Chapter 13 - The Voice on the Magnetic Tape
The narrow attic fell into a suffocating, hostile silence broken only by the patter of October rain against the slate shingles.
Marcus stepped directly between me and the two armed security guards, his broad frame blocking the dim light from the stairwell.
"Step aside, Miller," Sterling said, leaning lightly on his silver-headed cane with the relaxed posture of a man inspecting livestock.
"You've played the grieving martyr for over twenty years, and you've played it well."
"You took forty thousand dollars of my money when you sold your garage and left town in 2006."
"That was Donald's dirty payoff money through a straw buyer, you arrogant bastard," Marcus growled, his knuckles clenching into fists.
"I didn't know whose blood was on that cash until three days ago."
"Semantics," Sterling dismissed with a flick of his gloved fingers.
"The entire infrastructure of Oakhaven—the schools, the medical clinics, the very road you drove your motorcycle on—exists because I built it."
"Sarah Miller was an unfortunate collision on an unlit mountain road during a dense autumn fog."
"It was an unavoidable industrial accident."
"An industrial accident?" I spoke up from behind Marcus, holding the steel cash box tightly against my ribs.
"You hit a seventeen-year-old high school student who was walking to her bus stop because your blood-alcohol level was twice the legal limit."
Sterling turned his cold, grey eyes toward me, a faint smirk playing on his thin lips.
"Do you really believe a jury in this county will convict an eighty-two-year-old civic philanthropist on the word of a bitter clerk and an outlaw biker?"
"The core samples prove human biological material, nothing more."
"They don't prove driver identity. Donald is dead. Ray Vance is dead. There are no living eyewitnesses to that road."
"There's this," I said, holding up the black cassette tape in the beam of my penlight.
Sterling’s smirk vanished instantly, replaced by a sudden, rigid tension in the set of his jaw.
"Donald loved his analog surveillance," I said, watching Sterling’s eyes track the magnetic ribbon inside the plastic casing.
"He labeled this one October 14, 2004, 7:15 AM."
"Hand that tape to my associate, Clara," Sterling said, his voice losing its cultured cadence and turning sharp as a razor.
"And you will walk out of this attic with enough money in a Swiss trust to put your daughter through any medical school in this country."
"Refuse, and the local news will report that an unstable, violent felon broke into the old library, started an electrical fire, and perished inside with an archivist."
One of the security guards reached inside his jacket, drawing a suppressed semi-automatic pistol with practiced efficiency.
Marcus didn't give the man time to raise the weapon.
With a roar that shook the dust from the attic rafters, Marcus lunged across the four-foot gap between the pine chests.
He slammed his massive shoulder straight into the first armed guard, sending the man crashing through the dry lath-and-plaster wall.
The second guard lunged forward with a collapsible baton, aiming directly for Marcus’s collarbone.
I didn't hesitate.
I swung the heavy steel cash box with both hands, striking the second guard squarely across the side of his knee.
The metal corner caught the guard’s joint with a loud, sickening crack, sending him sprawling into the floorboards with a scream of agony.
Sterling stumbled backward toward the stairwell landing, swinging his silver-headed cane like a club to defend himself.
Marcus caught the polished wooden shaft in mid-air with his bare left hand, ripping it effortlessly from the old man's grip.
He grabbed Richard Sterling by the lapels of his thousand-dollar wool overcoat, lifting the eighty-two-year-old billionaire six inches off the floor.
He slammed him back against the brick chimney stack, the ancient mortar crumbling behind the old man's head.
"Give me one reason why I shouldn't throw you down these stairs headfirst," Marcus rumbled, his breath hot against Sterling’s trembling face.
Sterling was no longer a towering titan of industry; he was a fragile, terrified old man gasping for breath in the grip of a giant.
"Kill me... and you prove everything Donald told this town about you," Sterling choked out through blue lips.
Marcus stared into the old man's terrified eyes for five long seconds.
The violent rage that had possessed Marcus for two decades seemed to battle against something deeper and far older.
Slowly, deliberately, Marcus lowered Richard Sterling until the old man's polished shoes touched the dusty floorboards.
"My daughter wouldn't want your filthy blood on my hands," Marcus whispered, his voice trembling with iron control.
He reached down, picked up the black cassette tape from the floorboards, and handed it back to me.
May you like
"We don't need to break your neck, Sterling," Marcus said, turning toward the open staircase.
"This little plastic ribbon is going to do that for us on live television."
