by Brad Parks
“And you’re fired,” Whipple countered. “But I suppose it won’t hurt you too bad. Let me remind you, Mark, you’re walking away from this with at least six million dollars. Three million from that short sale contract and at least another three million when ApotheGen stock jumps right back to where it started. See? I told you. Everyone wins.
“Oh,” Whipple added, now looking at me. “And if you’re thinking that when this is over you can just run to the police, you might want to think otherwise. I anticipated the possibility of a backfire like this, so I took out a little insurance policy. There’s another hundred-thousand-share short sale contract that has been executed, and it’s got your name on it, Judge Sampson. There’s also a standing order to wire the money from your account with the Whipple Alliance to a bank in the Caribbean.”
“I don’t have an account with the Whipple Alliance,” I said.
“Ah, but you do. It was set up just before this all began. If everything went perfectly, I was just going to fish the money out at my leisure. I have all the codes. But if push came to shove, I knew I could use that as a little enticement for you to go along with me. Or, if you didn’t like that carrot, I could always go with the stick: I’ll tell the authorities you were complicit in the scheme and you’ll go down with me. If anything, you’ll go down harder, the mandatory minimums for official misconduct being what they are.”
“That would never hold up in court.”
Whipple actually laughed. “But, you see, it would. You have no idea how guilty you look, Judge Sampson. Karen Lowe has a key to your house. She was able to get your passport, your social security number, everything we needed. And I assure you the signatures on all the paperwork are a match. I hired the best forger in New York and he did magnificent work.
“I know you think your ‘But I’m a judge, I’ve been framed, I’m innocent’ act would work with the prosecutor. But it would be your word against the documents, and I’ve got you nailed six ways to Sunday with the documents. It’s all waiting for the US Attorneys Office with a neat little bow on it if I so choose.”
There was a possibility he was inventing all this on the fly. But, somehow, I doubted it.
It went to the very nature of what a hedge fund was and how it had gotten its name in the first place. The whole idea of hedge funds was that they made money even in down markets—with short sales, derivatives, and a host of other financial instruments that were potentially profitable regardless of the direction of the markets. They were all ways of hedging your bets.
Which was exactly what Andy Whipple had done here.
“So,” he said. “Do we have a deal or not? Just say yes and you’ll be hugging your daughter within the hour.”
“Yes,” I said. “We have a deal.”
I didn’t see where I had any other choice.
SEVENTY-FOUR
The brothers had thought it would all be fairly simple: Get the call, kill the girl, toss her in the grave, and take off.
Their final destination was Venezuela. They could hole up for as long as they needed. It had plenty of beaches, plenty of rum, and didn’t extradite fugitives to the United States.
It was all set. So when the Internet phone rang and the older brother answered, the younger was already going into the bag where he kept his hunting knife. He would wait until they were out at the grave before he slit the little girl’s throat. Less cleanup that way.
“Yes,” the older said.
“There’s been a change of plans,” Andy Whipple told them on speakerphone. “Bring the girl to the judge’s house.”
“Then what?”
“Then you let her go.”
The older brother paused. “That wasn’t what we agreed to.”
“I know. I told you, there’s been a change of plans.”
“We haven’t cleaned up yet. I don’t want to leave behind evidence.”
“I’ll give you another hundred thousand,” Whipple said.
The older brother glanced at the younger. He shrugged.
“Make it two hundred,” the older said. “The little girl has seen our faces many times. She would be able to identify us. That’s a risk we weren’t anticipating. We should be compensated for it.”
“Fine,” the man said, so easily, it made the older brother wish he had asked for five hundred. “But I need you to leave immediately.”
“Very well.”
The call ended.
“I did all that digging for nothing?” the younger said.
“Maybe not,” the older said. “We’ll see.”
SEVENTY-FIVE
A child for a verdict.
It was what Andy Whipple had wanted all along. And while it galled me to give it to him, what mattered far more was that Emma was coming home. And Whipple was going to have a gun trained on his ear until she got there safely.
Whipple had his hedge. That Smith & Wesson was ours.
We decided the exchange would happen at the farm. Whipple made the call to the Macedonians before we left the courthouse to set it all up. What we agreed was that Whipple would stay in my Buick until the Macedonians got there with Emma. When Emma was let out, we would allow Whipple to go free as well.
And then, on Monday, once the attorneys rested in Palgraff vs. ApotheGen, I would file the ruling that had already been written out for me. Whipple was assured of my cooperation by the knowledge that he could release all those toxic documents if I failed to toe the line.
I think it helped—both with my conscience and with my willingness to go through with it—that it was the correct ruling.
We told Mark to stay behind, not wanting to attract attention by having a battered man hobbling with us through the courthouse. Jeremy volunteered to stick around and babysit him in my office. Jeremy was also going to have Jean Ann adjourn court for the day, explaining to everyone that the judge had become violently ill.
That left just three of us in my car. Alison went in the backseat with Whipple. I drove. I felt like I was chauffeuring the devil.
I stole occasional glances at him in the rearview mirror. He was sitting in total tranquility. I had never been in the presence of someone I hated more. I found it vile that this man—no, he wasn’t a man; he was a subhuman thing—was even touching my car’s upholstery. At one point, I heard him sigh. It revolted me I was breathing the same air. Only supreme love for my daughter stopped me from acting out my loathing for him in any number of violent ways, all of which I fantasized about as we got on the highway.
Unaware of my hatred—or, perhaps more accurately, indifferent to it—Whipple just stared out the window. It was well beyond my understanding how he could stand to look at himself while he shaved in the morning.
The only satisfaction I had was that, even as he thought he was winning, he was actually losing in the long run. All he had was money, the things it could buy, and the ever-increasing misery that way of life brought. He thought amassing more would make him happy. Yet this supposed financial genius was forgetting one of the simplest tenets of economics, the law of diminishing returns. It was working against him the whole time. Each dollar he earned or stole made him a little bit less happy than the previous one. It would continue that way, ever more, until eventually, he reached zero.
Which was exactly what he deserved.
If nothing else, this ordeal had confirmed for me what mattered. The simple pleasures of family life. The love of an amazing woman. The joy of children. Good health. Especially good health.
I never had taken those things for granted, even before this. I knew I never would now. Pancake Day and Swim With Dad never sounded so good.
The series of lights on Route 17 in Gloucester seemed interminable. If Whipple was going to dare make a break for it, one of those lights would be his best chance. But he seemed content to ride along, secure that he had everything under control.
Eventua
lly, after a long and tense ride, I made the turn onto our sleepy little road. As I passed our property line, I noted the vultures were gone.
I slowed as my tires left the pavement and started rolling through the woods along the soft dirt, down that four-tenths-of-a-mile road that I once thought walled out the world. I would never again make that mistake. But I hoped, someday, we would at least be able to feel like we were not under constant attack.
That was, cruelly enough, the sweet thought going through my head as we made it to the clearing that preceded our farmhouse. And then I was jolted back to the bitter present.
There, waiting for us at the end of the driveway, were four vehicles: an unmarked Ford Taurus, a sedan bearing the seal of the state medical examiner, and two Gloucester County Sheriff’s cars.
* * *
From the backseat, Whipple was suddenly alive.
“What the hell is going on? What is this? Are you—”
“Shut up,” I hissed. “Just shut up. I have no idea. You think I want these guys here right now?”
“Well, then what are they doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
Alison swore.
“Just stay put,” I said. “Let me take care of this. This doesn’t change anything. I’ll get rid of them.”
I drove about halfway between the clearing and where the cop cars were parked and pulled off to the side. It was as close as I dared get; otherwise, they’d see my wife holding Andy Whipple at gunpoint. I shut off the engine, got out, and jogged the final fifty yards.
What I had told Whipple was the truth. I really didn’t know what the Gloucester County Sheriff’s Office was doing here. The presence of the state medical examiner was even less explicable.
Maybe twenty-five yards in, I saw the shaved black head of Detective Sergeant Harold Curry Jr. emerging from the front door of my house and walking out onto the porch. He was followed by the beefy, baby-faced deputy who had been out to my house previously, along with one other deputy.
Curry descended the steps and met me on the front lawn.
“You better have a warrant,” I said.
“We do.”
“Let’s see it,” I said.
From his jacket pocket, he produced two sheets of paper that had been trifolded. He handed them to me. I started reading. It appeared to be perfectly proper, granting them the right to search my primary domicile and anything else they felt like searching, just like last time.
But this warrant had a few extra words the previous one did not.
“Instrumentality of murder? . . . The homicide of Herbert Thrift?” I said. “You guys think I killed Herb Thrift? Why would I possibly do that?”
“He was one of our own, you know,” Curry said. “Retired, sure. But he still had a lot of friends in the department. They’re all pretty upset right now.”
“But I didn’t have anything to do with that. You’re making a terrible mistake.”
“Oh?” Curry said. “Well, tell me, Judge Sampson, did you hire Herb Thrift?”
I knew I should have shut my mouth. The defendant’s table in my courtroom was regularly occupied by people who were indicted and then convicted by the stupidity of their own words, which they uttered under the belief they could talk their way out of trouble. I knew that.
But right then, I just wanted these men to disappear. Which made me another idiot suspect who thought if he said the right thing, this would all go away.
“Yes, I hired him.”
“To do some private detecting for you?”
“That’s right.”
Curry pulled a small notebook out of his breast pocket. “What was he doing for you?”
“That’s why they call it private,” I said. “Because it’s none of your business.”
“Okay. When is the last time you saw him alive?”
I scanned back in my memory. “It would have been . . . a Thursday. Thursday two weeks ago. Or, I guess I should say, two weeks and a day ago.”
“Where did you see him?”
“In his office. I made an appointment. I’m sure he has a calendar; you could check it.”
“Have you seen him since?”
“No.” I was trying not to envision the images of his corpse my brain would never allow me to forget.
“Have you talked to him since?”
“Yes. Several times, on the phone. We talked about the work he was doing for me.”
“When was the last time?”
“I . . . I couldn’t . . . Monday, I guess it was. No, wait, Saturday. Yeah, it was the Saturday after I hired him. Again, roughly two weeks ago. I’m sure you could pull his phone records and check.”
Curry was scribbling all this in his little pad. The baby-faced deputy was listening every bit as intently.
The detective lobbed out the next question casually. “Did you visit his office again sometime after that?”
A horrible sinking feeling came over me. The note. They had found the note I wedged in his door.
“Yes, I . . . I hadn’t heard from him, so I went by his office and”—there was no point in trying to deny it—“I left him a note.”
“Where did you leave this note?”
“On . . . on the back door. I kind of wedged it in there above the handle.”
“The back door. You’re talking about the entrance to his personal quarters?”
He emphasized the second-to-last word, and I could already hear Detective Sergeant Harold Curry Jr. testifying at my trial, It seemed like it was personal.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What did the note say?
“I just . . . I asked him to call me.”
“Were you angry with him?”
“No. No, I was . . . I was a little frustrated I hadn’t heard from him.”
“Frustrated.”
“Yes.”
“Not angry?”
“Angry . . . angry would be too strong a word.”
“Did you knock on his door?”
“Well, yes, I’m sure I did.”
“How many times?”
“I . . . Several, I guess. What does that matter?”
“Were you swearing a lot as you did it?”
Oh God. They must have spoken to the neighbor, the woman I snapped at.
Now I could hear her testifying too. He was ranting and raving and cursing a blue streak. I was so scared I ran back in the house.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“Had you paid Mr. Thrift for his services in cash?”
“Uhh . . . yes.”
“And had he completed his work?”
“No. That’s why I wanted to talk to him.”
“Did that make you angry? Paying for something and not getting it?”
“No. Just frustrated, like I said.”
“Did you have any other interactions with Mr. Thrift after that?”
“No.”
“Did you call him again?”
“Probably. I’m sure I left messages. You can check that too.”
“Actually, we already did. It seems like you stopped leaving messages for him last Saturday. You stopped calling him too. Why, if you were so eager to hear from him, did you suddenly stop calling and leaving messages?”
I felt my face flushing, even as I willed it not to. This was the kind of detail that juries just loved, the one that both showed the defendant to be a liar and tied him to the foul play in question. It was circumstantial, yes—as long as they didn’t have a body, it was all circumstantial—but it was incredibly damning in its own way.
“I guess at that point I just gave up on him and decided he wasn’t going to call me back,” I said lamely.
“Did you go back to his home again?”
“You mean his place of business?”
“One and the same.”
“Well, no,” I said. “I didn’t.”
“Because you had given up hope of hearing from him.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
More scribbling. He was taking his time. I hated him for it. I needed him gone. While he was focused on his pad, I risked a glimpse toward the Buick. Whipple still appeared to be sitting in the same spot. So was Alison. I was sure she still had the gun on him, but she was keeping it low, out of sight.
And then Curry, having already allowed me to build my own gallows with my voluntary statement, invited me to also tie the noose.
“So,” Curry said. “Can you explain how it was Herbert Thrift’s body was found on your property?”
The words bored into my gut. Curry had just laid out his whole case: I had hired Herb Thrift, gotten angry with him over his failure to provide services, left messages for him, stormed to his house looking for him, left more messages for him until I stopped leaving messages for him—because by that point, I had killed him and buried him in my woods. Men had been sent to prison for murder on far less evidence.
I now understood why the state medical examiner was there. They were pulling clues from what was left of poor Herb Thrift.
“A pack of wild dogs dug him up,” Curry said, shaking his head. “Some lady was driving along and suddenly there’s some mutt dragging a human arm across the road.”
Curry was no longer writing in his note pad. His eyes were trying to lock on mine. But mine were shifting around quite a bit, I’m sure.
I was so engrossed by this little drama I didn’t really hear the engine coming down the driveway. But then a rapidly moving object drew my attention.
A white panel van, the vehicle Sam had described to us, the one we had seen on the video in Karen’s phone, had burst into the clearing.
The Macedonians had arrived.
SEVENTY-SIX
What transpired next didn’t even take a minute, perhaps no more than thirty seconds.