John Roberts, his family, and Pastor Mark Rheingold just a
few years ago.”
I heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end. And I
knew I’d just pulled a big, dangling thread. I waited thirty
seconds for a response. Waverly was still on the other end,
but it was clear he wasn’t dying to talk about the fire.
“Justice Waverly, are you still there?”
“Yes, Mr. Parker, I’m here.”
“So you do remember those deaths?”
“I didn’t say that.”
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Jason Pinter
“So you don’t remember the alleged electrical fire that
killed five people, including the most famous pastor in the
state of Texas.”
“I didn’t say that, either.”
“Justice Waverly, I’m not the police,” I said. “I’m a reporter
trying to find out why four people have been murdered and
how they might be connected to a fire that killed five people
several years ago.”
“I don’t know how any of your murders are my concern,
Mr. Parker. Now if you’ll excuse me I have a meeting in just
ten minutes and I still haven’t had my coffee.”
“Fine by me,” I said. “Because my next call is to the FBI. I
know Mike Sellers down at the Houston branch pretty well.
And one thing he hates is red tape and bureaucratic doublespeak. So I hope you’re not stringing any of that tape up for
me.”
I had spoken to Deputy Michael Sellers once, over e-mail.
He had given me a terse no comment, though complimented
me on a previous story about the treatment of prisoners at
Rikers Island. I figured that brief correspondence was as good
an opportunity as any to name-drop.
I heard a pounding sound, like something hitting wood.
Sounded like Justice Waverly was getting frustrated and
taking it out on his poor desk.
“No, now I wouldn’t want that,” Waverly said. “I’ll answer
any appropriate questions in order to help whatever story you’re
writing. But I won’t go into tangential matters that are none of
your business. So to answer your question, yes, I do remember
the deaths of the Roberts family and the tragic passing of Pastor
Rheingold. He was a pillar of this community.”
“Would you say the Roberts family was a pillar of the
community?”
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273
“Shoot,” he said. “John Roberts just moved his family
down to Hico a few years back. He had some relatives down
here got along pretty good, but I can’t say they had as much
influence as Pastor Mark.”
“I read the news reports of the fire. You’re sure it was
electrical?”
“Goddamn right I am,” Waverly said. “And I hope God’s
green ears don’t hear you insinuating we didn’t give that fire
a thorough investigation.”
“No, I’m saying you’re awfully defensive.”
There was silence on the other end again. Then Waverly
spoke.
“We turned that house inside out. There was nothing left.
Not a doll, not a picture album, nothing. An entire family was
destroyed in one night, I assure you it was a monumental
tragedy. We didn’t find any reason or need to pry more than
we already had.”
“So you’re admitting the investigation wasn’t handled as
thoroughly as it could have been.”
“I’m saying injury was bad enough without adding insult.”
“Unless the insult and injury would have been to your
town.”
“I’m sorry, Parker, you’ve lost me there.”
“Let’s see if you can follow—at the Roberts’s funeral, the
priest made a statement making it clear there were remains
unaccounted for. That one or more of the coffins the Roberts
family was buried in wasn’t full. Do you follow that?”
“I have nothing to say about such idiotic rumors. And if
you don’t mind me saying, I don’t see how this has any relevance to your murders in New Yawk. ”
“I’ll get to that,” I said. “Now whose remains were never
found?”
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Jason Pinter
“This has nothing to do with you,” said Waverly.
“Whose remains, Justice? I can be on the phone to Mike
Sellers in thirty seconds, and based on your lack of cooperation he can have those graves dug up in less time than it takes
for you to stir your cream and sugar.”
“You arrogant prick,” Waverly spat. “Just who do you
think you are? Do you have any idea who we are, what this
town is? We have a thousand residents. You live in a city
of millions, where nobody gives a shit about anybody else.
Do you have any idea what something like this could do to
our county?”
“Without the legend of Brushy Bill Roberts, your town
dies,” I said. “That’s a fact. And by covering up a murder investigation, it will do the same thing.”
“Who said anything about murder?” Waverly said. There
was concern in his voice. It was trembling. He knew something.
“Whose remains were never found?”
“I don’t have to talk to you?”
“Whose, Justice?”
“The son,” he gushed. “William Henry. We found a piece
of femur we believe was his, but…”
“But what?” I said.
“But we weren’t sure. So we buried it.”
“You buried an empty coffin?”
“It wasn’t empty!” Waverly said. “There was a femur bone
inside! Besides, the boy’s body was nowhere. Either he died
in that fire or he disappeared off the face of the earth. We
figured his remains being too burnt up to find was a more
likely scenario.”
“Only those remains turned up alive in New York, pulling
the trigger of a Winchester rifle four times, killing four people.”
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275
“Listen, Parker,” Waverly said. “You don’t know what it’s
like here. You don’t know what this would mean to our
township and its residents.”
There had to be something else going on. Hico stood to
prosper hugely if it was revealed Brushy Bill Roberts was, in
fact, Billy the Kid. Waverly was hiding something else.
“What was Pastor Rheingold doing in that fire?” I asked.
“Strange that he just happened to be at the Roberts home the
night it goes up in flames.”
“Enough!” Waverly said. “You got your damn story.
Rheingold has nothing to do with it. Goodbye, Mr. Parker. I
hope you sleep well tonight.”
Waverly hung up. Sleep was the last thing I would find
that night.
43
Mya stirred. Not because her body awoke naturally. Not
because sunlight from the outside had forced it, or because
she had to pee, or any other number of reasons why nature
might interrupt one’s slumber.
No, Mya awoke because of the knife point she felt digging
into her side.
“Wake up, Mya,” he said. She opened her eyes, the lids dry
and crusty. Her hands were still bound, her wrists hurt like
hell. She hadn�
�t been able to wipe the moisture or makeup
away. The last thing she remembered was following this man
back to his hotel room, having a drink, feeling his lips on hers,
and then nothing. There was no other pain, and besides her
bonds she was otherwise unharmed.
She was lying on the floor of some dingy hotel room. The
bed was unmade. Ugly orange curtains dangled above her.
The rusty air conditioner rattled, spewing a warm breeze.
Under the bed she could see a small blue duffel bag, underwear and socks spilling out of it.
By the foot of the bed, Mya saw what appeared to be a
gun. Not like the kind she saw in the movies. This one was
long. The barrel seemed to have some kind of wood finish.
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277
The boy noticed her staring and said, agreeing, “She’s a true
thing of beauty.”
Mya tried to squirm but it was no use. Her energy was
gone. And a blade was ticking her ribs. If she bucked in the
wrong direction, it could…
“How you feeling?” he asked. Mya blinked. What was his
name? He’d told it to her at the bar. Where he’d been
charming, funny, handsome and sweet. Of course all of this
was before he kidnapped her. “Nod once for okay, nod twice
for not okay.”
Mya nodded twice, vigorously. She remembered his hands
on her, her whole body tingling, feeling alive. She remembered his hands, strong and gentle, but then all of a sudden
perfunctory, like they were only waiting to…
And here she was.
“You’re not getting me, Miss Loverne. Nod once if you’re
okay, as in not hurt. Nod twice if you are hurt. Forget about
your hands. Can you walk?” Mya felt the blade dig in. She
tried to cry out, but the tape prevented her from emitting
anything but a pathetic whimper. She felt saliva coating the
tape sealing her mouth.
She nodded once. That was all.
“You had me worried,” the boy said with a grin.
William. His name was William.
“We have a busy night ahead of us,” William said. “Are you
up for it?”
Her first instinct was to try and scream. Or at least nod
twice. But the knife made its horrible presence felt once again
and she tilted her chin down once. A single tear streaked
down Mya’s cheek. The boy wiped it away.
44
After leaving the office, I called Amanda. We hadn’t spoken
the whole day, mainly because I’d been swamped with Justice
Waverly, then presenting the information to Wallace, Evelyn
and Jack. Then I began to prep the outline of a blockbuster
story that would both force the reopening of the fire in Hico,
but present new information proving that Billy the Kid had
lived long after his alleged murder. It was too soon to claim
that Athena Paradis’s killer was Billy’s great-grandson, or that
I thought he was. I knew it was true, but had to be able to
convince others. Truth required proof, however, and since he
was still at large the only proof was four silent corpses.
One thing was for certain, and Waverly had confirmed it,
that William Henry Roberts was not among the victims who
died in the fire.
So if William did not die in that fire, why was there no investigation into his whereabouts? Hamilton County police department came up empty, and they moved mighty quick to
assume the body had simply “burnt up.” Even I didn’t think
they would be that careless. At least not by accident.
Not a single newspaper report asked questions about the
fire. They were too busy bemoaning the death of Mark Rhein- The Guilty
279
gold and four, less important, members of the Hico community. Everyone seemed more than happy to wash away any
unpleasant memories and get on with their lives.
That brought up another question. What was Pastor Mark
Rheingold—a statewide institution, a man who made millions
of dollars a year and had thousands of rabid followers—doing
at the Roberts house the night of the fire? I searched every
archive available but couldn’t find anything linking Rheingold
to the Roberts family. It was a pretty big coincidence that
Rheingold paid a house call the night a four-alarm blaze
burned everything to the ground.
I dialed Amanda’s line at work. It went right to voice mail.
“Hey, babe, it’s me, I’m heading home now. You’re probably still at work, just wanted to know if we should plan to
have dinner together. Anyway, give me a call back. Love you.”
Click.
I needed a night to relax, unwind. Everything this past
week had come so suddenly. All those deaths—deaths of
people I knew. The NYPD was beside themselves at this
point, and the newspapers hadn’t pulled punches in their criticism. And though New York had arguably the finest police department in the country, it was also a city in which it was all
too easy to disappear. I knew that firsthand. Sooner or later
the net would close in on Roberts. We could only hope it did
before that Winchester fired again.
The Gazette’ s sales had gone through the roof the last few
days. The city hadn’t seen such juicy copy in a long time, and
people were buying up papers in droves. Between Athena
Paradis’s murder, the turmoil at Franklin-Rees after Jeffrey
Lourdes’s death, the NYPD wanting blood for Joe Mauser,
and the societal fallout from David Loverne’s murder, it was
a gold mine for newshounds.
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Jason Pinter
Joe Mauser’s death had been relegated to the back pages.
A cop dying in the line of duty just didn’t sell as many papers
as a murdered pretty blond white girl. It was strange that this
pissed me off so much, considering Joe Mauser’s bullet had
left a nasty scar on my leg. Just one year ago, Mauser wanted
to kill me. I held no ill will toward the man. If someone had
done to my family what he thought I’d done to his, I would
have wanted blood, as well.
I got off the subway and began walking toward our apartment. The summer sun was dipping below the clouds, the
shimmering towers of NewYork fading into night. The streets
began to fill as people straggled home from work. Finally,
after over a year I felt I was becoming a part of this city. It
hadn’t been easy, thanks to assholes like Frank Rourke. Since
the dog crap prank, my desk had been left alone. I had gone
along with it, laughed it up, threw it in the trash and left it at
that. If you let guys like Frank know they’d drawn blood,
they’d grow addicted to the taste. I could bleed on my own
time.
I approached the apartment building and fished in my
pocket for the key. I wondered if we should move to a safer
neighborhood, live in a building with a doorman. Now that
Amanda was living with me I wasn’t completely comfortable
with her walking home alone, especially since most days she
came home later than I did. I had to take care of the woman
I loved. Put her needs before mine. I was determined to prove
Jack wrong. I could balance work and relat
ionships. I didn’t
have to give in just because he did. Jack was a legend, but an
old school legend. I was strong. I could make it work.
As I turned the key in the lock, a voice broke the night and
froze my blood. I recognized that voice, only now it was
louder, angrier.
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281
I heard it again, turned around. Saw several pedestrians
staring up, up at the rooftops, their mouths open in masks of
horror. A man dialed his cell phone frantically. A woman
grabbed her son and ran.
Then I heard it again.
“Henry Parker!”
High above us, perched atop a four-story brownstone, illuminated by the moonlight, was William Henry Roberts.
One hand was empty. The other held a knife. The knife was
held to Mya Loverne’s throat.
“Mya!” I shouted. Her eyes were frightened beyond
rational thought. Some sort of towel or cloth was in her
mouth. I ran forward, then stopped.
“Parker!” Roberts cried again.
“Leave her alone!” I shouted, unsure of what else to do. I
wasn’t close enough to get to them. No cops were in sight.
Fucking Carruthers had pulled off my security detail, and now…
I called you, Henry.
Mya.
“This,” Roberts said, his voice a mixture of pathos and
breathless glee, like a man taking perverse excitement in reprimanding a dog. “This is what happens. I control information, not you, Parker. I give you history to write about. So
consider this a present, Henry. From me to you.”
And with that, before I could react, before my weak legs
could respond or my mouth could cry out, William pushed
Mya off the roof.
I shouted “No!” as her body plummeted out of view. The
horde of onlookers gasped. Mya disappeared into the alley
behind the building. I ran toward it, then heard the most
horrible sound of my life. A terrible thump as something hit
the ground.
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Jason Pinter
Then I looked up, and Roberts was gone.
I ran as fast as I could, the world around me disappearing in
a blur. I sprinted into the alley, then covered my mouth in shock.
Mya was lying on the ground. Her eyes were open, staring
at the sky. I could see a small pool of blood below her.
I ran over and grabbed her hand.
“No,” I whispered, frantically checking her wrists, her
neck, anything. I thought I felt a pulse. Weak, but there. I
could hear 911 calls being made somewhere behind me.
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