teens, right?”
Barry nodded again but said nothing, deciding to let Ellen do the work.
“He took a blow to the head, and Albert, Mr. Langley, he got the jury to believe that he’d more or less provoked it, that the other boy-what was his name?”
“Anthony Colapinto,” Barry said hesitantly, as though he’d been forced to admit something that wasn’t common knowledge.
“That’s it,” Ellen said. “Albert persuaded the jury that Anthony Colapinto was acting in self-defense when he went at the McKindrick boy with a baseball bat. When they read out the verdict, not guilty, the boy’s father, Colin McKindrick, collapsed right there in the courtroom.”
“Yeah,” Barry said. “I was there.”
“But then didn’t he get up? And threaten Albert?”
Barry nodded. “He told Albert Langley he’d pay for getting the son of a bitch off.”
I think my eyebrows must have shot up. “I hadn’t heard about that,” I said.
To Derek, Barry said, “You ever hear Albert Langley, or even his son, Adam, talking about that? Like maybe they were worried this Colin McKindrick might try to get even?”
“No,” Derek said, almost dreamily. “I never heard anything like that at all.” His words were trailing off, like he was getting woozy. Spending the morning cutting grass in these sizzling temperatures would be enough to send someone into heatstroke. Add to that the shock of what had happened at the Langleys’, it was little wonder Derek looked as though he was about to collapse.
I grabbed him under the arms. Ellen said, “Derek? Derek?”
“Water,” I said to Barry. “I’ve got some in a cooler in the truck.”
Barry clearly had another plan and barked to a uniformed female officer, “I need some water here!” The woman bolted to one of the nearby cruisers, where evidently a few bottles were stashed. I eased Derek over to the closest Promise Falls police car and leaned him up against it. The cop was running back, cracking the plastic cap along the way, and handed the bottle to me. It was warm, but it was still water, and I brought it up to Derek’s lips and tipped it.
He took a few swallows, breathed shallowly.
“We need to get him inside, where it’s cooler,” Ellen said. Our house was still a hundred yards away, and the female officer offered to drive him. “I’ll go with him back to the house,” Ellen said to me, figuring, I guessed, that if I stayed behind with Detective Duckworth I’d learn even more about what had transpired in the night.
“It’s like he’s in shock or something,” Barry said as the car rolled up to our house.
“Wouldn’t you be?” I said. “Your best friend gets killed along with the rest of his family?”
Barry nodded slowly in agreement.
“So’s that your theory?” I asked. “That this is related to the case Albert was working on? Was there anything taken? The house torn apart?”
Barry appeared thoughtful. “I don’t know why the fuck this happened, Jim. All I know is, three people dead? There’s gonna be a shitstorm of interest around this one. Don’t think we’ve had a triple murder around here in some time, if ever. A few single ones of late, but something like this. .” He paused, then looked back to the highway. He seemed to be staring at our mailbox.
There was just the one, with the name Cutter on it. Last winter, I’d had to fix it after a snowplow took it down. The Langleys had their mail sent to a P.O. box in town. Albert didn’t like the idea of his mail sitting in a box by the highway, available to anyone passing by.
“What you looking at?” I asked Barry.
“Huh?” he said, as though he’d been daydreaming. “Nothing.”
FOUR
Before I could ask Barry anything else, our attention was caught by an approaching car. It was a big black vehicle, and it was slowing down at the end of the lane. Barry rolled his eyes and said, “Oh boy, we can all rest easy now, the big man is here.”
It was a Mercury Grand Marquis with heavily tinted windows. I could only see the car in profile, but I knew that the license plates on it read “PF 1.” What with all the other police vehicles up there, there was no room for the Mercury to pull over, so the driver opted to put on the flashers and block a lane of traffic.
Barry and I were standing side by side now, waiting for the great man’s appearance. Barry said to me, “Tell me why you did it.”
“Excuse me?” I was still thinking about the Langleys, and found Barry’s question a bit jarring.
“Why’d you punch him in the nose? How many times you going to make me ask you?”
“That’s just a rumor, Barry.”
“There’s not a civil servant in Promise Falls, or anybody else in town for that matter, who doesn’t know you punched the mayor in the nose,” Barry said. “It’s like our own urban legend.”
“You can’t believe everything you hear,” I said.
“Well, this is one of those stories I choose to believe,” Barry said. “This, and the one about Elvis working as a short-order cook at that diner just north of town.” He was watching the driver get out of the Grand Marquis. He was a tall man, lean, late thirties, with short blond hair except around back, where it hung down over his collar, mullet- style. “I mean, the mayor shows up at a council meeting, his nose the size of an orange, and guess who just happens to no longer be on the mayor’s payroll? Just think, you could still be working with Lance there if you hadn’t gone and fucked things up.”
“I’m happy with the way things have worked out,” I said.
The driver had his hand on the back door of the town car.
“What I heard is, even though you punched the mayor right in his fucking nose, you asked him for a letter of reference afterwards, and you got it,” Barry said. “I guess that was before you decided to go into business for yourself. Anyway, that tells me that you’ve got something on him that’s pretty fucking amazing. I mean, he never even pressed charges, and if there was ever a vindictive bastard out there, it’s Randall Finley.”
And with that, the door opened, and Mayor Finley emerged from the car.
He was a small man, a textbook case of the Napoleon complex. Carried himself like he was six-four instead of five-four. He’d opted to leave his jacket in the car, too, and gave his trousers a hitch as he stood on the hot pavement, gazing at the crime scene through a pair of Oakleys.
“Detective Duckworth!” he called out to Barry.
I whispered to him, “Show me how you scurry.”
But Barry approached the mayor at a regular pace, like he was trying hard not to run, not wanting me to think he jumped every time the mayor asked him to, even if that was exactly what he did.
As Barry closed in on the mayor, his driver, wearing a pair of casual slacks and the kind of blue T that looked like it cost a couple of hundred bucks, walked in my direction.
“Cutter,” he said. “My old man Cutter.”
“Lance,” I said. If ever there was a guy the name “Lance” was made for, it was Lance Garrick.
“Lots of excitement around here today,” he said, forming a grin.
“My neighbors were murdered,” I said. “My son just lost his best friend.”
Lance shrugged. “Shit does happen. Especially around you.” I didn’t see the point in responding to that. I couldn’t see where engaging in small talk with the guy who held the job I’d walked away from was going to make an already bad day any better.
“Mayor got the call,” Lance said, recovering his dignity. “About Langley. Wanted to take a run by, see what was happening. He knew Langley pretty good, you know?”
I nodded.
“So,” Lance said, looking up the road at my truck, chuckling under his breath. “How’s the lawn-cutting business?”
“Good,” I said.
“You’re something else, Cutter,” Lance said. “Quitting a good gig like this to go around mowing lawns. I used
