“Turns out I was a coward, turns out when I was old enough to kill the old monster, I didn’t. I just wanted to scare him to keep him quiet. But I knew he wouldn’t. This time I was going to strangle him. Would I have gone all the way until I knew that his heart was no longer beating?” Weldon shook his head, looked down at his bandaged foot, winced. He said finally, “What are you going to do?”

He looked at each of them in turn. From Inspector Delion to Detective Flynn, to the FBI agents, in a circle around him. The pain meds had finally kicked in completely and there was only a dull throb in his foot. He looked at Nick. “I don’t blame you for trying to protect an old man. You didn’t know.”

“I wish I had shot him instead,” Nick said. “But if I had, we wouldn’t have learned the truth.”

Weldon was shaking his head, back and forth, his eyes on each of their faces in turn. “I left home on the day I turned eighteen. I came to LA because I was a good writer and I wanted to write TV and movie scripts. I met a girl, Georgia, and we fell in love. I got her pregnant. We got married. A drunk driver killed her when our son was only three years old.”

“You raised your son alone just like your father did you?”

“Of course, but I wasn’t like my father, I really loved my boy. I would have done anything for him. It wasn’t long before I got work writing for a TV sitcom and started making enough money so I didn’t have to worry about it all the time.” He paused a moment. “I kept up with the old man. Do you know that long after he was in his sixties, the people still wanted him to stay on as sheriff?”

“Why?” Dane asked.

“The old man was so mean he could face down drunk bikers. Once, I heard he’d pistol-whipped a man for hassling a woman, all the while yelling at him, ‘No one fucks with my town!’ That’s what he always loved to say, and then he’d spit out a wad of tobacco.

“I’ll bet you’re all wondering why I’ve kept him in such a nice place for the last ten years.”

No one had actually really thought about it yet, but Nick knew they would have, sooner or later.

She said, “Why did you?”

Weldon said simply, “He told me if I didn’t keep him sitting real pretty until he kicked off, he’d contact the press and tell them where bodies were buried that no one even knew about, tell them where his gun was hidden, tell them all about the bundles he’d buried beneath that elm tree. There’d be so much proof, they’d have to believe him.

“I agreed. What else could I do? There was my own growing career to think about, but most important, there was my boy, my own innocent boy.”

Nick said slowly, “I guess I can understand that, but was he still killing people? Didn’t you realize you had to do something once you were an adult and out from under his thumb?”

Weldon said, “I tried never to think about it. He’s right. I was a coward, and he knew I wouldn’t say anything once I had my boy. He was still the sheriff thirteen years ago when something went wrong with an arrest, and a car ran over him, smashing his legs. He’s been confined to a wheelchair ever since. So I knew the world was safe from him.”

Savich started to say something, but Nick shook her head, said, “He started his threats recently, didn’t he? He knew he was getting close to the end and he wanted recognition for what he’d done. He wanted the world to know just what had walked among them for years and years.”

Weldon nodded, his hands clasped, so pale, so deadened, that it broke her heart. “Yes. After he told me what he was planning to do—you know, make his announcement to the press, tell everyone everything—I didn’t know what to do. I reminded him that he’d sworn to keep quiet for as long as I kept him in that home. He just laughed, said he was going to croak pretty soon so it didn’t matter. I knew his madness was beyond control then.”

Weldon stopped cold. Then he seemed to look deeply inside himself, drew a deep breath, and said, “That’s when he told me he’d had a nice little visit with his grandson. And that’s when I hit him and knocked his chair over. I should have killed him then but I just couldn’t do it. I threatened him, hoped to scare him into silence like I already told you, but I knew that wouldn’t work. After I left, I thought about it and knew I had to kill him, there was just no other way. I failed.”

Dane said very gently, “Weldon, your father visited with your boy and confessed what he was to him?”

“Yes.”

“Weldon, who is your son?”