We made our way back down the stairs. Walden stepped with me out onto the porch.
“There were twenty-two of them, you know,” Walden said.
“Yes.”
“Those are the ones Victor really blames. Well, those twenty-two and himself. I don’t know that there’s anyone he blames more than himself, for not showing up on time to meet Olivia.”
I thought about that.
Twenty-two, plus himself.
I could do the math.
THIRTY-THREE
ONCE he had left the water plant, Randall Finley decided to head back to the park, where his people were still handing out free flats of water from the backs of the Finley Springs trucks. Many of the trucks had already run out and been sent back to the plant for more.
Along the way, he put in a call to David. There might be some more photo opportunities, and he wanted David to be there.
David picked up on the first ring.
“My man,” Finley said. “I’m going back to the park. Should be there in five. Meet me.”
“I can’t,” David said.
“Come on, the good people of Promise Falls are counting on us.”
“I know, it’s all about helping the people.”
“Am I hearing a tone?”
“Forget it,” David said. “I’ve got something else I have to deal with.”
“What could be more important than helping people get good, clean water?”
“That Sam person you were asking me about before? I’m worried she and her son may be in trouble.”
Finley sighed. “David, I gotta say, you need to get your head in the game.”
“Excuse me?”
“This town is in the midst of the biggest crisis it’s ever seen, and you’ve got your shorts in a knot because some woman doesn’t want to see you anymore?”
“That’s not what it’s about. It’s more serious than that.”
“Is it more serious than people dropping dead all over town?”
“I can’t talk about this, Randy.”
“You’re not going make employee of the month this way,” Finley said. His tone darkened. “Let me ask you something.”
“What?”
“Have you been talking to Duckworth today?”
“Duckworth? Why would you ask that?”
“That’s an easy yes-or-no question.”
“Okay, yeah, I was talking to him. I thought he might be able to help me with my situation.”
“Your Sam situation,” Randy said.
“That’s right.”
“Is that all you talked about?” When David didn’t answer immediately, Finley pressed on. “Was it?”
“I don’t remember. Mostly we talked about Sam.”
“Did my name come up?”
“I think it might have. I called him when he was at the water plant. He said he was going to arrest you or something, for getting in the way.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Tell him about what?”
“About me.”
“Randy, I have to go. I didn’t say anything to him about—”
“Did you say something about how I’d increased production at the plant?”
Another pause. “I think, just kind of in passing,” David confessed.
“Goddamn it, so it was you. What the fuck were you thinking, saying something like that?”
“When Duckworth said you were being arrested, I thought it had to do with the water.”
“That I’d somehow poisoned it?”
“I never said that. I never said I thought you’d poisoned the water. He was the one who said you’d been arrested. And then it kind of came together for me, at the time, that if you had done it, it made sense that you’d upped production.”
“And that would make sense why?”
“Because then you could be the big hero, coming to the town’s rescue with fresh, clean water.”
“Is that what you think?” Finley asked.
“No,” David said. “I don’t . . . I don’t think that.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Fuck!” Finley said. “Maybe we should put that on a campaign button. ‘I’m voting Finley because I’m pretty sure he’s not a mass murderer.’”
“I’d go with a T-shirt,” David said. “That’d never fit on a button.”
“You think it’s funny.”
“I don’t think any of this is funny. Look, I’ve already told you what I think of you. You’re a pompous gasbag, but do I think you’d kill hundreds of people just to look good? No. The bar’s not set that high with you, Randy, but I think you’re above that. If I’ve offended you, fire me. Or I can quit. I’ve offered before, and I can offer again.”
Now it was Finley’s turn to go quiet. Finally, he said, “I don’t want you to quit. Thing is, as little respect as you have for me, I don’t know that I could find anyone with more.” A long sigh. “I’m not a bad guy, David. I swear.”
David’s tone turned more conciliatory. “There’re still weeks to go before the election. I’ll have time to do what you need me to do. But you decided to run just when a lot of shit’s been going on in my life. That stuff with my cousin Marla, and then—”
“Yeah, yeah, fine, I don’t need a recap. Do what you have to do and then check in.”
Finley took the phone from his ear and tucked it away as Promise Falls Park came into view. The convoy of Finley Springs trucks was there, but he wasn’t going to be able to get a parking spot near them.
It was like Times Square at rush hour. Word had spread.
Cars jammed the road bordering the park. People were stopping in the middle of the street, running over to the trucks for free flats of water, then scurrying back to their cars with them.
“Son of a bitch,” Finley said to himself, followed by, “Cheap bastards.”
There was a Promise Falls police car off to the side of the road, lights flashing, a female uniformed officer trying to direct traffic. Letting people grab their water, then making a hole for them to drive away.
Finley pulled his Lincoln half up onto the sidewalk, got out, and started walking toward all the commotion. Was that a TV crew? With a CBS logo on the side of the camera resting on one man’s shoulder?
Maybe it didn’t matter that David couldn’t make it. There was a fucking national network here.
“Hello, hello, hello!” Finley said, reaching the first truck. Trevor Duckworth was handing out cases of water from the back of it as quickly as he could. “Let me help you out there!” the former mayor said, nudging Trevor out of the way, grabbing a case, and handing it to a young, unshaven man standing there with a girl of about six.
“Here you go, sir!” Finley said, then looked down at the girl and patted her head. “This your daughter?”
“Yup. Say hi, Martina,” the man said.
“Hi,” said Martina, extending a hand. Finley grinned and shook it.
“That’s the man who owns the water company,” the girl’s father said.
“Thank you,” the girl said. “All the regular water is poisoned.”
“I know!” Finley said. “Awful thing, just awful. Let’s hope they get it back to normal real quick.”
“Thank you for all you’re doing,” the man said, holding the water with two outstretched arms.
“No problem,” Finley said. “How about you, ma’am? Can I help you?”
Trevor leapt into the back of the truck and shoved cases toward the door so his boss could grab one after another. A few people took shots with their phones. The CBS crew had figured out what was happening, and was shooting footage.
Finley offered everyone a smile, but not too big a smile. This was, after all, a solemn occasion.
People had died.
The CBS crew had grabbed a few shots but now was moving farther up the line of trucks. Finley got his phone out and said to Trevor, “David’s a bit held up, so I need you to take some video
.” He handed the phone over to him. “You know how to use this?”
“Yeah,” Trevor said.
“Just saw your dad up at the water plant.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Heck of a guy,” Finley said. “Doin’ a bang-up job. He’s gonna get to the bottom of what’s happened. You can take that to the bank.”
Trevor held the phone up in front of him, Finley filling up the screen. “Rolling,” he said.
Finley continued to sling cases into the arms of Promise Falls residents. He wasn’t registering faces. He figured he could go for a few minutes until he started to feel it in his back.
A plump woman with short hair, dressed in jeans and a dark blue athletic shirt that read “Thackeray,” had come to the front of the line. “Here ya go,” Finley said, but the woman didn’t have her arms out to receive the flat of water bottles, and Finley had to hang on to it.
The woman said, “You opportunistic bastard.”
Finley’s eyes met the woman’s. His face broke into a grin and he said, “Why, Amanda Croydon. I thought you must be dead.”
The mayor of Promise Falls rested her hands on her hips and said, “I’d gone to Buffalo for the weekend to see my sister. When I heard this morning, I drove straight back.”
“Well,” Finley said, handing the water to the next person in line, “while you were cruising along the New York Thruway, I was rolling up my sleeves.”
“What the hell is all this?”
Finley glanced Trevor’s way, wanting to be sure this was all being recorded.
“This,” Finley said, waving his hand before him, “is what’s called being there for the people.”
Croydon shook her head. “No, this is called grandstanding. There are emergency systems in place. Thousands of cases of bottled water are on the way from the state as we speak. The governor’s declaring a state of emergency.”
“Well, Amanda, as we speak, these people already have water. Sometimes, the private sector does a much better job serving the people than the public, and this turns out to be one of those times. Surely you’re not opposed to a private citizen pitching in where he can.”
The mayor’s face reddened. She pointed a short, thick finger at Finley.
“It’s a cheap stunt, that’s what it is. These people are in true crisis and you turn it into a PR opportunity.”
Finley shook his head with disappointment as people began to gather and watch.
“If the good folks of Promise Falls should decide next time around to choose me to represent them in the mayor’s office, and I certainly wouldn’t presume that they will, but if they do, I can promise them one thing for certain. If and when another tragedy hits this town, I will welcome help from anyone, anyone at all, if it means the people in this town will be helped, even if that help ends up exposing my shortcomings on the job. Because these people”—and his voice began to rise—“these people you see here today, mean more to me than any job or elected position.”
Finley resisted all temptations to look at Trevor and the phone.
“That’s what I’m about,” he continued. “I’m about the people, and I’ve been doing my best for them since this nightmare began early this morning. Nice of you to finally join us.”
“I’ll have you know,” Amanda Croydon said, looking as though she might blow a fuse, “I’ve already been up to the hospital and conferred with Chief Finderman and—”
“Oh, you’ve conferred,” Finley said. “And here I almost accused you of doing nothing.”
“—and the governor, and the Atlanta Centers for—”
“And yet,” Finley said, cutting her off, “you still have time to justify to me everything you’ve been doing. Listen, I’d love to chat longer, but I have water to distribute.” He grabbed another case, moved past the mayor to hand it to an elderly couple.
“You tell her!” the man said.
Amanda Croydon turned around and walked off into the crowd. Over his shoulder, Finley looked to make sure Trevor was still recording.
He wasn’t. He was holding the phone down near his waist, looking at the screen, hitting a button.
“Trevor!” Finley said. “This is no time to play Scrabble. Wait. Are you tweeting this? You putting it on Facebook?”
“You have a call,” he said. Trevor put the phone to his ear. “Hello?”
“For God’s sake,” Finley said, throwing a case of water back into the truck and extending his hand. He snapped his fingers.
Trevor handed him the phone.
Finley glanced at the screen long enough to see that it was a call from his home. “Hello?”
“Mr. Finley?”
“Yes, Lindsay, it’s me.”
“I think there’s something wrong with Bipsie.”
“Lindsay, I’ve kind of got my hands full here. What’s wrong with the dog?”
“She’s sick. She was throwing up and acting weird and . . . and I think . . . Mr. Finley, I think she might be dead.”
Finley kneaded his forehead with the fingers of his free hand. Then it hit him. “Tell me you didn’t let the dog drink out of the toilet.”
“She does that,” Lindsay said. “She might have.”
“For Christ’s sake, why didn’t you put the lids down so the dog couldn’t get into them? It’s not just water coming out of the taps that’s poison. It’s any water that comes into the house!”
“The water is poison?”
For a second, he stopped breathing. “Lindsay, what did you say?”
“You say the water is poisoned? How could that happen?”
“Are you saying you don’t know?” He started shouting. “Fucking hell, how could you not know?”
“You didn’t say anything when you left.”
“I didn’t know then! Haven’t you had the radio on? The TV? You didn’t hear them blasting warnings through the neighborhood?”
“Please don’t yell at me,” Lindsay said. “I’ve been reading, and I was in the basement doing laundry.”
“If Bipsie was thirsty, you should have given her some of the bottled! I can’t believe this! Jane’ll be devastated. Does Jane know?”
There was nothing at the other end of the line.
“Lindsay? Lindsay!”
After several seconds, she said, “Oh no.”
THIRTY-FOUR
CAL Weaver had to decide whether to follow Dwayne or the man who’d given Dwayne the cash. He went with the latter. Cal knew who Dwayne was. He needed to find out more about the other guy, because there was obviously something fishy about meeting someone in an alley for a payoff.
The two men talked for about five minutes, some of their exchange appearing heated. At one point, Dwayne angrily jabbed his finger at the man’s chest. His friend didn’t much care for that, brushing his hand away and pointing in return. But nodding followed; an agreement of some kind seemed to have been reached.
Dwayne shoved the money deep into the front pocket of his jeans.
Dwayne came out onto the sidewalk first and headed back to his pickup truck. The other man held back about ninety seconds, then emerged. He went in the other direction.
Cal sat in the car, watched.
The man crossed the street half a block up and got into an old junker of a Ford Aerostar van. A two-tone, blue and rust. The van pulled out into the street, exhaust belching out the back, at which point Cal checked his mirror and moved into traffic.
He reached over to the glove box, popped it open, and grabbed a notepad. With a pen from his pocket, he scribbled down the license plate number. He still had a friend or two with the police—if not in Promise Falls, then elsewhere—who could run a plate for him.
The man made a stop near the park by the falls. Cal, who’d kept the car radio tuned to the news all day, had heard there was free water being given out there. He wasn’t interested in facing the crowds—he’d live on beer and OJ for the next few days if he had to. But his new friend clearly wanted to take advantage of the offer. He left the van
running in the middle of the street as he ran over for a case. When he returned to the van, he slid open the side door and tossed the pack of twenty-four bottles of water inside.
Once back behind the wheel, he headed north, then took a turn east that led in the direction of an industrial area, and beyond that, the now-mothballed Five Mountains amusement park.
Cal kept a couple of cars between the van and himself. The Aerostar wasn’t taking a circuitous route. If it had been, Cal would have guessed the driver suspected he was being followed.
The van’s left turn signal came on, then the brake lights. Cal and two cars ahead of him had to slow to a stop while the driver waited for oncoming traffic to clear. Once it had, he turned into an industrial park. The other cars, and Cal, moved forward. He glanced left as the van drove on between two large warehouse-sized buildings.
Oncoming traffic was thin, so Cal executed a swift U-turn, then sped back to where the van had turned off. He rolled onto the gravel shoulder and came to a stop. The van slipped into a spot between some other cars. The driver got out and went into a business directly in front of where he’d parked.
Cal turned in.
He drove down slowly between the two buildings, slowly enough that he could read the sign in the window of the place the driver had gone into without actually hitting the brakes.
SUPERFAST PRINTING, it said. Orders large and small. Business cards, letterhead, envelopes. Some work, the window sign promised, could be done while one waited.
Was the driver a customer, or an employee?
Cal parked the car and walked back to the storefront, but when he tried the door, it was locked.
He made a visor of his hand and peered through the glass door. A counter separated the waiting area from where the work was done. Cal could see several high-end, oversized copying machines, several desks with computers, and stacks of packages wrapped in plain brown paper. The place went back a long way, maybe sixty feet, and there was what looked like a garage door on the back wall.
Near that door, the man Cal had seen give money to Dwayne was moving some packages. He looked up, saw Cal, and waved him away. Shouted something that sounded like “Closed!”
The Twenty-Three Page 22
