“So no one else knows about the kidnapping.”
“No one.”
Delia had no idea Gavin Chambers and Saul Strauss had kidnapped her son. Hester knew, of course. Three weeks ago, Wilde had confided in her and her only. She didn’t like what Wilde had done in the end. You don’t work outside of the system. The system may be flawed, but you don’t cut off children’s fingers, even to save a wrongly convicted man or even to save — ugh, such dramatics — the world.
She hadn’t seen Wilde in three weeks either.
“So why are you here, Delia?”
“To say goodbye.”
“Oh?”
“We are taking the family and moving overseas for a while.”
“I see.”
“Since that tape became public, you can’t imagine what it’s been like.”
“I think I can.”
“There are constant death threats coming from Rusty supporters. They think Dash made it up or doctored it to destroy their hero.”
“Fake news,” Hester said.
“Yes. As our attorney, you know that Dash can’t comment or authenticate it.”
Hester swallowed hard. “Right. It would be self-incrimination.”
Dash Maynard had committed felonies that night by moving the dead body. Hester had wanted to work Raymond Stark’s case pro bono, but unfortunately, she couldn’t because of the conflict of interest in her representing the Maynards. Her hands were also tied. She wanted Dash more than anything to come forward, but as his attorney, she had to advise him against it.
The system was flawed, but it was still the system.
She didn’t think Dash would come forward anyway. She also didn’t think it would help. That was the worst part of it all. At first, the release of the tape seemed to destroy Rusty Eggers once and for all.
At first.
But mythical beasts don’t die, do they? When you try to kill them, they come back stronger. So: The tape was a fake. If it wasn’t an outright fake, it was doctored. If it wasn’t doctored, it all happened thirty years ago, so it didn’t matter. If it mattered, Rusty Eggers said on the tape that he killed the man in self-defense and that’s not a crime. If it’s a crime, it was thirty years ago, when Rusty Eggers was just a young student, and well, someone tried to kill him so he had no choice but to defend himself. And if the death was later blamed on an innocent black man, that was the police’s fault, not Rusty Eggers’s. Blame that crooked cop Kindler. Blame the racist system. And if it’s not racism, Raymond Stark had a criminal record, even as a seventeen-year-old, so he probably would have ended up in prison on another charge. Maybe Stark did other crimes that night, who knows? Maybe Raymond Stark was involved in Christopher Anson’s killing anyway. If it was self-defense, maybe Raymond Stark joined forces with Christopher Anson to attack Rusty Eggers. Maybe Raymond Stark and Christopher Anson together tried to rob Rusty Eggers and Raymond Stark ran off with the knife. Maybe that was why the knife was on him.
Like that.
Most of the media scoffed at these theories, which just made the Eggers supporters, coming from both the far right and the far left, dig in their heels and back their man even more.
“You said that you would never tell,” Delia said.
“Sorry?”
“No matter what. Even if it was to stop Hitler. If something was told to you under attorney-client privilege, you’d never tell.”
“That’s right.” Hester didn’t like the way this was headed. “You also told me that there was nothing on those tapes.”
“I didn’t know about that tape,” Delia said. “I had no idea that tape existed. I had no idea Dash helped Rusty dump the body in an alley.”
“Okay.”
“Because I was gone by then.”
Hester felt an icy hand touch down on her spine. “Sorry?”
“The two of them fought a lot. Rusty and Christopher. A lot of it was over me. Thirty years ago. You know how it was. Girls were things. Shiny objects. So I guess they had a big fight in the bar that night. I was dating Rusty then. We were getting serious. Rusty had gotten a plum assignment from the senator. Christopher had been overlooked. I don’t know. Who cares anymore? So Christopher knocked on the door. I let him in. He was drunk. He tried to kiss me. I told him no. He didn’t stop. No girl was going to say no to Christopher Anson, especially not his rival’s girlfriend. You can guess what happened next. I hate the term ‘date rape’ or ‘acquaintance rape.’ Thirty years ago, it was pathetically considered ‘boys being boys.’ When I shouted for him to stop, he punched me in the mouth. I ran into the kitchen. He raped me right there on the floor. He was about to rape me again. Tell you the truth? I don’t even remember reaching into the drawer or picking up the knife.”
Hester just stood there. “You killed him?”
Delia moved over to the window. “I sat on the kitchen floor next to him. The knife was still in his chest. I don’t think he was dead yet. But I couldn’t move. He made gurgling noises for a while. Then those stopped. But I just sat there. I don’t know how much time passed. That’s how Rusty found me. On the kitchen floor. Next to the body. Rusty took over. He cleaned me up. He dressed me. He drove me to Union Station. There was a late Amtrak from Washington to Philadelphia. He got me on it and told me not to come back until he called. I stayed in a Marriott hotel room for three days. Ate room service. Rusty told me he moved the body, so nobody would know. When I came back to Washington, nothing was the same between us. You can imagine, right?”
Hester could feel her heart pound against her rib cage.
“We broke up. And I started dating Dash.”
Had that been, Hester wondered, an arrangement between the two men? Was Delia still just a thing, a shiny object, being bartered for a favor? Or had Rusty really loved her? Had Rusty loved her so much that the politician so many believed would destroy the country sacrificed his own happiness to protect her?
Or does it go deeper than that?
Did Rusty’s actions that night — getting rid of a bloody corpse, living with the awful lies and aftermath, losing the love of his life and then his parents — are those what warped Rusty Eggers? Had all of that nudged the young college student off the straight and narrow and veered him into becoming the irredeemably damaged man he was now?
Delia put up her hands. Her smile was sad. “The rest is history.”
“After all that, you’re staying with him?”
“Dash? We have a life together. A family, kids — especially a boy who suffered a great trauma and is going to need stability. We both kept secrets from each other. I at least know his now.”
“And you won’t tell him yours?”
“That I was the one who killed Christopher?” Delia shook her head. “No, never.”
“Hell of a thing to live with,” Hester said.
“Been living with it for over thirty years,” Delia said. She made a production out of checking her watch. “I better go.”
“People wouldn’t blame you,” Hester said, trying to keep the desperation out of her voice. “You were being raped. You can still come out of this doing the right thing.”
“I am doing the right thing. For me. For my family.”
She turned to leave.
“There was one secret you and Dash both kept,” Hester said.
“What’s that?”
“What did you think when you heard that Raymond Stark had been arrested for Christopher’s murder?”
Delia didn’t reply.
“You both knew the truth, right? You and Dash. You didn’t talk about it with each other, but you both knew that an innocent man had been arrested. Yet you never came forward.”