Chapter Forty-Five

It is six weeks later.

Myron sits alone in the dark in room 982 at the Royal Mansour hotel in Marrakech. Yes, in Morocco. I am next door, in a connecting room with Terese. If Myron needs me, I can be with him in seconds. Cameras and audio are in place. Myron's health is somewhat better, but nowhere near a hundred percent. Or even fifty percent. We could have put this off a bit longer—Myron's doctor pretty much insisted upon it—but I know that doing so was robbing Myron of sleep. I detest the word "closure," but there is little doubt that for Myron to heal, he will need it.

My man watching the elevator sends me and Myron a one-word text:

HERE

Terese reads the text over my shoulder. "I don't like this."

"He's safe," I tell her.

She doesn't seem satisfied with that. I understand.

Room 982 has been booked for the last six nights under the name Arthur Caldwell. That's not his real name. He waves his key card in front of the lock and opens the door. The lights are out. He enters and closes the door behind him. He hits the light switch and walks into the hotel room.

He pulls up short when he sees Myron.

"Hey, Greg."

Greg Downing startles for a second but to give him credit, only for a second. "Is there any point in asking how you found me?"

It wasn't all that difficult, I think. When the FBI was done with him, Greg started his journey, as I mentioned before, in Cairns, Australia. I figured that Greg would want to change his identity as soon as possible. My people found three suppliers of fake identities working in Cairns. I offered a quarter million dollars to the first one who could tell me Greg's new identity. One came forward immediately, took my cash, and gave me copies of all the paperwork on Arthur Caldwell.

There is no honor amongst thieves.

"You look thin," Greg says.

That is an understatement. Myron has lost thirty pounds. His cheeks are sunken. There are times it is hard for even me to look straight at him and not wince.

When Myron does not reply, Greg asks, "So what do you want?"

"Did you know Grace planned to kill me?"

"Would you believe me if I said no?"

"I might," Myron says. "I think she might have gone rogue there."

"She was a killer, Myron."

"So are you."

Greg smiles. "Not like her though."

"Are you going to tell me about it?"

Greg takes a seat on the corner of the bed. "I don't have any choice really, do I? I assume Win is nearby. You wouldn't have come without him."

Myron does not reply.

"I don't want to spend my life looking over my shoulder," Greg says, crossing his legs, "so let's get on with this, shall we? For starters, where did I go wrong?"

"Small things," Myron says.

"Such as?"

"Grace killing Ronald Prine, for one. If Grace was the one who planted your DNA at the Callister murder scene to frame you, why would she be dumb enough to kill Prine while you were behind bars and couldn't have done? That would only guarantee your release."

"Because she's crazy?" Greg tries.

Myron frowns. "Are we going to play that game?"

"Old habit, I guess. What else?"

"Your explanation for how the killer planted your DNA at the Callister scene."

"You mean the pickup basketball game? I thought that was pretty inspired."

"It was," Myron admits, "but only on the surface. Some guy hits you in the nose during a game. You bleed. They collect your blood and leave it at the scene."

"I got that idea from a novel, actually. Or maybe a short story."

"Either way, we checked it out. No one at the Wallkill remembers you or a broken nose. The broken nose? That didn't bother me. But no one remembered you, Greg. That's what struck me. Win didn't pick up on it. No one else would. But you and I…"

Greg nods. "You're right. Someone would notice."

"Greg Downing in a pickup game? I don't care how you disguised yourself or dialed it back."

"A real hoopster would have spotted me," Greg says. "Dumb on my part."

"Another thing," Myron says.

He grins. "You sound like Columbo. What?"

"I saw you and Grace together at your house in Pine Bush. Briefly, I admit. And it could have been an act, but I don't think so. I think you genuinely loved her."

"I did." His eyes close for a moment, his voice softer now. "I still do."

"You even said it to me: Is it too corny to call her your soulmate?"

"I meant that."

"I believe you. It's why all these stories about you not knowing because you lived apart or weren't that close—"

"That was a lie, yes."

Greg looks up at Myron. This time there is no falling back to their youthful days on the court. It is just two men, grown men, men physically past their prime, who fate has forced into too many collisions.

"Have you ever been in love like that, Myron?"

"I like to think I am now."

"No, no. You're in love and you're married and that's all great. But you two aren't together all the time. You have separate lives. That's probably smart. Healthy. It's how I always felt before Grace. But—and yeah, I know how corny this will sound—I remember lying in bed with her one night. I was holding her from behind. My arm was wrapped around her waist. I could feel her heart beating and suddenly my heart started beating the same as her. Involuntarily. They matched up, and I swear that never stopped. It was like our two hearts had become one."

"Wow," Myron says.

"I mean every word."

"And yet you killed her."

"I had no choice."

"Because she was going to kill Jeremy."

"Yes." He shakes his head. "I sacrificed the woman I loved for our son."

"Oh, our son," Myron repeats. "You're not going to play that card with me now, are you?"

"I'm going to play every card I have," Greg says. "But oddly, I think my best play is to let you see the truth."

"It all went wrong with the Callisters, didn't it?"

Greg shakes his head. "It all went wrong way before that, when Grace came to that Bucks–Suns game in Phoenix," he says. "That's how the world works, isn't it? Everything is a chemical reaction. What are the odds you and I would meet, compete, fall for the same girl, end up ripping each other's lives to shreds? We were like two ordinary compounds that became toxic when combined. It's the same thing here with Grace, except much more explosive. There are a lot of what-ifs in life. What if I hadn't hired Spark as an assistant coach, for example? I almost didn't. I would have never met Grace, and if you think you and I were combustible when we collided…"

"What happened, Greg?"

He shrugs. "I fell in love. That's all it was at first. The same as I said to you—I was burned out. I wanted to leave the game, run away with Grace, see the world with her. But first, her son needed help."

"Bo."

"You know the whole sordid story. Jordan Kravat got him strung out on drugs, pimped him out. I mean, that guy was killing Bo a day at a time. Grace and I talked it out. We couldn't find a way to extract Bo from the situation. And then suddenly Grace suggested the obvious and yet forbidden."

"Killing Jordan Kravat."

Greg nods. "And once the idea was spoken out loud, once we used the word ‘murder'… it's like we crossed a line and there was no going back. I started planning like, well, for a big playoff game. Scouting. Sizing up the opposition. Trying to guess what they might or might not do. That's when I came up with the idea of framing Jordan's mob boss."

"Joey the Toe."

"Right. We would eliminate our biggest threat and it would divert attention. Kravat, Turant. These were bad people, Myron. This felt like our only way."

"So that was your first team kill?"

"Yes."

"And what, you liked it?"

He chuckles. "More than that. Much more. How do I explain this?"

"Let me help you. You're both psychopaths. One psychopath walking down the road of life alone, well, that's bad. But when the two of you—what's the term you used?—collided…"

"That's not far off," Greg says. "It was, well, it was a high, sure. A rush like no other. But it was more than that. It was like we both went through a complete transformation. We were heightened in every way. Food tasted better. Sex was more intense. We experienced something mere mortals could never comprehend."

"So cutting to the chase," Myron says, "you went on killing."

"Yes."

"And framing people."

"Yes."

"As a team. The two of you working together."

He nods. "Grace was the more violent of us. She loved to watch the life force leave the person's face. Ending another human being's life—she described it as the closest thing to being a god. I got that, but I was more the plotter. I loved working on the frame-up, the slow burn of sending someone to prison for a crime they didn't commit. But we both did both. I killed some, she killed some. I did most of the planning, but she contributed a lot. We were a team in every sense of the word. My point is, many of us have the potential to be killers, but once Grace and I tried it—"

"Yeah, Greg, I think I get it. You just went on killing."

"Yes."

"How many, Greg?"

"More than they know. That's all I'll say for now."

Myron can see that it won't pay to pursue that line of questioning right now. "You planned carefully."

"Yes."

"You always made sure someone else took the fall. You took your time. There was pretty much zero chance you'd get caught, until you messed up with the Callisters. I don't get it. Why go after someone you knew, even tangentially?"

"To up the game, I suppose. I also liked the idea of taking down Cecelia's scuzzy husband, Lou Himble. He stole a lot of people's life savings, you know. I don't want to make it sound like we were Robin Hoods. For the most part, we chose our victims coldly—how easy they would be to kill and did they have someone in their life who would want them dead."

"To make the frame work?"

"Yes. We moved around a lot. We often worked more than one victim at a time, and more often than not, we aborted when we realized that we wouldn't be able to pull off both the kill and the frame."

"So you had no connection to the victims?"

"None. Until Cecelia. But she was so ripe for it, what with her testifying against her husband. Oh, and I knew Cecelia's first husband."

"Ben Staples."

"Yeah, I liked Ben." Greg puts his hands on his knees and takes a moment. He lowers his voice because he wants Myron's full attention. "You see, Myron, Cecelia screwed Ben over good. She got pregnant by another man. Can you imagine a wife doing anything worse to her husband?"

Greg stops now and grins at Myron.

"Subtle," Myron says.

"I'm not trying to be subtle."

"And Cecelia didn't cheat. She was raped."

Greg shrugs. "I didn't know that."

"So you planned on killing her and pinning it on her husband."

"Yes. Except Cecelia's son Clay showed up. He was supposed to be on a one-week cruise in the Caribbean, but he ended up getting food poisoning, so he came home two days early." Greg swallows, looks off. "He walked in on Grace and me killing his mother. A fight ensued. I killed them both."

"And left your DNA behind."

"No choice," he says, "but I wasn't too worried. I was dead, remember? That's part of why I faked my death. To stay under the radar. So if people maybe ‘thought' they saw someone who looked like Greg Downing, well, he was dead. It would go nowhere. And then I figured, well, even if they somehow track the DNA of a dead man, I'm hidden under another identity. There is no way they're going to find me on my little farm in Pine Bush." He leaned forward. "How did you find me?"

"The bank account in North Carolina."

"Ah."

"Still," Myron says, "you're a planner."

"I am."

"So you came up with a scheme in the event you got caught."

Greg smiles again. "You're good at this."

"No, not really. But I can get in your head a bit."

"It is what made you a tough competitor on the court."

"Right after I found you in Pine Bush," Myron continues, "you were arrested. Your DNA was at the murder scene. You'd be convicted. You knew all this. So your only play was to do what you'd always done—pin it on someone else. Grace called the FBI pretending to be an anonymous source. She pointed to the other killings. She said it was all the work of a serial killer who framed innocent people—and that you were the killer's latest mark. Grace even went so far as to kill Ronald Prine because then the FBI would know for sure that you, sitting in a jail cell, couldn't be the serial killer."

"It worked."

"Except Grace wasn't as good at planning as you."

"No, that was my forte."

"She decided to set up Jeremy for all of it. She'd make him out to be the serial killer."

"Stupid."

"She planted the phone in his room."

"Grace probably thought I'd approve."

Myron makes a face. "She thought you'd approve of framing your own son?"

"Grace found out that Jeremy wasn't really mine, Myron."

Greg gives Myron that smile again and waits for Myron to take the bait. When Myron doesn't, Greg continues. "Grace probably saw what she was doing as poetic justice. In her eyes, Jeremy was the evil spawn of my cheating enemy. Why not kill that enemy and pin it on his evil spawn?"

The two men sit there for a long time. Neither speaks. The silence is strangely comfortable. Both know that they've reached the endgame, but neither feels the need to rush it.

Finally, Greg slaps his thighs with both hands and says, "So now you know."

"Now I know."

"You also know me," Greg says. "You know me like no one else does."

"Meaning?"

"You know that I'm no longer a danger."

This seems to reach Myron, but he still asks, "How do I know that?"

"Because we both get love and loss."

Myron stays silent.

"Do you know what the problem is when two hearts become one?" Greg asks.

Myron shakes his head. Greg stands up and crosses the room.

"It means when one of you dies, the other does too. Whatever was in me that made me kill—it's gone. We both know that."

He moves to the window and looks out.

"So you think I can just let this go?" Myron asks.

"You?" Greg just stares out the window. Then he says, "I don't think so."

Myron waits. Greg still has his back to him.

"We've done a lot of damage to one another," Greg says. "Grace thought that whatever was broken inside of me was broken by you that night you were with Emily."

"Greg?"

"What?"

"You don't get to put that on me," Myron says.

"Maybe you're right."

Then Greg takes two steps back from the window.

"Greg?"

"It's okay."

"What's okay?"

"It ends now."

"Greg?"

But he doesn't listen. Greg Downing gives Myron one last smile before turning back to the window. Then he runs those two steps and hurls himself against the glass. Myron tries to rise to stop him, but his brittle bones scream out in protest. There is nothing he can do anyway. For a moment it seems as though the window won't give way. But it does. And Greg disappears forever.