Maybe that seems like a detail to you, but it wouldn’t to the Hanrattys and it wouldn’t to Patrick. Suicide wouldn’t be just a word to any of them.
“You can laugh at people religious enough to think less of someone who died saving a friend, or you can get angry and throw things, but the fact is that if I said Patrick cut his own rope, that family would have choices to make between their son and their beliefs. There was time to think about it while I was hiking in, and I didn’t see the need to put them through that. I owed Patrick better than the risk of being misunderstood.” Horn looked up then, his eyes hot. “I didn’t expect Hanratty to like me very much when he heard the story. But I sure as hell didn’t expect him to kill me!”
“There was an inquest,” remembered McKendrick. “Before you left Alaska. You lied to them?”
“I told the same story from the day I got back to civilization and reported Patrick’s death. I’d worked out all the details in my head, gone over it so often it almost felt like the truth. I told the same thing to the Alaskan coroner and again to the police here when I got home.” Horn dared a glance at McKendrick’s face, but nothing he saw there reassured him. He struggled on. “I thought I was doing the right thing. Every time I served it up, it went down a little easier. A time came when I half believed it myself. I knew there’d be criticism. I knew some people would think what I’d done—what I said I’d done—was beyond the pale. But I thought that was the worst I’d have to deal with. I thought I could weather the storm. For Patrick? He’d died for me—I could lie for him.”
“And now—now!—you feel this irresistible urge to set the record straight?”
“I owe you the truth. And I thought it was now or never.”
Incredibly, McKendrick started to laugh. Almost hysterically, thought Horn; as if these events mattered more to him than they had any right to. He was at a loss to explain the intensity of the man’s reaction.
“What?” Horn demanded at length. “What?”
“Sorry.” McKendrick wiped a hand across his eyes, cleared his throat and forced a little decorum back into his manner. “It’s just … this is so not how I expected to be spending today. Okay. You swear to me, this is the truth you’re telling now?” Horn nodded. “Have you tried to tell Hanratty?”
Horn’s eyebrows soared. “What’s the point? He already thinks I’m a killer and a coward—it’s not going to give him massive problems to think I’m a liar as well.”
McKendrick let his head rock back, and in the second before he turned away Horn saw his eyes glaze over, as if everything was changed utterly by what he’d heard—that a climber’s rope had been cut at one end rather than the other. “I need to think,” he muttered, heading for the stairs. “Watch the monitors. If you see anything, yell.”
“Believe it,” mumbled Horn.
* * *
Beth was coming down the steps from the tower. They met outside William’s room. “Trying the mobiles again?” asked McKendrick.
She nodded. “Still no joy. Which, of course, is why we have a landline—the mobiles have always been more miss than hit here.”
“You’d think, from the roof…”
She held them out. “You want to try?”
McKendrick blew out his cheeks. “No. The only way to get any higher than the turret is to climb the flagpole, and while I’m sure I could do that if I really wanted, I doubt if I could do it one-handed while dialing with the other.”
Beth gave a wan smile. “Supermack admits defeat?”
McKendrick smiled back but his manner was distracted. “Let’s just say I’m looking for a plan with a higher success-to-effort ratio.”
They went into William’s room. McKendrick gave his brother a friendly grin out of habit. The frozen man held him in an unwinking stare.
Beth had been sitting on the sofa. She put the phones down on the coffee table. McKendrick took the window seat. “What do you make of Nicky Horn?”
Beth’s eyes flew wide with indignation. “You’re asking me? You know what I think of him. You know why.”
“I’m not sure I do.”
She stared at him, hurt and uncomprehending. “Patrick was my friend. You know what it meant to lose him.”
“Patrick died where he did, how he did, because that’s where he chose to be. No one forced him to go