Page 139 of Nobody's Fool

All pretty obvious.

But now I wonder—because another part of me feels,knows, I was always meant to be a cop. It’s in my blood, even now, even after getting thrown off the force and knowing that I will never be able to return. I’m not saying it was God’s will or any of that. I don’t think I’m that important. I don’t think any of us are. We human beings are startlingly, amazingly, narcissistic. I remember my father, the amateur scientist, pointing this out to me once:

“Earth is 4.6 billion years old, Sami. If you scale that down to forty-six years, do you know how long human beings have been here?”

“No.”

“Guess. It’s important. How long out of those forty-six years have humans roamed the earth?”

“Twenty years?”

“Less.”

“Ten years.”

He smiles and shakes his head. “Four hours. Out of forty-six years, we humans have been on this planet for a mere four hours. The industrial revolution started a minute ago. Yet we humans believe God created all this just for us.”

I think about that a lot. It keeps me humble, I guess. Our insignificance in the scheme of things. That doesn’t make life less valuable to me. It makes it more.

Okay, enough with the philosophical meandering. My point is, I don’t want to sound too self-serious, but maybe I was destined to be a cop. I can’t let that part of me go, which is why I am teaching a course on criminology. Now that the clues are starting to pour in, now that I feel the answer is tantalizingly close, I need to step up.

I can’t have my students figure it out before me.

Not out of ego. My students have been amazing and more than proved themselves. They should be proud of what they’ve done. But it has to be on me at the end. There’s no other way. So I’ve divided them up. One hand won’t see what the other is doing. They will report their findings only to me. We have all worked this case hard and like real cops. Maybe harder. We have no agenda other than solving the case. We may not have a badge but in today’s world, perhaps that’s an advantage not a hindrance, especially since I also have Marty, whom I’ve nicely bullied into running certain tests for me.

This takes a week.

I remained patient. I gathered all the findings. I analyzed the data in private.

I’ve come up with the answer.

When I do, I call Archie Belmond and tell him I need to see thefamily. He knows it is something big. I can hear it in his voice or maybe he hears it in mine. We set up a time to meet at the Belmonds’ estate.

Marty insists on driving me. I would argue, but I know he won’t listen. This is the deal I made with him and Molly. I would argue, but my body is still sore, and I need someone to drive me anyway, so what’s the point?

Besides, to be fair, I really can’t predict how the Belmonds will react. I’m about to pull the pin out of a grenade and toss it at them. You know what they say: You never know who is going to make the sacrifice and jump on the grenade, who is going to panic and run—and who is going to pick it up and toss it back at you.

Or something like that.

When Marty pulls through the gate and up to the front of the house, I’m barely surprised to see Arthur standing there. I get out of the car and tell Marty to stay here. He nods. He has done all I’ve asked and then some.

“Marty?”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

He nods again. “I’m going to leave the car windows open. Scream like a lunatic if you need me.”

Arthur waits at the same spot he’d stood when last we were here together.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him.

“As your attorney, I’m supposed to remind you of your legal commitments and responsibilities.”

“You drove all the way up here to tell me that?”

“What part of ‘billable hours paid by the Belmonds’ is confusing to you?”