The Winner

by David Baldacci

  police or him. No, that’s a lie. I know, it’s him. I’d take the police over him any day. He told me never to come back here. Never. Now I am back. We all are.”

  Charlie laid his hand on top of hers and spoke as calmly as he could. “If he knew, do you think he’d have let us get this far? We took about as circuitous a route as anybody could take. Five plane changes, a train trip, four countries, we zigzagged halfway across the world to get here. He doesn’t know. And you know what, even if he does he’s not going to care. It’s been ten years. The deal’s expired. Why should he care now?”

  “Why should he do any of the things he’s done? You tell me. He does them because he wants to.”

  Charlie sighed, undid his jacket button, and lay back against the seat.

  LuAnn turned to him and gently rubbed his shoulder. “We’re back. You’re right, we made the decision and now we’re going to live with it. It’s not like I’m going to announce to the whole world that I’m around again. We’re going to live a nice, quiet life.”

  “In considerable luxury. You saw the photos of the house.”

  LuAnn nodded. “It looks beautiful.”

  “An old estate. About ten thousand square feet. Been on the market for a long time, but with an asking price of six million bucks, can’t say I’m surprised. Let me tell you, we got a deal at three point five mil. But then I drive a hard bargain. Although, of course, we dumped another million into renovation. About fourteen months’ worth, but we had the time, right?”

  “And secluded?”

  “Very. Almost three hundred acres, plus or minus as they say. About a hundred of those acres are open, ‘gently rolling land.’ That description was in the brochure. Growing up in New York, I never saw so much green grass. Beautiful Piedmont, Virginia, or so the realtor kept telling me on all those trips I took over here to scout for homes. And it was the prettiest home I saw. True it took a lot of work to get it in shape, but I got some good people, architects and what-not representing our interests. It’s got a truckload of outbuildings, caretaker’s house, three-stall horse barn, a couple of cottages, all vacant by the way; I don’t see us taking in renters. Anyway, all those big estates have that stuff. It’s got a pool. Lisa will love that. Plenty of room for a tennis court. The works. But then there’s dense forest all around. Look at it as a hardwood moat. And I’ve already started shopping around for a firm to construct a security fence and gate around the property line fronting the road. Probably should have already gotten that done.”

  “Like you didn’t have enough to do. You do too much as it is.”

  “I don’t mind. I kind of like it.”

  “And my name’s not on the ownership papers?”

  “Catherine Savage appears nowhere. We used a straw man for the contract and closing. Deed was transferred into the name of the corporation I had set up. That’s untraceable back to you.”

  “I wish I could have changed my name again, just in case he’s on the lookout for it.”

  “That would’ve been nice except the cover story he built for you, the same one we used to appease the IRS, has you as Catherine Savage. It’s complicated enough without adding another layer to it. Geez, the death certificate we had made up for your ‘late’ husband was hell to get.”

  “I know.” She sighed heavily.

  He glanced over at her. “Charlottesville, Virginia, home to lots of rich and famous, I hear. Is that why you picked it? Private, you can live like a hermit, and nobody’ll care?”

  “That was one of two reasons.”

  “And the other?”

  “My mother was born here,” LuAnn said, her voice dropping a notch as she delicately traced the hem of her skirt. “She was happy here, at least she told me she was. And she wasn’t rich either.” She fell silent, her eyes staring off. She jolted back and looked at Charlie, her face reddening slightly. “Maybe some of that happiness will rub off on us, what do you think?”

  “I think so long as I’m with you and this little one,” he said, gently stroking Lisa’s cheek, “I’m a happy man.”

  “She’s all enrolled in the private school?”

  Charlie nodded. “St. Anne’s-Belfield. Pretty exclusive, low student-to-teacher ratio. But, hell, Lisa’s educational qualifications are outstanding. She speaks multiple languages, been all over the world. Already done things most adults will never do their whole life.”

  “I don’t know, maybe I should have hired a private tutor.”

  “Come on, LuAnn, she’s been doing that ever since she could walk. She needs to be around other kids. It’ll be good for her. It’ll be good for you too. You know what they say about time away.”

  She suddenly smiled at him slyly. “Are you feeling claustrophobic with us, Charlie?”

  “You bet I am. I’m gonna start staying out late. Might even take up some hobbies like golf or something.” He grinned at LuAnn to show her he was only joking.

  “It’s been a good ten years, hasn’t it?” Her voice was touched with anxiety.

  “Wouldn’t trade ’em for anything,” he said.

  Let’s hope the next ten are just as good, LuAnn said to herself. She laid her head against his shoulder. When she had stared out at the New York skyline all those years ago, she had been brimming with excitement, with the potential of all the good she could do with the money. She had promised herself that she would and she had fulfilled that promise. Personally, however, those wonderful dreams had not been met. The last ten years had only been good to her if you defined good as constantly on the move, fearful of discovery, having pangs of guilt every time she bought something because of how she had come by the money. She had always heard that the incredibly rich were never really happy, for a variety of reasons. Growing up in poverty LuAnn had never believed that, she simply took it to be a ruse of the wealthy. Now, she knew it to be true, at least in her own case.

  As the limo drove on, she closed her eyes and tried to rest. She would need it. Her “second” new life was about to commence.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Thomas Donovan sat staring at his computer screen in the frenetic news room of the Washington Tribune. Journalistic awards from a number of distinguished organizations dotted the walls and shelves of his cluttered cubicle, including a Pulitzer he had won before he was thirty. Donovan was now in his early fifties but still possessed the drive and fervor of his youth. Like most investigative journalists, he could dish out a strong dose of cynicism about the workings of the real world, if only because he had seen the worst of it. What he was working on now was a story the substance of which disgusted him.

  He was glancing at some of his notes when a shadow fell across his desk.

  “Mr. Donovan?”

  Donovan looked up into the face of a young kid from the mail room.

  “Yeah?”

  “This just came in for you. I think it’s some research you had requested.”

  Donovan thanked him and took the packet. He dug into it with obvious zeal.

  The lottery story he was working on had so much potential. He had already done a great deal of research. The national lottery took in billions of dollars each year in profits and the amount was growing at more than twenty percent a year. The government paid out about half its revenue in prize money, about ten percent to vendors and other operating costs, and kept forty percent as profit, a margin most companies would kill for. Surveys and scholars had argued for years about whether the lottery amounted to a regressive tax with the poor the chief loser. The government maintained that, demographically, the poor didn’t spend a disproportionate share of their income on the game. Such arguments didn’t sit well with Donovan. He knew for a fact that millions of the people who played the game were borderline poverty-level, squandering Social Security money, food stamps, and anything else they could get their hands on to purchase the chance at the easy life, even though the odds were so astronomically high as to be farcical. And the government advertisements were highly misleading when it came to detailing
precisely what those odds were. But that wasn’t all. Donovan had turned up an astonishing seventy-five percent bankruptcy rate per year for the winners. Nine out of every twelve winners each year subsequently had declared bankruptcy. His angle had to do with financial management companies and other scheming, sophisticated types getting hold of these poor people and basically ripping them off. Charities calling up and hounding them relentlessly. Purveyors of every type of sybaritic gratification selling them just about anything they didn’t need, calling their wares “must-have” status items for the nouveaux riches and charging a thousand percent markup for their troubles. It didn’t stop there. The sudden wealth had destroyed families and lifetime friendships as greed supplanted all rational emotions.

  And the government was just as much to blame, Donovan felt, for these financial crashes. About twelve years ago they had bestowed the initial prize in one lump sum and given it tax-deferred status for one year to attract more and more players. The advertisements had played up this fact dramatically, touting the winnings as “tax-free” in the large print and counting on the “fine print” to inform the public that the amounts were actually tax-deferred and only for one year. Previously, the winnings had been paid out over time and taxes taken out automatically. Now the winners were on their own as far as structuring the payment of taxes went. Some, Donovan had learned, thought they owed no tax at all and went out and spent the money freely. All the earnings on that principal were subject to numerous taxes as well, and hefty ones. The Feds just hung the winners out there with a pat on the back and a big check. And when the winners weren’t astute enough to set up sophisticated accounting and financial systems, the tax boys would come after them and take every last dime they had, under the guise of penalties and interest and what-not, and leave them poorer than when they started out.

  It was a game designed for the ultimate destruction of the winner and it was done under the veil of the government’s doing good for its people. It was the devil’s game and our own government was doing it to us, Donovan was firmly convinced. And the government did it for one reason and one reason only: money. Just like everybody else. He had watched other papers give the problem lip service. And whenever a real attack or exposé was formed in the news media, government lottery officials quickly squelched it with oceans of statistics showing how much good the lottery monies were doing. The public thought the money was earmarked for education, highway maintenance, and the like, but a large part of it went into the general purpose funds and ended up in some very interesting places, far away from buying school books and filling potholes. Lottery officials received fat paychecks and fatter bonuses. Politicians who supported the lottery saw large funds flow to their states. All of it stunk and Donovan felt it was high time the truth came out. His pen would defend the less fortunate, just as it had over his entire career. If he did nothing else, Donovan would at least shame the government into reconsidering the morals of this gargantuan revenue source. It might not change anything, but he was going to give it his best.

  He refocused on the packet of documents. He had tested his theory on the bankruptcy rate going back five years. The documents he was holding took those results back another seven years. As he paged through year after year of lottery winners, the results were almost identical, the ratio staying at virtually nine out of twelve a year declaring personal bankruptcy. Absolutely astonishing. He happily thumbed through the pages. His instincts had been dead-on. It was no fluke.

  Then he abruptly stopped and stared at one page, his smile disappearing. The page represented the list of twelve consecutive lottery winners from exactly ten years ago. It couldn’t be possible. There must be some mistake. Donovan picked up the phone and made a call to the research service he had engaged to do the study. No, there was no mistake, he was told. Bankruptcy filings were matters of public record.

  Donovan slowly hung up the phone and stared again at the page. Herman Rudy, Bobbie Jo Reynolds, LuAnn Tyler, the list went on and on, twelve winners in a row. Not one of them had declared personal bankruptcy. Not one. Every twelve-month period for the lottery except this one had resulted in nine bankruptcies.

  Most reporters of Thomas Donovan’s caliber lived or died by two intangibles: perseverance and instincts. Donovan’s instinct was that the story he might be onto right now would make his other angle seem about as exciting as an article on pruning.

  He had some sources to check and he wanted to do them in more privacy than the crowded newsroom allowed. He threw the file in his battered briefcase and quickly left the office. In non–rush hour traffic he reached his small apartment in Virginia in twenty minutes. Twice divorced with no children, Donovan led a life focused solely on his work. He had a relationship slowly percolating with Alicia Crane, a well-known Washington socialite from a wealthy family, which had once been politically well connected. He had never been fully comfortable moving in these circles; however, Alicia was supportive and devoted to him, and truth be known, flitting around the edges of her luxurious existence wasn’t so bad.

  He settled into his home office and picked up the phone. There was a definite way to obtain information on people, particularly rich people, no matter how guarded their lives. He dialed the number of a longtime source at the Internal Revenue Service. Donovan gave that person the names of the twelve consecutive lottery winners who had not declared bankruptcy. Two hours later he got a call back. As he listened, Donovan checked off the names on his lists. He asked a few more questions, thanked his friend, hung up, and looked down at his list. All of the names were crossed off except for one. Eleven of the lottery winners had duly filed their tax returns each year, his source had reported. That was as far as his source would go, however. He would tell Donovan no specifics except to add that the income reported on all of the eleven tax returns was enormous. While the question still intrigued Donovan as to how all of them had avoided bankruptcy and apparently done very well over the last ten years, another more puzzling question had emerged.

  He stared down at the name of the sole lottery winner that wasn’t crossed off. According to his source, this person had not filed any tax returns, at least under her own name. In fact this person had outright disappeared. Donovan had a vague recollection of the reason why. Two murders, her boyfriend in rural Georgia and another man. Drugs had been involved. The story had not interested him all that much ten years ago. He would not have recalled it at all except that the woman had disappeared just after winning a hundred million dollars and the money had disappeared with her. Now his curiosity was much greater as he eyed that particular name on his list: “LuAnn Tyler.” She must have switched identities on her run from the murder charge. With her lottery winnings she could easily have invented a new life for herself.

  Donovan smiled for an instant as it suddenly occurred to him that he might have a way of discovering LuAnn Tyler’s new identity. And maybe a lot more. At least he could try.

  The next day Donovan telephoned the sheriff in Rikersville, Georgia, LuAnn’s hometown. Roy Waymer had died five years ago. Ironically, the current sheriff was Billy Harvey, Duane’s uncle. Harvey was very talkative with Donovan when the subject of LuAnn came up.

  “She got Duane killed,” he said angrily. “She got him involved in those drugs sure as I’m talking to you. The Harvey family ain’t got much, but we got our pride.”

  “Have you heard from her in any way over the last ten years?” Donovan asked.

  Billy Harvey paused for a lengthy moment. “Well, she sent down some money.”

  “Money?”

  “To Duane’s folks. They didn’t ask for it, I can tell you that.”

  “Did they keep it?”

  “Well, they’re on in years and poorer’n dirt. You don’t just turn your back on that kind of money.”

  “How much are we talking about?”

  “Two hundred thousand dollars. If that doesn’t show LuAnn’s guilty conscience, I don’t know what would.”

  Donovan whistled under his breath. “D
id you try to trace the money?”

  “I wasn’t sheriff then, but Roy Waymer did. He even had some local FBI boys over to help, but they never turned up a durn thing. She’s helped some other people round here too, but we could never get a handle on her whereabouts from them either. Like she was a damned ghost or something.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, you ever talk to her, you tell her that the Harvey family ain’t forgot, not even after all these years. That murder warrant is still outstanding. We get her back to Georgia, she’ll be spending some nice quality time with us. I’m talking twenty to life. No statute of limitations on murder. Am I right?”

  “I’ll let her know, Sheriff, thanks. Oh, I’m wondering if you could send me a copy of the file on the case. The autopsy reports, investigative notes, forensics, the works?”

  “You really think you can find her after all this time?”

  “I’ve been doing this kind of stuff for thirty years and I’m pretty good at it. I’m sure going to try.”

  “Well, then I’ll send it up to you, Mr. Donovan.”

  Donovan gave Harvey the Trib’s FedEx number and address, hung up, and wrote down some notes. Tyler had a new name, that was for certain. In order even to begin to track her down, he had to find out what that name was.

  He spent the next week exploring every crevice of LuAnn’s life. He got copies of her parents’ death notices from the Rikersville Gazette. Obituaries were full of interesting items: birthplaces, relatives, and other items that could conceivably lead him to some valuable information. Her mother had been born in Charlottesville, Virginia. Donovan talked to the relatives listed in the obituary, at least the few who were alive, but received few useful facts. LuAnn had never tried to contact them.

  Next, Donovan dug up as many facts as he could on LuAnn’s last day in the country. Donovan had conversations with personnel from the NYPD and the FBI field office in New York. Sheriff Waymer had seen her on TV and immediately notified the police in New York that LuAnn was wanted in Georgia in connection with a double murder and drug trafficking. They, in turn, had put a blanket over the bus and train stations, and the airports. In a city of seven million, that was the best they could do; they couldn’t exactly put up