Page 97 of The House of Cross

Sampson said, “And the men you had murdered around DC? The Dead Hours killings?”

M shifted in his wheelchair. “You mean the child molesters? That was actually my late brother’s work. Even so, isn’t the world a better place without them creeping around, a better place for your daughter, Detective?”

John thought about that a moment. “I can’t dispute your goal, only your means.”

“Not our means in this case. Sean’s. Ian’s.”

Malcomb claimed that his brother figured out what Maestro was years ago and had created a digital back door to the organization’s files and Paladin’s supercomputers. He used that back door to target the child molesters.

“Why?” I asked.

“You’d have to ask him,” Malcomb said. “Which is impossible.” He tapped his lip again, his eyes slightly squinting.

“Was Sean molested as a child?” I asked, sensing my way toward the truth.

“We’re not going there.”

“Why not? You were his twin brother. Was he molested or not?”

The Maestro leader shifted in his wheelchair. “He was mistreated, not molested, beaten for things that he should not have been beaten for.”

“By your father? Wheeler?”

“And our dear mother,” Malcomb said.

“You were beaten too,” I said.

His head bobbed ever so slightly. “Though never as bad as Sean. They knew I was physically weak even before my diagnosis. But we were both ‘bad genes,’ as they called us. Bad genes. Bad adoptions.”

“They said that?” Bree said.

“Often,” Malcomb said.

Years of clinical psychology work backed up my instincts at that point. I said, “When were the worst beatings? What age?”

Malcomb adjusted his glasses. “They got worse as we got older.”

“And no one was coming to help. Your parents were wealthy. No one would have expected them to mistreat you.”

He said nothing.

“When did it become intolerable for you?”

“For me or Sean?”

I shook my head. “The both of you. You were twins.”

The corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. “You are very perceptive, Dr. Cross. I’ll grant you that.”

“Which one of you raised the idea of killing your parents first?”

Malcomb thought about that. “After our father whipped Sean with a leather belt so bad he bled, it was almost like he had no choice. He behaved and waited until his back healed completely to eliminate motive. And he and I figured out a way around the alarm system so it would look like Sean had never left the boathouse that night and climbed in naked through the basement window of the main house.”

I watched him, unsure whether I believed him. “What did Sean do with the knife?”

“We had a boat lift that was mounted on four steel pipes about eight feet long drilled into the bedrock. The pipes were capped and below the surface a good two feet. We’d figured out how to unscrew the caps earlier that summer. Sean dove in the lake after it was done to clean himself, then unscrewed the cap and dropped the knife in. I assume it’s still there.”

“So he was a vigilante at age nine,” Sampson said.

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