Prove the Nameless by Terence Faherty

Author:Terence Faherty [Faherty, Terence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Terence Faherty

• • •

Much later, sunburned and tired, Harry and I sat in my brittle lawn chairs watching the little edible pieces of the fluke we’d caught cook on a charcoal grill. Amanda stood on the seawall, throwing my stale bread to the lagoon ducks.

“Turning forty was a bitch,” Harry said after a long silence.

“I know,” I said.

“Going back to the firm when Dad had his stroke was worse.” By the firm, Harry meant Ohlman, Pulsifer, and Hurst, the New York law office that he had briefly escaped to try his hand as a painter.

“But that’s only temporary,” I said, even though we both knew it probably wasn’t.

“Everything’s temporary, Owen. Then you die.” There was another healthy pause. “Ever think about the old days when you were working for the firm?”

I had thought of them very recently, thanks to Barbara Lambert questioning me about the Carteret case. “Why do you ask?”

“I was just wondering if you’ve ever thought of coming back.” I looked over at him. He wasn’t smiling, and the beer in his hand—the first of the day—was almost full.

“Ms. Kiefner’s been asking after you,” Harry said, naming the firm’s office manager, a woman who had terrified me as few non-nuns could. “Seriously, Owen. I’d like to have a friendly face around. Someone I could talk to.”

“I haven’t changed, Harry. I still wouldn’t fit in.”

“The problem is I’ve changed. I don’t fit in anymore myself.”

“Besides, I have a job.”

“I think we can outbid a newspaper.”

“I meant I have a case.”

“The girl’s death was an accident,” Harry said, giving me a very pointed look.

“Right,” I said, addressing the fluke. “But I haven’t finished what she asked me to do. I can’t leave it hanging.”

Harry had anticipated that objection. “I could help you there. I thought it over on the way in from the bay. Only one of the old murder suspects isn’t known to be dead, the cult leader, Geist. If you’re going to learn anything new about those murders, it’s going to be from Geist. And,” he added, addressing the fluke now himself, “if the Lambert woman’s death means that the murderer is back in action …”

“Which it doesn’t,” I said.

“Right. But if it did, the murderer could only be Geist. To settle it once and for all, we only have to find him.”

“How do ‘we’ do that?”

“Leave it to me. The firm is not without resources. And a little demonstration of them may convince you to come back and keep me company.”

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