Tail Spin

shrink had only spoken of forgiving himself for an unfortunate mistake. Unfortunate mistake, he repeated, the little girl was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake.”
    Sherlock’s eyebrow shot up. “A shrink?”
    “Yes, he went to a psychiatrist for maybe six months. Jimmy told me Greg hadn’t believed it smart to see a local psychiatrist—too much chance for it to get out since there were probably three news sharks hanging around every doctor’s office to see if any of the great and famous paid them a visit.”
    She took a deep breath, looked at all of them. “Jimmy finally decided to call a press conference. He was going to confess what he’d done, then go to the police. Only thing is, he didn’t have the chance. He died.”
    Sherlock said, “Since you believe the Abbotts killed him, he must have told his sister and brother what he was going to do, right?”
    “Yes, he told them.”
    “Did he call his ex-wife and his daughters?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe he did since the fallout would affect them. I’m sure he gave everyone close to him fair warning, probably begged for their understanding and forgiveness since they’d have to deal with the consequences. I believe his brother Quincy told him to plant a tree in her memory, in Delancey Park, where he’d hit her.”
    Savich looked up from MAX’s screen. “The little girl’s name was Melissa Parks. Her case remains open. A hit-and-run.”
    “Anything else about her we should know?” Sherlock asked.
    “A year ago, Melissa Parks’s family received an envelope containing one hundred thousand dollars in untraceable small bills with a note that said only ‘I’m sorry’. It revved up the investigation again, but since they couldn’t trace the money, or the note, it once again went cold.”
    “Jimmy didn’t tell me about that,” Rachael said. “I remember a couple of days after he told me about the accident, I walked into his study and saw him staring at his phone. I knew he wanted to call Melissa’s parents, call the police, simply end it all, right then. Unfortunately he waited a few more days, warned those who would take a hit, and then he was dead.”
    Sherlock said, “Rachael, you know for sure your father told his family and Greg Nichols, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay. I have to tell you, I have a hard time believing that his confession would enrage his family to such a degree that they’d kill him.”
    “There’s more. The reason his death was declared an accident was because when the two patrolmen found Jimmy’s Beemer at the bottom of a cliff, Jimmy was alone in the driver’s seat. They said they could smell the alcohol on him. They said it was apparent he’d had too much to drink and lost control of his car, and hurtled down a steep embankment just off the Beltway, near Bethesda Navy Medical Center.”
    “Yes, I remember that,” Sherlock said.
    “Jimmy told me after he hit the little girl, he simply couldn’t make himself get behind the wheel any longer. The fact is, he stopped driving. It was manageable because he had a car and driver available to him. Not only that, he hadn’t had a drink since the night he killed the girl. That’s what he told me, and I believed him.”
    “Then why didn’t you tell the police the truth?” Jack asked.
    “I couldn’t,” Rachael said. “It would have meant telling them why he’d stopped drinking and hadn’t driven a car for the past eighteen months. I simply couldn’t bring myself to do it. All of it would have come out. It would have destroyed his legacy.” She drew a deep breath. “That was the main reason I took off for Sicily. I had to decide what to do. For two weeks I chewed it over every which way, and I came to a decision. I was coming back to Washington to tell the truth. Of course, I was going to discuss it with my mother, but I knew she would agree with me and it was what Jimmy would have done, what he was fully prepared to do. The least I could do for him was honor his wishes. After I nail Quincy and Laurel, I can and will do what Jimmy wanted to do. I will clear his conscience for him.”
    Sheriff Hollyfield was tapping a pen on his desk blotter. He said thoughtfully “Your father’s dead, so is his conscience, so is his guilt. I’m thinking like his aide did—why ruin Senator Abbott’s name? Why ruin his memory? Why destroy what he stood for, what he was as a man for most of his lifetime? And that’s what would happen. The sum of his life would be