Richard Patterson - Fall from Grace

On the way home, he tossed the garbage bag filled with his clothes in a pile of refuse at the Chilmark dump, and dropped Lew’s device in its incinerator. Parking at his mother’s, he saw Clarice drinking coffee on the porch. “You look terrible,” she observed.

Adam fingered his dark stubble. “The price of watching the sun come up. All that’s left when you catch no fish.”

“Get some sleep,” his mother suggested with a smile. “You’re not twenty anymore.”

Climbing the stairs, Adam closed himself in a room that still held the artifacts of his youth. For a moment, he contemplated Jenny’s photograph. Then he downloaded the images he had taken into his computer, reviewing the documents he would provide to Teddy’s lawyer.

The process took two hours, more disturbing by the minute as the mosaic of evidence began forming in his mind. He found no reference to the insurance policy obliquely mentioned by Bobby Towle. But the witness statements conformed to what he knew: the Blaines, Jenny, and Carla Pacelli all denied knowing about the will, and his mother and Teddy’s central assertion-which, in his brother’s case, Adam no longer believed-was that neither had seen his father once he left the house. Far more lethal were the crime scene and pathology reports. He was not surprised that someone besides his father-no doubt Teddy-had left distinctive boot prints at the promontory. But there had been drag marks in the mud as well, mud on the heels of the dead man’s boots, suggesting that someone had dragged him, perhaps struggling, through the wet earth near the point from which he fell. Worse yet, there were circumferential bruises on Ben’s wrists, no doubt heightened by his regime of chemotherapy, appearing to confirm that a murderer had grasped him by both arms. It was plain that the police and prosecutor believed, as Adam did now, that someone had thrown Benjamin Blaine off the promontory.

Suppose you find out that your father was murdered by a member of your family.

Adam felt a coldness on his skin. His next task was to print these pages, mail them to Teddy’s lawyer, then erase the images from his camera and computer before getting rid of both. But he paused to absorb what he and the authorities now further believed in common-that Teddy had killed their father. The job Benjamin Blaine had left him was not just to execute a will, but to save a guilty man, his brother.

Four nights later, Adam again met Amanda Ferris beneath the promontory.

On the surface, little had happened since the break-in. Whatever inquiry Hanley and the police had launched-an exhaustive one, Adam was certain-they had suppressed any news of the incident itself. The previous day Teddy had flown to Boston to buy art supplies; only Adam knew enough to guess he had been summoned by his lawyer. No one had questioned Adam about anything: with the security cameras disabled, all Sean Mallory had was a faceless man, swift and resourceful enough to vanish, thereby eliminating a host of potential suspects while creating a dead end. Unless someone checked his bank accounts, Bobby Towle was in the clear.

Knowing all this, Adam had the familiar sense of having set events in motion without leaving any trace. But he also continued to parse the varied narratives surrounding the will and his father’s death, including those from his family, sensing that none of them was truthful or complete. And now he had the problem of Amanda Ferris.

As before, he had followed her from Edgartown; as before, he wanted no evidence that they had met. But the woman was no fool. Now he would learn how fully she understood their chess game.

The air was balmier; the seas calm. She had not brought a tape recorder. By now she grasped that their conversations were damning to them both.

“Too bad I couldn’t get the pathologist’s report,” she said with quiet acidity. “But you may not have to wait long. Only until Hanley indicts your brother.”

Hearing this made Adam cringe inside. “Tell me about that.”

Ferris shifted her weight, adding to the restlessness animating her wiry frame. “First, there’s the evidence at the scene. A footprint matching your brother’s boot. Plus skid marks suggesting someone dragged your father toward the cliff.”

And mud on his father’s heels, Adam thought, but Ferris did not know this. “What else?”

“There’s a button missing from his shirt, suggesting a struggle-”

“Have they found it?”

Ferris hesitated. “No.”

“Then it means nothing.”

“There’s also the neighbor who was walking along the trail. He thought he heard a man screaming, then saw a figure leaving the promontory-”

Nathan Wright, Adam knew. Feigning curiosity, he asked, “Man or woman?”

“He couldn’t say.” Ferris’s tone became more assertive. “But the crime lab found a hair on your father’s shirt that matches Teddy’s DNA.”

This Adam had not known. “Anything more?”

“Your brother’s cell phone records. About eight fifteen, well before sunset, he received a call from the landline in the main house-no doubt from your mother. At nine fifty-one, after the neighbor saw this unknown figure, Teddy left a message on an ex-lover’s voice mail-”

“Concerning what?”

“It wasn’t specific, though he sounded distraught. But the time between calls leaves an hour and a half for Teddy to go to the promontory and push your dad off the cliff. Maybe in response to something your mother told him.”

“Or,” Adam interjected, “maybe she and Teddy gave him a shove together. He was pretty big, after all.”

For an instant, Ferris was silent. “You see my point,” Adam said with the same indifference. “You’re still awash in ‘maybes.’ So are the police.”

Ferris crossed her arms. “Then why did Teddy lie? Not only did he say he hadn’t gone there that night, but that he never went at all. Just like he claimed not to remember Clarice calling him at eight fifteen. How could that be?”

“Maybe because the phone call was so ordinary. And even assuming the footprint was Teddy’s, we don’t know whether he left it before eight fifteen or after-or any time near the time my father died. You haven’t given me a murder, let alone a murderer.”

Once more Ferris hesitated. But she did not know, as Adam did, about the bruises on Ben’s wrists. “Let me ask you this,” he pressed. “Did the crime lab find any DNA under Teddy’s fingernails?”

“No.”

“So let’s catalog what you don’t have. First, definitive proof of a murder. Second, a murderer. What you do have is this boot print, the drag marks, the shadowy figure, the phone records-all subject to multiple interpretations. A first-year lawyer could defend Teddy in his sleep.” Adam paused, then prodded, “So now that we’ve acquitted my brother, what do you have on Carla Pacelli?”

“Her DNA on your father’s clothes and face. But is she strong enough to throw him off a cliff?”

Adam flashed on Pacelli at dinner. “She looks pretty fit to me.”

“So I hear,” Ferris answered pointedly. “I understand you made quite the couple at Atria, too intent on each other to notice anyone else. And those tender moments on the swing chair-oh my. People will say you’re in love.”

For a moment Adam was stung, then grudgingly gave Ferris points for tenacity. “Actually,” he said, “we’re running away to Portofino on the old man’s money. But you’ll have to pay for the wedding pictures.” His voice became sharp. “On the question of strength, my dad was dying. He might even have had a stroke-in which case, an average woman could have tossed him overboard. That would explain the drag marks. So we can add Carla to the suspects, I suppose.”