Deadline(126)

            Jennifer Barns: “You’re telling us that our goose is cooked?”

            Laughton shook his head: “Not quite yet. I think I might be able to skate, unless you all decide to take me down with you. I mean, I have no power over the school budget—”

            “You sure took the money, that’s all the police would have to know,” said Owens.

            “Like I said, you all could drag me down. I know that,” Laughton said. “Listen: if we hang together, we could still make it. But to do that, we may have to throw Henry and Del overboard. They actually moved the money, they’re the ones who always talked with Masilla, they made the deals. They were Randy’s boss—Henry hired Randy himself. I think we could argue that it was a three-man arrangement, and we didn’t know about it.”

            “But we knew every step,” Barns said. “If we tried to throw them overboard, they’d take us down out of revenge. I mean, that’s what I would do, if I was in their shoes.”

            “They might try, if they had nothing to lose, but they do have something to lose,” Laughton said. “They both have families.”

            The board members looked at each other, and then Parsons said, “Stop beating around the bush. Tell us what you’re thinking.”

            “Very simple,” Laughton said. “I’m pretty sure that Flowers is going to tear the house down. He’s smarter than he looks, and he’s been working everybody. Suppose we went to Henry and Del and said, ‘We’re not going to make it. If you take the rap, the other six of us . . . well, five of us, if Jen Houser doesn’t show up . . . we’ll take care of your families. They can go off to live with their folks, and every year they’ll get X amount of dollars in the mail.’”

            “How big an X?” Gedney asked. She looked unhappy with the prospect.

            “We’d have to work that out,” Laughton said. “I’m thinking, you know, if each one of us put two hundred thousand dollars into a trust at Vanguard or Fidelity, and if we had to have all five signatures to move money, we could probably get both families twenty thousand a year, and still keep the million. We’d just send them the interest, four percent, and anything over that we’d keep. Then, when this is all blown over, and nobody remembers it . . . we cash the fund out. Take our money back.”

            They all sat silently for a minute, then Jen 1 said, “You really think . . . I don’t know. It seems crazy. Maybe too easy.”

            Owens said, almost conversationally, “You know, Henry and Del have got to know they’ll be the first to go. There’s no way we could have done any of this without them knowing. So maybe . . . they might buy it.”

            “If Henry doesn’t stick a gun in his ear,” Jennifer Gedney said.

            “Which would save us all some money,” Laughton said. “Wouldn’t have to take care of his family.”

            The other four turned to look at him, then Owens said, “You went out the door with Randy the other night. I saw you talking.”

            “Saying good-bye,” Laughton said.

            They all looked at him some more, then Parsons said, “I’ll be goddamned. You killed him.”

            Laughton started to deny it, but felt the sweat pop out on his forehead, and finally said, “It had to be done. No way he was going to get away—and if he did, he’d have been bleeding us for years. Forever.”

            Jen Gedney said, “Viking—that’s awful. You really killed him?”

            Laughton waved his hands at them: “He was a dead man, anyway. He would have wound up shooting it out with some cops, somewhere, probably kill one or two of them. I saw the chance, and I took it. Saved us fifty thousand bucks, each.”