The Guilty - Jason Pinter [96]
tape sealing her mouth.
She nodded once. That was all.
"You had me worried," the boy said with a grin.
William. His name was William.
"We have a busy night ahead of us," William said. "Are you
up for it?"
Her first instinct was to try and scream. Or at least nod
twice. But the knife made its horrible presence felt once again
and she tilted her chin down once. A single tear streaked
down Mya's cheek. The boy wiped it away.
44
After leaving the office, I called Amanda. We hadn't spoken
the whole day, mainly because I'd been swamped with Justice
Waverly, then presenting the information to Wallace, Evelyn
and Jack. Then I began to prep the outline of a blockbuster
story that would both force the reopening of the fire in Hico,
but present new information proving that Billy the Kid had
lived long after his alleged murder. It was too soon to claim
that Athena Paradis's killer was Billy's great-grandson, or that
I thought he was. I knew it was true, but had to be able to
convince others. Truth required proof, however, and since he
was still at large the only proof was four silent corpses.
One thing was for certain, and Waverly had confirmed it,
that William Henry Roberts was not among the victims who
died in the fire.
So if William did not die in that fire, why was there no investigation into his whereabouts? Hamilton County police department came up empty, and they moved mighty quick to
assume the body had simply "burnt up." Even I didn't think
they would be that careless. At least not by accident.
Not a single newspaper report asked questions about the
fire. They were too busy bemoaning the death of Mark Rhein- The Guilty
279
gold and four, less important, members of the Hico community. Everyone seemed more than happy to wash away any
unpleasant memories and get on with their lives.
That brought up another question. What was Pastor Mark
Rheingold--a statewide institution, a man who made millions
of dollars a year and had thousands of rabid followers--doing
at the Roberts house the night of the fire? I searched every
archive available but couldn't find anything linking Rheingold
to the Roberts family. It was a pretty big coincidence that
Rheingold paid a house call the night a four-alarm blaze
burned everything to the ground.
I dialed Amanda's line at work. It went right to voice mail.
"Hey, babe, it's me, I'm heading home now. You're probably still at work, just wanted to know if we should plan to
have dinner together. Anyway, give me a call back. Love you."
Click.
I needed a night to relax, unwind. Everything this past
week had come so suddenly. All those deaths--deaths of
people I knew. The NYPD was beside themselves at this
point, and the newspapers hadn't pulled punches in their criticism. And though New York had arguably the finest police department in the country, it was also a city in which it was all
too easy to disappear. I knew that firsthand. Sooner or later
the net would close in on Roberts. We could only hope it did
before that Winchester fired again.
The Gazette' s sales had gone through the roof the last few
days. The city hadn't seen such juicy copy in a long time, and
people were buying up papers in droves. Between Athena
Paradis's murder, the turmoil at Franklin-Rees after Jeffrey
Lourdes's death, the NYPD wanting blood for Joe Mauser,
and the societal fallout from David Loverne's murder, it was
a gold mine for newshounds.
280
Jason Pinter
Joe Mauser's death had been relegated to the back pages.
A cop dying in the line of duty just didn't sell as many papers
as a murdered pretty blond white girl. It was strange that this
pissed me off so much, considering Joe Mauser's bullet had
left a nasty scar on my leg. Just one year ago, Mauser wanted
to kill me. I held no ill will toward the man. If someone had
done to my family what he thought I'd done to his, I would
have wanted blood, as well.
I got off the subway and began walking toward our apartment. The summer sun was dipping below the clouds,