“About whether, if you had the power to punish Buck’s killer and unravel the corruption behind the paper mill deal, you would do it? If it meant the town losing the mill and all that comes with it.”
“I have thought about it. I asked Jet the same question this afternoon.”
“What did she say?”
“She’d blow it up without a second thought.”
Nadine nods thoughtfully. “Well . . . she can afford to, can’t she? She married well, as they say. At least in an economic sense.”
“What about you? What would you do?”
“I understand the temptation to blow it all up. Especially after what happened to Buck. But it’s like that Vietnam-era saying: ‘We had to destroy this village in order to save it.’ That’s the real dilemma in all this.”
“I know. It’s just hard to take the macro view when you know somebody beat Buck to death over it.”
Nadine is watching me carefully. “Well . . . anyway. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t cross a line before.”
“No. We’re good.”
“Night.” With a small smile she closes the door.
I check the doors and windows to be sure they’re locked, then go back to my bathroom and brush my teeth, glad for quiet after the night’s craziness. It’s strange to have Nadine under my roof, but not at all unpleasant, and it’s absolutely necessary. The break-in at her store was not normal. A skilled criminal was looking for something in her safe. Something specific. The same burglar probably hit at least two other law offices in town. What I don’t understand is how Nadine could have no idea what they might be looking for.
Using earbuds, I call Ben Tate to make sure I know the thrust of the stories he’ll be running tomorrow. While we talk, I open my top dresser drawer and remove the Walther P38 I borrowed from my father after I moved back home. I was living downtown at the time, and street crime was common enough to warrant keeping it in my car. The gun was made in Germany in 1957, and Dad bought it while serving there in the early 1960s. After hanging up with Ben, I set the Walther on my bedside table, then lay my iPhone and the new burner Jet brought this afternoon beside it. I’ve yet to take a call on that burner phone, but something tells me that whatever comes over that illicit connection over the next few days could determine the course of the rest of my life.
As I lie in the bed, waiting for sleep, I see Jet on the mezzanine of the Aurora after dragging me down there in a fit of recklessness. Suddenly I understand what triggered her atypical breakout. From the moment she kissed me on the roof to the moment she hiked up her dress, she was trying to get us caught. The months of secrecy and tension took one kind of toll, but Paul’s suspicion means we must stop seeing each other, at least for a while. The only rational way forward is for her to ask him for a divorce, one that will never be resolved in her favor. Even for a woman as resolute as Jet, the prospect of fighting an unwinnable battle must bring on something close to despair. How much easier—or so it probably seemed while drunk—to blow up her marriage and let the shrapnel fly where it will. A month ago she would never have done what she did tonight. Yeats is always right, I reflect. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. As sleep finally takes me, and the awful weight of this day begins to slip from my shoulders, a sense of foreboding awakens in my mind, too shapeless to define, yet real enough to prevent my descending into true oblivion.
My iPhone wakes me at 1:40 a.m.
Blinking in confusion, I see that it’s Ben Tate, calling from the paper. It’s been two hours since he and I finalized tomorrow’s stories. I can’t believe he’s still at the office. I press answer and lie back on my pillow.
“Ben? What’s going on?”
“Thirty minutes ago the police scanner went crazy. Something happened at Max Matheson’s house, in that ritzy neighborhood out in the county.”
“Like a break-in or something?”
“I don’t think so. Carl got word from a source in the sheriff’s department that Max’s wife had been shot.”
I sit up and turn on my bedside lamp. “That can’t be right.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But Carl’s guy said that when the responding deputy got there, Mrs. Matheson was dead in the bed with her husband, and Max was out of his mind. The gun was in the bed with them, and the sheets were covered in blood. Like a slaughterhouse, he said. She was shot through the heart.”
“Sally Matheson is dead?” I ask dully, seeing an image of Sally dressed to the nines on the Aurora rooftop earlier tonight. “Is this for real, Ben?”
“I know it sounds crazy. It’s like even the cops can’t believe it. But it’s real.”
I rub my eyes and shake my head, as if that could clear my mind. “Actually, the Mathesons had a very public argument at that party on top of the Aurora tonight. Everybody saw it happen. Sally called him a bastard and threw a drink in his face. I’ve never seen her do anything remotely like that.”
“Are you coming down here?” Ben asks.
Nadine rises in my mind. “I don’t know. I may wait and monitor—”
My burner phone is ringing. I don’t recognize the number, but I never do until I’ve had a burner for about a week. It’s got to be Jet. “I’ve got to run, Ben. I’ll work my own sources and call you back later. Keep me updated.”
I hang up before he can reply, then answer the burner. Despite what Ben said, the news I’m braced to hear is what I’ve feared for the past three months: Paul is headed to your house with a gun— “I’m here,” I answer.
“I only have thirty seconds,” Jet says, panic crackling in every syllable. “Wake up and listen hard.”
“I’m up. Was Sally shot?”
“Yes. She’s dead, Marshall.”
“The news is already out. Did Max shoot her?”
“That’s what it looks like. The police are over there now. Sheriff’s deputies, actually. Paul went over. I have Kevin with me at home. My God, this is the last thing in the world I could have imagined.”
“Is Max going to be arrested?”
“I don’t know. I guess he might be. It’s all so unbelievable.”
“I saw their argument at the Aurora. Have they been doing that a lot recently?”
“No! Not that I’ve seen, anyway.”
“You told me Sally was acting weird today, that she wanted to talk to you.”
Jet is silent for about three seconds. “That’s right. You know . . . wait—”
She blocks the mic on her phone, and I hear her muffled voice speaking to her son.
“I’ve got to go,” she says with sudden clarity. “I’ll know more after Paul gets home, but I won’t be able to call you. And don’t call me. Not under any circumstances.”
The phone clicks, and she’s gone.
I sit naked on the edge of the bed for a minute or so, stunned beyond belief. The image of Sally Matheson, the archetypal steel magnolia if ever there was one, lying beside her husband on their bloody bedsheets is something my brain simply refuses to accept. It’s like hearing that Sally Field got her brains blown out. Of course, Sally Field never married a man like Max Matheson. Burt Reynolds and Max probably shared more than a few traits, but so far as I know Burt never killed anybody. Yet despite all I know about Max, I’ve never heard a whisper about him raising a hand against his wife. In his own way, Max worshipped Sally.
A tentative knock sounds at my door.
“Hello?” I call.
“It’s me.”
For an instant Jet flashes in my mind, but Jet can’t be standing at my door. It has to be Nadine. Getting up, I pull on a pair of Levi’s, then go to the door and pull it open.
Nadine stands there in a long T-shirt and wire-rimmed glasses, nothing else.
“The house phone rang,” she says. “You didn’t answer, so I got up and checked it. The caller ID showed it was from the Watchman office. As I was walking back to my room, I thought I heard your voice. You sounded upset. Is everything okay?”
“No. Sally Matheson has been shot. By Max, apparently.”
Nadine stares at me without blinking. “Shot dead?”
“That’s what my editor told me.”
“That’s . . . it seems impossible. Crazier than Buck getting killed.”
“I know. But it’s happened.”