“Why did you decide to share with Warren the domestic violence call you responded to up at the Randolphs’?”
“That whole thing was like a gift from the gods. When I was called to the Randolphs’ home, I knew I had some gossip that Bradley would find impossible to resist. It played out better than I could have imagined. When Grant Randolph almost cold-cocked Bradley in front of half the town on opera night, I knew I’d never get a better chance. Besides everything he had written about Randolph in The Standard, here you have the guy looking like he’s ready to beat the creep to a bloody pulp. I played it cool, but I knew this was my best chance. The next day I called Bradley from a pay phone and asked if he had the time to give me a cooking lesson that week. He made a big deal about my being his ‘savior,’ and he was only too happy to give me some pointers on cooking.”
“How in the world did you track Bradley down in the first place? He did a reasonably good job of covering up his past. I should know, Holly and I spent an entire weekend trying to track him down and got nowhere.”
“While I was with the San Jose PD, I took a long weekend to visit Flagstaff. Mrs. Hayden had a friend who worked at the Coconino County clerk’s office. She babysat for me a few times. Nice lady. I arranged to take her to lunch the day I arrived in town and asked if anyone had ever heard anything more about Benedict. She knew through the sheriff’s office that he had settled in Tulsa and filed a name change going from Benedict to Bradley. Of course, that was years earlier. I tracked Bradley from Oklahoma back here to California. I finally located him in Sausalito. I put my name on a waiting list for an opening with the Sausalito PD and got hired six months later. The fact that Bradley made those volunteer lunches for the department was another stroke of good luck. But either way, I would have tracked him down. Small towns are not an easy place to blend into the crowd. And with Bradley turning himself into a minor celebrity it was that much easier.”
“Sounds like you had wanted to kill Benedict for a very long time.”
“You might say it was a cross between a fantasy and an obsession.”
One last question had made Rob more curious than any other. “You almost got away with the perfect crime. You left the house clean of prints. From what Eddie Austin says there were no obvious signs of a homicide until you decided to chop off Bradley’s hands. I know you spoke at the trial about your severing his hands, but I still feel there is more to the story. Is there?”
“Over the past twenty-five years, I’d imagined killing Benedict a thousand times in a hundred different ways. That night, I kept refilling his glass with wine in the hope that it would put him into a sound sleep. It worked just as I had hoped. By the time I put the pillow over his head, I don’t think he had become aware that he was unable to breathe until moments before he lost consciousness. There was no struggle. Afterward, I went around cleaning up everything I had touched and tossed in a plastic bag any trace of my DNA—napkins and such.”
“No one would have known this was a murder,” Rob said softly.
“I realized that,” Chris grimaced. “As I was getting ready to leave, I looked at him and thought how peaceful he looked. I killed him, but what if I had done such a good job that the story of his life ended with people all talking about this good man who did all this great volunteer work, and died peacefully in his sleep? I imagined all those little old ladies telling me what a great guy dear Warren was! And that’s when I snapped. I grabbed that expensive meat cleaver off the counter and whacked off his hands—and I certainly enjoyed doing that. I was sure the world would ask one simple question: ‘Why did this happen to poor Warren?’”
It was chilling to Rob how logical an utterly insane act could sound.
On the hour-plus ride back to Sausalito, Rob kept thinking: What in the world would I have done?
A foster child finally placed in a loving home, and then it all turns into a nightmare.
Your new mom is dead, the new big brother you thought you had is now out of your life; you’re taken from one home to another, and you have only one thought: Someday I will destroy that man.
There were two things Rob wanted to do when he arrived back home. First, hold and hug his two young children as he never had before. Second, be thankful for Karin, their home, and all the other beautiful aspects of his life, which he too often took for granted.
Three months later the article’s release in The New Yorker was celebrated at the No Name Bar.
“I’ll bet when you were covering the two-year debate over improvements to Sausalito’s dog park, you never thought this would happen!” Holly said as she lifted her glass high for a toast. “Here’s to a great writer, a good friend, and a reasonably decent boss.”
“So, Holly, will you be resurrecting your relationship with Chris Harding after the shrinks say he’s free to go?” Eddie asked.
Holly shrugged. “He’s a terrific guy, and certainly easy on the eye. It’s tragic what happened to him, but I don’t think we have a future together.”
“Why not, Nancy Drew?”
“I can give you ten reasons,” Holly said as she raised both her hands and wiggled
