by Archer Mayor
Sam smiled in appreciation. “I was wondering how to deal with that. I know I pissed you off last time.”
Rachel waved that away. “I have a lot to learn.”
Sam went on a slight segue as a result, however. “Speaking of the newspaper shtick, what’s it like to suddenly be the headline and not the reporter? What’s your boss gonna do in tomorrow’s paper? I read some of the early online stuff. That’s gotta be awkward. I can’t even imagine the story’s lead.”
“No kidding,” Rachel admitted. “On top of everything else, I had to explain to him what I was doing there.”
“He think you were working for us?”
“Sure he did. We may not have your legal restraints—probable cause and the rest—but there are rules. He let me know pretty clearly what he thought of what I did.”
“But…,” Sam suggested leadingly.
Rachel laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. I did get the story. Not pretty, but hard to argue with.”
Sam shook her head. “God, what a racket. Okay. So, I’ll tell you what I know if you promise not to tell anyone, including Joe or your mother. Deal?”
“Deal.”
“The thing between Robert and Philip began with Philip’s birth. In a nutshell, while Bobby was an accident, having his two siblings was all Martha’s idea, according to Robert. Plus, Philip and he just didn’t like each other. There was as much envy as hatred between them. Joe guessed they each saw what they didn’t like about themselves in the other guy.”
Sam sighed before continuing. “That’s what I meant by it being a Shakespearean tragedy: We only have Robert’s word for it, of course, but he said his whole family was a source of resentment, from the moment Martha announced she was pregnant, forcing Robert to give up Victoria.
“By dumb luck, Bobby ended up fitting in, ’cause he’s basically a grind, and Elaine was written off as a girl and therefore deemed useless—plus she brought in Brad St. John, who turned out okay. But Philip became the symbol of everything Robert had lost by marrying Martha.”
“My God,” Rachel said.
“I know, right?” Sam smiled in wonder. “They ended up like alpha dogs, competing for everything and pretending it was all cool. That’s what got Robert chasing after Teri. She must’ve been stunned by her good luck, having both of them on the line—before Robert got her pregnant and sealed her fate. The man just never learned to keep it in his pants.
“In the end, once Philip found out, maybe from Teri herself, he went after everything Robert had built—hitting the old man where he thought it would hurt most, consequences be damned. We found Philip’s house full of research materials on how to build explosives and rig trucks like the one that blew apart on the interstate. And he had the tools—welding equipment, a metal shop. You name it. Handy guy.”
“So, Philip really loved her?” Rachel asked. “I thought she was just an opportunist.”
Sam shrugged. “She may’ve been, but like I said, Robert’s the only one left talking. And let’s not forget, he didn’t just sleep with Teri. He killed her out of rage and paranoia and then exploited some other poor slob’s guilt over his estranged daughter to take the fall. Talk about an opportunist.”
Sam’s voice saddened as she explained, “Turns out Mick Durocher approached Robert a couple of years ago, asking for whatever help Robert could provide Mick’s daughter after Mick was dead and buried with cancer. He’d just been diagnosed and remembered how much he and Robert had got along when he worked for GreenField. Mick hit a blank wall then, but when Robert found out he was about to be an inadvertent papa yet again, opening himself to a raft of problems, he got back in touch and made Mick an offer he couldn’t refuse.”
Rachel was surprised. “Mick didn’t kill Teri?”
“Nope. We were good with that theory, especially given Mick’s supposedly mild nature. All Robert had to do was let us keep believing it—or steer us into thinking that Philip pulled Mick’s strings somehow. But he just copped to it instead. Joe thinks killing his son released something inside him—described it as the same kind of trigger point that unleashed Philip when he heard about Teri and his dad. It was an oddly similar crisis for both of them, in a way—neither had anything left to lose anymore.”
“Like father, like son?” Rachel wondered.
“Crazier things have happened,” Sam conceded. “And Robert definitely killed her. Mick was the garbage man—using his words. I guess when you’re talking about psychopaths, everything becomes doable.
“But in the end,” Sam returned to a previous thought, “who knows what’s true and what’s not? Did Philip really love Teri? Or did he just think he was avenging her, when he was only using her as an excuse to lash out at his father? They were sure as hell cut from the same mold.”
She shook her head. “In a way, it reminds me of Lillian Wuttke going after Victoria. All she had to do was look outside her own little world for three seconds to realize she was living the dream, being a marginally competent nurse in a good work environment with a great boss. Instead, all she could think about was resentment, envy, and vengeance. Every day, I’m amazed by how self-absorbed people are.”
“I still don’t understand how Robert could go that far—kill his own son.”
Sammie had been mulling it over, as well. “I’ve started to think that inside Robert’s head, he was doing an honorable thing. Could be he rationalized killing Teri to save the company, since he saw it and himself as one and the same. And then he additionally compensated for it by honoring his contract with Mick Durocher, sending Mandy Lawlor the money—the ultimate good-guy gesture. With that logic, I could see him also paying homage to his murdered employees by executing Philip. We all laughed about Robert’s routine with the rotating chauffeurs, but he saw that as a kind and generous effort—his way of showing his workers—his real, chosen children—how much he thought of them. Call me crazy, but I’ve ended up seeing his sacrificing Philip—and therefore himself—as no weirder than some Bible story.”
“Abraham standing over his son with a knife in his hand?” Rachel asked with a sad smile.
“Yeah,” Sam said, adding, “Except there was no God, or at least no messenger to intervene. As usual, it was just us humans, stumbling around.”
“And that’s it?” Rachel asked rhetorically.
Sam hitched one shoulder, leaned forward, and blew out the candle, allowing the moonlight to assert itself fully over the porch.
“It’s where I put my faith,” Sammie told her. “I got a kid to bring up, and a man who keeps fighting to stay sane, sober, and useful—despite the odds against him. I try to do the right thing, and surround myself with people like you and your mom and Joe and Lester. Who cares if the rest of the world is acting like a bunch of loonies?”
She leaned forward and tousled Rachel’s hair. “All of whom’ll give you something to take pictures of and write about. Think of that, and don’t let the bastards pull you under. It’s the best I got, corny as it is.”
ALSO BY ARCHER MAYOR
Trace
Presumption of Guilt
The Company She Kept
Proof Positive
Three Can Keep a Secret
Paradise City
Tag Man
Red Herring
The Price of Malice
The Catch
Chat
The Second Mouse
St. Albans Fire
The Surrogate Thief
Gatekeeper
The Sniper’s Wife
Tucker Peak
The Marble Mask
Occam’s Razor
The Disposable Man
Bellows Falls
The Ragman’s Memory
The Dark Root
Fruits of the Poisonous Tree
The Skeleton’s Knee
Scent of Evil
Borderlines
Open Season
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ARCHER MAYOR, in addition to writing the New York Times bestselling
Joe Gunther series, is a death investigator for the state medical examiner and has twenty-five years of experience as a firefighter/EMT and a police officer. He lives near Brattleboro, Vermont.
VISIT THE AUTHOR’S WEBSITE AT WWW.ARCHERMAYOR.COM, OR SIGN UP FOR EMAIL UPDATES HERE.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
The Lead or the Lede?
Acknowledgments
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Also by Archer Mayor
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
BURY THE LEAD. Copyright © 2018 by Archer Mayor. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover photograph by Valention Sani/Arcangel
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-11328-3 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-11329-0 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250113290
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First Edition: September 2018
