Page 20 of Nobody's Fool

I turn and again look up at him. “I can’t tell you what pride I take in the fact that I trained you.”

“You also use humor as a defense mechanism.”

“I wish I still carried a firearm.”

“More humor.”

“I know I was in Connecticut, Marty. Of course I know. I thought this was clear from my text, but just in case: I dropped that pin at someone’s residence. I want to know whose.”

“You also realize, I assume, that you were in a very high-end district when you dropped that pin.”

“I do.”

“On private property.”

“Yep.”

“I checked several satellite maps. The aerial footage over that area is blurred on all of them.”

“I know,” I say.

“You also dropped the pin late at night.”

“Marty?”

“Yes?”

“Why do you keep telling me things I already know?”

“What the hell were you doing there, Kierce?”

I don’t answer. There is no one left by the prison gate. I still stare at the spot where Tad Grayson has been standing. He was free. The man who had murdered Nicole was free. I bet his lawyers take him out for dinner. Probably a fancy steakhouse. Celebrating the man who blew away Nicole’s beautiful face.

Marty isn’t good with silence. I know that. He is a babbler. It takes a few more moments and then he lets loose a sigh. “The property is owned by an LLC.”

“Any name attached?” I ask.

“Not yet.”

I am not surprised by this. Someone is working hard to keep that property secret. Why? And why would Anna, a woman I thought was murdered in my presence over twenty years ago—perhaps by my own hand—be staying there?

“I tried a few other ways to look up the owners, but I didn’t get anywhere. Yet. You know how it is. You sent me that location late last night. Most places are just opening now. I’ll make some calls.”

“Thank you,” I say.

Then he asks the same question Molly did: “Does this have something to do with…?” He gestures toward the prison gate.

“No,” I say.

But then I tilt my head.

“What?” he asks.

I met Anna in Spain more than twenty years ago. Five years later, I was engaged to Nicole and she was murdered by Tad Grayson. I never put the two together. Why would I? They had nothing to do with one another. The only connection was, well, me. And I certainly see no connection between Anna—should I keep calling her Anna or should I move back to Maybe Anna, I don’t know anymore, let me stick with Anna—showing up at my class yesterday and the release today of Tad Grayson. None. Except for one thing.

The timing is curious.

Coincidences happen more often than we know. I’ve done a lot of studying on this. Fatalism, Jung-Pauli theory on synchronicity, probability, chance, apophenia—but I mostly go with something closer to a chaos theory. Coincidences happen. But coincidences assume a randomness, that there is no connection, not even a casual one, between two events.

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