The Twenty-Three 3 (Promise Falls) (33 page)

FIFTY-EIGHT

Duckworth

“HIS
mother is dead?” I said. “I don’ t—earlier today I asked him what he was going to do and he said he might visit her.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head.

“Why would he say he might see her, and why would he act like he was talking to his mother on the phone, if she’s dead?”

“It’s something he does. It helps him. When he was in therapy, it was something that was suggested to him. That when he was stressed-out, when he was angry, he could verbalize his feelings. That it would help him, help release the tension.”

“Let’s sit down,” I said, and steered her into her own living room. We took chairs across from each other, a coffee table between us. “When did his mother die?”

“When he was seventeen,” she said. “Nearly twenty years ago.”

“What happened to her?”

“She killed herself. Jumped off a bridge onto the interstate. She wasn’t right in the head, if you know what I mean.”

“Depression?”

“That, and other things. Angus’s father walked out on them when Angus was eight, and his mother raised him until she passed away.”

“Sounds like a rough childhood,” I said.

“She was . . . she was not a very good mother to him,” Gale said.

“Abuse?”

She nodded. “Not just physical, but psychological, too. She wasn’t always that way. When he was little, she was pretty happy and normal, for the most part. But then something happened to her after her husband walked out. She changed. Like, her mind completely changed. It’s amazing that Angus turned out to be as well-adjusted as he is. You know, for the most part.”

“What do you mean, for the most part?”

“He has this thing . . . he has this thing about us never having children. He doesn’t want to have them. Like he’s afraid I’m going to turn into the kind of monster his mother was.” Her eyes filled with tears as she leaned forward. “I would never become that kind of person.”

“Of course you wouldn’t,” I said. “Since he couldn’t have gone to see his mother, are you sure you have no idea where he might be?”

She shook her head. “None.”

“You say you tried phoning him, but he didn’t answer?”

“That’s right.”

“What about texting him?”

“I didn’t do that.”

“It’s easy not to answer the phone, but a person almost always looks at a text. I want you to send him one.”

She got up, went to the kitchen, and returned with a cell phone.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Something that will make him call home. Something he can’t ignore.”

Her lower lip began to quiver. “What’s going on? Why do you need to talk to him so badly?”

“Text this to him.
Call me.
Put an exclamation mark after that.”

“What’s going on?” she asked again.

“Just do that, but don’t send it yet.”

With one thumb, she typed the two words. “Okay, now what?”

I tried to think of something that would make any man call home immediately. Besides an invitation to sex. Or, in the case of someone like me, cake.

“Say there’s a leak under the sink. Water everywhere.”

“But there is no—”

“Please.”

“I don’t like lying to him,” she said. “It’s not right.”

“I’ll tell him I made you do it. I’ll explain. The important thing right now is that we get him to phone you. Soon as the phone rings, hand it to me.”

Gale took two deep breaths, then typed what I’d asked.

“Send it,” I said.

She hit the button.

“Now we wait,” I said.

We sat there across from each other, not saying a word, counting the seconds. Ten, fifteen, thirty.

A full minute went by.

When the phone rang in Gale’s hands, she jumped, as though it had the power to electrocute her. I extended my hand and she placed the phone in it. I hit the button to accept the call.

“Angus,” I said.

A pause, while he dealt with the surprise. “Barry?”

“That’s right.”

“What’ s—what’s going on? I just got a text from Gale about a busted pipe or something. Are you there?”

“I’m here, with Gale.”

“How bad is it? Which sink?”

“There’s no leak, Angus. I’m sorry. It was a trick. I made Gale do it, so you’d call. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you.”

“Jesus, what the hell?”

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t want to do it. I went looking for you at the used bookstore.”

“The what?”

“Naman’s. Gale said you were going there.”

“She shouldn’t have said anything. I was just checking out a possible lead. Probably nothing.”

“But you never went.”

A pause at the other end. “It’s my next stop.”

“Where are you now?”

“Just driving around. What is it you want, Barry? What’s so goddamn important?”

“There’s something I need your help on. I wouldn’t have pulled a stunt like this if it wasn’t important.”

“Fine. Go ahead.”

“Not over the phone, Angus. It’d be easier to talk face-to-face.”

“What is it? Just tell me.”

“Seriously, Angus, this is a conversation I’d rather have with you in person.”

There was a long pause from Angus. Then, “I don’t think so. If you can’t give me some idea what it’s about, it’ll just have to wait until the next time we run into each other.”

I ran my tongue over my front teeth. “Okay, then,” I said slowly. “Did you know that about a week before Olivia Fisher died, and a few days before Rosemary Gaynor died, they each got a speeding ticket?”

A long pause. Then, “No. How would I know that?”

“Because you wrote them,” I said. “Both of them.”

“I suppose that’s possible,” he said. “I was in uniform. I drove around. I wrote tickets.”

“And you interviewed Lorraine Plummer just days before she was murdered.”

An even longer pause at the other end. “Yeah, of course I did. I told you all about it. I don’t know what you’re getting at, Barry.”

“It seems odd you never thought to mention that you’d met Fisher, and Gaynor, too.”

“I write a lot of tickets, Barry. Do you remember everyone you gave a ticket to when you were in uniform?”

Gale was watching me, her eyes wide.

“I’m struck by the fact that you came into contact, one way or another, with each of these three women shortly before they were all killed. I’m trying to get my head around that. That you never thought to mention it in the cases of Fisher and Gaynor.”

“What did I say just five seconds ago? I didn’t remember. I
don’t
remember.”

“We need to talk. Face-to-face. Let’s sort this out. I’m sure it can all be explained away. What do you say?”

I waited for a reply.

“Angus?”

He’d ended the call.

I looked at Gale, saw a tear running down her cheek. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

It was then that my eye caught a framed picture on the mantel over the fireplace. It was a portrait shot, faded over time, of a woman in her thirties. Good-looking, with dark eyes and black hair that fell gently to her shoulders. She looked, at a glance, not unlike Olivia Fisher or Rosemary Gaynor or Lorraine Plummer.

“Who’s that?” I asked Gale.

She followed my gaze, sniffed, and said, “That’s Angus’s mother.”

FIFTY-NINE

ANGUS
had never intended to pay a visit to Naman.

He’d put very little stock in Gale’s suspicion that the used bookseller might be involved with contaminating the town water supply just because he had a book on poisons. What had been done to Promise Falls was not the work of some guy who got the idea out of the pages of a book. It had been done by someone with a working knowledge of the town’s infrastructure. That sure didn’t sound like Naman. And from what little Duckworth had told him in their first conversation of the day, Victor Rooney sounded like someone who fit that profile.

But interviewing the bookseller was an excellent pretext to get out of the house, to leave Gale on her own.

He had seen another one.

Someone else who bore a striking resemblance to his mother.

It was happening more now than it used to. Was that because he was seeing more women who fit the profile? Or was the need greater?

Did it matter?

After Olivia Fisher, he’d gone three years before doing it again.
But then he’d pulled over Rosemary Gaynor for doing sixty in a forty. There was something about her, something in her eyes, something in the way her dark hair fell to her shoulders, that made him think of her.

If he’d known she already had a child, he might have given her a pass. But there was no baby seat in the back of her car, nothing that immediately gave away that she was a mother. It was only after he’d killed her that he learned there had been a baby boy asleep upstairs.

There was no point in killing them after they’d given birth. It was too late then. You had to get them
before
.

With Lorraine Plummer, it had been much easier to get it right. She was a student. No serious boyfriend, no imminent marriage. Motherhood might be years away.

Perhaps that was why the
need
struck him again so soon after Rosemary Gaynor. Because he’d gotten it wrong.

But she certainly looked the part. She looked so much like
Leanna
.

They’d been having regular chats lately. Somewhat one-sided, of course. That therapist he’d been seeing way back before he and Gale even moved to Promise Falls from Ohio suggested them.
Give a voice to your feelings,
he’d been told.
Even if she can’t hear you, you get to hear yourself. Let the feelings out.

At times, it seemed to make a difference.

Sometimes, he’d talk to her, phone in hand, like he had a toll-free line to hell. Or he’d talk to her while driving, as though she were in the seat next to him. Other times, he would look at her picture on the mantel in the living room. Tell her what was on his mind. Give it to her straight.

Gale didn’t understand. She thought it was crazy. Asked him not to do it.

Move on,
she said.
It’s over. She can’t hurt you anymore.

Easy for her to say.

Let’s start a family of our own,
Gale kept saying.

She just didn’t get it.

He was always very careful to make sure they took all the necessary precautions, and not just when it came to sex. He’d been careful to choose a girl who looked nothing like his mother. Different hairstyle, facial structure, body type. He wanted her to be as unlike his mother as possible.

After all, he’d hate to think that he might have to kill Gale.

Angus
loved
Gale.

They were, he believed, a perfect couple. He’d always been able to talk to her. He’d told her all about his childhood. How things got so much worse after his father left. How his mother had slowly descended into a kind of madness at times.

Angus hadn’t told Gale everything his mother had done. Some things he couldn’t bring himself to say aloud. Only his therapist heard the grisly details, and even in the privacy of the doctor’s office, there was one story Angus had always held back.

He’d told Gale of the lesser offenses. The relentless criticisms. That he was an accident. She’d never intended to have him. He was dumb like his father.

First came the insult. And then, when his lip would begin to quiver, she’d frown and say, “Oh, come, now. You have to learn to take these things. I’d be doing you no favor not to point out your shortcomings.”

And then she’d lean in, nose to nose, and say, “Give your mom a smile. A good boy always gives his mom a smile.”

A smile.

But being a good boy was an unattainable goal, as his mother constantly reminded him.

Good boys didn’t roughhouse or run through the living room. Good boys walked on the stairs, never jumped. Good boys didn’t get their clothes mussed up. Good boys didn’t make farting noises. Good boys didn’t get bad marks at school.

Good boys didn’t look at dirty magazines and do nasty things with themselves under the covers.

That was one of the stories he’d never been able to tell Gale.
The night, when he was thirteen, when his mother burst into his room and caught him in the middle of doing that.

How she’d whipped the covers off the bed, exposed his nakedness, his withering hardness. He’d made a grab for the covers, but she held them firm.

“I thought you were a good boy,” she said.

“Please!”
he whimpered, trying to get her to let go of the bed-covers.
“Leave me alone!”

“If you think that’s such a smart thing to do, if you’re so proud of that kind of behavior, then go ahead and finish,” she said. “I’ll wait.”

He rolled onto his side, curling up into a ball, as though shielding himself from an imminent lashing. But her taunting had a much greater sting.

“I’m waiting,” she said.

He wrapped his arms around his knees, pulled them in closer to his chest, felt a tear run down his cheek to the pillow.

“Just as I thought,” his mother said. “Even those most basic tasks you can’t finish.”

And then she leaned in, kissed him on the forehead, and said, “All right now, let’s move on. Give your mom a smile.”

Pulling up the corners of his mouth felt like lifting a set of five-hundred-pound dumbbells.

After his mother died, he went to live with Aunt Belinda for two years. It just about killed him when she said to him one day, “I know my sister wasn’t the best of mothers, and it tore me apart watching how she treated you, but what could I do?”

She could have saved him, he thought. That’s what she could have done.

He thought, often, how much better it would have been if his mother had never had him. A life that never was would be preferable to what he’d endured.

That life seemed to turn around when he met Gale. Kind, loving, ego-boosting. After a stint in police college, he landed a job
with the Cleveland force. Gale got work as a kindergarten teacher’s aide.

But a perfect life with the perfect woman was not enough to turn things around.

Charlene Quint was his first. (Well, not
technically
.) A Cleveland waitress. Twenty-seven. Engaged. Pulled her over for failing to signal a turn. When she turned her head just the right way, he could see Leanna in her. He had her address, made a house call a week later.

It had simultaneously felt like the right thing to do and the wrong thing to do. But it had also felt
good
.

When he accepted a job with the Promise Falls police, and he and Gale moved away from Cleveland, and he was no longer exposed to the geographic markers of his formative years, he thought the feelings would dissipate.

Several years passed before Olivia Fisher. He had pulled her over near the Promise Falls Mall. She was doing seventy in a forty. A serious offense, but he knocked the ticket back to fifty. Not before, however, engaging her in enough chitchat to find out she was graduating from Thackeray, that she was engaged, that she did not yet have any children.

Several days later, he staked out her address. She was still living with her parents, Elizabeth and Walden. He saw her leave by herself in the same car she’d been driving when he’d ticketed her. Followed her to downtown Promise Falls. She parked the car and wandered into the park, not far from the falls.

It was getting dark, and there were no other people nearby.

He walked right up to her. Smiled, said, “Ms. Fisher?”

She didn’t recognize him. Angus got that a lot. People meet you when you’re in uniform, then run into you another time when you’re in your street clothes, and they can’t place you. You’re out of context.

She said, “Uh, hello?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Happens all the time. I’m not in uniform.
I was the mean old cop who gave you a speeding ticket the other day.”

“Oh, yes.” She smiled. “You’re right. I knew you looked familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen you.”

Angus nodded his understanding. “I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“What?”

“For the ticket. It’s my job.”

“Oh, I know. Don’t worry about that.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

The knife was already in his right hand, down at his side, the blade hidden against his pant leg.

“Just waiting for my boyfriend.”

Angus looked beyond her shoulder. “The falls are gorgeous tonight, the way the lights on the bridge reflect in them.”

Olivia Fisher turned to look.

It was all the time he needed.

Left arm around the throat. Body pulled tight to his. Right arm around the front to her left side. Blade in. Then pull hard to the right. Down slightly in the middle.

Like a smile.

She let out such a scream.

He should have gotten his hand over her mouth, kept her from making such a noise. Not much he could do about it now.

He pulled out the knife, let her drop to the ground.

No time to savor the moment. That scream was sure to draw people. He ran. Bounded up a set of concrete steps that led up to the bridge that spanned the falls. He scaled them two at a time, tossing the knife into the falls along the way.

Rosemary Gaynor had gone more smoothly. He was in her home, didn’t have to worry about being seen, or heard. He’d parked two blocks away. Went right to the front door, rang the bell. When she opened it, she recognized him, even though he was not in uniform.

“Officer?” she’d said.

Angus made the motion of tipping an imaginary hat. “So sorry to bother you,” he said. “It’s about the ticket I wrote you the other day. I’ve been instructed to do a follow-up with you, and I didn’t get to it while I was still on my shift, so I thought I’d pop by on my way home.”

“A follow-up?”

“In fact, they’ve sent me here to tear it up. I didn’t realize that the zone where I clocked you was before the actual point where the speed limit drops.”

“You’re kidding,” she said, and laughed. “How often does
that
happen? Won’t you come in?”

“That’s very kind of you.”

The rest was easy.

And now, here he was, the Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend.

A new opportunity had presented itself.

He was more rattled than usual this time. He figured that was due to the shooting at the hospital. Killing people in secret was one thing, but an event that public, with implications for his job—his future—was quite another.

He needed to try to put that aside and concentrate on the task at hand. But complicating things further had been that call from Detective Duckworth.

Duckworth had connected the dots.

Angus believed it was all going to be over very soon. There might only be time for one more.

Sonja Roper.

The nurse at Promise Falls General. In their short conversation he’d learned she had no children. Not yet. But she had a boyfriend—a pilot who wasn’t due home until tomorrow—and they were certainly planning to have children in the future.

So there was still time to save those kids.

To spare them inevitable lives of torment and misery.

It hadn’t taken Angus any time at all to figure out where Sonja Roper lived. A quick call to the hospital confirmed she was off today.
He parked a couple of blocks from her home. He’d slapped the stolen green Vermont plates on the car shortly after he’d left home.

She’ll be my fifth,
he thought.

But then he corrected himself mentally.
Sixth.

He often forgot to count his mother.

Everyone thought she must have been depressed when, late one night, she leapt off that overpass straight into the path of a transport truck heading south on I-90.

There were some stories you didn’t share even with your therapist.