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None of which he was inclined to follow at this moment as he tried to untangle his jumbled thoughts.
“I thought you’d want to hear the story.” Joseph spoke behind him, his rasp of a voice barely there. “That’s why I asked you to come. I want to answer your questions and tell you how sorry I am for the terrible deed I did that night—which wasn’t supposed to end with anyone dying. I went to the house ahead of time and looked through the windows. I could see smoke detectors on the ceilings.”
Marc lifted his hand to slide his pen back into his shirt pocket. Stared at his fingers.
They were trembling.
Badly.
And speech had deserted him.
“Please, Agent Davis. Let me tell you what happened—and what led up to it.”
No.
He wasn’t ready for this conversation.
Not until he could reconcile himself to being in the same room with the man who’d murdered his parents.
But much as he wanted to bolt ... to put as much distance between himself and this man as possible ... to go somewhere quiet to try to process what had just transpired ... he didn’t have that luxury. If he left, Butler could be gone before he felt ready to hear the story.
It was now or perhaps never.
Forcing air into his lungs, Marc slowly pivoted and lurched back to the chair on wobbly legs. “I’m listening.” His own voice sounded like gravel.
“Thank you.” Joseph drew an unsteady breath and bunched the edge of the nubby blanket that rested near his fingers. “I was twenty-six that summer. Working as a day laborer. There weren’t many other jobs open to a high school dropout. It was a dead-end life and I knew it, but if you come from a bad home environment and find yourself on the street at fifteen, that’s where you can end up. So when the opportunity to make a few easy if not quite legal bucks came along, I grabbed it. I didn’t realize I was getting involved with a crime syndicate, or how much power they’d have over me once I got trapped in their web.”
The man grimaced as if in pain and shifted in the bed. “I was assigned to set the fire at your parents’ house. They didn’t explain why. I didn’t ask. I found out from the news stories afterward that your dad was an investigative reporter and put two and two together. But I never intended to kill anyone. There should have been plenty of time to get out.”
A muscle in Marc’s jaw spasmed. “Not if someone in the house has a broken leg.”
Sadness filled the man’s eyes, so profound it infiltrated Marc’s defenses and stirred a faint ember of compassion to life deep in his heart.
He snuffed it out at once.
“I didn’t know about that until I read the news story. The guilt was overwhelming. I decided I was no good to anyone, that my life was worthless and the world would be better off without me. So I decided to commit suicide.”
Marc hardened himself to the man’s pain. Joseph Butler didn’t deserve one iota of pity.
“I assume you changed your mind.”
“No. I went through with it. Late one night about a week after the fire, I drank myself into a stupor and jumped off one of the Chicago River’s highest bridges. I didn’t have strong swimming skills, and I assumed the booze would weaken them. All I wanted to do was sink to the bottom of the river and die.”
“Obviously that didn’t happen.”
“No—and the sequence of miracles that followed convinced me I wasn’t yet meant to leave this earth.”
He wasn’t going to let the man’s sad personal history soften his heart, but the reference to miracles was intriguing.
“What kind of miracles?”
“Despite the late hour, someone saw me jump off the bridge and dived in after me. A bona fide hero. That was miracle number one. He also managed to find me in the dark. Miracle number two. I don’t remember anything from the moment I hit the water until I woke up hours later in the hospital. No one—”
Butler’s breathing suddenly faltered, and as he began gasping, Marc vaulted to his feet. “I’ll get your daughter.”
“No.” The command came out in a wheeze. “Wait.”
Marc hesitated.
