Far From True (25 page)

We sat on the edge of the bed, fumbled with clothes, kicked off shoes, went through those awkward preliminaries before ending up under the covers. Twice she whispered that we had to be quiet.

We didn’t want to wake Crystal.

Later, for appearance’s sake, Lucy returned to her own room so she’d be there when Crystal got up.

I slept like the dead.

IT
was three minutes after one in the morning when Dwayne Rogers stepped out of Knight’s, one of Promise Falls’ seedier downtown bars that had been down on Proctor Street since God was in short pants, into the cool night air. He dug into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He hadn’t smoked in years, but the last couple of weeks, he’d found himself falling back into the habit. Calmed him, at least briefly. The whole ritual of it. Unwrapping the cellophane on the package, tapping the pack against his fist to eject the cigarette, putting it between his lips, opening the matchbook and striking a match, watching it flare briefly, putting it to the end of the cigarette, watching the warm glow as the tobacco ignited.

He’d been drinking more lately, too. You did what you had to do in tough times. Told Celeste he needed to get some air. He’d felt ashamed, crying like that in front of Celeste. Then her brother-in-law shows up, peeking through the window, seeing him that way. Dwayne confronting him and acting like a real asshole.

Celeste gave him proper shit after Cal left. Dwayne didn’t realize, until after Cal was gone, that he’d been burned out of his home. Dwayne thought maybe he could have handled that a little better.

He said he needed to go out to think about things. What he didn’t tell Celeste was that he’d already been planning to go out.

He had somewhere he had to be at a certain time.

He’d been at the bar only about five minutes—he hadn’t even ordered a beer yet—when he went back outside. Before he left, he said hello to a couple of people he recognized, gave the bartender a friendly wave. Said to him, “Have you seen Harry around?”

“Don’t think so,” the bartender said.

“Well, if you see him, tell him Dwayne was here,” he said.

“Sure thing.”

Once he was back on the street, he lit up his cigarette and waited. He wasn’t the only one out there. A young couple was leaned up against a lamppost, making out. Three men were huddled together debating which was better: NASCAR or horse racing. Occasionally, someone went into or came out of Knight’s.

Proctor Street ran downhill from north to south. When Dwayne was younger, he used to skateboard down the length of it late at night or early Sunday morning, when there was hardly any traffic.

As he looked to the north, he saw something coming, but it was not a kid on a skateboard.

It was a bus. A Promise Falls Transit bus, with a big baylike window at the front.

The buses didn’t typically run this late, at least not anymore. They once crisscrossed town until the bars closed, but since the town managers went hacking away at the budget, you couldn’t get a bus after eleven.

This didn’t look like a bus anyone would want to board, anyway.

It was on fire.

The inside of the bus was aglow with flames. They were flickering out the windows on both sides.

Rolling down the center of Proctor, with increasing speed, the
bus looked like a comet. Proctor ran dead straight, but the bus looked like it was coming down on a slight angle, and pretty soon was going to crash into cars parked along the curb.

Dwayne stood, rooted to the sidewalk, mesmerized by the spectacle, as the bus got closer.

The men debating the merits of fast cars versus fast horses spun around and stared, mouths agape, as the fireball approached.

“Son of a bitch!” one yelled.

“Fucking hell!” said another.

As the bus flew past Knight’s, it became obvious to everyone that there was no one behind the wheel. Nor were there any passengers.

As the rocket of flame continued to barrel on down the street, the back end of the bus was illuminated every few seconds as it passed below streetlamps.

The number 23, in numerals three feet high, adorned the back of the bus below the window.

“Look!” said the young man who’d been making out with his girlfriend. “It’s him!”

“Who?” the girl asked.

“The guy the cops were talking about! Mr. Twenty-three!”

“What?” she said.

The bus sideswiped several parked cars on the other side of the street, setting off multiple alarms and flashing taillights, but the collisions did little to slow the vehicle down.

Proctor T-boned with Richmond about a hundred yards on. The flaming bus raced through the intersection, smashed through two cars parked on the street, and barreled into the front window of a florist shop.

“Wow,” Dwayne said.

The sound of the crash brought others out of the bar. “What the hell happened?” someone asked.

“That bus!” Dwayne said. “Went flying past, all on fire! Jesus!”

A growing crowd spilled out into the street. The bar emptied.
Across Proctor, customers poured out of an all-night diner to see what was going on.

The man who’d read something into the number on the back of the bus started shouting: “It might have a bomb in it! It’s the guy who blew up the drive-in!” He grabbed his girlfriend by the arm and started running up Proctor the other way.

The others on the street exchanged looks, as though pondering what they should do. They seemed torn between moving in for a closer look at what happened—the flower shop’s burglar alarm was whooping loudly and the blaze was spreading from the bus to the building—and running for their lives.

Several of them started to run.

Dwayne heard heavy footsteps coming from the north and turned. It was a male jogger in his mid – to late twenties. He came to a stop next to Dwayne.

“What the hell happened?” asked the jogger, his shirt soaked with sweat.

“Beats me,” said Dwayne. “Thing just flew past here like a space shuttle on reentry.” He gave the jogger a closer look. “You look familiar. Do I know you?”

“Don’t think so.”

“You were in the bar the other night, kinda mouthing off at everyone.”

“Yeah, that mighta been me. Had a bit too much. Sorry if I said anything to you—what’s your name?”

“Dwayne.”

“Well, sorry, Dwayne. I’m Victor, by the way.”

“Hey.”

Victor Rooney gazed down the street at the fire with something approaching awe and wonder. “Not the sort of thing you see every day, is it?”

DEREK
Cutter had set the alarm on his phone for six, but his eyes were open five minutes before it went off. Early-morning sunlight was filtering through the blinds into his bedroom. He could have lain in another five minutes, even a few more after six, but he wanted to get going.

He was excited.

And surprised. Surprised that he was excited.

Marla Pickens had invited him to come over first thing this morning to have breakfast with Matthew and her. Matthew was her ten-month-old child. Matthew was also, as it turned out, Derek’s ten-month-old child.

Derek was stunned to learn that he was a father, but Marla was also somewhat stunned to learn she was a mother.

More than a year ago, he’d known he was going to become a dad, and he was certainly not excited about the news at the time. Scared shitless was more like it. He and Marla, a woman he’d met at the Thackeray pub, had gone out a couple of times, slept together, and even though that was the kind of activity that he was aware could lead to babies, he was dumbstruck when Marla told him she was pregnant.

He didn’t want a kid, and he didn’t know what the hell to do with one when it arrived. He didn’t know whether Marla even wanted him involved. All he knew was that she intended to have the baby.

Derek was a wreck for months.

Then he got the news.

The baby had died at birth.

He couldn’t believe how it hit him. Months earlier, he would have been secretly relieved to hear Marla had lost the baby. Off the hook. Problem solved. Case dismissed. But he was devastated.

My kid died.

Except, of course, as everyone now knew, that wasn’t what had happened. Marla’s mother and her doctor had tricked her into thinking her baby had not survived. Ten months later, Marla was reunited with her child.

Not that everyone lived happily ever after. Marla’s mother and the doctor were dead. Marla remained pretty screwed up. She’d refused to believe, for several days, that her mother had actually killed herself by jumping off Promise Falls. She and Matthew were living with her father, and being checked on regularly by the local child welfare authorities.

But everyone thought it was a good sign that she wanted to bring Derek into the loop.

Even Derek’s mother and father.

This was the really good part.

He’d figured his parents, Jim and Ellen, would be all over him about this. Still in school, got a girl pregnant, didn’t have a job, why couldn’t he keep it in his pants?—that kind of thing.

It hadn’t been like that at all.

They hadn’t really judged. His dad just made it clear that he had to step up to the plate, do the right thing, accept his responsibility, fill in whichever cliché you want here. The really weird thing was, Derek having a kid seemed to be bringing Jim and Ellen, who had split up a few years ago, back together.

They were grandparents. And they appeared to want to enjoy the experience together.

They’d met a few times for dinner. They’d gone to the Pickens house twice to see the baby. They’d bought stuff. Diapers, clothes, board books.

Jim had asked his son if he wanted to come back to work with him this summer at the landscaping business.

Derek said yes.

So he felt pretty good this morning. The events of two nights ago at the drive-in were still fresh in his memory, but he wasn’t going to let that drag him down too much. He jumped into the shower, got dressed, and was out front of his place by seven. He didn’t have a car, but Gill Pickens, Marla’s dad, had offered to come over and pick him up.

Gill was there.

They didn’t have much to say to each other. Derek figured that whenever he looked at him, he was probably thinking,
You’re the dickwad who knocked up my little girl.
Then again, you couldn’t blame the guy for being quiet. His wife had just died, and he had a whole lot on his plate right now.

Marla was at the door, holding Matthew in her arms, when they pulled into the driveway.

“You’re just in time,” Marla said. “He’s really hungry.”

Derek followed Marla and his son into the kitchen. “You hold on to him while I get his breakfast ready.”

“You sure?” he said.

She handed Matthew over to him. Derek took him under the arms, settled him up against his chest, put his right hand on the child’s back.

“I can feel his heart beating.”

“Yeah, well, that’s a good thing,” Marla said.

Matthew made soft gurgling noises. Derek said, “He looks bigger than he did two weeks ago.”

“He’s growing—that’s for sure. You guys look good together.”

A cell phone started to ring.

“Who’s that?” Marla asked.

Derek could feel the buzzing on his upper thigh. “It’s me,” he said. “I don’t know who’d be calling me this early. Can you take him?”

He handed Matthew off to Marla, then took the phone from the pocket of his jeans. He saw the name on the screen and said, “What?”

“Who is it?”

“Lydecker,” Derek said. “As in George Lydecker.” The phone continued to ring in his hand. “Except it’s his home phone, not his cell. He never uses his home phone.”

“Who’s George Lydecker?”

“He’s this idiot. The other night, before the screen came down? He was shooting at stop signs and stuff.” The phone kept ringing. Derek sighed, accepted the call. “Hello?”

It wasn’t George on the other end. It was a woman, and she was speaking loud enough that Marla could hear every word.

“Hello?”

“Is this Derek?” the woman asked. “Derek Cutter?”

“Yup.”

“It’s Hillary Lydecker. George’s mother. Is George with you?”

“What? No.” Why the hell would George be with him this early in the morning? Wait, maybe that wasn’t so implausible. George had been known to drink too much and pass out at a friend’s place, then head home the next morning.

“I’ve been calling everyone he knows. I found your number on his cell phone bill. I think I’ve called just about everyone!” The woman sounded frantic. “You sure he’s not with you?”

“I’d kinda know. I haven’t seen him since night before last.”

“We’re all set to go. We were supposed to leave for the airport a couple of hours ago. We thought maybe he was out partying or something and maybe he passed out and didn’t wake up in time to get home for the taxi. We’ve missed our flight. We’re going to have to rebook everything.”

“When did you last see him?” Derek asked.

“Last night, we had an early dinner. Then he said he was going out, and I said to him, ‘Be back early, because we’re flying out in the morning.’ All of us, we’re going to Vancouver to see my husband’s family, and we told George the taxi is coming really early, at five, and he promised he’d be home in good time, but I’ve tried his cell and I can’t get him and—”

“I’m sure he’ll turn up,” Derek said. “You know what George is like. I’m sure he’s okay. It’s probably like you say. He went to a party and had a bit too much and fell asleep on somebody’s couch. Too bad about your flight, though. That’s really a drag.”

Hillary Lydecker said, “I just hope he hasn’t done something really stupid.”

IT
wasn’t as though Barry Duckworth was expecting a plate covered with four scrambled eggs, half a dozen strips of bacon, and a heap of home fries. He rarely got something like that at home. If he wanted a breakfast like that, he hit one of Promise Falls’ greasy, wonderful diners.

But a grapefruit and a slice of toast? Seriously?

“Maureen,” he said, “we need to talk.”

She was drinking her coffee across the table from him, having a quick look at the news on her tablet before heading off to work.

“What’s the problem?” she said. “I cut the grapefruit in half, and even took a knife to the little wedges so you won’t get any grapefruit juice in your eye and blind yourself. Also, I sprinkled some Splenda on it so it’s not so bitter. I couldn’t see sprinkling sugar all over it. That kind of defeats the purpose, don’t you think?”

“What kind of toast is this? It doesn’t look like my regular toast.”

“That’s multigrain,” she said, not moving her eyes from the tablet. “There’s something pretty amazing on here you’re going to want to see.”

“It looks like birdseed stuck to the crust.”

“It’ll make you a better warbler,” Maureen said. She looked at him. “Oh my God, you’re not actually picking those seeds off, are you?”

“I don’t like them.”

“I buttered the bread for you. Not a lot, but that’s actual butter on the bread. I would never expect you to eat dry toast. My God,
the way you’re carrying on, you’d think you were being waterboarded.”

“I like my usual toast,” he said.

“I’m sure you do,” Maureen said. “Really, you’re going to want to see this, unless you’ve already heard about it.”

“Heard about what?”

“The bus? That was on fire? It made the Albany station. Someone got video on their phone.”

Duckworth beckoned with his hand. Maureen turned the iPad around on its stand, pushed it his way.

“You just press the little play arrow there,” she said.

“I know how to do it,” he said.

He tapped the screen. Watched the flaming bus roll down the street, crash into some cars, destroy a flower shop.

“Jesus,” he said. “I’ve bought flowers for you there.”

“Not lately,” Maureen said.

“Hang on,” he said. “How do I make it go again?”

“Press the little arrow that’s like a circle that—”

“I got it. Hang on. I want to pause it right . . . here.”

The image froze. Duckworth had paused the video at the point where the bus had driven past whoever was filming it.

Where you could see the back end of the bus.

With the number 23 three feet high and three feet across.

“Look at that,” he said, turning the tablet around.

“Yeah, I see it.”

“You see the number on the back?”

“I do.” She shook her head. “He’s at it again.”

Duckworth stared at the screen again. “He’s sending a message. I just don’t know what the hell it is.” He shook his head despairingly. “I feel like we’re leading up to something.”

“Like?”

“I don’t know. But—”

His cell phone started to ring.

“Duckworth,” he said.

“Detective, this is Officer Gilchrist.”

Gilchrist.
Ted
Gilchrist. Duckworth had last seen him at the Gaynor house, trying to sort things out between David Harwood, his cousin Marla Pickens, and Bill Gaynor, shortly after Rosemary Gaynor’s body had been discovered. A good cop, Duckworth thought.

“This about the bus? I just found out about it.”

“No, sir. Something else. Figured I’d call you directly, since it’s probably going to be you who gets the call.”

“Okay.”

“I was just doing a regular patrol, going past a house, noticed the front door was left ajar. Decided I should have a look. Went up to the door, rang the bell, no one came, figured maybe someone hurried off to work and didn’t pull the door shut all the way, but when I had a look inside, I realized it was something else.”

“What?”

“There’s a dead lady on the stairs. Her neck’s busted.”

Duckworth felt like a tire with only a couple of pounds of pressure left in it.
There was too much shit going on in this town.

“Address?” he asked Gilchrist.

•   •   •

Barry Duckworth, hovering over the body of Miriam Chalmers, one police-issue bootie on one step, one police-issue bootie on the other, couldn’t help but kick himself mentally.

He should have come out here. He should have come out here last night and interviewed this woman.

At the time, however, it seemed far more urgent to seek out Peter Blackmore, husband of Georgina, the woman who had really died in the Jag with Adam Chalmers. The bad news had to be delivered.

There was bad news for Miriam Chalmers, too, but someone had already told her that her husband was dead, as evidenced by her call to her brother seconds before Duckworth nearly showed him Georgina Blackmore’s body.

So there’d been no pressing need for Duckworth to pay Miriam Chalmers a visit. And besides, he was so goddamned tired all he could think about was going home to bed.

Excuses.

If he’d come by here last night, maybe he could have kept this from happening. Maybe he’d have arrived at just the right time. Or maybe he would have learned something that led him to believe this woman was in danger.

All too late for that now.

“Any sign of forced entry?” Duckworth asked Gilchrist, who was standing at the top of the stairs that led to the basement.

“I’ve been all around the house, checked windows, doors, and I don’t see anything,” he said.

Duckworth studied the angle of the body, trying to determine how she’d landed this way, head at the bottom step, feet five steps above.

“Tripped?” Gilchrist asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “If she tripped going up the stairs, her head would be that way. If she’d tripped going the other way, she’d be facedown. I’d say she was on the way up, and got pushed, or pulled.”

“Yeah,” Gilchrist said. “I see what you mean.”

Standing on the basement floor, Duckworth noticed a room behind him with a light on. It didn’t have a proper doorway, but
appeared to be accessed by the bookshelves that had been slid to one side.

Duckworth peered into the room.

“Officer Gilchrist!” he said.

“Yes, Detective?”

“Have you been down here and seen this?”

“Yes, sir, I have.”

“And you hadn’t thought to mention it?”

“I was going to, then thought I’d let you discover it on your own. So it would have the same impact on you as it did on me. And honestly, I didn’t know if there was any way I could really describe it for you. It’s one of those things you just have to see. I’m going to take another look around up here.”

Duckworth took in the framed photos on the wall. The oversized bed, the retro shag carpeting, the satiny bedcover, which had been disturbed. As though someone had wrapped himself—or herself—in it, without getting underneath it.

The room’s theme immediately made the detective wonder whether Miriam Chalmers had been sexually assaulted. He took another look at her, from a good ten feet away. Her clothes appeared undisturbed.

The coroner would tell him more.

Duckworth looked up to the top of the stairs, where Gilchrist had been a moment earlier.

“You called Wanda, right?” he shouted upstairs.

Gilchrist, from somewhere, said, “Yup.” And, “Found something.”

Duckworth didn’t move. He didn’t want to navigate his way around the body again. He waited.

Gilchrist reappeared, holding up something small and white, about the size of a business card.

It was, in fact, a business card.

“This rings a bell,” Gilchrist said. “Didn’t a Cal Weaver used to work for the force?”