The Twenty-Three 3 (Promise Falls) (26 page)

DAY TWO

FORTY-TWO

DAVID
set out Sunday at daybreak. He could make it to Lake Luzerne in under an hour, he figured. And if Sam and Carl were at Camp Sunrise, that’d be fantastic, because checking all the other campsites could take several hours.

“Where are you off to so early?” his mother asked him when she found him in the kitchen. She and Don were always up before David, so it was a surprise to find him there.

“Just something I have to do,” he said.

“Is it something for Mr. Finley?” she asked.

“No.” That got him thinking that he really needed to get in touch with Randy. The man had, after all, hired him to do a job, and David had not exactly been giving one hundred percent. Despite the contempt David felt for him, he felt some measure of guilt that he wasn’t earning his salary.

He didn’t want to call and wake the man, so he decided to send him a text that Finley could discover whenever he got around to looking at his phone.

David sent the text.

He was about to put his phone away when he saw the telltale dots that told him Finley was writing a reply.

That didn’t sound like the Finley David knew. Where was the outrage? The bluster? The guilt-tripping?

Maybe, David thought, he’d been terminated. Maybe Finley’s short response meant he had found someone else to work for him. David wasn’t sure whether to be hurt or relieved. He didn’t like working for the man, but he also needed the job.

David phoned him.

“Am I fired?” David asked when Finley answered.

“I don’t know,” Finley said.

“Look, I know I’ve had some things going on, but I’m hoping to get them all sorted out. I’ve got to take a run up to Lake Luzerne today, but once I’m done up there, I can—”

“Jane’s dead.”

Finley filled him in. A stunned David didn’t know what to say beyond that he was sorry.

“I may pull out,” Finley said. “I’m thinking, the hell with it.”

“Don’t make a decision right away,” David counseled. “Take care . . . of what you have to take care of. Give it some time. Then decide.”

“You don’t understand,” he said.

“Don’t understand what?”

“She was the reason,” Finley said.

David started to say something else but realized Finley had ended the call.

“What happened?” Arlene asked as Don came into the room.

David shook his head and asked, “Can you look after Ethan today?”

Don asked, “Can we have coffee today or is the water still going to kill us?”

Arlene asked her son, “Do you know? Is the water safe yet?”

“They should have it fixed by now,” Don said. “I don’t know why the hell they can’t have it fixed by now. They should have been able to flush the system. I’ve half a mind to go over to the plant myself and see what the hell they’re doing.”

“Yes,” Arlene said. “I’m sure they’d welcome your input.”

If I don’t have a job,
David thought,
I’ll be losing this house and moving back in with them.

“Can you look after Ethan?” he asked again.

“Of course,” Arlene said.

David was out the door.

David didn’t have GPS built into his car, or even one of those stick-on mini-nav systems that could be put atop the dashboard. But he had looked up the location for Camp Sunrise on his phone’s map app. He wasn’t expecting it to be difficult to find.

He was there in just over an hour, and along the way he had to think about just what the purpose of this trip was. Was his search for Sam solely motivated by concern for her, or was this more about him?

About half-and-half, he concluded.

He was, without a doubt, worried for her safety. Brandon was looking for her, and he wanted to be sure Sam and her son were safe, that Brandon had not found them. But he also realized Sam was no fool. The fact that she’d gotten herself and Carl out of town so quickly was evidence of that.

But that wasn’t enough for David. He had to
know
.

And, he admitted to himself, he wanted Sam to know he cared enough to look for her.

When he reached Camp Sunrise, he found a small, tollbooth-like structure between the entrance and exit lanes. It was designed to look like a mini log cabin, with wooden gates in the raised position on both sides. There was no one in the booth, so there was nothing to stop him from driving straight in.

It wasn’t even nine in the morning yet, and the camp was a sleepy place. Few people were out and about, but as he drove the narrow, winding roads that led through the forested grounds, he noticed exceptions. There was a man frying up some bacon on a Coleman stove set up on a picnic table. At another campsite, a woman was running an extension cord from an electrical post to a cappuccino maker resting on the top of a stump.

“Roughing it,” David said under his breath.

David didn’t see any empty campsites. This was a long weekend, and it seemed a safe bet that the place was filled to capacity. There were tents, small trailers, and those hybrid tent-trailer things, with two wheels and a metal chassis, that opened up to sleep four or more people.

Driving slowly through the camp, David did not see Sam or Carl anywhere, and even if they were still sleeping in their tent, he saw no car that looked like hers. He made his way back to where he’d turned in off the main road, and saw that there was now someone in the booth. He pulled up alongside it and powered down the window.

“Help ya?” said a man—no, more like a kid about seventeen—at the window.

“I’m not staying here,” David said. “I’m trying to find somebody.”

“Okay.”

“Samantha Worthington,” he said. “She probably checked in Thursday night. She’s with her son, about nine or ten, and they’d have pitched a tent. They don’t have a trailer or anything like that.” He thought maybe he needed a reason to be looking for them. “There’s kind of a family emergency back home and we’ve been trying to locate them.”

The kid appeared to be consulting a book, or maybe a laptop. David couldn’t see from where he sat.

“I don’t have anything here. No Worthington,” he said. “When did you say they arrived?”

“Thursday, probably.”

“Did they have a reservation?”

David was betting Samantha had not made one. If she’d just found out about Brandon’s escape, there wouldn’t have been time. She’d have thrown everything they needed into the car and just taken off.

“I doubt it,” David said.

“Well, if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have been able to get in. All the sites had been booked ahead by Wednesday.”

David felt deflated. He’d played a hunch and it had been wrong. But just because Sam wasn’t here didn’t mean she couldn’t have tried another campsite in the area.

“Thanks,” he said to the kid. He drove out of the park, then pulled over onto the shoulder of the road to consult the Web browser on his phone, thinking he’d get the names and locations of other nearby campsites.

Except he couldn’t get online. He had no bars on his phone. He couldn’t get cell service here.

Maybe that was why Samantha hadn’t taken any of his calls, or tried to get in touch with him. He felt simultaneously discouraged and encouraged. He believed he was on the right track, but was still no closer to finding them.

He got out of the car and walked back to the booth.

“If you’re full up, where might you send someone to try next?”

The kid in the booth didn’t hesitate. “Probably Call of the Loon.”

“What?”

“I know, seriously. A pretty dumb name for a place. Call of the Loon Acres. About five more miles up the road that way. They try to squeeze in extras even when they’re booked solid.”

“Thanks,” David said, and ran back to the car.

FORTY-THREE

Duckworth

WHEN
the alarm went off at six, I was dreaming. It was more a nightmare than a dream, but no one ever says they were nightmaring. But that’s a more accurate word for what I was doing when the clock radio started to beep.

I’m in the park by the falls. It’s dusk and I am standing on the sidewalk by the road that runs parallel to the park.

I hear screaming. It seems to be coming from all directions. I turn and look one way, thinking that is where the screams are originating. But I no sooner spin around than the screams seem to be coming from behind me. I keep spinning round and round, and pretty soon it’s as though the screams are coming from everywhere.

I am turning and turning to the point of dizziness. Finally I stop, pretty sure the screams are not all around me, but near the base of the falls. I start walking in that direction; then I feel a tap on my shoulder.

I spin around suddenly and there, directly in front of me, is Olivia Fisher.

She is looking at me quizzically, an almost naive expression on her face. She says, “Didn’t you hear me?”

“I did,” I say. “I just couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from.”

“It was coming from here,” she says, opens her mouth wide, and points into it. But her mouth has opened unnaturally wide, as though her jaw is no longer hinged.

And blood begins to pour from her mouth, like water gushing from an opened fire hydrant. Blood spills over me, and I look down and see that within seconds it is up to my knees.

Even though her mouth is flowing with blood, I can still hear her speaking to me. “Do you know what my favorite number is?”

“No,” I say.

“Twenty-three. Do you know why?”

“Tell me.”

“You already know. You’ve figured it out.”

“No, I haven’t. I’m not sure. I—”

“Oh, dear,” Olivia says. Her mouth is back to normal now, no blood flowing from it. But she has her hands over her stomach, where her entrails are spilling out. She is attempting to stuff them back in.

“How will I explain this to my mother?” she asks.

The alarm wakes me before I can offer her a suggestion.

Maureen sat up in bed as I reached over to kill the alarm. “If that hadn’t gone off, I’d have woken you up,” she said. “You were starting to shout things. You were having a nightmare.”

“Yeah,” I said, throwing back the covers and putting my feet on the floor. I had a headache and my mouth was dry.

“I can make coffee,” Maureen said. “I got bottled water yesterday.”

“You went down to Finley’s circus?”

“I got it at the Stop and Shop.”

I checked my phone, which was recharging on my bedside table. I hadn’t muted it when I’d turned out the light, in case someone tried to reach me in the night. But there was a text message on the screen.

“I never heard this come in,” I said.

“You were out cold,” Maureen said. “When did it show up?”

I looked. The text was from Joyce Pilgrim, and she’d sent it at eleven forty-five p.m. About half an hour after I’d lost consciousness. I told Maureen.

“I hadn’t come to bed yet,” she said, “so I never heard it, either.”

I read the message:
Call me when you get this. Might have something.

“Shit,” I said.

Maureen threw back the covers and headed downstairs as I texted back to Joyce:
Just got this. If you’re up, phone me.

I took the phone with me into the bathroom, placing it on a shelf just outside the shower. And thought:
Is it safe to take a shower?

I’d had one the morning before with no ill effects. Maybe water laced with sodium azide was enough to kill you if you drank it, but its effects were negligible when it washed over your skin. Those granules I’d touched the day before had made my finger itch, but hadn’t burned through my skin or anything.

I made a call to the station to see what the latest updates were. The state health officials believed the contaminated water had moved through the system, but to be on the safe side, they were recommending against drinking anything from the taps for at least another forty-eight hours. Water for nondrinking purposes was believed to be safe. In the case of a shower, they advised, let it run for a good five minutes before stepping in.

Well, that was a relief. The idea of taking a bath with several bottles of Finley Springs water did not appeal to me.

I turned on the water and let it run.

After five minutes, I stripped out of my pajamas and stepped

under the hot spray. I was rinsing shampoo out of my hair while soaping up my ample belly when my cell phone rang.

“Goddamn it.”

I turned off the shower while still soapy, reached out for a towel to get my hands dry enough to pick up the phone without dropping it, then, still in the stall, put the phone to my ear.

“Yeah?”

“It’s Joyce. I got your text.”

“Okay,” I said. “Sorry. I was asleep when you sent yours. Just saw it.”

“I figured.”

“So what have you got?”

“A witness. Maybe. Not a great one, but a witness.”

“Go on,” I said, using my free hand to wipe away some shampoo that was trying to find its way into my eye.

“So I did what you asked. I reviewed the surveillance footage.” She told me about seeing a car park near Lorraine Plummer’s residence around the time of her murder, a man getting out and returning.

“What did he look like?”

“You can’t tell a thing from the video,” she said. “And you can’t get any kind of a good look at the car, either.”

“Well, still, that’s something. Maybe we can get someone to enhance the video, or maybe there are some other cameras along the way to Thackeray we can check. But what’s this about a witness?”

She told me about the appearance of the jogger in the video. How he’d run right past the parked car.

“So last night, I camped out there, thinking maybe this was a regular run this guy takes, and I’d get a chance to ask him whether he noticed that car or not.”

I felt my pulse quicken, which took my mind off the fact that I was freezing as soapy water clung to me. Maureen stepped into the bathroom, looked at me standing naked in the shower with a phone in my hand, gave me an up and down, and left without comment.

“And?” I said.

“He came by. I got out of my car and stopped him and got him to think back to the car and whether he remembered anything.”

“Ok-k-ay.”

“Something wrong?”

“Nothing. Just felt a chill, is all.”

“So I tried to jog his memory, no pun intended, and it kind of came back to him.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. He said the car was a four-door sedan. Hard to tell at night, but dark blue or maybe black. He was a little fuzzy on the make, but he thought North American. Like a Ford.”

“Plate number?” I knew, even as I asked it, that it was a long shot.

“No, he didn’t take any notice of the plate. At least, not the numbers. But he thought maybe it was out of state. He thought it might have been green.”

Green. Vermont plates were green, and Vermont was not very far away.

“Okay,” I said. “So we’ve got a bit to go on with the car.”

“He says he saw the guy,” Joyce Pilgrim said.

I gripped the phone a little tighter. “Tell me.”

“White, about six-three, ball cap—for the Yankees, he thinks—running shoes, dark blue Windbreaker, maybe a hundred and eighty to two hundred pounds.”

“He must have got a long look at him to get that kind of detail.”

“He says he only saw him for a second. And he didn’t see him near the car. Saw him farther away, near the building where Lorraine Plummer was killed. But he was figuring it must have been the guy whose car it was, since there wasn’t anyone else around.”

“This is amazing, Joyce. This is really terrific work.” I took one step out of the shower and reached for a towel. I rubbed it over my soapy hair, tried to blot myself where I could with one available hand. “You got a name for this witness?”

“Yeah, hang on, I wrote it down. Here’s the phone number. It’s—”

“I can’t take it down right now. I can call you back in a couple of minutes. What about the name?” I stepped out of the shower all the way, my feet on the furry white bath mat.

“Rooney,” she said.

“What?”

“Rooney. Victor Rooney.”

The towel slipped out of my hand.

I said nothing. I was trying to grasp the significance. The boyfriend of Olivia Fisher just happened to be running past Lorraine Plummer’s building at the time of her murder.

Maybe his description of the mystery man was so good, right down to the Yankees cap, because he wanted us to have someone else to look for.

Maybe someone he’d never seen at all.

“Thanks, Joyce,” I said. “I’ll be getting back to you.”

Maureen appeared again, looked at me standing there, stark naked, towel around my ankles, phone still to my ear.

“Coffee’s ready,” she said.