A Tap on the Window by Linwood Barclay

“This girl is Bertram Sanders’ daughter? She’s the mayor’s kid?”
    “I can see why you’re a detective,” said Brindle.
    “Our information,” Haines said, “suggests you may have encountered Claire last night.”
    “You have a picture of her?”
    Haines got out his phone, tapped it a couple of times, and approached me. He held the phone close enough that I could see the screen, but didn’t hand it to me. The photo looked like it had been taken at a party. The girl was laughing, her head tilted back, a martini glass in her hand. I was guessing it was off Facebook.
    “I gave that girl a ride last night,” I said. “But I’m guessing you already know that.”
    Haines nodded. “You picked her up at Patchett’s.”
    No sense denying it. “Yeah. I get picked up on closed-circuit?”
    Haines hesitated, then said, “Yup.”
    “That something you do a lot, Mr. Weaver?” Brindle asked. “Pick up teenage girls?”
    “She tapped on my window when I was stopped at the sign. Asked for a lift home.”
    “And you gave her one.”
    “Yes.”
    “So you already know Claire Sanders?” the older cop asked.
    “No,” I said.
    “Hmm,” Brindle said. “If it was me, and some young girl asked me for a lift—assuming I was in my own car and not the cruiser—I’d feel a bit odd about that. Like maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing in the world to do.”
    “She recognized me. She said she’d known my son, Scott.” I looked at Officer Haines at that point.
    Hank Brindle cocked his head like a dog hearing a whistle. “That’s the one that died, right?”
    I felt warm under my collar. “Yes.”
    “Got stoned and went flying off the roof of Ravelson Furniture a couple months back,” Brindle said, like we were just reminiscing. “I got that right?”
    “Yeah.”
    “You got that call, didn’t you, Ricky?” he asked Haines.
    “Yeah.” His face flushed. “I had to deliver the news to Mr. and Mrs. Weaver.” I sensed discomfort.
    “I remember that,” Brindle continued. “That was the week I didn’t get any of the overtime I was due in my pay slip. ’Cause your wife had taken some time off and didn’t put it through.”
    Now my neck was feeling hot. I made fists, not because I was planning on taking a swing at anyone, but to channel the tension. I kept my hands down so Brindle wouldn’t think I was about to hit him in the nose, much as I wanted to. “On her behalf, allow me to apologize for the inconvenience,” I said.
    Brindle waved a hand. “No biggie.” He cleared his throat. “So you gave this girl a ride because she knew your son?”
    “It seemed wrong, at that point, to leave her standing in the rain. I told her to get in. She asked for a ride home.”
    “Did she tell you her name?” Brindle asked.
    “Just Claire.”
    “So you dropped her off at her home?” Haines asked.
    They were both looking at me intently. I had a bad feeling about the way this was going, because the story I felt it was inevitable I’d have to tell stretched the limits of credibility.
    “No, I didn’t drop her at home. We stopped at Iggy’s, out on Danbury. Claire said she felt like she was going to be sick.”
    “You could have pulled over to the side of the road for that,” Brindle said.
    “She asked to go to the restaurant, so I pulled in and waited in the car. She was in there for quite a while, so I went in looking for her, couldn’t find her, but when I got back outside there was a girl sitting in my car.”
    “What do you mean, ‘a girl’?” Haines asked. “You mean Claire.”
    I shook my head. “I thought it was her, at first. This girl wanted me to think she was Claire—she was wearing a wig to make her look like Claire, and her clothes were similar—but there were differences you could spot up close. For one, Claire had a cut on the back of her left hand, but this girl didn’t.”
    “Whoa, whoa,” Brindle said. “You’re saying Claire Sanders went into Iggy’s, but it was a different