CHAPTER 22

CAITLIN HAD HOPED to find Kaiser gone when she returned from Sheriff Byrd’s office, but as she pulled into the employees’ lot, she saw his black Crown Victoria parked against the wall. Pulling around the building, she parked in the visitors’ lot and headed for the front door.

As she passed through it, she came upon some sort of altercation between a haggard-looking woman of about seventy-five and Jackie Cullen, the paper’s receptionist. Jackie gave Caitlin a quick shake of her head, as though she should hurry past, but before Caitlin could manage it, she heard the overwrought woman say that no one but Caitlin Masters could possibly help her, and she wasn’t leaving what she’d brought with anyone else.

Something plaintive in the woman’s tone made Caitlin pause. Without taking time to think, she said, “Maybe I can help you, ma’am. What is it you need to see Ms. Masters about?”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” the old woman said, whirling on her.

As soon as the frustrated eyes lit on Caitlin’s face, they changed. “You’re her,” she said, her face softening. “Aren’t you?”

The old woman hadn’t a dab of makeup on her wrinkled face, and she was clutching a manila envelope to her chest like it held the deed to her ancestral home. She looked like nothing so much as a woman from one of Dorothea Lange’s photographs from the 1930s. A Dust Bowl wife. Caitlin forced a smile and said, “I am. And you are . . . ?”

The woman closed her eyes and wavered on her feet as though about to collapse. Then Caitlin saw tears trickle from the corners of her eyes.

“Virginia Sexton,” said the woman. “I’m Henry’s mother.”

Caitlin froze for a second, then rushed forward and put her arms around Mrs. Sexton to support her. The receptionist’s mouth dropped open, but Caitlin didn’t bother to explain. She was scanning the newsroom behind Jackie, searching for FBI agents. Seeing none, she took Mrs. Sexton by the wrist and led her into the nearby advertising office, which was about the only room John Kaiser was unlikely to enter.

“I need the room,” Caitlin said to the two salespeople sitting in the office. “Don’t tell anybody I’m in the building, and tell Jackie to say she hasn’t seen me. Got it?”

The younger of the two women nodded as she left the office.

“I’m so sorry you had to wait,” Caitlin apologized, leading Mrs. Sexton to a rather uncomfortable chair. “We get a lot of cranks demanding to see me or the editor, so the receptionist is overly cautious.”

“I understand,” said Mrs. Sexton, breathing too fast. “You can imagine what kind of nuts showed up at the Beacon to give Henry an earful.”

Caitlin smiled and nodded, but she felt tears on her own cheeks. For the thousandth time she saw Henry disappear into a roaring fireball, giving his life to save hers. “I can,” she said, wiping her eyes. “Mrs. Sexton, I have more respect for your son than any reporter I ever met.”

As the aged eyes took her measure, Caitlin felt the ruthless appraisal of someone who has nothing to gain or lose. Virginia Sexton had already lost everything, and nothing could compensate her for it.

“I’m sure you do,” said Mrs. Sexton. “I tried to warn him, you know. Two, three times a week I’d try to talk him into letting go of all that history and just getting on with life. But he couldn’t turn it loose. He was like a loggerhead snapping turtle. Stubborn, like me. I wouldn’t admit it while he was alive, but it’s true.”

Caitlin didn’t know what to say, so she simply vocalized what was in her heart. “Mrs. Sexton, Henry gave his life to save mine last night. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him. Literally. I feel so guilty about that.”

The old woman nodded, obviously bereft. “You feel guilty? I took him my car and that shotgun last night. I went to his room and helped him out of that hospital bed . . . helped him fool the monitors.” She dabbed at her eyes, looking away from Caitlin. “I used to be a nurse, you see. So don’t blame yourself. If I hadn’t done those things, my boy would still be alive.”

As Caitlin reassured Henry’s mother, her eyes settled on the manila envelope still clutched in the wrinkled hands.

“What was it you wanted to see me about?”

Mrs. Sexton slowly took the manila envelope away from her chest and set it on her lap. “I haven’t been able to sleep since last night. I’ve been going from room to room, cleaning up. I’ve always kept Henry’s old room pretty much like it was when he was a boy, even though he’s a grown man. After his father passed, I never really needed the space, so . . . well, I don’t know. I have some happy memories of the things in that room.”

“Is that where you found the envelope?”

The woman looked down as if she’d already forgotten what she held. “No. Henry had this in his weekend bag at the hospital. It was stuffed under the plastic bottom. I found it when I was unpacking the bag, and . . . I made the mistake of looking inside. It’s a letter to you. My first instinct was to go out back and burn it in the trash can.”

Inwardly, Caitlin shuddered.

“But Henry wouldn’t have wanted that. I know he chose you to carry on his work after they beat him up, so I decided to bring it to you. There’s pure evil in this envelope, and no mistake. I don’t think you should fool with it. But I imagine you’re like my Henry was. You’ve got to get at the truth of things, even if it kills you.”

“I’m afraid you’re right.”

Caitlin stepped forward and gently lifted the envelope from Mrs. Sexton’s hands. The old woman seemed to shrink within her skin when she let go of the paper. However much she hated Henry’s work, she understood that giving it up meant giving up the surviving essence of her son.

“I’m so sorry for what happened,” Caitlin said uselessly. “And I’ll never let the world forget what Henry did.”

Mrs. Sexton shook her head. “Henry didn’t care about that. My boy didn’t do what he did to see his name in the paper, like some.”

Caitlin’s cheeks burned, though she didn’t get the feeling the comment had been directed at her.

“He just believed everybody deserves the same break. I don’t know where he got that idea. Not from his daddy, that’s for sure. And I learned a long time ago, if you’re going to wait for this world to be fair, you’re going to be waiting in the grave.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The old woman started to leave, but Caitlin touched her arm and checked the foyer first, to make sure no FBI agents were close. Before she let Mrs. Sexton go, she said, “Did Henry’s, ah, partner know about this envelope?”

“You mean that Sherry Harden?”

Caitlin nodded.

“I don’t know. She might have brought some of those papers up there to him. I don’t know how else he would have got them. But she couldn’t have seen the letter. He wrote it after Sherry was shot, and he woke up in the special hospital room. It doesn’t matter now, does it? She’s beyond doing anything about it.”

Unless she told Kaiser about the papers before she was killed. But if she had, surely Kaiser would have found them after Henry escaped from the hospital.

“I suppose I’d better go to her funeral,” Mrs. Sexton said, “if only for her boy.”

“Do you have any idea when Henry’s service will be?”

“I reckon Saturday. We have some people up in Kansas who’ll probably want to come. I haven’t even been to the funeral home yet.”

For a moment Caitlin thought the poor woman would finally collapse, but she didn’t.

“Mr. Early told me there’s really nothing left of Henry,” Mrs. Sexton said softly. “Bones and ashes. It’s like he was cremated already.”

Caitlin didn’t need to be told this; she’d seen it happen. “If there’s anything you need done, or taken care of—anything at all—please call me. I mean that, Mrs. Sexton. If there’s any question of funds—”