The road was arrow-straight. No curves at all. The accident had happened at ten thirty on a Saturday night. Fallon was a fitness geek, a man who ran every night, the same route on the same roads. He’d been wearing orange reflective tape on the back of his jacket and flashers on the heels of his running shoes. But the night would have been black as coal, and Nikki Candis would have been drunk to the point of unconsciousness, and Serena had no idea how fast the woman had been driving. Jonah Fallon didn’t stand a chance. The Highlander had taken him out at full speed and kept going. The coroner said he died instantly, his body broken.
Serena got back into her car. A mile north, she turned left on a road called Wildrose Trail. The forest had been chopped away here to make large, grassy lots for executive home sites. They were sprawling, expensive properties, some fetching close to a million dollars, which was still a lot of money in the Duluth market. She parked outside a house with multiple gables and a white-brick exterior. There was a neat garden in the front yard, and the lawn had been recently mowed. A car with Wisconsin plates was parked in the driveway.
She’d never met Susan Fallon. This was Abel’s case, and he’d been the one to deal with Jonah’s wife. There was no record in the file that Abel had contacted her in more than a year; he’d had nothing to report on the status of the cold case. Now Abel was retired in New Mexico, and it fell to Serena to tell this woman that they finally knew who had been behind the wheel when Jonah died.
It was much later in the day than she’d planned to be here. Most of the day had been taken up in finding a lawyer for Delaney and in taking her statement at police headquarters. They’d also discussed possible charges for Ben Larsen with the county attorney. Serena had finally been able to get away, but she deliberately hadn’t called Susan Fallon before showing up. After two years, this was the kind of news that she wanted to break in person.
At the door, Serena rang the bell and waited. It was a long time before she heard footsteps inside. She had no photograph of Jonah’s wife, so she didn’t know what to expect, but when the door opened, she saw two people standing on the threshold. One was a tall older man; the other was a short older woman. She knew them. They were familiar to her. She’d talked with them very recently, but she struggled to place them because she had no idea why she was seeing them here.
Something was wrong.
Something made no sense.
“Oh, Detective, hello,” the woman greeted her. She didn’t sound surprised at all to see Serena on the doorstep. “We heard about Chelsey. That’s such wonderful news.”
Serena blinked, forcing her mind to catch up to her eyes. She studied their faces again and glanced at the car in the driveway with Wisconsin plates.
Then, in a rush, she knew. She remembered.
Mary and Tim Webster.
Gavin Webster’s parents from Rice Lake.
“It’s very kind of you to come out here to tell us in person,” Mary Webster went on. “Of course, Gavin called us as soon as he got word. It sounds like Chelsey is healthy and fine. We’re so relieved.”
Serena tried to find the words to ask the questions that were in her head.
“What are the two of you doing here?” she asked.
“Well, we put it off as long as we could,” Mary replied. “Someone had to start cleaning out Susan’s house. Given everything, Gavin wasn’t going to be much help. He asked if we could take the lead, and we said we would. But I can’t tell you how painful it is. Her spirit is still here. This is where she died, you know. She didn’t want to pass away in a hospital.”
“Susan,” Serena murmured.
“That’s right.”
“Susan Fallon. Your daughter — Gavin’s sister — was Jonah Fallon’s wife.”
“Yes, as we told you, it’s just been tragedy upon tragedy for us. First Gavin lost everything, and then Susan received the cancer diagnosis so soon after getting married. And then for her to lose Jonah in that horrible, horrible accident. Well, God can be cruel sometimes. But at least He isn’t cruel today. Today Gavin got Chelsey back, so that’s something. It simply would have been too much for him to lose his sister and his wife in the same year.”
37
“I called Abel Teitscher in New Mexico,” Stride announced to Serena, Maggie, and Guppo in the police conference room. “Gavin’s name never came up during the investigation of Jonah Fallon’s hit-and-run. With Susan having a different last name, Abel never made the connection. Not that he would have or should have under the circumstances. It wouldn’t have seemed relevant.”
Maggie stood up and went to the window, where she leaned against the ledge. After staring at the forest for a while, she turned back and blurted out what they were all thinking.
“Does anyone believe this is just a coincidence?” she asked. “Because if not, what exactly do we think happened here?”
Stride stood in front of the whiteboard and studied the four names that he’d written there:
Jonah Fallon
Nikki Candis
Susan Webster Fallon
Gavin Webster
Somehow, the lives of those four people had intersected violently. And for Gavin, lucratively. Three of them were dead, and Gavin was rich.
“Six years ago, Gavin’s law firm partner was arrested for embezzling client funds,” Stride began, laying out the timeline for them. “The firm dissolved, and Gavin lost everything. He went bankrupt. He lost his house, his reputation, and most of his savings. He had to start over doing defense work for low-income clients, usually on public defender rates.”
He used a black marker to circle Susan’s name on the board.
“Then three years ago, Gavin’s sister, Susan, married Jonah Fallon. Jonah was a senior health-care executive with money in the bank and a high six-figure income. Susan and Jonah honeymooned in a luxury resort in Aruba. They bought a mansion in Bayview Heights. Suddenly, Gavin’s sister had everything in her life that Gavin had lost in his. It’s not hard to think there was some sibling jealousy over that. But there wasn’t anything Gavin could do about it.” Stride paused. “Until.”
“Until Susan was diagnosed with an aggressive form of uterine cancer just a few months after she got married,” Serena finished his thought.
“Exactly.”
Guppo shook his head. “Holy crap. Holy effing crap.”
Stride sat down again and took a minute to contemplate the horror of what they were describing. “Yeah. That’s what we’re thinking, right? Gavin is bankrupt and down on his luck, and over here is his sister, with a lot of money thanks to her new husband. But then he finds out that his sister is going to die. It’s just a matter of time. If she dies with Jonah alive, nothing changes for Gavin. On the other hand, if Jonah dies before Susan, then Susan inherits her husband’s money. Plus a sizable life insurance policy, I imagine.”
“So when Susan ultimately dies of cancer — with no kids, no other family — all of that money goes to Gavin,” Serena concluded.
Stride nodded. “I think we’re looking at an unbelievably insidious murder conspiracy that’s been playing out for the last two years. With three million dollars as the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.”
“Fucking lawyers,” Maggie snorted from the window ledge.
Guppo crunched on his Fritos. “Do you think Chelsey Webster knows about any of this?”
“She was pretty quick to have doubts about her husband,” Maggie pointed out.
“Right, and if Chelsey suspects, it gives us the one thing we’ve been missing,” Stride went on. “A motive. If it was just about money, Gavin could have divorced her and walked away with the inheritance. On the other hand, if Chelsey had even a whiff of foul play in Jonah’s death, that’s totally different. That’s a reason to get rid of her permanently. Gavin keeps the money, and his wife never raises any awkward questions about his dead brother-in-law.”