CHAPTER 69

“AM I?” MALCOMB SAID again with an infuriating smile.

Bree looked like she wanted to smack him, but she kept her cool and said, “Yes.”

The smile remained as he pointed us to chairs by the fire. He limped to the wheelchair, sat in it, put the blanket across his legs, and gazed at us with renewed interest if not energy. He looked as if he’d recently been ill.

“The three of you are persistent, I’ll give you that,” he said. “And I must say, we knew you were an investigative all-star, Dr. Cross, but we had no idea you were a marksman as well. Six dead because of you and Officer Fagan.”

I said, “The rifle was well sighted in, and your men shot first.”

“Yes, that was a mistake,” Malcomb said, tapping his finger against his chin. “Tell me, does it stick in your craw that your wife was the one who figured me out?”

I shrugged, said, “I’ve always said she was the shinier side of the coin.”

“Ah, yes, the self-deprecation,” Malcomb said softly. “The need to be liked. I am well aware you are a psychologist. You know a lot about the human mind in general. But I know a lot about the way you specifically think, Dr. Cross. And you, Chief Stone. And yes, you, Detective Sampson. We’ve been tracking your data for years.”

Sampson looked like he wanted to rush him. He said, “And you’ve been killing people you don’t like and taunting men who’ve just lost their wives.”

“No.” Malcomb shook his head. “Never. Not me. That would have been my lesser half.”

Bree said, “Sean.”

I added, “Your twin brother, aka Ian Duncanson, who vanished hunting near Boise two months ago.”

“What?” Sampson said, looking at me.

“True,” I said.

To me, Malcomb said, “You really have gotten to the heart of the matter, haven’t you?” Then the head of Maestro looked at Sampson. “What you all failed to understand was that there were two of us contacting you over the years. One M—me—was fairly helpful to your investigations. The other, my brother, less so. Cruelly less so. I personally apologize for the way Sean treated you after your late wife’s passing.”

Sampson said nothing.

Bree said, “You’re saying your brother was part of all this? Maestro?”

Malcomb squinted. “He was aware of it, but not a part of it. In the instances I’ve mentioned, he just signed into our area of the darknet and went about his cruel mischief.”

“How’s that?” Sampson demanded.

“Sean seemed to have a troubled mind from early childhood. But he had a better brain for math and computer code than I ever did. He helped me write the algorithms that made my company, and I made him a very wealthy man. He also had a knack for hacking and for hiding things, like ownership, through Brazilian shell companies.”

“Like that ranch in Colorado where your men were attacked,” I said.

Malcomb dipped his head. “Like that ranch. And the ranch above the road where I met my untimely end. And this place, of course.”

“Sean died in your vehicle,” Bree said. “Not on a hunting trip.”

Malcomb sighed. “It had to end at some point. In the past few years, Sean was deteriorating mentally, and his mere existence provided a bombproof alias for me.”

“You’re a great brother,” Bree said.

“Better than you know. Sean’s life would have been over decades ago if it had not been for me. Protecting him. Keeping his secrets secret. And yes, you were getting too close to those secrets, and to mine. That’s why we had to send for the janitor. Toomey, the man who brought you here. He cleans things up for us on a regular basis.”

I flashed on the janitor at the mounted police office in Kimberley. Toomey? Wasn’t that his name? He had to have heard me and Fagan talking.

The blond woman came into the room wearing an apron. Handsome more than pretty, she said with a mild Slavic accent, “Dinner is ready, M.”

“Thank you, Katrina,” Malcomb said, then looked at us. “Shall we?”