A Perfect Life (31 page)

CHAPTER 49

Scott Thomas couldn't get warm.

Heated air hissed from a vent in the ceiling, but the concrete floor and gray walls radiated the wet-cold of March in New England. Even the metal chair seemed to push cold into his aching joints. The shoulder hurt. He'd been injured pretty badly in wrestling, but this was something else. The doctors in North Carolina had said that, sooner or later, he'd be looking at an operation, and Scott wondered if prison docs were like the ones in the movies—either noble and ill-equipped or sadistic and stupid.

The door opened and Assistant District Attorney Anne Foucher stepped into the interrogation room. She didn't speak. She simply spread out six stacks of papers on the table between them and then eased into a chair. Minutes passed before she spoke.

“You were a real ass at our first meeting, Dr. Thomas.”

“Mr. or Scott. I'm not a doctor.”

She looked up. “Right. In any event, you made me about as mad as . . . Well, let's just say that I don't usually let suspects get to me. But you—I have to give you credit, Scott. You really shoved a bug up . . . Sorry, I'm working on my language.” Scott noticed for the first time that ADA Foucher had had something expensive done to her hair. And something else. She still wore a suit, but it was soft and forest green. Even her skin seemed to glow. Overall, the woman just looked . . . healthier. Foucher watched his eyes. “Don't flatter yourself. I had let myself go. You were just the first person rude enough to point it out. That doesn't make you what you said right or anything. It just proves that even a jerk can teach you something if you can bear his presence.”

“You attacked my friend. You were nasty and condescending. I responded in kind.”

“Seemed pretty unkind to me, but . . . whatever. Let's just say you gave me a reason to become personally interested in your case. Unfortunately, the harder I tried to bury you, the more complicated things got. You see, Scott, we have computer people, too. It was easy enough to figure out what you'd been doing messing around in the hospital's computer system.” She picked up a stack of e-mails. “How long did it take you to break the code?”

“Natalie figured it out.”

“Um. We got that right off. But it took a while to trace the IP address of the sender to a hacker named Darryl Simmons. After that, it was simple to see that this Simmons had been communicating through the hospital's e-mail system with Kate Billings, Phillip Reynolds, and Charles Hunter.”

“Hunter?”

“Oh.” Foucher grinned. “You didn't know that, did you? Hunter was assigned a temporary hospital e-mail address when he was in the process of designing the new children's wing. Apparently, he held on to it.”

“It wasn't on anybody's official list.”

“Right.” Foucher pushed back from the table and crossed one knee over the other. “Tennessee Bureau of Investigation nabbed Simmons in some flea-bitten motel in Memphis. Mr. Simmons—”

“Click.”

“Right. Click seems to be missing a hand. A recent loss. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?”

Scott's eyes never left hers. “No. I wouldn't.”

“Good.” She laced her fingers together in her lap. “The night Dr. Reynolds got shot outside the hospital? Were you supposed to be meeting him there?”

“No. Not him. I got a message that Kate wanted to meet me outside the hospital parking deck. I guess Reynolds got the same message.”

“Right. The shots came from a second deck across the street.”

Scott's heart began to pound. “If you know all this, what are you charging me with?”

Anne Foucher grinned. “Charles Hunter is dead. We've got Click in custody, and, sooner or later, we'll find Kate Billings, if Click hasn't already left her in a dumpster somewhere. But as for you . . . Well, being a sap and a sometimes horse's ass aren't really against the law in this state.”

Scott got to his feet. “So that's it?” The room seemed to tilt, and he couldn't get his breath. “I can just go back to school like none of this ever happened?”

She grimaced. “Of course, we notified the graduate school. Unfortunately”—Foucher pressed her lips together—“they do not want you back.”

His breathing slowed to normal as something more—much more—than relief settled over him. He was surprised by his reaction. The weight of the world seemed to have been lifted from his . . . the word that came to mind was “soul.” Scott smiled. There was a lightness he hadn't felt since he was a child. “I always hated hospitals.”

She just looked at him.

“So,” he said, “for me, not going to jail is as good as it's going to get.”

“Sorry, but that's about size of it.” Foucher gathered up her papers and tucked them inside a manila folder. “Ms. Friedman is waiting for you downstairs. That's something you didn't have before.” She got to her feet. “Something that might keep you from
ever
working fourteen hours a day, walking around some bullshit office with a sour expression and frayed cuffs.” The directness of her comments made Foucher blush. It was a surprisingly attractive sight. “There's, ah, something else you should know. Your friend Natalie made a deal with the Boston PD to monitor your movements. It's one of the reasons they let you and her go when you were in custody.” Scott felt his heart sink. Foucher saw the hurt in his eyes. “She never did it, Scott. Never. All Natalie ever did was call the police from New York and tell them to forget the deal. I think her exact words were along the lines of telling our Lieutenant Cedris to go fuck himself.” She examined his face. “She was completely faithful to you. Remember that. And remember that frightened people—people who've never even thought of being arrested—do and say things under intense pressure that they don't really mean. Look, Scott. Find another school next year if having a PhD is what you want. But, for now, take some time off. Take Natalie to the Bahamas. Rent a sailboat. Go see your mother.”

His face flushed. “My mother's dead.”

ADA Foucher dropped her folder on the table and flipped it open. Thumbing through various reports, she found a fax from a detective with the Homewood, Alabama, Police Department.

Scott asked, “What is it?”

Foucher held up a palm while she finished reading. Then she placed the report back into the folder and closed it. “I'm sorry, Scott. I didn't . . . understand about your mother.”

As Anne Foucher stopped to hold the door for Scott, he had to ask. “Are you saying that if I'd never gone to North Carolina, you'd have figured all this out anyhow?”

“Truth?” The assistant DA chuckled. “We'd have probably never gotten Charles Hunter. Whether your presence down there brought things to a head between him and the other
two . . . Who knows? Maybe he'd be dead even if you'd never gone near him. Or maybe”—she looked hard into Scott's eyes—“Hunter just finally tried to manipulate the
wrong person
.”

Scott thought back on the strange look on Bobby's misshapen face as he sat in the Land Cruiser that last day on the island. “Did you kill them?” he'd asked. Bobby had made that almost smile. “You could say that.”

Unbelievable.

Scott had thought then that Hunter had manipulated his brother into committing a double murder. Now, for the first time, he understood that maybe he was not the smarter of the Thomas brothers.

CHAPTER 50

They sat in the downstairs café at the Madison Hotel. Across the teeming street, the grass in Central Park hinted at the deep green color to come. Trees showed wisps of bright new growth. Across the table, Cannonball sat next to Natalie, who seemed enthralled by the old bluesman.

“Think I finally earned my money.” The old man sounded tired, but there was something like satisfaction in his voice. “I've got some good news for you.” He paused, still conflicted about what he was about to say, or, more to the point, what he was not going to say. “We got an agreement with John Pastings at the bank. They're gonna replace all the money that Click and his bunch stole outta your account. Not only that . . .”

Scott hunched forward. “Why the hell would the bank do that?”

Cannonball lied. “Hell, boy. It was the bank's fault. Lettin' somebody with no rights just dip a hand into your money . . . they can't do that. Once I got Mr. Pastings pinned down, hell, there wasn't much else he could do.”

Something felt wrong. “That's great, but what about the fire and the cops down there reopening the investigation?”

“I don't know what Pastings thought he was up to. Truth is, Doc . . . And I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your daddy was mixed up in some business deals that went bad. Everybody down there has known for a long time that he set fire to his own house—meaning all the time to get you and Bobby and your momma out. Everybody agrees on that, too.” Cannonball paused. “Your daddy was a good man, Scott. But he was weak, and he messed up. Messed up about as bad as a man can, but there wasn't any evil in it toward you and your family.” Cannonball took a sip of iced tea. “They don't make this right once you get outta the South.” He smiled, but there was sadness. “What you got to live with is a fuck-up for a father. He wasn't no murderer, though. Just got in over his head and messed up everything. Can you live with that, Doc?”

Scott leaned back in his chair, a blank expression on his face. “I guess I'm going to have to.”

Cannonball sighed. “Worse things in the world than not having a family. Lots of folks be glad to give theirs away.”

Scott looked over at Natalie as he spoke to Cannonball. “So that's it? I've got my money back, and the authorities down there don't suspect me of anything.”

A picture of Nancy Thomas—sitting in that wicker rocker with her hideous scars hidden beneath twisted turban and flowing dashiki—floated into Cannonball's mind, and he felt a wave of nausea wash over him. “That's it. Only you got a little more money than Mr. Pastings said. There was another account or somethin'.” Cannonball didn't explain that the other account materialized after three hours of arm-twisting in Pastings's office. “By the time it's all worked out, you're gonna have a solid hundred grand to finish up your schoolwork. That includes what you took out just here recently, though.”

Natalie smiled. “We're rich.”

“
We,
huh?” Scott turned back to Cannonball. “I don't know how to thank you.”

“You paid me for this, remember? We're good, you and me.” He scratched at salt-and-pepper curls. The old bluesman was spinning a web of half-truths and it was wearing on him.

The waiter placed their orders on the table. When they were alone again, Scott asked, “Anything else?”

“Nope.” The old bluesman sighed. Without thinking, he reached up to finger a thick document in his inside coat pocket, and he immediately felt better.

He and Pastings had worked on the document for most of one night.

Pastings had admitted nothing in writing—not that he had been Robert Thomas's partner in the embezzlement scheme, not that he'd screwed over his partner along with everyone else, not that he'd paid for Scott's education out of ill-gotten funds, and not even that he'd spearheaded the funds drive that had rebuilt Nancy Thomas's home. But the banker did agree, in writing, to keep up payments on Nancy's house, her nurse, and all other expenses for as long as Nancy Thomas lived.

Cannonball still did not know whether Pastings's acts of generosity toward the Thomas family had been born of fear, guilt, or kindness. All Cannonball Walker knew was that John Pastings had been the lesser of two fuck-ups fifteen years ago and he'd been paying for it ever since.

But that wasn't true, either. Cannonball knew one other thing—that poor, scarred, crazy Nancy Thomas still kept a thick stack of love letters tied with pink satin ribbon. The insane little woman was damned proud of those letters: she'd showed them happily after Cannonball had sung blues and gospel and picked his old guitar.

Mixed together, as if the two men had been interchangeable, were letters from both Robert Thomas and John Pastings. Cannonball had read just enough to understand that Nancy Thomas had been a beauty and that Robert Thomas and John Pastings had loved her with equal and extraordinary intensity.

As his mind returned to the present, Cannonball picked up a knife and fork and cut a bite of steak. Scott excused himself from the table, and the old man turned to Natalie. “You in love with that boy?”

Her face colored. “Well . . . yeah, I guess I am.”

He chewed his steak, swallowed, and drank some tea. “He don't ever need to go back to Birmingham. Don't tell him I said it. Just make sure it doesn't happen.” He saw alarm in her face. “It ain't like he's gonna be arrested or anything. It'd just . . . I think it'd break his heart. We clear on that?”

“We're clear.” There were tears in her eyes.

He nodded and cut more steak. Cannonball's mind was still back in Birmingham. He remembered, when it was all over, standing in Pastings's paneled executive office, studying the banker's Hitchcockian profile—trying to imagine that rotund man as the impetuous, passionate young lover who had romped with Robert Thomas's beautiful young wife and then written torrid letters that remained, fifteen years later, among his conquest's greatest treasures.

He couldn't see it.

Scott came back to the table. He glanced at Natalie. “What's the matter with you? You look like your puppy died.”

Cannonball grinned. “Woman says she's in love with you.” The old man looked at Scott. “You figured out which body chemicals account for a beautiful woman lovin' a nerd like you?”

Scott laughed. He thought back on what Natalie and Cannonball, even Bobby, had done for him. Then mental images of Kate and Click, Charles and Patricia Hunter, Peter Budzik and Cindy Travers filled his mind, and his smile faded. Scott glanced up at Cannonball and saw the old man's eyes fill with hurt.

Scott cleared his throat. “You know what I'm feeling, don't you?”

“Some of it.”

Scott looked at Natalie and turned back to study the lines and years that marked Cannonball Walker's face. “It's complicated.”

Cannonball started eating again. “That's all I been tryin' to tell you, boy. That's all I been tryin' to tell you.”

Inside a Boston skyscraper designed by her father, ten-year-old Sarah Hunter sat on a tufted leather sofa. Carol Petring reached over to straighten Sarah's dark blue dress. “Honey, this has got to be perfect. Your father named me as your guardian in his will, but . . .” She couldn't tell the child that everything her father had ever done was being picked apart by prosecutors and judges. “Just remember what I told you to say, Sarah. When this is over, we can go back to Spinnaker Island. We'll build everything your father and I dreamed about.”

Sarah pushed a suffocating mass of hurt down deep in her stomach. She sat up straight and reviewed her lines in her head. Carol had said “Be perfect.” It was the only way she would get to stay with Carol, and, Sarah was convinced, it was the only way to finally to stop it.

First her mother had died. Then Trey. Then that awful Patricia. Now her father was gone, too, and Carol was the only one left who loved her. Sarah swallowed hard and bit down on her lip. She wasn't sure why everyone around her always died. She'd never even heard of something like that happening to anyone else. All she knew was that she had loved them all—all except Patricia. Clearly, she'd done something wrong. Sarah didn't understand what, exactly. But there had to be something.

Carol reached over to squeeze Sarah's hand. Sarah squeezed back briefly, then pulled away and folded both hands in her lap. She straightened her spine. “I'll be perfect, Carol. Don't worry. From now on I promise to be perfect.”