Дэвид Балдаччи - The Sixth Man

Michelle looked at Kelly Paul with a mixture of admiration and astonishment. “I’m Michelle Maxwell.” She shook hands with Paul and came away respectful of the woman’s grip.

“Would you like some breakfast now?” she asked them. “I’ve got eggs, bacon, grits, biscuits, and good, hot coffee.”

Michelle and Sean glanced at each other.

Paul smiled. “I’ll take your famished looks as a yes. Come on in.”

The interior didn’t have a homey feel to it. It was minimally furnished, but was clean with simple lines one would have expected from the exterior. She led them down the hall and into the kitchen that was sturdily and plainly built out with old appliances. There was a fireplace set against one wall that looked as old as the house. Another fireplace was in the front room.

“Have you lived here long?” asked Sean.

“By local standards, no. It’s a typical little farmhouse. But that’s what I wanted.”

“So where did you move from?” asked Sean.

She reached out a hand and flicked on the coffeepot, then pulled a bowl and skillet from the cupboard.

When she didn’t answer, Sean said, “You said you were expecting us?”

“You called me last night. I recognized your voice when you spoke outside just now.”

“But I didn’t speak to you before you said I must be Sean King.”

Paul turned around and pointed a long-handled wooden spoon at Michelle. “But you spoke to your partner here. I’ve got excellent hearing.”

“How’d you know we’d come to visit you? Or that we even knew where you lived?”

“Coffee will be ready in just a minute. Can you pull down some plates and cups from the cupboard right there, Michelle?” She pointed to her left. “You can just set them on the kitchen table right here. I’ve eaten but I will have coffee. Thank you very much.”

While Michelle got the dishes, Paul tended to the eggs and bacon sizzling in another pan. Grits simmered in a closed pot, and Sean could smell the biscuits rising in the oven.

“Got a Smithfield ham in the refrigerator. I can fry that up too if you’d like. Nothing better than a salt-cured Smithfield.”

“The bacon will be fine,” Sean said.

When it was ready Paul filled their plates with food and apologized that the grits were instant. “Otherwise, it would be a while, I’m afraid.”

She sat down across from them with her cup of coffee and watched with what looked like sincere pleasure as they ate.

Sean glanced at her every few seconds. Kelly Paul had on khaki pants, a worn denim shirt, a light blue jean jacket, and beige Crocs that seemed too small for her long feet. Her hair was shoulder length and tied back in a ponytail. Her face was fair and relatively unlined. He estimated the woman to be in her early forties or perhaps even younger.

When they had eaten their fill and she had topped off their coffee cups, they all sat back, looking expectant.

She said, “Bellies full, let’s get to it. Of course I knew you’d come to see me after I hung up on you. As to how you’d know where I lived, I assumed that former Secret Service agents would be able to find that out. I expect that’s why Teddy Bergin hired you.”

“Teddy?”

“My pet name for him.”

“So you knew Bergin before all this?”

“He was my godfather. And one of my mom’s best friends.” Paul studied their reaction to this revelation and then said, “I want you to find out who killed him.”

“So you know he’s dead?” said Michelle. “How?”

Paul tapped the table with her long index finger. “Does it matter?”

“We’d like to know,” said Sean.

“Hilary phoned me.”

Sean looked angry. “She said she had no idea who the client was.”

“That’s because I made her promise me she wouldn’t tell.”

“Why?”

“I had my reasons. Same ones that made Teddy keep everything under seal with the court.”

“What’s your relationship to Edgar Roy? Are you his sister? You have the same height, same features.”

“Half sister. Same mother, different father. Mother was over six feet. Funny thing is, both our fathers were shorter than she was. Guess we got her height genes.”

“Is Paul your married name?” asked Sean.

“I hope not, since I’ve never been married. Paul was my father’s surname.”

“But you obviously know Edgar Roy?”

“Yes, although I’m eleven years older than he is.”

“You’re forty-six?” said Sean.

“Yes.”

“You look a lot younger than that,” said Michelle.

She smiled. “It’s not from pious living, I can tell you that.”

Sean returned the smile. “I guess a lot of people could make that concession, including me. But then again I think I look every day of my age and then some.”

Paul continued. “Our mother divorced my father when I was nine. She married Edgar’s father, and they had him shortly afterward.”

“So you two were together as a family for how long?”

“Until I left for college.”

“And your mother and stepfather are dead?”

“My stepfather died about the time I left. Our mother passed on seven years ago. Cancer.”

“What happened to your stepfather?” asked Sean.

“He had an accident.”

“What sort of accident?”

“The sort where he stopped breathing.”

“And your father?”

“He and my mother divorced when I was a little girl. Haven’t heard from him since. Probably why she divorced him in the first place. Not the most caring man in the world.”

Sean said, “How did you get permission to hire a lawyer to represent your brother?”

“Eddie is a brilliant person. It wasn’t that he could sort of remember everything he ever saw, read, or heard. He could recall it precisely right down to the date and time he’d experienced it. And he could take pieces of any puzzle you gave him and spit out the solution in no time. He operated on a different plane than the rest of us.” She paused. “Do you know what an eidetic memory is?”

“Like a photographic one?” said Sean.

“Pretty much. Mozart had one. Tesla too. Someone with an eidetic memory can, for instance, recite pi’s decimal places to over one hundred thousand. All from memory. It’s a genetic thing coupled with a little freak-of-nature occurrence. It’s like the wiring in the brain is simply better than everyone else’s. You can’t learn to be eidetic – you either are or you aren’t.”

“And your brother obviously had an eidetic memory?”

“Actually something more than that. He never forgot anything, but beyond that, like I said, he could see how all the pieces of any puzzle went together. ‘This fact affecting that fact’ sort of thing. No matter how disparate or seemingly unrelated. Sort of like looking at an anagram once and knowing exactly what it’s really saying. Most people use about ten percent of their brain. Eddie is probably up around ninety to ninety-five percent.”

“Pretty impressive,” said Michelle.

“He could have achieved greatness in any number of fields.”

“I sense a but coming,” prompted Sean.

“But he didn’t have a lick of common sense. Never did, never will. And if something didn’t interest him he ignored it, regardless of the consequences. Years ago, after he forgot to pay his bills, renew his driver’s license, and even pay his taxes, I got a power of attorney from him. I couldn’t do everything for him, but I tried my best.”

“If you did all that, how could you remain in the shadows of his life? The press didn’t even mention that he had a half sister after he was arrested.”

“I’d been gone for a long time. And I’d never come back home for long. And I had a different last name. But much of the help I provided him could be done long-distance.”