Джеффри Дивер - The Midnight Lock

But, as often, his mind soon wandered to his son.

It seemed inconceivable that he was the psychopath the police said he was.

Yet there was no doubt about his son’s resentment for him. An idealist all his life, Kitt never liked the brand of journalism that Whittaker Media hawked.

Of course, that alone wasn’t enough. It was also his father’s neglect.

But how could I do otherwise? Fifteen-hour days keeping the business going, weathering the storms all media is subject to. A world Kitt didn’t want and was unsuited for. He was collateral damage.

And, of course, there was that terrible incident with Mary’s passing.

Dying without her husband by her side.

3/2/17.

He thought: But it was so important for the family. I had to buy the TV station, and it had to be done that day, or the option would have lapsed and...

He gave a hollow laugh. Even now I’m making excuses.

And, yes, I did it for the family... but mostly I did it for myself.

He looked out over the vast city, today muted by a milky complexion, the vast, bristling horizon foreshortened.

And now his son was a criminal... and, the police said, a threat to him and others.

At least in making his statement to — and about — his father, he’d done nothing more than upset several people. Whittaker prayed the police would find him before he actually hurt someone.

Or himself.

Oh, Kitt. I’m sorry...

He heard another scrape from outside.

Who was there?

He stood and, assisted by his cane, hobbled across the carpet. How he hated the accessory, a sign of dependency, a sign of weakness.

Pushing through the doorway, saying, “Hello, who’s—”

Averell Whittaker froze at the sight of the tableau before him.

“Kitt!”

His son sat in a wheelchair. The young man’s head lolled and he stared straight ahead. He seemed drunk or drugged. Behind him, gripping the handles, was Martin Kemp. The baby-faced man was swallowing and looking typically uncertain. And on the floor just inside the living room lay the Alicia Roberts her throat cut. Ample blood was drenching the blue and gold rug Mary had bought in Jordan so many years ago.

“No...”

Then he heard a sound from behind him and as he turned, his niece stepped forward and shoved him down the low stairs that led to the living room. He stumbled and fell hard onto the marble, crying out in pain.

“My shoulder,” he moaned. “It’s broken...”

Whittaker climbed unsteadily to his feet and, grimacing, struggled to a chair. His head drooped and he was breathing heavily. “The pain...”

Joanna paid no attention to her uncle. She looked toward Kemp. “Is she dead?” She was impatient.

“Well, I mean...” He gestured at the still body, the soak of blood.

She scoffed. “Check and see? All right?”

“They’ll... won’t I leave fingerprints on her?”

Joanna closed her eyes briefly in irritation. “Why would you not check to see if someone who’d been stabbed was alive or dead? Wouldn’t everybody do that? If your prints weren’t there, that would be suspicious.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

He bent down over the woman, pressed his fingers on her neck. “There’s no pulse.”

“Check her eyes.”

He hesitated.

“It’s not a horror movie, Marty. She’s not going to possess you with her gaze.”

He grimaced at the verbal slap and nervously rubbed his hands together then lifted the woman’s lids.

“I don’t know... It... Yeah, I guess she’s gone.”

Whittaker whispered, “Jo, please... What are you doing?”

The woman turned disappointed eyes upon him. “It’s reckoning time, Averell.”

“What?” He winced.

“For one, stealing the company from my father...”

Whittaker snapped, “Your father was a drunk! He pledged shares for loans to cover his bad investments. Illegally. It took two years to get that nullified. I gave him a generous allowance.”

“He was humiliated.”

Whittaker muttered, “He made his bed. Some would’ve cut him off completely.”

“And dissolving the company? Everything Father worked for?”

“We wrote stories that cost lives. I can’t be a part of that anymore.”

He looked away, as Joanna continued, “Your foundation’s a joke. Nobody cares about the press, about news, about facts.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is, yes.”

“I wasn’t going to dissolve your charity.”

Her face flared with rage. “Where you can count on your little niece to keep her head down and not get into any trouble.”

He looked at his son. “What’s wrong with him? What’ve you done?”

“He’s drugged.”

“We’ll work something out. Please...”

Her stern face, with the fleshy nose and thick eyebrows, gazed at him with what might perhaps be a modicum of sadness.

Then he thought of the security guard and knew there’d be no negotiation.

He saw the scene unfolding. They would kill him, using the same knife, then Kitt — probably injecting him with more drugs, an overdose. It would look like a suicide. The empire would go to Joanna.

“You’ll keep the company running,” he whispered.

“Yes, though, in a different direction. Verum?”

“The conspiracy theorist, the crank. Do you know him?”

With what Whittaker believed was a modicum of pride, she said, “I am him.”

“Jo... no! You don’t believe that crap.”

She scoffed. “And you don’t believe that stories about secret love children and the vice president’s grandfather helping Lee Harvey Oswald kill John Kennedy belong on a front page. But there they are. And that made you a very wealthy man.”

“It’s different,” he raged.

“You’re right, Averell. I’m the next generation.”

“Fah... Father...” Kitt was more aware now. He glanced at his wrists strapped to the wheelchair arms. He shook his head, took a breath. “Father?” His head drooped.

Joanna walked to her fiancé and was speaking to him. She appeared impatient.

Whittaker couldn’t hear what they were saying exactly. She apparently had killed the security guard, and it was now Kemp’s task to murder Whittaker and Kitt. But he was balking. Her face was filled with contempt.

He’d check pulses and eyes, he’d corroborate stories, but he wasn’t going to wield the blade.

“Martin,” Whittaker called.

But when the man looked his way, a pathetic expression on his face, and appeared about to speak, Joanna snapped her fingers and he fell silent.

She looked at him with disgust and, using a bloody plastic bag, picked up the knife that she’d used to kill Alicia. Striding across the sumptuous carpet to where he sat, she studied him, as if deciding to slash the left side of his neck or the right.

Whittaker slumped in the fake Chippendale chair, which he and Mary had bought in New England and refinished together after taking a class in doing trompe l’oeil and faux painting furniture. It had been a happy weeklong project.

Whittaker called in a weak voice, “Kitt?” Louder, “Kitt?”

His son opened his eyes.

Joanna stood over him and Whittaker, who looked up, expecting to see a hint of regret in that face, which bore a passing resemblance to that of his brother.

But there was none. Only regal impatience.

“Just let me say one thing,” Whittaker whispered, wincing as he shifted a few inches.

She paused and cocked her head toward him.

“I’m sorry, son.”

Kitt blinked slowly.

Averell Whittaker grabbed his cane in both hands — he’d been feigning injury to his shoulder — and swung the top, the brass head, with all his strength into his niece’s face.