Myron said nothing.
“That’s all I did. For the sake of my daughter’s memory.”
The blurry line between fair and foul again. “So you decided to frame me for Clu’s murder.”
“Yes.”
“The perfect way to wreak vengeance on me for bribing the officers.”
“I thought so at the time.”
“But you messed up, Sophie. You ended up framing the wrong person.”
“That was an accident.”
Myron shook his head. “I should have seen it,” he said. “Even Billy Lee Palms said it, but I didn’t pay attention. And Hester Crimstein said it to me the first time I met her.”
“Said what?”
“They both pointed out that the blood was found in my car, the gun in my office. Maybe I killed Clu, they said. A logical deduction except for one thing. I was out of the country. You didn’t know that, Sophie. You didn’t know that Esperanza and Big Cyndi were playing a shell game with everybody, pretending I was still around. That’s why you were so upset with me when you found out I’d been away. I messed up your plan. You also didn’t know that Clu had an altercation with Esperanza. So all the evidence that was supposed to point to me—”
“Pointed instead to your associate, Miss Diaz,” Sophie said.
“Exactly,” Myron said. “But there’s one other thing I want to clear up.”
“More than one thing,” Sophie corrected.
“What?”
“There’s more than one thing you’ll want to clear up,” Sophie said. “But please go ahead. What would you like to know?”
“You were the one who had me followed,” he said. “The guy I spotted outside the Lock-Horne building. He was yours.”
“Yes. I knew Clu had tried to hook up with you. I hoped the same might happen with Billy Lee Palms.”
“Which it did. Billy Lee thought that maybe I killed Clu to keep my part in the crime buried. He thought I wanted to kill him too.”
“It makes sense,” she agreed. “You had a lot to lose.”
“So you were following me then? At the bar?”
“Yes.”
“Personally?”
She smiled. “I grew up a hunter and a tracker, Myron. The city or the woods, it makes little difference.”
“You saved my life,” he said.
She did not reply.
“Why?”
“You know why. I didn’t come there to kill Billy Lee Palms. But there are degrees of guilt. Simply put, he was more guilty than you. When it came down to a question of you or him, I chose to kill him. You deserve to be punished, Myron. But you didn’t deserve to be killed by scum like Billy Lee Palms.”
“Judge and jury again?”
“Luckily for you, Myron, yes.”
He sat down hard on the pitcher’s mound, his whole body suddenly drained. “I can’t just let you get away with this,” he said. “I may sympathize. But you killed Clu Haid in cold blood.”
“No.”
“What?”
“I didn’t kill Clu Haid.”
“I don’t expect you to confess.”
“Expect or don’t expect. I didn’t kill him.”
Myron frowned. “You had to. It all adds up.”
Her eyes remained placid pools. Myron’s head started spinning. He turned and looked up at Jared.
“He didn’t kill him either,” Sophie said.
“One of you did,” Myron said.
“No.”
Myron looked at Jared. Jared said nothing. Myron opened his mouth, closed it, tried to come up with something.
“Think, Myron.” Sophie crossed her arms and smiled at him. “I told you my philosophy when you were last here. I’m a hunter. I don’t hate what I kill. Just the opposite. I respect what I kill. I honor my kill. I consider the animal brave and noble. Killing, in fact, can be merciful. That’s why I kill with one shot. Not Billy Lee Palms, of course. I wanted him to have at least a few moments of agony and fear. And of course, I would never show Clu Haid mercy.”
Myron tried to sort through it. “But—”
And then he heard yet another click. His conversation with Sally Li started uncoiling in his head.
The crime scene …
Christ, the crime scene. It was in such a state of disarray. Blood on the walls. Blood on the floor. Because blood splatters would show the truth. So splatter some more. Destroy the evidence. Fire more shots into the corpse. To the calf, to the back, even to the head. Take the gun with you. Mess things up. Cover up what really happened.
“Oh God …”
Sophie nodded at him.
Myron’s mouth felt dry as a sandstorm. “Clu committed suicide?”
Sophie tried a smile, but she just couldn’t quite make it.
Myron started to stand, his bad knee audibly creaking as he rose. “The end of his marriage, the failed drug test, but mostly the past coming back at him—it was all too much. He shot himself in the head. The other shots were just to throw the police off. The crime scene was messed up so no one would be able to analyze the blood splatters and see it was a suicide. It was all a diversion.”
“A coward to the end,” Sophie said.
“But how did you know he killed himself? Did you have his place bugged or under surveillance?”
“Nothing so technical, Myron. He wanted us to find him—me specifically.”
Myron just stared at her.
“We were supposed to have our big confrontation that night. Yes, Clu had hit rock bottom, Myron. But I was not through with him. Not by a long shot. An animal deserved a quick kill. Not Clu Haid. But when Jared and I arrived, he’d already taken the gutless way out.”
“And the money?”
“It was there. As you noted, the anonymous stranger who sent him the diskette and made all those phone calls was blackmailing him. But he knew it was us. I took the money that night and donated it to the Child Welfare Institute.”
“You caused him to kill himself.”
She shook her head, her posture still ramrod. “Nobody causes someone to kill himself. Clu Haid chose his fate. It was not what I intended but—”
“Intended? He’s dead, Sophie.”
“Yes, but it was not what I intended. Just as you, Myron, did not intend to cover up my daughter’s murder.”
Silence.
“You took advantage of his death,” Myron said. “You planted the blood and gun in my car and office. Or you hired someone to do it.”