“A way what?” Garnet asked.
“A way to get Carl, a way to save your hundred grand, and a way to get Sam to stop being a pain in the ass for you guys.”
“Save it, Ed,” Garnet said.
“What I was going to say was, if Sam’s no longer in the picture, you don’t have to worry about her saying anything against you, taking your money, or standing in the way of you raising the little bastard.”
“For God’s sake, don’t talk that way,” Garnet said.
“No, wait, hang on,” Yolanda said. “Let’s hear what the man has to say.”
FORTY-FOUR
“SHIT,” Clive Duncomb whispered into the phone to Miriam. “The cop wants me. Peter’s losing it. I’ll call you back.”
Duncomb put away the phone, turned, and nodded to Duckworth on his way back into Blackmore’s house. The professor was where he’d left him, on the couch in the living room, shaking his head, wiping away tears.
Detective Duckworth said to Duncomb, “You need to keep an eye on him. He needs to make some calls, get in touch with family, and in the morning, he needs to come in and make a positive ID, as best he can, of his wife’s remains.”
“Of course,” Duncomb said.
“He came to you, didn’t he?”
“What do you mean?”
“He came to you when his wife went missing.”
“Peter’s my friend. Of course he did.”
“And once again, you took matters into your own hands, just like you did with the Mason Helt business. You could have brought us in from the beginning. Told Professor Blackmore to make a formal report with us.”
Duncomb bristled. “And what difference would that have made? Would that have kept that movie screen from falling down on her? What was done was done. You’re a small man in a small pond, Duckworth.”
Duckworth put his face up close to Duncomb’s. “What happened in Boston?”
“Excuse me?”
“Why does a cop walk away from a good job like that? Kiss his pension good-bye? Come to a place like Promise Falls? Because he couldn’t take the heat? Or maybe because his bosses had something on him and quitting was his only way out? I’m from here. I grew up around here. But you’re the one who came here, who chose the small pond because you couldn’t handle the rough water anymore.”
Before Duncomb could come back with anything, the detective was out the door.
“Asshole,” he said to the professor.
Blackmore whimpered.
“Come on, get a grip,” Duncomb said.
The man’s head shot up. “Get a grip?”
“Okay, okay, I get it. This has been a terrible shock for you. I get that. Look, you go do what you have to do about Georgina. Start making arrangements. I can scan through the rest of the discs. I gotta find her. And not just her. Any of the other girls we brought in.”
“I don’t care.”
“Yeah, well, you better care. You ever want to be in the position of having to explain that we just happened to be having that kind of fun with that girl a few weeks before she was murdered?”
“I didn’t kill that girl.”
Duncomb put his face up close to the professor’s. “Do you really think that matters?”
“She wasn’t even drugged,” Blackmore said. “Not like the others. Not like Lorraine. If anyone ever saw it, they’d see that Olivia knew what she was doing. She consented. She did.”
“It amazes me someone can rise to the level you have, teaching at a place like Thackeray, and be so astonishingly stupid,” Duncomb said. “All that girl ever had to do was threaten to tell anyone what we’d been doing, and we’d have all been finished. If all we did was lose our jobs, we’d have been lucky. We should have made sure she was drugged. She’d have forgotten the whole thing. The truth is, we got lucky when someone killed her. We’ve never had to worry she’d talk about that night.”
Blackmore eyed Duncomb fearfully.
“I’ve always wondered if it was actually you,” Blackmore said. “That you made it look like the work of some random maniac. I don’t think there’s much you’re not capable of.”
“You don’t know anything,” Duncomb said.
“I know getting mixed up in all of this . . . that it was a mistake. The fucking lifestyle, it was enough for Georgina and me, for Adam and Miriam. But for you and Liz, it wasn’t. You had to up the ante. Bring in some young stuff. College girls. Invite them to dinner with some famous cult writer, slip a little something in their drink, make them part of the show. We should have fought you on it, but at the time . . . I won’t lie. I liked it. It made me feel . . . omnipotent. That we were capable of anything, that rules didn’t apply to us. That other people existed for our pleasure. That’s what you and Liz did to us. That’s the kind of people you made us. You made us depraved.”
“Oh, please.”
“Maybe that’s why that screen came down on Adam and Georgina. Some kind of divine retribution. They got what was coming to them, and we’re next.”
“You’re losing it, Peter.”
“I’m seeing clearly for the first time in years,” he countered. “I see what you and Liz have done to us. You’ve poisoned us. You connecting with Liz, what are the odds two people that twisted would end up together?”
Duncomb gripped Blackmore by the shoulders. “Peter,” he said firmly, “you need to stop talking about this. Especially to anyone else. Because I swear, I’ll put a bullet in your head just as fast as I did to Mason Helt.”
Blackmore blinked several times. He swallowed, hard. “I need a drink.”
“Sure, get yourself one. I have to call Miriam back.”
“Miriam,” Blackmore said under his breath. “She didn’t keep Adam interested enough. If she had, he wouldn’t have been with Georgina. It’s her fault.”
“Jesus, just get a drink.” Duncomb got out his phone while Blackmore slunk off to the kitchen. He tapped the screen, put the phone to his ear.
“Christ,” Miriam said. “I’ve been waiting.”
“The cop left, and then I had to calm Peter down.”
“I was trying to tell you, before you cut me off.”
“Trying to tell me what?”
“The disc isn’t missing,” she said.
“What?”
“The Fisher one, and any of the others with special guests. Adam got rid of them.”
Duncomb felt an almost euphoric wave building up inside him. “He did?”
“He hated parting with them, but he knew it was a risk to keep them. He destroyed them months ago.”
“God, Miriam, that’s the first bit of good news in some time.”
“So me being alive, that’s not?”
“We’ve been going out of our minds here looking for that one disc and—”
“All right, fine. I hear you.”
“I’m sorry about Adam, Miriam. It’s horrible.”
“Enough,” Miriam said. “I have . . . I have things to do.”
She ended the call.
Duncomb slipped the phone into his pocket, made two fists, looked up at the ceiling, and said, “Yes!”
When Duncomb went into the kitchen to share the good news, Peter Blackmore was gone.
• • •
Miriam, sitting on the edge of the bed in the playroom, set down her phone on the satin sheet. She pulled herself up onto the mattress, drew the slippery covers around herself, making them into an icy cocoon. She brought her knees up to her chest and gave herself permission to cry.
Except the tears would not come.
She knew she should feel something. Anger? Sorrow? Outrage? Grief? And yet she wasn’t sure that she felt any of these things. The only emotion she could identify at that moment was relief.
It seemed so strange to her, of all the things she could feel.<
br />
But that was what she felt. Relief. And maybe . . . freedom? Was that it? She was free of Adam and all his bullshit. Free of that ex-wife of his who could never keep her nose out of their affairs. Who was always e-mailing or calling Adam on the phone. She’d never really let go, that one.
Free also of Lucy, and her disapproval. Miriam knew Adam’s daughter had never liked her. And she’d be free of that weird kid of hers. Crystal. All the time drawing her little comic books. But Adam liked—God, even loved—his granddaughter, so what could Miriam do? Let the little kid come over whenever Lucy needed a babysitter, that’s what. Adam would always make sure the sliding bookcase was locked into position before Crystal came over. She was already a strange kid—imagine how much weirder she’d have been if she’d found her way into the playroom.
With her husband dead, Miriam could sever all ties to Lucy and Crystal. She’d sell this house, sort out Adam’s estate, move the hell out of Promise Falls. Someplace warmer. The winters here were a bitch. Four feet of snow last year. Who needed that? She was thinking she’d relocate to San Diego or Los Angeles with whatever money the estate left her.
Miriam hoped there was enough to help her start over. Adam had been overly concerned about financial matters in recent months, but secretive about how close to the wire things were. He’d been desperate to get a new book contract.
Suddenly, she did begin to cry. Perhaps it was the uncertainty of her inheritance that tipped her over the edge.
She made huge racking sobs. She buried her head into a pillow and moaned as if she were a wounded animal.
It wasn’t just grief. It was relief. The chance to start over. It had overwhelmed her.
After several minutes, the sobs ebbed. Exhaustion was moving in. For a while, perhaps as long as half an hour, she drifted off.
She woke with a start, took a second to realize where she was. While this was a bed she was on, it was not, typically, one she’d ever slept in.
It was time to go upstairs, go to sleep in their—her—bedroom. She could start sorting things out tomorrow.
The truth was, she did not like this room, this playroom. There had been some amusements here, to be sure, but she’d had enough.
Miriam threw back the covers, slipped her legs over the edge of the bed, touched her toes to the shag carpeting.
Someone was standing in the doorway.
“Jesus!” Miriam said. “You scared the hell out of me!”
“I rang the bell.”
“I didn’t hear it.”
“I let myself in. Found you down here. I was watching you.”
“Get out. I’m sick to death of you. What the hell do you want?”
“What do you think? I’m guessing you know.”
“Just get out.”
“He said if something ever happened to him, I was to come here. That he’d leave something for me. He told me where to look.”
“What? In here? Some gold-plated dildo?”
“Not in here. I think you know. I think you have it.”
“Get out.”
“I’m not leaving until you give it to me.”
“I said get out!”
Miriam charged out of the room, pushed the intruder out of her path. As she started up the stairs, she felt hands try to grab her around the ankles.
“I want what’s mine!”
“Get the fuck out of here!” Miriam screamed.
Her pursuer tried to overtake her on the stairs, came up alongside her, grabbed at Miriam’s hair to slow her down.
Miriam’s head jerked up briefly, and she lost her balance. She made a grab for the railing, but missed it.
Her body pitched backward, seemed almost suspended in midair for a second before she hit the stairs.
A sound of something snapping.
Miriam’s head rested on the bottom step, the rest of her body splayed awkwardly on the stairs.
“No! God, no! You’re not dead! You’re not dead!”
Miriam, in not replying, seemed to be suggesting otherwise.
FORTY-FIVE
Cal
A fireman named Darrell let me go up to my apartment to grab a few things. I didn’t notice any actual damage, but an acrid smell overwhelmed the place. The gas had been turned off, so I wouldn’t have been able to cook anything—not that I ever did, anyway—and the power had been turned off to the building as well. I tossed a change of clothes into a small travel bag. From the kitchen, I got a small freezer bag, which I stuffed with my toothbrush and toothpaste and half a dozen other things from the bathroom. I found an extra pair of socks and underwear and tossed it all into a backpack.
Took about three minutes.
Before heading up, I had told the police everything I could about what I’d seen, which was not a lot. I’m usually good with cars, but telling a Ford pickup from a Chevy pickup, from the side, when it’s moving fast, was not among my skills. All I knew with any certainty was that the truck was black and there was some rust around the rear wheel wells. An older model, judging by how loud and rough the engine sounded. The person who threw the Molotov cocktail was male, white, blondish hair, probably early twenties.
And I remembered what he’d said: “Fucking terrorist!”
I felt sick for Naman. The flames had spread from one stack of books to another, and were licking at the ceiling by the time the trucks arrived. But they had water on the fire before it had done any significant structural damage. The place, as bad as it looked, was not going to fall down. Naman, disbelieving, surveyed his burned and water-damaged stock.
“I’m finished,” he said to me when I reappeared with my stuffed backpack.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “You’ll get this all cleaned up. You’ll be open again in no time.”
“The water seeped through the floor. Hundreds of books in the basement, ruined. I should never have called it Naman’s Books. I should have had a sign that said ‘Used Books,’ that’s all.”
I didn’t know what to say. All I could come up with was “It was a couple of assholes, Naman. The whole town isn’t like that.”
He turned his head slowly to look at me. “Is that what you think? That the man who did this, that he’s an anomaly? That that kind of racism is rare? You have no idea.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Not a day goes by that I don’t sense it, that I don’t feel it. Maybe I’ve never been firebombed before, but you think I don’t hear whispers behind my back? You know how long I have lived here, in America? More than forty years. I am an American.” He waved his hand toward the street. “I have taught these people’s children. I have worked with these kids, encouraged them, shaped them, cried with them, helped make them good, decent citizens. I have always paid my taxes. I have sent boxes and boxes of free books to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. And this is my thanks. I am a terrorist. How would you feel about this town if you knew you’d given your whole life to it, and this is how it pays you back?”
He was looking me hard in the eye, and I held his gaze. I said, “You have my cell. If there’s anything you need, call me. Okay?”
Naman said nothing. He turned around, bent over, picked up the now singed and waterlogged copy of The Blue Hammer that he’d been reading earlier.
• • •
I decided it made the most sense to stay with my sister, Celeste, at least for tonight. I didn’t know how many days it would be before I’d be able to get back into my apartment, and I might need to rent a motel room. But Celeste had already offered to let me stay with her, even if her husband, Dwayne, was not crazy about the idea. I’d insist she take some money from me. What with the town cutting back on the work it contracted Dwayne’s paving company to do, there wasn’t much money coming in.
I parked out front, grabbed my backpack, and trudged up the two steps to the front door. I was about to knock when I cau
ght sight of Celeste and Dwayne sitting on the couch together. She had her arm around him, and at first I thought they were making out. Kind of sweet, I thought, for a couple married as long as they had been.
Then I realized I was seeing something very different.
Dwayne’s shoulders were hunched over, his head down and propped up on his palms.
The man was crying.
Celeste must have noticed my shadow at the window. She looked my way and caught my eye. She whispered something to her husband, got up, and came to the door. She opened it and slipped outside.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was about to knock and saw—”
“It’s okay,” my sister said. “What’s with the bag?”
“Never mind, don’t worry about it.”
“You want to stay here tonight?”
“There was a fire. At the bookstore. Some yahoos tossed a Molotov cocktail through the window.”
“What?”
I explained the likely motivations of the idiots in the pickup truck.
“Of course you can stay here,” she said.
“No, I don’t think so. Looks like you’re dealing with something.”
She moved me toward the far end of the porch, away from the door. “He’s falling apart.”
“I figured.”
“I mean, I’m worried, too, you know. About how much longer we’re going to be able to pay the bills. But we’ll manage somehow, right? Maybe it’s just as well we never had kids. Think how much worse this would be if we had mouths to feed. But it’s just us—we’ll get through. But no matter how much I tell Dwayne that, he’s just not hearing me. The stress of it’s killing him. It goes right to the heart of who he is, being able to look after me. Hey, I can get more hours if I have to, but it’s been wearing him down for a long time.”
“I have money,” I said.
She put a hand on my arm. “Cal.”
“No, really. I have some. Enough to get you through a couple of weeks, anyway.”
She went up on her tiptoes and kissed my cheek. “You’re a good brother. You really are.”