Fear the Worst

by Linwood Barclay

  I do know it was something instinctual. Someone suggests you killed your own daughter, that you took the life of the person more dear to you than anyone else in the world, what else are you going to do but try to get your hands around his neck and choke the life out of him?

  I came out of the chair like it was an ejector seat and went straight for Marjorie, my hands outstretched. I wanted to kill him. And not just for what he was suggesting about me. I was doing it for Syd. These people were supposed to be helping find her, but weren’t getting anywhere because they—maybe not Jennings, but I was no longer sure about her—were wasting their time trying to find a way to put the blame on me.

  “You son of a bitch,” I said, reaching for his throat.

  But I couldn’t get my hands around it. You weren’t a cop for as many years as I guessed Detective Marjorie had been without learning a thing or two about how to defend yourself. He took hold of one of my arms and used my own force and momentum to throw me into the wall behind him.

  Then he turned, grabbed hold of my hair with his meaty fingers, and shoved my face up against the wall. My neck felt like it was going to snap.

  “Adam!” Jennings shouted at him.

  “You motherfucker,” he breathed into my ear.

  “Adam,” Jennings said again. “Let him go.”

  “You just assaulted a police officer,” he whispered. “Nice going, dickhead.”

  “I didn’t kill my daughter!” I shouted, my lips moving on the pale green surface.

  “Adam,” Jennings said, “let’s talk.”

  He held me another second for effect, then let me go. Then he and Jennings left the room. I heard the door lock.

  I leaned up against the wall, panting, trying to regain my composure. I stood there a good five minutes before the door opened and Detective Jennings came in alone.

  “You’re free to go,” she said, holding the door open.

  “What, that’s it?”

  “You’re free to go.”

  “I don’t believe you people.”

  “Mr. Blake—”

  “Let me guess. Your friend wants to hold me, to charge me, but there’s no evidence against me. Just his wacko theories.”

  “Really, Mr. Blake, you should just go.”

  “He’d like to charge me with assault, but he’s thinking if you let me go, maybe I’ll make some sort of mistake, something that’ll stick.”

  Jennings didn’t speak.

  “I’ll tell you the mistake I made. The mistake I made was trusting you. I mean, I know parents are usually primary suspects when something happens to their kids, but I never got the idea I was one in your eyes, not until now. But now, if you’re thinking the way he’s thinking, then I guess I can’t count on you for help anymore. I guess I’m on my own to find my daughter.”

  She was still holding the door open. I went through it.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I WAS IN A SWEAT AS I WALKED OUT into the police station parking lot. It wasn’t just from anger. It was hot. I turned on the AC when I got into the car and powered up the windows. I adjusted the vents so they’d be blowing on me, but even after a couple of minutes, all that was coming out of them was hot air. I tried adjusting the settings on the AC controls, but things didn’t get any better.

  “Goddamn it, Bob,” I said under my breath.

  I drove into the Riverside Honda lot, circled around until I saw a demo—a blue Civic hybrid—I was pretty sure Andy Hertz was using these days, and parked next to it. I walked into the showroom, heading straight for Andy’s desk, but when I passed Laura Cantrell’s office she called out, “Tim!”

  I whirled around.

  “Bringing back the CR-V?” she asked.

  “Try the cops,” I told her.

  Andy was leaning over his desk, on the phone. I reached over his shoulder, tapped the receiver base and disconnected him.

  He saw my arm and followed it until he realized who’d cut him off. “What the fuck, Tim? What are you doing?”

  “We’re going to have a chat,” I said.

  “I had a solid lead there,” he said. “Guy wants to get his wife a Pilot for her birthday and—”

  I grabbed him under the arm and yanked him out of his chair. “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Where? Where we going?”

  “Tim! What are you doing?” It was Laura, hands on hips, trying to look like she was running the place.

  I ignored her and steered Andy toward the door. I took him outside and walked him around back of the dealership, where I’d chewed him out for stealing a commission out from under me.

  “What’s with you?” he asked. “I didn’t swipe any more of your customers. Besides, you’re not even working here now, so if someone did come in and dealt with you before, what the fuck am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Think back,” I said, putting my face into his. “A year ago. You put Jeff Bluestein in touch with someone for a job.”

  “Huh?”

  “Jeff. You remember. He and Sydney were going out for a while.”

  “Yeah, I know who he is,” he said defensively.

  “I’m guessing you know Syd and all her friends. Jeff tells me you used to hang out with them.”

  He protested that. “Aw, come on, a few drinks was all.”

  “That was the other thing he mentioned. That you used to buy booze for them since they’re underage.”

  “Jeez, Tim. Shit, you were their age once, weren’t you? Didn’t you have someone buy beer for you when you were sixteen?”

  “Any other day, Andy, I’d carve you out a new one for getting booze for my daughter, but I’m worried about bigger things right now. I want to know about this guy you put Jeff onto.”

  “It was just some guy,” he said.

  I pushed him up against the side of a minivan. “I want a name.”

  “I only knew his first name,” Andy said. “It was Gary. Just Gary. That’s all I knew.”

  “Where’d you know him from?”

  “I used to see him at this bar I go to, kept seeing him there, then one day, I’m walking into the Dairy Queen, and he’s sitting there having a milk shake with Patty.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. They were just kind of hanging out and talking. Patty waved and I went over and said hi, told Gary I recognized him from that place, and that was about it.”

  “Patty?” I said. “Patty Swain?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you ever ask Patty about him?”

  Andy shook his head. “Not really. I just figured they knew each other. Anyway, not long after that, I ran into the guy at a bar, I go, ‘Hey, I know you.’ It’s like we already know each other, and we got talking.”

  “What’d this guy do?”

  “He was, like, a businessman, you know? He was into a lot of things. Asked me if I wanted to make some extra money, but that was around the time I started here and things were going pretty good, you know? But I said if I knew anybody who was looking for some work I’d send them his way.”

  “So the guy gave you a number?”

  “He gave me a card, but it wasn’t his own business card. It was another card he happened to have on him, so he wrote his number on the back.”

  “You still have that card?”

  “Yeah, probably, at home. I’ve got a jar I toss business cards into.”

  “You remember whose card it was?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, it wasn’t his own card. It could have been for a body shop or a hotel or something, maybe a lawyer’s. I just don’t remember. It was a whole fucking year ago!” I still had his head pressed up against the minivan, his neck arched at an awkward angle. I moved back half a step so he wouldn’t have to contort himself.

  “Okay, tell me about Gary.”

  “He said he remembered Patty saying I worked with cars. He wondered what, exactly, that entailed. Like, did I service them? Run a Mobil station, what? And I told him I sold cars,
and he said I wasn’t the kind of guy he was looking for. He wanted people in the restaurant business, gas stations, convenience stores, that kind of thing, a place where there are lots of transactions.”

  “You didn’t wonder what that was about?”

  “Not really,” Andy said. “He wasn’t interested in me, so I wasn’t interested in what he was looking for.”

  “Go on.”

  “So, you know, one night I’m hanging out after work with Sydney, and Jeff, and Patty, and Jeff is going on about how he wants to get some really cool laptop, one of the new Macs that are really thin or something, and I said, hey, you work in a restaurant, right? And Jeff said yeah, so I gave him the number of this guy—I guess I still had his card at that time—and said he might have something for him. And that was it.”

  “Did you ever give that number to anyone else?” I asked him.

  “What do you mean?”

  I moved in closer again. “I mean, did you ever give that number to anyone else?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. Like who?”

  “Did you ever give that number to Sydney?”

  Andy licked his lips, like his mouth was dry. “Look, Tim, like, I give a lot of numbers out to a lot of people. How do you expect me to remember something like that?”

  “I swear to God, Andy, I’m—”

  “Okay, okay, uh, let me think. Honestly, I don’t think I ever did. But one time, Patty said she was thinking of switching to some other job, and I remembered I still had that guy’s number, and I went to offer it to her, but when she looked at it she goes, oh, that guy, I already have his number. So I guess, if she knew it, she could have given it to Sydney.”

  That was certainly possible.

  “What’s the big deal about this anyway?” Andy asked. “So I gave Jeff the guy’s number, and I offered it to Patty, and maybe she gave it to Sydney? If they got some work out of it, why are you all over my ass about it?”

  “Do you know what this guy wanted Jeff to do?” I asked.

  Andy shook his head. “I don’t know. I never heard any more about it. Didn’t it work out?”

  “He wanted Jeff to rip off credit card numbers.”

  “Well, shit, that’s not legal,” Andy said.

  Maybe, another time, I might have laughed. Instead, I asked Andy, “Did you see that guy I went for a test drive with two days ago? He said his name was Eric, but it was a fake name. Could that have been Gary?”

  Andy shook his head. “I didn’t see the guy.”

  “Do you have any idea whether Sydney might ever have gotten in touch with him?”

  He gave half a nod. “A few weeks ago, before summer started, she dropped by to see you, stopped by my desk, and I asked whether she was going to be working at Riverside Honda again for the summer. She said no, she needed a bit of distance from her dad, that Patty had put her onto something else—maybe she got that number from her—and the bonus was you got paid in cash so you avoided all kinds of tax and shit.”

  “And it never occurred to you to mention this to me? To the police?”

  “I didn’t know it meant anything,” he said. “Swear to God.”

  I backed away from him, exhausted. “Have you seen Patty around lately?”

  His face seemed to flush. “No,” he said.

  “When was the last time?”

  “I don’t know. Probably that day she dropped by to see you.”

  “Probably?” I asked. Andy seemed to be hedging.

  “No, really. I’d see her the odd time, but I haven’t seen her in a while. Why?”

  “No one’s seen her for a couple of days,” I said.

  Andy’s face flashed with worry. “Shit. She’s gone, too?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “How well do you know her?”

  “Not… really well,” he said.

  “What are you not telling me?” I asked.

  He shrugged uncomfortably. “We hooked up a couple of times,” he said. “It was nothing.”

  “Hooked up? You slept with her?”

  “Listen, it’s not like she’s Mother Teresa, you know? I mean, she’s been with more guys than I’ve been with girls, and she’s like five years younger—”

  He stopped himself.

  “Yeah,” I said. “She is like five years younger than you are. What’s the problem, Andy? Can’t get dates your own age?”

  “I do okay,” he said.

  I didn’t want to ask, but felt I had to. “What about you and Sydney?”

  He shook his head adamantly. “No way, man. I never touched her. I mean, with your desk next to mine? I didn’t want to hook up with her in case you found out and, you know, wanted to pound the shit out of me or something.”

  He was dumb enough to steal my customers, but not that dumb.

  “You’re going to do something for me,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “You’re going to find this Gary for me.”

  “do that?”

  “What’s this bar where you’d see him all the time?”

  “JD’s,” he said. I’d seen it out on Naugatuck Avenue, although I’d never been inside. It had been a long time since I’d hung out in bars. “I could go after work, see if he’s there, ask around for him.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “If you see him, or get a lead on him, you’re going to call me right away. Understand?”

  “Sure. Then what? You going to call the cops?”

  “We’ll see. We’re not exactly on speaking terms at the moment.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  ANDY STILL HAD TO FINISH OUT HIS SHIFT, which went to six. He said he’d head over to JD’s after that, but wasn’t hopeful that Gary, if he showed up at all, would make an appearance before eight. But if he saw any other patrons that he could remember being in Gary’s company in the past, he’d ask where he might be able to find him.

  In the meantime, there were others I wanted to talk to. Patty Swain’s mother, for one. A visit to see her seemed long overdue.

  I went back into the dealership, wound my way through the showroom of gleaming, tightly packed cars, and dropped into the chair behind my desk. Laura didn’t appear to have found anyone to use it temporarily, so I made myself at home long enough to look up some phone numbers.

  I found a Milford address for a Swain. In all the time Syd and Patty had been friends, I’d never actually driven to Patty’s house, never had to drop Sydney off or pick her up there. I made a note of the address and wrote it down.

  I was getting up from my chair when I found Laura Cantrell standing in my path.

  “A moment?” she asked. I followed her into her office and she asked me to close the door. “What’s going on with you and Andy?”

  “That’s between us,” I said.

  “Where’s my car?”

  By that, she had to mean the one I’d not returned. “The police have it,” I said. “The back end got shot up.”

  “Shot up? What do you mean? With bullets?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tim,” she said slowly, “I’ve been patient with your situation, I really have. And I get why you want to take a leave. But if that’s what you’re going to do, take it. Because now I find you’re getting company cars damaged, and you keep popping in here to deal with your shit, and it’s getting disruptive.”

  “My shit,” I said.

  “I’ve got cars to move. I can’t do it if you keep dropping by to harass my salespeople. Promise me you’re not going to bring your troubles around here anymore.”

  “Thanks, Laura,” I said. “At the end of the day, you’ve always been there for me.”

  I WAS HEADING DOWN ROUTE 1, about to turn into the Just Inn Time to see if anyone had found Milt in the room I’d rented a few nights earlier, when my cell went off.

  “What are you doing right now?” It was Arnie Chilton.

  “Why?”

  “There’s some stuff you should hear.”

  “What?”

  “Look, I’m at my broth
er Roy’s restaurant. You know, Dalrymple’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know where it is?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are you now?” Chilton asked.

  “Can you tell me what it’s about, Arnie? Because I’ve kind of got a lot on my plate at the moment.”

  “I think Roy’s got something you might find interesting.”

  I turned off before I got to the hotel and headed for Dalrymple’s.

  * * *

  MY PHONE HADN’T BEEN BACK IN MY JACKET three minutes when it rang again. Thinking it was Arnie calling back, I didn’t look at the call display.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Hey.”

  Kate Wood.

  “Hello, Kate,” I said evenly.

  “Look,” she said. “I think I might have done something I shouldn’t have.”

  “What might that be, Kate?”

  “Okay, you’re going to get mad, but I think I need to give you a heads-up about something.”

  “Really?”

  “The thing is, I was talking to the police, and now I’m starting to think I may have given them the wrong idea.”

  “About what, Kate?”

  “You know how, sometimes, I kind of overreact a bit to things? How, once in a while, I get carried away a little?”

  I paused. “I think I know what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, when I was talking to the police, they might have gotten the idea that maybe there really was no call from Seattle. That maybe you were making the whole thing up.”

  “Whoa,” I said.

  “I think, okay, what I think is, I think maybe when I saw you helping that girl into your house the other night, that made me kinda mad, and got me thinking all sorts of crazy things. So I’m calling to tell you, you might be hearing from the police about this, and I’m really sorry if it causes you any problems.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “So I was thinking,” she said, “that maybe there’s some way I could make it up to you? To prove to you I’m sorry? I know the other night, when I brought over Chinese, things kind of went to shit and all, but I was thinking we could try that again, I could bring over—”