A Brilliant Death by Yocum Robin

Author:Yocum, Robin [Yocum, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: USA
ISBN: 9781633881297
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2016-04-04T14:00:00+00:00

“He was in hock up to his ass for that boat,” Tornik said.

Travis shrugged. “That doesn’t mean he killed my mom. He didn’t take the boat out on the river. He was on the road.”

“No, that alone does not mean he did it. As you’re looking at this, pretend you’re putting together a puzzle, a puzzle of that instant in time when your mother died. It’s the big picture we’re looking at. In a perfect world, it would show you how she died, where, and who was responsible. But you and I both know that isn’t possible. You’re always going to be missing a couple of the pieces, so you’re putting together a puzzle where you’ll never get a complete picture. You with me?” Travis nodded. “What we do is look at all the pieces that are available, and we try to put those together. Now, when we’re done, maybe we don’t have a complete picture with every piece of evidence that we’d like, but we’ve put together enough of the picture that we can imagine what the missing pieces look like. That’s what we’re doing here. In itself, that letter doesn’t mean your dad did anything, but it’s a piece of the puzzle. So you put it on the table and go look for the next piece.”

“Okay, what’s next?”

Tornik looked back down at his cheat sheet. “Page twenty-four. We found some of the instruments from the boat’s console. The switch to the boat’s running lights was turned off, but the ignition switch was turned on.”

“I don’t understand the significance,” Travis said.

“If you’re out on the river at night, it’s common sense to keep your running lights on.”

“So? My mom probably didn’t know much about the boat. Or, maybe they didn’t want to be seen.”

“Maybe they didn’t want everyone in Brilliant to know they were out on the river, but they would certainly have wanted a barge to see them. After your mom’s death, I went for a nighttime ride on that towboat—the same one that was pushing the barge that crushed your mother’s boat. That spotlight is strong enough to see a small boat drifting in the river a mile away, maybe further. I think the lights were killed on the boat because it was stashed in the brush near the bank—probably on the West Virginia side. When the barge got close, someone drove the boat out of the brush and toward the front of the barge, but under the spotlight. By the time the captain saw the boat, it was too late to do anything. And here’s the important fact: It wasn’t drifting, as was first reported. It was driven into the barge. That’s why the ignition switch was on: because it wasn’t adrift, it was a kamikaze mission.”

“Kind of a wild-ass theory, isn’t it? They drove the boat in front of the barge and then tried to swim to shore? I don’t get it.”

I watched Tornik roll his teeth over his lip, and his left eye twitched like a turn signal.

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