Broken Promise: A Thriller

by Linwood Barclay

  “And she decided to have the baby.”

  “Yeah, which, if I’m telling the truth, was not exactly what I was hoping she would do. But like my dad said, it was her call. She said she wanted to have the kid; she really wanted to have a baby, said it would give her a focus, that it would really help her get her life together, right? And she said it was up to me how involved I wanted to be, but I was never sure whether she meant that, or if she was trying to guilt-trip me into stepping up and asking her to marry me or something like that, which I did not want to do. Marry her. I just wasn’t ready for anything like that.”

  “Sure,” I said. “You’re still in school and all.”

  “This is my last year. I graduate later this month. I didn’t even realize for a long time how much older than me she was. I thought she was maybe a year or two, but she was, like, seven or something. It’s like I’ve got this thing for older women.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Mrs. Langley?”

  Right. The neighbor who’d been murdered years ago. Derek had been rumored to have had a sexual relationship with her. It was one of the things that had made him, briefly, a suspect.

  He shook his head. “We don’t have to get into that, do we?”

  “No.”

  “Anyway, I started thinking maybe it wasn’t a guilt trip, that Marla really didn’t want me that involved, and part of that may be that her mom didn’t like me.”

  “You met Agnes?”

  “I never actually did, but Marla told me she wasn’t pleased. She runs the hospital, right? I mean, you’d know, if Marla’s your cousin. Her mom would be your aunt, right? She’s a bigwig around town. And I’m the son of a guy who runs a landscaping company. You could just guess how much she loved that.”

  I felt as though I’d been dipped into a bucket of shame. Derek had my aunt pretty much nailed.

  “And then,” I said, “Marla had the baby.”

  The young man nodded, and then began to tear up. “It was so weird. I was really sorry I got her pregnant, and didn’t want her to have the kid, and didn’t want to have the responsibility, right? But when I found out the baby—it was a little girl, but you probably know that—died when it was, like, coming out, it kind of hit me. I never expected that to happen. But it hit me real hard.”

  He sniffed, used the back of his hand to wipe away a tear. “All of a sudden I was thinking about what she might have grown up to be, what she’d have been like, whether she’d have looked like me and all that kind of shit, and I was so shook up about it that I kind of, you know, went to pieces.”

  “What happened?”

  “I moved back in with my dad. We’re pretty close. It was a good thing we hadn’t told Mom anything. I mean, it would have killed her to think she had a granddaughter, and that she died right away.” He swallowed. “Marla told me about holding her. Holding the baby when she was dead. She said she was in kind of a daze, but she looked at all her little fingers and her nose and all and said she was really beautiful, even though she wasn’t breathing. She even had a name chosen for her. Agatha Beatrice Pickens. Agatha sounded sort of like her mother’s name, but was different, she said.”

  He wiped his eyes again.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “These things can affect you in ways you never expect.”

  Derek Cutter nodded. “I guess.”

  We both heard the sound of a car door closing. Derek got off the table and looked out the window.

  “Oh, shit,” he said. “I know that guy.”

  I joined him at the window. I knew that guy, too.

  “Detective Duckworth,” I said.

  “Yeah. He was the one who thought I’d done it when our neighbors got killed. What’s he doing here?”

  I could think of two possible reasons: Duckworth wanted to talk to him about Marla Pickens for the same reasons I had. Or maybe he wanted to ask him about his dead friend Mason Helt.

  “I hate that guy,” Derek said. “Can you tell him I’m not here?”

  “I can’t do that, Derek.”

  “Great.”

  “I want to ask you one last quick question.”

  “Fine, whatever.”

  “I want your gut feeling about Marla.”

  “Gut feeling?”

  “Can you imagine her killing Rosemary Gaynor?”

  He thought a moment. “My gut?”

  “Yeah.”

  “One night we were at this thing at the college—this was before she got pregnant, I think. And there’s a whole bunch of kids around, and this guy was really giving shit to this girl about her talking to some other guy or some shit like that, and you could see she was really intimidated, looking real scared, and he went to raise his hand to her—I don’t know if he’d have actually hit her, but you never know—and Marla, who’s been watching all of this, grabs this beer bottle and throws it right at this asshole’s head. We were only like six feet away, so even if her aim hadn’t been great, she had a good chance of hitting him. And she does, right on his fucking nose. Lucky thing the bottle didn’t break or the guy might have lost an eye, but his nose started bleeding like crazy. And the guy looks at Marla, like maybe he’s going to come at her, and she shouts, ‘Yeah, I’m right here!’ Like she was just daring him to try something. Swear to God, you had to see it to believe it.”

  “Jesus,” I said.

  Downstairs, the doorbell rang.

  “So when you ask me what my gut thinks about Marla, I don’t know if there’s anything she could do that would surprise me,” he said.

  FORTY-THREE

  DUCKWORTH thought, I’m an idiot.

  He’d just pulled up in front of the house where he’d been told by the Thackeray College registration office that he could find Derek Cutter, when he realized what he should have asked Sarita Gomez’s landlord, Mrs. Selfridge, she of the magnificent banana bread.

  When Duckworth had left the station that morning he’d dragooned a female officer and put her on the phones to call nursing homes in and around Promise Falls to try to find where Sarita worked. It had occurred to him that, even if they were to call the right place, someone might deny employing a person here illegally.

  It was on the way to interview Derek that it hit him.

  “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he said to himself.

  He pulled right over to the curb, a couple of blocks away from Derek’s address, and got out his notebook and phone. He found Mrs. Selfridge’s number and dialed.

  She answered on the third ring. He identified himself.

  “Oh, hello, Detective,” she said. “If you’re wondering if Sarita’s come back, she hasn’t. She’s paid up to the end of the month, but I’m thinking I should start looking for a new tenant. I got a feeling she’s flown the coop for good.”

  “You might be right,” Duckworth said. “I wanted to thank you again for that banana bread. I was wondering, would you be willing to part with the recipe? And if you say no, I’m pretty sure I can get a subpoena.”

  That made her laugh. “I don’t even have it written down. I just do it out of my head. But I guess I could come up with something.”

  “And there’s another thing,” he said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this yesterday. Your phone, that Sarita used?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’d like you to go through the call history. Calls in and out.”

  “I could do that,” she said. “You want me to do that before or after I get you the recipe?”

  “Before,” Duckworth said, with some regret. “Sarita probably made, and received, calls from the nursing home where she worked. Once we have that number, we’ll know her employer. And there may be other numbers, too, that might help me find her.” He paused. “And when I do, I can ask her whether she’s going to keep the room.”

  “Oh, I’d really appreciate that.”<
br />
  “You have the card I left with you?” he asked. She said yes. “Okay, if you’d take down those numbers and e-mail them to me, I sure would appreciate it.”

  Mrs. Selfridge said she would get right on it, and Duckworth said good-bye.

  Idiot, he thought again. He wanted to plead overwork. Juggling too many cases at once. A murder, a fatal shooting at Thackeray, strange goings-on in the night at Five Mountains. Dead squirrels, for God’s sake.

  And then there was the home front. How the hell did his son end up working for that asshole Randall Finley? That son of a bitch couldn’t be trusted. There had to be a reason he’d hired his son. Sure, Trevor would be a good hire for any company, but you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to drive a truck. Finley could have hired anyone for a job like that. Why Trevor?

  While he waited for Sarita’s landlady to get those numbers, he’d continue on to Derek Cutter’s residence. The young man’s name had surfaced twice in the last day, in two separate investigations. Not only had he been identified as the man who’d gotten Marla Pickens pregnant, he was also reported to be a friend of Mason Helt, the student Clive Duncomb had shot in the head.

  Duckworth had much to discuss with Derek.

  He was about to put the car in drive when his cell rang.

  “Duckworth.”

  “Hey, Barry. Cal Weaver.”

  There was a voice from the past.

  “Son of a bitch. I knew you were back. I’ve been meaning to call.”

  “Everyone’s busy,” Weaver said.

  “Where you living?”

  “You know that used bookstore downtown? Naman’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Above it.”

  “Okay.”

  “I was living at my sister’s for a while,” Weaver said. “But that was temporary till I got my own place.”

  “I knew you’d moved back from Griffon,” Duckworth said. “I heard about what happened there. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks,” Weaver said. “Listen, you’re working the Rosemary Gaynor murder.”

  “I am.”

  “Neponset Insurance has asked me to look into it. Bill Gaynor works for them, and all their insurance is with them as well.”

  “Okay,” Duckworth said.

  “There was a million-dollar policy on Ms. Gaynor. Before there’s a payout to Mr. Gaynor, there’s the usual due diligence.”

  “Of course,” Duckworth said.

  “But from what I understand, this one may be a bit of a slam dunk,” Weaver said.

  “I’m in the middle of my investigation, Cal. No charges yet.”

  “But this Marla Pickens is looking good for it.”

  “She’s a suspect.”

  “She had their baby,” Weaver said. “And it wasn’t the first time she pulled a stunt like that. Am I right?”

  “You are.”

  “Look, I don’t want to get in your way on this, and I’m not doing an active investigation of my own, not at this stage. I’m hanging back, monitoring developments, waiting to see if there’s an arrest. I wanted to give you a heads-up, is all.”

  “Appreciate it,” Duckworth said. “Listen, we should have a beer sometime, get caught up.”

  “Sure,” Weaver said noncommittally, and ended the call.

  Duckworth was thinking he should have reached out to his old friend before now, but even more than that, he was thinking Bill Gaynor wasn’t going to have any trouble paying for a new nanny to look after Matthew.

  A million bucks.

  • • •

  When Duckworth bumped into David Harwood coming out of Derek Cutter’s place, he asked him what he was doing there. “Trying to find out what happened, same as you,” the former reporter said on his way to an old Taurus parked on the street.

  Duckworth found Derek waiting for him at the door to his apartment.

  “Hey, Derek,” Duckworth said. “How you been?”

  “Okay.”

  “How’s your dad?”

  “Okay.”

  Once upstairs, Duckworth asked about Marla Pickens. Derek said, “I’ll tell you what I just told the other guy.”

  Which he did.

  Then Duckworth turned to Mason Helt. “I hear you guys were friends.”

  “They fuckin’ executed him; that’s what I hear,” Derek said.

  “Did you know Mason was stalking women on campus, attacking them?”

  “You think if I knew something like that I wouldn’t say something about it?”

  “So you had no idea.”

  “No. I still don’t believe it. I’ve got some experience with being accused of something I didn’t do.”

  Duckworth felt he’d apologized enough years ago for all of that. “When was the last time you talked to him?”

  “Maybe two weeks ago? We ran into each other and he invited me to his place for a couple of beers.” Derek moved his lips in an out. “He said he got this weird kind of job. Sort of an acting thing. We’d been taking some theater classes together.”

  “What kind of acting thing?”

  “I asked him. I said, ‘Like in amateur theater? Something on campus or off?’ I even wondered if he’d tried out for some kind of commercial or something like that.”

  “Which was it?”

  “Well, none of those. Mason said it was a private thing. I thought, Maybe it’s got to do with sex, you know? Like maybe some old guy’d hired him to come to his house and dance or strip or do some kinky kind of role-play.”

  “Why would something like that come to mind?” Duckworth asked. “Have you ever been asked to do something like that?”

  “Geez, no. It’s just because he was so secretive about it, it made me wonder. But I kept asking him about it, and what he would say was, it was kind of like, you know when they hire actors to pretend they’re sick and medical students have to figure out what they’ve got?”

  “I’ve heard of that.”

  “Like what he was doing was part of a study or something. But he also implied it was a bit risky.” He shook his head. “He sure turned out to be right about that.”

  “Did Mason say who hired him?”

  “No, but he said he’d be able to buy me a few rounds for the next few weeks on what he was getting paid.”

  It fit with what Joyce Pilgrim had told him. Mason, just before Clive Duncomb shot him, had said he wouldn’t hurt her. That the attack was some kind of gig.

  “Mason was wearing a hoodie when he was shot,” Duckworth said. “With the number twenty-three on it. You ever see him wearing that?”

  “That’s weird that you should bring that up,” Derek said.

  “Why?”

  “That time I ran into him, he’d been to some sports store in Promise Falls. Where you can buy stitch-on letters for varsity jackets, that kind of thing. He had this white plastic bag, and I asked him what was in it, and he said it was for the gig, but he wouldn’t show it to me. But he had to leave the room for a second to take a leak, and I peeked inside, and it was two numbers. The way they were in the bag, they made a thirty-two, but yeah, could just as easy be twenty-three.”

  “So whoever hired him, for whatever it was he was supposed to do, he had to be wearing that number.”

  “I guess,” Derek said. “Why would someone do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s the significance of twenty-three?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe it’s a reference to Psalm Twenty-three,” Derek offered.

  “You’re going to have to help me there,” the detective said. “I sleep in on Sunday mornings if I’m not on duty.”

  “Well, I haven’t been to church in years either, but my parents used to send me to Sunday school when I was really little. Psalm Twenty-three is the one
that goes ‘The Lord is my shepherd.’ And there’s that part that talks about walking through the valley of the shadow of death, but not fearing any evil. You know?”

  “It rings a bell,” Duckworth said.

  FORTY-FOUR

  TREVOR Duckworth had rarely driven a van with so few windows. There was the front windshield, of course, and the roll-down ones on the driver and passenger doors. But that was it. The cargo area was totally closed in. There wasn’t even any glass on the two rear floor-to-ceiling doors.

  Visibility was a bitch.

  A couple of times over the years, he’d found himself behind the wheel of a rental, helping someone move, and he hated having to back the damn thing up. Couldn’t see where you were going. He’d adopted a style of backing up very slowly and hoping that if and when he hit something—or somebody—he’d hear it and stop before he did too much damage.

  But after a few days of working for Finley Springs Water, he was getting the hang of it. He could back this sucker up pretty nicely using only the mirrors that were bolted to the two doors. He’d dropped off about a hundred cases of water at several convenience stores around Promise Falls, and had now returned to the plant with an empty truck. He drove up in front of the loading docks, put the column shift into reverse, spun the wheel around, and guided the truck right up to the platform. Stopped an inch short, never touched the bumper.

  Hot damn.

  He grabbed a clipboard from the other seat that listed the places he’d been and how much had been delivered, and headed to the office with the paperwork.

  God, his dad could be such a dick sometimes.

  Giving him a hard time about working for Randall Finley. Who cared? A job was a job, and Trevor’d been out of work too long. How long had his parents been at him about getting a weekly paycheck? And then he finally gets one, and his dad’s not happy about it. At least his mother seemed pleased. It was funny about her. She could be such a huge worrier. Like when he was going around Europe with Trish, and was out of touch with his parents for days or weeks at a time. It drove his mother crazy. And yet now that he was back in Promise Falls, she was okay. She was the one he could go to when he had a problem. His dad was another story. Maybe it was the whole thing about being a cop. You got all hard-ass about everything.