Victor raised the bottle, then rammed it straight down onto the bar, shattering it, leaving him with nothing in his hand but the neck and shoulder.
“Hey!” the bartender said.
But other than that, the place went silent. All the patrons stopped their conversations in midsentence and turned to look down toward the end of the bar, where Victor had come off his stool and was standing, staring at all of them.
“Was it any of you?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Vick,” Walden said quietly. “Stop.”
“You need to take your son home,” the bartender told Walden.
“He’s not—” Walden started to say, then decided not to bother.
“Was it?” Victor Rooney asked again, moving closer to a table where five men were sharing a pitcher. “Was it any of you assholes?”
One of the men, broad of chest and more than six feet tall, kicked his chair back and stood up. “Think maybe you’ve had enough, pal,” he said.
Walden tried to take Victor by the arm, but the younger man shook him off.
“Oh, I’ve had enough, that’s for sure,” Victor said. “I’ve had enough of the whole lot of you.”
Another man stood. Then a third.
“Come on,” Walden said, getting a firmer grip on the man’s arm. “I’m taking you home.”
This time Victor didn’t shake him off. He allowed Walden to lead him toward the door, but not before whirling around for one last shot.
“Assholes!” he said. “Every last one of you!”
Walden got him through the door and pushed him out onto the sidewalk.
“You pull a stunt like that again,” Walden said, “and you’re going to end up in the hospital. Or worse.”
Victor was fumbling in his pocket for his keys. Once he had them out, Walden grabbed them.
“Hey.”
“I’ll drive you home,” Walden said. “You can come back for your van tomorrow.”
“What if I don’t remember where it is?”
“I’ll remember.”
“I guess.”
“And then I think we need to talk,” Walden said. “About getting your life back on track.”
“I’m going to leave this town,” Victor said. “I’m going to get the hell out of here.”
“When? Do you have something lined up? A job?”
“I just want out. Everywhere I look, I’m reminded of Olivia.”
“How soon are you leaving?” Walden asked, unable to hide the concern in his voice.
“Not sure. Still got a few things to do here; then I’m gone. End of the month, I’d say.”
“Hang in, at least till then,” Walden said. “Maybe something will still work out for you here. I could ask around.”
Victor smiled. “Don’t waste your time on me.”
Twenty-eight
Barry Duckworth had learned less from his search of Sarita Gomez’s room than he’d hoped.
The detective already knew the Gaynors’ nanny had no phone of her own. But she didn’t have a computer, either. At least not one that she’d left behind in the apartment. So there were no e-mails to check, no bookmarked Facebook page. No electric bill. No monthly Visa statement. No invoice from a visit to the dentist. Nor were there any personal letters, or even an address book. Sarita either packed up everything in a hurry, or she led a very simple, off-the-grid kind of existence. No digital trail here.
No bloodstained uniform, either.
Duckworth had asked the nanny’s landlord, she of the amazing banana bread, whether she might have any pictures of Sarita. “On your phone, anything like that?”
No such luck. Duckworth didn’t even know what this woman he was searching for looked like.
He was driving back to the station when he realized there was something big he had allowed to slip through the cracks.
The Thackeray College predator.
The Gaynor murder had so completely taken over his day that he’d neglected to do anything following his chat with the college’s head of security. Clive Duncomb. “Asshole,” Duckworth said to himself behind the wheel of his unmarked car. Duckworth had left his business card with Duncomb and told him to e-mail him the names of the three women who’d been attacked. They needed to be interviewed by the Promise Falls police. But the day had gone by and no names, no e-mail at all from Duncomb. Duckworth could just guess what the ex — Boston cop thought of the local police. That they were a bunch of know-nothing rubes.
“Asshole,” he said again.
Duckworth called the station and asked to be put through to Chief Rhonda Finderman.
“Hey,” Finderman said, answering right away. “I was just about to check in with you.”
Finderman wanted to know what progress was being made in the Gaynor case, and apologized for not knowing much about it. “I’m on this national association of police chiefs that meets all the time, the mayor’s committee on attracting jobs, plus this task force with the state police about coordinating data. I’m up to my ass in administrative shit. So, Rosemary Gaynor. Someone killed her and kidnapped her baby?”
Quickly Duckworth brought her up-to-date. Then he told her about how Clive Duncomb, Thackeray’s head of security, didn’t think he needed to bother letting the Promise Falls police know they might be dealing with a possible rapist on campus.
“That horse’s ass,” Finderman said. “I’ve had the pleasure. We had lunch one time; he said he really liked my hair. Take a guess how that went over.”
“You know anything about him? Beyond his being a horse’s ass, I mean?”
Rhonda Finderman paused. “What I hear is he worked vice in Boston. And that he left. And brought along his new wife, who may have been someone he met in the course of his duties, if you get my drift.”
“The thing is, I’ve got my hands full, but we need someone out there, taking statements from the students who’ve been attacked, that whole drill. We need to find this guy before he ups his game.”
“I’m down two detectives,” she said. “I’m going to have to move someone up, temporarily at least.”
“Okay.”
“You know Officer Carlson? Angus Carlson?”
Duckworth paused. “I do.”
“Try not to gush.”
“It’s your call, Chief.”
“We were all young once, Barry. You telling me you weren’t a know-it-all when you started?”
“No comment.”
She laughed. “He’s not that bad. He presents this front of being a wiseass, but I think there’s more to him than that. We got him about four years ago, from Ohio.”
“It’s your call.”
“I’ll have him call you; you can bring him up to speed.”
“Fine.” There was still something else on Duckworth’s mind. “One other thing. I ran into Randy this morning.”
“Finley?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus, him and Duncomb in one day. It’s like an asshole convention.”
“He called me directly after finding all these squirrels someone had strung up on a fence near the college. He said he’s running for mayor again, and he was looking for me to be a department snitch, maybe give him something to run on. I’m probably not the only one he’s asking.”
“He’s looking for something on me?”
“He’s looking for anything he can get on anybody. I think you’d be near the top of the list. So would Amanda Croydon.”
“The mayor’s squeaky-clean,” the chief said.
“Finley could find a way to make that negative.”
“He’s a weaselly son of a bitch,” the chief said. There was a long pause.
“You there?” he asked.
“Yeah,” Rhonda said. “I’m just thinking about how he might go after me.” Another pause. “I think I run a clean department. Maybe he’ll go after something I did before this job.”