Broken Promise (23 page)

“About what?”

“About when I hit my head on the raft. How if it hadn’t been for you, I’d have been a goner.”

The corners of her mouth went up a fraction of an inch. “No problem.”

“I want to help, Marla. You’re in a jam. The baby thing, your having Matthew—”

“I told you, someone came to the door and—”

“I know. What I was going to say was, Matthew being with you, it doesn’t look good in connection with what happened to Mrs. Gaynor. You get that, right?”

She nodded.

“So I’m going to start asking around. Find out how Matthew could have ended up with you. Find your angel.”

She smiled. “You believe me.”

What I had come to believe was that Marla believed it. “Yes,” I said. “I want you to answer a few questions so I can get started. You up to that?”

A weary nod.

“I know your face blindness makes it hard to describe people, but the woman who came to the door with Matthew, is there anything you can tell me about her? Hair color?”

“Uh, black?” she said, as if she was asking me.

“I wasn’t there,” I said. “But you think it was black?”

She nodded. Rosemary Gaynor had black hair, but if it had been her at the door it would have meant she’d handed off her own baby to Marla. That didn’t make a lot of sense.

And plenty of women had black hair.

“I know the smaller details are tough, but how about skin color? Black, white?”

“Kind of . . . in between.”

“Okay. Anything else? Eye color?”

She shook her head.

“Moles or scars, anything like that?”

Another shake.

“How about her voice? What did she say to you and what was her voice like?”

“It was pretty. She said, ‘I want you to look after this little man. His name is Matthew. I know you’ll do a good job.’ That was about all. Her voice was kind of singsong? You know what I mean?”

“I think so,” I said.

“And she left me the stroller. She said she was sorry she didn’t have anything else for me. And then she was gone.”

“Did she leave in a car?”

Marla concentrated. “Yeah, there was a car.” She sighed. “I’m even worse with those than faces. It was black, I think.”

“A pickup truck? An SUV? A van? A convertible?”

She bit her lip. “Well, it wasn’t a convertible. A van, maybe. But I wasn’t paying much attention because I had Matthew to look after.”

“Didn’t you think it was kind of strange? Someone just doing that?”

“Sure,” she said, looking at me like I was an idiot. “But it was such a wonderful thing, I didn’t want to question it. I thought, Maybe this is how the universe is supposed to unfold. I lose a child, but then I’m given one to make up for that.”

I thought there was more—or less—to this than the universe trying to make things right.

Knowing a reasonable explanation was unlikely to come from Marla, I tried to figure it out myself. If what Marla believed was really what happened, how did one make sense of it?

For someone to be able to take Matthew’s baby, Rosemary Gaynor must have already been dead. Otherwise she would have tried to stop it from happening.

So someone kills Matthew’s mother. And there’s this baby in the house.

The killer doesn’t harm Matthew. Whatever has motivated him—or her—to murder the woman, it’s not enough to do in the baby, too.

The killer could have just left. The baby would have been found eventually.

But no. The killer—or someone—wants to leave the baby with someone.

Why Marla?

Of all the people in Promise Falls the baby could have been left with, it’s Marla. Who lives clear across town. And who has a history—albeit a short one—of trying to steal a baby out of a hospital.

Oh, shit.

It was perfect.

“David?” Marla asked. “Hello?”

“What?”

“You looked all spaced-out there for a second.” She smiled. “You look like I feel. Like I’m in dreamland or something. They’ve got me on something. I kind of go in and out. Last time I felt like this was when I was at the cabin.”

“I was just thinking,” I said. “That’s all.”

I asked her a bunch of other things. About this student named Derek she’d told me about earlier in the day who’d gotten her pregnant, and where I might be able to find him. I tried asking again whether there was any chance she might have a connection to the Gaynors. I’d brought along one of my reporter’s notebooks and was scribbling down everything Marla said in case something that didn’t seem important now would turn out to be later.

But the entire time, I was thinking about something else.

About how, if I—let’s say—had wanted to kill Rosemary Gaynor, and wanted to pin the crime on someone else, who better than some crazy woman who’d tried to kidnap a baby months earlier? What better way to frame her than to leave the dead woman’s baby with her?

Maybe even leave a little blood on the door.

Was that a reach? Was that totally ridiculous?

To pull off something like that, someone would have to know what Marla had done. And her escapade had been pretty well hushed up by my aunt. There’d been nothing in the news, no charges laid.

For someone to put Rosemary Gaynor’s death on Marla, that person would have to be connected somehow to both Marla and the Gaynors. Otherwise there’d be no way that person would know how to exploit Marla’s history.

But who—

“Excuse me, who are you?”

I turned and saw a man standing in the hospital room doorway. He was wearing a proper suit, was about six feet tall, and looked like he thought he owned the place.

“I’m David Harwood,” I said. “I’m Marla’s cousin. And you . . . ?”

“I’m Marla’s doctor,” he said. “Dr. Sturgess. I don’t believe we’ve ever met, David.”

THIRTY

“I’VE
got a good feeling,” Clive Duncomb said. “This is the night we’re going to catch this son of a bitch.”

The entire Thackeray College security team was crowded into Duncomb’s office, including Joyce Pilgrim, the lone female member. Thirty-two, five-five, one hundred and thirty-nine pounds, short brown hair. At Duncomb’s request, she had not shown up tonight in anything resembling a security uniform. She was in jeans, a pullover sweater, and a light jacket.

Duncomb wasn’t happy, but didn’t say anything. When he had first suggested to Joyce that she act as a decoy, in a bid to draw out the man who’d been attacking young women on campus, he’d wanted her to wear high heels, fishnets, and a skintight top. Joyce had pointed out that this sicko was attacking students, not hookers, and if she was going to be wandering the campus as bait, she wasn’t going to be spending her time fending off requests for blow jobs. She suspected Duncomb just wanted to see how she’d look in an outfit like that, the pig.

Maybe
he
was the predator, she thought.

Okay, she knew that wasn’t true. The description provided by the three women who’d been attacked so far didn’t match Duncomb. Not as tall as the security chief. Slighter of build. They knew they were looking for a young man, although they didn’t have much of a description. In each attack, he’d been wearing a numbered sports sweater with a hood.

When she took a job at the college as a security guard, she couldn’t have anticipated that she’d be doing something like this. What Duncomb expected of her sounded more like police work. Which was exciting and distressing at the same time. She liked doing something more important, more challenging than wandering around making sure lecture room doors were locked.

But still, she knew she wasn’t adequately trained for this. She had raised the point, and not for the first time, at the beginning of this meeting.

“God, you sound like that hick Promise Falls cop,” Duncomb said.

“What cop?” Joyce asked.

“He was here this morning, throwing his weight around, suggesting we didn’t know how to look after our own affairs. I spent eighteen years with the Boston PD. I think I know a thing or two more than some local hot shot who spends most of his time investigating the murders of forest creatures.”

“Huh?” Joyce said.

“Never mind. We’ve got this. And besides, you’ve got more backup than anyone could ever hope for. You got me, the boys here”—and he pointed to the three other men in the room, not one of them over the age of twenty-five, and all grinning like village idiots—“and most important, you’ve got protection in your purse, and I’m not talking condoms.”

The other three laughed.

Duncomb was speaking, of course, of the handgun he had provided Joyce. Not only had he given her a weapon, but instruction in its use. Almost three minutes’ worth.

“And we’ll be in constant communication,” Duncomb reminded her.

Joyce’s cell phone would be on the whole time, and tucked into her jacket. She had a Bluetooth earpiece that was hidden by her hair, not that anyone was likely to notice it late at night anyway. She could talk to Duncomb anytime she wanted.

“Okay,” she said hesitantly. She hadn’t even told her husband, Malcolm, what her security duties had entailed of late. He would have freaked out. But he was between jobs, and they needed her income. So she’d kept him in the dark.

Joyce hoped Duncomb’s instinct was on the money. That they’d get this guy tonight and she could return to checking locked doors and sending drunk kids back to their dorms.

“Now,” Duncomb said, “Michael, Allan, and Phil here, and me, are all going to be walking the grounds, no more than a minute away. Anything fishy happens, you just say the word and we come running. Okay?”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Let’s roll,” the security chief said, Joyce thinking, The guy believes he’s in a TV show or something.

Just because it was dark didn’t mean the campus had gone to sleep. Far from it. Students were heading to and from evening lectures. Music spilled out of the residences. Two young men were playing Frisbee in the dark.

Very few women were walking alone. Thackeray’s president had put out a carefully worded advisory that it made sense for female students to walk in groups after dark. In pairs, at least. In an earlier statement he’d suggested women find male students they trusted to escort them from one part of the school to another, but that triggered a social media shitstorm within the college. Many young women were outraged at being told to find a man to protect them. Twitter hashtags like #needaman and #walkmehomeprez and #dontneedadick began to spread. Joyce thought, political correctness aside, it made a hell of a lot of sense, but she figured students were always just waiting for something to get angry about, and the president had played right into their hands.

Duncomb thought the walk between the athletic center and the library was a good location. It was nearly a quarter of a mile long, with a wooded area along one side and, for about half the stretch, a road on the other. Even better, it was not as well lit as it could be, which made it a prime spot if you were a would-be rapist. One of the three women who’d reported being grabbed said she’d been attacked along here.

Duncomb wanted Michael and Phil to walk back and forth between the two buildings, one going one way, one the other. He ordered Allan to wander the wooded area. And Duncomb would be in a car parked alongside the path, where he had a reasonably good view of everything. Plus, he’d be on the phone at all times with Joyce.

Once everyone was in position, Joyce entered the athletic center. The plan was that she would stay there about five minutes, then come out and start walking in the direction of the library.

“Okay,” she said, standing in the center’s foyer. “I’m coming out.” She had a long-strapped purse slung over her shoulder, one hand planted inside it, resting on the gun.

“Got it,” Duncomb said. From his car he saw Joyce come out the front doors and head west, or left, toward the library a quarter of a mile away. “I see ya. You’re looking good. You know, you could easily pass for nineteen or twenty. You know that?”

“So you’ve said,” Joyce whispered, her head down, not wanting it to be obvious that she was talking to anyone. An attacker might be deterred if he thought Joyce was already on the phone with a person who could send help.

“I’m just saying, you keep in shape. I bet your husband appreciates it.”

She’d thought about going to the college’s human relations department and filing a complaint about Duncomb. Thackeray had a sexual harassment policy, which was brought in years ago to keep professors from jumping on their students, but it applied across the board. Even though the policy, which was there for everyone to read on the college’s Web site, stressed that no individual’s employment would be placed in jeopardy by lodging a complaint, she knew the real world was very different. Sure, she might be able to keep her job, but would she want it? It was a small department, and everyone in it was male except for her. Whenever Joyce thought of Michael, Allan, and Phil, what came to mind was Larry, Darryl, and Darryl, the backwoods clowns from that old TV show. She’d have a hard time building a case without their support. She’d broached the subject once with Allan, after Duncomb had asked her what she thought about something he called “the lifestyle,” which evidently was a fancy name for swapping spouses. Joyce had said, “Not much.” She decided to talk to Allan about it, given that he was the only one on the team who seemed to have an IQ higher than a pomegranate’s. He’d said Duncomb was just goofing around, that she shouldn’t take him so seriously.

“You there?” Duncomb said. “You’re not saying anything.”

“I heard you, Clive,” she said.

There was a male student coming from the direction of the library. Black, six-foot-six, thin. Wearing jeans and a gray school hoodie that zipped up the front. The hood was down and his head was held high.

“Got someone coming my way,” she whispered.

Their paths crossed. He kept on walking toward the athletic center; she continued on to the library. There was another young man headed her way, but it was Phil.

“
Rrruffff
,” he whispered as he passed.

She didn’t want to make a show of turning around, checking behind her, but she couldn’t resist. She wanted to make sure Michael was back there somewhere. Joyce did not see him.