He figured there was a way to solve his financial problems and stick it to his father at the same time.
So he went into a sister branch to the one his dad managed, and stuck the place up. Had the gun, the ski mask, the whole thing.
Just might have worked, too, if a cop wanting to exchange the fifties the ATM had given him for smaller bills hadn’t wandered in at that very moment.
Sometimes you couldn’t get a break.
Sam filed for divorce. Brandon went to jail.
Ed Noble, who of all of Brandon’s friends was the one with the most screws that needed tightening, came under Yolanda’s influence, started doing her bidding. Yolanda wanted Carl to herself. She’d lost her son to prison, but she was not going to lose her grandson, and she’d figured that with the right amount of intimidation, Samantha would give him up. She got Ed to do her dirty work.
It hadn’t exactly worked out.
It wasn’t just Brandon in jail now. Ed was there, too, awaiting trial. Garnet and Yolanda were facing multiple charges, and out on bail.
Then Yolanda went and had a heart attack.
At first, Brandon wondered whether she’d faked it, hoping to get some sympathy from the prosecuting attorney’s office. But it was pretty hard to fake an EKG. She ended up in intensive care, and for a while there it was looking touch and go.
Yolanda asked to see her son.
“Bring me my boy,” she whispered to the doctor from her ICU bed. “Don’t let me die without seeing him.”
Arrangements were made.
Brandon stood at Yolanda’s bedside, held her hand, looked sadly into her eyes. Yolanda whispered something he could not hear.
“I’m sorry. What was that?” he said.
She said it again, but he still could not make it out. So he leaned down, put his ear so close to her mouth that she could have kissed it.
Yolanda whispered, “Find the bitch, get your son.”
And then that orderly came in. A guy about Brandon’s height and build, maybe a little bigger. Brandon had spent a lot of time working out in prison, learned a thing or two.
He didn’t even have to think. He just acted. Looped his arm around the orderly’s neck and squeezed. The dumb bastard struggled, but Brandon just squeezed harder. Within seconds, the guy had passed out. Brandon stripped off his pants and shirt, pulled them on over his own clothes.
His mother smiled the whole time.
Brandon pushed the orderly under the bed, gave his mom a kiss good-bye, and walked right out of that ICU like he owned the place. Dumbass cop posted at the door was playing Angry Birds on his phone. Probably caught a glimpse of legs in pale green pants striding past him, never looked up.
Brandon flew down the stairs, came out into the hospital parking lot. He needed to find a car, but searching for one with the keys left in it would be a waste of time. No one did that anymore. He needed a car that was already running.
So he kept hoofing it until he got to a plaza where there was a 7-Eleven. Sooner or later, some idiot would leave a car running while he ran in for a pack of cigarettes. While he waited, he stripped off the scrubs and stuffed them in a garbage can. Half an hour later, a woman pulled into the lot in a little shitbox Kia. He wasn’t going to be choosy. She parked right close to the door and got out, and as soon as Brandon noticed exhaust still coming out of the tailpipe, he made his move.
He stayed off the Mass Pike and the New York Thruway. So it took a lot longer to get to Promise Falls than he’d hoped. He was worried Samantha would hear that he was out before he got there.
Which was exactly how it had turned out.
But now he had an idea where she might have gone. A camping trip made sense. Once she’d learned he’d escaped custody, she’d have been looking for a place to go. But a hotel-even a motel-was going to be a strain on Samantha’s budget, especially when she didn’t know how long she was going to have to stay there. She didn’t exactly get paid a hundred grand a year to look after a Laundromat. But finding a space to put up a tent in a nearby campground wouldn’t cost her all that much.
And Brandon was pretty sure she still had the tent. One time, about a year back, when Carl’s mother had allowed him to visit his father in prison, the boy had mentioned how much fun he and his mother had had on a recent camping trip.
So there you go.
All Brandon had to do now was a bit of research. See how many campgrounds there were within a short drive of Promise Falls. Odds were Sam had checked in at one of them, although there was the distinct possibility she wouldn’t have done so under her real name.
He decided to check around the Lake Luzerne area first. It wasn’t that far a drive, and there were a bunch of campgrounds up that way. Those places were usually gated, so he wouldn’t be able to just drive in without registering. But he figured if he parked down the road, he’d be able to walk in. If anyone stopped him, he’d say he was already a guest, heading back to his campsite.
It worked like a charm at the first place, which was called Sleepy Pines. He strolled the entire campground, but never spotted the blue-and-yellow tent he and Sam and Carl had shared many nights years ago.
So he scratched Sleepy Pines off the list.
No luck at Canoe Park, either. But there were still plenty of places to go. Like Camp Sunrise, and Call of the Loon Acres.
All he wanted to do now was find Sam. Find her and Carl.
Have a little word with them.
A nice chat.
THIRTY-SIX
Duckworth
I was on my way to Victor Rooney’s place when Wanda Therrieult phoned.
“You saw what I saw,” she said.
“You tell me what you saw.”
“Well, I have to do a full autopsy, but I’d say this Thackeray student, this Lorraine Plummer, is the latest.”
“After Olivia Fisher and Rosemary Gaynor,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“That was my thinking, too,” I said. “When will you get to the autopsy?”
“The body’s being taken to the morgue now, but honestly, Barry, I don’t know when I’ll get to her. All those other bodies, we may think we know what happened to them, that they were poisoned by the water, but I have to do the due diligence. Every one of them has to be autopsied.”
“You’re getting out-of-town help,” I said.
“Sure, but you’re going to have to wait. And if I don’t lie down soon, in a proper bed, I’m going to collapse wherever I’m standing.”
I knew how she was feeling. I’d been running on empty for several hours now. I wanted to go home, have something to eat-even a salad-then crawl into bed with Maureen and sleep till Christmas. Maybe, after I’d had a chance to talk to Rooney, I could do that. Even just a few hours of sleep would do me. I could be back at this by six in the morning, if not earlier.
“I hear ya, Wanda,” I said.
“Barry,” she said, “you know me.”
“I do.”
“I’m a woman of science. I believe in science. My life is all about science. It’s about facts and evidence and data. You know what I mean?”
“Yup.”
“There’s nothing mystical about it. But these last few days, I can’t help but wonder, are we being punished for something? Did we do something bad, and God’s taking it out on us?”
“Maybe not God,” I said. “But I get what you’re saying.”
“I’ll talk to you later,” she said.
I dropped the phone onto the seat next to me, and it hadn’t been out of my hand for ten seconds before it rang again. I glanced at the screen, saw the name Finley come up.
“Fuck off,” I said out loud.
It rang ten times before he gave up. But a few seconds later, it started ringing again.
Finley.
Was he going to keep doing this until I answered? I reached for the phone and put it to my ear.
“What is it, Randy?” I said.
His voice was more subdued than I expected it to be. Shaky, too. “Barry, can you come by my house?”