Eleventh Hour

“Why?” Dane asked.

“The old man was so mean he could face down drunk bikers. Once, I heard he’d pistol-whipped a man for hassling a woman, all the while yelling at him, ‘No one fucks with my town!’ That’s what he always loved to say, and then he’d spit out a wad of tobacco.

“I’ll bet you’re all wondering why I’ve kept him in such a nice place for the last ten years.”

No one had actually really thought about it yet, but Nick knew they would have, sooner or later.

She said, “Why did you?”

Weldon said simply, “He told me if I didn’t keep him sitting real pretty until he kicked off, he’d contact the press and tell them where bodies were buried that no one even knew about, tell them where his gun was hidden, tell them all about the bundles he’d buried beneath that elm tree. There’d be so much proof, they’d have to believe him.

“I agreed. What else could I do? There was my own growing career to think about, but most important, there was my boy, my own i

Nick said slowly, “I guess I can understand that, but was he still killing people? Didn’t you realize you had to do something once you were an adult and out from under his thumb?”

Weldon said, “I tried never to think about it. He’s right. I was a coward, and he knew I wouldn’t say anything once I had my boy. He was still the sheriff thirteen years ago when something went wrong with an arrest, and a car ran over him, smashing his legs. He’s been confined to a wheelchair ever since. So I knew the world was safe from him.”

Savich started to say something, but Nick shook her head, said, “He started his threats recently, didn’t he? He knew he was getting close to the end and he wanted recognition for what he’d done. He wanted the world to know just what had walked among them for years and years.”

Weldon nodded, his hands clasped, so pale, so deadened, that it broke her heart. “Yes. After he told me what he was pla

Weldon stopped cold. Then he seemed to look deeply inside himself, drew a deep breath, and said, “That’s when he told me he’d had a nice little visit with his grandson. And that’s when I hit him and knocked his chair over. I should have killed him then but I just couldn’t do it. I threatened him, hoped to scare him into silence like I already told you, but I knew that wouldn’t work. After I left, I thought about it and knew I had to kill him, there was just no other way. I failed.”

Dane said very gently, “Weldon, your father visited with your boy and confessed what he was to him?”

“Yes.”

“Weldon, who is your son?”

Weldon shook his head. “Listen, Agent Savich, my son isn’t a murderer, he isn’t.”

“But you believe he is,” Sherlock said, “and it’s eating you alive. You think your son killed the people in San Francisco and in Pasadena, copying the scripts you wrote.”

Finally, Weldon DeLoach said, “I just couldn’t make myself accept that he was like his grandfather, that his head wasn’t right, that something was missing in him.”

Dane said, “We’ve got to bring him in, Weldon, you must know that. You can’t let him continue doing what your own father did for so many years.”

Weldon was shaking his head. “Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t figure it out until just a couple of days ago. And even then I didn’t figure it out for myself. The old man actually bragged about how he’d finally gotten a real man in the family, how he didn’t have much to teach his grandson, because-like his granddaddy-he was born knowing what to do and how to do it. He told me that his grandson came to see him, brought a Christmas present, a nice tie with red dots on it. And how perfect that was, and so he told the boy he was going to die soon and he wanted to tell him all about himself. And he laughed and laughed at how stupid everyone was, the cops especially.”

Weldon fell silent, looked at them again. He said at last, “I haven’t known what to do. I just knew I had to kill that obscene old man, get him buried, and gone.”

Sherlock said very gently, “But what were you going to do about your son?”

“Get him help. Stop him from doing any more harm. Turn him over to the police if I had to.”

Sherlock said, “We’re the cops. What’s his name, Weldon?”

But Weldon just shook his head. “I couldn’t let him continue, not like my father had done. He was a good boy, really. I know something must have happened to make him snap, to turn him into a monster like his grandfather. I don’t know what it was, but there just had to have been something. He was doing so well. He’s very smart, you know, extraordinarily talented. But then there were some signs-he struggled when he was in high school, didn’t like his teachers, couldn’t make friends-it was enough to make me pay attention. He was violent once, when he accidentally killed a girl in college, but it could have happened to any guy, you know? Things just got out of hand. It was involuntary manslaughter. I got him help. They made him well. My son promised me he was just fine, and I wanted desperately to believe him.

“Something happened. The old man did this to him, somehow.”

He looked up at each of them in turn. “Do you know I still don’t know how many people that old monster killed? There were people he killed that were never found by anyone. Oh Jesus.”

He put his head in his hands and sobbed very quietly.

THIRTY-TWO

“Wait! You can’t go in there!”

As she pushed past him, Sherlock said, “Jay, it’s time for you to go away now. It’s time to take your custom suits from Armani, get another job, and pay off your credit cards.”

“But he’s meditating! He specifically told me he didn’t want to be bothered. And I love Armani. When I wear Armani everyone knows it’s Armani.”

Suddenly Arnold Loftus came roaring forward. He didn’t try to bar their way, he rounded on Jay Smith. “Shut up, Jay. They’re here for a reason. Don’t try to stop them.”

“You’re the damned bodyguard. Don’t let them go in there, you moron, you’ve-”

Arnold very gently picked up Jay Smith beneath his armpits and simply walked away with him. He said over his shoulder, “The Little Shit fired me. Whatever it is, go for it.”

Dane gently turned the handle. The door was locked. He turned to Jay, still held up by his armpits, and held out his hand. “Key,” was all he said.

Arnold let Jay down, watched him like a hawk as he went to his desk, got down on his knees, and untaped a key beneath the center drawer. He handed it to Dane.

“Thank you,” Dane said.

Dane quietly unlocked the door, slowly pushed it open. The huge office was dark, like a movie theater, and indeed, there was a movie showing, on the far white wall. Linus Wolfinger was seated in the chair behind his desk, his chin propped up in his hands, watching.

It was an episode of The Consultant, one they hadn’t seen. He didn’t look away from the screen even after all six of the people who’d come into his office were standing around his desk.

He said in a calm, conversational voice, “My dear old dad blew the whistle, I take it?”

“No,” Delion said. “Your dad told us about how he’d found out that his son was a murderer, but no, he didn’t tell us your name.”

“That crazy old pile of bones told you then.”

Savich said, “Actually, we managed to figure it out. MAX, my computer, verified for us that you were born Robert Allen DeLoach, and you attended Garrett High School here in LA. Here’s a photo of you.”

Savich laid the photo faceup on Wolfinger’s desk. Linus didn’t bother to look at it.