Monteleone glanced at the photographs of her family for a moment before answering.
“I suppose I’m being unfair. It wasn’t Victoria that Jack despised. It was his father. Jack’s mother died when he was a baby. When he was ten, Jack’s father told him, ‘When your mother died, they all said I should put you in an orphanage. I didn’t, and it was the worst thing I ever did in my life.’ Can you imagine that? A man saying something like that to his ten-year-old son?”
I flashed on my own father, who did everything for me after my mother died. No, I couldn’t imagine it.
“Jack remembered the words verbatim,” Monteleone said. “They haunted him. Because of those words, Jack never asked for anything from his father. The reason he spent so much time playing basketball was so he could get away from him. His father, for his part, never went to see Jack play. Not even the title game. Jack was a hero in Victoria, but not at home. I wasn’t surprised at all that he refused to attend his father’s funeral. Instead, he went to Europe to play basketball. Given his background, it’s a wonder Jack turned out as well as he did.”
“Perhaps you had something to do with that,” I suggested.
Monteleone gave it a moment’s thought before saying, “It’s nice to think so.”
“Have you seen him, spoken to him, since he left school?”
“No. I shook his hand once during a campaign fund-raiser here in Mankato a couple of years ago, but he didn’t recognize me.”
I wasn’t surprised. Monteleone no longer resembled at all the attractive young woman in the Victoria High School yearbook.
“I’ve been in Victoria,” I said. “Some people blame Governor Barrett for Elizabeth Rogers’s death.”
“What nonsense. He couldn’t possibly have known she would be killed when he left the party.”
“Lynn Peyer—”
“Lynn Peyer.” Monteleone spoke the name like it was an obscenity.
“She, for one, thinks Jack actually killed her.”
Monteleone rose quickly to her feet.
“That’s a lie. An absolute lie. A damnable lie.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Monteleone slowly sat down.
“I just am,” she said.
A few minutes later—after Monteleone decided she had more important things to do than speak to a muckraker like me—I was back on the road. Driving alone, I lapsed into a freeway fantasy. I had a fast car, plenty of money, and no encumbrances. I could go where I pleased, go where I’ve never been before, and do things I’ve never done. There was nothing holding me to the road I was traveling except a sense of duty, of responsibility, that I couldn’t even define. Turn off at the next exit, I told myself. Or the next one. Or the one after that. Just turn off . . .
A dozen exits later I was approaching Victoria. I was still way above the speed limit, but promised myself I’d slow down before I reached the city limits.
“No way I’m going to let that cowgirl give me a ticket,” I said aloud.
What the hell, you’ll probably never see her again, my inner voice reminded me. Considering your relationship with Nina, that’s probably for the best.
My plan hadn’t changed. I would find Josie Bloom in the hope that I could persuade him to tell me what he knew about the night Elizabeth was killed. I didn’t expect much to come of it. “Oh, what did we do?” The line still hung in the air, demanding explanation. Only it could mean anything. From a chronic alcoholic? Absolutely anything.
Still, I’d love to get a long look at the case files. Maybe there was something there besides the unsubstantiated allegation that Elizabeth was killed by roaming transients. Something that would categorically clear Governor Barrett. Only I’d have to give Mallinger something in return, and I had nothing to swap.
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension? That was just something to annoy Dr. Peterson and the boys. I had no intention of bringing official attention to Elizabeth’s murder and subsequently to John Allen Barrett.
Which brought me back to Lindsey’s elusive e-mailer.
“We’re gonna have to do something about him,” I said aloud.
I had been driving with both hands on the steering wheel in the ten and two positions, just as I had been trained. I took my right hand off the wheel only long enough to switch the radio to the classic rock station.
In that moment, the Audi lurched hard to the right.
Blowout, I told myself.
I gripped the wheel with both hands and twisted it to the left to compensate and removed my foot from the accelerator.
Only it didn’t feel like a blowout.
A loud, high-pitched grinding sound added to my confusion.
The car edged closer to the shoulder and the ditch beyond.
I tried to pull it back.
It was like leaning against a moving wall.
A big blue wall.
A truck.
A pickup truck with a plow blade.
The plow blade was digging into my car just below the door handle, leaning against the Audi, pushing it toward the ditch.
I saw the truck, but not the driver. The driver was too high in the cab.