Dark Room (36 page)

“I can do that, too.” Monty jerked his thumb toward the gym. “What would you say if I told you I just found out that one of the guests Lara invited to that fateful Christmas party showed up early? What if I said that when she arrived, that guest heard Lara and Jack arguing downstairs with a man whose voice she recognized intimately—yours?”

Beads of perspiration were beginning to dot Arthur’s forehead. “You’re lying. If that were the case, she’d have come forward sooner.”

“If she’d known what had happened, she would have. But she didn’t. She was sequestered away, having her baby, then hopping on a plane and getting the hell out of New York, cutting all ties with her old life—on your orders. She’s been in L.A. all this time, with no idea the Winters had been murdered and there was a killer at large. She was transferred back here several months ago. And she first heard about the murders and the wrongful conviction when the news broke. She read that Lara had a daughter named Morgan, put two and two together, and after the hit-and-run, came to me with what she knew. That gives us motive, means, and opportunity.” Monty’s lips thinned into a cold, grim line. “Game, set, match.”

LANE BURST INTO
the gym, not even bothering to remove his coat, just blowing by the attendant and into the room. He and Morgan spotted each other simultaneously, and he covered the distance between them in long strides, gripping her shoulders tightly.

“Where are Monty and Arthur?”

“In the yoga room.” She pointed, her eyes wide and questioning. “Having it out. They’ve been in there for almost half an hour.”

Scrutinizing the room, Lane found the man he was looking for.

“Morgan, I want you to think,” he said. “Who provided the food for your mother’s Christmas party at the shelter that night?”

“I don’t have to think. Lenny did. Or at least he would have if—” Her breath caught as Lane grabbed her hand, pulled her through the room. “What’s happened? What’s going on?”

“You’ll see.” He stopped in front of Lenny and Rhoda, who were
chuckling with a couple of guests. “Lenny, can I see you for a minute? It’s important.”

Lenny’s brows rose in surprise. “Of course.” A hint of apprehension. “It isn’t…Nothing happened to…”

“Jonah’s fine,” Lane answered quietly. “Almost ready to go home. Now, please, come with me.” He glanced at Rhoda and the others, forcing a natural and apologetic smile. “Excuse us. I have to borrow Lenny for a few minutes.”

“Take him,” Rhoda said with an affectionate grin. “It’ll give me a chance to talk for a while.”

Lane clapped a hand on Lenny’s shoulder, guided him toward the yoga room, his other hand still tightly clasping Morgan’s.

“What’s this about?” Lenny looked totally confused, and a little wary. “Where are we going?”

“To join Monty and Arthur. They’re talking.”

They reached the door. Lane twisted the knob and pushed the door open. Both Arthur and Monty whipped around to stare at them.

Lane prodded Lenny in. After that, he paused in the doorway for a heartbeat of a second, turning his back to the room and speaking softly to Morgan. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured. “You have no idea how sorry.”

Before she could reply, he led her inside and shut the door with a firm click.

“Lane,” Monty began. “We’re right in the middle of—”

“I know what you’re in the middle of. I’m just here for the ending.” He glared at Arthur, stared him down. “Let me guess. You denied everything. Even in light of all the evidence Monty presented.”

“You’re damned right I denied it,” Arthur responded, pain and anger flashing across his face as he saw Morgan. “You brought Morgan here? You filled her head with this garbage? How could you subject her to—”

“Cut the crap, Arthur,” Lane interrupted. “You’re in way too deep to play the loving surrogate father. So, for my own edification—and Morgan’s—were the murders planned? Or did they just happen? Were you an accomplice? Or just the cleanup committee? Which one of you brought the gun—you or your father?”

Arthur’s mouth opened, then snapped shut.

“His father?” Morgan asked weakly.

Lane glared at Arthur with utter disgust. “Does it give you some sick sense of power to know your father is so blind to who you really are that he’d kill to protect you? That two amazing human beings were murdered because you knocked up an underage teenager and wouldn’t face the consequences? That Lenny refused to
let
you face the consequences or even to listen to Lara and Jack?”

Everyone was staring at this point, even Monty.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Lenny made a tortured sound deep in his throat. “Lane, please. Don’t do this. Not in front of Morgan. I can’t bear for her to hear it. She was a child…a little girl…”

“Dad, be quiet,” Arthur commanded. “They’ve got nothing. They’re fishing.”

“I wish I was.” Lane fought the urge to punch Arthur’s lights out. “I have proof, Arthur. Physical evidence.” He pulled out the prints, one by one, then knelt down and slapped them onto the yoga mats. “The imprint of Lenny’s gold initial ring on Jack Winter’s face. His blood on the floor from the fistfight, and his bloody knuckle prints on Jack’s face. See the wet, sticky consistency? That’s because Lenny’s blood is slow to coagulate because of the Coumadin he takes for his atrial fibrillation. Today’s DNA testing is balls-on accurate. It’ll prove the blood is Lenny’s. Then there’s this clean, round space where an empty bucket of Spackle was removed—right here.” Lane pointed. “That’s where Arthur threw his bloody shirt after he mopped up Lenny’s face and hands, wiped his prints off everything, and made it look like the Winters had been killed during a random burglary.”

Lane heard Morgan’s gasp, felt her violent trembling as she hovered beside him. But he couldn’t quit, not yet. Not until he had both confessions he’d come for.

He shot a quick look at Monty. “Another bit of evidence for you. I gave Anya a call on my way over here. Like us, she knows how conscientious Lenny is. His deli’s always open, even on Christmas day. Well, she distinctly remembers just two days he called in sick during her entire twenty years at the deli. Guess when those days were? Christmas day and the day after, 1989. She remembers because it was right after his son’s friends were
killed. But he didn’t look good when he came back—his face had cuts and bruises on it. He said he fell. I say he was beaten up in a fight with Jack Winter, who was defending his wife’s life and his own.”

By this time Lenny was openly weeping, his hands covering his face as if he couldn’t bear the shame or the sorrow. “It shouldn’t…I never meant…”

“Dad!” Arthur barked out again.

Lane turned back to Arthur, shook his head in utter disbelief. “You don’t even feel remorse, do you? You certainly didn’t then. You just plucked the valuables off Jack and Lara’s bodies, chucked the Walther PPK in the Fountain Avenue dump, and went back to a goddamned Christmas party being held in your honor. Like nothing ever happened. You didn’t miss a beat.”

“He did,” Lenny chimed in, defending his son to the last. “You should have seen him when it happened. The whole time he cleaned up, tried to cover for me, he cried like a baby. Then, when the cops were called, he was the first one at the scene. Dear God, Lane, neither of us knew Morgan was upstairs. We never imagined she’d be the one who’d find them. And when we realized she had, when Arthur saw what it had done to her, it tore his insides out. Mine, too. From that moment on, she became a Shore. She still is. In our hearts, she’s Arthur’s daughter and my granddaughter. We swore nothing would ever hurt her again. And we kept our promise. All these years, we’ve tried to make up for what happened—even though we knew nothing really could. But Elyse is a wonderful mother. And Jill is a sister in all ways but blood. We all cared for her, sheltered her, loved her, and—”

“Shut up! Just shut up!”
The words exploded from Morgan’s mouth, from her heart and her soul, as she stared at this man—these two men—she didn’t know and couldn’t stomach.

“Morgan…” Lenny reached out to her. “Please try to—”

“No.” She jerked away as if he were a loathsome monster. “No more excuses.” Her voice sounded rough, unsteady, nothing like her own. “No more words of affection. No more pleas. No more remorse. The truth. Lenny, how much of this was you? How much was Arthur? Who’s lied to me more? Dammit, I want the truth. Tell me what happened that night. You owe me that much.”

“Morgan.” This time it was Lane who interceded, taking her cold hands between his. “Are you sure you want to—”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

“Let her be, Lane,” Monty said. “She needs closure.”

Lane nodded, but didn’t release her hands, determined to show her she wasn’t alone.

“I’m calling our lawyer,” Arthur announced, whipping out his cell.

“Call whoever you want,” Lenny replied bleakly. “I’m telling Morgan what she wants to know. It’s over, Arthur. And you know what? I’m glad. I can’t take it anymore—not even for you.”

Ignoring his son’s protests, he turned to Morgan, making no further move to touch her. “I never planned to hurt them. I went to deliver the food. The gun was just for protection. It was Christmas Eve, it was nighttime, and it was a lousy section of Brooklyn. I went in through the basement door. Arthur and your parents were down there, arguing. Your mother was accusing Arthur of being a coward and of cheating on Elyse with a teenage girl. She told him she’d seen him with her own two eyes, and that she couldn’t stay silent, knowing everything she knew. Arthur told her to butt out, to stop trying to heal the world, and to keep her mouth shut or he’d sue her for slander.”

Remembering, Lenny gave a hard shudder. “That set your father off like a firecracker. He called Arthur a sick bastard and a rapist, and said he’d make sure he was prosecuted and put away for statutory rape. He said that when he was through, Arthur’s marriage would be destroyed, and his career would be over.”

Lenny wiped a palm across his face. “I couldn’t believe he was saying those things—not about my boy. I couldn’t keep quiet. I yelled at him to shut up, to leave my son and his family alone. Arthur denied everything—again and again—but they wouldn’t believe him. Lara kept calling him a liar and a cheat, and Jack kept threatening him with criminal prosecution.

“Then, out of nowhere, Jack announced that they were changing their wills so Arthur could never raise Morgan. He said their feelings for Elyse no longer outweighed the fact that Arthur was barely one step better than a pedophile. Arthur went crazy. He started throwing things, swearing he was innocent, that they were just out to ruin him. That tore out my heart. I
didn’t know what to do. So I pulled out the gun and started waving it around. I’m not sure what I hoped to accomplish—maybe to scare Jack enough to take back his lies and his plans to ruin Arthur. Lara must have thought I meant to use the pistol, because the next thing I knew, she was swinging a two-by-four at me. I never meant to shoot her. I’m not even sure if I fired the damned thing or if it just went off—I didn’t even know how to use it. But what difference does any of that make? One minute Lara was swinging the board at me, the next, she was lying on the floor…and there was blood everywhere…”

Lenny had to pause to control his sobs. “Jack lunged at me like a wild animal. We fought. I whacked him on the side of the head with the gun. The gun went flying off somewhere. But Jack and I kept fighting. I punched him hard in the face. At some point, we tripped over a bucket, and went down. Jack fell on his face. All I could think was that I had to stop him, to keep him from hurting Arthur. But I was a lot older than he was, and I was getting tired. I just knelt there, trying to breathe, trying to get past the shock of what I’d done.”

“What about Arthur?” Monty asked. “Where was he through all this?”

“First he rushed over to Lara. He checked her pulse to see if maybe she was still alive. But it was too late. She was gone. He looked lost for a minute, like a kid who didn’t know what to do. Then—” Lenny broke off, clearly aware that whatever he said next could do nothing but incriminate Arthur.

“Then he realized that the only way to save his ass—and yours—was to finish what you’d started,” Monty deduced. “So he found the gun on the floor. He picked it up and crossed over to where Jack was lying, facedown and dazed. He had to move fast, before Jack came around and reacted. So he convinced you that the only way he could protect you from the crime you’d just committed and to silence Jack’s lies was to kill Jack, too. You were so out of it by then, you didn’t even know which end was up. But Arthur did. He knew exactly what he was doing when he aimed that gun and fired two shots into the back of Jack Winter’s head. After that, the rest was pretty much as Lane described. Except that your son had two sets of fingerprints to wipe off that gun, not one.”

“God help me…” Lenny bowed his head.

“You shot my father in cold blood?”
Morgan wrenched her hands out of
Lane’s. Trembling with rage, she slapped Arthur across the face with every ounce of strength she possessed.

His head snapped sideways from the impact, and when he turned back, there were angry marks where her fingers had been. “Morgan…”

“Don’t say my name. Don’t even speak to me. Not now. Not ever. Lenny is pathetic. But you…you’re an animal. A cowardly, hypocritical, inhuman…” She sucked in her breath, still staring him down. “Who else knows?” she asked in that same odd, stony voice. “Does Elyse?”

“I have no answer for that,” Arthur replied tonelessly.

“You have no answers for anything,” Monty noted. “Just sick lies and an even sicker sense of retribution.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Arthur’s jaw was working. “What I meant was, Elyse and I never discussed it. It was better that way. Did she figure it out? I’m sure she suspected something. One thing’s for sure—she’s never been the same since that night.”

“And Rhoda?”

“My mother knows nothing. Neither does Jill. They wouldn’t have been able to live with it.”

“Jill,” Morgan repeated, a tremor in her voice. “This is going to break her heart.”

“It’ll mend,” Monty assured her gently. “Jill’s strong. And you’re stronger. Plus, she’s not alone. And this time, neither are you.” He watched as Lane came up behind Morgan, planting his hands firmly on her shoulders and easing her back against him. No words were necessary.