Central Park

by Guillaume Musso

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Copyright © 2021 by Guillaume Musso

  Translation copyright © 2021 by Sam Taylor

  Cover design by Lauren Harms

  Cover photograph by PeskyMonkey / Getty Images

  Cover © 2021 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

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  First North American edition: March 2021

  Originally published in France as Central Park by Guillaume Musso

  © XO Editions, 2014

  Back Bay Books is an imprint of Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Back Bay Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  ISBN: 978-0-316-59094-5

  LCCN 2020950107

  E3-20210121-DA-PC-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Part One: Handcuffed 1: Alice

  2: Gabriel

  3: Central Park West

  4: Handcuffed

  5: Red Hook

  6: Chinatown

  I remember…

  7: Biting the Dust

  Part Two: Memory of Pain 8: Memory of Pain

  I remember…

  9: Riverside

  10: Fingerprints

  11: Little Egypt

  I remember…

  12: Free Jazz

  13: Hookah Bar

  14: Two People

  15: Prepare for War

  I remember…

  Part Three: Blood and Fury 16: Tracking the Killer

  17: The Devil’s Tricks

  18: Sucker Punch

  19: In the Land of the Living

  20: Inside the House

  21: The Veil

  I remember…

  22: Vaughn

  Part Four: Come Undone 23: Do or Die

  I remember…

  24: Chapter Zero

  25: Just Before

  26: The Mirrors

  27: White Shadows

  28: With One Heart

  There Will Be…

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  About the Author

  Also by Guillaume Musso

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  Things that escape you are more important

  than the things you own.

  —W. Somerset Maugham

  Part One

  Handcuffed

  1

  Alice

  FIRST, A GUST of wind stings her face.

  The light rustling of leaves. The distant murmur of a stream. The quiet trill of birdsong. The first rays of sunlight illuminating the tiny blood vessels in her still-closed eyelids.

  Then the creak of swaying branches. The smell of moist earth, rotting leaves. The strong, woody odor of gray lichen.

  And farther off, an indistinct buzzing, dreamlike and discordant.

  Alice Schafer opened her eyes with difficulty. She was blinded by the early-morning sun, her clothes sticky with dew. The frozen sweat on her skin made her shiver. Her throat was dry and her mouth filled with the harsh taste of ashes. Her joints were bruised, her limbs stiff, her mind numb.

  When she tried to sit up, she became aware that she was lying on a rough wooden bench. Suddenly, she realized that a large, sturdy man was curled up next to her, his body leaning heavily on hers.

  Alice stifled a cry and her pulse raced. Trying to free herself, she toppled over onto the ground and stood up in the same movement. That was when she realized that her right wrist was handcuffed to the left wrist of this stranger. She took a step back, but the man remained motionless.

  Shit!

  Her heart was pounding in her chest. A glance at her watch—the face of her old Patek was scratched, but the mechanism still worked. According to the watch, it was eight a.m. on Tuesday, October 8.

  Jesus Christ! Where the hell am I? she wondered, using a sleeve to wipe the sweat from her face.

  She looked around in an attempt to assess the situation. She was in the middle of a forest, the leaves on the trees autumn gold, the undergrowth fresh and dense. A wild, silent clearing surrounded by oaks, thick bushes, and jutting rocks. There was no one else here, which was probably a good thing, considering the circumstances.

  Alice looked up. The light was soft, beautiful, almost unreal. Shards of brightness sparkled through the foliage of a huge flame-colored elm tree. Its roots disappeared into a carpet of damp leaves.

  Where was she? She hazarded a few guesses: The forest of Rambouillet? Fontainebleau? The bois de Vincennes?

  It was like an Impressionist painting on a postcard, the serenity of the image clashing with the surreal weirdness of waking up next to a total stranger.

  Cautiously, she leaned forward to get a better view of his face. He was in his late thirties, she thought. Disheveled chestnut hair and the beginnings of a beard.

  A corpse?

  She knelt down and placed two fingers on his neck, to the right of his Adam’s apple. When she pressed down on the carotid artery, she felt a pulse. Relief. The guy was sleeping but alive. She took a moment to look at him more closely. Did she know him? Some thug she was taking to jail? A childhood friend whose face she’d forgotten? No, his features were completely unfamiliar to her.

  Alice pushed back a few stray blond locks that had fallen over her eyes, then examined the pair of metal handcuffs that connected her to the man. It was a standard double-locking model, a type used by police departments and private security firms all over the world. Most likely, this was her own pair. Alice rummaged in her jeans pocket, hoping to find the key.

  It wasn’t there. She did, however, find a gun in the inside pocket of her leather jacket. Thinking it must be her service pistol, she sighed with relief as she gripped the butt. But this was not the SIG Sauer used by cops in the Paris Criminal Division. It was a polymer Glock .22, and she had no idea where it had come from. She wanted to check the magazine, but it was difficult with one hand shackled. She did eventually manage it, after a few contortions, taking care not to wake the stranger. One bullet missing. As she handled the pistol, she became aware that the butt was stained with dried blood. Unzipping her jacket all the way, she discovered that there were traces of blood all over her blouse.

  My God, what have I done?

  Alice rubbed her eyes with her free hand. A migraine was throbbing in her temples now. She felt as if her skull were being crushed in an invisible vise. She took deep breaths, trying to push back her fear, gather her memories.

  The night before, she had gone out on the Champs
-Élysées with three girlfriends. She’d had plenty to drink, downing glass after glass in a series of bars: the Moonlight, the Thirteenth Floor, the Londonderry…around midnight, the four friends had gone their separate ways. She had been alone when she’d headed to the underground parking garage on Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt, where she’d left her car. And then…

  A blank. As if someone had dropped a black veil over her brain. Her mind floundered in the void. Her memory was paralyzed, frozen, jammed on that final image.

  Come on, think, for God’s sake! What happened next?

  She had a distinct memory of paying at the ticket machine, then walking downstairs to the third underground level. She had been drunk, without a doubt. After staggering over to her little Audi, she had unlocked the door, sat behind the wheel, and…

  Nothing.

  No matter how hard she tried to concentrate, a white brick wall barred the way to her memories. A vast, unclimbable wall.

  She swallowed. Her panic level went up a notch. These woods, the bloodstains on her blouse, this gun that wasn’t hers…whatever was going on, it was a hell of a lot worse than an ordinary hangover. If she couldn’t remember how she had ended up here, she must have been drugged. Maybe some creep had spiked her drink. It was far from impossible—as a cop, she’d dealt with several cases involving date-rape drugs in recent years. She filed this idea away in a corner of her mind and began emptying her pockets.

  Her wallet and her police badge had disappeared. No ID, no money, no cell phone.

  Her fear was compounded by worry.

  The crack of a branch sent a flock of warblers flying. A few red leaves fluttered down, brushing Alice’s face. With her left hand, she zipped up her jacket, holding the top of it down with her chin. That was how she came to notice the writing, in faded ballpoint, on the palm of her hand—a series of numbers, scrawled on the fly, as if she were some schoolkid trying to cheat on a test:

  2125550100

  What did they mean? Had she written them? Maybe, but I can’t be sure, she thought, examining the handwriting.

  She closed her eyes for a second, feeling lost and frightened.

  But she refused to give in to her fears. Obviously, something serious had occurred last night. She remembered nothing, but the man she was handcuffed to would soon refresh her memory. She hoped so, anyway.

  Friend or foe?

  There was no way of knowing, so she slid the magazine back into the Glock. With her free hand, she pointed the gun at her companion’s head before unceremoniously shaking him.

  “Hey! You! Time to wake up!” she said in French.

  The man was struggling to open his eyes.

  “Come on!” she yelled. “Wake up, asshole!”

  He blinked a few times and stifled a yawn before painfully sitting up. His face registered shock as he saw the barrel of the gun a few inches from his forehead.

  He stared at Alice, wide-eyed, then turned his head from side to side, apparently flabbergasted by the sight of the surrounding woods.

  After a few seconds of shocked silence, he gulped. Then he opened his mouth and asked in English: “Who the hell are you? And what are we doing here?”

  2

  Gabriel

  THE STRANGER HAD spoken with a strong American accent.

  “Where the hell are we?” he demanded, frowning.

  Alice tightened her fingers around the butt of the gun. “That’s what I’m asking you!” she replied in English, bringing the barrel of the Glock closer to his temple.

  “Whoa, calm down, okay?” he said, raising his hands. “And put the gun down. Those things are dangerous, you know.”

  Still sleepy-eyed, he pointed with his chin at the steel bracelet around his wrist. “Why did you cuff me? What’d I do this time? Did I get in a fight? Was I drunk?”

  “I didn’t cuff you,” she replied.

  Alice looked him over. He was wearing dark jeans, a pair of Converse sneakers, a crumpled blue shirt, and a fitted suit jacket. His eyes were clear and engaging but had dark rings of fatigue under them.

  “Kinda cold out here,” he complained, hunching his shoulders. He looked down at his wrist to check his watch, but it wasn’t there. “Shit…what time is it?”

  “Eight in the morning.”

  As best he could, he went through his pockets before exclaiming angrily: “What the hell! You’ve taken everything! My cash, my wallet, my phone…”

  “I haven’t stolen anything from you,” Alice assured him. “They got me too.”

  “And there’s a pretty big bump on the back of my head,” he noted, rubbing his skull with his free hand. “Let me guess—that wasn’t you either?”

  He watched her from the corner of his eye. Dressed in tight jeans and a leather jacket, beneath which he could see a bloodstained blouse, Alice was a slender blonde, her hair in a ponytail that was on the point of coming undone. Her face was hard but harmonious—high cheekbones, thin nose, pale skin—and her eyes, spangled with the copper reflections of the autumn leaves, shone intensely.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a sudden pain, a burning sensation running up the inside of his forearm.

  “What now?” She sighed.

  “It hurts.” He grimaced. “Like I’m wounded or something.”

  Because of the handcuffs, Gabriel couldn’t take off his jacket or roll up the sleeves of his shirt, but through a series of contortions he managed to see a sort of bandage encircling his arm. The dressing looked like it was freshly applied, but a thin trickle of blood had escaped and was running down to his wrist.

  “All right, I’ve had enough of this bullshit!” he said angrily. “Tell me where we are. Wicklow?”

  The young woman shook her head. “Wicklow? Where’s that?”

  “A national park in the south,” he said.

  “South of what?” she asked.

  “Are you kidding me? South of Dublin!”

  She stared at him, wide-eyed. “You really think we’re in Ireland?”

  He sighed. “Where else would we be?”

  “Well, in France, I’d guess. Near Paris. In the forest of Rambouillet, or—”

  “Oh, give me a break!” he interrupted. “And who are you exactly?”

  “A girl with a gun. So I’m the one who asks the questions.”

  He stared at her defiantly but, realizing that he was not in control of this situation, stopped talking.

  “My name is Alice Schafer. I’m a police captain in the Paris Criminal Division. I spent the evening with friends on the Champs-Élysées. I don’t know where we are or how we got here, handcuffed together. And I don’t have the faintest idea who you are. Your turn.”

  After a few seconds of hesitation, the stranger decided to reciprocate.

  “I’m American. My name is Gabriel Keyne and I’m a jazz pianist. I live in Los Angeles, but I spend a lot of time on the road, playing gigs.”

  “And what’s the last thing you remember?” she demanded.

  Gabriel frowned and closed his eyes in concentration. “Let me see…last night, I played with my bassist and my saxophone player at Brown Sugar, a jazz club in Temple Bar—it’s a part of Dublin.”

  Dublin? This guy is crazy!

  “After the concert, I sat at the bar and maybe had a few too many rum and Cokes,” Gabriel went on, opening his eyes.

  “And then?”

  “And then…” His face tensed and he chewed his lip. Evidently, he was finding it as hard as she had to remember the end of his evening.

  “Listen, I don’t know. I think I may have gotten into a fight with a guy who didn’t like my music, then I talked to a few girls, but I was too wasted to actually pick one up.”

  “Wow, very classy. What a charming guy you are.”

  He waved away her sarcasm with a casual hand and stood up, forcing Alice to do the same. With an abrupt movement of her forearm, she forced him to sit down again.

  “I left the club around midnight,” he said. “I could barely stand up. I looke
d for a taxi in Aston Quay. After a few minutes, a car pulled up and…”

  “And what?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I must have given the driver the address of my hotel and passed out in the back seat.”

  “And what do you remember after that?”

  “Nothing, I’m telling you!”

  Alice lowered her weapon and was silent for a few seconds as she digested this bad news. Clearly, this guy was not going to help her get to the bottom of this situation.

  “You do realize that everything you’ve just told me is a huge pile of crap?” she said with a smile.

  “Oh yeah? And why’s that?”

  “Because we’re in France—look!”

  Gabriel’s gaze swept the woods that stretched all around them: the wild vegetation, the dense bushes, the rock walls covered with ivy, the golden dome formed by the autumn leaves. His eyes scaled the length of a giant elm tree and he glimpsed two squirrels racing, leaping from branch to branch in pursuit of a robin.

  “I’ll bet you my shirt that we’re not in France,” he said, scratching his head.

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Alice replied irritably, putting her gun in her jacket pocket and dragging Gabriel up from the bench.

  They left the clearing and dove into the jungle of dense thickets and leafy shrubs. Cuffed together, they crossed through rolling undergrowth, followed a climbing path, then walked down the other side of the hill, holding on to rocks as they went. It took them a good ten minutes of stepping over little streams and striding along several winding trails to find a way out of this wooded labyrinth. Finally, they came out on a narrow asphalt path bordered by trees that created a leafy vault over their heads. The farther they walked along this paved track, the closer they drew to the sounds of civilization, to the familiar and ever louder buzz of a city.

  Propelled by a strange intuition, Alice led Gabriel toward a sunny gap in the foliage. A path led from this clearing to what looked like the grassy bank of a lake.