Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(56)

He held his hands up. “I had zero idea until I saw the new will. I thought it was going to the state.”

“That is true, he did not know!” Larch said. “Kay — Mrs. Willingham — she swore me to secrecy in the letter. She said she’d had another change of heart about the land and thought her only living relative should decide what to do with the plantation, with the bulk of her estate going to charity.”

Carson said, “Gentlemen, I know this has to look funky.”

“In the extreme,” I said. “How long ago was this?”

“Eighteen months?” Larch said.

“And you never told Mr. Carson?” Mahoney asked her, sounding skeptical.

“I take my job seriously. I said nothing to anyone about any of the changes.”

“Until when?”

“Excuse me?”

“When did you tell Mr. Carson about his inheritance?”

“Later on the day I heard she died, after I notified the court clerk and confirmed that probate was duly sealed per her wishes. I walked into Rob’s office to express my condolences. He was shaken by her death. I mean, his last living relative. Then I told him about the inheritance.”

I said, “And what was Mr. Carson’s response?”

“He was so shocked he almost missed his chair sitting down, and then he kept looking at the will to make sure I was right.”

“I told you I didn’t believe it,” Carson said. “I still don’t.”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You move pretty fast, then.”

“How’s that?”

“We saw all the timber up there already marked for logging.”

He held up his hands. “That was Kay’s decision over a year ago.”

“Also true,” Larch said. “She needed to raise cash for reasons that were not made clear to me. I have the documents authorizing the timber sale with her signature notarized on all of them.”

“Where will the proceeds of that sale go now?” I asked.

“To the charities stipulated in the will, I suppose,” Carson said. “Someone smarter than me will have to figure that out.”

“We’d like to see those documents,” Mahoney said.

“You don’t believe us?” Carson said.

“Trust but verify, Counselor. Especially since someone took a shot at us near that cove last evening and a truck ran us off the road from the plantation. The government frowns on people trying to kill federal agents twice in one day.”

“Whoa, wait a second there, Special Agent Mahoney,” Carson said, hardening. “I have no idea who the truck belonged to, but that was probably crazy Althea taking a potshot at you.”

“It looked like an African-American male,” I said. “Lean. Bald. Hunting rifle.”

He nodded. “That’s Althea Lincoln. Nutcase artist who’s taken a vow of silence for… anyway, she thinks she owns the north point of that cove, but she does not. She got Kay to sign some shaky title-transfer document when Kay was at West Briar the last time. There isn’t even an address on the document for her, which is illegal. I predict it won’t hold up in court.”

“Was Kay aware of this?”

“I doubt it. She was totally out of it on antipsychotics when she signed that thing.”

Larch said, “I found out about Ms. Lincoln’s transfer filing only last week, when probate began.”

“We’d like copies of all the documents you’ve mentioned,” Mahoney said. “It saves us all the hassle of a court order.”

Before they could answer, Mahoney’s phone began to ring and buzz with an alert. He pulled it out, stared at the screen, and said, “We’ve got the go-ahead to look at her medical files.”

Sounding discouraged, Carson said, “Whatever you find in there, please be kind to Kay. She deserves that much in death.”





CHAPTER 62





WE RENTED A NEW CAR, and as Mahoney drove us north to West Briar, I went through my notes on the conversation.

“You believe them?” Mahoney asked.

I looked up from my notes about Napoleon Howard. “Like you said, trust but verify. Kay could be fickle, and she did suffer from mental illness, but something about it just seems a little off.”

“I hear you.”

I did an internet search on the dead prison inmate and read out loud what I’d found to Mahoney while he drove. Howard was forty-nine when he died at the state penitentiary at Hunts-ville after spending more than half his life on death row. He had made multiple appeals. All were denied.

Almost thirty years prior to his death, Howard was arrested, tried, and condemned for the savage murder of twenty-three-year-old Jefferson Ward in what the state said was a drug-fueled dispute over profits. Howard had steadfastly maintained his innocence, said Ward was his best friend, his idol, and that he would never have killed him. He claimed he was being framed.

But eyewitnesses put Howard at the scene the evening of the murder, and police found blood and fingerprint evidence that put his hand on the murder weapon, a nine-inch buck knife that was used to decapitate Ward after his death.

I read out loud: “‘Due to the viciousness of the crime, J. Walter Willingham, the prosecutor assigned to the case, filed for special circumstances and sought the death penalty, which he got.’ And then after sentencing, Willingham said, ‘This punishment fits the crime. That’s the way it should be with animals like Mr. Howard.’ ”