Chapter 7 - The Gathering Storm
The metal clicks of three sets of Smith & Wesson handcuffs ratcheting shut sounded like gunfire in the small bedroom.
Dr. Kenneth Vance didn't even resist. He held his hands behind his back, tears streaming down his face behind his wire spectacles. "I'll cooperate, Major! I’ll give state's evidence! Julian forced me! He held the note on my clinic! I never wanted to drug the old man—I never prescribed the phenobarbital! That was Julian’s supply from his mother's hospice kit!"
"Shut up, you sniveling coward!" Sterling roared, struggling as two troopers hauled him to his feet. "You don't say a damn word until my attorneys get here from the city! Miller, you hear me? You're dead in this town! You'll never sell a stick of wood! You'll never get an easement through the valley!"
"I don't need to sell wood, Julian," I said, standing toe-to-toe with him. "And the valley doesn't belong to you anymore. As of 0800 this morning, the Department of Justice froze all assets tied to Sterling Enterprises LLC under the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Your accounts are dry. Your bank is in federal receivership. Even the shearling coat you're wearing is technically property of the United States Bankruptcy Trustee."
Sterling’s eyes bulged with pure, helpless malice. He tried to spit at my boots, but a trooper jerked his collar, spinning him toward the doorway and shoving him down the hall.
Then came Abigail.
A female trooper stepped toward her, pulling a pair of steel cuffs from her duty belt. Abigail shrank back against the floral wallpaper, her hands clutching at her cardigan.
"Sam... please," she sobbed, looking at me with wide, terrified eyes. "I’m your wife. We took vows. You can't let them take me like this. Clara Gable is outside! The whole town will see!"
"The whole town needs to see," I said.
"I did it for us!" she shrieked, her voice losing every trace of its polished, martyred veneer, turning sharp, ugly, and hysterical. "You were gone! You were always gone! Five years of sand, dirt, and your father treating me like an intruder in my own house! You expected me to sit here and grow old in this rotting Craftsman while Julian was building an empire? We could have had millions, Sam! We could have had a life in the city!"
"You had a home, Abigail," Leonard said, speaking from the foot of his bed. His voice was steady, devoid of anger, weighed down only by the profound sadness of an old man who had watched someone poison their own soul. "You had a family that welcomed you at this table. You had a husband who risked his life every day to provide for you. But you wanted an empire built on dirt and deceit."
The trooper clicked the cuffs around Abigail’s wrists.
"Abigail Miller," the trooper recited, reading from a small laminated card. "You are under arrest for attempted second-degree murder, elder abuse, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and grand larceny. You have the right to remain silent..."
As they led her toward the staircase, Mrs. Gable appeared on the landing, her mouth hanging open in complete, paralyzed horror. She looked at Abigail in cuffs, then at Sterling being dragged down the steps, and finally at Leonard, standing tall, sharp-eyed, and completely sane in the doorway of his room.
"Leonard...?" Mrs. Gable stammered, her hands flying to her cheeks. "You're... you're not..."
"I'm quite well, Clara," Dad said politely. "Though if you ever bring one of those grocery-store lemon tarts to this house again, I might indeed become violent. Real pastry requires cold butter and lard, not hydrogenated palm oil."
May you like
Mrs. Gable looked like she wanted the earth to open up and swallow her whole. She backed away down the hall, stammering apologies that dissolved into the sound of the police cruisers' engines idling on the gravel below.
***
