Deadline(128)

            The meeting broke up, and they left a couple minutes apart. When only Laughton and Jennifer Barns were left in the newspaper office, she asked, “What about Randy? Was it awful?”

            “Awful for me,” Laughton said. He leaned toward her, talking in a hoarse whisper. “He never saw it coming. One minute he was there, and the next he wasn’t. Fast, painless. Not a bad way to go. But I’ll remember it forever.”

            She looked him over for a moment, then said, “You couldn’t kill all of us, and get away with it.”

            “I know. Not that I didn’t think about it,” Laughton said. “It’s just not feasible. I try to stick to that standard—doing what’s feasible. If Flowers had any hard evidence against us, he would have moved already. That makes me think we’ve still got a chance.”

            “Unless he’s focused on catching the killer, and is letting the money thing go until that’s done,” Barns said.

            “I don’t think that’s likely. That’s just not the way cops think,” Laughton said. He looked at his watch. “It’s been a couple minutes. You better get out of here.”

            —

            BARNS WALKED ACROSS the parking lot and got into her Subaru, and it occurred to her that Flowers probably would place a premium on finding the killer, rather than the money thing. And Laughton had just confessed to the four board members that he’d killed Kerns. That had to be a chip worth something.

            Her phone rang, and she glanced at it: Owens.

            “What’s up?”

            “Vike just confessed to killing Randy.”

            “I was thinking that exact thought, just now,” Barns said. “It’s like you pulled it out of my brain.”

            “If the four of us board members stuck together, we might be able to throw Vike overboard along with Henry and Del,” Owens said. “We might claim that Henry and Del directed Randy, and that Vike was in on all of that. We could say that we met and that Jen Houser said she was going to confront Vike about all of this, on our behalf, and then she disappeared—”

            “But how do we explain that Vike confessed to us?”

            “Well, it’s a little weak, but we could say that Jen Houser saw him with Randy, in Randy’s truck, just before Randy was killed, and told us about it. Then Jen Houser disappeared, and we all went together and confronted him. He told us he was going to drag us all down if we didn’t support him—”

            “Okay. Listen, Bob, we need to talk to the others . . . the other board members. I think you’ve got something there, a kernel of something, but it’s not quite right yet. For example, if Vike confessed to us, why didn’t we drive right over and tell Flowers?”

            “Okay. Okay, we have to work on it. Maybe we don’t say he confessed—just that Jen Houser saw them together. Listen, let’s call the others and let it cook for a while, see what we come up with. In the meantime, stay the hell away from Vike. He has wigged out. As they used to say many years ago.”

            “Many,” Barns said. “All right. Let’s talk. If we can give them all the killers, all wrapped up . . . we might slip through this.”

            —

            SHE PUT THE SUBARU in gear, drove across the parking lot, and never saw Del Cray in his aging gray Pathfinder, slumped in his seat, eating a slice of mushroom and sausage.

            The pizza smelled so good that he hadn’t been able to wait until he got back to his house, so he opened the box and pulled a slice free . . . and saw Gedney come out the back of the newspaper office. That was interesting, but not astonishing. Then, a minute later, Owens emerged, looking guilty, checking around, before scurrying over to his car. That was even more interesting.