Inflated Ego novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Four Seconds

It was Victor Langhorn.

His silver hair was combed back, and his charcoal coat was buttoned to the throat.

He held a white handkerchief in one hand, and he was looking straight at my lens through the glass.

His mouth was set, grim and wet-eyed.

Behind him, in the stairwell, the handkerchief was smeared with something dark.

The rail.

He had been wiping the second-floor rail.

I sat there on the edge of Margot's bed with the screen glowing in my hand, and a hot, ugly joy went through me.

I had him.

I had Victor Langhorn on film, in his own building, with a dead man and a cloth, sixteen feet from the body.

The man who read my measurements on a stage would stand in front of a judge.

I wouldn't need the ledger.

I wouldn't need Margot.

I wouldn't need the plan at all.

I swung my legs off the bed.

"Mason."

I jumped.

Margot was sitting up behind me, with the sheet clutched to her chest and her hair wild.

She was looking at the phone.

"What's that?" she said.

"Margot, go back to sleep."

"What are you watching?"

"Nothing."

She reached over my shoulder before I could pull away.

She took the phone from my hand.

I watched her face as the frozen frame filled the screen.

The old man in the glass.

The handkerchief.

I watched the blood leave her cheeks, and her lips open.

She whispered:

"Grandpa."

"He was there," I said gently. "He was in the stairwell at 3:05. He wiped the rail. Margot, I think he killed Dale."

She did not say anything.

She stared at the screen.

"I think they fought," I said. "I think Dale found something, or Victor did, and it went wrong. I'm so sorry. I know he's your family. But I have him."

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