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Back 3 a.m.
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  67. 3:46 a.m.

“But I called the company who did the test. They wouldn't give me much information, but I wiggled out of one of the receptionists that Jessie Kallomatix was in their files.”

“That was probably from when I had her tested when she was young, to make sure Paul was her father and not you.”

“And he was?”

“Yep.”

“Shit.”

Sullivan had a right to be pissed. He'd paid out over $300,000 based on Jessie being his daughter. But he didn't look pissed. In fact, he was smiling.

I could tell he was thinking about Ricky. Glad his son hadn't been sleeping with his half-sister. That must have been giving the President nightmares.

“That's why she sent you the picture of your son the second time,” I say to the President. “Because if she would have blackmailed you for being your daughter, you would have checked more thoroughly this time. You would have had Red or one of your other guys get to the bottom of it. So she started hooking up with your son. She knew you would keep that to yourself.”

Sullivan nods.

“Hooking up with your son?” asks Kim.

Sullivan spends the next ten minutes explaining everything. From how he'd first met Jessie, to her blackmail, to the picture she sent of her and his son, to him going over to her house and dropping off the money, to her being found strangled to death.

I look down at my cell phone.

It's 3:50.

Ten minutes.

Sullivan gazes at me. “So then, another dead end.”

Lights turn onto the street.

Get brighter. Brighter. Brighter. Then disappear.

All six eyes are trained on me.

I put my finger up to my lips.

Ten seconds later, there is a knock.

“Bins,” comes a voice. “Bins, it's me. I'm here.”

I pull the door open.

:17

Paul Kallomatix is wearing the same suit he’d been wearing when I’d first met him. His forehead is heavily creased over furrowed brows. His goatee is perfectly groomed around his gaping mouth.

“Hey, Paul,” I say.

“What the fuck is going on here, Bins?” he says, ignoring my jest. He sweeps his eyes over his ex-wife, his partner, and the President of the United States. “Kim? Ray? What the fuck is this?”

“You tell me, Cal. Why don't you tell me about Jessie?” spits Ray.

When the President had been telling his story about the marriage mix-up, he'd said the name Paul Kallomatix and Ray had gone silent. I could almost see her trying to put the pieces together in her head. Cal? A murderer?

Cal looks over his shoulder. Thinks about running. Thinks better. His goatee smirks and he takes two steps in and closes the door.

“Are the guys you had following me still at the hospital?” I ask.

“I don't know what you're talking about.”