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

“How do you get to the basement?” he asked.

“What is this?”

“The basement. Something’s burning.”

“There!”

He was, it turned out, standing by the door that led downstairs. He opened it and was down the steps in seconds, finding himself in a finished rec room, wood paneling on the walls, a pool table, a TV set, and a couch. At the far end of the room, near the slightly opened window, was a child sitting cross-legged on the floor.

He stopped short, quickly assessing that there was no fire.

A little girl was sitting within a large oval of toy train track, and whizzing around her at high speed was a steam engine pulling three cars. Whiffs of smoke were puffing continuously from the locomotive’s chimney, much of it drifting upward and out the window. In the girl’s hands was a small plastic bottle, about the size of a container of nasal spray. On the side were the words toy train smoke fluid.

Harry recognized her as the child who’d been at an upstairs window when Delbert Dorfman was smoking himself to death. She stared straight ahead, rocking her body slowly frontward and backward. She was oblivious to Harry’s arrival.

The woman came up behind him. “There’s no fire,” she told him.

He turned slowly. “I’m sorry. I saw smoke outside.”

The woman rolled her eyes at him. “It’s just pretend. It’s some special stuff that goes into the engine. It’s not toxic or anything. I checked. Allison loves it when the train puffs out the smoke. She finds it calming.”

Harry glanced back at the girl, then said to the mother, “She’s, like, in a trance or something.”

The woman sighed, annoyed. “She has autism. Don’t they teach you police anything?”

Harry sighed. “I’ll let myself out.”

As he moved past the woman, he stopped and asked, “When did you get those trains for her?”

“A week ago,” the woman said. “That new shop in town.”

“He seems to be doing a bang-up business,” Harry said.

Thirty-Nine

Something was up. Edwin Nabler could always tell.

While he couldn’t accurately predict what his products would trigger when he sent them out into the world, he liked to stay on top of what they’d set in motion. It was much more than idle curiosity, or taking pleasure in one’s work. He wanted to know the trains were doing what they were designed to do, which amounted to so much more than bringing a smile to a little boy or girl’s face.