CHAPTER 19

I found Bone asleep in the truck, curled in the sun. One look up the hill and I could tell the house was empty, but I couldn’t face it; that body was still warm. So I went to the office. It still felt like Ezra’s building and I thought it would be easier to start there.

It was a little after four and the street was empty, sidewalks, too. I wanted to be angry, but walked like a victim. I went in through the back door and saw my office first. Drawers were pulled out, filing cabinets stripped bare. Case files, personal documents, all of it. My financial information, medical records, photographs. Even a journal I wrote in once in a blue moon. My whole life! I slammed the drawers shut, the sounds like breaking fingers in the quiet building. I glanced in the break room and saw that they’d helped themselves to drinks from my refrigerator. Cans and candy wrappers still littered the small scratched table, and the room stank of cigarettes. I scooped up trash and stuffed it violently into a plastic bag. I cleared half the mess, then flung the bag to the floor. There was no point.

I went upstairs to Ezra’s office. It, too, was in shambles, but I ignored the mess and went straight to the corner of rug that hid the dead man’s safe. I took a handful of fringe and pulled the rug back. Everything looked the same: two dented boards held fast by four nails-two of them cleanly driven, two bent and hammered into the wood.

The cops had not found it, which made me savagely content. If anyone had the right to tear down the old man’s last secret, I did.

The hammer was where I’d left it, and I used the clawed end to pry at the nails. The bent ones came out, but the other two refused. The claw barely fit into the crack between the boards, but a hard yank brought them up with an animal squeal. I tossed them down and bent over the safe. Hank had said to think about what was important to Ezra if I wanted to open it without a locksmith. So I tried to think clearly of the dead man whom fate had made my father.

What was important to him? A simple question. Power. Standing. Prominence. Yet it all came down to money.

In the heart of my father’s million-dollar house was his study, and on the desk there was a single framed photograph. It had been there forever, a reminder and a goad. How many times had I caught him staring at it? It was who and what he was: what he’d strived to bury yet couldn’t bear to forget. In his heart, and in spite of his overwhelming accomplishments, my father had always been the same grubby boy with scabby knees. The dark eyes had never changed.

I’d been born into comfort, and both of us had known all along that I lacked his hunger. That hunger had made him strong, but it’d made him hard, as well. Ruthlessness was a virtue, and the lack of it in me was, to him, the surest proof that he had fathered a weakling. So where I searched for meaning, he’d sought power. His life had been a determined climb to the top, and it all came down to money; it was the foundation. Money had bought his house in the best neighborhood. Money had bought cars, paid for parties, and financed political campaigns. It was a tool, a lever, and he’d used it to shift the world around him, the people, too. I thought of my career, and knew I’d chosen the easy route. He’d bought me off. I could face that now. Maybe he’d bought us all, except for Jean. For her, the cost was too heavy, and, unable or unwilling to bend, she’d snapped under the weight of it. So in the end, Ezra had paid the price. The whole thing reeked of karma.

I studied the safe. I’d discovered it by accident and could have gone the rest of my life without knowledge of its existence, yet it weighed upon me.

Money and power.

I remembered my father’s first million-dollar jury award. I was ten, and he took the family to Charlotte to celebrate. I could still see him, teeth clamped on a cigar, proudly ordering the best bottle of wine in the restaurant, and how he’d turned to Mother. “Nothing can stop me now,” he’d said. And I remembered Mother’s face, too, her uncertainty.

Not us. Me.

She’d put her arm around Jean, and at the time I didn’t recognize it, but looking back, I knew she’d been scared.

That verdict was the beginning. It was the largest jury award in the history of Rowan County, and the press made my father famous. After that, people came looking for Ezra Pickens.

And he was right. Nothing could stop him. He was a celebrity, an icon, and his ego grew with his fame and with his fortune. Everything changed for him after that.

For us, too.

I still remembered the date of the verdict. It was the day Jean turned six.

I typed the date into the keypad. Nothing. I replaced the boards and hammered in four new nails. I took my time, and they sank into the wood, straight and clean. I spread the rug with a sigh and turned away.

It would have been too easy.

I moved around the office, closing drawers, turning off lights, and was about to leave, when the phone rang. I almost didn’t answer it.

“Damn all generosity!” It was Tara Reynolds, calling from her office at the Charlotte Observer. “My editor is about to stroke out.”

“What are you talking about, Tara?”

“Have you seen the Salisbury Post?” Unlike the Observer, it ran in the afternoons. It would have hit the stands less than an hour ago.

“No.”

“Well, you should pick up a copy. You’re page-one news, Work, and it’s a freakin’ injustice, that’s what it is. I bust my ass on this story, I’m all set to break it, and some idiot from the Post gets a call that the cops are at your office and just walks on over and takes your damn picture.”

My voice was cold. “I’m sorry to inconvenience you.”

“ ‘Police search home, office of slain lawyer’s son.’ That’s the headline. There’s a picture of you standing with the district attorney in front of your office.”

“That was four hours ago,” I said.

“Hey, good news travels fast. The article’s short. Do you want me to read it to you?”

So, the story was now official. Fifty thousand people subscribed to the Post. In twenty-four hours, it would be in the Observer, which had close to a million readers. Strangely, I felt more calm than not. Once you lose your reputation, your worries become more concrete: life or death-freedom or prison. Everything else pales.

“No,” I said. “I do not want you to read it to me. Other than making my day even worse, is there some reason you called?”

“Yeah. I want you to appreciate me. Because right now, I’m the only one doing any favors.”

“Appreciate what?” I asked bitterly.

“News,” she said. “With the same proviso as last time. You tell no one where you heard it, and I get the exclusive when this is said and done.”

I didn’t speak right away. I had a sudden splitting headache. None of this would go away. Not on its own.

“Do you have someplace else you need to be?” Tara demanded sarcastically. “If so, just tell me and I’m gone. I don’t have to play games.”

“No games, Tara. I just needed a second. It’s been a long day.”

She must have heard the despair in my voice. “Hey, I understand. I get caught up in things, the curse of the type A personality. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t sound particularly sorry, and my words, when they came, were short and bitten off. “It’s okay,” I said. “You use me. I use you. No reason to take it personally. Right?”

“That’s exactly right,” she said, oblivious. “So here’s my news. The police have figured out why your father was in that old mall.”

“What?”

“Actually, it would be more accurate to say that they’ve figured out how he was in that mall.”

“What do you mean?”

“The property was going into foreclosure. Your father was retained to represent the bank. He would have had keys to the property.”