The Kind Worth Saving by Peter Swanson

Author:Peter Swanson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Kimball

I told Lily, in what felt like extraneous detail, the entire story of the shooting in my classroom. I told her how I’d frozen up while it had unfolded, paralyzed with fear, and how I’d never really forgiven myself for that.

“You could have made it worse,” Lily said. “If you’d tried to wrestle the gun away he might have shot everyone in that classroom.”

“Sure,” I said. “That’s a possibility.”

“Or you’d have been shot, yourself.”

“A much greater possibility.”

“I know you’ve probably thought a lot about this, but ultimately there’s no way of knowing what would have happened if you rushed him. Could have made it better, could have made it worse. I’m just telling you things you already know, right?”

“Yes, I have gone over this a few times in my head over the years.” I smiled.

“I’m sure you have. I’m sorry. It sounds scary,” Lily said, leaning back farther into her sofa. A nearby lamp allowed me to see only half of her face.

“It’s not really the choices I made that I’ve kept going over for years,” I said. “It was the fact that I froze. At the time, even if I thought the right thing to do was to charge James Pursall there was no way I could have done it. I couldn’t have done anything, really.”

“So you became a cop,” Lily said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. I couldn’t go back into the classroom. And I couldn’t make a living writing poetry. Plus, I hated therapy.”

“And you had a secret fantasy that if you were able to save someone when you were a police officer then that would even the score.”

“Probably,” I said. “I’m not sure I ever put it that way exactly in my own mind, but, yeah.”

“And then I came along and ruined being a police detective for you.”

“We don’t need to talk about that tonight,” I said. “It’s late.”

“It is late,” she said.

“Before we go to sleep, tell me what you think about my story, about Joan Grieve.”

Lily touched an earlobe and was quiet for a moment. “What I think is that Joan Grieve absolutely had someone kill her husband and her husband’s lover. Just like she absolutely had James Pursall kill Madison Brown for her. I don’t know how she did it, but she did. There’s a reason she came back to you and asked you to follow her husband. It was nostalgia, I think. She has good memories of what happened in your classroom, and she wanted to replicate the experience.”

“She did replicate the experience. At least for me. Two bodies dead by gunshot wounds. Something I never thought I’d see again.”

“So here’s the thing about Joan,” Lily said, and she moved forward on the couch in preparation for getting up and going to bed. “She doesn’t do these things on her own. Somehow, back in high school, she got James Pursall to do her dirty work. Last week, she got someone else to murder her husband. All we need to do is find that person.

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