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CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX: Home
Spring came early that year to the West estate, and the long garden behind the house bloomed as though it had been waiting for this moment for twenty-three years. The flowerbeds were alive with fresh colors, the climbing roses had begun to cover the old stone walls, and the trees along the garden path were heavy with new leaves. Even the air seemed different, carrying the sweet scent of flowers and freshly turned earth through the open windows of the house.Derek stood on the back terrace with a cup of tea going cold in his hands and watched his mother move along the flowerbeds with her sleeves rolled to the elbow, bending over the new shoots with the absorbed look of a woman who had been given time back. She worked slowly, stopping now and then to examine a leaf or brush a little soil from her fingers. For twenty-three years, she had walked this garden alone, tending the flowers through changing seasons while carrying a grief she had never truly learned to put down.Now she hummed as
CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE: The Station Door
Three weeks later, Jacob West walked out of the hospital on his own two feet, leaning on a cane he complained about and a son he did not complain about at all.The authorities had finished their review the week before. The prosecutor's letter had been brief and courteous: Mr. West had been the victim of a deliberate fraud, he had cooperated fully, and the state saw no purpose in pursuing him. Jacob read it twice in his hospital bed, folded it carefully, and handed it to Derek's mother without a word. She read it, and then she sat down on the edge of the mattress and wept into his shoulder for ten minutes while a nurse politely found a reason to be elsewhere.Now the three of them stood on the hospital steps in the morning air, and Jacob lifted his face to the breeze like a man tasting something he had forgotten."I should like to go somewhere before we go home," Derek said.The station sat at the end of a quiet street, red doors and a scrubbed concrete apron, exactly as he remembered
CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FOUR: The Hearing
The courtroom smelled of old wood and floor polish, and every seat was taken.Derek sat at the defense table in a borrowed suit that fit him badly across the shoulders, his lawyer at his side and his mother in the first row behind him. Across the aisle the district attorney shuffled his papers with the air of a man who had expected an easy morning and no longer did."Mr. Moss," the judge said, peering over her glasses, "I am told the defense wishes to enter new evidence.""We do, Your Honor." Derek's lawyer rose. "A recording, a sworn statement, and a document dated twenty-three years ago."The recording came first. The clerk set the player on the bench and pressed the button, and Hartigan's voice filled the room, thin and tinny and unmistakable. He spoke of Weston, of the ledger, of the child taken from a garden and the sums that had changed hands afterward. When it reached the part where he admitted what he had done to his partner on the night of the murder, a low sound ran through
CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-THREE: The Weight of the Truth
Derek was still standing beside the car, his thumb hovering over the screen, when he heard his mother calling his name across the car park.She was running, which he had never once seen her do, her coat flapping open and her hair slipping loose from its pins. She stopped in front of him with a hand pressed to her ribs, and she laughed and cried in the same breath."He is awake," she said. "The surgeon says the bullet missed everything that matters. He is weak, and he is cross with the nurses, and he is asking for you."Derek's knees nearly gave way. He caught the roof of the car and held on until the ground stopped tilting. "He is going to live?""He is going to live." She took his face between her hands, and her palms were warm against his cold skin. "Come and see him."Jacob lay propped against white pillows with a tube in his arm and a monitor ticking steadily beside him. He looked smaller than he had in the chapel, and older, but his eyes were clear, and they found Derek the momen
CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO
"Do not move him," Derek heard himself say, and his voice sounded like someone else's, a stranger calmly shouting orders in a burning building. He knew exactly what to do, because he had done it a hundred times for people he had never met. He tore off his jacket, pressed it against the wound beneath his father's shoulder blade, and leaned on it with all of his weight.The pistol cracked again, closer this time, and a hymnal burst apart on the pew above his head."Stay down!" His mother had thrown herself across both men, her bound hands clutching at Jacob's coat. "Derek, stay down!"Derek lifted his head. Hartigan stood in the center aisle with the cassette still in his left hand and a bloody gash running down his temple, and he was backing toward the doors with the pistol swinging between them. His breath came in sobs, and his eyes were wide and fixed, the eyes of a man who had started something he could no longer control."It is over," Derek said. "You killed your own partner in fro
CHAPTER TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-ONE
"Hello, Conrad," Jacob said.The old man crossed the threshold one trembling step at a time, leaning his weight on the cane and ignoring the blood that had begun to seep through the dressing at his side. His eyes went first to Derek and then to the woman in the pew, and something in his face broke and mended in the same moment."You were not supposed to leave your bed," Conrad said, and for the first time his voice lost its warmth. "You never could follow a simple instruction.""I have followed one all my life, and it was yours." Jacob stopped in the aisle between them. "You told me to sign that order in secret and tell no one. I have been paying for it ever since."In the front pew, Derek's mother made a small sound. "Jacob," she whispered. "What order?"Jacob looked at her, and the whole chapel seemed to hold its breath. "I signed the paper that sent our son away, and I never told you, because I could not bear for you to know that I had done it with my own hand."Derek's mother clos
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