“I can’t say there was one moment IknewPoppy—Helen—was the one. But I do see Theo Pappas’s show, the unmasking, as a pivotal moment in my life.”
Trinity:
“When you wore the mask of the Echo?”
Patrick:
“Yes. I was still reeling with my father’s Christmas Day revelation that I was not his son, still coming to terms with what that meant to me, and to who I was.
“I’d spent my whole life trying to be the boy, and then the man, I thought Angus McGregor wanted me to be. Then came Arrabella—and love, or lust, is indeed blind—I tried to become the manshewanted.
“But stripping off the Echo mask ... it’s what I needed. I had to stop echoing and mirroring what others expected, and simply be myself.
“And like Helen said—when you finally find the freedom to accept who you are, everything changes.
“After theOrchidtragedy, we ran into each other again in the Edinburgh lawyers’ office. We went for lunch ... and we have sort of been together since.
“First we bonded over our shared trauma on the ship, then as friends. Later we became partners in charity work. We shared interests, passions. We fell into the best kind of love, and married three years later. Very different people than when we met. Bottom line? Lillith crossed our paths. And through Angus, she gave us the resources to make change.”
A long pause as Patrick gazes out over the caldera.
“It’s true—there’s so much hype around ‘closure’ and what it means.” He makes air quotes. “But I am deeply grateful for the truth. I, too, finally feel I belong somewhere. I understand where I fit.
“And that”—he exhales—“was something I struggled my whole life to find. Lillith and Angus allowed me that.
“Finally. In the end.”
It’s Criminal:
The Mystery of theBlack Orchid
A Trinity Scott & Gio Rossi True Crime Production
Trinity:
“To paraphrase Homer in theOdyssey,‘They went aboard their ship and put out to sail on the wine-dark sea.’
“And like an Odyssean adventure, no one on theBlack Orchidknew on that exhilarating departure day how—years later—the words of Dr. Gideon Marsh, retired FBI profiler, would still resonate.
“‘The murders were savage, seemingly random at first. Capricious and cruel pranks of the Fates. Until we dig deeper and begin to understand the psychology driving both the villain and his victims. And yes, on occasion his victims became villains, too. But when we delve deeper into their psyches, it all makes perfect sense.’
“He was referring to the murders carried out by Vincent Kapoor and Sanjay Lohar, enabled in part by a once-innocent and naive medical secretary fromQuebec, Aline-Claire Lavoie, whose path was crossed with a devil.
“Gideon Marsh dedicated his final work,Thrall of the Naga, published posthumously, to his grandson, Carter J. Frost.”
Trinity picks up a hardcover, opens it, and reads aloud:
“‘I followed Vincent onto theBlack Orchidand into the mythology of the Ancient Greeks.
“‘I went because I believed ‘Hendrick,’ the antiquities dealer from Amsterdam, would lead me—us—finally, to one of his accomplices. I was wrong. The script was flipped.
“‘It was his accomplice, Aline-Claire Lavoie—Lillith Ravenscroft McGregor—who lured Vincent. To his death. She finally ended his power over her.
“‘She thus lured me, too.
“‘She gave me the answers to a lifetime obsession. A search for closure. She told me on the ship—in Avi Galev’s suite during the dark dawn of our arrival in Crete—that Vincent had revealed to her that Sanjay was indeed deceased. Killed by an associate of Vincent’s in the backstreets of Berlin. His body was dumped in the northern region of Germany’s Black Forest. This is consistent with the last believed sighting of Sanjay Lohar.
“‘And she gave me something else.
