“You took a hell of a risk,” I said.
“But what choice did we have?”
“There had to be other ways.”
He leaned closer. I smelled his breath. The loose folds of skin by his eyes drooped low. “Again, Beck, you’re on that dirt road with those two bodies—hell, you’re sitting here right now with the benefit of hindsight. So tell me: What should we have done?”
I didn’t have an answer.
“There were other problems too,” Hoyt added, sitting back a bit. “We were never totally sure that Scope’s people would buy the whole setup. Luckily for us, the two lowlifes were supposed to leave the country after the murder. We found plane tickets to Buenos Aires on them. They were both drifters, unreliable types. That all helped. Scope’s people bought it, but they kept tabs on us—not so much because they thought she was still alive, but they worried that maybe she had given one of us some incriminating material.”
“What incriminating material?”
He ignored the question. “Your house, your phone, probably your office. They’ve been bugged for the past eight years. Mine too.”
That explained the careful emails. I let my eyes wander around the room.
“I swept for them yesterday,” he said. “The house is clean.”
When he was silent for a few moments, I risked a question. “Why did Elizabeth choose to come back now?”
“Because she’s foolish,” he said, and for the first time, I heard anger in his voice. I gave him some time. He calmed, the red swells in his face ebbing away. “The two bodies we buried,” he said quietly.
“What about them?”
“Elizabeth followed the news on the Internet. When she read that they’d been discovered, she figured, same as me, that the Scopes might realize the truth.”
“That she was still alive?”
“Yes.”
“But if she were overseas, it would still take a hell of a lot to find her.”
“That’s what I told her. But she said that wouldn’t stop them. They’d come after me. Or her mother. Or you. But”—again he stopped, dropped his head—“I don’t know how important all that was.”
“What do you mean?”
“Sometimes I think she wanted it to happen.” He fiddled with the drink, jiggled the ice. “She wanted to come back to you, David. I think the bodies were just an excuse.”
I waited again. He drank some more. He took another peek out the window.
“It’s your turn,” he said to me.
“What?”
“I want some answers now,” he said. “Like how did she contact you. How did you get away from the police. Where you think she is.”
I hesitated, but not very long. What choice did I really have here? “Elizabeth contacted me by anonymous emails. She spoke in code only I’d understand.”
“What kind of code?”
“She made references to things in our past.”
Hoyt nodded. “She knew they might be watching.”
“Yes.” I shifted in my seat. “How much do you know about Griffin Scope’s personnel?” I asked.
He looked confused. “Personnel?”
“Does he have a muscular Asian guy working for him?”
Whatever color was left on Hoyt’s face flowed out as though through an open wound. He looked at me in awe, almost as though he wanted to cross himself. “Eric Wu,” he said in a hushed tone.
“I ran into Mr. Wu yesterday.”
“Impossible,” he said.
“Why?”
“You wouldn’t be alive.”
“I got lucky.” I told him the story. He looked near tears.
“If Wu found her, if he got to her before he got to you …” He closed his eyes, wishing the image away.
“He didn’t,” I said.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Wu wanted to know why I was in the park. If he had her already, why bother with that?”
He nodded slowly. He finished his drink and poured himself another. “But they know she’s alive now,” he said. “That means they’re going to come after us.”
“Then we’ll fight back,” I said with far more bravery than I felt.
“You didn’t hear me before. The mystical beast keeps growing more heads.”
“But in the end, the hero always defeats the beast.”
He scoffed at that one. Deservedly, I might add. I kept my eyes on him. The grandfather clock ding-donged. I thought about it some more.
“You have to tell me the rest,” I said.
“Unimportant.”
“It’s connected with Brandon Scope’s murder, isn’t it?”
He shook his head without conviction.
“I know that Elizabeth gave an alibi to Helio Gonzalez,” I said.
“It’s not important, Beck. Trust me.”
“Been there, done that, got screwed,” I said.
He took another swig.
“Elizabeth kept a safety-deposit box under the name Sarah Goodhart,” I said. “That’s where they found those pictures.”
“I know,” Hoyt said. “We were in a rush that night. I didn’t know she’d already given the key to them. We emptied their pockets, but I never checked their shoes. Shouldn’t have mattered, though. I had no intention of them ever being found.”
“She left more in that box than just the photographs,” I continued.
Hoyt carefully set down his drink.
“My father’s old gun was in there too. A thirty-eight. You remember it?”
Hoyt looked away and his voice was suddenly soft. “Smith and Wesson. I helped him pick it out.”
I felt myself start shaking again. “Did you know that Brandon Scope was killed with that gun?”
His eyes shut tight, like a child wishing away a bad dream.
“Tell me what happened, Hoyt.”
“You know what happened.”
I couldn’t stop quaking. “Tell me anyway.”
Each word came out like body blows. “Elizabeth shot Brandon Scope.”
I shook my head. I knew it wasn’t true.
“She was working side by side with him, doing that charity work. It was just a question of time before she stumbled across the truth. That Brandon was running all this penny-ante crap, playing at being a tough street guy. Drugs, prostitution, I don’t even know what.”
“She never told me.”
“She didn’t tell anyone, Beck. But Brandon found out. He beat the hell out of her to warn her off. I didn’t know it then, of course. She gave me the same story about a bad fender-bender.”