“I was just about to call for them,” Dr. Singh said.
“I’ll leave you two alone, then,” Emily said. “I have a press conference downstairs.”
Myron looked at her. “You don’t want to wait for the results?”
“I already know the results.”
Emily left without a backward glance. Karen Singh looked at Myron. Myron folded his hands and put them in his lap.
“You ready?” she asked.
He nodded.
Karen Singh picked up the phone and dialed. Someone on the other end answered. Karen read off a reference number. She waited, tapping a pencil on the desk. Someone on the other end said something. Karen said, “Thank you,” hung up, focused her eyes on Myron.
“You’re the father.”
Myron found Emily in the hospital lobby, giving the press conference. The hospital had set up a podium with their logo perfectly positioned behind it, sure to be picked up by any and all television cameras. Hospital logo. Like they were McDonald’s or Toyota, trying to sleaze some free advertising. Emily’s statement was direct and heartfelt. Her son was dying. He needed new bone marrow. Everyone who wanted to help should give blood and get registered. She plucked the strings of societal grieving, making sure it rang personal in the same way that Princess Diana’s and John Kennedy Jr.’s deaths rang personal, wanting the public to mourn as if they actually knew him. The power of celebrity.
When she finished her statement, Emily hurried off without answering questions. Myron caught up to her in the closed-off area near the elevators. She glanced at him. He nodded, and she smiled.
“So now what are you going to do?” she asked him.
“We have to save him,” Myron said.
“Yes.”
Behind them the press were still yelling out questions. The sound trickled and then faded into the background. Someone ran by with an empty gurney.
“You said Thursday was the optimum day,” Myron said.
Hope lit her eyes. “Yes.”
“Okay, then,” he said. “We try it on Thursday.”
The bullet that had struck Greg had entered in the lower part of his neck and traversed toward his chest. It had stopped short of the heart. But it had done plenty of damage anyway. He survived surgery but remained unconscious in “critical” and “guarded” condition. Myron looked in on him. Greg had tubes in his nose and a frightening assortment of machinery Myron hoped never to understand. He looked like a corpse, waxen and gray-white and sucked dry. Myron sat with him for a few minutes. But not very long.
He returned to the offices of MB SportsReps the next day.
“Lamar Richardson is coming in this afternoon,” Esperanza said.
“I know.”
“You okay?”
“Dandy.”
“Life goes on, huh?”
“Guess so.”
Special Agent Kimberly Green came semi-bouncing by a few minutes later. “It’s all wrapping up,” she told him, and for the first time he saw her smile.
Myron sat back. “I’m listening.”
“Edwin Gibbs, under his Dennis Lex/Davis Taylor identity, still had a locker at work. We found the wallets of two of his victims, Robert and Patricia Wilson, in there.”
“They were the honeymoon couple?”
“Yes.”
They both took a moment, out of respect for the dead, Myron guessed. He pictured a healthy young couple beginning their life, coming to the Big Apple to see some shows and do a little shopping, walking the bustling streets hand in hand, a little scared about the future but ready to give it a go. El fin.
Kimberly cleared her throat. “Gibbs also rented a white Ford Windstar using the Davis Taylor credit card. It was one of those automatic reservations. You just make a call, walk straight to the rental, and drive off. No one sees you.”
“Where did he pick up the van?”
“Newark Airport.”
“I assume that’s the van we found in Bernardsville,” Myron said.
“The very.”
“Tidy,” he said, using a Win word. “What else?”
“Preliminary autopsies reveal that all the victims were killed with a thirty-eight. Two shots to the head. No other signs of trauma. We don’t think he tortured them or any of that. His modus operandus seemed to involve the early scream and then he just killed them.”
“He ends the seed sowing for them,” Myron said, “but not the families.”
“Right.”
“Because for his victims, the terror would be real. He wanted it all in the mind.” Myron shook his head. “What did Jeremy tell you about his ordeal?”
“You didn’t talk to him about it?”
Myron shifted in his chair. “No.”
“Edwin Gibbs wore the same disguise he used at work—the blond wig and beard and glasses. He blindfolded Jeremy as soon as he had him in the van and drove straight to that cabin. Edwin told him to scream into the phone—even made him practice first to make sure he had it right. After the call, Edwin chained him up and left him alone. You know the rest.”
Myron nodded. He did.
“What about the plagiarism charge and the novel?”
She shrugged. “It was like you and Stan said. Edwin read it, probably right after his wife was dying of cancer. It influenced him.”
Myron stared at her for a moment.
“What?” she said.
“You guys figured that part out when you first got the novel,” Myron said. “That Stan hadn’t plagiarized. That the book influenced the killer.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Come on. You knew that the kidnappings had taken place. You just wanted to put pressure on Stan so he’d talk. And maybe you wanted to embarrass him a little.”
“That’s not true,” Kimberly Green said. “I’m not saying some of our agents didn’t take it personally, but we believed that he was the Sow the Seeds kidnapper. I already told you some of the reasons why. Now we know that a lot of the same evidence pointed to his father.”
“What same evidence?”
She shook her head. “It’s not important anymore. We knew Stan was more here than just a reporter. And we were right. We even thought he was getting stuff wrong on purpose—that he was using the book rather than what he’d really done just to throw us off.”
Her words didn’t resonate the way the truth does, but Myron didn’t argue the point. He scanned his Client Wall and tried to bring his focus around to Lamar Richardson’s visit. “So the case is closed.”