Too Close to Home

FOUR

Before I could ask Barry anything else, our attention was caught by an approaching car. It was a big black vehicle, and it was slowing down at the end of the lane. Barry rolled his eyes and said, “Oh boy, we can all rest easy now, the big man is here.”

It was a Mercury Grand Marquis with heavily tinted windows. I could only see the car in profile, but I knew that the license plates on it read “PF 1.” What with all the other police vehicles up there, there was no room for the Mercury to pull over, so the driver opted to put on the flashers and block a lane of traffic.

Barry and I were standing side by side now, waiting for the great man’s appearance. Barry said to me, “Tell me why you did it.”

“Excuse me?” I was still thinking about the Langleys, and found Barry’s question a bit jarring.

“Why’d you punch him in the nose? How many times you going to make me ask you?”

“That’s just a rumor, Barry.”

“There’s not a civil servant in Promise Falls, or anybody else in town for that matter, who doesn’t know you punched the mayor in the nose,” Barry said. “It’s like our own urban legend.”

“You can’t believe everything you hear,” I said.

“Well, this is one of those stories I choose to believe,” Barry said. “This, and the one about Elvis working as a short-order cook at that diner just north of town.” He was watching the driver get out of the Grand Marquis. He was a tall man, lean, late thirties, with short blond hair except around back, where it hung down over his collar, mullet-style. “I mean, the mayor shows up at a council meeting, his nose the size of an orange, and guess who just happens to no longer be on the mayor’s payroll? Just think, you could still be working with Lance there if you hadn’t gone and fucked things up.”

“I’m happy with the way things have worked out,” I said.

The driver had his hand on the back door of the town car.

“What I heard is, even though you punched the mayor right in his fucking nose, you asked him for a letter of reference afterwards, and you got it,” Barry said. “I guess that was before you decided to go into business for yourself. Anyway, that tells me that you’ve got something on him that’s pretty fucking amazing. I mean, he never even pressed charges, and if there was ever a vindictive bastard out there, it’s Randall Finley.”

And with that, the door opened, and Mayor Finley emerged from the car.

He was a small man, a textbook case of the Napoleon complex. Carried himself like he was six-four instead of five-four. He’d opted to leave his jacket in the car, too, and gave his trousers a hitch as he stood on the hot pavement, gazing at the crime scene through a pair of Oakleys.

“Detective Duckworth!” he called out to Barry.

I whispered to him, “Show me how you scurry.”

But Barry approached the mayor at a regular pace, like he was trying hard not to run, not wanting me to think he jumped every time the mayor asked him to, even if that was exactly what he did.

As Barry closed in on the mayor, his driver, wearing a pair of casual slacks and the kind of blue T that looked like it cost a couple of hundred bucks, walked in my direction.

“Cutter,” he said. “My old man Cutter.”

“Lance,” I said. If ever there was a guy the name “Lance” was made for, it was Lance Garrick.

“Lots of excitement around here today,” he said, forming a grin.

“My neighbors were murdered,” I said. “My son just lost his best friend.”

Lance shrugged. “Shit does happen. Especially around you.” I didn’t see the point in responding to that. I couldn’t see where engaging in small talk with the guy who held the job I’d walked away from was going to make an already bad day any better.

“Mayor got the call,” Lance said, recovering his dignity. “About Langley. Wanted to take a run by, see what was happening. He knew Langley pretty good, you know?”

I nodded.

“So,” Lance said, looking up the road at my truck, chuckling under his breath. “How’s the lawn-cutting business?”

“Good,” I said.

“You’re something else, Cutter,” Lance said. “Quitting a good gig like this to go around mowing lawns. I used to do that when I was a kid. There were a few houses on my street.” He shook his head in mock puzzlement. “Of course, I didn’t have a little tractor to run around on. That must be fun. But even if I knew I could get myself a tractor, not sure it’s the sort of thing I’d have dreamed of doing when I grew up. Is there like a course you take, some sort of degree you can get out at Thackeray? Weed Eating 101? Hey, you ever thought of branching out? Maybe get a paper route?”

“You certainly made the right call, Lance,” I said. “You get to wipe the mayor of Promise Falls’s ass any time you want. I envy you.”

Lance pretended to laugh at that one. “Yeah, well, if I got fired from a job, I’d want to put it down, too.” If that was what Lance wanted to think, that I’d been fired, that was fine by me.

Barry was walking back from his chat with the mayor and said to me, “He wants to talk to you.”

“So he can ask me,” I said. “Since when do you deliver his messages?”

Barry looked embarrassed, but was spared from having to explain himself when Randall Finley shouted over to me, “Hey, Cutter! Gotta minute?”

I walked over. As I approached I realized the Grand Marquis was still running, belching out exhaust into the hot, humid air. Waves of heat rose off the hood, like if I looked into them long enough I’d see a mirage.

“Hell of a thing,” he said.

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said.

“I’ve told Barry to put everything he’s got on this,” Finley said.

“I’m sure he will.”

“Albert, he was a good man. He did work for me over the years. Good guy. Horrible thing.”

“Yep.”

“And living next door to something like that, that would sure give me the willies,” he said. When I said nothing, he continued, “Look, you should drop by the office sometime. I’ve hardly seen you since you left.”

“I’ve been pretty busy,” I told him.

“How’s Ellen?” he asked. If you didn’t know him better, you’d think he was actually interested. “Still working at the college under Conrad?” He caught himself. “That didn’t sound right, did it?”

“Randall, is there anything I can do for you today, or did you just want to get caught up on old times?”

“I just wanted you to know that everything that can be done to find out what happened here will be done. This is a terrible crime. Promise Falls has never seen anything like this. A triple murder. One of the city’s best-known citizens, a noted criminal lawyer, dead.”

I wanted to go back and check on Derek. I began turning to walk away when Randall Finley said, “Cutter, you owe me more respect than that. I did you a favor. Assaulting a public official, a mayor for fuck’s sake. You could have done time. I took a lot of things into consideration to let that slide.”

I turned back, walked up to Finley until my nose was within a couple of inches of his, although that meant stooping just a tad. “You want to lay a charge, it’s probably not too late. It’s only been a couple of years. I’m sure Barry over there would take your statement.”

Mayor Finley smiled and slapped me on the side of my shoulder. “Hey, listen, I’m just messin’ with ya. Fact is, I still wish I had you working for me. Lance there, he’s okay, but he spends a lot of time looking in the rearview mirror, always checking his hair, making sure he hasn’t got something stuck in his teeth. I liked you. You were always there to watch my back.”

“There’s a lot of people in this town who’d be happy to stick something in it,” I said. “Pretty much everybody on the city payroll that you’ve accused of not doing their jobs, and most recently, a houseful of unwed mothers.”

Finley waved his hand. “Oh that,” he said. “Just a little misunderstanding. That never would have happened if you’d been working for me. You’d have never let me go in there and make a goddamn fool of myself.”

“What else does Lance let you do that he shouldn’t?” I asked.

Finley grinned nervously. “Nothing,” he said. “He’s actually not that bad. I just have to make sure he doesn’t set me up on any bad blind dates, if you get my meaning.” He flashed me a grin.

“I’m going to go see how my family is,” I said, then turned my back on the mayor and walked away.

He shouted after me, loud enough for others to hear, “Will do, Jim! Anything you need, you let me know.”

As I passed Barry he said to me, “The nose thing? No jury would ever have convicted you.”

I found Ellen and Derek sitting at the kitchen table. He had his head in his hands and she was turned toward him, reaching out and touching him tentatively.

“It’s a shock, I know,” Ellen said softly as I came into the room and stood just inside the doorway. Derek shook his head, not looking up, not taking his hands away. “We’re all in shock. And it’s not going to make any sense, not until we know why it happened. And it may not make any sense after that, either.”

Ellen turned toward me, gave me a hopeless look. I noticed there was half a glass of white wine in a tall-stemmed glass on the counter. She caught me looking at it.

I went over to my son and rested my hands on his shoulders, not sure what words at this time could make things any better. He took his hands away from his face and, without turning to look at me, dragged one of my hands down around his neck, pulling me down close to him. Ellen moved closer, and we both held on to our son while he continued to weep.