by Harlan Coben
“Then maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”
“Almost definitely.”
“And we know he ran away by his own volition. So what are we going to tell them? That we found some blood on a shirt in his locker? You think the police are going to give a rat’s ass?”
“Not even one cheek,” Myron agreed.
They finished clearing out the locker. Then Myron drove her to the late practice. He kept his eye on the rearview mirror, looking for the gray Honda Accord. There were many, of course, but none with the same license plate.
He dropped her off at the gym, and then he took Palisades Avenue toward the Englewood Public Library. He had a couple of hours to kill, and he wanted to do some research on the Bradford family.
The Englewood Library sat on Grand Avenue off Palisades Avenue like a clunky spaceship. When it was erected in 1968, the building had probably been praised for its sleek, futuristic design; now it looked like a rejected movie prop for Logan’s Run.
Myron quickly found a reference librarian who was straight from central casting: gray bun, glasses, pearls, boxy build. The nameplate on her desk read “Mrs. Kay.” He approached her with his boyish grin, the one that usually made such ladies pinch his cheek and offer him hot cider.
“I hope you can help me,” he said.
Mrs. Kay looked at him in that way librarians often do, wary and tired, like cops who know you’re going to lie about how fast you were driving.
“I need to look up articles from the Jersey Ledger from twenty years ago.”
“Microfiche,” Mrs. Kay said. She rose with a great sigh and led him to a machine. “You’re in luck.”
“Why’s that?”
“They just computerized an index. Before that you were on your own.”
Mrs. Kay taught him how to use the microfilm machine and the computer indexing service. It looked pretty standard. When she left him alone, Myron first typed in the name Anita Slaughter. No hits. Not a surprise, but hey, you never know. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you plug in the name, and an article comes up and says, “I ran away to Florence, Italy. You can find me at the Plaza Lucchesi hotel on the Arno River, room 218.” Well, not often. But sometimes.
Typing in the Bradford name would produce ten zillion hits. Myron was not sure what he was looking for exactly. He knew who the Bradfords were, of course. They were New Jersey aristocracy, the closest thing the Garden State had to the Kennedys. Old Man Bradford had been the governor in the late sixties, and his older son, Arthur Bradford, was the current front-runner for the same office. Arthur’s younger brother, Chance—Myron would have made fun of the name, but when your name is Myron, well, glass houses and big stones and all that—was his campaign manager and—to keep within the Kennedy metaphor—played Robert to Arthur’s Jack.
The Bradfords had started modestly enough. Old Man Bradford had come from farm stock. He had owned half the town of Livingston, considered the boonies in the sixties, and sold it in small pieces over the years to developers, who built split-levels and colonials for baby boomers escaping Newark and Brooklyn and the like. Myron in fact had grown up in a split-level that had been built on what had formerly been Bradford farmland.
But Old Man Bradford had been smarter than most. For one thing, he reinvested his money in strong local businesses, mostly malls, but more important, he sold his land slowly, over time, not immediately cashing in. By holding on a bit longer, he became a true baron as the price for land increased at an alarming rate. He married a blue blood aristocrat from Connecticut. She redid the old farmhouse and made it something of a monument to excess. They stayed in Livingston, in the original spot of the old farmhouse, fencing off an enormous chunk of real estate. They were the mansion on the hill, surrounded by hundreds of middle-class cookie-cut houses: feudal lords overlooking the serfdom. Nobody in town really knew the Bradfords. When Myron was a kid, he and his friends just referred to them as the millionaires. They were the stuff of legends. Supposedly, if you climbed their fence, armed guards shot at you. Two sixth graders gave a wide-eyed Myron this stern warning when he was seven years old. He of course believed it absolutely. Outside of the Bat Lady, who lived in a shack near the Little League field and kidnapped and then ate little boys, no one was more feared than the Bradfords.
Myron tried limiting the search on the Bradfords to 1978, the year Anita Slaughter disappeared, but there were still a ton of hits. Most, he noticed, were from March, while Anita had run off in November. A vague memory prodded him, but he couldn’t conjure up more than a glimpse. He’d been just starting high school then, but there had been something in the news about the Bradfords. A scandal of some sort. He threaded microfilm into the machine. He was a tad spastic with anything mechanical—something he blamed on his ancestry—so it took him longer than it should have. After a few screeching false starts, Myron managed to look up a couple of articles. In fairly short order he stumbled across the obituary. “Elizabeth Bradford. Age thirty. Daughter of Richard and Miriam Worth. Wife of Arthur Bradford. Mother of Stephen Bradford …”
No cause of death given. But now Myron remembered the story. It had, in fact, been rehashed a bit recently, what with the press on the gubernatorial race. Arthur Bradford was now a fifty-two-year-old widower who, if the accounts were to be believed, still pined for his dead love. He dated, sure, but the spin was that he had never gotten over the devastating heartbreak of losing his young bride; it made for a nice, too-neat contrast with his thrice-married gubernatorial opponent, Jim Davison. Myron wondered if there was any truth in the spin. Arthur Bradford was perceived as a little too mean, a little Bob Dole. Sick as it sounded, what better way to offset that image than resurrecting a dead wife?
But who knew for sure? Politics and the press: two cherished institutions that spoke with tongues so forked they could double for fine dinnerware. Arthur Bradford refused to talk about his wife, and that could reflect either genuine pain or clever media manipulation. Cynical, but there you have it.
Myron continued to review the old articles. The story had made the front page on three consecutive dates in March 1978. Arthur and Elizabeth Bradford had been college sweethearts and married six years. Everyone described them as a “loving couple,” one of those media buzz phrases that meant as much as calling a dead youth an honor student. Mrs. Bradford had fallen off a third-level balcony at the Bradford mansion. The surface below was brick, and Elizabeth Bradford had landed on her head. There was not much in the way of details. A police investigation stated unequivocally that the death had been a tragic accident. The balcony was tiled and slippery. It had been raining and dark. A wall was being replaced and thus not secure in certain spots.
Awfully clean.
The press played very fair with the Bradfords. Myron now recalled the obvious rumors that had gone around the schoolyard. What the heck was she doing out on her balcony in March? Was she drunk? Probably. How else do you fall off your own balcony? Naturally some of the guys speculated that she’d been pushed. It made for interesting high school cafeteria fodder for at least, oh, two days. But this was high school. Hormones inevitably recaptured the flag, and everybody returned to panicking about the opposite sex. Ah, the sweet bird of youth.
Myron leaned back and stared at the screen. He thought again about Arthur Bradford’s refusal to comment. Maybe it had nothing to do with genuine grief or media manipulation; maybe Bradford refused to talk because he didn’t want something brought to light after twenty years.
Hmm. Right, Myron, sure. And maybe he had kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. Stick to the facts. One, Elizabeth Bradford had been dead for twenty years. Two, there was not a scintilla of evidence that her death was anything but an accident. Three—and most important to Myron—this had all happened a full nine months before Anita Slaughter ran away.
Conclusion: There was not even the flimsy hint of a connection.
At least not right then.
Myron’s throat went dry. He’d continued to read the article from the March 1
8, 1978, issue of the Jersey Ledger. The page one story finished up on page eight. Myron played with the knob on the microfiche machine. It screamed in protest but trudged forward.
There it was. Near the bottom right-hand corner. One line. That was all. Nothing that anybody would notice: “Mrs. Bradford’s body was first discovered on the brick back porch of the Bradford estate at 6:30 A.M. by a maid arriving for work.”
A maid arriving for work. Myron wondered what the maid’s name was.
Myron immediately called Mabel Edwards. “Do you remember Elizabeth Bradford?” he asked.
There was a brief hesitation. “Yes.”
“Did Anita find her body?”
A longer hesitation. “Yes.”
“What did she tell you about it?”
“Wait a second. I thought you were trying to help Horace.”
“I am.”
“So why are you asking about that poor woman?” Mabel sounded slightly put out. “She died more than twenty years ago.”
“It’s a little complicated.”
“I bet it is.” He heard her take a deep breath. “I want the truth now. You’re looking for her too, aren’t you? For Anita?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why?”
Good question. But when you stripped it bare, the answer was pretty simple. “For Brenda.”
“Finding Anita ain’t gonna help that girl.”
“You tell her that.”
She chuckled without humor. “Brenda can be headstrong,” Mabel said.
“I think it runs in the family.”
“Guess it does at that,” she said.
“Please tell me what you remember.”
“Not much to it, I guess. She came to work, and the poor woman was lying there like a broken rag doll. That’s all I know.”
“Anita never said anything else about it?”
“No.”
“Did she seem shaken up?”
“Of course. She worked for Elizabeth Bradford for almost six years.”
“No, I mean beyond the shock of finding the body.”
“I don’t think so. But she never talked about it. Even when the reporters called, Anita just hung up the phone.”
Myron computed this information, sorted in through his brain cells, came up with zippo. “Mrs. Edwards, did your brother ever mention a lawyer named Thomas Kincaid?”
She thought a moment. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Were you aware of him seeking legal advice on anything?”
“No.”
They said their good-byes, and then he hung up. The phone was barely disconnected when it rang again. “Hello?”
“Got something strange here, Myron.”
It was Lisa from the phone company.
“What’s up?”
“You asked me to put a tracer on the phone in Brenda Slaughter’s dorm.”
“Right.”
“Someone beat me to it.”
Myron nearly slammed on the brake. “What?”
“There’s already a tap on her phone.”
“For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you trace it back? See who put it on?”
“Nope. And the number is blocked out.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can’t read anything on it. I can’t get a trace or even look at old bills on the computer. My guess is, someone in law enforcement is behind it. I can poke around, but I doubt I’ll come up with anything.”
“Please try, Lisa. And thanks.”
He hung up. A missing father, threatening phone calls, a possible car tail, and now a phone tap: Myron was starting to get nervous here. Why would someone—someone with authority—have a tap on Brenda’s phone? Was that person part of the group making the threatening phone calls? Were they tapping her phone to track down her father or—
Hold the phone.
Hadn’t one of the threatening calls told Brenda to call her mother? Why? Why would someone have said that? More important, if Brenda had obeyed the call—and if she had indeed known where her mother was hiding—the people behind the trace would have been able to find Anita too. Was that what this was really all about?
Was someone looking for Horace … or Anita?
“We have a problem,” Myron told her.
They sat in the car. Brenda turned toward him and waited.
“Your phone is bugged,” he said.
“What?”
“Someone has been listening in to your calls. You’re also being tailed by someone.”
“But—” Brenda stopped, shrugged. “Why? To find my father?”
“That’s the best bet, yes. Someone is anxious to get to Horace. They’ve already attacked your aunt. You might be next on their list.”
“So you think I’m in danger.”
“Yes.”
She watched his face. “And you have a suggested course of action.”
“I do,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“First, I’d like to have your dorm room swept for bugs.”
“I have no problem with that.”
“Second, you have to get out of your dorm room. You’re not safe there.”
She considered this for a moment. “I can stay with a friend. Cheryl Sutton. She’s the other captain of the Dolphins.”
Myron shook his head. “These people know you. They’ve been following you, listening to your phone calls.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning they probably know who your friends are.”
“Including Ms. Sutton.”
“Yes.”
“And you think they’ll look for me there?”
“It’s a possibility.”
Brenda shook her head and faced forward. “This is spooky.”
“There’s more.”
He told her about the Bradford family and about her mother finding the body.
“So what does that mean?” Brenda asked when he finished.
“Probably nothing,” Myron said. “But you wanted me to tell you everything, right?”
“Right.” She leaned back and chewed at her lower lip. After some time had passed, she asked, “So where do you think I should stay?”
“Do you remember my mentioning my friend Win?”
“The guy who owns Lock-Horne Securities?”
“His family does, right. I’m supposed to go to his place tonight to discuss a business problem. I think you should come too. You can stay at his apartment.”
“You want me to stay with him?”
“Just for tonight. Win has safe houses all over. We’ll find you someplace.”
She made a face. “A preppy Mainliner who knows about safe houses?”
“Win,” Myron said, “is more than he appears.”
She crossed her arms under her chest. “I don’t want to act like a jackass and hand you that phony crap about how I’m not going to let this interfere with my life. I know you’re helping me, and I want to cooperate.”
“Good.”
“But,” she added, “this league means a lot to me. So does my team. I’m not going to just walk away from that.”
“I understand.”
“So whatever we do, will I be able to go to practice? Will I be able to play in the opener Sunday?”
“Yes.”
Brenda nodded. “Okay then,” she said. “And thank you.”
They drove to her dorm room. Myron waited downstairs while she packed a bag. She had her own room, but she wrote a note to her suite mate that she was staying with a friend for a few days. The whole enterprise took her less than ten minutes.
She came down with two bags over her shoulders. Myron relieved her of one. They were heading out the door when Myron spotted FJ standing next to his car.
“Stay here,” he told her.
Brenda ignored him and kept pace. Myron looked to his left. Bubba and Rocco were there. They waved at him. Myron did not wave back. That’ll show them.
/> FJ leaned against the car, completely relaxed, almost too relaxed, like an old movie drunk against a lamppost.
“Hello, Brenda,” FJ said.
“Hello, FJ.”
Then he nodded toward Myron. “And you too, Myron.”
His smile did more than lack warmth. It was the most purely physical smile Myron had ever seen, a byproduct strictly of the brain giving specific orders to certain muscles. It touched no part of him but his lips.
Myron circled the car and feigned inspecting it. “Not a bad job, FJ. But next time put a little muscle into the hubcaps. They’re filthy.”
FJ looked at Brenda. “This the famed Bolitar rapier wit I’ve heard so much about?”
She shrugged sympathetically.
Myron motioned at them with his hands. “You two know each other?”
“But of course,” FJ said. “We went to prep school together. At Lawrenceville.”
Bubba and Rocco lumbered a few steps closer. They looked like Luca Brasi Youth.
Myron eased between Brenda and FJ. The protective move would probably piss her off, but tough. “So what can we do for you, FJ?”
“I just want to make sure that Ms. Slaughter is honoring her contract with me.”
“I don’t have a contract with you,” Brenda said.
“Your father—one Horace Slaughter—is your agent, no?”
“No,” Brenda said. “Myron is.”
“Oh?” FJ’s eyes slithered toward Myron. Myron kept up the eye contact, but there was still nothing there, like looking into the windows of an abandoned building. “I’d been informed otherwise.”
Myron shrugged. “Life is change, FJ. Gotta learn to adapt.”
“Adapt,” FJ said, “or die.”
Myron nodded and said, “Oooo.”
FJ kept the stare going a few more seconds. He had skin that looked like wet clay, as if it might dissolve under heavy rains. He turned back to Brenda. “Your father used to be your agent,” he said. “Before Myron.”
Myron handled that one. “And what if he was?”
“He signed with us. Brenda was going to bow out of the WPBA and join the PWBL. It’s all spelled out in the contract.”
Myron looked at Brenda. She shook her head. “You have Ms. Slaughter’s signature on those contracts?” he asked.