When his ruined corpse was delivered to the crematorium, I unwrapped him, gloried in what he looked like now, in death. I took my father’s belt and put it around his pants, replaced his body with another’s due to be cremated. I drove Mr. Henry and his precious treasure to the lake and dumped him where he’d dumped my family, off the end of the dock at Gatewood. I’d finally avenged them. Perhaps now they could rest in peace. Against all odds, I’d kept my promise and I’d killed him.
I was the one who struck down Gunny—Leigh Saks—with a brick, a spur-of-the-moment reaction to being terrified of what she would tell the FBI hotline about that belt buckle. What could she possibly have said? I didn’t know what he’d told her that long-ago day. But I’d heard she’d seen Mr. Henry with that belt buckle, and I knew it might lead them directly to me. I didn’t have time to question Leigh myself. I acted. Now, of course, I realize she didn’t know anything that would have implicated me. All she did was watch that profane old man polishing and fondling my father’s belt buckle.
I am grateful Leigh survived. I am grateful that whatever it was in her brain that had made her simple miraculously corrected itself. I have no understanding of how that happened. But I wish her the best in her new life. Perhaps one day she will consider I did her a favor.
I hope you are alone in my house, that neither Landry nor Eric is there with you. I’ve written to them separately. The pain it will bring Landry makes me want a magic wand, to wish away that any of this ever happened, that I ever came to Haggersville. But I did. He will have to face it, deal with it, as I will.
Again, my husband and my brother-in-law have no idea what I have done or who I really am. They are innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever.
Yet again I have to leave my home.
I predict the two of you will prosper.
She’d printed out her name, then signed it
Albie Pierson, aka Susan Pierson Hadden Sparrow
74
* * *
VITA-MAX CORPORATION
CRANSTON BUILDING, SUITE 202
TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
When Ty and Sala stepped off the elevator on the second floor of the older Cranston Building, they didn’t see anyone, understandable since it was the weekend. They heard whistling, followed it down the hall to a door that was cracked open. They walked in to see Bill Culver packing boxes. Ty had thought he’d looked good in the suit he’d worn at Octavia’s funeral, but he was even more good-looking today, dressed in jeans, boots, and a black T-shirt tight enough to show off pecs that rivaled Eric Sparrow’s.
He looked up, puzzled a moment, then he smiled and stepped forward. “Agent Porto and Chief Christie, whatever are you two doing here?” The smile fell off his face as if on cue when they didn’t answer him. He splayed his hands in apology and said in a low voice filled with emotion, “There was no time on Tuesday to thank you for caring enough to invite me to sit with you.” He squeezed his eyes closed a moment. “And then that explosion, all the chaos, a terrible thing. A miracle no one was killed.”
“You never left Octavia’s coffin,” Sala said.
“Of course not. How could I? She was the woman I loved, the woman who would have come back to me if that crazy young man hadn’t killed her. I saw on TV he was dead, killed where he’d lived once, in Fort Pessel, Virginia. Thursday night.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Ty said. “Why are you packing boxes, Mr. Culver?”
A smile bloomed, then disappeared quickly. He shrugged. “The timing is regrettable, but my lease is up. I’ve bought a small building not far from here, offices for the additional staff I’ve been planning to hire and a bigger distribution center for the three new Vita-Max stores I’m going to be opening over the next six months.”
Sala whistled. “That’s an expensive plan. It would keep me up nights wondering how I was going to pay all the bills.”
Culver laughed, but sobered immediately. “You’re right, of course, the financing would have been tight, but Octavia’s lawyer called me last Wednesday to tell me Octavia never changed her will. Still, I was stunned. When we married we agreed I would be her sole beneficiary and she would be mine. But then when we couldn’t resolve our differences and she left, I naturally assumed she would change her will.”
Sala said, “Octavia told me about the bequest from a relative, a complete surprise. What is the amount, something near five million dollars?”
Culver nodded. He shrugged again. “Of course, I’d much rather have my wife back.”
“Would you really?” Ty had spoken very quietly, but Culver immediately turned on her.
He stared at her, his face tightening with anger. “What do you mean by that, Chief Christie?”
It was Sala who answered. “I told you at Octavia’s funeral she had decided to go back to you. It must have come as quite a shock, since you’d paid Victor Nesser twenty thousand dollars to murder her. Of course, if she had come back to you, you would simply have waited until it was safe to pay someone else to murder her later, say, after your second honeymoon. No reason to share all that money, was there?”
Culver’s hands gripped the edge of his desk so hard his knuckles were white. He was shaking, and not from rage. “That’s outrageous! How dare you come in here making accusations like that! I loved Octavia, do you hear me? Loved her! I will grieve for her the rest of my life. The two of you—you disgust me. I want you both out of here right now.”
Ty smiled at him. “It turns out, Mr. Culver, the twenty thousand dollars you withdrew on three different dates from your bank, Third Republic of Virginia, right here in Tysons Corner, was from the bank vault. It also turns out Victor Nesser paid for his dinner in a town called Winslow with a one-hundred-dollar bill that matches a sequential serial number from one of those bills you withdrew from your bank. He had a few dozen more hundreds in his pants pocket when he died.”
He looked blank for only a moment, then he said, smooth as honey, “I admit that’s strange, if it’s true and not some kind of mix-up at the bank. But that money I withdrew? I pay people with cash all the time, some of my suppliers prefer it. He could have gotten the bills from anywhere. He didn’t get them from me.”
Sala continued, his voice expressionless, “We examined the prison logs at Central State Hospital while Victor was there. They videotape visits to patients who are violent offenders, did you know that? Guess what? There you are, Mr. Culver, right there, a few days before Victor escaped. It was foolish of you to go there yourself, rather than hire someone else to contact him. But you’re not all that smart, are you?”
Culver opened his mouth, but Ty raised her hand. “Mr. Culver, spare us. It also wasn’t bright of you to tell us you hadn’t known you were still Octavia’s beneficiary. One phone call to her lawyer, and that lie stood up and saluted. You knew it very well, made sure to confirm it before you arranged to help Victor escape and kill her. Your cell phone puts you there near the grounds the night he escaped. Were you ever afraid he might go crazy and murder you, Mr. Culver? After all, he was incarcerated in a high-security mental facility. Or Octavia had told you all about him, and you were certain he was harmless, at least to you? You picked him up, gave him the twenty thousand, all in one-hundred-dollar bills, and took him to the Klondike Motel and left him there.”
Culver’s hands were fisted, his jaw working. He looked like he wanted to smash Ty’s face. “You listen to me, I didn’t mean what I said exactly. I was still grief-stricken when her lawyer called me. I don’t really remember what he said or what I said. You’re twisting everything.”
Sala was breathing hard, so enraged he wanted to leap on this man. “If I had known what you are, you bastard, and Octavia had told me she was going back to you, I would have tied her down to protect her.”
“She was coming back to me—you told me so at her funeral!”
Sala shrugged. “I lied. I felt sorry for you, so I lied.”
Culver grabbed up a box cutter, saw Sala beckon to him with a wave of his fingers, and slowly put it down.
“Good move, Mr. Culver,” Ty said.