The Last Coincidence

Twenty-Four

As I had promised, the Gazette got its scoop. I called Lon Monday night after the dust cleared, finally reaching him at home, and gave him the details plus plenty of color and several quotes from Wolfe. It made for good reading in the Tuesday afternoon edition, which Wolfe and I both devoured after Cramer left, his belly full of scallops. Seeing as how the story broke too late for the morning papers, the Gazette gave it especially big play, with an uppercase banner headline reading NEW CONFESSION IN LINVILLE CASE! along with a major story, two sidebars, and lots of pictures, including one of Wolfe with a caption that referred to him as a “master sleuth.”

Halliburton’s family eventually found him a big-time defense lawyer who managed to make an insanity plea hold up, which didn’t go down well with the press or Linville’s family, to say nothing of the D.A.’s office. He is now boarding with the state at one of its high-security facilities for the mentally disturbed.

After the hubbub surrounding the trial died down, Michael James admitted to his family that he had indeed fabricated his story because of his fear that one of them — he wouldn’t say which he thought it was — had killed Linville to avenge Noreen. One piece of positive fallout, according to Lily, is that Michael and his mother were tearfully reconciled and seem to be getting along better than they have in years.

Noreen appears to have recovered from her own trauma nicely, which is all the more surprising considering that her ordeal got spread all over the press and TV. She dropped Rojek soon after Halliburton’s trial, telling her aunt that she thought he was “too shallow.” And now, Lily tells me, she’s about to take a new job with a publishing company in Chicago, which has offered her far greater editing responsibilities than she ever had with Melbourne Books. “I’ll miss Noreen, but it’ll do her good to get away from New York — and particularly her mother,” was Lily’s observation.

I certainly can’t disagree with that.