The Last Invitation (33)
A second file went on top of the first. “Damon Scott. A politician and slum landlord who evaded criminal prosecution even after two of his tenants died when a poorly maintained balcony collapsed. One month after that he died in a fall off the rooftop deck of his Georgetown home. His wife insisted an accidental fall was impossible due to the railing. As soon as she spoke up, criminal charges were filed against her. Those were later dropped when she agreed to the medical examiner’s findings about her husband’s death.”
She read about that strange fall. “Okay.”
“Need more?” He stacked a third file on the pile. “Richard Kellerman, pediatrician accused of molesting his patients. Children. He drowned in the Potomac even though he hated water and didn’t have a boat.” Rob reached into his bag and brought out the files he previously shoved away. “Amos Prince, another doctor accused of molestation, but this one by his daughters.”
The facts made Gabby sick. “I can’t—”
“Leonard Waters. Kane Long. Bart Thomas. Are you seeing the pattern?”
The long list of names sounded compelling. Again, not evidence of a conspiracy, but she was tempted to sort through those files and see what he and Tami had compiled.
Still, one of them had to be rational and it looked like she’d won that prize. “People die, Rob. Accidents are horrible, but they happen.”
“Do you think I want to believe this? I have lost everything. Don’t you get that?” His voice rose until a few people in the coffee shop glanced his way. He ignored the stares but lowered his voice. “I sat with her, watched her while machines pumped air into her broken body. Argued with the doctors for more time, but I wasn’t officially family. Not yet. I didn’t get to make the decision to give up on her.”
Gabby ached for him. For Tami. But she tried to separate out that empathy and heartache from reality. “Is it possible . . . Could you be too close to this?”
“Maybe. Probably.” He exhaled. “But what choice do I have? This was Tami’s legacy. If I’m right, she literally gave her life to find out the truth. I owe it to her to follow this to the end.”
The haunting sound of his voice pulled at Gabby. “Even though you lost your job and your reputation?”
“Tami was worth more than all of that.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes. Gabby skimmed her fingertips over the file in front of her, wanting both to open it and to walk away. Not knowing gave her an odd sort of power. It shielded her, let her wallow in possible ignorance and not take a stand. She could pretend to be noble without ever risking a failed test.
Rob’s voice cut across the quiet stretching between them. “These men, by paying hush money or falling back on their positions, got away with the unthinkable. They weren’t held accountable by the legal system. In the age of supposed cancel culture, they didn’t lose anything in the way of reputation or serious cash. Then they died.”
After a quick glance around to make sure no one was watching this little scene, she tried to reason with him. “Say you’re right. Say someone is taking the law into their own hands and deciding judgment, why assume it’s a group?”
“Wouldn’t it have to be? This type of concerted effort would take serious planning as well as access to forensics, weapons. They would need the connections. People who would look the other way. Brains and money. Even more important, they’d need the will and ability to tamper with evidence and make it disappear. Mess with cars and drugs. Create or destroy forensics.”
“That’s daunting.” Impossible, really. She tried to think of even bigger words to describe the unlikelihood of that sort of massive covert undertaking.
“But a certain type of crowd does have access to all those things.” He tapped one final file: a thick one that he placed on top of the others. “Here are copies of all of Tami’s notes. It shows how she put the pieces together and why she discounted some deaths as actual accidents or suicides and not others.”
Okay, that didn’t sound completely irrational, which scared her a bit. “But why was Baines on this covert group’s hit list?”
He shrugged. “I think you’d know the answer to that better than I would.”
Secrets. The word flashed in her mind, and she concentrated on blinking it away. “Who would do this? The risk is huge, both in getting caught and in having someone else from the group talk. There are too many variables, and people have too little discipline for this to actually work.”
She talked herself into a maybe then right back out again. In her experience, secrets like this leaked out. People couldn’t sit on volatile information . . . except maybe her. But the idea that a group of people, all working in tandem, would be able to keep the ruse up, keep killing, and no one would talk or mess up? Nope. Humans didn’t work like that.
“I thought that, too.” Rob leaned forward. “Then I started digging. There are names that show up more than once in these cases. Prosecutors. Police. Judges. Lawyers.”
“Yeah, now I know you’re wrong. I went to law school. I know lawyers. You’re talking about a competitive crowd that craves the spotlight. They’d never pull off secretive and trusting, even in a small group. They’d be too busy fighting to take credit.” Which was one of the reasons she got the degree then never used it. A legal career wasn’t for her, not after she saw what some of her classmates were willing to do to succeed.