“Do you love your son?” Carlson asked.
“Absolutely.”
“Does he love you?”
Duckworth waited a beat before replying. “Of course.”
The corner of Carlson’s mouth went up. “Truth is in the pauses,” he said, got up, and walked out of the room.
“Thanks for coming,” Duckworth said to the various media representatives who had turned out on short notice. Normally, there might have been people here from only Albany, but the drive-in bombing had brought journalists from as far away as Boston and New York, and they were still in town. The small meeting room in the police building was crowded, and with that many bodies, and lights, it was quickly getting warm in there.
Duckworth introduced himself and spelled out his name.
“I wanted to bring everyone up to speed on what happened at the drive-in, and a possible link between that and some other recent incidents in Promise Falls.”
“Has there been an arrest?” someone shouted.
Duckworth raised a hand. “Hold your questions till the end. We’re hoping to enlist the public’s help today. Someone out there, someone watching, may have information that would prove valuable to our investigation. Something they may not even know is important. Let me start by saying that every effort is being made to find out how the Constellation Drive-in came down, whether it was an accident or a deliberate act. The screen came down at twenty-three minutes past eleven, which in military time or the twenty-four-hour clock is twenty-three twenty-three. That in and of itself is not particularly noteworthy. But it may be when we look at some other occurrences which, up to now, have not attracted much attention.”
With Finderman’s approval, he’d had some photos blown up and mounted onto foam core board. He set the first one up on an easel next to his podium. It showed the twenty-three dead squirrels strung up on the fence in Clampett Park.
“Oh, yuck,” said someone in the room.
“This act of animal cruelty went largely unnoticed earlier this month. Not that we don’t take something like this seriously. But we hadn’t issued any release on it, and no arrests have been made.”
“Is that even illegal?” asked a reporter. “I mean, I kill squirrels all the time with my car and I haven’t been charged with murder.”
A wave of laughter.
“I said I’d take questions at the end,” Duckworth said. “If you count them, you’ll notice there are twenty-three animals here. Now, let me put this second photo up... Okay, this is the Ferris wheel at Five Mountains. That ride was in the process of being mothballed because the park, as you know, has gone out of business. But the other night, someone fired it up, got it running.”
The picture showed the three naked mannequins in a carriage, the “YOU’LL BE SORRY” message painted across them in red. A buzz went through the room.
“What the hell?”
“Jesus.”
“What kind of sicko does that?”
Duckworth raised a hand, put up a third picture, taken from the side of the carriage, showing the “23” on the side.
“Whoa,” someone said.
“This was our second incident,” Duckworth said. “No particular harm done, but there is this ominous message painted onto the mannequins. At the time, no special importance was attached to the number of the car they were sitting in.”
He put his last picture in place. It was the hoodie Mason Helt had been wearing the night he attacked Joyce Pilgrim. The local media knew the Helt story, but this aspect of it was new to them.
“Now,” Duckworth said, “it may be just one huge coincidence that this same number keeps popping up. But maybe it isn’t. That’s why I’m asking for the public’s help. If you know of someone with a fixation on this number, if you have any idea how these various incidents might be connected, we want you to get in touch with us. All tips will be treated as confidential.”
A reporter’s hand shot up. “Can I ask a question now?”
Duckworth nodded. “Yeah, sure.”
“So you think you’re looking for a guy who likes to torture squirrels and blow up drive-ins?”
Soft chuckles went around the room again.
“I’m saying we see a possible link here,” Duckworth said, “and we’re asking the public for their help. Four people died when that screen came down, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t laugh along with the rest of you.”
Another hand. “So let’s say the same person or persons are responsible for all these things. Why? What’s the deal? Those words painted onto the dummies, ‘you’ll be sorry.’ Who’ll be sorry, and for what? If someone’s trying to send a message, what is it?”
“There’s nothing I’d like to know more,” Duckworth said.
Thirty
Clive Duncomb brought home dinner, although that hardly made this evening special.
Duncomb picked up something on the way home most days. And those that he didn’t, Liz generally ordered something in. Or threw some Stouffer’s frozen thing into the microwave. Tonight, he had stopped at Angelino’s, an Italian place that did mostly takeout. Pizza was Angelino’s biggest seller, but they did pasta, too, so Clive got two orders of linguine with clams, and a single Caesar salad that he and Liz could split.
Cooking had never been Liz’s calling. Even back when she ran her own business, in Boston, where she had a devoted clientele, when a customer asked for something spicy off the menu, a dildo was a more likely ingredient than dill. Nor was Liz’s “Round the World” option a sampling of global cuisine.
But then again, Duncomb did not choose to make a life with Liz for her terrific soufflés. They had not met at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. Liz’s mentor was not Julia Child. They met during an investigation into a Boston escort business. Duncomb, working vice at the time, had been gathering evidence to shut the place down, but had something of a change of heart when he met Elizabeth Palmer. She was willing to bring to life just about any fantasy he could imagine — especially those that involved extra players — if it meant turning a blind eye to her business operations.
Liz didn’t even have to provide the handcuffs. Although, when it came to threesomes, or younger girls, she used her connections.
Not quite enough connections, however, to feel she could keep her business going without eventually getting busted, or keep Clive from getting brought up on police charges. When they sensed their luck was running out, they each bailed on their lines of work, but not before tracks were covered. Files were shredded or deleted, payoffs made, threats to potential squealers delivered.
So they put their Boston lives behind them and came to Promise Falls. But it didn’t mean they had to abandon their interests. Just because you move to the North Pole doesn’t mean you don’t still like water-skiing.
“Hey,” he said when he came through the side door, directly into the kitchen. Liz was leaning up against the counter, watching Dr. Oz on a small television that hung from under one of the cabinets. Her long brown hair was twirled into a knot at the back of her head, and her feet were bare. Her red tank top was cut off, exposing several inches of skin above her jeans.
“Shh,” she said, holding up a finger. “Dr. Oz says we should be having sex two hundred times a year. I’m not sure I could handle that.”
“If you got down to two hundred,” Duncomb said, setting the takeout on the counter, “you could take up another hobby. Scrapbooking, maybe.”
“What constitutes a single sexual act, anyway?” Liz said, picking up a remote and turning down the volume. “I’ve got my doubts Dr. Oz will address this, but if I’m sucking your cock while Miriam’s eating me out, is that one act or two?”