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‘That's a load of crap,' said David. ‘Don't you understand, Logan? This is
it
. You have just admitted to six murders so . . .'

‘Six and a half,' corrected Logan.

‘It makes no difference,' countered David, the sweat now beading on his forehead. ‘Whether or not you admit to killing your wife is irrelevant. You are going away for life, Logan. And no one will be happier about that than me.'

But Logan would have none of it, the man simply smirked and extended his right arm that inch further, while shouldering his rifle with his left, and aiming it inland, beyond the thick, grey haze.

‘Do you want to know how they did it?' he asked, as if needing to see this through.

‘I want you to stop fantasising and put down your weapons before I blow your fucking brains out.'

‘See, there you go again, David. Your ability to allow your idealism to blind your view of reality is really quite extraordinary. It was all about choice, you see. My children weighed up the pros and cons and then decided on a course of action. Bad decision, as it turns out, but then I suppose they are paying for that now.'

‘You are wasting your breath, Logan,' said David, shifting his feet. Despite himself, all this talk of the children was starting to get to him. He knew Logan was only playing mind games, but there was something about his assuredness that . . .

‘Perhaps,' replied Logan, interrupting his thoughts. ‘But I really would like to get back to the subject at hand. I was talking about choices, which is really quite appropriate given I am about to ask you to make one.'

David shifted yet again.

‘Now, now, no need to jump the gun, David,' he said. ‘No pun intended.'

Then Logan turned away from him, ever so slightly, to place his left eye on the rifle's circular viewfinder – his right arm still straight and steady, pointing directly at David's head.

‘There,' he said. ‘Do you see them?'

And despite the situation, David could not help but look.

‘Wait,' said Logan. ‘Wait, wait . . . There! See?'

And that was when David realised what Logan was aiming at – and the contents of his stomach rose in his throat.

‘
No!
' he yelled, his right foot lunging.

‘Hold it right there, David,' said Logan. ‘One more step and I will kill them both. I must say it was very kind of them to present themselves as they have, like two lame ducks sitting stupidly on a levee. I am a reasonable man, David, and given I respect the fact that you have been my worthiest adversary to date, I am going to let you choose.'

‘
Put the gun down
.'

‘
No
,' yelled Logan, any trace of feigned conciliation now gone. ‘
You wanted to play this game, you fucking amateur, and now it is time to deal
. Who will you save, David – your beloved secretary or your pregnant fucking whore – the latter being the choice I obviously prefer, given I am guaranteed a two for one.'

It was as if time stood still, as every muscle in David's body seemed to tense, as every inch of his being focused on the power he held in his now sweating right hand. Without even thinking, he squeezed the trigger, the sound of gunfire –
bang, whoosh
,
bang
,
bang
– echoing across the endless bleak expanse.

And in the split second, just before he saw Jeffrey Logan's head explode, he noticed the fire spew from the end of Logan's rifle.

David dropped his weapon. And then he began to run.

The following morning

‘D
avid . . . David . . . wake up.'

He was drifting, stuck in that nowhere land between awake and asleep, where your conscious brain refuses to register your current location and situation. But then your senses kick in. Giving you little clues whether you wanted them or not – the soulless smell of antiseptic, the rhythmic beep of a machine, the vague sensation of fluorescent lighting, the cool air-conditioning on your skin.

‘Lisa,' he said at last, his eyelids separating to see his younger sister standing above him.

‘Hey, big bro,' she said with a smile. She was wearing her Mass General nurses' uniform, her plastic ID and stethoscope draped around her neck. ‘You need to go home and get some real sleep. There is nothing you can do here now. I will call you if there's any change.'

‘Hey,' said a new voice in the mix, and David turned to see his good friend Joe Mannix looking more than a little dishevelled at the hospital room door. ‘How is she doing?' he asked, pointing at the sleeping figure in the bed.

‘She's fine,' replied Lisa. ‘We call it a false labour – in this case induced by stress,' she added, poking David in the shoulder.

‘She hasn't had a contraction for the last six hours so at this stage we simply let her rest – which is exactly what this idiot should be doing,' she said, gesturing at her brother who was still slouched in the hospital room chair in front of her. ‘Make him go home, Joe, at least for a little while.'

Joe nodded, moving into the room. ‘You heard your sister.'

‘I've been hearing her for thirty-six years, Joe,' said David with a half smile. ‘It doesn't mean I have to do what she says.'

Lisa tousled David's hair in mock frustration.

‘Seriously, David,' said Joe then. ‘You really do need to take a load off.'

‘Not until I hear the latest,' said David, now sitting up in his chair.

‘Okay, I'll leave you to it,' said Lisa. ‘But if you're not gone by the time I get back, I'll hunt you both down.'

And with that, Lisa was gone.

Jeffrey Logan was dead. He was in fact shot three times by three bullets from three different guns a split second apart – the actual bullet which slammed into his head first, was yet to be determined.

Nora Kelly was fine, the bullet from Logan's rifle merely grazing her left cheek. It was Nora's quick action that had saved Sara's life – given it was she who had spotted the spark of gunfire on the beach and pulled her surrogate daughter to safety.

Deirdre McCall had been arrested, so far the greatest injustice of it all. But Amanda Carmichael, after a long discussion with David and Joe late last night, had agreed that the District Attorney's Office would not push for jail time. She would in fact suggest that the elderly heroine had acted to prevent the likelihood of ‘further serious casualties', and Carmichael planned to have her released as soon as was legally possible so that she might meet her two grandchildren.

‘McCall was behind that cabana the entire time, Joe, just biding her time, waiting for an opportunity to shoot.'

‘I guess she has waited a lifetime to deal with her son, David, so in the scheme of things . . .'

Deirdre McCall may have waited years to deal with her evil offspring, thought David then, but in the end she had undertaken the most selfless act any human being could carry out. She had killed the person she had given life to, so that others could live.

‘So you think it was her bullet that hit Logan first?' asked David.

‘Pretty sure. The Cape Cod ME said it appeared as if the initial impact came from about fifteen yards to the victim's left, which lines up with the cabana. So it appears to have been McCall's first, Molis' second, and your bullet . . .'

‘And here I was thinking it was me who saved the day,' said David.

‘Not a chance,' smiled Joe.

‘That McCall is something else,' said David after a pause. ‘One minute she is in a hospital in Vegas, the next she is seeking out her son's gun cellar so she can put an end to his killing.'

Joe nodded. ‘First she locates the house, and then she finds the cellar – which was not easy, by the way, considering it took our guys a good twenty minutes to see the tiniest of cracks between the floorboards. And then she pulls up the trap door, climbs down those stairs and chooses a weapon before loading it and . . .'

‘That's a mother's determination for you,' said David, his eyes drifting across to Sara.

Joe nodded once again.

‘What is it?' asked Joe after a time, perhaps reading the fresh look of recognition on David's face.

‘I was just thinking,' replied David. ‘We started off believing a son had killed his mother – and ended up with a mother killing her son.'

‘That's some kind of justice,' said Joe.

‘I guess so.'

Joe went on to explain that Malcolm Tyler's body had been exhumed late yesterday afternoon and that ME Gus Svenson would be undertaking the autopsy today. He also said that Las Vegas Detective Michael Lopez had called as soon as he heard the news – promising that David's statement regarding Logan's admissions had resulted in a fresh warrant for Damien Chi's arrest.

‘The man killed seven people, David,' said Joe after a pause, and David felt his brow furrow. ‘And sadly, part of me wishes the bastard was still alive so that we could drag him through the courts and put his famous ass in jail forever.'

But David was shaking his head. ‘Not me,' he said. ‘I got no problem with the way things went down, Joe.'

‘Fair enough, my friend. Fair enough.'

David rose to his feet. ‘I need to see the children,' he said.

‘You need to get some rest.'

‘There will be time for that later.'

‘No, David,' said Joe, smiling as he pointed at Sara. ‘Given the three months of sleepless nights you two have ahead of you, my guess is your time has run out.'

‘Sounds nice,' smiled David.

‘It is,' replied Joe.

David moved towards his friend to take his hand and pull him into an embrace, the two men saying nothing, knowing nothing needed to be said.

‘You ever steal my gun again, I'll kill you,' said Joe at last.

‘It was a one-off, Joe,' said David. ‘Next time, I'll ask.'

It had come to him at midnight, not long after he had hung up from his good friend Tony Bishop. David had told no one of Logan's determination to blame his children for Stephanie's death, but the conversation remained with him, like a splinter in his side.

‘Tony,' he had said, after he had given him a rundown on the day's events and Tony had spent the next five minutes asking a million questions as to David and Sara's welfare. ‘There was one thing I wanted to ask you.'

‘Ask away,' his friend had replied.

‘The last time we saw Stephanie – back in February, at that St Valentine's Day ball – how did you think she looked?'

‘I didn't see her at the ball, remember?' he had said. ‘Missed her altogether which, to be honest, DC, I will never forgive myself for.' His friend had taken a breath.

‘But I saw her in that video and Jesus, man, she looked terrible.'

David had said nothing, hoping his friend would go on.

‘You know, weeks after her death, we had this meeting – me and Amanda, the insurance turd and Harrison. And Harrison said something about people often changing their wills and life insurance policies at the same time. He said nine times out of ten, people address those sorts of things across the board – wills, life insurance, health
checks and so forth. And for some reason the health check thing stuck in my mind.

‘And then I saw that video and, Jesus, DC, despite everything else I realised that Stephanie
did
have a health problem. Her husband was like a disease, slowly sapping her life away.'

Which was the truth, David knew . . . but perhaps not all of it.

‘Gus, it's David,' he said, as he put his cell on speaker so that he could negotiate a left-hand turn out of the Mass General parking garage and onto Fruit Street.

‘Hello!' said the Swedish-born ME, a genuine delight in his voice. ‘Mannix tell me your situation. I am so glad you and Sara are all right.'

David knew that he meant it. ‘Thanks, Gus,' he said. ‘Listen, I know you guys are snowed under . . .'

‘Yes, but not so much. The governor approved the employment of two more examiners. My load has eased, just a little.'

‘That's great news. I was wondering if you could check something for me.'

‘I will conduct autopsy on Malcolm Tyler today and Katherine de Castro tomorrow.'

‘Okay, thanks, but . . .' said David, not sure how to approach his question without raising Gus' suspicions. ‘This is about Stephanie Tyler. You mentioned the last time we spoke, that Stephanie was an organ donor – and that her organs and tissues were harvested not long after her death.'

‘That is correct.'

‘And doesn't the New England Organ Bank send you some report to clarify this?' David was pretty sure this was the case. He had once worked on a previous case where such a report was used in evidence after a family disputed their deceased loved one's decision to be a donor.

‘Yes,' said Gus. ‘The NEOB give report on all organs and tissue given to organisations such as Lifenet for processing. They also explain what organs have been passed on for research to various approved research protocols.' Gus took a breath. ‘Why, you need this?'

‘Not me,' he lied, ‘but the children. They want to donate some of their mother's fortune to the various transplant and research organisations.'
Another lie. ‘Do you think you could get someone to pull the report and leave it at reception? I'll race by and look at the list and leave it for you to re-file.'

‘That would be fine. That is very kind of the children.'

‘They are good kids, Gus,' he said, still hoping, that beyond all else, this was true.

Amanda Carmichael met him at her office door. ‘Hi,' she said, extending her hand. ‘Come on in.'

David moved into her office, the two of them standing somewhat awkwardly until she directed him to her sofa.

‘The kids are here,' she said. ‘I put them in the conference room until you arrived. I got my assistant to get them some sodas.'