Finishing, Adam reassembled the file and placed it in a different drawer. This last was for Bobby Towle- Hanley would know that someone had rifled his office, but not who, creating a universe of suspects who might have sold out to the Enquirer. A gift of conscience from an old friend.
Opening the door, Adam left it ajar.
At the top of the stairs, he stopped abruptly. The deputy was padding down the hallway, perhaps sensing that something was wrong. If he glanced up, Adam was caught.
Utterly still, Adam watched him. The man disappeared, the only sound the quiet echo of his footsteps.
Adam stayed where he was.
Moments crawled by while the deputy inspected the first floor. At last, Adam heard more footsteps, and prayed that the deputy would not come upstairs. Back toward Adam, the man plodded to his station and sat before a monitor Adam knew to be disabled.
With agonizing care, Adam walked down the stairs. With each step the distance between him and the deputy lessened. As Adam reached the bottom of the steps, it narrowed to ten feet.
Head propped on his arm, the deputy gazed at the frozen screen.
Turning down the hallway, Adam passed beneath more cameras, still unseen. A few last steps, swifter now, took him to the entrance.
Slowly opening the door, Adam reentered the night.
As he stepped onto the asphalt, headlights sliced the darkness. In an instant Adam grasped that the patrol car was arriving. As its lights caught Adam, the driver hit the brakes.
Whirling, Adam sprinted down Main Street, footsteps pounding cement. In one corner of his mind he gauged the time it would take the patrolman to swing back into the alley toward the street, picking him up again.
Suddenly, he swerved, cutting back through the lawn of the Old Whaling Church and then a stand of trees bordering a neighbor’s backyard. Behind him he heard brakes squealing, a door opening, the footsteps of the cop scurrying from his car.
Adam had little more time to run; in minutes more police would converge, on foot or in patrol cars. Nor could he drive away. His last hope was to hide.
Bent at the waist, he crossed another yard, heading for his truck.
It was parked in a line of cars along the crowded lane. As headlights entered the lane, Adam reached his truck, sliding to his stomach at the rear. Clawing asphalt, he pulled himself beneath it, invisible to anyone who did not think to look.
He heard the patrol car pass, then his pursuer, still on foot, reaching the lane near Adam’s truck. Listening to the man’s labored breathing, Adam imagined him looking about, mystified by the absence of sound, the sudden disappearance of his quarry.
Move on, Adam implored him.
Another car passed without stopping, and then the man’s footsteps sounded again, fading as he moved away.
Adam removed his mask and gloves. Damp face pressed against the asphalt, he glanced at his watch.
Three twenty. Two hours until dawn. Head resting on curled arms, Adam waited.
First light came as a silver space between the tires of his truck. Sliding out, Adam looked around him, and saw nothing but the still of early morning.
He climbed into his truck, started the motor, and drove out of town at a slow but steady pace. Glancing in the mirror, he saw that no one followed. As had been his plan, he headed back toward Dogfish Bar.
The beach was empty, the only sign of human existence the footprints left by fishermen. Satisfied, he changed into his fishing gear and drove to a restaurant overlooking the Gay Head cliffs. He ordered breakfast amid the tourists and tradesmen, a nocturnal angler as determined as his father, refueling after hours of solitary fishing. He made a point of joking with the waitress.
On the way home, he tossed the garbage bag filled with his clothes in a pile of refuse at the Chilmark dump, and dropped Lew’s device in its incinerator. Parking at his mother’s, he saw Clarice drinking coffee on the porch. “You look terrible,” she observed.
Adam fingered his dark stubble. “The price of watching the sun come up. All that’s left when you catch no fish.”
“Get some sleep,” his mother suggested with a smile. “You’re not twenty anymore.”
Climbing the stairs, Adam closed himself in a room that still held the artifacts of his youth. For a moment, he contemplated Jenny’s photograph. Then he downloaded the images he had taken into his computer, reviewing the documents he would provide to Teddy’s lawyer.
The process took two hours, more disturbing by the minute as the mosaic of evidence began forming in his mind. He found no reference to the insurance policy obliquely mentioned by Bobby Towle. But the witness statements conformed to what he knew: the Blaines, Jenny, and Carla Pacelli all denied knowing about the will, and his mother and Teddy’s central assertion-which, in his brother’s case, Adam no longer believed-was that neither had seen his father once he left the house. Far more lethal were the crime scene and pathology reports. He was not surprised that someone besides his father-no doubt Teddy-had left distinctive boot prints at the promontory. But there had been drag marks in the mud as well, mud on the heels of the dead man’s boots, suggesting that someone had dragged him, perhaps struggling, through the wet earth near the point from which he fell. Worse yet, there were circumferential bruises on Ben’s wrists, no doubt heightened by his regime of chemotherapy, appearing to confirm that a murderer had grasped him by both arms. It was plain that the police and prosecutor believed, as Adam did now, that someone had thrown Benjamin Blaine off the promontory.
Suppose you find out that your father was murdered by a member of your family.
Adam felt a coldness on his skin. His next task was to print these pages, mail them to Teddy’s lawyer, then erase the images from his camera and computer before getting rid of both. But he paused to absorb what he and the authorities now further believed in common-that Teddy had killed their father. The job Benjamin Blaine had left him was not just to execute a will, but to save a guilty man, his brother.
Part Three
One
Four nights later, Adam again met Amanda Ferris beneath the promontory.
On the surface, little had happened since the break-in. Whatever inquiry Hanley and the police had launched-an exhaustive one, Adam was certain-they had suppressed any news of the incident itself. The previous day Teddy had flown to Boston to buy art supplies; only Adam knew enough to guess he had been summoned by his lawyer. No one had questioned Adam about anything: with the security cameras disabled, all Sean Mallory had was a faceless man, swift and resourceful enough to vanish, thereby eliminating a host of potential suspects while creating a dead end. Unless someone checked his bank accounts, Bobby Towle was in the clear.
Knowing all this, Adam had the familiar sense of having set events in motion without leaving any trace. But he also continued to parse the varied narratives surrounding the will and his father’s death, including those from his family, sensing that none of them was truthful or complete. And now he had the problem of Amanda Ferris.
As before, he had followed her from Edgartown; as before, he wanted no evidence that they had met. But the woman was no fool. Now he would learn how fully she understood their chess game.
The air was balmier; the seas calm. She had not brought a tape recorder. By now she grasped that their conversations were damning to them both.
“Too bad I couldn’t get the pathologist’s report,” she said with quiet acidity. “But you may not have to wait long. Only until Hanley indicts your brother.”
Hearing this made Adam cringe inside. “Tell me about that.”
