TailSpin - Catherine Coulter [36]
“Then why didn’t you tell the police the truth?” Jack asked.
“I couldn’t,” Rachael said. “It would have meant telling them why he’d stopped drinking and hadn’t driven a car for the past eighteen months. I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it. All of it would have come out. It would have destroyed his legacy.” She drew a deep breath. “That was the main reason I took off for Sicily. I had to decide what to do. For two weeks I chewed it over every which way, and I came to a decision. I was coming back to Washington to tell the truth. Of course, I was going to discuss it with my mother, but I knew she would agree with me and it was what Jimmy would have done, what he was fully prepared to do. The least I could do for him was honor his wishes. After I nail Quincy and Laurel, I can and will do what Jimmy wanted to do. I will clear his conscience for him.”
Sheriff Hollyfield was tapping a pen on his desk blotter. He said thoughtfully, “Your father’s dead, so is his conscience, so is his guilt. I’m thinking like his aide did—why ruin Senator Abbott’s name? Why ruin his memory? Why destroy what he stood for, what he was as a man for most of his lifetime? And that’s what would happen. The sum of his life would be forgotten—he’d end up being remembered for killing a child in a park, and hiding it.” He sat forward, his hands clasped.
“Rachael, do you want what happened in the final year and a half of your father’s life to define him? That he go down in history as the rich guy who killed a little girl when he was drunk?”
Rachael jumped to her feet, began to pace the small office. “I’ve used the very same argument to myself, but I know he wouldn’t! When I tell everyone how he’d planned to confess, surely they would see how moral he was, how ultimately honest.”
Jack said very gently, “I’ve known since I was twenty years old that the human mind doesn’t work like that. Sheriff Hollyfield is right—your father would be cut to pieces, all the good he ever did in his private life, in his political life, distorted, questioned, erased. As for you, there would be no recognition that you were simply following through on his wishes. You’d be the bastard daughter who destroyed her father’s name.”
“I know you’re trying to help, but again, I’ve thought about all this, and it doesn’t matter what anybody thinks or says about me. I think you’re wrong, Jack, you have to be.” She shook her head, then tucked her long hair behind her ears.
Savich looked up from MAX. “Did you tell anyone you were going to make your father’s confession for him since you’ve been back?”
“I told Mr. Cullifer, Jimmy’s lawyer. I’d have thought Jimmy would have filled him in on his plans, but he hadn’t. He was pretty emotionless about it, told me he’d suspected something was very wrong with Jimmy, asked if I had any proof, like fingerprints or witnesses, which of course I didn’t. He then said if I made Jimmy’s confession for him, I would find myself in a snake pit—people vilifying me, accusing me of lying because he left my mother all those years ago, that I was doing it to get back at him, and he wasn’t even here to defend himself. I’d thought about most of those things, but I’ll tell you, the way he spoke, the utter certainty in his voice, I was nearly ready to flip-flop on my decision. Then I found Jimmy’s journal. It was filled with his misery, his guilt, his hatred of himself for what he’d done, and that’s what made me decide to go ahead, no matter the fallout. I felt I owed it to him.
“I told Greg Nichols. He heard me out, then said he wasn’t about to help me destroy Senator Abbott’s name and drag the rest of his family through the muck. Of course, he’d be pulled into the muck himself, maybe even do some time in jail, but neither of us mentioned that.
“I didn’t want to talk to Laurel Kostas and Quincy Abbott since I believe to my toes they killed him, and why.