I Will Find You(48)

“I don’t know what to tell you—”

I hit her in the cheek with the barrel of the gun.

No, this isn’t easy for me to do. And no, I didn’t hit her hard. It was a tap. No more. But it’s enough to both get the message across and make me feel awful. “You changed your name and moved away,” I say. “You did that because you lied on the stand and needed to escape. I’m not looking for revenge or any of that. But there’s a reason you lied, and that reason might lead to my son. So I’m going to either learn why or I’m going to kill you.”

She stares at me. I stare back.

“You’re delusional,” Hilde-Harriet says.

“Could be.”

“You can’t possibly think your son is still alive.”

“Oh, but I do.”

Hilde’s hand flutters up to her lips. She shakes her head and closes her eyes. I don’t lower my gun. When she opens her eyes, I see a change. The defensiveness and defiance are gone. “I can’t believe you’re standing here, David.”

I stay silent.

“Are you taping this?” she asks.

“No.” I quickly pull out my phone and show it to her. Then I drop it on the table, just to emphasize the point. “This is just between us.”

“If you tell anyone, I’ll just deny it.”

I feel my pulse quicken. “I understand.”

“And if someone is taping this, I’m just telling a story to appease a crazy killer who is threatening me with a gun.”

I nod encouragingly.

Hilde Winslow looks up at me and meets my eye. “I’ve imagined this moment for a long time,” she says. “You standing in front of me, me confessing the truth.”

She takes a deep breath. I hold mine, afraid that even the slightest movement on my part will break this spell.

“First off, I justified what I did because I thought my testimony wouldn’t matter. You would have been convicted anyway—I was icing on the cake. That’s what I told myself. I also genuinely believed you’d committed the murder. That was part of the sales pitch—I was helping put away a killer. And do you want to know the truth, David?”

I nod.

“I still think you did it. The evidence against you was overwhelming. That helps me sleep at night. The knowledge—the certainty—that you’d done it. But that doesn’t really let me off the hook, does it? I was a philosophy professor at Boston U. Did you know that?”

I did know that. My attorneys dug deep into her background, looking for something that we could use on cross-examination. I knew that she’d been widowed when she was sixty, that she had three children, all married, and four grandsons.

“So I have studied all the ‘ends justifying the means’ type rationales. I did that here too, trying to defend my actions, but there is no way around the fact that my testimony sullied the trial. Worse, I sullied how I saw myself.”

Her phone buzzes then. She looks up at me. I nod that it’s okay to check it.

“No caller ID,” she says.

“Don’t answer it.”

“Okay.”

“You were saying?”

“It was my daughter-in-law. Ellen. She’s a physician in Revere. An MD.”

I remember this from the file. “She’s married to your oldest son, Marty.”

“Yes.”

“What about her?”

“She had—probably still has—a gambling problem. A chronic one. I didn’t know that at the time. She’s a respectable ob-gyn. Delivered all my friends’ grandchildren. Marty, I guess he tried everything. Gamblers Anonymous. Shrinks, therapy, controlling her access to money. But you know how it is with addictions. You’ll find a way. Ellen did. She got in deep. Too deep to get out of. Hundreds of thousands. That’s what they told me on the phone. Ellen was way behind in the money she owed, but she could get out from under—if I did them a small favor.”

She rubs her face and closes her eyes. Again I stay still.

“You want to know why I testified against you. That’s why. This man, he visits me. He is very polite. Nice manners. Big smile. But his eyes, I mean, they were black. Dead. You know the type?”

I nod.

“He also has poliosis.”

“Poliosis?”

She pointed to the middle of her head. “A white forelock. Dark black hair with a white streak right in the middle.”

I freeze.

“Anyway, this man, he tells me the situation with Ellen. He says I’d be doing the world a favor if I helped them. He says that you definitely did it, smashed your own child’s skull with a baseball bat, but you’re going to get off because your old man is a crooked cop and so the fix is in.”

I swallow. The white forelock. I know the man she’s talking about. “This man mentioned my father?”

“Yes. By name. Lenny Burroughs. He says that’s why they need me. To help assure justice is done. If I help them with this, they’ll help Ellen. He has on expensive loafers with no socks. He lays it all out for me. Do you want to know what I told him?”

I nod.

“No. I say I’m not going to do it. Let Ellen figure a way to pay it back. That’s what I tell him. This little man, he says ‘okay, fine.’ Just like that. He doesn’t argue with me. Doesn’t make any threats. The next morning, the same little man calls me. He says in a polite tone, ‘Mrs. Winslow? Listen.’ And then…” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I hear this loud crack and then Marty starts to scream. Not Ellen. My Marty. The little man snapped my son’s middle finger like it was a pencil.”