Weldon shook his head. “Listen, Agent Savich, my son isn’t a murderer, he isn’t.”

“But you believe he is,” Sherlock said, “and it’s eating you alive. You think your son killed the people in San Francisco and in Pasadena, copying the scripts you wrote.”

Finally, Weldon DeLoach said, “I just couldn’t make myself accept that he was like his grandfather, that his head wasn’t right, that something was missing in him.”

Dane said, “We’ve got to bring him in, Weldon, you must know that. You can’t let him continue doing what your own father did for so many years.”

Weldon was shaking his head. “Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t figure it out until just a couple of days ago. And even then I didn’t figure it out for myself. The old man actually bragged about how he’d finally gotten a real man in the family, how he didn’t have much to teach his grandson, because—like his granddaddy—he was born knowing what to do and how to do it. He told me that his grandson came to see him, brought a Christmas present, a nice tie with red dots on it. And how perfect that was, and so he told the boy he was going to die soon and he wanted to tell him all about himself. And he laughed and laughed at how stupid everyone was, the cops especially.”

Weldon fell silent, looked at them again. He said at last, “I haven’t known what to do. I just knew I had to kill that obscene old man, get him buried, and gone.”

Sherlock said very gently, “But what were you going to do about your son?”

“Get him help. Stop him from doing any more harm. Turn him over to the police if I had to.”

Sherlock said, “We’re the cops. What’s his name, Weldon?”

But Weldon just shook his head. “I couldn’t let him continue, not like my father had done. He was a good boy, really. I know something must have happened to make him snap, to turn him into a monster like his grandfather. I don’t know what it was, but there just had to have been something. He was doing so well. He’s very smart, you know, extraordinarily talented. But then there were some signs—he struggled when he was in high school, didn’t like his teachers, couldn’t make friends—it was enough to make me pay attention. He was violent once, when he accidentally killed a girl in college, but it could have happened to any guy, you know? Things just got out of hand. It was involuntary manslaughter. I got him help. They made him well. My son promised me he was just fine, and I wanted desperately to believe him.

“Something happened. The old man did this to him, somehow.”

He looked up at each of them in turn. “Do you know I still don’t know how many people that old monster killed? There were people he killed that were never found by anyone. Oh Jesus.”

He put his head in his hands and sobbed very quietly.

THIRTY-TWO

“Wait! You can’t go in there!”

As she pushed past him, Sherlock said, “Jay, it’s time for you to go away now. It’s time to take your custom suits from Armani, get another job, and pay off your credit cards.”

“But he’s meditating! He specifically told me he didn’t want to be bothered. And I love Armani. When I wear Armani everyone knows it’s Armani.”

Suddenly Arnold Loftus came roaring forward. He didn’t try to bar their way, he rounded on Jay Smith. “Shut up, Jay. They’re here for a reason. Don’t try to stop them.”

“You’re the damned bodyguard. Don’t let them go in there, you moron, you’ve—”

Arnold very gently picked up Jay Smith beneath his armpits and simply walked away with him. He said over his shoulder, “The Little Shit fired me. Whatever it is, go for it.”

Dane gently turned the handle. The door was locked. He turned to Jay, still held up by his armpits, and held out his hand. “Key,” was all he said.

Arnold let Jay down, watched him like a hawk as he went to his desk, got down on his knees, and untaped a key beneath the center drawer. He handed it to Dane.

“Thank you,” Dane said.

Dane quietly unlocked the door, slowly pushed it open. The huge office was dark, like a movie theater, and indeed, there was a movie showing, on the far white wall. Linus Wolfinger was seated in the chair behind his desk, his chin propped up in his hands, watching.

It was an episode of The Consultant, one they hadn’t seen. He didn’t look away from the screen even after all six of the people who’d come into his office were standing around his desk.

He said in a calm, conversational voice, “My dear old dad blew the whistle, I take it?”