BooksBarbecue
Back Whistle
Chapters (73)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. Part IAnnie
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Part IIHarry
  13. Eight
  14. Nine
  15. Ten
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. Seventeen
  23. Eighteen
  24. Nineteen
  25. Twenty
  26. Twenty-One
  27. Part IIIAnnie
  28. Twenty-Two
  29. Twenty-Three
  30. Twenty-Four
  31. Twenty-Five
  32. Twenty-Six
  33. Twenty-Seven
  34. Twenty-Eight
  35. Twenty-Nine
  36. Thirty
  37. Thirty-One
  38. Thirty-Two
  39. Part IVHarry
  40. Thirty-Three
  41. Thirty-Four
  42. Thirty-Five
  43. Thirty-Six
  44. Thirty-Seven
  45. Thirty-Eight
  46. Thirty-Nine
  47. Forty
  48. Forty-One
  49. Forty-Two
  50. Forty-Three
  51. Forty-Four
  52. Forty-Five
  53. Forty-Six
  54. Forty-Seven
  55. Forty-Eight
  56. Part VAnnie
  57. Forty-Nine
  58. Fifty
  59. Fifty-One
  60. Fifty-Two
  61. Fifty-Three
  62. Fifty-Four
  63. Fifty-Five
  64. Fifty-Six
  65. Fifty-Seven
  66. Fifty-Eight
  67. Fifty-Nine
  68. Sixty
  69. Sixty-One
  70. Acknowledgments
  71. About the Author
  72. Also by Linwood Barclay
  73. About the Publisher

Harry thought back to the night Angus Tanner’s body had been found. He’d knocked on the door of one Darrell Crohn and asked him whether he had seen or heard anything in the night. Maybe a car stopping by the side of the road, someone getting out and dumping a body.

Crohn hadn’t heard or seen anything. At least, nothing like that.

But there was the sound of that train in the night that brought him out of a deep sleep. Harry had dismissed it. Even Crohn had to admit he might have imagined it. He’d had quite a bit to drink before nodding off.

After all, it simply wasn’t possible. There wasn’t a rail line anywhere near there.

Thirty-Eight

A few days passed.

Harry sat in his office, leaning back in his chair and throwing darts at a board hanging on the wall, ruminating.

He had been thinking about a famous serial killer whose day job was as an installer of home security systems. This allowed him to gain access to private residences, install locks and alarms, and in the process gain the trust of the individuals who had engaged his services. The killer would select his victims from those he had met in his job, and when it came time to break in and snuff the life out of one of them, he had the technical know-how to bypass whatever security measures he’d installed.

So what if, Harry thought, this Mr. Nabler had personally delivered the toy train sets to the homes where these tragedies had occurred? Assembled the track, carefully taken the trains from their packaging, did all the wiring that connected the power pack to the rails and an electrical outlet, gave everything a test run to make sure it was working. Then Nabler would have gained a familiarity with the workings of the household. Know that they had a barbecue, a liking for baths, a normally friendly dog.

And?

Suppose he had been in those homes. Did he sabotage the barbecue? Put that poor woman in the tub and drop in a live transformer? Drive a dog mad? How the fuck was he supposed to have done those things?

And yet, there was something about him that got under Harry’s skin. The fact that one day, his store was just there. Like he’d come out of nowhere. How these tragedies had all happened since his arrival. The fact that he was, well, at least judging from the couple of times Harry had met him, kind of fucking weird.

Not what Melissa Cairns would call hard evidence.

Maybe, Harry thought, he was so ill-equipped to solve Angus Tanner’s murder and Walter Hillman’s disappearance that he was grabbing at fantastical straws. There had to be logical answers to the questions he was puzzling over. He just lacked the smarts to come up with them.