hoped to pin that on Rivers, shake up his story. “Just trying to get the lay of the land,” I said.
Rivers said that when he reached the basement of his house, he considered calling 911, but then he decided it was smarter to go straight to the sheriff’s office in Madison.
“I got in my Porsche, pulled out of the garage, and there they were,” he said. “Headlights right in my eyes and coming hard from the anthill. In the Porsche, I knew I could outrun them, but I took that turn too fast for the slick road and flipped the car.” Rivers grimaced. “That’s all I know. I mean, I’m surprised I’m even alive.”
I felt my stomach churn. I’d been the one chasing him, not whoever put the head in his subbasement.
His attorney cocked her head and gazed at Sampson and then me. “How was it that you came upon my client so soon after the crash?”
“They’ll answer that in due time, Counselor,” Mahoney said a little too quickly. He looked at Rivers. “Where do you think those heads came from?”
Rivers took a sip of water through a straw, said, “I’ve been thinking about that. It had to be that delivery driver or someone else who came onto my property while I was at the hardware store. Look at the tapes.”
“We will,” Mahoney promised. “Any reason someone would want to frame you, Mr. Rivers? Enemies?”
“Two ex-wives? Three or four angry ex-girlfriends? Actually, nah. They might want to cut my testicles off for whatever reason, but I can’t see any of them sawing off people’s heads to get at me.”
I said, “Who’s Maxine?”
Rivers frowned. “My cat?”
“Your cat?” Sampson said.
I closed my eyes again.
“Yeah,” Rivers said. “She lives in the anthill and kills the mice. She can be a real pain, though. Almost impossible to catch when I need to give her her medicine.”
Rivers’s attorney was taking notes and studying us. “I’ve got a question for all of you.”
“If we can answer, we will,” Mahoney said.
She said, “This is connected to that woman’s kidnapping in Ohio, isn’t it? Diane Jenkins? There was a head left in an FBI car there during a ransom drop. The agents weren’t named, but it was you, wasn’t it, Special Agent Mahoney?”
“And me,” I said, looking at her evenly.
Nodding, Cowles said, “So is this the work of the mysterious M?”
Rivers said, “Who’s M?”
“We can’t answer that question because we don’t know,” Mahoney told Cowles.
“But the cases are related?” the attorney said.
“Yes,” I said.
She straightened. “I knew it. Why would M put two heads on my client’s property? And, again, why were you in the area at all, Dr. Cross? Detective Sampson?”
“Counselor, this is a complicated federal investigation—” Mahoney began.
“But the truth alone will set us free,” I said, and I held up my hands, palms out. “Mr. Rivers, Ms. Cowles, you deserve to know exactly what happened, regardless of the consequences to me.”
CHAPTER 50
IF I’D LEARNED ANYTHING FROM Nana Mama, it was this: If you’ve screwed up, admit it and face the consequences. If you’ve crossed the line, admit it and face the consequences. If you’ve had lapses in judgment or viewed something with eyes full of prejudice, admit it and face the consequences.
“Any other course of action is deception and cover-up, which only makes the consequences worse for you in the long run,” my grandmother told me when I was a boy. “Deal with the mess you’ve made, Alex, and move on.”
Nana Mama’s advice had been proven true time and again, so I followed it once more in Rivers’s hospital room. Over the next twenty minutes, I laid out the bones of the story, from the earliest contact by M to the Wickr message I’d gotten moments before Rivers discovered the severed head in his subbasement to following him and rescuing him from the wreck of his sports car.
“We still thought you were M. Luckily, we got to you before your car exploded.”
“Lucky?” Rivers’s attorney said. “My client would not have crashed if you hadn’t chased him. He would not have run in the first place if he hadn’t heard you and Detective Sampson coming down the staircase. And my client’s rights would not have been violated if you hadn’t broken into his private bunker— twice—Dr. Cross.”
I held up my hands. “All true. In my defense, I was hoping against hope that I’d find Diane Jenkins or evidence of her in Mr. Rivers’s bunker.”
“No, you were hoping you’d find evidence that my client was M.”
“That too,