I cringed a little at that. Assuming we all made it out of here, I’d have to give him an enormous tip. “Well. Thanks for not hurting him, I guess.” Hopefully that boded well for me too?
“I’m not going to hurt you either,” Kevin said, flicking some beads of sweat from his brow. For all he was saying, the gun didn’t waver. “I mean it, Pom. I don’t want to hurt you. And I promise I won’t, as long as we can come to an… understanding.”
Something hooted overhead. An owl? I didn’t know owls even lived in Central Park. “What kind of understanding?”
He shifted back on his feet. With the lack of light, it was hard to see anything of his eyes but a glint. I couldn’t tell if he was panicking, or cocky, or calm. “The building. Pom, you’re going to come out tomorrow and tell everybody that you’re very sorry, but you have to backtrack on your plan to donate the building and its archive because you’ve already signed the deed over to me. For a fair price, of course. Above market, even.”
I furrowed my brow, though I wasn’t sure if he could see it, and made sure to infect my voice with as much of Old Pom as I could still manage. Sometimes it was useful to have the entire world think you were stupid. Probably it was half the reason I was still alive. “I don’t understand.”
“I want that building. No, Ineedthat building.” He sounded patient, like all of my teachers had the first time they tried to explain something to me. “And I don’t want there to be any more violence in that process.”
“Youkilled Conrad,” I said grimly. I was already here at gunpoint. He knew I’d put it together eventually, even if I didn’t know now. Assuming he let me go.
He was silent for a moment, probably thinking about whether he should admit to it or not. But remember: He thought I wasstupid. Yes, I’d solved one murder, but everybody thought I’d blundered my way into the solution. He sighed, air leaking out of a punctured tire. “Just sign the building over to me.”
“Why did you do it?” I persisted. “Did he hit you, and you hit him back?” I knew that Kevin hadn’t hit Conrad; my dad had. But Kevin didn’t know I knew that. Kevin didn’t know I knew anything. “In that case, it’s self-defense. Right? You wouldn’t go to jail for that.”
He was silent again, another long moment. Something scurried in the brush around us. He said, finally, “I didn’t hit him. He didn’t hit me. It was…” Pause. Nothing scurried this time. The entire world hung silent, suspended, as if it, too, were holding its breath. “He fell.”
“But he didn’t just fall, right?” I scrunched up my brows even more. “I remember the police said he had to have been pushed, or he wouldn’t have hit the sculpture with enough force for it to pierce his body the way it did.”
“I didn’t mean to push him!” The words burst out. I actually took a step back from the force. “He just… He wouldn’t shut up. It was only supposed to be a little shove to make him stop talking.”You didn’t mean to push him, or it was only supposed to be a little shove?It probably wouldn’t be helpful to clarify that right now. “I didn’t realize…” A hard swallow. “I didn’t realize he was so close to the railing, or that the railing was so low.” A pause. “If anything, this is the venue’s fault. What kind of safety rating is that? It’s unconscionable.”
“He wouldn’t stop talking.” I brought him back to earlier in the conversation, before we started talking about historical buildings and grandfathered-in accessibility ratings. “About what?” I let the words hang there. When it didn’t sound like he was eager to go on, I tossed him a crumb. “It was because he put two and two together from his last look around the building, didn’t he? You’d seemed desperate to take it off his hands. He must have wondered why.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But he didn’t sound angry anymore. He sounded… tired.
Because he did know what I was talking about. And he knew that I knew what we were talking about.
And he’d already killed one person to cover it up.
“I think you do.” We both knew it. I might as well stop being coy. “William.”
He sucked in a sharp breath. “How did you figure it out?”
“There’s only so long you can pretend to be someone you’re not,” I said somberly. “That’s something I learned firsthand.” I paused to let my profound wisdom sink in. “Also, the way you were trying to use my brother. I thought it was weird that my brother cared so much about what I did with that house, but then, after I learned the two of you were collaborating, I talked to him more. You told him you’d help him take over Afton Hotels if he got me to sell you the building. That’s why you were so interested in whether Gabe wanted to be part of the business, weren’t you? So that you could use him instead, since he’s closer to me. You weresointerested in that building.
“It made me take another look at the records. Isaiah, the artist, said that you’d wanted his painting of all those superheroes. And I remembered that William, the kid who’d lived in the brownstone, had doodled superheroes that wound up in the rec-ords. And under the wallpaper. And all over that house. Your parents must have been annoyed they had to wallpaper over your big, looping signature. I did a little more research, and found out the truth.”
His mouth opened, as if ready to accuse me of lying, then closed again when he realized I’d told him I had receipts.
“That’s how you got into the house the day you went after me and Vienna and then out of the basement, isn’t it?” I gestured at his head. He still had on that wig Persimmon told me he was wearing to disguise balding, though in reality it was probably to cover up the big bruise or bump I’d given him when I smashedhim with the filing cabinet. “You still had the keys from the old days, when you lived there.”
He hissed. Literally hissed, like a cat. He probably wasn’t used to people telling him he had to do things he didn’t want to do. Not then, not ever.
I sighed. “It’s over, William. You should just admit to it while you have some dignity left.”
He was silent for a while. Just as I was thinking maybe I could jump at him and surprise him, he said, very quietly, “Nobody’s called me that in many years.” He sighed. “And I wasn’t coming after you and Vienna. I didn’t even know you were there. I was… talking to the records.”
Right.Where are you hiding? When I find you, I’m going to rip you to pieces.It was a little silly, but it made more sense.
He went on, “I knew there was more in the house that could point to me, but getting those would at least buy me time where I could hopefully get back in and find it. As a child I hid a time capsule beneath one of the loose floorboards, but I couldn’t remember exactly where. I’d written all under the walls. I needed that building.”
Grim satisfaction. I said, “William’s not your legal name anymore, right? When did you change it?”
“When I went to college,” he said. “I introduced myself to my roommate and told him I’d grown up in New York. He said, ‘Wow, that’s so badass. Ever get in a knife fight on the subway?’ I’d never taken the subway, of course, but the awe in his voice, Pom… He thought I was a fighter. A survivor. A badass. Nobody had ever spoken to William Melrose, the weak, nerdy kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth, like that. So I went along with it. Told him I went by my middle name, Kevin, which was actually the name of our family chef. And just like that, I became someone else.”
“You embellished it over the years,” I said. “Until Kevin was a whole different person. Your entire brand’s been built on thisidea that you’re Kevin Miller, a guy who worked his way up from nothing. It all falls apart if they find out you’re actually William Melrose.”
