after the votes were counted.
Except for one person.
In saying his good-byes the President leaned into Walter Sullivan to
embrace the older man and say a few private words. Sullivan smiled at
the President’s remarks. Then the old man stumbled slightly but righted
himself by grasping the arms of the President.
After his guests had gone, Sullivan smoked a cigar in his study. As he
moved to the window, the lights from the presidential motorcade quickly
faded from view. In spite of himself, Sullivan had to smile. The image
of the slight wince in the President’s eye as Sullivan had gripped his
forearm had made for a particularly victorious moment. A long shot, but
sometimes long shots paid off. Detective Frank had been very open with
the billionaire about the detective’s theories regarding the case. One
theory that had particularly interesfed Walter Sullivan was his wife
having wounded her assailant with the letter opener, possibly in the leg
or arm. It must have cut deeper than the police had thought. Possible
nerve damage. A surface wound certainly would have had time to heal by
now.
Sullivan slowly walked out of the study, turning off the light as he
exited. President Alan Richmond had assuredly felt only a small pain
when Sullivan’s fingers had sunk into his flesh. But as with a heart
attack, a small pain was so often followed by a much larger one.
Sullivan smiled broadly as he considered the possibilities.
FROM ATOP THE KNOLL WALTER SULLIVAN STARED AT THE LITtie wooden house
with the green tin roof. He pulled his muffler around his ears, steadied
his weakened legs with a thick walking stick. The cold was bitter in the
hills of southwest Virginia this time of year and the forecast pointed
unerringly to snow, and a lot of it.
He made his way down across the, for now, iron-hard ground. The house
was in an excellent state of repair thanks to his limitless pocketbook
and a deep sense of nostalgia that seemed to more and more consume him
as he grew closer to becoming a thread of the past himself. Woodrow
Wilson was in the White House and the earth was heavily into the First
World War when Walter Patrick Sullivan had first seen the glimmer of
light with the aid of a midwife and the grim determination of his
mother, Millie, who had lost all three previous children, two in
childbirth.
His father, a coal miner-it seems everyone’s father was a coal miner in
that part of Virginia back then-had lived until his son’s twelfth
birthday and then had abruptly expired from a series of maladies brought
on by too much coal dust and too little rest. For years the future
billionaire had watched his daddy stagger into the house, every muscle
exhausted, the face as black as their big Labrador’s coat, and collapse
on the little bed in the back room. Too tired to eat, or play with the
little boy who each day hoped for some attention but ended up getting
none from a father whose perpetual weariness was so painful to witness.
His mother had lived long enough to see her offspring become one of the
richest men in the world, and her dutiful son had taken great pains to
ensure that she had every comfort his immense resources could provide.
For a tribute to his late father, he had purchased the mine that had
killed him. Five million cash. He had paid a fifty-thousand-dollar bonus
to every miner in the place and then he had, with great ceremony, shut
it down.
He opened the door and went inside. The gas fireplace threw warmth into
the room without the necessity of firewood. The pantry was stocked with
enough food for the next six months. Here he was entirely
self-sufficient. He never allowed anyone to stay here with him. This had
been his homestead. All with the right to be here, with the exception of
himself, were dead. He was alone and he wanted it that way.
The simple meal he prepared was lingered over while he stared moodily
out the window where in the failing light he could just make out the
circle of naked elms near the house; the branches waved to him with