Lethal

“Well, you don’t need to hear all that. You want to know about The Bookkeeper. Clever name, don’t you think? Anyway, millions of dollars were waiting for me in banks all over the world. It’s amazing what you can do over the Internet.

“But then Lee Coburn came along, and I had to accelerate my plan to skip the country. Lanny…” Here her voice turned thick. “Lanny would never have known the difference. It’s not like he would have missed me, is it? In exchange for a guilty plea, you swear to me that he’ll be placed in the very best facility in the country?”

“You have my personal word on it.”

“And he’ll get Tom’s pension?”

“Every cent will go toward his son’s care.”

“Tom would want that. He was devoted to Lanny. Often I envied his capacity to love Lanny in ways I couldn’t. I tried, but…”

After a short pause, she said, “That sexting… that isn’t me. I want you to know that I think that’s disgusting. It was simply a means of coded communication. I wouldn’t have sent Doral or Fred Hawkins a dirty text. God. Please. No, that was just a way to explain all the telephone activity in case Tom became suspicious. You understand?”

“I understand,” Hamilton replied blandly. “Didn’t you have any misgivings about killing Tom?”

“Of course! It was the hardest thing I had to do as The Bookkeeper. Doral tried to talk me out of it, but there simply was no other way. Besides, I did Tom a favor. He was miserable. Possibly even more so than I. He was in bondage at work just as I was at home. He wasn’t good at his job. You of all people should know that, Mr. Hamilton. You contributed to his misery. He knew he could never live up to your expectations.”

“I thought Tom had potential and only lacked the confidence to realize it. I thought that with my guidance and encouragement-”

“Those are really moot points, aren’t they, Mr. Hamilton?”

“I suppose so.”

“It pains me to talk about him. I grieved him. Honestly, I did. But this way, Tom died with honor. Even with a bit of heroism. I think he would have preferred that to dying in obscurity.”

After another pause, she said, “I guess that’s everything. Do you want me to sign something?”

Hamilton reached across his desk and punched the button to stop the playback.

Honor and Stan, who’d been invited to the district office in New Orleans to listen to Janice VanAllen’s recorded confession, had sat motionless for the duration of it, astonished by the casualness with which she had confessed her crimes to Hamilton several days earlier.

“She had Eddie killed,” Honor said quietly.

“As well as a lot of other people,” Hamilton said. “Based on the information on that USB key, we’re making definite progress. But,” he said around a sigh, “as she said, it’s almost futile. The criminals are multiplying at a rate much faster than we can catch them. But we stay at it.”