Fifty-One
McCabe: Thanks for coming. Have a seat. I’m recording this, just so you know.
Reece: Yeah, sure.
McCabe: First, I wanted to offer my condolences again on the passing of your mother.
Reece: Thank you.
McCabe: It’s been quite a tragic couple of days for you. Your father Friday, your mother yesterday. It’s horrible.
Diana: Thank you.
McCabe: And Mr. Chartwell, I wanted you to know that I have already been in discussions with the Crown attorney, and I think she’s
going to find that you acted in self-defense. The likelihood of charges against you is very remote. When you attacked Dalton
Crane, he had already shot your mother and was clearly intending to shoot the rest of you. That said, I would advise you to
retain the services of a lawyer through the process.
Reece: Understood. I’ve already been in touch with someone.
McCabe: How are your hands?
Reece: They did a pretty decent job getting all the splinters out of my palms at the hospital. Some of them were in pretty deep.
McCabe: Lucky that old piece of oar was there.
Reece: Yeah.
McCabe: Wish I’d have gotten there five minutes sooner. If Crane hadn’t died, if your mother had survived, there wouldn’t be quite
so many unanswered questions. But we’re going to do the best we can to clear those up. That’s why I want to talk to everyone
while their memory is fresh. I had a long chat with Holden this morning. He’s pretty shaken up. I was hoping he might be able
to clarify a few things.
Reece: Was he?
McCabe: Yes and no.
Diana: What do you mean?
McCabe: Let’s go back a bit. Holden has described for me what happened back in 1999, which I understand you were not aware of until
recently. That he witnessed your mother fatally shooting Evelyn Corby, who worked with you father at Wiffel-Smith.
Reece: Yes. It was . . . a shock.
McCabe: And that your parents, with the assistance of Mr. Crane, covered up this crime.
Reece: Yes.
McCabe: Holden said that during his time at Sharnwood, he met Alicia Zane, that they formed a kind of bond, that he unburdened himself
about what he had seen so long ago, something his mother had sworn him to never talk about. And even before Holden got into
the details, this Ms. Zane was able to figure out that it was her aunt that your mother had killed.
Reece: But Holden didn’t make the connection.
McCabe: No. He had no idea. He never realized there was any connection until she went to your parents’ house and killed Leah Kennard
and your father.
Diana: So that is what happened, then.
McCabe: That’s Holden’s theory.
Reece: You don’t think that’s what happened?
McCabe: There’s a problem.
Diana: What problem?
McCabe: I could see his thinking about her motive. She had plenty of reason to want to kill Catherine Chartwell, and given that she
had never actually met her, it’s understandable that she might have mistaken Leah Kennard for her, and thinking she had shot
her, it makes sense she would have to shoot your father, since he was right there and would have seen it happen. And maybe,
just maybe, there’s some way she could have figured out how to make it look like a suicide. But as I said, there’s the problem
of the gun.
Reece: The gun?
McCabe: The gun.
Diana: What’s the problem with the gun?
McCabe: We’d already determined that the gun used to kill Ms. Kennard and Mr. Chartwell was the same gun that had killed Evelyn Corby
back in 1999.
Reece: Right.
McCabe: So how was Alicia Zane in possession of it?
(long silence)
Reece: I don’t know. What did Holden say when you asked him?
McCabe: He didn’t have an answer for that one.
Reece: He had no idea at all how she might have come to have it?
McCabe: No.
Reece: Does my brother know what happened to the gun on that night? When he saw my mother shoot Evelyn Corby?
McCabe: He says he just figures your parents kept it. Which makes sense, since it was there on the floor in your parents’ bedroom.
But again, how did it get into the hands of Alicia Zane?
Diana: Maybe . . . Brent—Reece’s father—was forced to hand it over?
McCabe: How would that have worked, exactly? Alicia comes to the house with the intention of killing Catherine Chartwell. She’s been
plotting this act of vengeance from the time she met Holden. But she goes to the house unarmed?
Reece: That does seem . . . unlikely.
McCabe: What happens when she walks into that bedroom and finds the two of them? She’s not exactly going to ask politely to borrow
a gun to commit the murder.
Reece: If my father had the gun in a drawer next to the bed—
McCabe: —then he could have grabbed it, and the one who was shot would have been Alicia Zane.
Diana: So . . . what do you think happened?
McCabe: I do believe Alicia was working on a plan to get even. We found a burner phone on Mr. Crane we believe was hers. It had her
fingerprints on it. It had been used to make several calls to your mother, Mr. Chartwell. We found the calls on her phone
too. Alicia was blackmailing her, but I don’t see any evidence that she went to the house and killed her. We’re right back
where we started. You know the principle of Occam’s razor?
Reece: The simplest explanation is often the right one.
McCabe: Right. I know you might find some small comfort in thinking your father did not kill Leah Kennard, that he did not turn that
gun on himself. That it might leave you with a better memory of him. But I’m sorry to have to tell you that I think that’s
exactly what he did.
Reece: But why?
McCabe: There are some things we’ll never know.
We don’t know what was going on between the two of them, what they might have been talking about.
We don’t know anything about your father’s state of mind.
The one thing we know for sure is that he didn’t mistake Ms. Kennard for his own wife.
I wish I knew more. You and your brother are in a better position than I am to try to guess what he might have been thinking.
Reece: I can’t get my head around my father having a gun in the first place, or keeping it all these years. And all this time, it
was there, next to his bed?
McCabe: And yet, here we are.
Diana: It’s hard to accept.
Reece: I don’t think I’ll ever understand it.
McCabe: About your son.
Diana: Gage?
McCabe: Yeah. How’s he managing? Last night, that must have been a horrible experience for him.
Reece: He was already having a hard time dealing with the death of his grandfather.
McCabe: My daughter knows him.
Diana: What? How?
McCabe: From school.
Reece: Teenagers. How do we ever get through these years?
McCabe: As teenagers, or as parents?
Reece: Both.
McCabe: I wish I knew.