Page 54 of Plain Sight

The bookshelves mostly hold books. The desk drawers are organized, not overcrowded. There’s one locked drawer, and the key is inside a mug by the desk calendar under a few pens and a six-inch ruler.

The key opens the lock.

There are folders inside.

TAX RETURNS, divided by decade.

HOME REPAIRS

INSURANCE CLAIMS

The last one, at the very back, is labeled FREELANCE CONTRACTORS.

I pull it out and open it up.

There are contracts inside. Contractors. Ha.

And there he is.

Malcolm Walsh. Ten times over, there’s Malcolm Walsh.

The last paper in the stack is a copy of a copy of a contract between an entity called New York Strategic Enterprises and none other than Malcolm Walsh.

Well, well, well.

New York Strategic Enterprises was one of Bettencourt’s companies. It’s all coming together.

INSURANCE RECOVERY, the line item reads.

I swallow a laugh before it can get out. Insurance recovery. This is my parents. Bettencourt paid Malcolm Walsh five days before they were murdered. Five days before my life ended.

Methodically, responsibly, I lay out all the documents and photograph them. For evidence. Then I put the folder back in the drawer it came out of. I shut the drawer. Lock it up. I’m not a sloppy criminal.

Time to move on.

It feels less satisfying than I thought it would to have the proof, but I don’t have long to dwell on it, because when I exit the office, I come face to face with the judge.

He stands in a patch of yellow light from a streetlamp in old-man pajamas with buttons up the front, his arms crossed over his stomach, silent and ghostly.

“You’re a piece of shit, you know that? You didn’t have to ruin our lives. Our parents were already dead.”

Beaufort Hayes doesn’t ask me who I am. He already knows. He’s sent people after me more than once, and the old bastard has probably seen photos from the wedding in major media outlets.

“I had nothing to do with your parents, son.”

I make a disgusted noise. “Fuck off.”

“I didn’t know who they were.”

“Oh? So you just keep Bettencourt’s old contracts lying around to jack off too?”

He wrinkles his nose as if I’m the offensive one. “That was a warning about how far Malcolm Walsh is willing to go. The man doesn’t have any scruples. He follows the orders of the highest bidder, and he was willing to kill me if I didn’t…come along quietly. I kept that document as a reminder of the risks.”

I snort so loud it hurts. “Bullshit. Did you think your granddaughter was a risk, too? Is that why you tried to kill her? Sorry—have her killed?”

Beauford ages ten years in the blink of an eye. “I didn’t. That was Walsh. I was blackmailed. And now someone’s hired him out from under me.”

“Bummer. Guess you’ll have to do the job yourself, then.”