Win (Windsor Horne Lockwood III #1)(100)

I warned you that you may disagree with some of the calls I make.

Here is one.

Mrs. Parker and Mr. Rowan have waited nearly fifty years to learn the truth. I know the truth. I promised that I would tell them the truth.

And so I do.

I don’t go into gruesome detail, and mercifully they don’t ask.

When I finish, Mrs. Parker takes my hand in hers.

“Thank you.”

I nod. We sit there. They cry for a bit. Then I make my excuses and leave.

They’d wanted to know who killed their children.

Here again I am making a call you may not like.

I tell them it was Vanessa Hogan.

As I leave the assisted living village, I take out my phone and hit the send button on my email. I am emailing an audio file to PT. Of course, I realized that Vanessa Hogan might ask for my phone in order to confess—and of course, I carry a spare.

I cut out the opening—my words about my own unlawful acts—but the FBI will have her full confession on tape. Vanessa Hogan crossed the line in my view. You hear me say this, and you think me a hypocrite. You counter about my “night tours” and my beating of Teddy “Big T” Lyons in the beginning of this tale. Teddy did me no harm. On the other hand, Vanessa Hogan’s victims—Billy Rowan and Edie Parker—were responsible for the death of Vanessa Hogan’s only son.

I understand that. None of these are easy calls.

We live in the grays.

But Billy Rowan and Edie Parker were young with no record. They didn’t throw the explosives. They were remorseful and willing to surrender. They would not have continued to kill and harm people. Should Vanessa Hogan pay for what she did?

I’ll leave that to the courts.

Am I threading too thin a needle again?

Well, we aren’t done yet.

*



My jet awaits. We fly back out to St. Louis. When we land, I take the drive myself. The address is already in my phone navigation. I arrive at the farm and park on the road. I trek through the high grass. There are signs warning me about trespassing. I don’t much care. The farm has been in the Sinclair family for three generations. The Reverend was born in that farmhouse. But I am more interested in the caretaker.

I didn’t buy Reverend Calvin Sinclair’s reasons for not letting the world know who “R.L.” was once Arlo Sugarman died. He could say he had just learned his identity. There was no real danger in the truth anymore. The Reverend was also so ready for my arrival at his church, and thus I suspected that he had been warned, which, it turns out, he had been. Elena Randolph had called him within minutes of our confrontation.

With all that in mind, I did, as I told PT, have my people call not just the crematorium St. Timothy’s normally uses but all the local ones. I also had them check the county death records. In both cases, they found nothing matching anyone with the initials RL who died on June 15, 2011. In fact, there were no male deaths matching Arlo Sugarman’s description—age and height anyway—at all during that time.

When I walk up through the farm’s gate, I turn right. A man steps into view. He looks to be his age—sixty-six years old—with a shaved head. He is also the right height.

“Can I help you?” the man asks.

I can still hear the slightest hint of a Brooklyn accent.

Arlo Sugarman didn’t show up the night they tried to firebomb the Freedom Hall because he didn’t believe in that kind of destruction. He ended up caught up in something beyond his control and spent his life on the run. If I told PT the truth, would he have wanted to take Arlo in and bring him to trial? Or would he have seen it the way I do?

I don’t know. It isn’t PT’s call anyway. It’s mine.

“It isn’t over,” I tell him. “You need to run again.”

“Pardon?”

The back door of the farmhouse slams open. Calvin Sinclair hurries out. When he sees me, he starts to rush, obviously concerned by my intrusion, but the man with the Brooklyn accent puts up his palm to stop him.

“I figured out you’re still alive,” I say. “Someone else could too.”

The man looks as though he’s about to make denials or arguments, but instead he nods at me and says, “Thank you.”

My gaze moves to Calvin Sinclair, then back to Arlo Sugarman. I almost ask what they are going to do now. But I don’t. I have done my part. The rest is up to them. I turn and head back down the hill.

I still have one more stop to make.

*



As I pull off Hickory Place and up the long driveway, I see the old baronial mansion in the distance. I am back in New Jersey. Ema lives here with her movie star mother, Angelica Wyatt. I soon spot them both waiting for me by the front door.

I think by now you’ve guessed that I’ve told no one about Cousin Patricia. She gunned down a monster—a monster, per my own justification with Teddy “Big T” Lyons, who would have continued to maim and kill. There is no reason for Cousin Patricia, who ended up doing so much good, to pay any sort of price for that. I admit that I may be slightly biased because this decision also neatly fits into both my personal narrative and my own self-interest.

I don’t want my father and my family scandalized.

But regardless, I think this decision is just. You may disagree. Too bad.

When I park and get out of the car, Ema runs from the door to greet me. She doesn’t break stride as she wraps her arms around me, holding me tight, and I feel something in my chest crack open.