Bad Move zw-1

by Linwood Barclay

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And let me give you my card, it has my name and badge number and where I can be reached in case you think of anything else, you can give me a call.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Nice to see you again,” she said, touched her fingers to the brim of her hat, and withdrew. As she left, my last chance of coming clean went with her.

  Angie and I stood in silence for a moment. It wasn’t every day the police brought your daughter home in a marked car for passing bogus bills. That you’d given her.

  “Where’s Mom? I need to talk to Mom.”

  “She’s at work, honey. Remember?”

  “I’m going to call her.”

  “No, don’t do that. She called me earlier, and it’s pretty wild there tonight. This would be a very, very bad time to call her.”

  Angie started heading toward the kitchen, which would take her past my study. I blocked her way. “Just stay here for a minute,” I said, touching both her shoulders lightly.

  “What? Can’t I go to the kitchen?”

  “Just stay here for a minute!”

  My tone gave Angie a jolt. She stood still while I turned and ran to my study. I eased the door open. Maybe he wasn’t dead, I thought. Maybe I’d just knocked him cold. It used to happen to Mannix every week on TV. Somebody hit him in the head with a gun butt, he was back on his feet after the commercial, no harm done. Even if this guy was Stefanie’s killer, I hadn’t signed on to be his executioner.

  “Oh man,” I said.

  Rick was gone. I came back out of the study, bolted into the kitchen. The patio door was wide open. Evidently, I’d not killed him. And when he realized the police were in the house, he’d made a break for it. I slid the door shut, and when I returned to the study, I found Angie there, looking at the pieces of the Robot model all over the carpet, as well as a couple of makeup items from Stefanie’s purse that I’d failed to scoop up.

  “What happened here, Dad?” Angie asked. “Your robot thingy. It’s all smashed.”

  “I just had a little accident, that’s all.”

  “And what’s Mom’s makeup doing here?” She picked up an eyeliner, sneered. “Oooh. She doesn’t even use this kind.”

  “Angie, do you have any place you could go tonight?”

  “Go?”

  “A friend’s, to sleep over.”

  “You never let me go to sleepovers on a school night.”

  “I know, but you know, it’s your mom’s birthday in a couple of days, and I think she’s going to be able to get off shift soon, and I thought I’d surprise her when she gets home. Order in some food, put on some music, maybe-”

  “Oh God, don’t tell me any more. That’s so gross. Yeah, I could probably go to Francine’s. Her parents are in Europe, she’d like the company.”

  “Why don’t you go throw some things together and I’ll drive you over.”

  Angie shrugged, turned to go upstairs. “You still owe me $150,” she said.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” I said. “I didn’t know that money was counterfeit.”

  She shrugged. “It was kind of cool, actually. I never got to ride in the back of a cop car before.”

  18

  While Angie packed an overnight bag, I called Paul’s cell phone.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s me. You still at Andy’s?” I could hear other young males goofing around in the background.

  “Quiet, it’s my dad!” he shouted. Then, more quietly, “Yeah, I’m here. I gotta come home already? You only dropped me off here like half an hour ago.”

  “No, you don’t have to come home. I was wondering how late you could stay there.”

  “You want me to stay here?”

  “Long as you want. Any chance you could sleep over?”

  “On a school night?”

  Since when did my children become so concerned about staying up late on a school night?

  “Yeah, sure, it’s okay. Angie’s going to stay with somebody, and it only seemed fair to offer you the same opportunity.”

  “Who is this, really?”

  “It’s your father, Paul.”

  “So I get reamed out by my science teacher, and for punishment, I get to stay out all night? If I told you I’m failing math, too, would there be money for me and Andy to get hookers?”

  “I was just telling Angie, it’s your mother’s birthday in a couple of days, and I think she’s going to be home from work soon.” A lie. A total lie. “And I wanted to make her arrival extra special.”

  There was silence for a moment on the other end of the line. Then, echoing his sister: “Oh gross.” Just how did teenagers think their parents brought them into the world, anyway?

  “So do you think you can stay there?” I asked.

  “Hang on, I’ll check.” He covered the mouthpiece, and I could hear a muffled exchange in the background. Paul came back on the line: “Yeah, it’s cool. But I didn’t bring over any stuff.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Like, a toothbrush? And another shirt, but not something you’d like, but a T-shirt, just grab something that’s on my floor. And could you grab my pillows? You know how I can’t sleep on strange pillows. And my comforter. I’ll probably be sleeping on the basement couch, and I don’t know how many blankets they’ve got.”

  I grabbed a pen by the phone and started to make a list.

  “And my hairbrush? I don’t want to use somebody else’s hairbrush. Oh, and some toothpaste? I don’t think Andy’s family has mint toothpaste. And I guess some underwear. I don’t need pajamas, though. I’ll just sleep in my clothes.”

  “Anything else?” I asked, trying to hold back the sarcasm.

  “I don’t think so. It’s just the one night.”

  “I’ll drop this off in a while,” I said. “I have some other things I have to do first.”

  “Okay. See ya later.”

  Angie came into the kitchen and I handed her Paul’s list. “Can you gather those things up for your brother?”

  She scanned it. “His comforter? What about his teddy bear? Should I pack that, too?”

  “Just do it, okay?”

  I wanted her out of the house as quickly as possible. I didn’t know where Rick had gone, or whether he planned to come back. Given that he’d left empty-handed, and with a nasty bump on the head, it seemed logical to assume that he might return to get what he’d come for, and exact a bit of revenge. When I glanced outside I saw that the police car was still sitting there, Officer Greslow making some notes with the inside dome light on. As long as she was there, I figured we were safe from another visit.

  I made sure the patio door was locked, as well as the side and garage doors. And while I waited for Angie to pack her things and Paul’s, I slid the bolt on the front door.

  Nothing was making any sense. When I’d handed Rick those two envelopes of what I now knew to be counterfeit money, he was dumbstruck. The cash, it was obvious now, was not what he had come for.

  There had to be something else in the purse.

  “Okay,” said Angie. “I’m ready.” She had her own backpack slung over her shoulder packed with her things, and jammed under her arms were Paul’s pillows and comforter, and a plastic bag filled with his toiletry items.

  “Where’s his backpack?” I asked, wondering why she hadn’t used that instead of a plastic bag.

  “It’s already jammed with his crap. I wasn’t reaching into it and taking anything out. He’ll probably come by in the morning before he goes to school anyway to get his school stuff. It’s on the way.”

  Before I unlocked the front door, I looked out the window to make sure no one was lurking there. “What are you doing, Dad?” Angie asked. The police car’s brake lights came on as the car was shifted into drive, and then it pulled away slowly from the curb.

  I opened the door. “Come on, quickly,” I said, locking the door after Angie and hustling her to my old Civic. We tossed everything into the back se
at, not wanting to soil Paul’s linens with any potentially oily messes in the trunk.

  Once the car doors were closed, I locked mine and ordered Angie to do the same. “What’s with you tonight?” she asked. “You’re more paranoid than usual.”

  I decided to tell her something that, while not addressing the issue directly, was still true. “I guess I’m on edge. Your mom phoned from work tonight, said there was a murder not too far from here.”

  “Really? Another murder? That’s like, what, two in a week? In the suburbs, Dad? You told us these things never happened in the suburbs.”

  I ignored that. “Some woman was found dead in a garage. Beaten to death.”

  Angie decided that was not joke material, and said nothing. As we sped away down Chancery Park, I had to ask her for directions. “I don’t know where this friend of yours lives.”

  “Turn right at Lilac,” she said.

  We drove on in silence, Angie speaking only to give directions. About five minutes later, we stopped out front of a two-story house with a couple of expensive cars in the driveway. Angie had her hand on the door handle when I reached out and touched her arm.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” I said.

  She shrugged, avoiding my eyes. “I guess there’s no way you could know the money was fake.”

  “No, not about that. I’m sorry about moving us out here. I know you haven’t liked it out here, that you miss your friends downtown. I was only trying to do what I thought was best at the time.”

  Angie looked at me now, trying to read between the lines. “I know that.”

  “I’ll talk to your mom. I don’t know, maybe we need to reassess things.”

  “It’s not that bad,” she said. “I guess I’m getting used to it.”

  I smiled. “I love you, sweetheart.”

  “I love you too, Dad.”

  “Be careful,” I said as she gave my hand a squeeze and slipped out the door. I watched her run up the walk and ring the bell, and waited until she was safely inside the house before driving away.

  Next stop: Andy’s. He and Paul were already out by the end of the driveway, goofing around on skateboards, when my headlights swept around the corner and caught them. Paul grabbed his stuff out of the back seat and wasted as little time as possible on conversation. I think he was afraid I’d change my mind, tell him to get in the car and come home.

  I was well over the limit heading back to our house, but I slowed the last half-block, looking for unfamiliar cars parked at the curb, people crouched in the bushes. I parked, locked the Civic, and scooted into the house, looking over my shoulder as I pushed the door in, expecting Rick to suddenly appear, leaping onto me like a wild beast.

  But he wasn’t there, and once I was inside I threw the deadbolt. And stopped, holding my breath, listening for sounds. Was he back in the house somehow? As someone who worked for Valley Forest Estates, did he have some sort of master key? Could he get into any house he wanted, any time he wanted?

  All I could hear was the blood pounding in my temples. I shouted, “I know you’re here, asshole! And that cop’s back, right out front! So if you’re smart, you’ll get the hell out!”

  Nothing.

  Tentatively, I moved into the house, turning on every light switch I passed. The broadloom, with its upgraded underpadding, allowed me to roam about noiselessly. I peeked into the kitchen, the living and dining rooms, the family room where we watched TV. Then I eased the door of my study open, my crumbled Robot still on the carpet. So far, no guests.

  I turned the knob on the door to the ground-floor laundry room where I had stashed Stefanie Knight’s purse in the washing machine. I opened the lid, worked the purse out from around the agitator, and took it back into the study. There, just as Rick had done, I dumped its contents out onto the floor, just beyond the range of Robot debris. On my hands and knees, I started sorting.

  I put the envelopes to one side. Ditto for makeup items, tampons, car keys, change, expired coupons.

  And my eyes settled on the black plastic film canister. I gave it a shake to see that it wasn’t empty. A roll rattled inside. I popped the gray plastic lid off and dumped the roll into the palm of my hand.

  There was no strip of film extended from it, so it was clearly one that had pictures on it. It was high-quality, black-and-white film. Twenty-four exposures.

  Time to go downstairs and develop some pictures.

  19

  By the time I had the negatives developed and hanging up to dry, I had some sense that this film was, in fact, what Rick might have been looking for. These were not pictures from someone’s trip to Disney World. The twenty-four images were not from an excursion to Mount Rushmore. While I couldn’t yet see who, exactly, was in these images, I could tell that there were two people, and that one of them was a man, and the other was a woman. And that these were not taken out on the street, or looking down from the Eiffel Tower, or at a baseball stadium. These were definitely indoor shots.

  I had a lot of time to think in the darkroom while the negatives developed. My eyes adjusted to the near-total absence of light and sound, and I thought back to the trip Sarah and I had taken to the grocery store only a few hours ago, and how much our lives had changed since then. So far, only I was aware just how much.

  My guess was that Rick’s version of the events of the evening were not entirely as he’d related them. I believed he had gone to Stefanie’s house. And it was obvious that he had been to Stefanie’s mother’s house. But I didn’t believe that when he went to Stefanie’s house, she hadn’t been there. My guess was that he went there to get back this roll of film. That he had been waiting for her to get home. That would explain the second broken window. And when Stefanie finally showed up, probably on foot, and hadn’t been able to produce the film because she’d lost her purse, he ended up whacking her in the side of the head with a shovel. But he didn’t believe her story about a stolen purse, so he went looking places where he thought Stefanie might have been. Where she could have left that film. That led him to her mother’s house, and the slip of paper I’d left behind had led him to me.

  It was hard not to feel that I had, as they say, blood on my hands.

  I exposed one neg after another and started dipping the photographic paper into the various trays. As the images became less soft, as graininess gave way to definition, I could see that these pictures were all of the same two people, coupling away on what appeared to be a king-size bed in a well-lit bedroom. The camera had been mounted overhead somehow, perhaps behind a two-way mirror, so the shots in which these two were engaged in the traditional missionary style of lovemaking afforded few clues as to the man’s identity. I could see that he was overweight, and balding, but with enough hair on his back and butt that he should be considering some sort of transplant. (A comb-over was definitely out of the question.) It was not the kind of picture that would be useful in picking a guy out of a lineup.

  But the woman’s identity was a different matter. With her hair splayed out across the pillow, it was clear that she was Stefanie Knight.

  As I suspected would be the case, subsequent prints made identification of the man much simpler. It was as though Stefanie knew there had to be some shots on the roll in which the man’s face would be easy to see. “Let me get on top,” she must have said to him. “Let me dangle these in your face.” It would have been difficult for him to say no.

  And it was a face that I recognized. It had accompanied the article in The Suburban about the death of Willow Creek’s best friend, Samuel Spender.

  It was Roger Carpington, Oakwood town councilman.

  I felt-and I know this is going to sound awfully trite-dirty. Working alone here in the darkroom, no one else in the house, developing pornographic images. Not that I’m a prude about such things, but I think that if you’re going to have your picture taken screwing somebody else’s brains out, you should at least have the right to know there’s a camera in the room. Somehow I felt ol’ Roger here didn’t know. A
nd I was betting that Mrs. Carpington didn’t know, either.

  I wanted several prints of the shots where he was most identifiable. I was sorry, for the first time, not to have a digital camera. I could have displayed all these images on a computer screen, selected the ones I wanted, and printed them off in a couple of minutes. Doing things the old-fashioned way was going to keep me down here a bit longer, which was frustrating because I was itching to move forward with a plan that was slowly taking shape in my head.

  And then, upstairs, a noise.

  It was the front door opening. The darkroom was right under the front hall where you stepped into the house.

  I’d locked it. I was sure I’d locked it. I’d double-checked every door after coming in from delivering Angie and dropping off Paul’s stuff. Maybe my worst fear was true. Rick did have master keys. He could get into any house in Valley Forest Estates.

  The door closed. The sound of footsteps followed. But once they moved away from the front door and were no longer over the darkroom, I couldn’t track them.

  Maybe I could stay right where I was. Rick might stick to the main floor, go back into the study and look for the purse, never come down here.

  Get real. He would have seen the car in the driveway, suspect that I had to be in the house somewhere. He’d want to find me first, use his powers of persuasion to get me to hand over the film. Maybe arrange an encounter between me and Quincy in the trunk of his car.

  Careful not to bump into anything, I shifted over to the corner of the darkroom, where a tripod was leaned up against the wall. It would make a good weapon, I figured, with its three metal legs, once I could get out of the confines of the darkroom and had enough room in which to swing it.