Liam Byrne had known he was targeted after the O’Malley girl drowned and his car was run off the road. He must have taken the half million paid out by the senator, faked his death, and run away with the cash. Amazing. And for his long run to end at Bobby’s hand fourteen years after he had first escaped Robert’s grasp . . . well, the irony was too perfect to ignore.

With renewed purpose Bobby crawled closer to the car. He would come around to the passenger side, rise onto his haunches, jerk open the door, and grab the old bastard by his forehead with one hand as he slid the knife across the neck with the other. It was so simple, so tasty.

He looked up again, could see the old man’s head through the windshield, his eyes closed as he tapped one of the headphones, trying to hear. He was the one listening, the one charged with making the tape. Bobby could just imagine it all as it imprinted itself on the magnetic ribbon. Her sweet and deceitful mewings, the senator’s fraudulent oratory, the Byrne boy’s demands for money, the whole story of the rape and its cover-up spilled to the waiting tape. And then Bobby Spangler arriving heroically to punish all for their sins, to save a grateful nation, to raise again the banner of the Spanglers. The tape would be played nationwide, all day long, over and over again on cable television. Even as he ran off with the money, first to wreak havoc on the Truscotts and then maybe to Mexico, maybe to Peru, his legend would rise.

But if he killed Liam Byrne now, who would take care of the tape? If he killed Liam Byrne, who would make sure the truth was known? And wouldn’t the pain he inflicted be all the sweeter if Liam Byrne were forced to hear the death of his son through the headphones?

Bobby took a deep breath and then backed away, backed away, slithered through the grass and back between the boxwoods, where his black bag awaited.

CHAPTER 55

THE HOUSE KYLE BYRNE found himself inside smelled ancient, dank, and strangely like licorice. There were no lights burning in the hall, but a sliver of light slipped out around a door frame back through the house to the right, so he made his way toward it. He banged a knee into some hunchbacked piece of furniture placed smack in the middle of the hall, felt his way around the piece, and kept going.

When he reached the wide door, he heard the low hum of conversation coming from the other side. There was no handle, but he placed his hand into the gap and slid the door open.

“Ah, there you are,” said an old woman in a voice Kyle recognized. She was sitting regally on a high-backed chair, her bony body twisted and shivery, arms and neck jerking hither and yon as she sat there. She looked vaguely familiar, with her tall gray hair and twitching limbs, and he stared a bit before realizing he’d seen her before, sitting next to the widow at Laszlo Toth’s funeral.

“No need to be shy,” she said. “Come in, come in. We’ve been discussing you. Would you like a drink?”

“Not really,” said Kyle. “I only drink with friends, or at least with people who haven’t been trying to kill me.”

“Oh, you must be exaggerating, Mr. Byrne. Why would anyone want to kill you? Now, your father always loved a stiff drink. I admired that in him. But come in, come in, dear, and let us get our business out of the way.”

The room was a large parlor, with blue walls, twin crystal chandeliers, fancy French furnishings perched on dark, delicate legs. There were grand landscape paintings on the walls, thick rugs on the floors, vases the size of ponies. In its day that room had been quite the fancy place, but its day was not this day. The paintings were browned with grime and age, the rugs in some spots were worn through. And the smell of licorice was overpowering.

When he stepped into the room, he looked to his left and then did a double take. Standing by a fireplace, his arm on the mantel, was Francis Truscott IV. Above the senator was a painting of a blustery man in hunting clothes and with a bully’s lip leaning on that very same mantel.

“I’m surprised to see you here, Senator,” said Kyle. “I thought you would be on your knees in front of a pack of fat cats, working for your money.”

“I ducked out of the fund-raiser,” said Senator Truscott. “Our discussion raised a number of questions that I needed to ask my mother.”

“Did you get your answers?”

“Yes.”

Kyle looked back at the old woman. The phone call had convinced him that the murder of Colleen O’Malley, the attempted murder of his father, the murder of Laszlo Toth, all of it had been at her insistence. “I wouldn’t rely too much on what she told you, if I were you.”

“Is that it?” she snapped. “Is that the O’Malley file?”

“This is it,” said Kyle. “The whole caboodle.”

“A ny copies?”

“Not that I made.”

“How about your . . . accomplice?”

“Accompl ice?”

“The man you were with. Your partner in crime. Oh, one needn’t be a genius to know you’ve not been alone. It would take more than the likes of you to get this far.”

“There are no copies,” said Kyle.

“Good,” she said. “I’ll trust you, because you are young and I am idealistic. But be forewarned, Mr. Byrne, you’d be wise not to trifle with me.”

“No chance of that,” said Kyle with a wink. Then he turned from her and walked over to the senator. “I thought you weren’t buying.”

“I’m not,” said Truscott.

“But she is. Isn’t it the same thing?”

“I don’t have control over what she does.”

“But she apparently has control over you.”

“Don’t be impertinent,” said the woman, interjecting herself forcefully into the conversation. “He is a United States senator, and I am nothing but an old lady.”

“Don’t sell yourself short for my benefit,” said Kyle, still looking at the senator, whose chiseled face turned even more stony under Kyle’s gaze. “You might be as old as dust, but you’re no lady.”

“Feisty for a messenger boy, aren’t you?”

“This is all her doing,” said the senator. “I didn’t even know about it until you showed up. But I admit I’ve had second thoughts since we spoke. I believe I can do more good in the Senate than out on the street.”

“Oh, I get it,” said Kyle. “You wouldn’t want to deprive the republic of your irreplaceable value. Your patriotism warms my heart.”

“I simply began to see that maybe it is not the worst thing for everyone if the file disappears once and for all.”

“She’s persuasive, isn’t she? I suppose she keeps your balls quite safe in her pocketbook.”

“That’s enough,” she hissed from her side of the room.

Kyle turned his head toward her. “What, now you’re going to tell me you don’t like feisty?”