The Accident

by Linwood Barclay

  “He did that,” Sally said. “Writing wasn’t something he was all that good at. He’d jot down ideas and bits and pieces of what he wanted to say before he’d write a letter. What were the notes?”

  “They were kind of disjointed, didn’t make all that much sense, but there was one thing that stood out. He said something along the lines of ‘Sorry about your wife.’ ”

  “Sorry about Sheila?”

  I nodded. “What do you make of that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, it probably means just what it says. He was sorry Sheila passed away.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t get that. Theo and I were hardly friends. Especially after that blowup we’d had. And it’s been a few weeks now since Sheila died. Why tell me now?”

  Sally shook her head. “It is kind of screwy, isn’t it?”

  “It’s why I asked you how well you really knew him. Do you think it’s possible Theo had anything to do with Sheila’s death?”

  Sally stood up. “Oh God, Glen, really. I can’t believe you.”

  “I’m just asking,” I said.

  “I know you didn’t like him, that you thought he did shit work, that those truck nuts hanging off his bumper offended your fine sensibilities, but Jesus, are you kidding me? Thinking Theo killed your wife? Glen, no one killed Sheila. The only one who can be blamed for Sheila’s death is Sheila. Look, I know how much it hurts you for me to say that, but it’s the truth, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you can move on with your life and stop torturing the rest of us.”

  “But Theo sounds like he was feeling guilty about something.”

  She shook her head. She was furious, her cheeks flushed.

  “This is, like, this is the most unbelievable thing you’ve ever said to me,” she said.

  I stood up. I knew we were done here. “I’m sorry, Sally,” I said. “I don’t mean this as an attack on you.”

  She was moving toward the front door. “I think you should go, Glen.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “And I think I’d like to give my notice.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t think I can work for you anymore.”

  “Sally, please.”

  “I’m sorry, but I think I need to move on. With my personal life, with work. Maybe I just need to start all over again. I bet I could get a good price for this house. I could go live someplace else.”

  “Sally, I’m really sorry. I think the world of you. We need to let things settle down. We’re all on edge. There’s been so much happening the last month. For me, for you. Take a couple of weeks off. Maybe talk to somebody. Honestly, I’ve been thinking about doing that. Some days, I think I’m going to go out of my head. Just take—”

  She had the door open. “Go, Glen. Just go.”

  I went.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Rona Wedmore had gone home with two Big Macs and a large order of fries. No Cokes, no milk shakes. There were drinks in the fridge at home. No sense paying takeout restaurant prices for something you already had at home. And besides, McDonald’s didn’t have beer.

  She pulled in to the driveway of her Stratford house and let herself in.

  “I’m home,” she called out. “And I’ve got Mickey D’s.”

  There was no reply. But Detective Wedmore showed no concern about that. She could hear a TV going. Sounded like an episode of Seinfeld.

  Lamont loved to watch Seinfeld. Rona hoped one day he might even laugh during an episode.

  She took her gun from her belt and locked it in a desk drawer in a spare bedroom she used as an office. Even if she was only going to be home for a short while, she always took off her weapon and put it in a secured location.

  That done, she came into the kitchen and walked through it to a small room at the back of the house, the one they’d fixed up before Lamont went over. Not big, but big enough for a loveseat and a coffee table and a TV. They spent a lot of time in here together. Lamont spent almost all of his time in here.

  “Hey, babe,” she said, walking in with the brown takeout bag. She leaned over and kissed her husband on the forehead. He kept staring straight ahead at the adventures of Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer. “You want a beer with dinner?” Lamont said nothing. “A beer it is.”

  She set up two TV trays in front of the loveseat, then went into the kitchen. She put the Big Macs on plates and split the large order of fries between them. She squeezed some ketchup out onto Lamont’s plate. She’d never really cared for ketchup on her fries. She just liked them salty.

  She put the plates on the trays, then went back into the kitchen. She filled a glass with water from the tap for herself and reached into the fridge for a beer. She returned to the TV room. Lamont had not started his burger or eaten a fry. He always waited for her. He wasn’t much on the “please” and “thank you” thing these days, but he never began a meal until she’d sat down with him.

  Rona Wedmore took a bite of the Big Mac. Lamont did the same.

  “Every once in a while,” she said, “these just hit the spot. Don’t you think?”

  The doctor had said that just because he didn’t have anything to say didn’t mean he didn’t want her to talk to him. She’d gotten used to carrying on these one-sided conversations for several months now. She wished Lamont would get so sick of listening to her blather on about work and the weather and could Barack pull it together for a second term that he’d finally turn and say to her something like “For the love of God, would you please just shut the fuck up?”

  How she’d love that.

  Lamont dipped a french fry in ketchup and put it into his mouth whole. He watched Kramer whip open the door, slide into Jerry’s apartment.

  “I never get tired of that,” Rona said. “It kills me every time.”

  When the commercials came on, she told him about her day. “This is the first time I ever had to investigate a cop,” she said. “I’ve got to walk on eggshells on this one. But this guy, there’s something seriously bent about him. Isn’t the slightest bit curious about how his wife died. What the hell do you make of that?”

  Lamont ate another fry.

  The doctor said he might snap out of it tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe in a year.

  Maybe never.

  But at least he could be home. He functioned, more or less. Could take a shower, dress himself, slap a sandwich together. She could even phone and he’d check the caller ID and if it was her he’d pick up and she could give him a message. Just so long as she didn’t need him to answer back, she was okay.

  Sometimes she just called to say she loved him.

  And there’d be silence on the other end of the line.

  “I hear ya, babe,” she’d say. “I hear ya.”

  As a police detective, she’d seen things. Working in Milford, maybe she didn’t see, with any regularity, the kinds of things cops in L.A. or Miami or New York saw, but she’d seen some things.

  But she couldn’t imagine what Lamont had witnessed over there in Iraq. She’d been told by others what it was—about the Iraqi schoolchildren, how they’d blundered into that IED—but she still couldn’t get her head around it.

  Guess Lamont couldn’t, either.

  When he was finished with his burger and fries, Wedmore took the dishes into the kitchen and put away the TV trays. She returned and sat next to him on the couch.

  “I’m gonna have to go out for a bit,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll be long. But I talked to this man today, his wife died in a car accident a few weeks ago, and this guy, and his daughter, you wouldn’t believe the shit they’ve been going through. He thinks there’s something fishy about how his wife got killed. I think there is, too.”

  Lamont picked up the remote and started surfing through channels.

  “Even though I told him I wasn’t going to do anything with this until tomorrow, I’m going to try to talk to someone tonight. You okay if I head out for a bit?”

  Lamont landed on an epis
ode of Star Trek. The original one, with Kirk and Spock.

  Wedmore gave him another kiss on the forehead. She put her gun back on her belt, slipped on her jacket, and went out the door.

  She drove back over the bridge into Milford, past Riverside Honda, which was still in the process of being rebuilt after that fire, then found her way into Belinda Morton’s neighborhood and parked across the street from the house. She looked at it a moment, then got out. She did a quick scan of the street, something she always did out of practice. Saw a dark Chrysler parked a few houses down.

  It was quiet.

  She went up to the door and rang the bell.

  It was almost comical, in a way. The moment she hit the button, there came a scream from inside the house, like maybe she’d caused it to happen.

  Rona did three things in very quick succession. She got out her phone, hit a button, and said, “Officer needs assistance.” And she rattled off the address. The phone went back into her pocket, the gun came off her belt.

  This time, instead of using the doorbell, she banged on the door with her fist.

  “Police!” she shouted.

  But the woman was still screaming.

  Wedmore didn’t have the luxury of waiting for backup. She tried the door, found it unlocked, and swung it open, stepping back out of the doorway at the same moment. Carefully, she peeked her head around, both hands on her weapon, arms locked. There was no one in the front hall.

  The screaming had stopped, but now a woman, presumably the one who’d been making all the noise, was pleading, “Please don’t kill him! Please. Just take the money and go.”

  A man’s voice: “Give me the envelope.”

  Wedmore followed the voices. She went through the dining room, then past a room where a large television hung crookedly from the wall, the screen smashed.

  Now, a second man’s voice, whimpering, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry. Just take it!”

  Wedmore considered her options. Hold her position in the hall until help arrived? Shout out from where she was that the police were in the house? Or just—

  The woman screamed again. “Don’t shoot him! No!”

  Wedmore appeared to be out of options. She came through the door. In a nanosecond, she took in the scene.

  The room was a study. On the far side of the room, a broad oak desk. Heavily stacked bookshelves lined walls. To the right, a window that looked out onto the backyard.

  On the wall behind the desk, a framed picture on hinges was swung back to reveal an open wall safe.

  A woman Rona Wedmore recognized as Belinda Morton was standing off to one side, her face raw with horror. A middle-aged balding man Wedmore believed was George Morton, his head smeared with blood, was on his knees, looking up into the barrel of a gun. Training the weapon on him was a lean, well-dressed man with gleaming black hair. Wedmore did not recognize him.

  With her arms set rigidly before her, and both hands on her gun, she shouted with a voice she barely recognized as her own: “Police! Drop it!”

  The man was quicker than she had anticipated. One moment he was facing Belinda Morton’s husband, and now his entire upper body had shifted and he was looking right at Wedmore.

  The gun had moved, too. The barrel was now little more than a black dot in Wedmore’s eye.

  She pushed herself to the right at the same time as she shouted, again, “Drop—”

  She barely heard the pfft.

  Sure felt it, though.

  She got off one shot in return. Didn’t have a chance to see whether she’d hit her target.

  Wedmore was going down.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Darren Slocum, sitting out on the street in the Chrysler, heard the shot.

  “Oh shit,” he said aloud.

  He reached over for the keys, which were still in the ignition, got out of the car, and stood with the passenger door open, wondering what he should do. Much depended on who’d been shot. If anyone had been at all. It could have been some kind of warning shot. A gun might have gone off by accident. Someone might have fired at someone else and missed.

  What Slocum did know was who’d gone into that house. He’d watched Rona Wedmore get out of her car, cross the street, and bang on the door. From his position, he thought he’d heard some commotion in the house, but wasn’t sure. He’d seen Wedmore get out her phone and make the briefest of calls before unholstering her weapon and entering the premises.

  Not good.

  If Wedmore had shot Sommer, the smartest thing he could do was disappear. And not in Sommer’s car. Best to toss the keys back in, leave the Chrysler on the street, let everyone believe Sommer came to the Morton house alone. If Slocum left in the car, and police couldn’t find one outside the house, they’d know Sommer had an accomplice.

  Darren didn’t want anyone looking for an accomplice.

  Of course, it was also possible Belinda or George had been shot in whatever mayhem had taken place inside that house. And the absolute worst-case scenario, Slocum concluded, would be if Milford police detective Rona Wedmore had been shot.

  By Sommer.

  Which would mean Slocum was waiting out here for a cop killer.

  Again, not good.

  Slocum thought, Let it be Sommer. It’d be for the best, really. If Sommer was dead, he wouldn’t be doing much talking. He wouldn’t be able to tell about his involvement with Darren and his wife. Sommer was, even to Darren, who’d dealt with some pretty scummy people in his time as a cop, scarier than hell. Darren knew he’d sleep better at night knowing the guy was dead.

  He stood there by the car, thinking all these things, debating with himself. Stay with the car? Go up to the house? Just take off? He could make it from Cloverdale Avenue to his place on Harborside Drive in ten minutes on foot.

  And then? What if his fellow cops put it all together? When they showed up at his door, would they slap the cuffs on him, even if Sommer was dead and hadn’t said a word?

  When he got home, should he pack up Emily and make a run for it? And how far could he expect to get, realistically? He wasn’t prepared for anything like this. He didn’t have another identity set up. The only credit cards he had were in his own name. How long would it take the authorities to track him down? A man on the run with a little girl in tow?

  A day? If that?

  He couldn’t decide what to do. He needed to know what had happened in that house before—

  Someone came out the front door.

  It was Sommer. Holding a gun.

  The man ran down the walk toward the car. Slocum started running toward him. “What the hell happened in there?” he shouted.

  “Get in the car,” Sommer said, not quite shouting, but firm. “I got the money.”

  Slocum stood his ground. “What was that shot? What happened?”

  Sommer was nose to nose with him now. “Get in the damn car.”

  “I saw Rona Wedmore go in there. A cop! And you coming out, alone. What went down in there?” Slocum grabbed hold of the lapels of Sommer’s jacket. “Goddamn it, what did you do?”

  “I shot her. Get in the car.”

  In the distance, the sound of approaching sirens.

  Slocum gently released his grip on Sommer’s jacket, let his arms settle by his sides. He stood there, shook his head a couple of times, as though some kind of peace had come over him.

  “Now,” Sommer said.

  But Slocum didn’t move. “It’s over. All of this. It’s over.” He looked to the house. “Is she dead?”

  “Who cares?”

  Slocum surprised himself when he said, “I do. She’s a fellow cop. A lot more cop than I am. There’s an officer down, and I have to help.”

  Sommer pointed his gun at Slocum. “No,” he said, “you’re not.” And pulled the trigger.

  Slocum clutched his left side, just above his belt, and looked down. Blood appeared between his fingers. He dropped to his knees first, then fell onto his side, still holding himself.

  Sommer went over to
the car, closed the passenger door, then went around and got in behind the wheel. He went to turn on the engine.

  “What the—”

  The keys he’d left in the ignition were no longer there. He opened the door to activate the overhead light to see if they had fallen down onto the floor mats.

  More sirens.

  “Goddamn!” he said. He got back out of the car and strode over to Slocum, who was still clutching his stomach, as if he could somehow hold himself together.

  “The keys. Give me the keys.”

  “Fuck you,” Slocum said.

  Sommer knelt down, started feeling around in Slocum’s pockets. His hands became smeared with blood. “Where are they, damn it? Where are they?”

  He happened to glance up at that point, at the Morton house.

  Staggering out the front door, one hand holding a gun, the other pressed up against her shoulder, was Rona Wedmore. She glanced back into the house and shouted, “Stay in there!”

  Sommer was thinking things couldn’t get any worse.

  Then a pickup truck turned the corner and started driving up the street.

  FIFTY-THREE

  I’d already made up my mind, even before I’d left home, that I’d drop in on Belinda after I’d been to see Sally.

  I felt bad as I stepped out her door. It looked as though I was going to lose her as an employee, and a friend. But I’d had to ask her what Theo could have meant when he wrote that he was sorry about Sheila.

  It was not some token note of condolence. There was more to it.

  I pondered at the connections as I walked back to my truck. It stood to reason that Theo might have gotten his electrical supplies through Darren and Ann Slocum—assuming Doug wasn’t the one who’d procured them. And Darren and Ann’s troubles were very much intertwined with Sheila’s and mine.

  But how it all stitched together, I couldn’t begin to guess.

  I figured I would go see Belinda, and then I’d pay a visit to Slocum. I didn’t know, exactly, the questions I was going to ask, or the approach I was going to take, with either of them. Particularly Slocum. The last time I’d seen him had been at the funeral home when I’d slugged him.