“Jon’s dead,” Kathy Lauer said. “I thought you knew.”

“Dead?” Karen felt her heart come to a stop and the blood rush out of her face. She shook her head numbly. “My God, I’m so sorry… No…”

“About a month ago,” his wife said. “He was on his bike coming back up the road, up Mountain View. A car ran into him. Just like that. A hit-and-run. The guy who hit him never even stopped.”

CHAPTER FORTY

Dock 39 was a dingy, nautical-style bar in the harbor, not far from the navy yard. A shorted-out Miller sign flickered on and off in the window, while a carving of a ship’s bow hung above the entrance on the wooden façade. From the street Hauck could see a TV on inside. A basketball game. It was playoff time. A crowd of people gathered whooping around the bar.

Hauck stepped inside.

The place was dark, smoky, jammed with bodies fresh from the docks. A noisy throng at the bar was following the game. The Pistons versus the Heat. People were still in their work clothes, blowing off steam. Dock workers and seamen. No office crowd here. Ray Dubose had told Hauck that this was where he could find him.

Hauck caught the barman’s eye and asked him for a Bass ale. He spotted Pappy, huddled with a few guys drinking beer down at the end of the bar. The old man seemed disinterested in the game. He stared ahead, ignoring the sudden shouts that occasionally rang out or the jab of his neighbor’s elbow when someone made a play. At some point Pappy turned around and noticed Hauck, Pappy’s eyes narrowing balefully and his jaw growing tight. He picked up his beer and stood up, pushing himself away from his crew.

He came over to Hauck, pushing through the crowd. “I heard you been asking about me. I thought I told you to head back to where you came.”

“I’m trying to solve a murder,” Hauck told him.

“I don’t need you to solve no murder. I need you to leave me alone and go back home.”

“What did you stumble into?” Hauck asked. “That’s why you won’t talk to me, isn’t it? That’s why you quit your job-or were pressured to. Someone threatened you. You can’t keep pretending it’s going to go away. It won’t go away now. Your son is dead. That’s what that ‘accident’ up in Greenwich was about, wasn’t it? Why AJ was killed.”

“Get the hell away from me.” Pappy Raymond pushed away Hauck’s arm. Hauck could see he was drunk.

“I’m trying to solve your son’s murder, Mr. Raymond. And I will, whether you help me or not. Why don’t you make it easy and tell me what you found?”

The more Hauck said, the more the anger seemed to build in Pappy Raymond’s eyes. “You’re not hearing me, are you, son?” He thrust his beer mug into Hauck’s chest. “I don’t want your help. I don’t need it. Go on out of here. Go back home.”

Hauck grabbed his arm. “I’m not your enemy, old man. But letting your son’s death eat away at you by doing nothing is. Those ships were falsifying something. They were empty, right? There was some kind of fraud going on. That’s why AJ was killed. It wasn’t any ‘accident’ up there. I know it-you know it, too. And I’m not backing off. You don’t tell me, someone will. I’ll pitch a tent on your goddamn lawn until I know.”

A roar went up from the bar. “C’mon, Pappy!” one of his buddies yelled to him. “Wade just hit a three. We’re back down by six.”

“This is the last time I’m telling you.” Pappy glared. His gaze burned into Hauck’s eyes. “Go on home.”

“No.” Hauck shook his head. “I’m not.”

That was when the old guy raised his arm and took a swing at him. A wild one, his fist catching on the shoulder of a man nearby, but the punch of a man who was used to throwing them, and it surprised Hauck, catching him on the side of his face. The mug shot out of his hands, crashing to the floor, spilling beer.

People spun around to them. “Whoa…!”

“What is it you want from me, mister?” Pappy grabbed Hauck by the collar. He raised his fist again. “Can’t you just go back to wherever the hell you’re from and let what’s happened here die out? You want to be a hero, solve someone else’s crime. Leave my family alone.”

“Why are you protecting these people? Whoever they are, they killed your son.”

Pappy’s face was barely an inch away from Hauck’s, the smell of beer and anger all over him. He raised his fist back again.

“Why?” Hauck stared at him. “Why…?”

“Because I have other children,” Pappy said, anguish burning in his eyes. His fist hesitated. “Don’t you understand? They have children.”

Suddenly the wrath in the old man’s eyes began to diminish, and what was left there, in his hot, tremoring irises, was something else. Helplessness. The desperation of someone boxed in, with nowhere to turn.

“You don’t know.” Pappy glared at him, lowering his fist, releasing Hauck’s collar. “You just don’t know…”

“I do know.” Hauck met the old man’s eyes. “I know exactly. I lost a child, too.”

Hauck pressed something into Pappy’s hand as a couple of his friends finally came over and pulled him away, saying the old man had had one too many, offering to buy Hauck another beer. They dragged him back to the bar, where he sat, his face flushed with alcohol and incoherence, amid the hollering and smoke.

Dejected, Pappy opened his fist and stared. His eyes widened. Then he looked back at Hauck.

Please, his expression said, this time with desperation. Just go away.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

“Mom?”

Samantha knocked on the bedroom door.

Karen turned. “Yes, hon.”

Karen was on the bed with the TV going. She didn’t even know what she was watching. The whole ride back to Greenwich, it beat on her-Jonathan was dead. Struck by a car coming down from the hill while cycling back to his home. Charlie’s trader had been trying to tell her something. He had a family, two young kids. And just like that boy who had Charlie’s name in his pocket, who had died in Greenwich the same day Charlie disappeared-Jonathan had died the same way. A hit-and-run. If she hadn’t had the thought to go and see him, she would never have known.

Samantha sat beside her. “Mom, what’s going on?”

Karen turned down the volume. “What do you mean?”

“Mom, please, we’re not idiots. You haven’t been yourself for over a week. You don’t exactly have to have a medical degree to see that you don’t have the flu. Something’s going on. Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay, honey.” Karen knew that her face was saying something different. How could she possibly tell her daughter this?

Sam stared. “I don’t believe you. Look at you. You’ve barely left the house in days. You haven’t been working out or gone to yoga. You’re pale as a ghost. You can’t keep things from us. If they’re important. You’re not sick, are you?”

“No, baby.” Karen reached for her daughter’s hand. “I’m not sick. I promise.”

“So what is it, then?”

What could she possibly say? That things were starting to piece together that were really scaring her? That she had seen her husband’s face after he’d supposedly died? That she had come upon phony passports and money? That he may have been doing something illegal? That two people who might’ve shed some light on it were dead? How do you drag your children into the truth that their father had deceived them all in such a monstrous way? Karen asked herself. How do you unleash that kind of hurt and pain onto someone you love so much?

“Pregnant, then?” Sam pressed her, with a sheepish grin.

“No, honey”-Karen smiled back-“I’m not pregnant.” A tear built up in her eye.

“Are you sad about me going off to college? Because if you are, I won’t go. I could go somewhere local. Stay here with you and Alex…”

“Oh, Samantha.” Karen pulled her daughter close and squeezed. “I would never, ever do that to you. I’m so proud of you, hon. How you’ve dealt with all this. I know how hard it’s been. I’m proud of both of you. You’ve got lives to live. What’s happened to your father can’t change that.”