Against The Odds (Anna Dawson #1) (30 page)

“I told you about the day that picture was taken, yes?”

I nodded. “Rachael had been away, taking care of her dying mother in New York for a long time. You guys went to see Ben at the casino the day after she got back. The three of you reunited.”

He snorted. “Reunited, bah! I was sending Ben a message that day. That Rachael was mine. Would always be mine. That she’d come back to me. For me.”

I waited. This is what the last few weeks boiled down to. The fury in his eyes was raging.

“She was away for months, yes. But her mother wasn’t ill. That woman lived for another twenty years—outlived Rachael by years.”

“Then, where was she for all that time?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“She was having a baby. A bastard.”

I sucked in a breath. “Ben’s?”

He nodded, tears welling up in his eyes. He bristled, pulled himself together. He was on an emotional roller coaster, and the instability of that alarmed me. “Rachael and I had been married fifteen years. No babies. I suspected that maybe I was sterile. I’d had the mumps as a child. Back then, sometimes…”

I nodded, waited, mesmerized. And scared to death of the gun he held. He was telling me more secrets now. Would it be more reasons not to let me live?

“I should have said something before we got married, I know Rachael wanted lots of babies…but I wanted her so badly…had loved her the moment I met her.”
 

“You couldn’t have been sure, Saul. Surely they didn’t have the tests to know that kind of stuff back then.” Despite everything he’d done, and that he probably would try to kill me before this was over, Saul was my friend, and he was in pain.

He shrugged. “If they did, we didn’t know about them. If you didn’t have children back then, it was just God’s way.”

“But then Rachael got pregnant,” I led for him.

A look of bliss came over him. “Oh, that was a joyous day. We’d waited so long, thought it was not going to happen. Oh, how we celebrated.”

“And then?”

The bliss left, replaced by sorrow. “I started thinking about it too much.” He sighed. “Oh Hannah, if I could go back, that is the one thing I would change. I would have kept my mouth shut, raised and loved that baby. So many lives would be different today if I only had.”

“So, you asked Rachael about it? That must have gone over well.”

“All I had to say was how blessed we were that after all theses years a miracle had happened. She broke out sobbing. Sobbing, Hannah. My beautiful Rachael in so much pain. I could have cut out my tongue.

“She confessed that she and Ben had been lovers. Not long, not often, she said. And she’d ended it. But there was no doubt that the baby was his.”

“Oh, Saul, I’m so sorry,” I said, and I meant it. I was sorry for Saul. And Rachael, because I believe she probably loved two men. And for Ben who was in love with his best friend’s wife. Nobody could win.

And everybody had lost.

“The rage…the rage that overcame me, Hannah. I’m not proud of the way I handled it,” he said softly.

As opposed to how he was handling things now? I kept still.

“I wanted her to get rid of it. She said she’d leave me first…that she’d go away and I’d never see her again. I couldn’t bear that. But I couldn’t raise Ben’s child either. Knowing every time I looked at the child that I’d be reminded of their betrayal.”

I didn’t offer up the option of Rachael leaving Saul for Ben. Either it wasn’t discussed, or it was, but Saul wasn’t going to tell me about it.
 
Apparently she’d loved Saul, had wanted to stay with him.
 

Only questions a woman long since dead could answer.

“So, we compromised. She’d have the baby, but give it up for adoption. We were able to find a place that would allow us to know about the baby. Where he lived, how he was doing, even pictures every now and then. This was before open adoptions, so Rachael felt fortunate.”

“But she gave up the baby she wanted so badly?”

He sighed. “I used her guilt over her affair with Ben. It was…I was…I believe that’s what killed her so early. The guilt. First from being with Ben, and then from giving up the baby. She died not too long after the baby turned five. Heart disease the doctors said.
Broken
heart, I said.”

“And Ben never knew? She never told him?”

A small smile played across his face. “No. That was part of our deal. I would agree to her keeping in touch about the baby if she swore never to tell Ben. That was what kept me going. Ben had loved my wife, but I knew about his child, something he would never know about.”

“Jesus, Saul,” I whispered.

“Yes, Hannah, that is why Ben must die—to avenge my Rachael.”

“Saul, that had to be close to forty years ago.”

“And I thought about it every day of those forty years,” he said with what seemed like validation in his voice. “And then about a year ago…when I learned…” His voice trailed off.

I briefly wondered if Saul had entered into some kind of dementia? He seemed sharp as a tack, but for something to come to such a boil after forty-years…

I eyed the gun again.

“You know what they say, Hannah.”

“What, Saul?”

“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”

“B
ut Danny, Saul. Danny.” My voice cracked thinking of poor Danny dying at the hand of his friend. For the only reason of deflecting guilt off of him and trying to make it look like the entire Corporation was targeted.
 
“You shot him point blank. You’d do that to set up a ruse?”

Saul’s shoulders sagged. “Ah, Danny. What you don’t know, Hannah darling, what nobody knows is that Danny was already a dead man.”

“What?”

He took a deep breath, preparing for a painful story, I could tell. “Danny came to me a few days before that day at the Sourdough…the day Jimmy brought the magazine?”

I nodded, remembering the day. I’d been so proud of my boys.

“Danny came to me and told me he was dying. Brain cancer. Doctors told him he only had a few months. And it wasn’t going to be pretty. Painful. But he was willing to deal with the pain, Danny was. But he didn’t want that burden for Moira.”

My hands came to my face, startling Saul, but he relaxed when he saw it was just emotion driving me. “Oh, poor Danny.”

“He told me he wanted to kill himself. Have it done with. Clean, neat. No lingering. But he didn’t want Moira to know he’d killed himself. And of course there was the insurance to consider…”

“He asked you to kill him.”

He nodded. “I told him no, of course. I could never do that to someone I loved like Danny.”

I scoffed at that. “Danny had never lain with my wife,” he retorted. “Anyway, he begged me. Told me he’d hire someone to do it if I didn’t, but wanted someone he trusted to handle it.”

“And so much cheaper,” I added, the disgust in my voice.

“Don’t judge, Hannah. Moira was the light of Danny’s life. They were happy together for over fifty years. He wanted to spare her, and make sure she was provided for.”

“I know,” I said. And I did know how much Danny doted on Moira. How it would kill a proud man like Danny to deteriorate in front of the woman he loved, to have to be nursed by her for God knew how long. Given the same circumstances, I’m not sure I wouldn’t take the same route Danny had chosen.

“So, you changed your mind, obviously.”

“The day that article came out I started thinking. That one quote kept jumping out at me and I thought about how miffed the person in Pittsburgh would be when he read that and I felt bad that I’d even said anything. But it stayed with me…”

“And became your false motive.”

He nodded. “Danny would die first. It would be as he wished. I went to him and we worked it all out; the deserted parking lot, only one car, point blank so there’d be no mistakes.” His voice cracked. “Oh Hannah, it was awful. But it was what he wanted. And he was my friend.”

I waited while he pulled himself together. I wanted to buy time, and I also wanted to hear this story as Saul let it unfold.

“But it got me to thinking about endings. I’m eighty-two years old. How much longer do I have? Could I go to my grave with never having hurt Ben the way he hurt Rachael and I?

“So, if I had to do something so horrible to my friend, I said to myself, then I was going to get something out of it too.”

“Finishing it with Ben.”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“But that first night, the police suspected you guys, brought you all in.”

“That’s why another member had to be a target quickly, to shake suspicion off of us before they got as far as following us or getting warrants.” He nodded his head toward the bathroom where the garbage bag sat. “I couldn’t have them finding the Terrible Towels or the gun that killed Danny, but I still needed them.”

“So, you shot Gus? Jesus, Saul, he could have died.”

He shook his head. “I shot
at
Gus. I had no intention of hitting him. I was going to shoot near him, leave the Towel in the bush where I shot from and let the police think I’d missed.” He looked over my head, lost in his own thoughts. “Ben would be next, and I wouldn’t miss then.”

“But you did shoot Gus,” I pointed out.

“He moved at the last minute. He’d gotten his mail and dropped a letter. He was just entering his door and I was shooting low, to the flowerpots next to the door, when he realized he’d dropped some of his mail. He moved, and…”

“And you shot his leg.”

He nodded. “Even then I didn’t think it was so bad. It added weight to the whole thing, that this guy from Pittsburgh wasn’t going to stop with just one member of The Corporation. I didn’t know until that doctor talked to us in the hospital how close it had been, that the bullet had almost hit an artery.”

I remembered Saul being overcome with emotion when the doctor had told us that Gus was going to be all right. I thought at the time that it was just the same relief that all of us were feeling. And it was relief, but mixed with shock and grief over how close he’d coming to killing a friend.

One that wasn’t dying of brain cancer.

“So, you shot Gus, left another Terrible Towel, and the investigation turned to the big loser—or losers—in Pittsburgh.”

“It was supposed to, but I had a feeling your detective wouldn’t leave it at that.”

I didn’t bother pointing out that Jack wasn’t
my
detective any more—if he ever was. Saul was right though; Jack had never completely given up on the possibility that the shooter was someone closer. A theory that had infuriated me at the time.

A theory I should have paid closer attention to.

“So,” Saul continued. “I knew I’d have to move quickly. You asking me to stay here, under the same roof as Ben, was a Godsend.”

“Glad to be of help.”

He snorted, then a look of anger washed over him. “And it was perfect. That day. I was in my room.” He pointed to the sliding glass door that faced the outside—not the patio side. There was one on the other side of the bedroom as well, that faced the patio. “I went around the side, the patrol car couldn’t see me from that angle, and of course it was dark. I went to the woods, I was going to wait until Ben went to sleep and slip into his room—I’d unlocked his patio door earlier in the day.
 

“I would tell Ben about the baby—his baby. One that had lived a life never knowing his father. And then I’d end it.

“But then he came out onto the patio, turned on the outside lights. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted—I wanted him to hurt—but it had been so hard to find an opportunity that I knew I had to do it while I had the chance” he whispered with reverence, and again I wondered about Saul’s stability.
 

Then his voice turned harsh. “And then he had to go and trip and fall.”

“Thank God for crowded patio furniture and walkers,” I said earning a glower. Not what you want from a man holding a gun on you.

His anger was rising and I tried to turn him back to his mastermind plan—he seemed happy to talk about that.

“How was this all going to end, Saul? If I hadn’t come back here tonight what was the plan?”

He shrugged. “I wasn’t going to stop until it was finished, but it was getting harder to find opportunities since Jack moved in here. It was important to keep the threat real. I was going to stage an attempt on me this evening.”

“And then?”

“Sooner or later there’d be a time to get to Ben alone.”

“And after that? When you had…hurt…Ben? It just stops?”

“It stops. The police make of that what they want.”

“And the fact that Jimmy was never targeted? Doesn’t that make him look like a suspect? Or was that the whole idea?”

“It wasn’t the original intention, but if it worked out that way…”

“Oh, Saul.”

“What? They wouldn’t be able to prove anything. He didn’t
do
anything.”

“So, this is all about timing? You’ve been seeking revenge on Ben for forty years, and all the stars just aligned for you now?”