Jeff Abbott - No Rest for the Dead

Christopher was just trying to save his own tiny life; Nunn knew that. But that didn’t make him wrong. If Nunn let this happen, he would pay penalties-and possibly they were more than he could bear. He realized that, took a moment to acknowledge it. Then he said, “I don’t know if I can handle another ghost, Christopher. But you know what?” Jon Nunn smiled. “I don’t care.”

The man’s mask of reason disintegrated. “Goddamnit, get me out of here! Do you know who I am? Do you?”

“Yes.” Nunn took a moment to think of Rosemary, and to pray that she forgave him. “You were Christopher Thomas.”

Then Nunn turned and walked back to the Mercedes. A huddle of cars had stopped, people half in and half out. They froze when they saw him. Nunn ignored them. Carefully, he took the gun from his holster. He locked the safety, bent to set it on the ground. He could see the police cars now, two of them, lights flashing bright against the night, and behind them an ambulance. Nunn put his hands on his head and laced the fingers together. The first of the police cars jerked to a stop, two beat cops boiling out. Slowly, painfully, he eased himself down to his knees.

And as he touched the cold ground, as the police surged toward him and the breeze blew soft, as the lights of San Francisco twinkled through the fog, he heard a sound. A slow, metal creak like the yawn of some great beast, and a rush of air, and mixed with it, something that might have been a scream.

But not until he heard the splash did he let himself smile.

Iwas detained for a couple of days. The cops asked me a hundred questions. Then they asked me a hundred more. I didn’t have all the answers, but I had enough. I knew that Christopher Thomas had faked his death. That Peter Heusen had helped him. That Artie Ruby had aided and abetted by shipping the iron maiden off to Germany. That Stan Ballard had worked with Peter to make both of them multimillionaires while cheating the Thomas children.

And I knew something else-none of it really mattered. Rosemary Thomas was still dead.

Tony Olsen spoke on my behalf. He had more than a little influence with the SFPD, and a few of my old colleagues spoke for me too. Then Tony gathered up everyone one more time and got them to tell what they knew, or thought they knew.

Belle McGuire described how an unknown man, who she now believed had to have been Christopher Thomas, had assaulted her in her studio and displayed the red mark that was still on her neck where he’d drawn a palette knife across it. Her husband, Don, corroborated her story and even put in a good word for me. I’m not sure why. Probably because he’d wanted to hunt down Christopher himself and my doing it was the next best thing.

Peter confessed that he and Christopher had been selling stolen art in Europe and Asia for the past decade while everyone thought Christopher was dead. Greed knows no boundaries. He also admitted that he and Christopher had planned the museum break-in and that he was the one who attacked Haile Patchett at the memorial that night to create a diversion to get the fake police inside. Of course he blamed everything on Christopher and said he was forced into it. I won’t even honor that by asking how you can force someone into committing such heinous acts. He also said that I’d come aboard his boat and threatened him with a gun, which he thought would get me in trouble. It did-for a minute-but it also helped establish that he’d told me where Christopher was staying and that I’d gone after him.

Peter’s trial has been delayed now for more than a year. His lawyer is arguing that the evidence against his client was gotten by force-by me , an ex-cop with a grudge. I’m sure to be called as a witness, and I won’t deny what I did, but I sure as hell hope the DA is tough enough to make Peter’s words stick to him.

Hank Zacharius got himself a new story.

INNOCENT WOMAN EXECUTED

That headline appeared in newspapers across the country and with Rosemary’s public, exoneration, the state of California was not only shamed but also forced to pay the Thomas children undisclosed millions in damages. It was exoneration for Hank, too, and from what I hear, he’s got a seven-figure book deal to write the whole story, but when he called to interview me, I turned him down. He understood.

Stan Ballard was disbarred and is awaiting trial, and he and Sarah separated.

Sarah .

She told the police how she’d been attacked in a department store dressing room and how she’d realized, too late, that her attacker had to have been Christopher Thomas. I was furious she’d never told me.

Eventually the cops let me go. They didn’t have much to hold me on other than reckless driving and swinging my gun around like a cowboy, and Christopher Thomas’s fatal splash into the bay was finally ruled an accident.

Maybe it’s poetic justice that he died painfully. Maybe not. Maybe it would have been better if he had to grow old in prison and live with what he’d done, although he’d need a conscience for that and clearly didn’t have one. Still, a part of me feels robbed that I lived with pain for more than a decade and Christopher Thomas got off so easily. Again, my fault. I might have saved him if I was thinking straight at the time. But I don’t regret it. You could say the old Jon Nunn died that night too and I’m the guy who took his place. I was wrong-the phoenix does rise from ashes.

After everything settled down, I left San Francisco and bought a little ranch in Wyoming that was in foreclosure, nothing special, a dozen acres, a couple of old horses. The house was a mess, rotten floors and broken windows, but I’ve been fixing it up slowly and it doesn’t look half bad. Tony Olsen and I speak from time to time and he always asks me to come to San Francisco. But I’m not going back. I’ve tried too hard to get away from it all and forget. But then, you never forget, you just build a layer of scar tissue over the wounds and keep going.

Just the other day I got a little painting in the mail, an ocean scene, from Belle McGuire. No note, just the picture. I stared at it a long time and it brought everything back to me-the case, the trial, the ten years of sorrow and frustration, and the reckoning that finally arrived. I hung the painting in the living room as a reminder of all that had happened, but especially of Rosemary.

Afterward, I called Sarah.

She was surprised by my call. I told her I was more surprised. She laughed and it cut right through me. She asked how I was doing, and I turned the question around, and she said she was okay, but I think she was lying. I told her to come out to Wyoming for a visit sometime and she said maybe, so who knows…

Nowadays, I pay the bills doing some consulting for a security firm, and I’ve been lecturing on criminology at a community college, more to keep myself busy than anything else. But today I’m home. Next to the painting Belle sent me is a window, and in the distance I can make out the pointy, jagged tops of Cathedral Ridge, part of the Rocky Mountain range that I pretend belongs to me alone. Above it, the sky is bright blue with choppy, white clouds and looks to me like a landscape by van Gogh-vibrant, childlike, unbroken.

FORENSIC ENTOMOLOGY SERVICES

C/O DR. PETER M. GERBER

OSTENDERSTRASSE 129-162

13353 BERLIN

030 532 77 43

FESB # 0236 31 AUGUST 1998

NMB 03-79

CONTACT: DR. GERBER

Subject:Specimens were submitted hand to hand, from the Institute of Legal Medicine, arriving at Forensic Entomology Services of Berlin on 27 August 1998 at 1330 hours. Samples were in three specimen jars, no preservatives. One jar contained multiple puparial casings. A second jar contained multiple dead specimens. Label indicated specimens collected on 26 August 1998. The third jar contained preserved maggots preserved in 70% ETOH. A fourth jar contained a single dead specimen. 70% ETOH added to jar containing multiple dead specimens at 1400 hours, 27 August 1998.