too much to laugh. When he got his breath again, he pulled his chair up close. “Where have you been? What happened, anyway? They said your jaw is broken, and there was a bullet in your shoulder. And you were all cut up.”
“Later.”
“All right. Jason, I’m sorry, too.”
“It’s okay.”
“I’m sorry what I thought about you, and that I didn’t believe you. And I’m sorry I didn’t help you when you needed it.”
“It’s… okay.”
“I never really believed it. It was Fred… he kept telling me things.”
That was something I’d have to deal with. “Later. Turn on… news.”
We watched for hours. Eric talked as much as the heads on the screen, and I listened. It was hard to keep up with the torrent of words.
The guards did not wait for official instructions. The handcuff was removed. I gave them my own instructions-that no one besides Eric and my hospital staff was to get within a hundred yards of me. I had Eric unplug the phone and we watched Bill Sandoff, CNN, the networks, and everything else the remote could find. It was on every channel.
The police had tested Nathan Kern’s gun, and there was no doubt it had killed Clinton Grainger. Nathan’s Washington alibi had fallen apart like a cheap lawn chair when they found that his rental car had been turned in with fifteen hundred miles on it for the weekend. Then they’d found the letter from Angela. Mr. Kern, I have found papers that dear Melvin had written about you, and I have read some of them. It is too difficult to read them. I think he was very angry at you and I don’t understand. I don’t want to think about him angry. I believe I hate the foundation now. I will not call you. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to think about any of this. I don’t want this to go on. It all has to stop. I’ll do anything to make it stop.
It was a photocopy they’d found in a hidden drawer in his desk. On the television screen, the lines he’d cut off for the suicide note were highlighted.
And then they’d found the Swiss bank account.
Only Harry Bright was not convinced. “Jason Boyer is at the bottom of this,” he was quoted as saying. “I’ve always known a criminal when I see one.”
I fell asleep, and Eric sat by me through the whole night.
41
In the morning, Eric was still there, the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes.
The second thing I saw was a dead caterpillar. No… it was Detective Wilcox’s lip.
And he was so sorry for the misunderstanding. Oh, how sorry he was.
The wretched man was treading eggshells on top of eggshells. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men weren’t going to save more than a third of the careers in the Division of State Police, and I, Jason Boyer, was the king.
Would I mind just a few questions? A couple things he hoped to clear up. They had a good idea of how three of the murders had been committed. Nathan Kern was singing like a canary, trying to nurture any mercy in his captors. Wilcox wanted to describe the whole thing, to see if I had any additions or corrections. It had been such a misunderstanding. And had he mentioned how sorry he was?
I sent him out of the room while I freshened up, and when I was ready, I allowed him to begin.
Melvin had told Nathan months ago that he was changing his will. He had not said why. At first Nathan had graciously accepted the decision. As time passed, though, he couldn’t. He tried to persuade Melvin to keep the arrangements as they had been. Melvin refused to discuss the matter. Nathan apologized, but he had pushed a little too hard.
Melvin’s confidence in his director had been shaken.
I saw how it was, and Wilcox guessed at it, too. Even if Nathan hadn’t recognized how deeply the money had him hooked, Melvin saw it right away. The less trusting Melvin became, the more frantic Nathan acted.
He realized his days might be numbered at the foundation, and he couldn’t bear the thought of a less elegant lifestyle. So he’d opened a bank account in Zurich and started juggling the budget.
He was not very good at crime, whereas Melvin was an expert. Though he did not think Nathan was dangerous, his notes about the foundation were clear-he was getting very upset with his director. The police had found the whole stack of papers in Nathan’s basement.
“This was… after… Melvin said… he was… changing… his will.” The contraption on my jaw was getting real old.
“That’s right,” Wilcox said. “As far as we can tell from your father’s papers and the bank records, none of this was part of the original reason he decided to change his will.”
Then Melvin died. Nathan claimed no part of that. He didn’t know how to drain a brake line, or even that a car had such a thing.
Nathan hadn’t known that Melvin had uncovered the embezzling. After Nathan had talked to Angela about being on the board, she had looked at Melvin’s papers. She didn’t understand them, except that something was making Melvin angry. She wrote Nathan the letter to say she would have nothing to do with the foundation.
He called her but she was even more determined. She told him she’d call me and tell me to fire him. She’d show me the notes.
“She called… me,” I said. “She… only said… she wouldn’t… be… on the board.”
“And then you called Kern. That’s when he knew she hadn’t tattled on him. Could she have been blackmailing him?”
“She didn’t… like… black. Only… pink.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’d… have to… know her.”
“I’ve talked with other people who knew her,”Wilcox said. “She was apparently eccentric, if that’s what you mean.”
Nathan flew to Washington, but then he drove back to meet with her. He asked to see her privately. But he quickly saw that she was irrational, that his position was threatened, even hopeless. And Angela, helpless fool, had her gun out for protection. How easily he took it and used it. He had the letter she’d sent and saw how it could be made into a suicide note.
It had all been so quick, so natural. It hadn’t been planned-it was self-defense. So much was at stake. After he killed her, he took the incriminating files from Melvin’s office.
The suicide facade fell through very quickly. He realized it wasn’t going to be so easy.
Then Clinton Grainger called. He’d seen copies of the notes, delivered earlier by his agent who had broken into Melvin’s office. He could tell they would be worth something against me, and he wanted to see if he could blackmail Nathan onto his side.
I’d called Nathan the afternoon before I met Grainger at the hotel and told him about the meeting. He had hardly a qualm at that point. He bought his own gun that afternoon. He called Clinton and said he wanted a meeting that night, which they arranged for the hotel after our meeting.
And all the while Nathan was working on me, trying to convince me how terrible the money was, how I needed to get rid of it. It was all about to fall into his lap when Katie got in the way.
She was the one who could stop my plan, so she had to be stopped herself. He tried to think how he could stop the divorce or talk her out of her lawsuits and obstruction. But he knew there was only one way.
Then, in my office that afternoon, I’d walked right in with my gun in my hand. I’d set it on the sofa. I’d looked so dazed, he realized I might not even know I had it. He slid a cushion over it. I was clueless.
In those few seconds he’d made his plan to kill Katie-and perhaps get me accused of it by using my gun. It would jeopardize my ability to transfer the money to the foundation, but it would also give the police a suspect. Nathan was getting very worried they would find Melvin’s papers in Grainger’s office, or that Angela or Grainger had
