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“This young lady needs to talk to me. About Patrick Wolfe.”
Her face changes, turning nervous. “Brian, no. You don’t have to talk to anybody. Just send her away.”
“It’s alright, Suze. Come on,” he tells me. “We can talk in my study.”
I follow him down a hallway lined with family pictures, of Brian with his wife and two kids. Riding lessons… The tennis club…Ski vacations and summers on the beach. I can’t help wondering how a mid-level forensics guy has managed such a comfortable lifestyle.
An instinct tells me, it has something to do with his guilty conscience.
“You have a lovely home,” I offer, as he shows me into a book-lined study with a small desk and a couch covered in documents and crime scene photos. He quickly clears a space to sit.
“Sorry for the mess,” he apologizes. “I’m working on an appeal. I volunteer for an organization that tries to free wrongly convicted people.”
“That’s very virtuous of you,” I remark.
He looks ashamed. “It’s the least I can do.”
More guilt. Just what is this guy trying to make amends for?
“Do you want to tell me what happened?” I prompt, as he paces, full of nervous energy. “I know that you were the one who examined the car, after the crash. And then it disappeared, sent to a junkyard by mistake.”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” he says, with a heavy sigh. “I sent the paperwork through on purpose, to make sure nobody would be able to double-check my report.”
“Why?” I ask, getting chilled. “I saw what you wrote. The report was clean. What did you really find?”
Brian sits behind the desk, then stands up again. “The vehicle brakes weren’t functioning,” he says finally, meeting my eyes. “The crash… It wasn’t because of any driver error. There would have been an accident, no matter what.”
“You mean… It wasn’t really Sebastian’s fault?” I gape. All this time, he’s been thinking he killed his own father, and it turns out, it wasn’t his poor driving that led to the crash. “But I don’t understand,” I add, processing the revelation. “Why wouldn’t you tell anyone? Why would you cover up a mechanical failing?”
“Because it wasn’t a failing.” Brian says grimly. “The brakes had been cut.”
I stare at him in disbelief. “Cut…” I echo. “But… How? Who would do something like that?”
He looks away. “I have no idea,” he says, but it sounds like a lie.
“So what happened?” I demand. “Why didn’t you put that in your report?”
He sighs again, looking down at his feet. “Because someone showed up at my office one night and offered me an unthinkable amount of money to cover it up.”
“Who?” I ask, leaning forwards.
He pauses, then looks up to meet my eyes.
“Richard Wolfe.”
Sebastian’s uncle. Somehow, everything leads back to him.
“I know it was wrong, but you have to understand, my oldest son was just a boy then and he needed an expensive surgery.” Brian adds urgently. “I was desperate for money already and… And I guess it was just the right time to do the wrong thing.”
His voice cracks a little, and I can see that he’s wracked with guilt.
“So you did it,” I say, still reeling.
He nods sadly. “I took the cash, had the car scrapped, and mixed up the paperwork. I told myself it was a victimless crime. Those men were already dead, it wasn’t like my report would bring them back. Nobody got charged, and… The whole thing just went away. A tragic accident. At least, it was. But then I saw the news reports last month, accusing Sebastian Wolfe of killing them. It makes me feel sick to think that the poor kid thought it was his fault this whole time.”
That makes two of us.
“But you can come forward now,” I tell him, my hopes rising. “You can tell the police what you know—about the report, and Richard Wolfe—”
