Parting Shot

Eight

Barry Duckworth got back into his own vehicle and pointed it in the direction of Knight’s, which was only five minutes away.

Along the way, he got stuck behind an out-of-state car that was being driven hesitantly. Brake lights coming on, then off, turn signal on, then off. The person behind the wheel of this blue Ford Explorer with Maine plates gave every indication of being lost.

When the Explorer stopped at a light, Duckworth pulled up alongside and powered down the passenger window. The driver, a man in his forties, put down his own window and looked over.

“You folks lost?” Duckworth asked.

“You know how to get to the park where the falls is?” the man asked. “Wife and I are looking for the spot where Olivia Fisher was killed.”

A woman in the passenger seat leaned forward and held up what looked like a newspaper clipping. “We’re checking all the spots related to the town’s mass killing last year.”

The man smiled. “We’re true crime nuts. You know the way?”

Duckworth said, “Hang a right here, then the next right, and just keep on going.”

The driver looked puzzled. “Won’t that put us on the road back to Albany?”

“Yup,” Duckworth said. He put the passenger window back up, took his foot off the brake, and drove off.

He parked half a block down from Knight’s. Before entering the premises, he inspected the alley next to the building. Brian Gaffney’s last memory before his two-day blackout was of this location. It was no more than six feet wide, which allowed room to step around a line of trash cans. At the back end it opened out onto a small parking lot.

Duckworth walked the length of it, glancing down at the cracked and broken asphalt. Nothing caught his eye, and he didn’t know what he was expecting to find. Then he cast his eyes skyward, hoping he might see a security camera mounted to the wall of the bar, or the building next to it, which was a dry-cleaning operation. No such luck.

He came back out onto the street. It was early May — nearly a year since the catastrophic events that had taken so many lives in Promise Falls — and each day seemed just a little longer than the last. The town was planning a special event later in the month to commemorate those who’d lost their lives, and Duckworth had been asked to be a guest of honor.

He wanted nothing to do with it.

He pulled on the door to Knight’s and went inside. It wouldn’t be fair to call this place a dive. Although a little rough around the edges, it was a decent neighborhood bar. It had the usual trappings. The neon signs for Bud Lite and Jack Daniels and Michelob. There were tables scattered about the room, booths down the right side, and the bar itself over on the left, half a dozen people perched on stools, watching a ball game playing on the TV hanging off the wall above a set of shelves stocked with liquor bottles.

The place was about half full, and Duckworth guessed it would be close to packed as more people got off work. Knight’s didn’t just serve booze. Four guys sitting in a booth were feasting on a plate of chicken wings. The smells of fried food and grease wafted up Duckworth’s nostrils and he found himself instantly starving.

Chicken wings, he told himself, were usually served with celery and carrot sticks. That made them a balanced meal, yes? But he knew that when he got home in another couple of hours, Maureen would have pulled something together for them for dinner. Something that was not battered or deep-fried or dripping in sauce.

Be strong.

He glanced around the room and saw something that pleased him. Unlike the alley, there were security cameras in here.

A slim man about thirty years old, dressed in jeans and a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled back to his elbows, was working behind the bar, drying some mugs with a white cloth. Duckworth hauled himself up onto a stool.

“What can I get you?” the bartender asked.

Duckworth dug out his ID and displayed it for the man. “Like to ask you some questions. What’s your name?”

“Axel. Axel Thurston.” He squinted at the ID for a final second before Duckworth put it away. “Jesus, you’re the guy.”

“Sorry?”

“I know the name. You caught that guy. Jesus, you caught that guy.”

Duckworth nodded.

“What are ya drinkin’?”

“Nothing, really.”

“No, come on. What’s your pleasure? On the house. Your money’s no good here. Whaddya want? Want some Scotch? Best stuff. I got Speyburn, I got Macallan, I got Glenmorangie, I got—”

Duckworth raised a palm. “No, really. That’s very kind of you. But I’m on duty, you know?”

Axel grinned. “Yeah, of course. I get that. So maybe something else?”

“Glass of water’d be nice.”

Axel laughed. “Glass of water! The irony, huh?”

Duckworth didn’t get it at first. Then he realized it was a reference to what had happened a year ago, when the town’s water supply had been poisoned.

“Oh, yeah, right.”

“Let me give you bottled,” Axel said. He reached under the counter and came up with a bottle of Finley Springs. “How’s this?”

“Wow,” Duckworth said. “My favorite.”

Axel got a glass, put some ice in it, cracked open the water and poured. “So what’s up? What can I do for you?”

Duckworth brought out his phone and showed him the picture of Brian Gaffney that he had taken at the hospital.

“You recognize him?”

Axel nodded. “Sure. That’s Brian.”

“You know him?”

“Sure. He comes in here all the time. Brian Gaffney. Works at the car cleaning place.” He grew concerned. “Shit, is he okay? Somethin’ happen to him?”

Duckworth put away his phone. “Looks like somebody got the drop on him when he left here a couple of nights ago.”

Axel looked puzzled. “I haven’t heard anything about that? We didn’t have any cops here. Nothing happened as far as I know.”

Duckworth nodded understandingly. “It’s complicated. Brian didn’t come to our attention until today.”

“Is he okay? He’s a sweet guy, you know? Not the kind to ever hurt anybody. You almost feel kind of protective of him, you know?”

“What do you mean?”

Axel shrugged. “He’s a bit too trusting. He could get taken in pretty easy. So’s he okay?”

“Yeah. But I’d like to trace his movements over the last forty-eight hours. Were you on that night?”

Axel nodded. “Yeah. I was. Brian was sitting right where you are.”

“When did he come in?”

He shrugged. “About eight? Stayed an hour or two. He comes in every couple of nights when he’s done work.”

“Been coming here long?”

Another nod. “He likes to talk, you know. He’s interested in all sorts of weird shit. Like, conspiracy theories? Who was really behind 9/11, were the moon landings fake, did aliens build the pyramids, shit like that.”

“UFOs?” Duckworth asked.

“Yeah, them. Sometimes he talked about his family, his old man.”

“Albert Gaffney?”

“I don’t know his name, but yeah. Brian was saying he moved out, got his own place because his dad said it was time for him to make it on his own. Thing is, I think Brian would have lived at home forever. He felt safer there, I reckon. But he seemed to be doing okay on his own, far as I could tell.”

“What I wondered is, did you notice anyone talking to him, taking an interest in him that night? Checking him out somehow?”

Axel shook his head slowly. “Not really. Brian usually just sits there and drinks his beer and watches the game.”

Duckworth nodded in the direction of the security camera mounted on the wall close to the ceiling. “What about that?”

Axel followed his eye. “Oh, yeah.”

“You got security video from that night?”

“We should. System banks it for a week or so. It’s kind of good to have in case something goes down, you know. Fight breaks out, or someone thinks they got their pocket picked, stuff like that. The owner says it protects us, too, in case somebody tries to sue us for something that didn’t happen.”

“I’d like to see two nights ago. That be okay?”

“Sure,” Axel said. “Need to go to the computer in the back. I’d check with the owner, but when I tell him it’s you, fuck, he’s gonna tell me to do everything I can to be accommodating. You know why?”

Duckworth waited.

Axel leaned over the bar and said softly, “His sister was one of the ones who died from the water.”

“I’m sorry.”

“If he was here, he’d be offering you free drinks till the end of time.”

Duckworth smiled sadly. “Let’s go to the instant replay.”

Axel called over a waitress to watch the bar while he was gone, then led Duckworth through a back door, past the kitchen, where the smell of fries and wings made the detective light-headed, and into a wood-paneled office. The cluttered room featured a desk with a laptop.

Axel dropped into a chair and tapped away. “So two nights ago... and Brian came in around eight. Okay, here we are at quarter to eight.”

Duckworth came around and stood at Axel’s shoulder.

“Let’s trade places,” Axel said, offering the detective his chair. Duckworth settled in and Axel gave him instructions. “Just put the cursor there, yeah, like that, and you can go forward or backward and faster and slower, whatever you want.”

Duckworth got comfortable with the controls. “Okay, I’ve got it.” He looked at the timer in the corner that said it was 7:48 p.m. The camera captured most of the room, including the booths on the far side. Two couples were having something to eat in one, four guys were sharing a pitcher in another, and in the one next to that, a man and woman were seated side by side, the opposite bench empty. They had their heads close together, engaged in close conversation and the occasional kiss.

Axel pointed.

“Get a room, right?” he grinned.

A young man entered the scene from the right at 7:51.

“Here we go,” Duckworth said. The man wandered down toward the end of the bar and perched himself on a stool, although it wasn’t the same one Duckworth had just been sitting on.

“No,” Axel said.

“What do you mean?”

“That’s not Brian.”

Duckworth put his face closer to the screen. The image wasn’t crisp, but he could tell now that this man was not Brian Gaffney. But they were about the same height, had similar hair, and were both dressed in jeans and a dark shirt.

“At a glance, yeah, they look kinda the same, dressed pretty much the same,” Axel commented. “Sorry about the camera. It’s not exactly high-def. Look, there’s Brian.”

Axel was right. Brian Gaffney had come in, and he did place himself at the bar on the stool Duckworth had sat on minutes earlier. Gaffney raised a hand, Axel came over, chatted with him briefly, then got him a beer.

“Do you remember what you were talking about just then?”

“Just the usual shit. How was your day, how ya doin’. Nothing special.”

“How’d he seem?”

“Seem?”

“Same as always? Did he seem worried about anything? Anxious at all?”

“Nope. Same old Brian.”

Duckworth started fast-forwarding, but not so fast that he couldn’t spot anyone paying any kind of attention to Brian. At 8:39, a short, balding man walked past and gave Brian a friendly punch to the shoulder. Brian looked up from his drink and gave the man a thumbs-up.

“Who’s that?”

Axel said, “That’s Ernie. Can’t think of his last name. Just a regular. Sometimes they sit and have a beer together, shoot the shit.”

Twice Duckworth saw Axel get Brian another beer. Axel was always on the move, tending the bar while the waitresses looked after the booths and the tables.

Axel pointed to the couple sitting together in the booth, lips now locked. “Ain’t love grand?” he said.

Duckworth’s eye was drawn again to the man further down the bar who bore a passing resemblance to Brian. “What was this one’s name again?”

“Beats me. I only checked his ID to make sure he was old enough. But he paid in cash. Why?”

“No reason, just — Hello.”

Brian was throwing some bills on the bar. Axel came over, shook the man’s hand as he slid off the stool. Brian disappeared to the left.

“Where’s he going?” Duckworth asked. “Is he going out a back way?”

“He’s hittin’ the can before he goes.”

Sure enough, Brian reappeared about ninety seconds later, crossed the path of the security camera and exited to the right.

Duckworth noted the time. Brian Gaffney had left Knight’s at 9:32 p.m. By then, it would have been dark outside. If someone called to him from the alley, he wouldn’t have been able to see who it was.

“Well, that’s it,” Axel said.

Duckworth decided to watch the next few minutes of the surveillance video. Maybe Brian popped backed in briefly. Or maybe—

The two who’d been fooling around as much as talking and drinking were sliding out of the booth. The man slapped down some bills onto the check and then the two of them headed for the door, the woman first.

The camera hadn’t been able to provide a very sharp image of them when they were in the booth, but as they moved out into the middle of the room, it became easier to make them out.

Duckworth clicked the pause button. He leaned in closer and squinted, trying to get as good a look at the couple as possible.

“Something?” Axel said.

“No.”

“If you’re wondering who that is, I can tell you. Well, the guy anyway. The girl, I don’t recognize her. But the guy, he’s in here once in a while.”

“Not important,” Duckworth said, pushing back the chair and standing. “Thanks for all your help.”

“Any time you’re off duty, come on in. Drinks on the house. You like wings? We’ve got the best wings in town.”

“They sure smell good.”

“You want some to go?”

“No, that’s okay, but thanks.”

Duckworth left the office, walked past the kitchen and through the bar, and landed back on the sidewalk.

He wondered whether to tell Maureen that he now knew where Trevor had spent at least one of his evenings. That he seemed to have found a girlfriend.

He wondered about how much fun it was going to be sitting down with Trevor to interview him about who or what he might have seen when he walked out of that bar.