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“A grandfather clock. And a lot.”
Leo looked from the formidable obstacle waiting in the truck to Alex. “I’m deducting the cost of my services from your first paycheck.”
Alex smiled. “Sounds fair and reasonable.”
* * *
Later that night, Alex sat in her new flat. It was late, the television was off, and the only sound came from the grandfather clock standing in the corner of the room. Alex had wound the clock to bring its weights as high as they could go. Now she listened to the clock tick as the pendulum swung. For most of her childhood the clock had been an unnoticed thing in the second-floor hallway outside her bedroom. Alex had passed by it a thousand times, paying no mind to its beauty. Then it became something else the night her family was killed—something grand and protective.
With nothing but the ticking clock keeping her company, Alex reached for the day’s copy of the New York Times. Tracy Carr had finished her article about Laura McAllister and the story of rape at McCormack University that the girl was about to break before she was killed. It included the names of those who were incriminated in her episode. The article thoroughly covered Duncan Chadwick’s role in obtaining the date-rape drug used to spike drinks at his fraternity. An investigation was sure to follow, and even before the article was published, Larry Chadwick had voluntarily removed himself from the running of nominees to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. The story was explosive and Tracy did a great job honoring Laura McAllister in the article.
Alex sat back after she finished reading. There were sure to be hangers-on. There were sure to be true-crime fanatics who would never stop looking for Alexandra Quinlan. But without a prominent reporter leading the way, those fanatics would soon burn out. Alex’s offer to Tracy Carr had involved tipping the reporter off to a potential blockbuster story involving Larry Chadwick’s son and Laura McAllister. In exchange for the information Alex would hand over, Tracy Carr had agreed to stop her pursuit of Alexandra Quinlan. No more yearly updates. No more lurid videos. No more travel to McIntosh to shoot footage in front of her family’s home.
She put the newspaper to the side. It had been an arduous journey, but she had finally arrived at that fork in the road of life that marked her fresh start. She leaned back into the cushion of the couch, closed her eyes, and listened to the swinging pendulum of the grandfather clock as it clicked. Back and forth. Back and forth.
CHAPTER 72
The Appalachian Mountains Saturday, October 14, 2023 9:52 p.m.
HE DROVE THE SUV THROUGH THE WINDING ROADS OF THE APPALACHIAN Mountains. Although far from city surveillance cameras, he avoided gas stations and rest areas where his image might be recorded and had taken the precaution of swapping out his plates for ones lifted from a Maryland junkyard. As he drove, the rock face climbed vertically next to the guardrails, boxing him in as the road sliced through a canyon with mountains on either side. Other parts of the drive were wide open with nothing but undulating mountains in the distance. When he saw smoke spiraling from the chimneys of tucked-away homes, he knew he was getting close.
Had Larry Chadwick been appointed to the Supreme Court, the night’s mission would have been exponentially more difficult. The nine Supreme Court justices were closely shielded by government agencies. Inside the confines of the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court Police protected the justices day and night. Outside of DC, the US Marshals Service provided security detail. Thankfully, Judge Chadwick had been passed over for the Supreme Court. Technically, he stepped down and voluntarily removed himself from consideration. Either way, as a federal judge and not a Supreme Court justice, security detail for Larry Chadwick came only by request, not by commission. On test runs to the judge’s vacation home, he’d seen no such detail. Tucked away in the foothills of the Appalachians, the judge likely felt isolated and safe. The town of Heathrow was small and quiet. It consisted of a single road with two stoplights and mom-and-pop shops and restaurants lining each side of the street. Residents were cordial and made up of wealthy East Coasters who cherished their privacy.
He made the final turn and accelerated down the road that ran behind the judge’s vacation home. The judge’s usual schedule involved Chadwick and his wife leaving DC in the midafternoon on a Friday and returning to the city Sunday evening, in time for dinner and a glass of wine before the judge read briefs in preparation for his Monday morning docket. It was one of America’s great ironies, he thought now as he slowed his vehicle, that the man who had hired Reece Rankin to rape and kill Laura McAllister had been given the power to preside over the justice of a nation.
Jacqueline could have gone to the police with what she’d learned from her visit with Reece Rankin. She could have told the authorities about Rankin’s confession and that he had raped and killed Laura McAllister after being hired by Larry and Duncan Chadwick. But to do so would have placed the Chadwicks in the protective hands of the American justice system, where it was unlikely a proper sentence would have been handed down. Chadwick and his son deserved more than America’s system of justice could provide.
He pulled to the side of the road and turned into a wooded area. He edged his car far enough into the foliage so that it was out of sight from passing vehicles, then got out and trudged through the forest for three-quarters of a mile until the narrow path ended at the back of Larry Chadwick’s vacation home.
He was early. Lights still brightened the home’s windows, and he settled down in a clearing to wait for the Chadwicks to retire for the night. He removed the Smith & Wesson from his waistband and placed it on the ground next to him. He took a moment to listen to the calmness of the wilderness around the property. The closest neighbor was more than a mile away. A loon cooed from a far-off location on the lake. The sound reminded him of his youth, when he spent his summers away at camp. The clearing in which he sat brought him back to the night they had killed Jerry Lolland.
It was at Camp Montague that his life’s journey had begun. It was at Camp Montague that he had first taken matters into his own hands. It was there, after enduring a summer of abuse and then witnessing that same abuse befall Jacqueline, that he had decided some people were not worthy of the soft justice America delivered—a comfortable existence in prison where predators enjoyed three daily meals and the joys of entertainment that included books and television and more. No, some perpetrators were deserving of more than a pampered life behind bars. Those who committed the most heinous acts of violence—sexual assault on children—and those who assist them deserved a justice this country could not provide.
As he sat in the clearing at the edge of the Chadwicks’ property, he remembered Jerry Lolland. He remembered staring at the man’s body as paramedics wheeled him out of the cabin, a white sheet covering him from head to toe, confirming how well their plan had worked. Jerry Lolland had been their first kill. Jerry Lolland had been the first time he and Jacqueline had teamed up to stop a predator. Others followed through the years, but he still remembered Jerry Lolland most vividly.
He remembered them all to varying degrees because he learned something new from each of them. Most had gone as planned and had been perfectly executed. One, however, still haunted him. One had produced collateral damage that had, in the end, been their downfall. Now, he would have to continue their work alone.
As he sat in the woods behind Larry Chadwick’s home and waited for the house lights to dim, he remembered that night.
McIntosh, Virginia January 15, 2013
The town of McIntosh was small and tight-knit. Killing Dennis and Helen Quinlan would have consequences, but he had been unable to talk Jacqueline out of it. There was irony there—that he had started their vigilante duo decades earlier at Camp Montague, but that Jacqueline had been the catalyst that kept it going all these years. That night’s mission was something she would not be denied, despite his protests about the potential pitfalls.
He pulled the car into the industrial lot that butted up against the quiet neighborhood where Dennis and Helen Quinlan lived. In addition to being clients, the Quinlans were, after great scrutiny of their tax records and financial documents, the accountants who had helped Roland Glazer perpetrate his sex-trafficking ring. The Quinlans were the financial wizards who had helped Glazer hide his money. They were the ones who had issued the checks and initiated the money transfers that allowed Glazer the freedom to travel to his secluded island where young women were delivered on a weekly basis. Others were involved—politicians and businessmen and royalty—but none of those players were touchable. The Quinlans, however, were accessible and had had their fingerprints on Glazer’s dirty dealings for years. The excuse they offered when they approached Lancaster & Jordan—that they didn’t know where Glazer’s money originated from, or where it went after they finished protecting it—was fragile at best, an outright lie more likely. The explanation may have been true at first, perhaps. But it was unfathomable that their ignorance persisted longer than a fleeting moment. Their guilt was evidenced by the fact that after Roland Glazer came under federal indictment, the Quinlans ran to Lancaster & Jordan for protection against prosecution.
He turned off the headlights and drifted to a stop as the wheels crunched over gravel.
“In and out,” he said to Jacqueline.
A quick nod of her head was all he got in return. Then, she opened the door and disappeared into the forest. With the headlights off, he kept the engine running. They had clocked the mission three different times and had a top and bottom for how long it should take her to trek through the woods, sneak across the back lawn, retrieve Dennis Quinlan’s shotgun from the garage, enter through the back door, climb the stairs, take care of Dennis and Helen Quinlan, exit the home, race back through the woods, and make their escape.
He watched the clock as he waited. The bottom time limit came and went. He began sweating when the upper limit approached and grew restless when it passed. Something had gone wrong, and he thought for a fleeting moment about heading into the woods to see what had happened. But that was a poor decision that would put both of them at risk. The other option was worse: abort the mission and leave without her.
He could do neither, so he waited. And waited longer, until, finally, he saw a figure in the woods. Jacqueline was running in a frantic way he had never seen before. Something had gone wrong. He shifted the car into reverse, and as soon as she clambered into the passenger seat, he hit the gas pedal and spun gravel as he swung the car into a wild backward U-turn. After shifting into drive, he ripped out of the industrial park. Once on the main road and with some distance between them and the Quinlans’ home, he turned on the headlights and reduced his speed to the legal limit.
He looked over at her and saw that she’d placed her gloved hands over her face. The index finger on her right hand protruded through the glove where the latex had split.
“Your glove is broken,” he said.
