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“That’s the one thing I can’t do, my friend,” he says. “My children need me. My family.”
“You’ll be on the run for the rest of your lives,” I say. “Is that any way to raise a family?”
“We’ll be okay,” he says. “I gave away most of the money—I’m sure you know that by now—but I saved enough that we could run when the time came. My kids will have a good life. A normal life.”
“How does Josie feel about what you’ve done?” I ask.
“Like I said before, marriage is all about compromise. When you’re truly in love, you can go to your spouse and say, ‘Honey, I need you to come along with me, no questions asked.’ If you’re in love, you make it work.”
Hearing him talk about dragging Josie and the kids into his life on the lam makes something in me snap. I can’t take any more of his self-righteous justification—any more delusions that he’s agoodperson helping others.
“Parker,” I say, “you are crazy.”
“No,” he says defensively. “I amnot. It’s the world that’s gone crazy.”
“You rationalize why it’s okay for you to conduct yourself outside the bounds of society and its laws,” I say, “but you’re no better than the criminals you used to put away.”
“Ihelppeople,” he growls.
“Tell that to the family of Luisa Ramirez.”
This stops him, and for a moment he doesn’t speak.
“That was an accident,” he says softly. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. And the person who made that mistake has paid for it.”
“So that’s why you killed Harvey?”
He’s quiet again.
“That’s right,” I say. “We found him. I’m looking at his dead body right now. He has a bullet in his face and he’s covered in shit. Tell me again how you’re not crazy.”
Any mirth Parker was feeling earlier is now gone. His voice is so quiet I can hardly hear him.
“You’ve killed people, Rory.”
“Only in self-defense,” I say. “Never in cold blood.”
“Semantics,” Parker says. “Harvey committed murder and had to die.”
“And that’s the same excuse you used for Jackson Clarke?” I say. “Before you left him rotting in your septic tank?”
“It seemed a fitting place for that psychopath to rot.”
“You had to know eventually you’d be found out,” I say. “You can’t go forever without getting a septic tank pumped.”
“That’s just the thing,” he said. “Wecouldgo forever. We had to replace the tank back when we bought the house, and the damn county insisted we put in a three-thousand-gallon drum because it’s an old farmhouse built for a much bigger family. Building codes go by the number of bedrooms, not how many people actually live there. It was easy to push that murderer into the back of the tank and forget about him. A piece of shit buried in a sea of it.”
I open my mouth to tell him that Jackson Clarke was actually innocent, but he cuts me off before I can speak.
“I’m done with this conversation,” he says. “You’re clearly just a cog in the corrupt machine, and you’ll never understand. I wanted to call and say thanks again for saving Leo, and I’ve done that. I’m sorry that you couldn’t catch me. After tomorrow, you’ll never hear about me or the XYZ Bandits—or whatever it is you called us—ever again. Goodbye, Rory.”
Before he hangs up, I start to shout: “Let Josie and the kids go, Parker. Let them live a normal…”
I trail off because the phone beeps in my ear. He hung up on me.
“Shit,” I say to Carlos. “That didn’t tell us a goddamn thing.”
“Yes, it did.”
