Far From True (16 page)

BARRY
Duckworth was getting off the phone after speaking with the department’s media relations officer about the imminent news conference he’d cleared with Chief Finderman when Angus Carlson came in and dropped into a chair at the next desk over.

“I’ve had it,” Angus said.

Duckworth slowly looked over. Carlson was at least fifteen years younger than him. To Duckworth’s way of thinking, that meant Carlson had nothing to complain about whatsoever.

“Hardly had any sleep,” he added, without being prompted.

“Yeah,” Barry said. “You’re the only one.”

Carlson flushed with embarrassment. “Yeah, okay. I get it.”

“Tell me what happened at Thackeray,” Duckworth said.

“I saw their security chief. Clive Dickhead.”

Duckworth had no argument there. “What’d you say to him?”

“This big lawsuit that’s been filed against the college by Mason Helt’s family? I told him they were going to love it when they found out
Clive
never kept his promise to those women who’d been attacked to report what happened to them to us. I talked to one of the girls, Lorraine Plummer. She told me.”

“You shouldn’t have gotten into it with him.”

“He pissed me off.”

Duckworth worked his jaw around, hoping to reduce the tension. Day one working in the detective bureau and already Carlson thought he knew everything.

“There was something else that happened,” Carlson said.

Duckworth waited.

“When I was leaving, one of the profs, a guy named Blackmore? Peter Blackmore? He chased me out to the parking lot to tell me his wife was missing.”

Duckworth perked up. “Since when?” His first thought was of Helt, that maybe he was involved, but Helt had been dead nearly two weeks.

“Since yesterday, it looks like,” Carlson said.

“We putting out an official report?”

“I would have, but Blackmore backed off. Soft-pedaled it, said his wife would probably turn up before long. Anyway, for what it’s worth, I thought I’d mention it. He was in Duncomb’s office when I got there. I think he was asking for his help on it.”

Duckworth wondered whether Thackeray’s security chief was following the same course with a professor’s missing spouse as he had with the attacked girls. Trying to deal with it without bringing in the local police.

Duckworth glanced at his watch, rolled back his chair. “Gotta face the cameras.”

“What?”

“About the drive-in, other stuff,” he said.

“Something’s happened?” Carlson asked. “You got some—”

His desk phone rang. “Hang on,” he said to Duckworth. “I want to hear about this.” He snatched up the receiver, twirled it around his fingers like a baton, and put it to his ear.

“Hello? Oh, Gale.”

Duckworth wanted to get going, but Carlson was holding up a finger.

Talking into the phone, Carlson said, “Don’t worry about it. There’s nothing to be sorry about. . . . We were both tired. . . . Yeah, well, maybe it
wasn’t
the best time to talk about it. . . . I think we
are
a family, even if it’s just the two of us. . . . Look, if I want to talk to my mother about it, I will. . . . No, it’s helpful to me. . . . I have to go. I’ll see you later.”

He hung up, looked at Duckworth apologetically. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “Trouble at home?”

Angus Carlson shrugged. “No big deal. I came in at like four in the morning and we kind of got into it.”

“This kind of job can play hell with your home life,” Duckworth said with some sympathy. “Long hours, terrible shifts, you see stuff you can’t really explain to other people. My son, Trevor? He and I, we don’t see eye to eye. I’m suspicious of the whole world, questioning everyone’s motives. Not his, but the people around him.”

Like Randall Finley.

Angus eyed Duckworth warily, as though debating whether to confide in him. “Gale wants a child. And . . . I don’t.”

Duckworth nodded. “I get that. You think, is this any kind of world to bring a kid into? But it’s not all bad out there. We just see more of it than anyone else.”

“It’s not the rest of the world I worry about.”

Duckworth didn’t nod this time. “What do you mean?”

“It’s what families do to their own. Mothers—parents, I mean—are supposed to love their kids. Lots of times, they don’t.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t have to be you,” Duckworth said.

“Do you love your son?” Carlson asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Does he love you?”

Duckworth waited a beat before replying. “Of course.”

The corner of Carlson’s mouth went up. “Truth is in the pauses,” he said, got up, and walked out of the room.

•   •   •

“Thanks for coming,” Duckworth said to the various media representatives who had turned out on short notice. Normally, there might have been people here from only Albany, but the drive-in bombing had brought journalists from as far away as Boston and
New York, and they were still in town. The small meeting room in the police building was crowded, and with that many bodies, and lights, it was quickly getting warm in there.

Duckworth introduced himself and spelled out his name.

“I wanted to bring everyone up to speed on what happened at the drive-in, and a possible link between that and some other recent incidents in Promise Falls.”

“Has there been an arrest?” someone shouted.

Duckworth raised a hand. “Hold your questions till the end. We’re hoping to enlist the public’s help today. Someone out there, someone watching, may have information that would prove valuable to our investigation. Something they may not even know is important. Let me start by saying that every effort is being made to find out how the Constellation Drive-in came down, whether it was an accident or a deliberate act. The screen came down at twenty-three minutes past eleven, which in military time or the twenty-four-hour clock is twenty-three twenty-three. That in and of itself is not particularly noteworthy. But it may be when we look at some other occurrences which, up to now, have not attracted much attention.”

With Finderman’s approval, he’d had some photos blown up and mounted onto foam core board. He set the first one up on an easel next to his podium. It showed the twenty-three dead squirrels strung up on the fence in Clampett Park.

“Oh, yuck,” said someone in the room.

“This act of animal cruelty went largely unnoticed earlier this month. Not that we don’t take something like this seriously. But we hadn’t issued any release on it, and no arrests have been made.”

“Is that even illegal?” asked a reporter. “I mean, I kill squirrels all the time with my car and I haven’t been charged with murder.”

A wave of laughter.

“I said I’d take questions at the end,” Duckworth said. “If you count them, you’ll notice there are twenty-three animals here. Now, let me put this second photo up. . . . Okay, this is the Ferris wheel
at Five Mountains. That ride was in the process of being mothballed because the park, as you know, has gone out of business. But the other night, someone fired it up, got it running.”

The picture showed the three naked mannequins in a carriage, the “YOU’LL BE SORRY” message painted across them in red. A buzz went through the room.

“What the hell?”

“Jesus.”

“What kind of sicko does that?”

Duckworth raised a hand, put up a third picture, taken from the side of the carriage, showing the “23” on the side.

“Whoa,” someone said.

“This was our second incident,” Duckworth said. “No particular harm done, but there is this ominous message painted onto the mannequins. At the time, no special importance was attached to the number of the car they were sitting in.”

He put his last picture in place. It was the hoodie Mason Helt had been wearing the night he attacked Joyce Pilgrim. The local media knew the Helt story, but this aspect of it was new to them.

“Now,” Duckworth said, “it may be just one huge coincidence that this same number keeps popping up. But maybe it isn’t. That’s why I’m asking for the public’s help. If you know of someone with a fixation on this number, if you have any idea how these various incidents might be connected, we want you to get in touch with us. All tips will be treated as confidential.”

A reporter’s hand shot up. “Can I ask a question now?”

Duckworth nodded. “Yeah, sure.”

“So you think you’re looking for a guy who likes to torture squirrels
and
blow up drive-ins?”

Soft chuckles went around the room again.

“I’m saying we see a possible link here,” Duckworth said, “and we’re asking the public for their help. Four people died when that screen came down, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t laugh along with the rest of you.”

Another hand. “So let’s say the same person or persons are responsible for all these things. Why? What’s the deal? Those words painted onto the dummies, ‘you’ll be sorry.’ Who’ll be sorry, and for what? If someone’s trying to send a message, what is it?”

“There’s nothing I’d like to know more,” Duckworth said.

CLIVE
Duncomb brought home dinner, although that hardly made this evening special.

Duncomb picked up something on the way home most days. And those that he didn’t, Liz generally ordered something in. Or threw some Stouffer’s frozen thing into the microwave. Tonight, he had stopped at Angelino’s, an Italian place that did mostly takeout. Pizza was Angelino’s biggest seller, but they did pasta, too, so Clive got two orders of linguine with clams, and a single Caesar salad that he and Liz could split.

Cooking had never been Liz’s calling. Even back when she ran her own business, in Boston, where she had a devoted clientele, when a customer asked for something spicy off the menu, a dildo was a more likely ingredient than dill. Nor was Liz’s “Round the World” option a sampling of global cuisine.

But then again, Duncomb did not choose to make a life with Liz for her terrific soufflés. They had not met at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. Liz’s mentor was not Julia Child. They met during an investigation into a Boston escort business. Duncomb, working vice at the time, had been gathering evidence to shut the place down, but had something of a change of heart when he met Elizabeth Palmer. She was willing to bring to life just about any fantasy he could imagine—especially those that involved extra players—if it meant turning a blind eye to her business operations.

Liz didn’t even have to provide the handcuffs. Although, when it came to threesomes, or younger girls, she used her connections.

Not quite enough connections, however, to feel she could keep
her business going without eventually getting busted, or keep Clive from getting brought up on police charges. When they sensed their luck was running out, they each bailed on their lines of work, but not before tracks were covered. Files were shredded or deleted, payoffs made, threats to potential squealers delivered.

So they put their Boston lives behind them and came to Promise Falls. But it didn’t mean they had to abandon their interests. Just because you move to the North Pole doesn’t mean you don’t still like water-skiing.

“Hey,” he said when he came through the side door, directly into the kitchen. Liz was leaning up against the counter, watching
Dr. Oz
on a small television that hung from under one of the cabinets. Her long brown hair was twirled into a knot at the back of her head, and her feet were bare. Her red tank top was cut off, exposing several inches of skin above her jeans.

“Shh,” she said, holding up a finger. “Dr. Oz says we should be having sex two hundred times a year. I’m not sure I could handle that.”

“If you got down to two hundred,” Duncomb said, setting the takeout on the counter, “you could take up another hobby. Scrapbooking, maybe.”

“What constitutes a single sexual act, anyway?” Liz said, picking up a remote and turning down the volume. “I’ve got my doubts Dr. Oz will address this, but if I’m sucking your cock while Miriam’s eating me out, is that one act or two?”

She suddenly frowned like a child expecting to be reprimanded. “I shouldn’t speak that way of the dead, I suppose.” She looked in the bag. “What do we have here?”

“Linguine, salad.”

“Good,” Liz said without enthusiasm.

“You’re not happy?”

“I don’t know. I was feeling a little bit like Thai. But this is fine. I can eat this.”

“Are you really gonna bust my balls about dinner
today
?”

Liz rubbed his shoulder and forced a pout. “Big man have bad day?”

“Yeah, I had a bad day. And it’s not over. Blackmore’s freaking out because Georgina hasn’t come home, and the most important disc is the one I can’t find.”

Liz got down plates, opened up the take-out containers, and divvied up the pasta and salad. “I’ll get some Parm,” she said, and brought out a container of cheese from the refrigerator door.

“Are you hearing me?” he said.

“No matter how bad things are,” she said, “we still have to eat.”

They did so, standing at the counter. The kitchen table was littered with newspapers, bills, boxes of paperwork that appeared to have taken up permanent residence there. They twirled pasta onto their forks, speared salad leaves.

“So, what do you mean, you can’t find it?” Liz asked.

“Like I said. You know how Georgina’s been lately. Like she wants out. I started to wonder whether it was her that took it from Adam’s place. Tore her—well, her and Peter’s—place apart, but it wasn’t there.”

“Shit,” she said. “I wish you’d find it.” She smiled. “I’d like to watch it.”

“Jesus, Liz, the second I find it, I’m breaking it into a hundred pieces.”

“She was a foxy little thing, that Olivia.”

Clive shook his head, not wanting to talk about it.

“What?” Liz said. “That was a fun session. It was too bad what happened to her. She might have liked to come back for more. We didn’t even have to spike her wine like any of the others. She was coming on to Adam in the kitchen. She didn’t even know what we were all into. She just wanted to fuck a washed-up writer.”

“We should have,” he said.

“Should have what?”

“Spiked her wine like the others. It was a huge risk, bringing her into the mix and letting her remember what actually happened.”

“She never told a soul,” Liz said. “I mean, the girl was engaged, for God’s sake. Who was she going to tell? Her fiancé? I think she wanted one last wild experience before she tied the knot.” A grin. “You know, in the marriage sense. I seem to recall a bit of knot-tying that night.”

“Honestly, Liz, dial it down for Christ’s sake. This is no joke.”

“Okay, okay. You’re just so serious all the time.”

“I’m going to go through all the discs again tonight, at Peter’s. Maybe I missed her. I fast-forwarded through all of them once I got them out of Adam’s house. I didn’t see her. But maybe she was there, and I just went too fast.”

“It must have looked funny.”

“What looked funny?”

“All that fast-motion fucking. All those asses going up and down at a hundred miles an hour.”

Duncomb opened the fridge, took out a beer, uncapped it. “A cop came out to the campus today,” he said.

“Why?”

“About the Mason Helt thing. They’re still asking questions about that. I didn’t do anything wrong there.”

“Of course you didn’t,” she said, almost purring.

“I saw Peter run after him when he left. I think he was asking about Georgina, whether to file a missing persons report. I told him I’d look after this, but he doesn’t listen.”

Liz touched a finger to Duncomb’s chest, worked it between the buttons of his shirt, and made tiny circles on his chest. “I like Peter.”

“You like his tongue—that’s what you like.”

She withdrew the finger. “Maybe. But I feel terrible about Adam. There was a man who had it all.”

Duncomb didn’t respond.

“Don’t take that the wrong way. I don’t even mean sexually,
necessarily. You know I love
you
, Clive. More than anyone else. I’m just saying he was an interesting man. And I can’t get over the irony of it. Here was a guy who loved the movies, and he dies when a movie screen falls on him. It’s like some sort of cosmic joke, you know? Like that jogger guy, years ago? You know, who wrote the book about it? And how does he die? He has a heart attack while out for a run. It’s like that.”

“I guess,” Duncomb said.

“You sound hurt. You can’t be jealous of a dead man.”

“I’m not.”

“And you have to be missing Miriam.” She smiled. “Be honest. She was very creative. I’d never seen anyone with that kind of imagination who wasn’t in the business.”

“I love
you
,” he said.

“Of course you do. That’s the way it’s always been. We love each other, and
make
love with others. But Miriam was very special. And totally bi. The rest of us basically swapped partners, but Miriam had as much fun with me or Georgina as she did with you or Peter.”

“It feels kind of strange, talking about Adam and Miriam like this. Now.”

“But, you see, what’ll help us through this is, we’ve always been good at separating the physical from the emotional. Otherwise, right now, we’d be devastated. Losing Adam and Miriam would,
under different circumstances, be very hard for us. But I’m okay. Aren’t you?”

Duncomb hesitated. “Sure.”

“And you never had any reason to be jealous of Adam. The fact is, you were much alike. You’ve done things you don’t like to talk about, and so had he. Back to his days when he was in that gang. Those weren’t weekend bikers he hung out with. Those were bad, bad people. Some of them were never heard from again after Adam left that life behind.”

“I know.”

“I’ve always had this theory that he must have ripped them off before he left. I don’t think he ever made enough writing books to have a nice house like that, or that antique Jag. I think he did okay for himself. He talked about it some with me. He managed girls—I managed girls. We had that in common. But there were drugs, too. I think that’s where he got his money.”

“Maybe,” Duncomb said. “I’ve been thinking, with what’s happened, it’s time to put a stop to this kind of stuff.”

“Just because Adam’s playroom’s no longer available doesn’t mean things have to be over.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore with Peter and Georgina. He’s getting too skittish about things, and her, I don’t know how to read her anymore. I don’t trust her.”

“I get that. You get tired of people. We’ll find new friends.”

She stopped eating and slipped her finger into his shirt again, started to unbutton it. She pushed Duncomb up against the counter and pressed herself into him, felt his hardness grow against her. She wrapped her arms around herself, gripped the bottom of the tank top, and slipped it off over her head. She was wearing nothing underneath.

“Touch me,” she said.

Clive Duncomb did as he was instructed.

Liz, moving herself slowly against him, said, “Tell me again . . .
starting from the beginning . . . and tell me very, very slowly . . . about when you shot that kid in the head.”