Chapter 20
Graham Walker motioned to the bartender. “Another whiskey on the rocks.” He checked his watch, pushing his wrist farther away so he could make out the numbers. Nearly noon. He’d been here since ten thirty, waiting for this meeting with Colin like a condemned man waits on death row.
He made no attempt to survey the patrons in the bar, figuring that Mitchell had at least one person in the vicinity. His precious protégé would no doubt be hunkered down for war. Wouldn’t he be surprised when he found only a drunken, broken old man, ready to confess his sins?
The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth and he gulped at his drink to chase it away. He was a man with limited options, his actions now dictated by another. Walker had laced the string to himself years before, never imagining it could one day be used to control him.
His mind wandered to this morning, when he had sat in his car and spied his only grandson.
The boy looked just like Walker’s son Tommy had at ten.
He was lean and tan, with tousled brown hair that fell in his face when he bent to weed the garden.
Walker lifted his cell phone so the camera lens just peeked over the door of the car and took a picture, knowing that the distance would make it difficult for him to see the boy at all.
Ahearn had done this, taken his family away. Walker didn’t even know his grandson’s name. Blame was absolute and powerful, bitterness rising up in Walker’s gut to eat away at any tenderness that once lived there.
An image of his Emma rose up in his memory, her body heavy with pregnancy as she screamed at her father. Walker had thought her grotesque, disfigured, having never expected her to keep the child he was so eager to forget.
“Get away from me! I hate you!” she yelled.
Walker had taken a leave of absence from work and staked out Emma’s best friend’s house for weeks on end, knowing how hard it was to sever all ties to a former life. “It’s time to come home and stop this foolishness, Emma. You’ve won. You get to keep your bastard.”
“I’m never coming home.” She held her chin high in the air.
“Where will you go? How will you support yourself?”
Her eyes gleamed as she delivered the blow. “I’m with Jerry Ahearn now, Dad.”
Walker paled.
“He takes care of me. He loves this baby and he loves me.”
Had that bastard touched his daughter? Dear God. Was that his baby? An image appeared in his mind and he forcibly pushed it back. “Ahearn’s a monster. A murderer. You have to know that.”
“Well, look at the pot calling the kettle black.” She stepped toward him. “I know what you did, Daddy. You cheated on mom with Jerry’s wife, then you killed her so she wouldn’t have your baby.”
He longed to cover her mouth with his hand, stop the filthy stream of words coming out.
Secrets long buried rose up and danced, tormenting him.
It occurred to him that Emma couldn’t be trusted with his secret, that he had to stop her from leaving here, from ruining everything.
There was only one way to do that, to keep himself safe.
His fingers trembled.
Emma’s face was snarled in disgust. “You killed your lover and your own child, like you tried to get me to kill mine.” A single tear ran down her face and she swiped at it with the back of her hand.
The movement was intimately familiar to him, something he had seen her do hundreds of times growing up.
He stepped back, frightened by what he’d been considering.
“What do you want from me?” he whispered.
“Stay away from us, or I’ll tell everyone what you did.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Why not, Daddy? Are you going to kill me, too?”
The fact that he had been considering that very thing filled him with a special horror.
I’ve lost everyone I have ever loved.
Adele was dead, June was tucked away in a nursing home with barely a memory of her own name, his daughter hated him and his son was dead. Mitchell had been a substitute for so many things in his life, and now he had turned on him too, left him alone to face his own demons by himself.
Walker watched as the boy raked up debris from the garden.
There would be no relationship with his grandson, no Christmas dinners or drawings made just for grandpa.
Walker gripped his gun in his hand and for the first time considered using it on himself.
The weight of the cold metal was an odd comfort, a choice that needed to be made.
Colin was the final antagonist of Walker’s life, Colin’s defection the last chapter.
Walker released the safety, just as his phone began to ring, pulling him from his soliloquy.
“Hello?”
“It’s Michael. Long time no see.”
The noise of the street grew louder, and Walker turned to see Colin step into the bar. The sling was unexpected, and Walker was immediately concerned, feeling responsible. “What happened to you?” he asked.
Colin’s stare was cool, and Walker’s heart sank a little lower in his chest. It was one thing to suspect the other man had lost faith in him. It was another to see it clearly etched into his features. Walker signaled the bartender. “Glenlivet—”
Colin raised his hand. “Just a Coke.”
A line in the sand. The first of several, Walker was sure. His fingers shook slightly as he reached for his drink. May as well get right to it. “Why didn’t you call me after the fire at your house?”
“Because I thought you did it.”
There it was, so plainly said. “After everything we’ve been through together, you thought I would try to kill you?” His bloodshot eyes searched Colin’s. “I tried to help you. I gave you the files you asked for.”
“You knew Gwen was there. You know the paperwork was there. If we had been killed, the investigation into David’s death might never be reopened.”
Walker reached for his drink and realized it was empty.
Colin waved to the bartender. “Whiskey on the rocks.”
Gratitude welled up inside Walker as he watched the bartender pour the amber liquid. He couldn’t have this conversation sober, couldn’t give voice to the terrible things that needed to be said.
It occurred to him that this would be his last conversation with Colin, and he felt a profound sadness. Colin was his family. Walker had schooled him in righteousness and the law, only to be brought down by those very things he himself had admired. Again he checked his watch.
“Waiting for someone?”
“No.”
“Tell me about Adele.”
Walker’s lips formed a hard line and he shook his head, the words locked inside like an unwilling confessor.
“I already know, but I need to hear it from you.”
“Why, are you wearing a wire?”
“Nope.” He leaned in close to Walker and whispered, “I looked up to you for damn near half my life, and you’re a murderer and a fraud. I want to hear you say the words.”
Walker could feel his lips pulling down hard at the corners, afraid he might disgrace himself and break down crying. He shot Colin a pleading look.
“Say it.”
He opened his mouth to speak and felt his bottom lip shake wildly. “I killed her,” he said quietly, tears welling in his eyes.
“Tell me why.”
“I l-l-loved her,” he choked out, the words costing him greatly. “She was pregnant, wouldn’t get rid of the baby. She was going to tell June…” Walker reached for his drink and knocked it over, several people turning to stare. He brought his hand over his mouth to cover his crying.
“Why kill David? You’d gotten away with it. Everything was over.”
“I panicked.”
“Why?”
A fresh drink appeared and Walker latched onto it. “Ahearn just got out of jail. His son hated him, but Jerry wanted to reconcile. David showed up in my office with a letter from his father, claiming his mother never contacted his grandmother.”
“Did Ahearn say anything to David about you?”
Walker shook his head. “Not that I know of. But David didn’t believe his dad. He thought Jerry had made Adele unhappy. He blamed his father for his mother’s death. David came to see me because he wanted to know the truth. Of course, I told him she contacted her mother.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“He wanted proof. A piece of paper he could show his father that said he was a liar. But that paper didn’t exist. That’s when I realized my mistake.”
Walker reflected on what he knew too well.
In every crime, the perpetrator left behind clues.
Some were subtle, some dramatic, and any one of them could bring him down.
He sipped at his liquor without tasting it, awash in memories of the mistake that would be his undoing.
“I told Jerry that Adele contacted her mother, but I never wrote it in the official file.”
“You would have had to document it.”
He nodded. “It was easier to write it up as a burglary. But now David was there, insisting, and I told him I couldn’t give it to him.
He was angry. Said he’d file a freedom of information request, go through the local police, whatever agency he had to petition, even go to the media if he had to.
” Walker remembered every word, every nuance in that conversation.
“He said he’d throw so much light on my office it would be like sunshine in the middle of the night.
” He turned to Colin, his eyes beseeching.
“Who knows what they would have found if that happened?”
“So you killed him.”
He shook his head. “I was too scared. I screwed up with Adele. This time I had help.”
“McDonald?”
Walker shook his head. “Sheriff McDonald helped cover the tracks. But he didn’t do it.”
“Then, who?”
“He should have taken his money and disappeared,” Walker said quietly, “but he turned into the devil himself.”
Colin pulled the other man around to face him. “What’s his name?”
“Michael Hinman.”
“Emma’s boyfriend!” Colin’s eyes were wide. “You hired Emma’s boyfriend to kill David.”
“No. You’ve got it backwards. They didn’t even know each other until Michael showed up on my front doorstep looking for money, and June invited him to stay for dinner.”