Moment of Truth (41 page)

Paige conked out first, then Brinkley, but Mary felt safe enough even with the detective asleep. Trevor wouldn’t think to look for her at her parents’ house and neither would the press. She was way too old to run home, and everybody but her knew it. What Mary knew was that she loved her parents more as she got older, not less, and appreciated them in a way she hadn’t when she was young and time stretched ahead of her like a shiny sliding board. There was a limit now, an end point; Mike’s death had taught Mary that. She didn’t need her mother’s thin skin or her father’s ruptured spine to remind her. There would come a time when she couldn’t go home again, not because the C bus had been rerouted, but because her parents would be gone. And when they were gone, home would be gone, too.

Mary shifted uncomfortably under her old blanket. It was a child’s fear, she knew, the fear of her parents’ death, and lying there she understood that every lesson her parents had taught her would be tested in surviving their passing. She didn’t know how she would live after they were gone, but she knew she would, and only because they had taught her to. It would be their final, and their greatest, gift, and she thanked them for it in her dreams.

Jack heard Mary fall asleep, as he tossed and turned under the blanket. It wasn’t the hardness of the floor that was keeping him awake. It was how everything had gone so wrong, not only from the night he took the blame for Honor’s murder, but from the very beginning. From the moment he married Honor and started lying about their daughter, and to her.

Honor always thought it was a detail, what age the child was, but Jack was never convinced. He knew all along, even as he prevented himself from knowing, that it was profoundly wrong to lie to Paige about the circumstances of her own birth. He had taught her to lie from the cradle; she was swaddled in lies. How could he expect anything but a lie when she grew up?

Was Trevor with you, Paige?

Of course not, Daddy.

But all along, at some level, Jack had known that she was lying about Trevor. He had sensed that Trevor had been there and was responsible for Honor’s murder, at least in part. In fact, if he were being completely honest with himself, it hadn’t mattered to him whether Trevor was there or not. The truth was that he’d known it that night, when he asked Paige to lie to him and she did, and when he made the deal that he would protect her fiction, even serve it. As he had with her pregnancy.

Jack faced the darkness and found the truth. He hadn’t been completely surprised when Paige told him she was pregnant, over the telephone at the office. He knew she was on a collision course with her mother, acting out against her from the day she’d declared she wanted to be emancipated. He knew that somehow, someday, Paige would figure out how to hurt her mother the most. Get pregnant, like her mother, replaying a past she didn’t know existed, but perhaps suspected. So it wasn’t Trevor’s plan that got her pregnant at all. Paige was lying to herself about that, and to all of them.

Jack shifted on the hard floor. The more he thought about Trevor, the less likely it seemed that the boy could kill Honor as part of a long-range plan to get Paige’s money. Trevor was a rash, spoiled, rich boy. A fuckup; the kind of kid who sold drugs and picked up blondes who turned out to be narcs. Something didn’t fit; something just smelled.

In his mind Jack went over the day Honor was killed. He had gotten the call from Paige at work, then had been on pins and needles the remainder of the afternoon. He had packed his briefcase, by habit, and left in plenty of time to get home for his usual seven o’clock, but the rain and the traffic had stymied him.

Well, wait a minute.

He had been stopped in the hall. Whittier, wanting to talk about the Florrman bill. Jack had tried to get away, but it had made him late. And in that time period Trevor had killed Honor. Whittier’s delay had given Trevor the time to murder Honor.

Jack sat bolt upright. Could it be? Had Whittier stalled him so Trevor could kill Honor? Not possible. There was no connection between Trevor and Whittier, was there? Jack thought about it, every sense alert and awake. It was at least plausible, and he had to find out. The responsibility for catching Trevor was his; it was his wife the boy murdered and his daughter he tried to kill. Jack’s heartbeat quickened. He had a responsibility, not to a lie, as before. But to the truth. It might have been rash, but he had no choice.

He rose silently, slipped into his
I LOVE PHILADELPHIA
jacket and his shoes, and left the house, closing the door softly behind him.

Jack approached the glistening skyscraper that housed Tribe & Wright with anticipation. It felt so good to be taking action himself, free from prison. If Whittier was behind this, he would find out. He eyed the building. If there had been press around the building, there wasn’t anymore; the eleven o’clock news was over and the reporters had crawled back under their rocks. It was dark, the street was empty. He hurried down the sidewalk and entered the marble lobby.

The security guard at the desk came to a nervous wakefulness when he recognized Jack. It had to be from the news; Jack didn’t know the security guards on this late a shift. “Sign in, please, sir,” asked the guard, righting his cap, his eyes glued to Jack’s wounded cheek.

“Ran into a truck,” Jack said, and walked to the elevator. His shoes echoed in the cavernous lobby and he stepped into an open elevator and hit the button for thirty. The elevator doors closed behind him with an expensive
swoosh
.

As soon as Jack was out of sight, the security guard reached for the telephone and punched in a number, as he had been instructed.

* * *

Jack had walked through the halls of Tribe & Wright a hundred times, even after hours, and the firm used to be as familiar to him as his home. But tonight it felt as foreign and unforgiving as the moon’s surface and almost as lifeless. The lights were on but the reception area was empty, the front desk bare and unstaffed, and the offices vacant. Though his floor looked the way it always did, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t know where he was. Either the firm had changed or he had changed. Or both.

He walked by the foxhunting prints on the wall and scrutinized them as he never had before. He passed a side table made of tiger maple and wondered what it was doing in the hallway. It was just in the way. He passed the two large offices off the hall, but no one was in, of course. He could do what he needed to do.

Jack’s office was just down the hall and as he walked toward it, he sensed it would be his last time. He wouldn’t be coming back to Tribe and he wouldn’t miss the place. All he wanted from it now was answers. He was going to sit in his chair and use his correspondence, notes, and time records to reconstruct everything that happened the day of Honor’s murder.

Jack’s pace quickened. The police would have confiscated some files, but he hoped not all of them. Then he remembered. His laptop, with the single ticket to London. The prosecution would use it against him, but he had arranged the trip to give himself some time alone, to consider what was happening in his marriage since Paige’s emancipation. It had all come apart before he had the chance. Jack arrived at his office, opened the door, and froze on the spot.

It was completely empty. Even the
furniture
wasn’t there anymore. How could that be? The police would have seized files and computers, but not every file, cabinet, book, and law review. Where was his stuff? Photos of Paige and Honor? His personal papers? Diplomas, a citation from Girard? Then he thought about it. Only the firm could take these things and only with the approval of the managing partner. Whittier.

Jack felt his jaw clench in anger. What was going on? Was Whittier really involved in this? A man he had known and worked with all his professional life? And why would Whittier want Honor dead? It was unthinkable. She had chosen him to be her executor, she had trusted him so much.

Whittier’s office was around the corner and down the hall. If Jack wanted answers, that’s where he’d find them. He turned and strode down the corridor, more determined with every step. He’d tear the place apart. Ransack every drawer. Jack was halfway there when he heard voices. Strange. It was too late for the cleaning people. The voices grew louder as he got closer to Whittier’s office. It sounded like shouting. The door was open. Jack broke into a run, and when he reached the office door, he got the surprise of his life.

Whittier and Trevor stood staring at him. Trevor looked disheveled, his eyes sunken and glassy. He was high, but Whittier surely wasn’t. The managing partner, still in shirt and suit pants, stood open-mouthed. He looked merely startled, but completely in command.

“What the
fuck
?” Jack said, enraged, and suddenly everybody was in motion.

Trevor bolted in panic for the door, pushing Whittier out of the way. Jack lunged for Trevor but the teenager had enormous momentum and knocked him backward. He darted out the door, and Jack recovered and ran after him, his heart pounding. Jack wasn’t about to let Trevor get away. He’d catch up with Whittier later.

Trevor thundered down the hall, a strapping kid in sneakers, but Jack ran quicker, fueled by a father’s rage. He heard shouting from the reception area at the hall’s end. He couldn’t explain it and didn’t try. Trevor bounded for the reception area with Jack right behind him, panting heavily.

“Stop, Trevor!” Jack shouted. He narrowed the gap between them, reaching for Trevor’s sweatshirt, then veered around the corner. The sweatshirt was almost within Jack’s fingertips when the elevator doors opened and a cadre of Philadelphia police flooded the reception area. Cops? Where had cops come from? What the hell was going on? Jack skidded to a bewildered stop but Trevor ran practically into the arms of the cops.

“He’s got a gun!” Trevor screamed. “He’s trying to kill me!”

“Freeze!” one of the cops ordered, drawing his gun on Jack.

“I’m unarmed!” Jack shouted, but in the next instant a crazed Trevor grabbed the gun from the cop’s hand.

“No!” yelled the cop, jumping for his weapon. The cop flanking Trevor grappled for it, too, and they were wrestling for the gun when it went off, the sound reverberating hideously in the tony corporate setting. Jack held his breath and didn’t know if anyone had been hit. Neither did the cops. And for a final split second, neither did Trevor.

“Shit!” said one of the cops, pained and angry, when the gun dropped to the plush Oriental.

Jack watched in horror as a strange smile appeared on Trevor’s face, then went suddenly slack. Bright red blood spurted from a round hole in his neck, under his chin. His eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed silently against the cops, who sprang instantly into action, trying to save his life. One palmed a radio while another ran to the reception desk for a phone. Two knelt over him, checking for a pulse and trying to staunch the flow of blood.

Jack, aghast, rushed to Trevor’s side and knelt down beside the cops. Blood was everywhere, spurting regularly with each heartbeat, and they couldn’t seem to stop it. They fell silent, their drawn faces acknowledging what they couldn’t say. Even Jack could see how much blood Trevor was losing and hung his head over the boy’s body.

“Shit, it’s arterial,” said the cop at Trevor’s neck. Blood gushed through his fingers despite his grip. Trevor’s face was ashen and his blue eyes still.

“The carotid,” the other cop said, his voice heavy with regret. “Oh, jeez. Oh, jeez.”

Jack couldn’t believe it was happening. The kid was dying. He shook his head over his body, then spotted something. Trevor’s shirt had been pushed up in the struggle and a purplish bruise peeked from the elastic bottom. Jack reached out and pressed his shirt to the side.
My God.
Bruises blanketed Trevor’s stomach. It had to be the bruises Mary had told him about, that hadn’t been on Paige. Jack was looking at the man who murdered Honor.

“No,” he said, remembering Whittier, in a horrified daze. He had to make him account for this. And for Honor, and Paige. He rose to his feet but when he stood up his arms were grabbed from behind, wrenched together, and slapped into tight handcuffs. “What are you doing?” Jack demanded, twisting around in anger.

“Take it easy, Newlin,” a cop ordered, shoving him to the elevator.

“I didn’t do anything! I don’t have a gun—”

“We’ve been looking for you. We’re taking you down for questioning in the attempted murder of your daughter.”

“What? Me,
kill Paige
? Are you insane?” Jack struggled against the handcuffs but more cops appeared. This was a nightmare. Him suspected of trying to kill Paige. Trevor bleeding on the floor. Whittier getting away with murder. “You can’t stop me, you have no right! Get Whittier, would you? Arrest him! He’s behind this and the murder of my wife!”

The cops shoved him toward the elevator. “Tell the detectives about it when you get there,” one said.