DAVID HALSTEAD ARRIVED HOME to a barking dog and an empty house. The gate had been left open, the back door as well. As he’d frantically raced home from the city, he had prepared himself for fear, for fighting, for despair. He hadn’t known what he would find in this house, though he had followed the instructions carefully. No police, no private security. He’d emptied the firm’s accounts, cashed out what was left on the home equity line. The mortgage deed was somewhere in the house and he would sign it over. Everything he could get his hands on was now in his briefcase, which he gripped tightly as he walked slowly through the house, room by room.
There were no cars in the driveway, no Jacks, no Beth. The other girls should have been home by now as well, and the nanny, the maid. The house always filled up after 3 P.M.
“Jacks?” he called out. There was no answer. He moved faster now, his mind spinning with thoughts too horrible to imagine. He thought about that execution years before, the husband facedown in a pool of blood on the closet floor, but when he raced through the remaining rooms of the house he found that they, too, were all empty.
Bounding back down the stairs, he retraced his steps in search of clues. It was then that he found the note on the counter. It was from his wife, and he scanned it quickly before reading each word. The man left willingly. It was just a scare. Kids are fine, at a friend’s house, but not sure if it’s safe to say where. Tell you in person later. Everything is going to be OK. Please, just wait for me.
David set the briefcase down, felt the charges settle inside him. They were safe for the moment, or so it seemed. Jacks was clever, she would have dropped some clue in the note if she’d been forced to write it. And her car was gone. No signs of struggle, which surely there would have been if they had taken Beth.
No, this wasn’t like that. They just wanted the money, whoever they were; he didn’t even know for sure. Everything had been arranged through that lawyer. It had all seemed so businesslike. Posh offices with secretaries. A Park Avenue address, fancy suits. He’d signed legal contracts, documents that had been notarized to obtain the loans, and he’d told himself they were nothing worse than junk bonds. Exorbitant interest, but that was to be expected given the level of risk he was asking them to take on. And now, one deadline come and gone and they were calling his house, his office. Sending a man to his home, scaring his wife, threatening his child. It was surreal, and yet the message had been delivered. This would never stop, would never end, because what he had in that briefcase was not even the first installment of what he now owed.
He looked out the window at the white, glistening snow. He saw the dog settling down, chasing after a squirrel. The tree swing swayed against the cold bursts of wind that the day had brought, along with the piercing sunshine and bitter cold temperatures. He took it all in, soaked it into his bones, then he grabbed the briefcase and went up the stairs.
In his study, he searched his files for the deed to the house. He pulled it out and signed it over to his wife, forging a notary’s signature the best he could under the circumstances. Then he folded the deed and placed it inside the briefcase with the rest of the family’s assets. He was on autopilot now, the fear gone, the panic subdued. What was left he couldn’t recognize, but it propelled him forward and he didn’t try to stop it. He didn’t know how to begin to stop it after everything he’d done.
In the back of his closet, on the top shelf, was his hunting rifle, the one he’d been given as a gift by the Barlows years before and that had been put away soon after. David was not a hunter, though Barlow had dragged him along on a couple of his excursions. He knew how to use it. It wasn’t that complicated.
His blood was moving faster now, though he had slowed his body, taking each step as it came, being careful. He walked inside the bathroom and closed the door, locking it shut. Then he laid the briefcase on the vanity counter, popping open the lid to expose the contents freely.
How had this happened? How had it come to this? Part of him was fighting it now, screaming that it couldn’t be what it was. He thought back on his pleasant childhood, his years at Harvard and working on Wall Street. Then his own firm, and clients, the expensive lunches and golf conferences out west. Three children, a house in Wilshire, private schools, expensive cars. It couldn’t all be gone after one mistake; it was not possible. But no, there had been more than one mistake. Think about it! He could not afford to have pity after what he’d done. He had not secured the insurance on the hotel; the most important detail had slipped right past him in his moment of arrogance, or forgetfulness. He’d jumped the gun; maybe he’d been too eager to get the investors on board, and in the end he had not done the due diligence. How and why, he could not say for sure. But the lapse occurred after the property transfer. It was on him and only him.
Still, is that all it took to ruin a man? One mistake? No, it was all that he had done after that, the covering up, raising a second fund to cover the first. It was fraud, and that was the moment he’d become more than a careless investor. He’d become a criminal. And the crime had been exposed, and then needed to be managed. It had seemed manageable that day in Angelo Ferrino’s office. He had talked about it like any lawyer would, with a series of actions that could be taken to solve the problem. Only the solution relied upon David coming up with more money, more investors at a time when the market was taking a sudden dive and he was fresh off a criminal investigation. It was his own arrogance that had made the plan seem possible, and of course Ferrino had known that. He’d been banking on it.
David could see the road map now, the twists and turns he’d taken to get to this place. He had not been the victim of circumstance. There was no hand-wringing to be done. If he were on his own, he might find a way to disappear. Leave the money and the house and pray that it would be enough for them. But you can’t hide a wife and three little girls. He had a two-million-dollar life insurance policy that Ferrino and his clients could never touch.
David Halstead was a lot of things, but he had never been a coward. He took the gun and headed outside to the woodshed.