“Jimmy didn’t tell me about that,” Rachael said. “I remember a couple of days after he told me about the accident, I walked into his study and saw him staring at his phone. I knew he wanted to call Melissa’s parents, call the police, simply end it all, right then. Unfortunately he waited a few more days, warned those who would take a hit, and then he was dead.”
Sherlock said, “Rachael, you know for sure your father told his family and Greg Nichols, right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. I have to tell you, I have a hard time believing that his confession would enrage his family to such a degree that they’d kill him.”
“There’s more. The reason his death was declared an accident was because when the two patrolmen found Jimmy’s Beemer at the bottom of a cliff, Jimmy was alone in the driver’s seat. They said they could smell the alcohol on him. They said it was apparent he’d had too much to drink and lost control of his car, and hurtled down a steep embankment just off the Beltway, near Bethesda Navy Medical Center.”
“Yes, I remember that,” Sherlock said.
“Jimmy told me after he hit the little girl, he simply couldn’t make himself get behind the wheel any longer. The fact is, he stopped driving. It was manageable because he had a car and driver available to him. Not only that, he hadn’t had a drink since the night he killed the girl. That’s what he told me, and I believed him.”
“Then why didn’t you tell the police the truth?” Jack asked.
“I couldn’t,” Rachael said. “It would have meant telling them why he’d stopped drinking and hadn’t driven a car for the past eighteen months. I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it. All of it would have come out. It would have destroyed his legacy.” She drew a deep breath. “That was the main reason I took off for Sicily. I had to decide what to do. For two weeks I chewed it over every which way, and I came to a decision. I was coming back to Washington to tell the truth. Of course, I was going to discuss it with my mother, but I knew she would agree with me and it was what Jimmy would have done, what he was fully prepared to do. The least I could do for him was honor his wishes. After I nail Quincy and Laurel, I can and will do what Jimmy wanted to do. I will clear his conscience for him.”
Sheriff Hollyfield was tapping a pen on his desk blotter. He said thoughtfully “Your father’s dead, so is his conscience, so is his guilt. I’m thinking like his aide did—why ruin Senator Abbott’s name? Why ruin his memory? Why destroy what he stood for, what he was as a man for most of his lifetime? And that’s what would happen. The sum of his life would be forgotten—he’d end up being remembered for killing a child in a park, and hiding it.” He sat forward, his hands clasped.
“Rachael, do you want what happened in the final year and a half of your father’s life to define him? That he go down in history as the rich guy who killed a little girl when he was drunk?”
Rachael jumped to her feet, began to pace the small office. “I’ve used the very same argument to myself, but I know he wouldn’t! When I tell everyone how he’d planned to confess, surely they would see how moral he was, how ultimately honest.”
Jack said very gently, “I’ve known since I was twenty years old that the human mind doesn’t work like that. Sheriff Hollyfield is right—your father would be cut to pieces, all the good he ever did in his private life, in his political life, distorted, questioned, erased. As for you, there would be no recognition that you were simply following through on his wishes. You’d be the bastard daughter who destroyed her father’s name.”
“I know you’re trying to help, but again, I’ve thought about all this, and it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks or says about me. I think you’re wrong, Jack, you have to be.” She shook her head, then tucked her long hair behind her ears.
Savich looked up from MAX. “Did you tell anyone you were going to make your father’s confession for him since you’ve been back?”
“I told Mr. Cullifer, Jimmy’s lawyer. I’d have thought Jimmy would have filled him in on his plans, but he hadn’t. He was pretty emotionless about it, told me he’d suspected something was very wrong with Jimmy, asked if I had any proof, like fingerprints or witnesses, which of course I didn’t. He then said if I made Jimmy’s confession for him, I would find myself in a snake pit—people vilifying me, accusing me of lying because he left my mother all those years ago, that I was doing it to get back at him, and he wasn’t even here to defend himself. I’d thought about most of those things, but I’ll tell you, the way he spoke, the utter certainty in his voice, I was nearly ready to flip-flop on my decision. Then I found Jimmy’s journal. It was filled with his misery, his guilt, his hatred of himself for what he’d done, and that’s what made me decide to go ahead, no matter the fallout. I felt I owed it to him.
“I told Greg Nichols. He heard me out, then said he wasn’t about to help me destroy Senator Abbott’s name and drag the rest of his family through the muck. Of course, he’d be pulled into the muck himself, maybe even do some time in jail, but neither of us mentioned that.
“I didn’t want to talk to Laurel Kostas and Quincy Abbott since I believe to my toes they killed him, and why. I guess I felt deep down that they’d look at me the same way, as something to be kept silent, or like I was crazy or some sort of rodent who’d crawled into their beautiful, perfect lives.”
Jack leaned forward, his hands clasped between his legs. “It’s not difficult to connect the dots here. The Abbotts—their holdings and wealth are up there with the DuPonts, the Barringtons, the Jetty-Smiths. I can see they’d hate the scandal, the questions, the media probes about their family ethics, and all the rest. And a possible lawsuit by the little girl’s family, of course. Sure, they might have lost some of their A-list status, but it would have blown over, as every scandal does. But I can’t see them losing much of their money over it, and after all, their brother wasn’t some loser schmuck; he was a United States senator.
“I’m sorry, Rachael, but I can’t see one or all of them murdering him to keep him quiet. The motive isn’t there.”
Rachael said, “As an outsider, I saw them very clearly. I cannot tell you how very proud they are. Their sense of entitlement, their sense of worth, their arrogance—it’s off the scale. They worship their name, their lineage, worshipped their father, the founder of the Abbott dynasty. Laurel Kostas’s children attend the finest prep schools, and they’ll attend the finest colleges, both of them destined for power, destined to marry into other prominent families. And Jimmy’s two daughters attest to that. Both their husbands are from wealthy families as well.
“In their eyes, a scandal like this would ruin the family, and they wouldn’t accept that. They would determine that the removal of this threat was not only justified, it was rational. That’s why they killed Jimmy and have tried to kill me.” FIFTEEN
“And then three days later, you ended up drugged and thrown into Black Rock Lake,” Jack said.
“Yes.”
Savich added, “But bottom line, Rachael, all you have in the way of proof that he was murdered is your belief that your father had given up both driving and drinking.”
“If I’d managed to come up with any proof, I would have camped out at the gate of the White House while I called the
Sherlock rose and stretched, nudged her husband’s shoulder. “Well, boss, what now?”
Savich grabbed her hand, gave it a squeeze. “First, Rachael, I want you to write all this down: Senator Abbott’s accidental killing of Melissa Parks, his death, your attempted murder—both times. Put in every detail you can think of. Do it fast. Make six copies. We’ll take a couple. I’m thinking it might be best to simply go public now. That should stop any more attempts on your life.”
She shook her head. “I’ll write everything down, but I don’t want to go public. Not just yet.”
“What? You like being bait?” Jack said.
She replied, “I don’t need your sarcasm, Agent Crowne. I’ll tell you, when I climbed out of that lake, I saw everything very clearly. I agree that going public might stop them, but they’ll get away with killing Jimmy, their own brother. I have to find proof, don’t you see? I want to bring them down, and if it means my neck is out there, then so be it.” She looked at each of them. “Maybe you can help me do this, maybe you can’t. But it’s my only goal at the moment. Then I’m going public and telling the world exactly what kind of man Jimmy was. After all, only an honorable man would feel such devastation about accidentally killing a child.
“I know you’re all concerned about the repercussions, but I firmly believe that people are forgiving.
“Now that I’ve spilled my guts to you, I’m going to get my car fixed, and I’m driving to Slipper Hollow. I’ve got lots of thinking to do, lots of planning, lots of writing things down, as Agent Savich wants.”
Savich said, “Rachael, what is the state of your finances?”
She blinked. “I suppose I’m very rich, at least in theory, since Jimmy left me one-third of his estate. In
