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Chapter Twenty-Six

It was a fifteen-minute walk from Le Bernardin back to the Lock-Horne Building. Win threw on a pair of badass mirrored sunglasses that reminded Myron of his parents' except for being in fashion terms the direct opposite. For the first few minutes, Myron and Win didn't speak. They headed east on 51st Street.

Finally, Win said, "Interesting."

"What's interesting?"

"You don't trust PT."

Myron knew where Win was going with this. "You're wondering why I didn't say anything about Greg getting roughed up in that basketball game."

"It could explain how his DNA ended up at the crime scene."

"I think revealing that would be a violation of attorney-client privilege," Myron said.

"And you want to save that information," Win said.

"Yes. There'll always be time later to say something."

"Like as a courtroom surprise."

"Probably nothing so dramatic," Myron said, "but I don't know the FBI's agenda here, do you?"

"I don't, no."

"I don't see why we'd give them a head start on this."

"Even if it exonerates Greg."

"If it does," Myron said, "then we can be the ones who find it and control it."

Win nodded. "Makes sense."

They continued down 51st Street.

"There are too many hidden interests at play here," Myron said.

"Like?"

"Like, if the FBI believes a serial killer is out there, why are they keeping it a secret?"

"To avoid panic."

"The public should know," Myron said. "Sadie Fisher, as Greg's attorney, should know."

"We both know why," Win said. "We discussed this before—with Joey the Toe's conviction."

"Exactly," Myron said. "That's what I mean about hidden interests. The FBI is afraid that if this gets out, then all those convictions—especially Joey the Toe's—would get overturned."

"So," Win said, "it is prudent for them to wait."

"But is it? Why? So they don't embarrass some overzealous DAs? There may be innocent people serving hard time in prisons for crimes—murders no less—that they didn't commit. Can you imagine a greater nightmare for them?"

"If the FBI reveals it now, they create a big issue. If they keep it to themselves, well, the same." Win thought about it. "Neither option is desirable when you think about it."

"So side with being open."

"And create panic by telling people there's a chance a serial killer is on the loose?"

"You underestimate the common man."

"You overestimate him," Win said.

"Ben Franklin said that it's better that a hundred guilty men go free than one innocent man suffers in prison."

Win nodded. "Blackstone's ratio."

"Yes."

"And you agree with that?"

"Blackstone actually said ten guilty men, not a hundred," Myron said. "But yeah, if the feds harbor the slightest doubt about these people's guilt, they should speak up now."

When they reached St. Patrick's Cathedral at Fifth Avenue, the foot traffic picked up and conversations in myriad languages wafted in the air.

"I trust PT," Win said.

"So do I."

"So for now, we honor that. We can't say anything."

"Why do you think he told us?" Myron asked.

"You know why."

"He's already thought of all the things we are saying now," Myron asserted. "About revealing the truth to the public."

"Yes."

"And the only way out of this dilemma for him is to solve this fast."

Win stopped, spun slowly, looked around.

"You forget something?"

Win frowned. "I never forget something."

"I've seen you forget umbrellas in downpours."

"I don't forget them. I leave them behind for others."

"You're such a man of the people."

Win took out his phone and checked it. He frowned and started typing a reply.

"Problem?" Myron asked.

"No, just a family business matter. I'm going to helicopter down to Philadelphia. I should be back in a few hours."

Within seconds, Win's limo was on the scene. The driver opened the back door for him. Win started toward it, stopped, turned back to Myron. "Is it wrong that I want it to be a serial killer and that the serial killer is Greg Downing?"

Myron smiled. "You don't forgive easily."

Win said nothing.

"Yet you still worked with him," Myron said. "You helped him with his finances."

"It wasn't my place to forgive or hold a grudge."

"It was mine."

"Yes."

"I don't know about right or wrong," Myron said. "I guess it would be easiest."

"We never get easy."

"Never," Myron agreed.

Win disappeared into the car.

When Myron got back to his office, Big Cyndi met him at the elevator. She kept her voice low.

"You have a visitor, Mr. Bolitar."

"Who is it?"

"Ellen."

"Ellen what?"

Big Cyndi was whispering now. "She wouldn't give me her last name."

Myron moved into the waiting area by Big Cyndi's desk. An elderly woman—Myron guessed her to be about his mother's age—stood holding her purse in both hands. She was tiny—what some might call wizened—with short hair and a buttoned-up cardigan of matching grays. She wore pearls and cameo stud earrings. A white shawl was wrapped around her neck, held in by a brass brooch of a butterfly.

"Can I help you?" Myron asked.

"Yes please," the woman said. "Can we speak alone in your office?"

"Do I know you?"

She gave him a smile so big that he almost took a step back. "Call me Ellen."

"That's my mother's name."

"My stars, what a coincidence," she said with a little too much enthusiasm. Then she lowered her voice and said, "I just need a moment. It's important. It's about my grandson. He was recently drafted by the Dodgers, but…" She looked past Myron and up at Big Cyndi. "Please," she implored. "It won't take long."

Myron nodded and led her into his office. The old woman moved slowly toward the big picture window overlooking the city. "This view is magnificent," she said.

"Yes, I'm lucky."

"Views don't make you lucky," she said. "You get used to them. That's the problem with views. They are nice when you first have them, but we get used to them and take them for granted. That's true of most things, of course. When I was young, my parents had the most exquisite home. It was a Queen Anne built in the early 1900s. We lived in Florala, Alabama. You ever heard of it?"

"No, I'm sorry."

"Anyway, I remember when we first drove up to it. I was eight years old, and you'd never seen any home as grand as this one. Sixteen rooms. Curly-pine wainscoting. The most gorgeous wraparound porch. Second-story balconies, one off my own bedroom. I loved it for, oh I don't know, a month. Perhaps two. But then I got used to it. So did my family. It just becomes the place you live. It was why Father liked having company. He loved to see the expressions on a newcomer's face, not because he wanted to impress them. Well, maybe that was it a little. All humans like to show their feathers, don't they? But mostly, when we saw someone else's reaction to the house, it brought us back to our own. We all need that now and again, don't you think?"

"I guess so, Ms.…"

"I told you. Call me Ellen."

Myron took the seat behind his desk. Ellen sat in front of it. She put her purse on her lap, both hands still on it.

"You said your grandson had been drafted by the Dodgers."

"I did say that, yes, but it isn't true. I just said that for the sake of your receptionist."

Myron wasn't sure what to make of this. "So what can I do for you, Ellen?"

She gave him a smile, a big smile, the kind of smile that—Myron was trying not to be ageist—gave him the creeps. Then she said, "Where is Bo Storm?"

Myron said nothing.

"My name isn't really Ellen. I work for some people who have close ties with a man named Joseph Turant. Do you know who that is?"

Joey the Toe. Myron still said nothing.

"I understand you had an encounter with Mr. Turant's colleagues recently in Las Vegas. In exchange for your safe passage out of that sinful place, you were supposed to provide the current location of Bo Storm, a young man who did Mr. Turant great harm. I'm here to collect that information for him."

Myron just stared at her.

"Before you reply," the old woman continued, "may I make a suggestion?"

"What's that?"

"You're eventually going to tell me what I need to know." Her eyes bored into his. "It will be much easier on all of us if you just do it now."

"I don't know where he is," Myron said.

She gave him an exaggerated faux pout. "You don't?"

"I'm still looking for Bo."

"Mr. Bolitar?"

Myron almost said, "Mr. Bolitar? What am I, your father?" but it didn't seem the time.

"Yes."

"You're lying to me."

"No, I'm not. If there's nothing else—"

"Private aircraft routes can be easily tracked, as I'm sure you and Mr. Lockwood are aware. We know you flew from Las Vegas to Montana on his aircraft. Why the stop at Havre Airport?"

Myron opened his mouth to answer, but Ellen raised a silencing finger.

"I asked you to make this easier," she said in the voice of an elementary school teacher who has been disappointed by a favorite student. "That's all. Just one small thing." She sighed theatrically. "I suspected you wouldn't listen. But I did ask you, didn't I?"

Myron figured the question was rhetorical, so he said nothing. She kept her eyes on his. Finally, Myron broke the stalemate.

"Look, whatever your name is, I don't know what you want from me."

"Haven't I made myself clear?"

"I don't know where Bo Storm is."

"Pity then." She shook her head and opened her purse. Myron half expected her to pull out a gun—it was that kind of day—but instead she took out a smartphone and said, "Allen, did you hear all that?"

A newly familiar voice came from the phone speaker: "Every word, Ellen."

Myron felt his blood freeze.

The old woman turned the screen toward him, so Myron could see. There, on FaceTime or whatever video app she was using, was Dad's new pickleball/trivia pal, Allen Castner.

"Hey, Myron!"

Myron just sat there. He felt a rushing in his ears.

Allen Castner moved his face very close to the screen. He had AirPods in his ears. "Your father invited me over after our pickleball outing for a little pinochle. He's just in the bathroom, taking a piss. Something's up with his prostate. It's like the fourth time he's been in there."

Myron swallowed. "What the hell is going on?"

"Oh, I think you know, Myron."

The screen jerked as though Allen Castner had dropped the phone. When it came back into view again, he was holding a Beretta M9A3 with a silencer screwed on the end of the barrel.

"Talk to us, Myron."

It was Ellen who said that. He understood, of course, that it wasn't her real name. And that this guy's name wasn't really Allen. They'd used his parents' names to mess with his head. Like he needed that.

"By the way," the old woman said, "Allen is wearing headphones."

"Ear pods," Allen said, correcting her.

"I stand corrected, ear pods, thank you. The point is, Allen can hear you. Your father won't be able to."

And then Myron heard his father's voice. "Who are you talking to?"

Allen Castner said, "Sit down here, Al."

"What the hell? Is that a gun?"

"Dad!"

"Don't shout," Ellen said. "Your receptionist will hear and that will be a problem. Where is Bo Storm?"

Myron's eyes were glued to the screen, to his father. "I told you. I don't—"

And then, on the screen, Myron saw Allen Castner whip his father in the face with the gun. His father grunted in pain and fell back.

"Dad!"

"I told you," the old woman said in a calm, almost soothing voice. "He can't hear you."

Myron's father crumpled to the floor, his hands covering his face. Blood seeped through his fingers. Myron looked across at the old woman. She just smiled.

"I asked you, didn't I? I asked you nicely."

Myron almost jumped across the desk—almost throttled her right then and there. Forget that she was an old woman. Damn the consequences.

But she just gave him a simple shake of her head.

"That would be Daddy's death warrant."

On the screen, Myron heard his father moan.

"Tell us where Bo Storm is," the old woman said.

"He's in Montana."

Myron could hear the panic in his own voice.

"That much we know already. Where in Montana? Be very specific."

Through the phone, Myron's father stubbornly shouted, "You bastard! You broke my nose!"

Ellen met Myron's eyes. Myron tried to regain some kind of leverage here or at least slow things down a beat, give everyone a chance to breathe. "Let's just talk about this a second."

Ellen sighed and leaned forward closer to the phone's speaker. "Allen?"

"Yes, Ellen."

"Shoot him in the head and wait for the mother to come home."

"No!" Myron shouted.

"Just do it, Allen."

Then Allen Castner said, "Ellen, turn off the video."

The old woman hesitated a moment before pulling her hand back across the desk, taking the phone off speaker mode, removing one earring, and putting the phone up to that ear so Myron couldn't hear. She listened a moment, nodded, and said, "Understood."

Then she disconnected the call.

"What happened?" Myron asked.

He could still hear the panic in his own voice.

"We sit and wait."

"For?"

"It won't take long."

The hell with that. Myron took out his own phone.

"Put it down," she said. "If you contact anyone…" The old woman shook her head. "Do I really have to make the threat? I thought you'd be smarter than that."

Myron's leg started shaking. "I don't know who you are," he said, "but if anything happens to my father—"

"Wait, let me guess." She stroked her chin. "You'll go to the ends of the earth to find me and make me pay. Please. Look at me, Myron. Do you think this is the first time I've done this? Do you really think I don't have all the bases covered?"

Myron had never felt so helpless in his entire life. "So what do we do now?"

"We wait."

"For?"

"For as long as it takes."

"Don't hurt him. Please. I'll tell you—"

She put her index finger to her lip. "Shh."

They sat there. Myron had never imagined time could move so slowly.

"This would have been easier if you'd just cooperated."

"What does that mean? What's going on right now?"

Her phone finally buzzed. She picked it up. "Hello?" She listened for a moment and then said, "Okay." She hung up and put the phone back in her purse. Using both hands for leverage, the old woman pushed herself into a standing position.

"I'm leaving now."

"What's going on? Is my father okay?"

"If I don't get down to my car in the next ten minutes, it will get worse for you. Much worse. Sit there. Don't move. Don't call anyone. Ten minutes."

And then she was gone.

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