Broken Promise: A Thriller

by Linwood Barclay

  “The woman who was . . .” I might have finished the sentence if Ethan hadn’t been standing there. The woman who was fatally stabbed in the park by the falls.

  Even though I’d never finished the sentence, Mom knew where I was going. “That’s the one. She was Walden’s daughter. Anyway, Walden’s wife just died, too, poor man. He still works for the town, and he wanted to ask your father some questions about all these things that went on back when your father worked there. Don’t ask me what because I don’t know and I don’t care.” She looked at Ethan. “What’s with the face?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “You want a cookie?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Come on,” I said to him. “Let’s go find Poppa.”

  He was, as Mom had said, in the garage. It was a separate building in back of the house that was a second workshop for Dad. It was hard to keep it warm in the winter, so he’d set up a place to work in the basement, too. But when the weather was nice, he spent a lot of time out here puttering.

  We found him standing at the workbench, sorting screws and dropping them into a drawer made up of dozens of small plastic cubicles. Dad was a good sorter.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hmm,” he said, barely acknowledging us. Ethan shot me a worried look, one that said, Maybe this isn’t a good time.

  “Dad, you got a sec?”

  He half turned to look at us, and I don’t know how this could be, but he looked older than when I’d seen him earlier in the day. I thought about his heart.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  I nudged Ethan’s shoulder.

  “I have to tell you something,” my son said. “You promise not to get mad?”

  My father eyed him curiously. “I know you haven’t wrecked my car. You can’t reach the pedals. There can’t be anything much worse than that. So, okay.”

  “You know the fight I had with Carl Worthington?”

  “Yup.”

  “It was about your dad’s watch. The one you had in a box downstairs with other stuff.”

  “Okay,” Dad said.

  “I kind of took it from the box and took it to school to show people, and Carl took it and wouldn’t give it back, and I’m really sorry and I know I shouldn’t have done it and I should have asked you if I could take it to school, and I’ll pay you back.”

  Dad’s eyes softened. “That’s what the fight was about.”

  “I grabbed him to try to get it back but he kept it. And Dad went over there to get it back but Carl lied and said he didn’t have it.” He paused for a breath. “But I know that none of this would have happened if I hadn’t taken it in the first place.”

  Dad said nothing for several seconds. Then: “Well, it didn’t keep time anyway. There’s people done worse things than what you did.”

  He put his hand to Ethan’s cheek, held it there for a moment, then went back to sorting screws.

  Ethan looked like a death row inmate who’d gotten a call from the governor at two minutes to midnight. I nodded toward the house, indicating he should take off. He did.

  “Everything okay, Dad?” I asked.

  “Yeah, sure,” he said, his back to me.

  “You let Ethan off pretty easy.”

  “He’s a good boy,” Dad said. “He screwed up.” A pause. “We all do.”

  “Mom said you met up with an old friend from work today.”

  “Not really,” he said. “His dad was a friend of mine.”

  “Was it good to see him?”

  A shrug, his back still to me as he separated Robertsons from Phillips. “Yes and no. I don’t really keep up with folks I worked with. Say hello if I see them on the street is all, like Tate.”

  I had no idea who Tate was.

  Dad continued. “I’ve got enough to do without living in the past. It’s not good for you, dwelling on things that happened a long time ago that you can’t do a damn thing about.”

  “What are we talking about here, Dad?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Absolutely nothing.”

  An awkward silence ensued, but it wasn’t for lack of things to talk about. Marla and the baby and Rosemary Gaynor. I still couldn’t shake the image of that dead woman on the floor. As hard as I tried to mentally push it away, it kept coming back.

  I figured even if I could block it out, it would be replaced with the image of a shotgun in my face.

  I decided to go with something else to make conversation.

  “I got offered a job today,” I said.

  That prompted Dad to turn and face me. “Hey, that’s great news, son. That’s terrific.”

  “I haven’t said yes. In fact, I’m not sure I want to say yes.”

  He frowned. “What is it?”

  “Remember Randall Finley?”

  “Yeah, of course. Good man, Finley.”

  “What?” That took me by surprise.

  “Oh, yeah, he was a good mayor. You telling me he offered you a job?”

  “Yeah. A kind of executive-assistant thing. Campaign manager, maybe. He’s thinking about running again, but he’s got his hands full overseeing his water-bottling company. Needs someone to do PR for him, deal with media, stuff like that.”

  “Pay good?”

  “Thousand a week.”

  “What’s there to think about?” my father asked. “That’s good money.”

  “Dad, he’s an asshole.”

  Dad shrugged. “He’s a politician.”

  “Remember the underage-hooker thing?”

  Dad nodded. “But he didn’t know she was underage.”

  Was this my father I was talking to? “You mean if she was just old enough, that made it okay?”

  He looked down at the floor. “No, I’m not saying that. I’m just saying there are degrees. Look at Clinton back in the nineties. Look at our own Spitzer, a few years back. They get a little bit of power and they think they can do anything; then they find out they can’t and get cut down to size. They learn. Does that mean we cut ’em off from ever making a contribution again?”

  I said nothing.

  “Let me tell you a story,” he said. “After your mother and I got married, but before I got a job with the town, I was out of work. There was a guy building houses on the south side of town who was looking to hire. I knew something about him. I knew he was a drunk, that he abused his wife, that he beat his kids. He was a total shit, this guy. And I had a wife to look after, rent to pay. I had responsibilities. I took that job. I wasn’t proud of myself, but looking after your mother came ahead of my pride. I decided I’d work that job, and keep looking for something better in the meantime. And as soon as I found something with the town, I gave that bastard my notice and left. But through it all, your mother never went hungry, and she never spent a day without a roof over her head.”

  I swallowed. “I hear you.”

  “Yeah, Finley’s an asshole. But I think he loves this town, and maybe he’s what Promise Falls needs right now. Someone to shake things up.”

  I nodded. We stood there facing each other. I put my arms around him and patted his back.

  “You’re a good man,” I said as he returned the hug.

  “Don’t be so sure,” Dad said.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  IT didn’t freak out Gloria Fenwick to be working in a deserted amusement park. At least, not in the daytime.

  She’d worked for the corporation that owned Five Mountains and several other parks across the country, and she’d been posted at some of those other locations through the years. And that had meant being there in the off-season, winding things down after the children had gone back to school, their parents back to the drudgery of their jobs.

  Fenwick was accustomed to strolling past riderless horses stuck in their tracks on the merry-go
-round. She could never bring herself to ride any of the parks’ roller coasters, so the stillness of the Five Mountains Super Collider Coaster actually gave her comfort. She couldn’t stand close to it when it was in operation, feeling the supporting structure tremble and vibrate, always fearing the apparatus would collapse, sending dozens of people to their deaths.

  The empty concession stands, the driverless bumper cars, the deserted parking lot. It was all just fine with Fenwick.

  In the daytime.

  But at night, well, that was a different story. At night, the place really did creep her out.

  She felt reasonably secure in the park’s administrative offices, where she was now, as darkness fell. She had a mountain of work—no pun intended—still to deal with. There were several offers from different amusement parks for some of the Five Mountains rides. An Italian firm was putting up several million dollars for the Super Collider, which could be dismantled, shipped overseas, and reassembled. A group involved in the ongoing rebuilding of the Jersey Shore after Hurricane Sandy was interested in some of the concession stands. A representative from Disney wanted information on laid-off employees. They might have work for them at one of their theme parks.

  Fenwick not only had to reply to all of them, but let the head office know about incoming offers. All the big decisions were made there. She was just the traffic cop, directing inquiries this way and that.

  Plus, there were countless other duties involved in winding the place down. Dealing with creditors. One pending lawsuit from a woman whose dentures flew out while on the coaster. If all she’d wanted was some new teeth, Five Mountains would have bought her a set, but the woman was claiming emotional distress, too.

  What a fucking world, Fenwick thought.

  She didn’t work here entirely alone. She had an assistant most days, but he took off promptly at five, whether there was work left to deal with or not. And Five Mountains had engaged a security firm to watch the place, keep it from being vandalized, make sure homeless folks weren’t camped out in the inner workings of the log ride. Usually it was a guy named Norm through the day, who did three rounds: one at nine, another at one, and his last at five. In the evenings it was Malcolm. She knew for sure he inspected the park at ten, because she’d been here working that late on more than one occasion. He was supposed to come through again at two in the morning, and then four hours later at six.

  Gloria was thinking she wouldn’t see Malcolm tonight. She hoped to get out of here around half past nine at the latest.

  She was making a list of things she had to do the next day when her cell rang. She smiled. It was Jason. From the head office. Hundreds of miles away. When he called this late, it was not to talk business.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Whatcha doin’?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Oh, go home. You’re working too hard.” A pause. “And speaking of hard . . .”

  “Stop it,” she said, grinning, putting down her pen and running her fingers through her hair.

  “Are you going to get here this weekend?”

  “I’m going to try,” she said, picking up the pen again, writing, Call denture lawyer. “What about Memorial Day?” The May holiday weekend, a little more than two weeks away. “You coming here for that?”

  “Oh, yeah. But I need to see you before then. I really need to see you.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I had this idea of something new we could try,” Jason said.

  “Go on.”

  “Okay, so picture this. You’re on the bed, on your back, and—”

  “What am I wearing?” she asked, scribbling, Review offer on bumper cars.

  “A pair of high heels,” he said. “The black pumps.”

  “I like those,” Gloria said. “They make me feel dirty. But they’re hard to walk in.”

  “You won’t be doing any walking,” Jason said.

  “Okay, so I’m on my back, in heels, and then what? Tell me this. Are you there with me? Because, the way this is sounding, I just might be getting off without you.” Underlining, with a question mark at the end, Tell head office about Finley?

  “Oh, I’m there, and my cock is very, very—”

  There was a flash of light outside Gloria Fenwick’s window.

  “Hold that thought,” she said, and put the cell phone on her desk. She got up and walked to the window. The light remained constant, but was somehow moving.

  “No,” she said.

  The light, which was being cast on a row of gift-shop buildings across from the admin offices, was coming from behind the building Fenwick worked in, where most of the rides were.

  The rides that had all been powered down, that were in the process of being decommissioned.

  She went back to her desk, picked up the phone, and said, “I’ll have to call you back.”

  “What’s—”

  She ended the call, then contacted the security company. “Yeah, hey, it’s Gloria at Five Mountains. There’s something going on here. You need to get someone here now. Yeah, right.”

  Gloria, keeping the phone in her pocket, left the office, went down a flight of stairs, and exited onto the park’s main street. To the left, the admission gates. Heading right would take her deeper into the park.

  When she rounded the corner of the building, she could not believe what she was seeing.

  The six-story-tall Ferris wheel was alive.

  Fully lit, it was a low-hanging, revolving roulette wheel against the dark night sky. A dazzling, monstrous twirling eye that always reminded Fenwick of the pinwheels she loved to blow into as a child.

  “This is not happening,” she said, starting to walk toward the base of the ride.

  It was not impossible, of course. All the rides were still connected to the park’s electrical source. They had to be turned on when prospective buyers came to pick through what Five Mountains was selling.

  The big wheel moved almost noiselessly. With the carriages empty, there was not the usual screaming and laughing of passengers.

  Except . . .

  Fenwick stopped dead, waited for the Ferris wheel to make another complete rotation. Allowed her eyes to focus on the ride. She thought she saw someone—no, more than one person—sitting in one of the carriages as it did a swing near the bottom, where there were more lights.

  The wheel went around again, and this time Fenwick was sure. There looked to be three people in one carriage. All the others were empty.

  Goddamn kids, she thought. Snuck onto the grounds, figured out how to start the ride, decided to have some fun.

  Except there had to be someone else. Someone who could stop the ride, or those three would be stuck on there for a very long time.

  As she neared the wheel, it was making another loop. She saw the numbers stenciled onto the side of each carriage: 19 . . . 20 . . . 21 . . . 22 . . .

  Here it was. Carriage twenty-three. Three people sitting side by side.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “What the hell do you think—”

  As the carriage swept past, Fenwick noticed that none of the passengers was moving.

  And it didn’t look like any of them were wearing clothes, either.

  She reached the base of the Ferris wheel, located the controls. She’d never worked as a ride operator, but she’d been around them often enough to know the basics. She grabbed the lever to power back the wheel, to start slowing it gradually. She craned her neck upward, watching for carriage twenty-three, hoping she could time it right so that it stopped at the boarding platform.

  Very nearly did it too. She didn’t get the wheel to fully stop until it had gone about three feet too far for the passengers to make a safe exit.

  But it didn’t matter. Because they weren’t passengers.

  They were mannequins. All female, all unadorned. Well, nea
rly.

  Gloria Fenwick looked around and began to feel very afraid.

  A single word was painted, in bold red, on each of the mute amusement-park-goers.

  Read across, the message was:

  YOU’LL BE SORRY

  TWENTY-FIVE

  BILL Gaynor had to bring in one of those companies that cleaned up crime scenes. The detective—Duckworth, his name was—had given him the name of a firm. Not local. There weren’t enough crimes like this in Promise Falls to justify a service that catered to this exclusive a clientele. But there was one in Albany, and they came up in the late afternoon, once the crime-scene investigators were finished doing whatever it was they did and had cleared out.

  They did a good job in the kitchen. They’d managed to mop up all the blood in there. The carpet on the stairs and in the second-floor hallway was a different matter. Gaynor had tracked blood through much of the house when he’d gone in search of Matthew. The cleaners had gotten up some of the stains, but they’d told Gaynor he’d probably want to have all that carpeting ripped up and replaced. It was a light gray, and there was only so much they could do.

  Sure, he’d replace the carpet. And then he’d put this house on the market. There was no way he could live in this place, raise his son here.

  It hadn’t occurred to Gaynor that he’d have to pay for the cleaning. The head of the crew handed him the bill without blinking. “We take Visa,” he said. “You might want to check with your insurance company. This might be something they’d reimburse you for.”

  “I work for an insurance company,” Gaynor said.

  “Well, there you go,” the man said. “Every cloud, as they say.”

  There were so many things one had to do, he thought, but he didn’t know where to start. As he’d told the detective, neither he nor Rosemary had immediate family. No siblings, no living parents. Truth be told, neither of them had ever really had many friends. He had the doctor, of course. As far as he knew, his wife really had no one. She loved to talk to Sarita, and probably considered her a friend, but really, Gaynor thought, you couldn’t be friends with the help.

  What they had was Matthew.