No Time for Goodbye - Linwood Barclay [115]
“I’m dying,” he said.
“Then maybe it’s time to get a few things off your chest,” I said.
Clayton turned his head on the pillow to look at me again. “Tell me your name.”
“Terry. Terry Archer.” I hesitated. “What’s your name?”
He swallowed again. “Clayton,” he said. “I’ve always been Clayton.” His eyes moved down. He stared at the folds in the hospital linen. “Clayton Sloan, Clayton Bigge.” He paused. “Depended where I was at the time.”
“Two families?” I said.
I was able to make out a nod. Remembered some of the things Cynthia told me about her father. On the road all the time. Back and forth across the country. Home for a few days, gone for a few, back for a few. Living half his life someplace else…
Suddenly he brightened as a thought occurred to him. “Cynthia,” he said to me. “Is she here? Is she with you?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t…I don’t know exactly where she is right now. She may be back home now, in Milford, for all I know. With our daughter. Grace.”
“Grace,” he said. “My granddaughter.”
“Yes,” I whispered as a shadow went by in the hall. “Your granddaughter.”
Clayton closed his eyes for a moment, as though in pain. But I didn’t think it was anything physical.
“My son,” he said. “Where is my son?”
“Todd?” I said.
“No no,” he said. “Not Todd. Jeremy.”
“I think he may be on the way back from Milford.”
“What?”
“He’s on his way back. At least that’s what I think.”
Clayton looked more alert, his eyes wide. “What was he doing in Milford? When did he go there? Is that why he hasn’t been here with his mother?” Then his eyes drifted shut and he started muttering, “No no no.”
“What?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
He raised a tired hand and tried to wave me off. “Leave me,” he said, his eyes still closed.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Aren’t Jeremy and Todd the same person?”
His eyelids rose slowly, like a curtain rising on a stage. “This can’t happen…. I’m so tired.”
I leaned in closer. I hated pushing an old, sick man as much as I hated Vince keeping an old, disabled woman prisoner, but there were things I had to know.
“Tell me,” I said. “Are Jeremy and Todd the same person?”
Slowly his head turned on the pillow and he looked at me. “No.” He paused. “Todd is dead.”
“When? When did Todd die?”
“That night,” Clayton said resignedly. “With his mother.”
So it was them. In the car at the bottom of the quarry. When the results of the tests comparing Cynthia’s DNA to the samples taken from the bodies in the car came in, we’d be getting a connection.
Clayton raised his hand weakly, pointed back to the small table. “More water?” I said. He nodded. I handed him the glass and he took a long drink.
“I’m not quite as weak as I look,” he said, holding the glass as though it were a major accomplishment. “Sometimes, when Enid comes in, I make like I’m in a coma, so I won’t have to talk to her, she won’t complain so long. I still walk a little. I can get to the can. Sometimes I even get there in time.” He pointed to the closed door on the other side of the room.
“Patricia and Todd,” I said. “So they’re both dead.”
Clayton’s eyes closed again. “You have to tell me what Jeremy is doing in Milford.”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “But I think he’s been watching us. Watching our family. I think he’s been in our house. I can’t say for sure, but I think he may have killed Cynthia’s aunt Tess.”
“Oh my God,” Clayton said. “Patricia’s sister? She’s dead?”
“She was stabbed to death,” I said. “And a man we’d hired to try to find out some things, he’s dead, too.”
“This can’t be happening. She said he’d gotten a job. Out west.”
“What?”
“Enid. She said Jeremy got a job, in…in Seattle or someplace. An opportunity. Had to go out there. That he’d come back and see me soon. That was why he wasn’t coming to visit. I thought…just not caring, that would be reason enough.” He seemed to drift off a bit. “Jeremy, he’s…he can’t help what he is. She made him what he is. He does whatever she tells him to do. She poisoned him against me from the day he was born….