The Twenty-Three 3 (Promise Falls) (9 page)

TWELVE

Duckworth

“HOW
long has Tate Whitehead worked for the town?” I asked Garvey Ottman as we wandered through the treed area between the water treatment plant and the highway.

“Long as I can remember,” Ottman said. “Twenty-five years, maybe.”

“Has he always had a drinking problem?”

Garvey was scouring the bushes to the left and right, pretending, I thought, not to hear. If Whitehead had failed to do his job properly because he was hammered, resulting in the deaths of God knew how many Promise Falls residents, Ottman had to know there was a good chance it was going to come back on him.

“I said, has Tate had this problem a long time?”

“I guess it’s all in how you define ‘problem,’ you know?” Ottman said.

“Let me help you with that,” I said. “Did Whitehead come to work drunk?”

“Like I told you, our shifts didn’t really overlap.”

I stopped trudging through the tall grass, turned, and raised a hand in front of the man. “Cut the bullshit,” I said.

Ottman blinked. “What do you mean?”

“You’re in charge of this plant. You telling me you don’t keep track of the people you don’t actually see? You have no mechanism in place to make sure they do their jobs?”

“Well, sure,” he said defensively. “Like, if Tate was having a problem overnight, he’d leave me a note, ask me to check it out, that kind of thing.”

“You saying Tate would have to e-mail you to say he was too drunk to chlorinate the water or whatever the hell you do with it, and maybe you’d like to look into that?”

“No, of course not, he wouldn’t say that. But if there was a technical problem, he’d let me know.”

“How would you know if Tate was performing his duties while under the influence? He worked the plant alone overnight. How would you know?”

“The guy he relieved would see him, and then whoever relieved him in the morning, like Trish this morning.”

“If I asked Trish if he was ever drunk when she came in for her shift, what would she tell me?”

A hesitation. “She might say it’s happened once or twice.”

“And you know this because she passed that along to you?”

Another damning hesitation. “She might have mentioned something at some point.”

“And when she did, what did you do about it?”

“Look, Detective—Duckworth, is it?”

I nodded. I was grateful to have stopped for this discussion. It gave me a chance to catch my breath after stepping over all the brush and debris.

“Tate Whitehead drinks. A lot of people drink. I think the odd time, the dumb bastard came out and had a beer in his car when he was supposed to be doing his job. But I’ve never—and I swear to
God I’m telling you the truth here—I’ve never known him to not do what he was supposed to do. You think Tate’s the only guy on the town’s payroll who drinks on the job? What about the cops? You want to tell me you never worked with a cop who had a drink during his shift, or got smashed when it was over, and maybe showed up the next day pretty hungover?”

I said nothing. He was right about that, of course.

“If the town fired everyone who drank too much, there wouldn’t be enough people left to get things done,” he said.

“Be sure to tell that to the lawyers,” I said.

“Lawyers?”

I scanned the woods. “I don’t think he’s out here. And yet, his car’s still here.”

“Maybe he got a taxi.”

“Hmm?”

“If he finished his shift drunk, maybe he had just enough smarts not to try and drive himself home.”

I supposed that was possible, although it had been my experience that good judgment did not typically follow heavy drinking. But Ottman had given me Tate’s home address, so it wasn’t going to be long before I found out for myself.

“I want to ask you about Finley,” I said.

“Randy? What about him?”

“You seem to be friends.”

Garvey Ottman shrugged. “I know him.”

“He also seemed to know about Tate Whitehead. That he’s got a problem.”

“Let me tell you something about Randall Finley,” Ottman said. “Lot of people, they think he’s a big asshole. And maybe he is. But when he was mayor, he never acted like he was too good for regular people. He used to come by here all the time. And not just here. You ask them at the fire department, or even the guys who pick up the trash. He’d go visit those people, shoot the shit with them. He came by here lots, into the plant, talking to people, asking
what they did, how everything worked. Like he really cared, you know? So when people say Randall Finley is a jerk, I say you don’t know the guy.”

“He came by here a lot?” I asked.

“When he was mayor.” The man nodded. “And even after, the odd time, if he was driving by, he’d just pop in. I hear he’s running again.”

I nodded.

“Well, he’s got my vote. I mean, he’s not even the mayor right now, but he’s up here, trying to help out. Where’s Amanda Croydon? You see her here?”

“I hear she’s out of town,” I said, although I didn’t feel much like defending her. She needed to get her ass back, and fast. “I’m going to swing by Tate’s house, see if he’s there. In the meantime, if you see him, if he shows up, I want you to call me immediately.”

I gave Ottman one of my cards. He looked at it, tucked it into his shirt pocket.

“Okay,” he said.

As I worked my way back through the trees to the parking lot, my cell phone started to ring. It was the station.

“Duckworth.”

“Yeah, Barry, Chief here.”

Rhonda. She usually identified herself to me by her first name. Was the more formal tone related to her being pissed off with me, or was the gravity of the town’s situation prompting a more official approach?

“Hey,” I said.

“Where are you?”

“Water plant. The overnight guy who monitors the place is apparently a drunk and nowhere to be found.”

“Terrific.”

“I’m going to see if I can find him at home.”

“Something else has come up.”

Jesus. What the hell else could happen? Half the town had been
poisoned, and I was still working the drive-in bombing from a few days ago. Had a truck carrying radioactive waste rolled over on the bypass?

“What is it, Chief?”

“We’ve got a homicide.”

“They might
all
end up being ruled homicides,” I said. “We could have hundreds of them.”

“I’m not talking about the poisonings. This is out at Thackeray. They’re not hooked up to the town water supply.”

“Thackeray? Hasn’t everyone gone home?”

“Summer student.”

“Christ. Send Carlson.”

“I tried. I can’t reach him.”

He was probably still in the hospital ER, unable to get calls on his cell.

I sighed. “I’ll try to get out there ASAP. What do we know so far?”

“Not much,” Rhonda Finderman said. “Just that it’s a young woman, and it’s bad.”

THIRTEEN

DAVID
figured Gill was dead.

Every time he glanced in the mirror to see how his uncle was doing, there was no movement from the man. Not so much as an eye blink. The man was sprawled across the seat, and Marla was up front next to David, Matthew in her arms. She was turned sideways, her back to the door, maintaining a constant chatter with her father.

“Hang in, Dad. Just hang in. I love you. Matthew loves you. We need you. You need to be strong. You need to be there for us. We need you so much.”

David was almost as worried for Marla as he was for Gill. She’d been through so much in the last month. Implicated, and ultimately exonerated, in a murder. Found out her baby was alive, but lost her mother.

Perhaps most devastating of all was learning her mother had conspired to let her believe her baby had died. At first, Marla’d been unwilling to comprehend it. The betrayal was more than she could handle. But in the weeks since, reality had slowly set in. The credit
for that, David felt, rested in large part with Gill, who had patiently and delicately led Marla toward the truth.

Marla needed him. David was wondering how she’d cope if she lost her father now. He feared a complete mental collapse. Which would be horrible enough for Marla, but what about Matthew? Who’d look after him if his mother became incapacitated? And for how long?

David was pretty sure he knew the answer to that question. He and his parents would do it, for as long as they had to.

When he got to the hospital, he nosed the Mazda right up to the ER doors, navigating around several ambulances like a fish working its way upstream. He told Marla to wait with her father while he ran in to find a doctor or a nurse or even a goddamn orderly who could take a look at his uncle.

He spotted a woman with the proverbial stethoscope hanging around her neck and a mask across her mouth and nose heading across the crowded waiting room.

“My uncle!” he said, positioning himself right in front of her. David knew there was no way he was going to get any help for Gill without being in someone’s face.

“What about him?” the woman said.

“He’s in the car, just outside. I don’t know if he’s still alive or not.”

The woman’s entire body seemed, for half a second, to wilt. She glanced toward the door, then back toward all the waiting patients, a gesture that suggested to David that she had no idea whom to look at first, or whether the order in which she saw people was going to make any difference.

“Show me,” she said.

David led the way, asking, “What’s your name?”

“I’m Dr. Moorehouse. Your uncle?”

“Gill Pickens.”

She reached out and grabbed him by the elbow. “Gill? Agnes’s husband?”

David nodded. At the car, Marla had the back door open and
was leaning over her father, talking to him, while balancing Matthew on her hip.

“Marla,” David said, pulling her out of the way.

The doctor squeezed in. “What’s he had this morning?” she asked. “To eat, to drink?”

“Just coffee, I think,” Marla said.

“Symptoms?”

“He got dizzy and he started throwing up and then he passed out,” she said. “Can you help him?”

The doctor nodded, more to herself than her audience, as though she’d heard this many times already today. She held up a hand, a “no more questions” gesture, as she put the stethoscope to Gill’s chest.

She listened for several seconds. David steeled himself for the worst.

“This man is alive,” the doctor said. She pulled herself out of the car, stood, and shouted over the roof at a couple of paramedics who appeared to be, at least for several seconds, idle.

“I got a live one here!”

They ran toward the car, one pulling a gurney behind them. They maneuvered Gill out of the car and onto it while David and Marla watched, barely breathing.

“Oh my God,” Marla said under her breath. “Oh my God, oh my God. You’re going to be okay! They’re going to fix you up, Dad!”

She started to trot along after them, following them into the building, but Dr. Moorehouse turned and said sharply, “Wait.” Gill was whisked away down a hallway that was already jammed with patients on gurneys.

David caught up to her. “Come on, Marla. Come on. Let’s go outside.”

As they exited the building someone yelled, “David!”

It was his mother, Arlene. She was running up the driveway. David raised his palms, trying to get her to slow down. The last thing he needed was for her to fall down and break her wrist. He ran ahead to meet her.

“I had your father drop me off down the street,” she said, huffing. “There’s so much traffic he didn’t think he could get any closer. Ethan’s with him.”

“Great.”

“How’s Gill?”

David filled her in, walking slowly to force her to do the same. When Arlene reached Marla, she gave her niece a hug and kissed Matthew on the cheek.

A paramedic said, “That your car?”

David whirled around, admitted that the Mazda was his.

“Get it the hell out of here.”

David said to his mother, “Can you hang in here with Marla now?”

“Of course,” she said.

“I have to go.”

Arlene nodded. “Go.”

David got behind the wheel and carefully steered his way back to the street. Once he was clear of the hospital, he pulled over, got out his phone again, and tried Samantha Worthington’s cell.

Still no answer.

He felt physically ill. He feared the worst—that Sam and her son, Carl, were both already dead.

He had to get there. David put the phone back into his pocket, took his foot off the brake pedal, and floored it.

He raced through the streets of Promise Falls to reach Sam’s place, a narrow row house sandwiched in between several others. The Mazda screeched to a halt out front of her house. David got out so quickly he didn’t bother to close the driver’s door.

He leapt up the stairs to the front door, rang the bell, and pounded on the door at the same time.

He put his mouth close to the crack where door met jamb. “Sam!” he shouted. “Sam! It’s David!”

No one came to the door. He couldn’t hear or sense any movement on the other side.

There was no point in calling the police to enter the premises and see if they were okay. The cops were too busy. He was going to have to do it himself. At least he wasn’t worried that he’d be looking down the barrel of a shotgun, like he was the first time he’d knocked on this door.

David turned the doorknob and pushed, but the door did not budge. The house was locked up.

“Shit.”

He’d have to break it down. He took two steps back, turned sideways, then ran into the door with his shoulder.

“Son of a bitch!” he said. His shoulder felt as though it had dislocated, and for all his effort, the door was still locked.

He rotated his shoulder to make sure he hadn’t done any serious damage, then set his eye on the closest window, which was low enough that he could crawl into the house if he could open it. He stepped between some shrubs and the foundation to get in front of it, tried to raise the glass, but it was no good.

David slipped off his jacket, wrapped it around his lower right arm, then rammed his elbow into the glass. Better luck here than with the door. The glass shattered. He cleared more of it away with his protected arm, then reached in, found the lock, slid it open, then raised the glass.

No alarms rang. Sam did not have a security system. That’s what the shotgun was for.

He brushed away the glass fragments, then hoisted himself up onto the sill and tumbled into the house, headfirst.

He rolled into the living room.

“Sam!” he shouted.

He went to the kitchen first. No dishes out, nothing in the sink. No pot of coffee on the go.

The two bedrooms were upstairs.

David bounded up the steps two at a time, went into Carl’s bedroom first. No Carl, and the bed was made.

Same story in Sam’s room. Everything looked in order, pillows in place.

The good news was, he hadn’t found Sam and Carl in the house dead. But the bad news was, he hadn’t found Sam and Carl in the house.

Where the hell were they?

It hit him then that he didn’t remember seeing Sam’s car out front. He went to the bedroom window, which looked out onto the street.

Sam’s car was not there.

He did recall, from an earlier visit, seeing the edge of a suitcase under Sam’s bed. He dropped to his knees and lifted the bed skirt.

The suitcase was gone.

He came back downstairs and thought to look for one last thing. Something Sam always kept in the closet by the front door.

He opened it, pushed aside some coats hanging in the way.

This was where Sam kept her shotgun, and it was not there.

As he closed the closet door, he began to feel light-headed. He turned and rested his back against the door, and as the events of the morning overwhelmed him, he put his face in his hands and began to sob.