So that’s the end.
I have compressed months of personal debriefings with Myron into those above few pages. You probably guessed most of it. I hope that I was able to scratch whatever last itch remained.
I give Myron this summary too when he is well enough. He stays silent throughout, which is something I’m still not used to. Myron is normally a talker. He likes to interject, probe, distract, interrogate, cajole, agitate. But talking exhausts him now. Today he just sits up in bed and listens without uttering a word.
When I finish, when I say to him, as I have above to you fine people, “So that’s the end,” Myron speaks up for the first time:
“No it isn’t.”
Chapter Forty-Five
It is six weeks later.
Myron sits alone in the dark in room 982 at the Royal Mansour hotel in Marrakech. Yes, in Morocco. I am next door, in a connecting room with Terese. If Myron needs me, I can be with him in seconds. Cameras and audio are in place. Myron’s health is somewhat better, but nowhere near a hundred percent. Or even fifty percent. We could have put this off a bit longer — Myron’s doctor pretty much insisted upon it — but I know that doing so was robbing Myron of sleep. I detest the word “closure,” but there is little doubt that for Myron to heal, he will need it.
My man watching the elevator sends me and Myron a one-word text:
HERE
Terese reads the text over my shoulder. “I don’t like this.”
“He’s safe,” I tell her.
She doesn’t seem satisfied with that. I understand.
Room 982 has been booked for the last six nights under the name Arthur Caldwell. That’s not his real name. He waves his key card in front of the lock and opens the door. The lights are out. He enters and closes the door behind him. He hits the light switch and walks into the hotel room.
He pulls up short when he sees Myron.
“Hey, Greg.”
Greg Downing startles for a second but to give him credit, only for a second. “Is there any point in asking how you found me?”
It wasn’t all that difficult, I think. When the FBI was done with him, Greg started his journey, as I mentioned before, in Cairns, Australia. I figured that Greg would want to change his identity as soon as possible. My people found three suppliers of fake identities working in Cairns. I offered a quarter million dollars to the first one who could tell me Greg’s new identity. One came forward immediately, took my cash, and gave me copies of all the paperwork on Arthur Caldwell.
There is no honor amongst thieves.
“You look thin,” Greg says.
That is an understatement. Myron has lost thirty pounds. His cheeks are sunken. There are times it is hard for even me to look straight at him and not wince.
When Myron does not reply, Greg asks, “So what do you want?”
“Did you know Grace planned to kill me?”
“Would you believe me if I said no?”
“I might,” Myron says. “I think she might have gone rogue there.”
“She was a killer, Myron.”
“So are you.”
Greg smiles. “Not like her though.”
“Are you going to tell me about it?”
Greg takes a seat on the corner of the bed. “I don’t have any choice really, do I? I assume Win is nearby. You wouldn’t have come without him.”
Myron does not reply.
“I don’t want to spend my life looking over my shoulder,” Greg says, crossing his legs, “so let’s get on with this, shall we? For starters, where did I go wrong?”
“Small things,” Myron says.
“Such as?”
“Grace killing Ronald Prine, for one. If Grace was the one who planted your DNA at the Callister murder scene to frame you, why would she be dumb enough to kill Prine while you were behind bars and couldn’t have done? That would only guarantee your release.”
“Because she’s crazy?” Greg tries.
Myron frowns. “Are we going to play that game?”
“Old habit, I guess. What else?”
“Your explanation for how the killer planted your DNA at the Callister scene.”
“You mean the pickup basketball game? I thought that was pretty inspired.”
“It was,” Myron admits, “but only on the surface. Some guy hits you in the nose during a game. You bleed. They collect your blood and leave it at the scene.”
“I got that idea from a novel, actually. Or maybe a short story.”
“Either way, we checked it out. No one at the Wallkill remembers you or a broken nose. The broken nose? That didn’t bother me. But no one remembered you, Greg. That’s what struck me. Win didn’t pick up on it. No one else would. But you and I...”
Greg nods. “You’re right. Someone would notice.”
“Greg Downing in a pickup game? I don’t care how you disguised yourself or dialed it back.”
“A real hoopster would have spotted me,” Greg says. “Dumb on my part.”
“Another thing,” Myron says.
He grins. “You sound like Columbo. What?”
“I saw you and Grace together at your house in Pine Bush. Briefly, I admit. And it could have been an act, but I don’t think so. I think you genuinely loved her.”
“I did.” His eyes close for a moment, his voice softer now. “I still do.”
“You even said it to me: Is it too corny to call her your soulmate?”
“I meant that.”
“I believe you. It’s why all these stories about you not knowing because you lived apart or weren’t that close—”
“That was a lie, yes.”
Greg looks up at Myron. This time there is no falling back to their youthful days on the court. It is just two men, grown men, men physically past their prime, who fate has forced into too many collisions.
“Have you ever been in love like that, Myron?”
“I like to think I am now.”
“No, no. You’re in love and you’re married and that’s all great. But you two aren’t together all the time. You have separate lives. That’s probably smart. Healthy. It’s how I always felt before Grace. But — and yeah, I know how corny this will sound — I remember lying in bed with her one night. I was holding her from behind. My arm was wrapped around her waist. I could feel her heart beating and suddenly my heart started beating the same as her. Involuntarily. They matched up, and I swear that never stopped. It was like our two hearts had become one.”
“Wow,” Myron says.
“I mean every word.”
“And yet you killed her.”
“I had no choice.”
“Because she was going to kill Jeremy.”
“Yes.” He shakes his head. “I sacrificed the woman I loved for our son.”
“Oh, our son,” Myron repeats. “You’re not going to play that card with me now, are you?”
“I’m going to play every card I have,” Greg says. “But oddly, I think my best play is to let you see the truth.”
“It all went wrong with the Callisters, didn’t it?”
Greg shakes his head. “It all went wrong way before that, when Grace came to that Bucks — Suns game in Phoenix,” he says. “That’s how the world works, isn’t it? Everything is a chemical reaction. What are the odds you and I would meet, compete, fall for the same girl, end up ripping each other’s lives to shreds? We were like two ordinary compounds that became toxic when combined. It’s the same thing here with Grace, except much more explosive. There are a lot of what-ifs in life. What if I hadn’t hired Spark as an assistant coach, for example? I almost didn’t. I would have never met Grace, and if you think you and I were combustible when we collided...”