by E. R. Torre
“And with what she’s got?”
“It might take an hour.”
“An hour?” Carol said.
“Maybe even more.”
Carol shook her head. She fiddled with the laces on her shirt and stared out the window.
“Can’t you do anything now?”
“Unfortunately, no,” I lied.
“I can’t wait for this. I’ve got things to do.”
“Do them,” I offered. “I’ll call you when something happens.”
Carol thought about this. I resisted the urge to look at her, but from the corner of my eye I could see her surveying the library. She didn’t want to leave a near stranger within reach of any of Robinson’s treasures. Then again, I was with Judith for the better part of the morning and, based on what she overheard us say, I probably seemed like a nice enough guy. I was also well known to Dr. Porter and the Sheriff and police staff. If anything in the library went missing, I would be found.
“I’ll get back to work,” she said. “Tell me when something happens.”
“I will.”
Her footsteps echoed through the library and out into the hallway. They faded as she descended the stairs. When she was sufficiently far away, I reached for the mouse and cancelled the upgrade download. The sign-in screen re-appeared.
Since I was already a client of the service, I entered my screen name, RTowne321, on the first blank. I then hit the tab key and entered my password.
“It’s nine digits,” I mumbled. Just like KarlsKube.
Finally, I hit the tab key one more time and entered the phone number Karl had dialed from the Inn.
All was ready.
I took a deep breath and hit the enter key.
The display on the screen changed and turned blank. A high pitched electronic squeal was followed by the sound of numbers being dialed.
“Come on.”
Another high pitched squeal followed. Then, the most beautiful sound in the world:
Welcome to USOnline services.
I just about fell out of the chair. Karl Walker had been using the USOnline services from his room. Once again the upgrade screen appeared. I cancelled it out and moved the cursor to the "Member Services" an option available to locate others using the USOnline services. Under this heading were several options. I clicked on the "Member Search" one and typed in "Karl Walker."
A list of twenty two names appeared, users who also had the name Karl Walker. Next to each of them was their USOnline screen name identification. It was through this screen name identification that I was able to figure out which one of the Karl Walkers was the one I was looking for.
“Karl Walker, aka CollisionCrse@usonline,” I read off the screen. “There you are.”
I logged off and removed my screen name from the startup menu, replacing it with CollisionCrse. For the password I typed in "KarlsKube".
Once again I held my breath and hit the enter button.
“Come on,” I said.
Checking password.
“Come on.”
And then...
Password Accepted.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
There was work to do.
When the main USOnline screen came up, I heard the familiar chimes that indicated Karl Walker had e-mail waiting for him. I clicked on the "E-Mail Post Office" button and was presented a list of over fifty e-mails. Of those, roughly twenty were solicitations, from penile enlargement to lottery ‘wins’ to pleas for assistance from deposed members of political families that just happened to have billions of dollars unclaimed in foreign banks.
The other thirty emails were sent to CollisionCrse from CollisionCrse. Karl was sending himself e-mails. The e-mail topics were arranged in order and listed as Robinson1, Robinson2, and onward through Robinson30.
This is what you wanted me to see.
My fingers trembled as I rolled the cursor on the last of the emails. I double clicked on it and found several paragraphs of personal information related to Sheriff Chandler. It was fascinating to read at first, but after a while I realized it was mostly second hand, and extremely unflattering, gossip. Most of it was gleamed from public records, court transcripts, and the scant information Karl received from other townspeople. Plenty of flash, but little fire. Despite their heated political differences, Karl concluded, Sheriff Chandler was not in any way involved or responsible for John Robinson’s death.
I exited that e-mail message and loaded up the one labeled "Robinson29". This one was focused on Judith Robinson.
When her name popped up, I paused. Given some of the ugly gossip Karl unearthed regarding the Sheriff, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read something similar about Judith.
You’ve come this far.
As calmly as I could, I read through the email. It was every bit as ugly as I feared it would be. Karl painted a bleak picture of not only Judith, but himself. While Judith had earned her title of ‘wild child’ for her misadventures during her teen years, it was Karl’s mania for obtaining each and every salacious detail that I found even more disturbing. We’ve all had indiscretions. Even Karl. But to write them up in such detail, where someone could accidentally –or not so accidentally– find them…
I was forced to reassess Karl Walker. He seemed like a reasonably nice, if introspective, guy. Yet the more I read, the more anger I felt. Did Judith, or the Sheriff for that matter, deserve this scrutiny? Did anyone?
"Take this easy," I heard myself say. In the end, I was in control of this information. Should I wish to, I could delete any or all of these files and the world would never know.
Good thing I chased Carol away.
I took a breath and finished the email on Judith. As Karl told me, she had the most to gain from her Grandfather’s death. However, he could find no concrete evidence that directly linked her to his accident.
The next email focused on a distant cousin of John Robinson, someone I never met or heard of before. This report was very long, and went into details on the life and times of this man. As I read this report, I got the impression he was Karl’s primary suspect in John Robinson’s death. He was in town at the right time and cleared out shortly afterwards. He moved back to North Carolina, where he was from, and remained there until his death from lung cancer the year before. Robinson’s cousin was a crooked man who had several run-ins with the law, from petty crimes to car theft to drug usage. Toward the end of the email, it appeared Karl had a change of mind. The last few paragraphs noted that, despite his criminal activities, Robinson’s cousin was never charged with any violent crimes and had a clean slate for the last two decades of his life. Karl’s information on this cousin stopped there.
I exited that email and read on, from email to email and individual to individual. Like the distant cousin, most were people unfamiliar to me. Some were considered suspects, others were discounted. Slurred or sanctified, they all rose and fell under Karl’s watchful gaze and I knew none of them. None of them, that is, until I reached the Lewis Sinclair’s email.
Karl’s report on him was surprisingly dry. It outlined the friendship between Sinclair and Robinson, both as rival actors and then as actor and agent. Karl somehow missed the financial dealings, post movie career, between the two. The personal details of Sinclair’s life proved even more illuminating. He listed the actresses romantically linked to Sinclair and I had to laugh.
“You missed that little detail on his life,” I muttered. Karl’s research wasn’t quite as complete as it first seemed.
In conclusion, Karl wrote:
Lewis Sinclair was a good friend of John Robinson. Little reason to be involved in John Robinson's death other than career difficulties following Collision Course and inability to invest with Robinson in the video releases of their films (Big money loss for him). However, why wait so many years before killing him?
After this conclusion, Karl added:
Cross with Robinson13.
I shrugged. I would get to Robinson13 soon enough. I closed the Sinc
lair file and continued the backward march through the emails. Subsequent topics included autopsy reports, court records, and the actual text of Robinson’s certificate of death.
All interesting, but nothing that stood out. That is, until I got to Robinson 13.
The report was headed "Miscellaneous," yet focused primarily on Deputy Craig Livingstone. At no point did Karl view his old friend as a suspect. He did note, however, that Livingstone told him about the hand gun found near Robinson’s corpse. This, to Karl, proved Robinson’s death was something more than just an accident.
He noted that Deputy Livingstone and Sheriff Chandler were also bothered by this discovery, but despite this, ultimately concluded the gun had nothing to do with what was deemed an accidental death. Karl finished this section with a personal note. He expressed remorse that his friendship with Deputy Livingstone deteriorated because of this leaked information. He blamed himself, rather than Livingstone, for this collapse and vowed to reconcile with his old friend as soon as possible.
Not soon enough.
Karl followed up the Livingstone section with one labeled "More Miscellany." Among the information presented was the addendum to Lewis Sinclair. It consisted of a description of his contacting the New Manville Adoption agency:
Thanks to a connection I have within the agency, I've been able to confirm the information Billingsly forwarded to me...
I didn’t know who Billingsly was, though I was sure his name appeared somewhere in these notes. I scrolled forward.
25 years ago a baby boy was put up for adoption at the Manville agency. His listed father was Lewis Sinclair.
I sat back, surprised by this information. Lewis Sinclair had a son? Was that possible?
Child was adopted by Nora and Albert Jones, originally from Utah...
I froze. Nora and Albert Jones? I scrolled back up to the child’s original name. Nicholas Sinclair.
Nick Sinclair. Adopted by Nora and Albert Jones.
Nick Jones.
My blood ran very cold. I remembered parts of my conversation with Lewis Sinclair at the Robinson party:
“You have a legacy, something you can show your children and grandchildren,” I told him.
“Heaven forbid!” he said. “I have no children nor any interest in them. I’m proud to say that on that tragic day when I will finally succumb to the Cold Hemispheres, the Sinclair name dies with me.”
I had another recollection, this time a conversation between Judith and myself:
"Is he? Is he...?"
"Yeah, Lewis Sinclair’s gay.”
“To Lewis Sinclair, women are little more than a nuisance. If you ever catch him even talking to a woman, any woman, you know he’s in a jam…”
I thought back to Karl’s email on Lewis Sinclair. Sinclair’s sexuality completely eluded him.
"What about the tabloids? Isn't he afraid they'll find him out?"
"The tabloids … don't much care about some old and, let's face it, faded actor who hasn't been in the spotlight for twenty some odd years."
Of course they didn’t. But had Karl known about Sinclair’s sexuality and his lack of interest in both women and the idea of having children when he got hold of Nick’s adoption records, he would surely have realized how unlikely it was that Lewis Sinclair fathered any child.
So who was Nick’s father?
I leaned back in my chair. Thoughts rushed by like wisps of smoke, each pregnant with possibilities. Yet another conversation entered my mind, this one with Lewis Sinclair a little over an hour ago. He told me what he did for John Robinson:
“When you lead as high a profile life as his, any big scandal can destroy you. It was my job to keep them quiet. And I did, even after he was gone, I did.”
Gears clicked into place. The air in the room felt still, stifling. And then it hit me, with the force of metal crushing through bone.
John Robinson had the illegitimate son, and Sinclair put him up for adoption!
“The only reason they got married was because of me,” Judith said. “Mom got pregnant and Granddad insisted they marry. He was old fashioned that way."
"The hypocritical bastard!" I thought.
“I still care for him, even after all this time. I can’t count how often we’ve gotten close and then…then we fly apart. It’s like he wants to be with me, but something stops him cold and he backs off.”
And now Nick Jones' voice:
"She was the love of my life. But it could never be."
He found out! He found out!
Grandfather and father…uncle and niece.
I had to go. I had to go now.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
I ran down the mansion’s stairs, skipping the steps as I went along. Three steps shy of the end of the stair case, I lost my footing and fell to the floor. A flash of pain shot through my left leg and I stumbled getting back up. Carol heard the commotion. She entered the hallway from the dining room as I limped to the front door. In her hand was a dripping mop.
"What is it?" she asked.
I ignored her and reached for my winter jacket. As I put it on and flung the front door open, Carol was at my side.
“What did you find?” she said, her voice rising with excitement. “It has to do with John Robinson’s death, doesn’t it?”
I pushed past her and into the cold.
“Tell me,” Carol hissed. “Or I swear I’ll tell Judith you broke in.”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I hobbled to my SUV and turned the engine on. As the wheels of the vehicle spun around in the slush, I caught one last glimpse of Carol. Her eyes were wide open, her mouth was twisted into an ugly snarl.
“You’ll never see her again!” she screeched.
When I hit the main road, I floored the gas pedal and sent the rear wheels into a wide spin. After a few tense seconds, I regained control and let out a deep breath.
“Fuck,” I spat. I eased on the gas but kept the truck moving. Half way to town I stamped on the brakes and skidded into the off ramp leading to Viktor's mountain. The pain in my left leg was excruciating and made it hard to focus on the road.
Despite it all, I tried to put all the pieces of the puzzle into place.
Nicholas Sinclair, alias Nick Jones, grew up with his foster family and at some point was either told or found out he was adopted. The news sent him to the Manville Adoption Agency and from there he found that Lewis Sinclair, resident of nearby Viktor, was listed as his "true" father. At this point Nick Jones made his way to Viktor, no doubt to acquaint himself with Sinclair.
Had Nick gone directly to him?
Probably not. If he had, then surely he would know the truth about his relationship with Judith. Whatever else Nick Jones was, he was genuinely torn up about his love for her. He knew it was wrong and was intent on ending it.
A scenario formed in my head.
Nick Jones arrives in town, applies for and secures a job in the ski patrol and, on the side, attempts to locate Lewis Sinclair. Some time before doing so, he meets Judith. It could have happened anywhere, on the slopes, in a restaurant…it didn’t matter. They date for a while and develop deep feelings for each other.
That sounded right. Eventually, they broke up. When?
“He and I were real close.”
“But?”
“It ended when Grandpa died.”
The chill that followed me from Florida was back.
“When Grandpa died,” I whispered.
John Robinson died and Nick and Judith then broke up. The two events had to be linked.
Did Nick Jones finally have his talk with Lewis Sinclair? If so, what did Sinclair tell him? Did he sneer at the suggestion that he was Nick’s father? Did he laugh when he told Nick his father was also Judith’s Grandfather? Lewis Sinclair was the type who would relish the opportunity to hurt John Robinson…and his son.
Time stopped around me.
How would I react if I discovered the love of my life was my niece?
“He stil
l cares for you.”
“And I still care for him…I can’t count how often we’ve gotten close and then…then we fly apart. It’s like he wants to be with me, but something stops him cold and he backs off.”
Nick Jones was love struck. Frustrated. Desperate…
How would I react?
I would get angry. Very angry. And then I would confront my real father and I would...
Kill him?
The haze blew away, the picture was clear: A furious Nick Jones calls John Robinson and tells him who he is. He demands they meet or else he’ll tell the entire world about the aging actor’s illegitimate son. John Robinson agrees to the meeting, but is afraid of what Nick Jones might do. He arms himself before heading out.
Early that morning, on the summit of Viktor’s mountain, they confront each other.
Only one of them survives.
I felt a sickness in the pit of my stomach. Nick Jones killed John Robinson and Karl Walker had somehow figured this out. Only he made the mistake of telling Nick Jones what he knew. While Judith and I were watching Death Highway, Nick committed his second murder.
Time moved again. An icy fear sent shivers down my spine.
