“That sounds like much more motive to commit murder than I have,” Royce exclaimed. “Her father, and then the man who helped him get away with it.” He thumbed at his chest. “Inn-oh-cent!”
“I didn’t kill anybody,” Brooke said.
“You have motive, of course,” I replied. “Everyone here does. But if you were the murderer, for those reasons at least, I’d suggest that Royce would probably have been killed by now too.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No, Royce. I’m saying that if someone is killing off people involved in covering up the rape of Lisa Fulton, you’d be a very likely target.”
He squeaked something that sounded like don’t but I was low on pity.
“You were never a full-fledged pathologist, not like it says on your bio. You were an intern in a lab. This was in Edinburgh, right?”
Royce hadn’t told me this directly, but he had bragged that he’d gone to the same university as Arthur Conan Doyle, which is, indeed, the University of Edinburgh. So it wasn’t too much of a leap to guess his internship had been in the same city. “But you had dreams of being a writer. Your work sat unread on publishers’ desks, even though you submitted it four times to Gemini. Until Wyatt picked it up. So along Wyatt comes one day, offering you a book deal that most writers would dream of. And he just wants a little favor. Swap the labels on a couple of vials. That was the deal you struck, wasn’t it? You cover this up for Wyatt, and he publishes you as the next hot new thing. It makes sense: why else would Gemini have changed their mind after four rejections? Your job description would have been in your bio. Wyatt must not have believed his luck. And the timelines work: your first book published in two thousand and four. But now your sales are dropping, Wyatt was losing interest, and you decided a blurb from Henry would fix it. You were humiliated that Henry had endorsed Lisa over you. You told me yourself that McTavish owed you.”
Snot ran out Royce’s nose. I’m not going to bother with his dialogue, but I’ll tell you that blubbering and groveling are suitable descriptions. Between mucus bubbles, he admitted that everything I’d deduced was true. Hatch leaned forward with interest.
Harriet spoke up. “So that’s three people in a secret cover-up, and two of them are dead? And yet Alan isn’t the killer?”
“His big accusation was certainly a distraction,” Wolfgang said. “To do that whole song and dance accusing someone who he knew was actually dead. It would be a way to take the heat off.”
“Thank you both. But Royce didn’t do it. Mainly because he’s a coward. He sides with and hides behind others. This is not a bloke who carries the knife. But destroying a victim’s chance at justice, just for a book deal, that seems pretty cowardly to me.” I looked at Hatch. “You can cuff him now, if you like.”
Hatch held up the cuffs to Royce. “I don’t have jurisdiction for an international crime that may or may not have happened. But it will probably help your cause later if you cooperate now.”
Royce nodded. His arm was al dente as Hatch cuffed him to the chair’s armrest, sitting like it was boneless. He looked resigned to what he knew was coming. I’d say it was a fall from grace, but grace was probably a few stories too many above Royce for him to have a proper splat. The next thing he’d write would be an apology on Twitter, which is a format reserved for the sincerest of apologies.
“Despite his conclusion being wrong, Royce actually laid out some reasonable motives for the rest of you,” I continued. “But, Lisa, this was why he refused to consider you a suspect in his summation.” I recalled her trying to bait him into it: Tell them why I’m a suspect, Alan. “He was discounting a completely viable path of inquiry because he knew that if he unpacked your motive, his involvement could be exposed.”
Majors crossed the room, tears in her eyes, and hugged Lisa.
Hatch cleared his throat. “Does it usually take this long?”
All the crime writers in the room said simultaneously: “Yes.”
“I have to go through everyone’s motives and alibis publicly,” I said. “It’s basically a requirement of the genre.” I lowered my voice in a conspiratorial whisper. “And my literary agent is here, and given all she’s done—behind the scenes, so to speak—to bring this book to life, I think she’ll want a proper ending. She’ll want me to really milk it.”
Simone squirmed in her seat. I enjoyed that too much to elaborate just yet, so I turned instead to S. F. Majors.
“One thing Royce had right was your motive. That same night in Edinburgh, you told McTavish your idea for a novel. A year later, his new book Off the Rails was published and it had the exact same plot. And that boiled in you. Because not only was it your idea, it was your story. Wasn’t it?”
Majors was chewing her lip. She shot a glance at someone else. I’ll get to who in a moment.
“You attended a regional primary school, didn’t you? It’s in your bio. You used to reread the only three books in your school library, which speaks of a very small school to me. You know Alice Springs—you recommended the best bakery to get a vanilla slice. You grew up around here.”
Majors nodded.
“That school bus that was hit by the Ghan, I am guessing that was from your school. I don’t think you survived the crash though—no one could have. I think you missed it entirely.”
“I was sick,” Majors said. “Any other day my parents would have bundled me up with tissues and painkillers and sent me off, but I never liked sports on Wednesdays, and so I hammed it up. I could’ve gone.” Her voice quivered, and I felt a wave of empathy: the why me I’d struggled with so much myself. “The girl . . . in my story, if that’s where you’re going with this . . . her name was Anna. She was my best friend. If you care to know.”
I knew it was like pushing a rotten tooth with your tongue to her, so I turned my attention to Douglas. “Let’s talk about how the two of you met. Your partner, Noah, was a teacher at the school, and he died that day in the crash. You told me that the driver of the bus, Troy Firth, had been inappropriate with a student. Anna, as we’ve just learned. Noah had convinced Anna to come forward. To stop that from happening, Troy parked on the tracks and locked all the doors.”
“He killed five people,” Douglas said. “Four kids.”
“The accident makes local news, it’s a tragedy, but nothing more. Normally such a story would fade into the past, but not here. Because a version of the story gets retold and lives on in one of the most popular crime novelists in the world’s third book. But Off the Rails is not just a retelling of the accident, it’s the real story—someone staging a murder as a rail accident—a story which only a few people knew. A victim’s best friend”—I nodded to Majors—“and her teacher’s partner. But there’s one crucial difference: in the book, the murderer gets away. If you believe it is a true story, you might believe something crazy. You might believe that Off the Rails has a hidden meaning: that Troy Firth is still alive.”
All the women in the room sized up the men: Wolfgang, Royce, Jasper, Douglas. Even Aaron didn’t escape the scrutiny.
“That’s where you come in, Douglas. You brought a gun on this train.” This drew a murmur. “Don’t worry, Hatch. The gun’s in a trash can at Alice Springs. Douglas, you asked me a question about revenge during our first panel. You wanted to know what it felt like to take a life. You set foot on this train ready to kill someone.”