Paul Robertson - The Heir

I turned it off. She was Katie. We both disliked Katherine.

I was doing ninety. I slowed down and pulled off. There was a big discount store at the exit and I bought some clothes. I counted the money in the envelope-forty-five twenties and seventeen hundreds.

A week ago, twenty-six hundred wouldn’t have been enough to dress for dinner.

The clothes were cheap and fit poorly; I’d hate for Katie to see me looking like this. I bought a hat, a baseball cap I could wear down over my face, and sunglasses.

I had breakfast at a truck stop. I sat in a corner in my disguise and watched the news on the monitor across the room. The volume was high enough to hear in the parking lot.

There was no other news anywhere in the world. It was all mine. They did family history about Melvin, and the FBI investigation into his criminal practices. They did Angela the eccentric widow. They did political scandal. They did impeachment and conviction. Harry Bright was doing his part to keep the story alive-he was refusing to leave the governor’s mansion. They did shutdown of state government and anarchy in the departments and investigations and arrests.

They did the murders. They did Melvin’s faked accident and Angela’s faked suicide, and Clinton Grainger’s unfaked murder. And over and over they showed it, in grainy news video from the street, the white-covered stretcher carried out the front door of my house and gently set in the ambulance.

They had Commissioner DeAngelo personally directing the investigation from the podium in the press room by answering questions from reporters. He told them the suspect was armed and dangerous and that his brother was under police protection. He also confided that he’d suspected Jason Boyer from the beginning. Motive and opportunity. It was obvious. Melvin’s death? DeAngelo waved the report right there on television. Brake fluid on the driveway. Irrefutable proof.

The whole state was shaken and cracked. Everything that Melvin had touched was on the television screen. What deep and wide roots he’d put down, and how damaging it was to pull them up. So many lives he’d touched, and every one was dead or dying.

In Pennsylvania I changed plates again, taking them from a blue Ford van parked behind an auto repair shop. It was past noon.

I was far away. This was not where they would look for me. Here, I just had to be careful, and I had options, west or south.

But my mind was still back at the house, in my own office.

It had to be Fred. Katie, what did you say to him? How did you threaten him? Did you even know? Or maybe she was just an innocent bystander. Did Fred kill her just to get me out of the way? If so, he’d accomplished it.

There was nothing I could do. All I could do was hide from the police, and from Fred. At least the police wouldn’t kill me, probably. Was there any chance the state police would find the real killer? No.

I found a library and spent two hours looking online for every detail they’d reported. My picture was everywhere. I moved to a different computer behind some shelves, less out in the open.

It had been my gun; the bullets matched the ones I’d fired at the gun shop. There was a story about how I’d been rearranging my assets, possibly to transfer funds overseas. It was definite that I had no alibi for Angela’s murder or for Melvin’s murder, and that I’d met with Grainger Thursday night. There was a lot of information that only Fred would have known.

He would kill me next, unless he got me convicted first, which would be just as good. I was his fifth victim either way.

As the sun set I drove into West Virginia. It was high October, when Katie and I usually took a weekend in a quaint New England inn and appreciated the colors and warm days and cool nights. We’d shop for Christmas presents. We probably had reservations somewhere. Katie had made them last year, maybe even for this coming weekend? We hadn’t had a chance to talk about it.

I’d have to sleep in the car again. Behind a big camping store, I found a dark corner. I leaned the seat back and slept in it for the second time.

It was no better. Instead, it was much worse.

The store was cavernous. I spent five hundred dollars on camping equipment-a tent, a stove and pots, sleeping bag, food, more clothes, a map of state parks. I called most of them from a pay phone before I found an empty campsite. I didn’t want to use my cell phone or credit cards, so I couldn’t reserve it; I just had to get there first.

It was two hours away, south of Charleston, but they still had openings when I got there. I paid for three nights. They wanted a name and address, and I gave them one of each, not mine. The tent was up in five minutes and then I was horizontal on the sleeping bag.

I slept through the afternoon without dreams, my first sleep in a couple weeks that was worth the effort.

That evening, Wednesday, I was hungry enough to eat the food I’d bought. I was finally still. Katie was dead, I knew it now, even if I kept thinking she’d climb out of the tent, blinking in the sunlight and running her hand through her hair, smiling, wrinkling her nose at the stew.

“Let’s get something else to eat,” she’d say. “Do they have Italian here?”

She’d look at the tent. “And let’s find a bed-and-breakfast. I can’t sleep in that thing again.”

“Sorry, dear,” I’d say. “We’re stuck here. We have to hide.”

“You have to, Jason, not me. I’ll go into town and find someplace more comfortable. I’ll be back in the morning.”

And she was gone.

I got up with the sun, as much as there was in the clouded sky, and my mind was clouded more. I showered and put on clean clothes and ate a decent breakfast.

I was restless-sitting was no good. I got into the car and drove to Charleston.

There was a big library downtown. There was still no other news in the world, only mine. Harry Bright had finally left his office and was now under medical supervision.

But the news pigs had found two new troughs. The first was the manhunt. They’d found the boat and identified the rented car. The timing showed that it had all happened before the murder. Boyer had driven from Cape Cod to his house in the rental. Obviously part of his plan.

A neighbor of the Boyer townhouse in Washington DC had seen Jason Boyer on the street there yesterday. She’d recognized the picture from the television, but police had found no traces in the house itself. There had been many sightings, in fact-even overseas.

The second trough was going to keep many investigative reporters employed. What would happen to the money? A trustee would be named. Petitions were already filed. The first named Eric, the younger brother and only other member of the family. I could smell Fred a thousand miles away.

And another petition requested that the Boyer Foundation be given the responsibility. I hoped Jacob Rosenberg kept his doors locked at night.

I was back at the campsite before supper. There was really nothing to do now but sit. I had escaped and I was safe enough. What was next? I walked a few miles on a trail, just in case an answer was leaning against a tree close by.

I came to a fork in the trail.

What could I do? I had to prove that Fred was the murderer. The police would not. I’d have to go back.

I didn’t know what to look for. If the police caught me, it would all be over. Every power I knew was against me.

Why should I even try? I was sitting on a fallen tree beside the path. There was a mountain view-vast waves of stone and earth, thousands of feet high and unmoving, foaming not white but crimson and umber and gold, and the salt in the breeze was burning wood. It was all just a sea to be lost in.