Page 61 of Think Twice

“What?”

“Who cares about me? Come on. You may have mourned a day or two, then went back to your real life. Emily? Ha. My mom is dead, my dad has advanced Alzheimer’s.”

“What about Jeremy?”

“Ah, now we are getting to it.” Greg smiled. “You mean, our son?”

Myron didn’t take the bait. Not right away anyway. He stayed silent. Win was good with silence. He could hold it a long time. Myron on the other hand was not so good. So eventually he said, “Yeah, fine, our son. How could you not let him know?”

And then Greg smiled again. “Who said I didn’t?”

It was then, as Myron was struggling to take in what Greg was saying, that they heard the crackle of the bullhorn. Myron looked out the kitchen window. Greg and Grace did the same. At least a dozen armed officers were positioned in the backyard.

“Oh shit,” Greg said.

There, in the center of the backyard holding a bullhorn, was FBI agent Monica Hawes with FBI agent Beluga Whale by her side.

Greg muttered “Oh shit” again as the bullhorn sounded again.

“Greg Downing,” Hawes said into the bullhorn. “This is Special Agent Monica Hawes with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You’re surrounded. Come out with your hands up.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Still seated at the kitchen table, Greg swiveled his head as though searching for an escape route. But that lasted only a few seconds. Grace put a calming hand on his forearm and shook her head. Greg deflated, nodded. Myron started shouting that they were surrendering peacefully. As the police swarmed in, Myron warned Greg not to say anything, not a word, that he’d follow Greg and get him the best legal counsel available. By the time Hawes and Beluga stepped into the kitchen, Greg was cuffed, his stomach on the kitchen floor.

“You’re not to question him without his counsel present,” Myron said.

Beluga patted his mouth for a fake yawn.

Three officers lifted a stunned Greg to a standing position. As they hustled him out the kitchen door, Myron shouted out reminders for Greg not to say anything. Shocked, Greg didn’t so much as nod. Grace started to follow, but an officer blocked her path.

Grace glared over her shoulder at Myron. “You brought them to our door.”

Myron opened his mouth to defend himself, but Grace pushed past the officer and rushed out the back.

Beluga slapped Myron on the back. “Tough break, pal.”

“Were you following me?” Myron asked.

“We don’t discuss our methods,” Beluga said, the smug smirk firmly locked on his smooth, pale face, “so I can neither confirm nor deny that we tracked your movements to Nevada and Montana and eventually here.”

Myron bit back a rejoinder and asked, “Who authorized the tail?”

“I think his name was…” Beluga looked up in the sky as though in deep thought, tapped his chin with his index finger for emphasis… “Special Agent Lick My Balls. Who cares anyway? You were about to call us, right? A law-’n’-order guy like you, Bolitar, would never harbor a wanted fugitive. That’s a crime, you know.”

The next few hours and indeed days passed in something of a blur.

Greg was denied bail. The prosecutor started in with the “if he were poor or marginalized, he would never get bail” optics argument, and while that may be true, the judge seemed far more persuaded by the fact that Greg Downing had been off the grid for five years and even faked his own death to stay that way. There was no way to make a convincing argument that Greg wasn’t a huge flight risk. Perhaps someone as skilled as Hester Crimstein, the famed trial attorney and host of television’s Crimstein on Crime, could have gotten him off, but Hester, who had gone to law school with Myron’s mother, wouldn’t take the case.

Hester had been Myron’s first call:

“He needs a good lawyer,” Myron had told her. “The best.”

“Oh my, you called me the best. I’m now a malleable puppet who will bend to your will from all your charming flattery, bubbe.”

“So you’ll do it?”

“No, sorry, this case isn’t for me.”