Good as Dead(61)

I nodded. “She said she lives there for free. Compliments of the man who killed her husband.”

He frowned. “But she doesn’t know who it is?”

I shook my head no. “Evan is some kind of middleman,” I said. “What I can’t figure out is, why would Jack Kimball anonymously be taking care of them?” Could it be for karma’s sake? Or is there a more diabolical reason?

“Let me see that,” Andy said, reaching for my computer. His eyes scanned the obituary. “Says he died on May 17,” he said, not really to me. His hands started tapping on my keyboard. And then they suddenly stopped.

“What?” I asked. I was eager for him to find the hole in my theory that would debunk the whole thing.

“You’re not going to believe this,” he said, looking up at me, “but I saw Jack Kimball on May 17.”

He had opened up his calendar of appointments. Sure enough, on that very day, he’d had a meeting with the one and only Jack Kimball.

“So he couldn’t have done it!” I said, feeling a surge of relief. “Because he was meeting with you!” It would have put a serious damper on things if my husband’s new boss was a killer. I once again felt foolish for even imagining it.

“No, he canceled on me,” Andy reminded me, “because something suddenly came up. But he was there on the lot. His office is all glass, I saw him through the window.”

I was getting confused now. Does that mean it could have been him? Or couldn’t have been him? My husband was already googling again. I looked over to see he’d typed “Jack AND Kimball AND family” into the search bar.

“He’s married with one son,” Andy said, clicking on a photo of a younger Jack Kimball with his wife and a boy who looked about ten.

My hand flew over my mouth as I audibly gasped.

“What?” Andy asked. “You recognize them?”

“The son,” I said. “What’s his name?”

It was an old photo, but the resemblance was unmistakable.

“Logan,” my husband said, reading the caption. “Why?”

My heart plunged into my stomach. Because it all made sense now.

“Logan,” I stuttered, pointing to his photo. “Logan is Savannah’s boyfriend’s name.”

Andy’s brow contracted. I could see the wheels turning in his head. “This photo is from eight years ago,” he said. “Which would make him well into his teens by now.” I remembered thinking what a good conversationalist he was for such a young man, how polite and composed—like someone who grew up in the limelight would be.

“He’s coaching her track team,” I reminded him, “on a gap year before starting Harvard.”

He clicked through more photos and finally found a more recent one. There was no denying it was the same Logan.

“The coincidences keep piling up,” I said nervously, hoping my husband would agree with me.

But he didn’t. “I’m not sure it’s a coincidence,” he said somberly.

“You think he’s the one . . . ?” I couldn’t finish the sentence. It was just too horrifying to speak out loud.

“It would certainly explain Jack’s behavior that day,” Andy said. “And his need to make amends.”

“But why is Logan hanging around Savannah, then?” I asked. “You would think if he did something like this, he would stay as far away from her as possible.”

“Unless he wants something from her,” he replied. His expression was grim as he added, “But I can’t imagine what that could be.”

“We could be completely wrong about all of this,” I said. “I mean, we can’t just go accusing anyone.”

“If he’s stalking Savannah and we knew but didn’t warn her mom, how would you feel?”

I thought about Holly, how she’d taken all those pills, how vulnerable she was.

And I knew I had to tell her.





JACK


Three months ago

“I only looked down for a second,” Logan said. “One second. He came out of nowhere!”

I didn’t doubt my son was telling the truth. He was a good boy. He didn’t drink or smoke, certainly not during the day, and would never drive under the influence. He knew there was always another way to get home. He had his own Uber account, and worst-case scenario he could call me or his mom. We would always come get him, no questions asked.

“It wasn’t my fault,” he insisted, and maybe it wasn’t. Maybe the pedestrians he mowed down in broad daylight did “come out of nowhere.” It was possible. Something similar happened to me when I was a teenager. I was riding my bike down a hill, and someone in a parked car opened his driver’s-side door right in front of me. My front tire slammed into the inside of the car door, and my bike crumpled into itself. Whose fault was it? Technically I slammed into the car, but the driver opened the door without even looking—there was no way I could have avoided hitting it. But I was on a speeding bike. And nobody died.

So whose fault was it in Logan’s case? Just because the guy he hit was dead, didn’t mean my son was at fault. In all likelihood, they were both culpable, the dead man and my son. But only one of them lived to talk about it.

“Traffic was bad, so I cut down a side street,” Logan explained. “I looked down at the phone to see where to turn, one or two seconds max. When I looked up a guy was opening the door for some lady. I tried to swerve out of the way, but there was a moving truck blocking the middle lane, there was nowhere to go!” His whole body was shaking. I knew he wanted me to tell him everything was going to be OK, but I couldn’t. It was too late for that.