“Trish is kind of like a niece to me. I’m her unofficial uncle.”
“You talked to Trish?”
“I told you, we lived next door to the Vandenburgs for years. When you punched her in the face—”
“I didn’t punch her; I—”
“When you punched her in the face, she came to me. She was afraid to go to Duffy and Mildred—you know, her parents—for fear Duffy would grab a gun and blow your fucking head off. She said to me, ‘No man will ever hit me twice.’ Trish is a strong woman. She was done with you at that moment, and there was never a snowball’s chance in hell she’d ever go back with you. Her question was whether to file a complaint.”
Trevor tried to find his voice. “It was all so stupid. It was a dumb argument; that’s all it was. I wanted to go back to Germany, maybe find a job there, and she said it was time to settle down here and do something with our lives, you know? And she started attacking me, criticizing me, saying I couldn’t figure out what to do with my life, and she was waving her hands at me, and I thought she was actually going to swat me or something, and I came at her backhanded, but I ended up hitting her in the side of the head. It was a fucking accident. I swear to God.”
“Trish told me she stayed in her apartment for three days till the bruising went down,” Finley said.
Trevor could think of nothing to say to that.
“So, she asked me what I thought she should do. I told her she was fully within her rights to charge you. That you had assaulted her. I even offered to go to the Promise Falls police with her. They got a woman chief now, as you’d well know, and I can’t imagine she’d have liked the sounds of what you did. But I also spelled out for her the pitfalls. That, first of all, your father is a detective with the force, and there would be a lot of attention surrounding the case because of that. Her parents would learn details about her life she might rather they not know. There was no telling what might come out about her own background. Not that there was anything that salacious, but in a trial, the most innocent things can be made to sound sordid. No one knows better than me about that.”
He patted the tops of his thighs and pushed himself off the desk. “So there you have it.”
“Why’d you hire me?” Trevor asked.
“Why?” Finley’s face was a mask of innocence. “Because you’re a decent young man in need of employment. And you’re doing a very good job. What other possible motive could I have?”
“What about my dad?”
“What about him?”
“He said . . . he said you might have hired me to get at him somehow.”
Finley shook his head. “Nothing could be farther from the truth. I don’t have it in for your father. He’s a good man. Quite the contrary. I don’t want to get at him, as you say. In fact, just yesterday I offered to help him. You see, I’m going to be running for mayor again, and I think your dad would make a good chief. All I might ever want from him is to keep his ears open. About things in the department. Issues I might want to address in my campaign.”
“What did he say?”
Finley smiled. “Not a lot. But maybe one day you’ll want to tell your father about our little chat here today, and maybe he’d be more inclined to be in my corner. What do you think? Or failing that, I’m guessing that when you go home for Sunday dinner, you hear things. About your dad’s work. Stuff that maybe isn’t part of the public discussion. If you’re ever interested in sharing anything like that, I can tell you right now, I would be an attentive listener.”
Trevor Duckworth swallowed hard. His mouth was dry. He needed a drink, but the last thing he wanted was a mouthful of Finley Springs Water.
“I think,” he said, “I’d better do my run to Syracuse.”
“Good lad,” Finley said. “I like your work ethic.”
FORTY-FIVE
SOMEONE was knocking lightly on the door of Marshall Kemper’s apartment.
Sarita Gomez was standing in front of the bathroom sink, staring at her reflection in the mirror, when she heard it.
She froze.
The police had found her. They must have discovered where she worked. Maybe someone had told them she’d been seeing Kemper. So now they were here. She knew she was stupid to think she could hide out for long. She had to get out of Promise Falls. She had to get as far away from here as she could, as quickly as possible.
Sarita stepped out of the bathroom and approached the apartment door in bare feet, trying to step lightly so as not to make any of the floorboards creak. She stood three feet from the door, held her breath.
Another knock.
Then, “Babe! It’s me!” An urgent whisper.
She went to the door, unlocked it, removed the chain. Marshall entered the room with a McDonald’s bag.