Retribution: The Second Chances Trilogy Book Three (16 page)

“I know now that I must have heard him when he read to me,” Colin says. “Shit, I still hear him. That’s why I dug into the archives this morning. Thought it wouldn’t hurt to give another listen whilst you were busy.”

“He still inspires you.”

“Yeh, and I was gonna put that inspiration to the test till Anthony and his mates started pestering for a visit to the oasthouses.”

“How so?”

“I was thinking I might find something in the lot that touched on bearing responsibility for the death of another.”

She wants to stop him right there, insist that the responsibility is not his to bear, but she hears him out, hears him explain that what he hopes to find is not such a long shot.

“Because, you see, at the time Rayce came up with the reading scheme, it was taken for granted I’d eventually resurface wanting to blame myself for . . . her death.”

“But you didn’t, did you?”

“No. Never. It’s like the inevitability of it reached me whilst I was supposedly unreachable. But these others I can’t shake off. With David and your father it’s different, and I can’t quite ignore the other three deaths that could have me guilty by association. So maybe you can see why I wouldn’t mind having some strong sentiments to prop me up, actually.”

He relieves her of the archive; she makes the decision that will cause her heart to skip a beat at all future mention of Rayce. “I’ll help you,” she says. “Together we’ll find the right set of words.”

“What do you mean unglued?” Nate gets comfortable on the chesterfield in his study, takes grateful sips of wine after a long tedious day. “Rattled? A little addled? A lot addled? Temporary or something more serious?” he responds to Amanda’s announcement about Laurel’s current condition.

“I want to say temporary, but all things considered . . .”

“You think she’s having some kind of delayed reaction?”

“Could be.”

“Ironic when it’s Colin we were keeping an eye on.”

“Doubly ironic because it’s her concern for him that’s clouding her judgment and screwing with her common sense.”

“I’m relieved she spilled the beans to you about the way Rayce must have died.”

“I’m not. I’d just as soon not be part of that conspiracy.”

“You see that as a conspiracy?”

“Well yeah. It
is
a conspiracy, a conspiracy of silence that could land you both—land us all in jail.”

“Now don’t
you
come unglued. If I gave much chance to that happening I never would have entered into the so-called conspiracy. Come here. Bring the wine, come sit beside me.” He motions to her with his recently freed up left arm, pats a place on the sofa.

She brings the bottle of Barolo from the drinks trolley, refills his glass and ignores his other request. Returned to the chair behind his desk, she looks smaller and more determined than usual, if that’s possible.

“What if when they catch the Jakeway creep he confesses to switching coke for aspirin and planting it in Colin’s luggage?” she says.

“What if he does? Unless Laurel or you or I supply the missing link, who’s to know the chain of events? Let’s face it, Amanda, Jakeway doesn’t know he killed Rayce Vaughn and—”

“Omigod, I never thought of that. I wonder if that’s crossed Laurel’s—”

“Leave Laurel out of it for now. I was saying that Jakeway has no idea he killed Rayce, and anyone else who thinks he did has to be projecting. Unless they know what you and I and Laurel know, they’re
purely
projecting—projecting the way Brownie Yates was projecting when he first hit us with the idea.”

“And the way Emmet Hollingsworth was projecting when he got Laurel all stirred up today. Did I think to tell you it was Hollingsworth who sent her into a tizzy with his belief that Jakeway’s somehow responsible for Rayce’s death?”

“No, but I’m not surprised. Brownie will have heard that Emmet’s slated to become Colin’s next lawyer. They’ve probably talked by now. They were thick as thieves when we all were in school together and Brownie can be very convincing.”

“That’s what I told Laurel when I was trying to drum some sense into her. But back to the projection thing . . . Scotland Yard wouldn’t mount an investigation based only on some fast-talker’s projection, would they?”

“I seriously doubt it. And don’t think I haven’t given a lot of thought to that very thing—to wondering just how much concrete evidence
is
needed to initiate an official investigation—so that makes me doubly anxious to know what sparked this one. But before I start calling around I’d like to hear about the rest of your day.”

“You’ve heard the most significant part.”

“I wouldn’t call your conversation with Laurel the most significant, not if you followed through with what you said you’d be doing.”

“I did. Follow through, I mean.” She frowns a little, stares at a spot somewhere above his mended shoulder. “I sublet my apartment and brought my clothes and personal things here as promised.”

“You want to tell me which of those activities is making you avoid eye contact?”

“You know.”

“Jesus, I was hoping we were through with the crap about your thinking you shouldn’t live with me unless you contribute in some way. Simply by being here you’re contributing. Can’t you accept that? Can’t you just accept that I
want
you here?”

She’s looking at him again. Skeptically, but she is looking.

“I missed you today,” he says. “A lot. I would’ve taken you with me if there’d been something for you to do in Philadelphia. I wouldn’t have made the trip at all if courtesy wasn’t owed the other board members. Bad form to resign in absentia.”

“Then you did go through with it.”

“Yes. And that’s the last one. No more board meetings unless I convene them.” Nate sets down his wine, starts to get up.

“I’ve got it.” Amanda anticipates him and reaches for the phone. “You want to try for Agent Bell or start with Grillo?”

“Grillo.”

Detective Grillo’s evidently chowing down at one New Jersey diner or another because he’s not answering his direct line. Amanda tries his pager number and leaves an urgent request for him to call.

“You might not want to overdo the urgent thing,” Nate says.

“I’ll dial down from urgent the minute they have the Jakeway scumbag behind bars.”

“Urgent it is, then.” He helps himself to more wine, offers her some that she refuses. “How did things stand when you left off with Laurel?” he continues.

“Hard to say. On one level she’s completely in touch with what she’s obligated to do, and on another level she’s paralyzed with fear—this almost irrational fear—about how Colin will react.” Amanda takes a tiny sip of the scant amount of wine in her glass. “How do
you
think he’ll react? You know him best.”

“He’ll go off on her for shielding him, that’s guaranteed. Then it’s anyone’s guess. He may want to become the fourth member of the conspiracy once he realizes the role he played in the tragedy. Or his stronger motivation may be to clear Rayce’s name. He may want to make public that it really was an accident—that Rayce neither slipped back into drug use nor destroyed himself in a fit of despair, the way they’re saying now.”

“But you don’t think Colin will slip back—”

“Into self-imposed oblivion? Hell no. When I finally—
belatedly
—got around to making comparisons, I realized nothing that’s happened recently is anywhere near as traumatizing as the shit that rained down on him before. When I let myself imagine what went on in that truck after he caught up with Aurora . . . Jesus, what could be worse than
that
confrontation? There she was, with all signs indicating last-stage heroin use and a bad end to the pregnancy. She was way out of control—that part I don’t have to imagine. I actually saw her take a swing at him and I saw him have to reach across the truck cab and restrain her when she continued flailing at him. I saw that much, and knowing Aurora, it wasn’t difficult to imagine her flaunting the needle tracks on her neck and bragging that she’d sold the baby. She was fully capable of telling Colin the baby wasn’t his whether that was hard fact or not, and she wouldn’t have had a problem telling him she’d turned to porn when he cut off the money supply.

“Nothing that’s happened since—not even David’s murder or the attack on Laurel—can hold a candle to Colin’s final clash with Aurora for sheer debilitating potential. And don’t forget, the assault on his senses didn’t stop there. He still had to deal with the fucking deer, the other truck, and the crash that damn near killed him. I’m leaving out the very good possibility he witnessed Aurora’s beheading and it didn’t register because he was already down to his base metal. Can you come up with anything worse than that? Where would learning that he may have unknowingly played a part in Rayce’s death rank when compared to being left alone in pitch dark with a headless body while his lungs filled—”

“O-
kay
. C’mon, honey, that’s enough. You’re preaching to the choir,” Amanda cuts in.

“Wait, I’m not finished. One more thing . . . It strikes me that Colin has a powerful defense mechanism in place. He has a great deal to remain viable for, more than he’s ever had before. A wife who adores him for himself, a baby on the way, a resurrected career set to skyrocket, and once the Jakeway threat’s removed, things’ll get even better. He won’t withdraw from that.”

“Did you mention those specifics to Laurel when she swore you to secrecy?”

“I didn’t think I had to. I didn’t think it would take her this long to come to the same realization.”

“Saying she has.”

“I think we should proceed as though she has and move on. May we please?”

Amanda relents, accepts a generous portion of wine and joins him on the chesterfield. They’re making a game attempt at avoiding weighty subjects and mellowness is within reach when the phone rings. Amanda jumps to get it, Nate follows her to the desk, where she hands over the receiver and mouths Grillo’s name.

“You wanna know what livened up the Yard’s interest in the Vaughn drug death. Right?” The detective gets right to it and continues without waiting for an answer. “Remind me who it was pushing the idea of Jakeway’s involvement in the Vaughn overdose.”

“Brownell Yates, one of my sources,” Nate says.

“Yeah, that’s him, the writer guy. Anyway, that crackpot theory of his did get me thinkin’. Thinkin’ about the high quality of the coke Vaughn ingested and the high quality of the coke fed to the old guy at the nursing home. So I appealed to agent whassisname—”

“Special Agent Bell.”

“I prevailed upon his holiness to requisition a copy of the Vaughn toxicology report and once I got a look at it, my interest went straight through the roof.”

“Why is that?”

“Because traces of that acid that makes aspirin taste so bad, you know . . .”

“Acetylsalicylic acid.”

“Yeah, that’s it. According to the full lab reports from the medical examiner’s office over there in London, trace elements of that acid were found in Vaughn. Nothin’ much was ever made of it because nothin’ says Vaughn didn’t dose himself with legit meds before he took on the verboten stuff. But the fact it did show up rang all my bells and whistles because we’re talkin’ about the exact same substance that showed up in the old Chandler guy’s labs. I didn’t bother Bell with this discovery. Went straight to one of the brotherhood at Scotland Yard where, to their credit, they’re considerin’ this more than a coincidence.”

“Holy shit! You’re saying the acetylsalicylic acid found in both bodies was the same? Jesus, that means the coke came from the same source as well, and Yates’s theory wasn’t crackpot after all,” Nate says in order to keep Amanda in the loop and further Grillo’s perception that this all comes as a huge surprise.

“That’s the way it stands. The Yard’s gonna establish the coke match—that’s a sure thing, the match and them establishing it—but I wouldn’t hold my breath when they do.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it’s gonna take a lot more than the combined forces of the FBI and Scotland Yard to establish
how
Vaughn came by the stuff that killed him if it wasn’t by his own doing. That’s gonna require some breaks and some outside resources, unlike the Chandler case that was a piece of cake, relatively speakin’. There, you had an old man unable to do for himself, a sittin’ duck when it came to the willful administering of an overdose by an outside party. But Vaughn’s another story altogether. Even with this fresh info, there’s still a lotta missing pieces to that story and it’s gonna take time and superior police work to uncover ’em. So, like I said, I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

“I hadn’t planned to,” Nate says and prepares to end the call.

Grillo’s not through, however. “While I’m at it,” the tedious detective says, “I better warn you not to hold your breath about the Floss thing either. With nothin’ more to go on than your pretty little sidekick’s intuition or whatever you wanna call it, I can’t justify wasting manpower on review of that case. Not now, not when I’m already shorthanded and catchin’ no end of flack because Jakeway’s still at large. Yeah, and before I forget, the lid’s still on—one of the few things me and the Bureau agreed about—so continue to treat everything you know as privileged info. Remind your cohorts of that too. No casual talk about any aspect of this investigation or any related investigation till further notice.”