“My appeal is based on my mental sanity. Killing Burroughs will make me appear to be even more loony. Don’t you see? They’ll have the murder weapon with my fingerprints on it. They’ll have my confession. Dozens of witnesses just saw our altercation, a fight nearly to the death, which will thus add in motive for me.” He turned both palms to the ceiling. “Case closed.”
Ted Weston couldn’t help but squirm. A hundred grand. That was more than a year’s salary. Plus it would be cash, no taxes taken out, so it was closer to two years’ worth. He thought about what he and Edna could do with that kind of cash. They were drowning in bills. That kind of money wouldn’t just be throwing them a life preserver. It would be throwing them a damn yacht. And he knew Sumner was good for it. Everybody knew that. He had already transferred two K into his and Bob’s account to look the other way in the cafeteria, which they’d done until it went south.
Looking away for two grand was one thing. Getting $500 a month to report on what Burroughs was up to, as Ted had for years now, that was nice too. But one hundred grand—man oh man, the number staggered Ted. And all he had to do was stab a worthless baby-killer who should have gotten the chair anyway, a man who, if Sumner wanted him dead, would end up dead no matter what. So what was the harm? What was the big deal?
Sumner was right. Nobody would finger Ted. Even if it went wrong, Ted was liked in here. His colleagues would back him.
It would be so easy.
“Theodore?”
Ted shook his head. “I can’t.”
“If you’re trying to negotiate for more money—”
“I’m not. This isn’t who I am.”
Sumner laughed. “Oh, you’re above it, is that what you think?”
“I need to be right with my family,” Ted said. “With my God.”
“Your God?” Sumner laughed again. “That superstitious nonsense? Your God who lets thousands of children starve every day but lets me live to murder and rape? Do you ever think about that, Theodore? Did your God watch me torture people? Was your God too weak to stop me—or did he choose to watch my victims suffer horrible deaths?”
Ted didn’t bother replying. He stared down at the floor, his face reddening.
“You don’t have a choice, Theodore.”
Ted looked up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I need you to do this. You’ve already taken money from us. I can let your bosses know—not to mention local law enforcement, the press, your family. I don’t want to do that. I like you. You’re a good man. But we are desperate. You don’t seem to appreciate that. We want Burroughs dead.”
“You keep saying ‘we.’ Who is we?”
Sumner looked him dead in the eye. “You don’t want to know. We need him dead. And we need him dead tonight.”
“Tonight?” Ted couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Even if I—”
“I can make further threats if you’d like. I can remind you of our wealth. I can remind you that we still have resources on the outside. I can remind you that we know all about you, that we know where your family—”
Ted’s hand shot out for Ross Sumner’s throat. Sumner didn’t so much as flinch as Ted’s fingers closed around his neck. It didn’t last, of course. Ted let go almost immediately.
“We can make things bad for you, Theodore. You have no idea how bad.”
Ted felt lost, adrift.
“But let’s dispense with such unpleasantries, shall we? We are friends. Friends don’t make idle threats. We are on the same side. The best relationships are not zero-sum, Theodore. The best relationships are win-win. And I feel as though I’ve behaved poorly here. Please accept my apology. Plus a ten-thousand-dollar bonus.” Sumner licked his lips. “One hundred and ten thousand dollars. Think about all that money.”
Ted felt sick. Idle threats. Guys like Ross Sumner don’t make idle threats.
Like the man said, Ted had no choice. He was about to be pushed across a line from which there was, he knew, no coming back.
“Tell me your plan again,” Ted said.
Chapter
7
Back in her room, Rachel stared at the maybe-Matthew photograph, picked up her phone, and debated calling her sister Cheryl and blowing up her world.
It was odd that David didn’t ask her to show him the photograph again. She had been prepared for that. Doubt burrows in when the photograph isn’t front and center. When you’re staring right at it, you somehow know that it has to be Matthew. When you put it away, when you rely on your imagination instead of something as concrete as the actual image, you realize how ridiculous your supposition is, that your belief that a distant view of a young child is somehow evidence that a toddler murdered five years earlier is, in fact, still alive is beyond ludicrous.
She shouldn’t call Cheryl. She should keep this from her.
But did Rachel have the right to make that call?
Rachel was staying at the Briggs Motor Lodge of Maine, famed, she imagined, for having walls made of some kind of gauze or cotton mesh. Right now, she could hear her neighbors fervently and lustily enjoying their stay as though they were sharing this bed with her. The woman kept yelling out “Oh, Kevin,” and “Go, Kevin,” and “Yes, Kevin,” and even—oh, how Rachel hoped this was something the woman shouted lost in the throes of passion rather than trying to be cute or funny—“Take me to Heaven, Kevin.”
A little afternoon delight, Rachel mused somewhat bitterly. It must be nice.
When was the last time she’d had an afternoon like that?
It wasn’t worth thinking about. Rachel was still coming down from a full-fledged panic attack brought on, she assumed, by the combination of seeing David and going off her antianxiety medicine. The medicine didn’t work for her. Not really. She took the Xanax or whatever, hoping to deaden the pain of being responsible for another human being’s death, but while it may have put some of the guilt at a distance—made it feel more elusive—the guilt clung on.
She blinked her eyes and tried to focus on doing the right thing here.
She should call her sister and tell her. That was what Rachel would want if their roles were reversed and Cheryl was the one holding this photo. Rachel picked up her mobile. Service was spotty up here in rural Maine. This was a prison town. Everyone staying at this motor lodge was somehow connected to Briggs Penitentiary—visitors, vendors, suppliers, deliverers, that kind of thing.
She had enough bars to make the call. Her fingers clicked the Contacts icon and scrolled to Cheryl’s name. Her finger hovered above the call button.
Don’t do it.
She’d promised herself that she would keep this from Cheryl—protect her sister—until she knew for certain. Right now, when you stripped out the emotion, she still knew nothing. She had a photograph of a boy who resembled her dead nephew. Period. The end. David’s enthusiasm notwithstanding, they had diddly-squat.
She flicked on the motor lodge’s television. On the sign outside, the Briggs Motor Lodge of Maine actually boasted that all rooms had a COLOR TV, spelling out each letter in a different color—the C was in orange, the O in green, the L in blue—to emphasize that fact, though Rachel figured that the real draw would be if the motor lodge still had black-and-white televisions. She flicked through the stations. Mostly daytime talk shows and bad-take cable news. The commercials—buy gold, get a second mortgage, consolidate your debt, invest in crypto—all seemed like legal versions of Ponzi schemes to her.