Paul Robertson - The Heir

I remembered standing in my office at home and someone screaming.

“Nathan… Kern…” They were both startled and looking at me. “Killed… my… wife.”

Wilcox was in my face. I was staring at his little mustache. “Oh, he did? You told your brother that it was Fred Spellman.”

I remembered Eric limp on the floor..

“Kern… killed… her. All… of them.”

Everything was coming back. Sailing in the rain and dark. Finding her. Escaping and camping and coming back. The street behind the train station. Walking to Nathan’s house. Driving back into town in the police car.

Standing in the broken window, looking out.

“Where have you been?” he said.

I was figuring out that I wasn’t dead.

“What… happened?”

“They grabbed your legs on the way out and you slammed into the side of the building. Two officers. You almost took them with you.” He stepped back from the bed. “They should have let you go out the window.”

That was too much to deal with. I closed my eyes. Maybe he would go away this time.

“I’m charging you with four murders, two attempteds.”

“Stealing… the police car.” It really hurt to just talk.

“That I’m charging against Officer Mulcahy, plus being an idiot. He saw you through the window so he knocked on the front door.”

I remembered that scene. Nathan and his gun both looking at me.

“Kern,” I said. “He… killed them.”

“Next you’ll blame Harry Bright. Look, Boyer, you’re dead meat. If you-”

A doctor had arrived, and two nurses. Wilcox backed into a corner while they examined and asked questions. I was still feeling a lot of pain in my shoulder and jaw, and the doctor told the nurse to crank up the morphine. Before they left I was starting to float away.

There was one more thing. “Where is… Eric?”

Wilcox’s voice floated up to meet me. “He was discharged yesterday, Wednesday.”

I was dreaming about bullets. There had been a bullet in me.

“I’ll tell DeAngelo he’s still too drugged to talk.”

Lots of bullets. Bullets in everyone. “Bullets…” I heard myself say.

“Yeah, what?” Wilcox had given up on the day.

“Bullets in… me. In… Grainger.”

“What?” He was listening.

“Same… gun.”

“What do you mean?” I didn’t know what I meant. Now I was too far away. He was still talking. “He’s crazy. He thinks he shot Clinton Grainger with Kern’s gun? That’s impossible.”

The pain was gone, and everything else.

Another morning came, and I felt much better. As bad off as I was, it was a better place to sleep than I’d had in a while. I figured out it was Friday.

They had rearranged me in the night, propping pillows to put me on my side. After a while a flock of nurses, escorted by three large police persons, removed all the tubes from my body.

I had taken inventory of that body. Rigid wires and not very soft pads held my jaw in a position I didn’t like. My right shoulder itched under the stiff wrapping.

With all of this and a police escort attached, I made my premier voyage to the bathroom. When I returned to the bed, the straps were no longer necessary. I was simply handcuffed to the bedrail.

Food was brought, a hospital milkshake. I didn’t finish it.

The morning dragged on, and the Mustache did not return. I started to think maybe I had died after all. I refused the lunch milkshake- partly because I was not convinced I wanted to live and partly because it tasted bad.

I’d lost my drugged stupor and I was thinking clearly. There was nothing else to do. I thought about everything I’d done. All the people: Harry Bright, Bob Forrester, Fred, Eric. Nathan Kern. What a mess it all was. Katie.

Oh, Katie.

Morphine wouldn’t take that pain away. I couldn’t even begin to think about the future.

It was four o’clock and I was staring at the window. There was a sudden disturbance in the hall.

“You can’t go in…”

“They said I could!” It was Eric’s voice. “Haven’t you seen the news?”

The guard inside the door stood up. The outside guard was growling. “Nobody told me anything. Hey!”

Eric had dodged them both and was in the room. His eyes locked onto me.

“Jason!”

The police were behind him, but they didn’t attempt to lay hands on him.

“Eric.”

Now he couldn’t say anything; he just stared. He looked fine, undamaged.

Then he came close to the bed, the linebackers staying right with him.

“Do you know?” he said.

I shook my head. He kept staring.

“What?” I said, finally.

“They arrested Nathan Kern.”

I felt myself collapse, which was redundant, as I was already flat on my back.

“Are you… okay?” I said.

“Me? Yeah! I’m okay. They let me out Wednesday.” He pointed to his head. “Nothing.”

Too many replies pushed through my own head before I came to the one I meant.

“I’m… sorry,” I said.

It was beyond him to know how to answer that. But while he was trying, a sorrow welled up in his eyes, of an intricacy I’d never known in him before.

“Sit down,” I said. He did and put his head in his hands and wept. I did, too, except I could only lie still in my bed.

At last he looked up. He wiped his eyes and caught his breath. “What happened to your hair?”

“Disguise.”

Then he was laughing just as helplessly. “It looks stupid!” I didn’t think it was funny, and it would have hurt too much to laugh. When he got his breath again, he pulled his chair up close. “Where have you been? What happened, anyway? They said your jaw is broken, and there was a bullet in your shoulder. And you were all cut up.”

“Later.”

“All right. Jason, I’m sorry, too.”

“It’s okay.”

“I’m sorry what I thought about you, and that I didn’t believe you. And I’m sorry I didn’t help you when you needed it.”

“It’s… okay.”

“I never really believed it. It was Fred… he kept telling me things.”

That was something I’d have to deal with. “Later. Turn on… news.”

We watched for hours. Eric talked as much as the heads on the screen, and I listened. It was hard to keep up with the torrent of words.

The guards did not wait for official instructions. The handcuff was removed. I gave them my own instructions-that no one besides Eric and my hospital staff was to get within a hundred yards of me. I had Eric unplug the phone and we watched Bill Sandoff, CNN, the networks, and everything else the remote could find. It was on every channel.

The police had tested Nathan Kern’s gun, and there was no doubt it had killed Clinton Grainger. Nathan’s Washington alibi had fallen apart like a cheap lawn chair when they found that his rental car had been turned in with fifteen hundred miles on it for the weekend. Then they’d found the letter from Angela. Mr. Kern, I have found papers that dear Melvin had written about you, and I have read some of them. It is too difficult to read them. I think he was very angry at you and I don’t understand. I don’t want to think about him angry. I believe I hate the foundation now. I will not call you. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to think about any of this. I don’t want this to go on. It all has to stop. I’ll do anything to make it stop.

It was a photocopy they’d found in a hidden drawer in his desk. On the television screen, the lines he’d cut off for the suicide note were highlighted.

And then they’d found the Swiss bank account.

Only Harry Bright was not convinced. “Jason Boyer is at the bottom of this,” he was quoted as saying. “I’ve always known a criminal when I see one.”