Fall Guy

when he began to stalk Tim in earnest. That's when he moved close by and began watching the apartment, when he befriended Parker, when he readied himself for what he would do once your mother was gone.“
    Dashiell had gotten up and put his chin on Maggie's lap. Absentmindedly, she stroked his head.
    „And all those years, while he was waiting, the hatred he felt never diminished.“
    „No. It festered.“
    She turned away, then swiped at her cheeks with the palms of her hands. When she turned back, her face was determined, her lips tight.
    „Why didn't he just leave, after he'd killed Timothy? Why stay around? Wasn't that risky? Wasn't it stupid?“
    „Rage was the only thing that made him feel good. It was the only thing that empowered him. It was all he had by then. It was his life.“
    „So he stayed to keep the rage alive.“
    I nodded.
    „He stayed for the pleasure it gave him, the only pleasure he had. And he stayed because if he left, he'd be starting over from scratch. Perhaps he didn't have the imagination or the courage to do that, to start a whole new life.“
    „Because he'd finished the old one.“
    „Yes. He had.“
    When I got up to go, she walked me to the car. Neither of us could speak. I put my arms around her and she held me tight. Then she bent and whispered something in Dashiell's ear. She was still standing there when we drove away.
    I thought about the place where it all started, up on top of the Palisades, just a bunch of kids fooling around. And then one careless accident, one push destroyed two families.
    I thought about O'Fallon, too, about how he had hidden his grief along with a lifetime of secrets. He'd carried the weight of it alone. Until now.
    I pulled into the gas station right before the bridge to fill the gas tank and call Brody.
    „I think I know the answer to that question now,“ I said.
    „What question?“
    „What Tim wanted me to do for him, why he chose me for this.“
    He waited.
    „When it was all over, whenever that was going to be, he wanted someone to understand.“
    - „What he'd done?“
    „And how he'd tried to make up for it by taking in men who might have been his brother, had his brother lived. I think he was hoping that someone, that one other human being, would know it all and then forgive him,“ I said. „Because he was never able to do that himself.“
    They'd tried, each of them, in their own way, to find a way to live despite what had happened at Breyer's Landing, and only Maggie was left now. I wondered if she was strong enough to let it go, to decide to live in spite of it.
    Driving across the George Washington Bridge, I could see the Palisades in the rearview mirror, harsh and rocky, rising up from the Hudson. Toward my right the river, flowing toward the ocean, looked calm, the sun painting the ripples of water with quick, graceful strokes of silver. And beyond, the city, tall and strong against the bright summer sky, tapering toward downtown, where in the year that Joey O'Fallon was pushed to his death by his own brother, the World Trade Center had been completed.

Acknowledgments
    For the generous sharing of information about cadaver dog training, I thank Bill McGlynn of the Rochester NYPD; Carla Collins, K9 training director of Search One Rescue Team of Texas; and retired bloodhound handler Gina Lyn Hayes. For being a constant resource about police work, my gratitude to Lieutenant Detective Commander, NYPD, Peter C. Fenty.
    I would also like to thank Anita LaTorre, Philip Levy, Stephen Solomita, Barbara Jaye Wilson, JoAnn Heming, Victoria Joubert, Beth Adelman, Wayde Vickrey and my sweetheart, Stephen Lennard, for information, advice and general shoring up.
    No book is as good as it could be without an eagle-eyed editor. I thank Trish Grader for this and for her generosity. This story wouldn't have become a book without my agent, Gail Hochman, miracle worker. I thank their able assistants as well, Erin Richnow at Morrow and Joanne Brownstein at Brandt and Hochman.
    With special thanks to G.D., who showed me that the dead do tell tales. And to Dexter and Flash—no words can begin to cover what I owe you.