WIN, Coben, Harlan [ebook and pdf reader .txt] 📗

Rationality and prudence are difficult, exhausting, mundane.

Occam’s razor works in reverse when it comes to answers: If the answer is easy, it is wrong.

I warn you now. You’ll disagree with some of the choices I make. Don’t fret about it. I don’t know whether I made the right ones either. If I was certain, per my personal axiom, I would probably be wrong.

*  *  *

When I arrive back at the Dakota, PT is waiting for me. I bring him up to my apartment. I pour us both cognac in snifters.

“Arlo Sugarman is dead,” I tell him.

PT is my friend. I don’t really believe in mentors, but if I did, PT would be one. He has been good to me. He has been fair.

“You’re sure?” he asks.

“I had my people call the crematorium that works with St. Timothy’s to look into their records for on and around June 15, 2011. They also looked into death certificates for the Greater St. Louis area for that date.”

PT sits back in the leather wing chair. “Damn.”

I wait.

He shakes his head. “I wanted him, Win. I wanted to bring him to justice.”

“I know.”

PT raises the cognac. “To Patrick O’Malley.”

“To Patrick,” I say.

We clink glasses. PT collapses back into the chair.

“I really wanted to right that wrong,” he says.

With the glass near my lips, I add, “If you did anything wrong.”

PT makes a face. “What does that mean?”

“You were the junior agent,” I say.

“So?”

“So those were his calls, weren’t they?”

PT carefully puts down his glass on the coaster. He watches me. “What calls?”

“To not wait for backup,” I say. “To go in through the back door on his own.”

“What are you trying to say, Win?”

“You blame yourself. You’ve blamed yourself for almost fifty years.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

I shrug. “Who called that tip in?” I ask him.

“It was anonymous.”

“Who told you that?” I ask. “Never mind, it’s not important. You both drove to the house, but when you got there, Special Agent O’Malley made the decision not to wait for backup.”

PT looks at me over his snifter. “He thought time was of the essence.”

“Still,” I say, “he broke protocol.”

“Well, technically, yes.”

“He kicked in the back door on his own. Who fired the first shot, PT?”

“What difference does it make?”

“You didn’t mention it to me. Who fired first?”

“We don’t know for sure.”

“But Special Agent O’Malley did discharge his weapon, correct?”

PT stares at me hard for a few long seconds. Then he tilts his head back on the leather and closes his eyes. I wait for him to say more. He doesn’t. He just sits with his head tilted back and his eyes closed. PT looks old and tired. I stay silent. I’ve said enough. Perhaps Special Agent Patrick O’Malley was just overzealous. Perhaps he wanted to catch Arlo Sugarman and make himself the hero, even if it meant shattering standard FBI procedure. Or perhaps O’Malley, a father financially stretched with six kids, had heard that Nero Staunch had put a bounty on the Jane Street Six, and really, they were killers anyway and so what if one of them got shot trying to escape?

I don’t know the answer.

I don’t want to push it.

Life is lived in the grays.

“Win?”

“Yes?”

“Don’t say another word, okay?”

I don’t. I just sit there with my drink and my friend and let the night close in around us.

*  *  *

The next morning, I drive out to Bernardsville, New Jersey, and I visit Mrs. Parker and Mr. Rowan again.

This for me is the grayest of the gray.

They made me promise to tell them what I learned about their children.

So do I? Do I tell these two elderly parents that their children are dead—or do I let them go on believing that maybe Billy and Edie survived and have children and possibly grandchildren? What good will knowing the truth at their age do for them? Should I let them live with their harmless fantasy? Will the truth cause too much stress at their age? Do I have the right to make that call?

I warned you that you may disagree with some of the calls I make.

Here is one.

Mrs. Parker and Mr. Rowan have waited nearly fifty years to learn the truth. I know the truth. I promised that I would tell them the truth.

And so I do.

I don’t go into gruesome detail, and mercifully they don’t ask.

When I finish, Mrs. Parker takes my hand in hers.

“Thank you.”

I nod. We sit there. They cry for a bit. Then I make my excuses and leave.

They’d wanted to know who killed their children.

Here again I am making a call you may not like.

I tell them it was Vanessa Hogan.

As I leave the assisted living village, I take out my phone and hit the send button on my email. I am emailing an audio file to PT. Of course, I realized that Vanessa Hogan might ask for my phone in order to confess—and of course, I carry a spare.

I cut out the opening—my words about my own unlawful acts—but the FBI will have her full confession on tape. Vanessa Hogan crossed the line in my view. You hear me say this, and you think me a hypocrite. You counter about my “night tours” and my beating of Teddy “Big T” Lyons in the beginning of this tale. Teddy did me no harm. On the other hand, Vanessa Hogan’s victims—Billy Rowan and Edie Parker—were responsible for the death of Vanessa Hogan’s only son.

I understand that. None of these are easy calls.

We live in the grays.

But Billy Rowan and Edie Parker were young with no record. They didn’t throw the explosives. They were remorseful and willing to surrender. They would not have continued to kill and harm people. Should Vanessa Hogan pay for what she did?

I’ll leave that to the courts.

Am I threading too thin a needle again?

Well, we aren’t done yet.

*  *  *

My jet awaits. We fly back out to St. Louis. When we land, I take the drive myself. The address is already in my phone navigation. I arrive at the farm and park on the road. I trek