Lethal (53 page)

Honor was allowed to ride to the hospital with her, but once there, her insistence on remaining with Emily was overruled.

While she was being examined by a pediatric team, Honor and Stan waited anxiously with cups of tepid coffee he bought from a vending machine. There was an awkwardness between them that had never been present before.

Finally he said, “Honor, I owe you an apology.”

“Hardly. After what I did to your house? After leaving you bound to a chair? After letting Coburn take your ‘magic knife’?”

He gave her a quick grin, but apparently he had something he wanted to say. “You tried to explain your motivations. I didn’t listen. I dismissed them out of hand.”

“It was a lot to take in.”

“Yes, but my apology goes beyond what’s happened over the last couple of days. Ever since Eddie died,” he said uneasily, “I’ve held you in strict control. No, don’t try to deny it when we both know it’s true. I’ve been afraid that you would meet a man, fall in love, marry, and I’d be ousted from your lives. Yours and Emily’s.”

“That would never have happened, Stan,” she said gently. “You’re our family. Emily loves you. So do I.”

“Thanks for that,” he said huskily.

“I’m not just saying it. Honestly I don’t know what I would have done without your support these past two years. You’ve been there, and I’ll never be able to thank you enough for everything you’ve done for us.”

“I tend to come on a little heavy-handed.”

She smiled and said softly, “Sometimes.”

“I made some ugly remarks earlier about your personal life. I’m sorry.”

“I know it offended you to think of Coburn and me together.”

“As you said, it’s none of my—”

“No, let me finish. It’s occurred to me that Eddie knew my tattoo would be discovered only by a lover. Who else would have seen it? He trusted me to choose wisely who that man would be. Eddie knew he would have to be a man of integrity or I wouldn’t be intimate with him.”

She paused before continuing. “I loved Eddie. You know that, Stan. He’ll be enshrined in my heart until I draw my last breath. But…” She reached for his hand and squeezed it as she added, “But he can’t be enshrined in my life. I’ve got to let go and move on. So do you.”

He nodded, but possibly didn’t trust himself to speak. His eyes were suspiciously moist. Honor was grateful for his stalwart presence. She was still clasping his hand when Deputy Crawford joined them.

“Your friend, Ms. Shirah? N.O.P.D. responded to your 911. They arrived to find her alone in the house. She had a gunshot wound to the head.”

“What! Oh my God!”

He patted the air. “She underwent surgery to have the bullet removed. I spoke with a friend of hers, a man named Bonnell Wallace, who’s there with her. She’s in fair but stable condition. The surgeon told Mr. Wallace that it appeared the bullet hadn’t done any permanent damage. He was guarded, naturally, but predicted she’ll make a full recovery.”

Weak with relief, Honor leaned her head against Stan’s shoulder. “Thank God.”

“Mr. Wallace gave me his cell phone number. Said for
you to call him when you’re up to it. There’s a lot he has to tell you and a lot he wants to hear. But he wanted you to know that Ms. Shirah has recognized him and that they’ve exchanged a few words. Her first concern was for you and Emily. He told her that you’d been rescued and were safe.”

“I’ll call him soon. Have you heard anything about Mrs. VanAllen?”

“She’s receiving treatment under close guard.”

“And Coburn?” she asked huskily. “Do you know anything?”

“I’m afraid not,” Crawford replied. “I’m sure Hamilton will be in touch when there’s something to report.”

The waiting seemed interminable, but not long after that, the pediatrician who’d examined Emily arrived with good news. He confirmed that she’d ingested an excessive amount of antihistamine. “I’ll put her in a room and let her sleep it off. She’ll be closely monitored. But she shouldn’t have any lasting effects.” He touched Honor’s arm reassuringly. “I saw nothing to indicate that she was harmed in any other way.”

She and Stan were allowed to go along as the staff transferred Emily to a private room. She looked small and helpless lying in the hospital bed, but measured against what could have been, Honor was grateful to have her there.

She was bending over her, stroking her hair, loving the feel of her, when Stan quietly spoke her name. She rose up and turned.

Hamilton was standing just inside the door of the room. Holding her gaze, he walked slowly toward her. “I thought I should tell you in person.”

“No,” she whimpered. “No.
No
.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Coburn didn’t make it.”

S
ix weeks later

“You sound surprised, Mr. Hamilton. Didn’t Tom ever mention to you that I’m brilliant? No? Well, I am. Most people don’t know that before Lanny was born and I became a virtual prisoner in my own house, I had a bright future as a business consultant and financial planner. All my career plans had to be abandoned. Then, a few years ago, when I’d had my fill of living a shadow life, I decided to apply my know-how to another, uh, field of endeavor
.

“And I was in a perfect position to do so. Who would suspect poor Janice VanAllen, mother of a severely disabled child and wife to a man totally lacking in self-confidence and ambition, to initiate and orchestrate an organization as successful as mine?”

Here she laughed
.

“Ironically, it was Tom who actually planted the idea. He talked a lot about illegal trafficking, the unlimited profits to be made, the government’s futile attempts to stop the ongoing tide. Mostly he talked about the ‘middleman,’ whose risk of capture is limited
because usually he’s hidden behind a screen of respectability. That sounded very smart and attractive to me
.

“Tom was an unchecked and guileless source of information. I asked questions, he gave me answers. He explained to me how criminals got caught. All I had to do was get to the men who caught them and, through men like Doral and Fred Hawkins, offer them a handsome bonus for slacking
.

“The smugglers paid me for providing the protection. And those who didn’t lived to regret it. Most are serving time. They couldn’t rat me out as part of a plea bargain or deal for leniency because none knew who I was. There were always human buffers between us
.

“
Suffice to say, Mr. Hamilton, my little cottage industry expanded and became extremely lucrative. I had virtually no overhead except for my cell phones. Doral or Fred would deliver disposables every other week or so when Tom was at work
.

“I paid my employees well, but even so, profits surpassed my expectations. That was important. You see, I had to save up for the day when Lanny would no longer be an impediment. After he died, I wasn’t about to stick around. I’d had it with that house, with Tom, with my life. I’d earned an easy and luxurious retirement. I never resented Lanny, but I resented the diapers I had to change, the meals I had to pump into his stomach, the catheters…

“Well, you don’t need to hear all that. You want to know about The Bookkeeper. Clever name, don’t you think? Anyway, millions of dollars were waiting for me in banks all over the world. It’s amazing what you can do over the Internet
.

“But then Lee Coburn came along, and I had to accelerate my plan to skip the country. Lanny…” Here her voice turned thick. “Lanny would never have known the difference. It’s not like he would have missed me, is it? In exchange for a guilty plea, you swear to me that he’ll be placed in the very best facility in the country?”

“You have my personal word on it.”

“And he’ll get Tom’s pension?”

“Every cent will go toward his son’s care.”

“Tom would want that. He was devoted to Lanny. Often I envied his capacity to love Lanny in ways I couldn’t. I tried, but…”

After a short pause, she said, “That sexting… that isn’t me. I want you to know that I think that’s disgusting. It was simply a means of coded communication. I wouldn’t have sent Doral or Fred Hawkins a dirty text. God. Please. No, that was just a way to explain all the telephone activity in case Tom became suspicious. You understand?”

“I understand,” Hamilton replied blandly. “Didn’t you have any misgivings about killing Tom?”

“Of course! It was the hardest thing I had to do as The Bookkeeper. Doral tried to talk me out of it, but there simply was no other way. Besides, I did Tom a favor. He was miserable. Possibly even more so than I. He was in bondage at work just as I was at home. He wasn’t good at his job. You of all people should know that, Mr. Hamilton. You contributed to his misery. He knew he could never live up to your expectations.”

“I thought Tom had potential and only lacked the confidence to realize it. I thought that with my guidance and encouragement—”

“Those are really moot points, aren’t they, Mr. Hamilton?”

“I suppose so.”

“It pains me to talk about him. I grieved him. Honestly, I did. But this way, Tom died with honor. Even with a bit of heroism. I think he would have preferred that to dying in obscurity.”

After another pause, she said, “I guess that’s everything. Do you want me to sign something?”

Hamilton reached across his desk and punched the button to stop the playback.

Honor and Stan, who’d been invited to the district office in New Orleans to listen to Janice VanAllen’s recorded confession,
had sat motionless for the duration of it, astonished by the casualness with which she had confessed her crimes to Hamilton several days earlier.

“She had Eddie killed,” Honor said quietly.

“As well as a lot of other people,” Hamilton said. “Based on the information on that USB key, we’re making definite progress. But,” he said around a sigh, “as she said, it’s almost futile. The criminals are multiplying at a rate much faster than we can catch them. But we stay at it.”

“There’s nothing in that file that implicates Eddie,” Stan averred. “And no one was more taken in than I was by the Hawkins twins. Yes, I used Doral to get information, knowing that he had ears in the police department, but I never had an inkling of what they were doing. I stand by my record. You can check it.”

“I did,” Hamilton said, giving him a congenial smile. “You’re as clean as a whistle, Mr. Gillette. And nothing in that file implicates your son of any wrongdoing. According to the superintendent of the Tambour P.D., an honest man I think, Eddie offered to do some covert investigative work. Possibly he’d picked up vibes when he was moonlighting at Marset’s company.

“In any case, the superintendent sanctioned it, but when Eddie was killed, he didn’t connect the car wreck to Eddie’s secret investigation, which to his knowledge had never produced any evidence. Eddie had given it to you,” he said directly to Honor.

She looked across at her father-in-law, laid her hand on his forearm, and pressed it. Then she motioned toward the recorder. “How long after recording that was Mrs. VanAllen…”

“Killed?” Hamilton asked.

Honor nodded.

“Minutes. Her lawyer had insisted that her statement be taken in a private office at the rehab center where she was getting therapy for the ankle injury. There were two federal marshals posted at the door. She was in a wheelchair. I and another agent were flanking her. Her attorney was pushing her chair.

“As we emerged from the office to take her back to her room, the young man seemed to come out of nowhere. He lashed at the marshal with a straight razor and sliced open his cheek. The other FBI agent was trying to draw his weapon when the young man slashed his throat. That agent died a few minutes later.

“Mrs. VanAllen was cut swiftly, but viciously. The razor went through her neck, almost to her spinal column, and from ear to ear. It was a gruesome death. She had time to realize she was dying. The young man, however, died instantly from a fatal gunshot wound.”

It had been reported on the news that Hamilton had shot him twice in the chest, once in the head.

“It was a suicide mission,” Hamilton said. “He had to know there was no possible means of escape. He gave me no choice.”