Far From True by Linwood Barclay
“Also, I got you something.”
I peeled back the bag to show her a package of expensive markers, and a package of five hundred sheets of white printer paper.
“You always seem to be running out,” I said, “so I thought you could use a big package of paper like this.”
“Yes,” she said, taking it from me. It was a lot heavier in her arms than it had been in mine. “Mom gets mad at me when I’m taking her papers.”
“I hope the markers are the right kind. There’s a lot of different colors there.”
She yawned. I wondered whether I was boring her. But then she examined them and said, “Yes, these are good.” A pause, then, “Thank you.”
“Can you sit with me for a second?”
“Okay.”
She hopped up onto the chair to my right. I slid her book over slightly so that it was straddling her knee and mine.
I flipped the title page back so we were looking at the first page. “This drawing here, of the little girl in bed, that just blew me away. You’re a very talented artist.”
Crystal nodded without saying anything.
“I noticed the girl is called Crystal. So this is you?”
She shrugged. “I guess. It’s my adventure that happens in my head.” Another big yawn.
“You’re a very tired girl today.”
“I didn’t sleep good.”
I flipped ahead a few pages, found the one where the girl is walking down the alley late at night. “That’s a really good drawing, too. Do you get scared when you’re doing creepy scenes like this?”
She shook her head.
“Have you ever taken art lessons?”
“No. I mean, I’ve had art in school, but mostly I learned to draw from looking in comic books.”
I had turned over the page that had the letter on the back side.
“Crystal,” I said, pointing to it, “where did you find this sheet of paper?”
She glanced at it. She studied it for a moment and said, “My grandpa’s. My grandpa’s and Miriam’s house.”
“You liked to draw when you’d go to their house?”
Crystal nodded. “Grandpa liked my drawings. I’m sad about my grandpa.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Miriam didn’t die.”
“In the accident, you mean,” I said.
The girl nodded. She hadn’t heard about Miriam’s latest reversal of fortune, and I didn’t think it was my place to tell her.
“I probably won’t see her anymore. I won’t go over if Grandpa is dead.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But when you did go over there, did you have a good time?”
A nod.
“Did your grandfather like your drawings?”
“Yes.”
“Did he give you lots of paper?”
“He told me to take it from his printer.”
Another big yawn.
“In his study,” I said. “In his office.”
Crystal nodded.
“But this page must not have come out of the printer. It’s got writing all over it.”
“When the printer got empty, I would look for paper in other places,” she said in her flat voice.
“Sure. So, then, where did you find this sheet?”
“Grandpa’s desk.”
“Oh. So it was sitting in one of the drawers.”
“Not exactly. It was in an envelope with tape on it.”
“Tape.”
“Duct tape. I reached into the drawer and I felt something rubbing the back of my hand. It was tape. It was sticking something to the bottom of the drawer on top of it. That seemed dumb to me.”
“Yeah,” I said. “That is kind of weird.”
“It was an envelope and that piece of paper was inside. It only had writing on one side, so I was able to use the other.”
“Did you read this?” I asked her.
Crystal shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t interested,” she said. “I’m only interested in blank pages so I can use them.”
“All you cared about was that one side was untouched.”
“Yup,” she said.
“I was going to give this back to you, but I wonder, would you let me take this one page out? So I could keep this letter?”
“That’ll ruin the book,” she said. “Maybe they’d let you copy it.”
She hopped off the chair, taking the book with her, and called over to the secretary, “Mrs. Simms, I need you to copy something for me. It’s just one page.”
Mrs. Simms came over to the counter. “Darling, for you, anything.”
“This page here,” she said, pointing.
Mrs. Simms, without even looking at the letter, put it on the office printer, closed the lid, and hit the button. She returned with the book, and the single sheet, which Crystal handed to me.
“Can I go to lunch now?” she asked me, gathering the package of paper and markers in her arms.
“You sure can,” I said.
She stifled yet another yawn.
“You’re going to need a big nap when you get home,” I said.
“I hope Mom doesn’t wake me up again tonight,” she said.
“Why did she wake you up? Were you having a bad dream?” Given the nature of her drawings, she seemed a natural for nightmares.
Crystal shook her head. “No. I heard her leave, and the car starting. I stood at the window and watched until she came back home. And then I heard you come, too. And then I heard you and Mommy in the guest room. So I had a bad sleep.”
If I hadn’t already been rendered speechless, what happened next would have done it.
Crystal, almost eye level with me, since I was still seated, gave me a hug.
“I like you,” she said, then left the office with her bag of paper and markers.
SIXTY-SIX
“PROFESSOR Blackmore has indicated to me he wishes to waive all his rights and is willing to answer any of your questions,” Nate Fletcher said. “As the professor’s attorney, I have strongly advised him against this, but I’m afraid I’m not able to change his mind. Just the same, I’m going to remain here to look after his interests, as best I can.”
“Sure,” Barry Duckworth said.
“I’ve got nothing to hide,” Peter Blackmore said calmly.
The three of them were sitting in an interrogation room at the Promise Falls police headquarters. Duckworth was recording the interview. Audio and video.
Once the formalities were over—a statement of when and where the interview was being conducted and the names of everyone in attendance—the detective kicked things off.
“Mr. Blackmore, did you arrange to meet Mr. Duncomb today out front of his bank on Claymore Street?”
“I did.”
“Did you call him?”
“I did. I said I wanted to meet with him, and he told me where he was.”
“What did you say to him?”
“I told him I was going to come by, that he should stand out front.”
“That’s what you asked him to do? To stand out front?”
“That’s correct,” Blackmore said.
“Why did you ask him to do that?”
“Because I wanted to run him down.”
“You’d already decided that.”
“Hang on,” said Nate Fletcher.
“It’s okay,” the professor said. “Yes, I had already decided that. I had decided to kill Clive if I had the opportunity. He’s a more powerful man than I am. Stronger than I am. I figured I’d be more successful using my car.”
“Why did you kill Mr. Duncomb?” Duckworth asked.
“He was a bad person.”
“Had he threatened you?”
“What activities are you referring to?”
He paused. “The sex.”
“You’re talking about that room in the basement of the Chalmers home, the multipartner sex parties.”
“That’s right. Georgina and myself, Clive and Liz, and Adam and Miriam.”
“And sometimes, others.”
Blackmore nodded. “That’s right. Sometimes Thackeray students. Girls excited about meeting an author. Clive would set it up. They’d come out for dinner. Have a little wine—”
“The drinks were spiked. With the roofies.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes not.”
“So you’re saying you ran Clive Duncomb down with your car out of fears for your own safety?”
“Only partly. I’ve stopped being concerned for myself. You could take your gun out now and shoot me in the head and I wouldn’t try to stop you.”
“I’m not going to do anything like that,” Duckworth said.
“I know. I’m just saying there’s a part of me that would welcome it. My wife is dead. I’m overwhelmed with shame. I know you’ll have people watching me, but I will probably try to kill myself at the earliest opportunity. But I’m happy to answer your questions first. I killed Clive because he was an evil man.”
“Did he kill Miriam Chalmers?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Blackmore said. “He said he didn’t, but . . .” He shrugged.
“What did he say exactly?”
“He just said he hadn’t. He tried to turn it around. He accused me of killing her.”
“Did you?”
He shook his head wearily.
“When I found you this morning, you had blood on you,” Duckworth said.
The professor nodded. “That’s mine. I stumbled last night, and then Clive hit me. I have no reason to lie. You’ve arrested me for killing Clive. I was of totally sound mind when I—”
Nate Fletcher held a hand up. “Peter, hang on, we don’t know that. We need a psychiatric assessment to determine—”
“Stop,” he said. “I was of sound mind when I ran Clive down with my car. It’s the most sane thing I’ve ever done. I know I’ll go to jail for that. So if I’d killed Miriam, I’d have no problem admitting it.”
“So you think Clive did.”
Another shrug. “I just don’t know. But if he did it, I think maybe it’s okay. Almost all the people that should die have died, one way or another. Clive, Adam and Miriam, and Georgina. The only ones left are me and Liz.”
“Mr. Duncomb’s wife.”
Blackmore nodded. “She might be the worst of all of us.” He leaned toward Duckworth and whispered, “She’s a snake.”
“We’ll be talking to her.”
“Liz isn’t beautiful, but she makes up for it. She knows every trick in the book. Georgina and I, we’d been having troubles. Our . . . our sex life wasn’t what it once was. Clive had hinted around that he and Liz were into something a bit different, and finally he invited us to be part of the group. It changed things for Georgina and me. It made her feel more alive, at first anyway. She was very taken with Adam.”
“She saw him outside the group,” Duckworth said. “Wasn’t that against the rules?”
He nodded. “Yes. I don’t know if she saw him many times before they were killed at the drive-in. But Adam . . . I don’t know how to explain Adam. I think he was a true psychopath. He could be anything you wanted him to be. He could lie to you so convincingly. He could pretend to care about you while betraying you. He wanted you to love him in the moment, but didn’t care what you thought of him later. Even his own daughter, and granddaughter. Lucy, and Crystal. He loved them, and he wanted them to love him, but I bet he couldn’t have cared what they’d have thought of him once he was gone. Georgina was caught up in his spell.”
“Maybe you were, too.”
“Maybe. Adam and Clive, they were . . . they were men’s men, if you know what I mean. One a former biker, the other a former cop. Both sides of the law. Just being in their company, it made me feel like more of a man. And Georgina felt like more of a woman with Miriam and Liz. They were both very sensual. It was like we finally got to hang out with the cool kids. We became so enmeshed in the dynamic that by the time Clive and Adam suggested spicing it up with our . . . our guests, we just went along.”
“Like Olivia Fisher.”
“That’s right.”
“How long was this before she was murdered?”
“Not long. A few weeks.”
“How did you feel when you heard about her death?”
“Shocked, of course. Stunned. We all talked about it. We all viewed it—I swear—as a terrible tragedy, because she was such a free spirit, a lovely young woman.”
“That you raped.”
“Detective,” said Nate Fletcher.
“Not . . . in her case,” Blackmore said. “She was getting married soon. I’m not so sure she wanted to go through with it.”
“What did she say?” Duckworth said.
“Just that she’d been going with some guy so long it just seemed to be inevitable.”
Duckworth let that float around in his head for a few seconds before asking, “Did you believe her murder was connected to what had gone on with all of you?”
Blackmore was slow to answer. “It crossed my mind.”
“Why?”
“Because of the kind of person Clive was.”
“You thought Clive killed her.”
“I just thought, of any of us, he’d have been the one most capable. He asked Adam once about the disc that had her on it, and all he would say was Clive shouldn’t give it a thought. So he tried not to worry about it. But then when he thought Adam and Miriam were dead, and there was a chance it, and the other discs, might be found, he had to get into the house and find them. But then last night, when he found out Miriam was alive, she told him Adam got rid of them long ago.”
“Tell me about Rosemary Gaynor,” Duckworth said.
“Who?”
“Rosemary Gaynor. Or Bill Gaynor.”
“I’ve never heard of either of them in my life. Who are they?”
Duckworth gave him a brief recap. “It was all over the news.”
“It was exam time,” Blackmore explained. “I had a lot of grading. I wasn’t really following current events.”
“Why are you asking about the Gaynor case?” Fletcher asked Duckworth.
The detective waved the question away and asked Blackmore, “You never heard Adam or Clive mention them? Is it possible the Gaynors were earlier swapping partners with the Chalmerses? Or the Duncombs?”
“I’m telling you, I’ve never heard of them.”
Duckworth strummed his fingers on the tabletop. Clive Duncomb might have had a real reason to kill Olivia Fisher, but there was no apparent connection to Rosemary Gaynor. Dr. Jack Sturgess might have had a real reason to kill Gaynor, but there was no apparent connection to Fisher.
And Bill Gaynor was still off in the wings.
There was a rapping at the interrogation room door. Duckworth shifted around in his chair, saw the stern face of Chief Rhonda Finderman in the small rectangular window.
Just when he thought his day couldn’t get any worse.
• • •
Once Peter Blackmore had been returned to a cell, Nate Fletcher had gone home, and Rhonda had been given ten minutes to carve him a new one, Duckworth sat at his desk.
He was the only cop in the entire room. There was someone down at reception, but up here, where the detectives worked, there wasn’t a soul.
Duckworth rested his head in his hands. Even my hair’s exhausted, he thought. So much had happened in the last couple of days—God, the last couple of weeks—that his
It was time to go home. Maureen would probably be in bed. He couldn’t wait to crawl in next to her. He’d be asleep in seconds.
His cell phone rang.
He dug into his pocket for it, saw a Boston area code on the display. He accepted the call and put the phone to his ear.
“Duckworth.”
“Hello, this is the detective?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Sandra Bottsford.”
“Oh!” He sat upright in his chair.
“I’m so sorry not to have called you back sooner. I only just found out you’d called the hotel. Is this about Mr. Gaynor again?”
“Right, yes, it is. I know when we last talked, you’d said Mr. Gaynor’s car had never left the hotel garage, that he’d been seen occasionally around the hotel, but I need to take another look at that.”
“You’re still wondering if he could have driven to Promise Falls and back to Boston during the night?”
“Pretty much.”
“Well, as I’ve told you, the car never left, and it’s not as if there’s a high-speed train running back and forth between the two places in the dead of night.”
“I know, but—”
“Unless he’s the one who stole the car.”
Duckworth shifted the phone to his other ear. “Say again?”
“It had slipped my mind before, but now, maybe it’s important.”
“What stolen car?”
“We had an incident,” she said. “I didn’t even find out about it for a week. Our concierge didn’t let me know. I might add, our former concierge.”
“Ms. Bottsford, what happened?”
“Someone checked into the hotel late that evening and handed over his keys—to someone. But later, when the front desk was trying to track the car down, no one had seen it.”
“Go on.”
“They were all in a panic, wondering how they’d lost a car, and they kept putting off calling the police, thinking maybe it had been misplaced in the garage, hoping it might turn up before the guest who owned the vehicle wanted it brought up the next morning. And they got lucky.”
“The car came back.”
“As the sun was coming up, they found it on the street, half a block away.”