The man glanced through the window at Carl, gave him a thumbs-up gesture. Then he rolled onto his back and started fiddling with his phone.
“What’s he doing?” Ed asked. “I can’t see him.”
“I think he’s calling the police,” Carl said.
Ed cranked the wheel hard left, hard right, and back again. See if the guy could enter any numbers while bouncing around like a pinball. He caught glimpses in his mirror of the guy being jostled back and forth. Didn’t look like he had the phone in his hand anymore. Which could mean he’d already called the cops, or maybe he’d just given up. Maybe the phone had been knocked out of his hand.
“Gotta lose this guy,” he said. But even Ed, who had failed physics in high school — and just about everything else for that matter — realized that no matter how quickly he drove, he wasn’t going to put any more distance between himself and this asshole in the back of his truck.
The only way he was going to get rid of him was to get him out of his truck.
“Hang on, kid,” Ed said, and slammed his foot on the brake with everything he had.
The truck squealed to a stop. The man in the back was thrown up against the back of the cab. Ed jammed the truck into park, threw open his door, and jumped out. He was going to reach in, grab the son of a bitch by his jacket, and throw him out onto the road.
What he hadn’t counted on was how quickly the man would get to his feet.
Or that he would kick him in the face.
“Fuck!” Ed shouted, staggering back, putting both hands over a nose that was already spurting blood.
“Carl!” the man yelled. “Get out of the truck! Run!”
Carl hesitated for half a second, then scrambled across the front seat of the vehicle and bailed out of the open driver’s door. The man placed both hands on the edge of the pickup bed and swung himself over, like he was dismounting a pommel horse.
While Ed still had his hands over his face, trying to stop the blood, the man drove a fist hard into his bloated stomach. Ed tumbled backward onto the street.
Carl, safely positioned behind a tree on a nearby front lawn, watched things play out.
In the distance, sirens could be heard. One of the many mothers at the school who’d witnessed all this must have called the police.
“You better get moving,” the man said. “Cavalry’s coming.”
Ed slowly got to his feet, blood dripping down his chin.
“You’re fucking dead,” Ed muttered, making his way back to the truck. He got behind the wheel, slammed the door, and sped off.
Carl came out from behind the tree and ran over to the man, who was now bent over, hands on his knees, throwing up.
“Jeez, Mr. Harwood, are you okay?” he asked.
David Harwood went from bending over to collapsing onto the grass. He wiped his mouth with the back of a hand that was shaking.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I was really glad when your mom finally returned my call, but now, I’m not so sure.”
Twenty-nine
Barry Duckworth was getting off the phone after speaking with the department’s media relations officer about the imminent news conference he’d cleared with Chief Finderman when Angus Carlson came in and dropped into a chair at the next desk over.
“I’ve had it,” Angus said.
Duckworth slowly looked over. Carlson was at least fifteen years younger than him. To Duckworth’s way of thinking, that meant Carlson had nothing to complain about whatsoever.
“Hardly had any sleep,” he added, without being prompted.
“Yeah,” Barry said. “You’re the only one.”
Carlson flushed with embarrassment. “Yeah, okay. I get it.”
“Tell me what happened at Thackeray,” Duckworth said.
“I saw their security chief. Clive Dickhead.”
Duckworth had no argument there. “What’d you say to him?”
“This big lawsuit that’s been filed against the college by Mason Helt’s family? I told him they were going to love it when they found out Clive never kept his promise to those women who’d been attacked to report what happened to them to us. I talked to one of the girls, Lorraine Plummer. She told me.”
“You shouldn’t have gotten into it with him.”
“He pissed me off.”
Duckworth worked his jaw around, hoping to reduce the tension. Day one working in the detective bureau and already Carlson thought he knew everything.
“There was something else that happened,” Carlson said.
Duckworth waited.
“When I was leaving, one of the profs, a guy named Blackmore? Peter Blackmore? He chased me out to the parking lot to tell me his wife was missing.”
Duckworth perked up. “Since when?” His first thought was of Helt, that maybe he was involved, but Helt had been dead nearly two weeks.
“Since yesterday, it looks like,” Carlson said.
“We putting out an official report?”
“I would have, but Blackmore backed off. Soft-pedaled it, said his wife would probably turn up before long. Anyway, for what it’s worth, I thought I’d mention it. He was in Duncomb’s office when I got there. I think he was asking for his help on it.”
Duckworth wondered whether Thackeray’s security chief was following the same course with a professor’s missing spouse as he had with the attacked girls. Trying to deal with it without bringing in the local police.
Duckworth glanced at his watch, rolled back his chair. “Gotta face the cameras.”
“What?”
“About the drive-in, other stuff,” he said.
“Something’s happened?” Carlson asked. “You got some—”
His desk phone rang. “Hang on,” he said to Duckworth. “I want to hear about this.” He snatched up the receiver, twirled it around his fingers like a baton, and put it to his ear.
“Hello? Oh, Gale.”
Duckworth wanted to get going, but Carlson was holding up a finger.
Talking into the phone, Carlson said, “Don’t worry about it. There’s nothing to be sorry about... We were both tired... Yeah, well, maybe it wasn’t the best time to talk about it... I think we are a family, even if it’s just the two of us... Look, if I want to talk to my mother about it, I will... No, it’s helpful to me... I have to go. I’ll see you later.”
He hung up, looked at Duckworth apologetically. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “Trouble at home?”
Angus Carlson shrugged. “No big deal. I came in at like four in the morning and we kind of got into it.”
“This kind of job can play hell with your home life,” Duckworth said with some sympathy. “Long hours, terrible shifts, you see stuff you can’t really explain to other people. My son, Trevor? He and I, we don’t see eye to eye. I’m suspicious of the whole world, questioning everyone’s motives. Not his, but the people around him.”
Like Randall Finley.
Angus eyed Duckworth warily, as though debating whether to confide in him. “Gale wants a child. And... I don’t.”
Duckworth nodded. “I get that. You think, is this any kind of world to bring a kid into? But it’s not all bad out there. We just see more of it than anyone else.”
“It’s not the rest of the world I worry about.”
Duckworth didn’t nod this time. “What do you mean?”
“It’s what families do to their own. Mothers — parents, I mean — are supposed to love their kids. Lots of times, they don’t.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t have to be you,” Duckworth said.