Three Harlan Coben Novels

by Harlan Coben

  “Okay,” Lenny said, overgesturing as was his custom, “it’s like this: I don’t want you talking to the cops anymore without my being present.”

  I frowned. “For real?”

  “Maybe it’s nothing, but I’ve seen cases like this. Notlike this, but you know what I mean. The first suspect is always family.”

  “Meaning my sister.”

  “No, meaning close family. Or closerfamily, if possible.”

  “Are you saying the police suspect me?”

  “I don’t know, I really don’t.” He paused but not for very long. “Okay, yeah, probably.”

  “But I was shot, remember? My kid was the one taken.”

  “Right, and that cuts both ways.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “As the days pass, they’re going to start suspecting you more and more.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. That’s just how it works. Look, the FBI handles kidnappings. You know that, right? Once a child is gone twenty-four hours, they assume it’s interstate and the case is theirs.”

  “So?”

  “So for the first, what, ten days or so, they had a ton of agents here. They monitored your phones and waited for the ransom call, that kinda thing. But the other day, they pretty much pulled up stakes. That’s normal, of course. They can’t wait indefinitely, so they scale back to an agent or two. And their thinking shifted too. Tara became less a possible kidnapping-for-ransom and more a straight-on abduction. But my guess is, they still have the taps on the phones. I haven’t asked yet, but I will. They’ll claim they’re leaving them there in case a ransom demand is eventually made. But they’ll also be hoping to hear you say something incriminating.”

  “So?”

  “So be careful,” Lenny said. “Remember that your phones—home, biz, cell—are probably tapped.”

  “And again I ask: So? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Didn’t do . . . ?” Lenny waved his hands as if preparing to take flight. “Look, just be careful is all. This might be hard for you to believe, but—and try not to gasp when I say this—the police have been known to twist and distort evidence.”

  “You’re confusing me. Are you saying I’m a suspect simply because I’m the father and husband?”

  “Yes,” Lenny said. “And no.”

  “Well, okay, thanks, that clears it up.”

  A phone next to my bed rang. I was on the wrong side of the room. “You mind?” I said.

  Lenny picked it up. “Dr. Seidman’s room.” His face clouded over as he listened. He spat out the words “Hold on,” and handed the phone to me, as if it might have germs. I gave him a puzzled look and said, “Hello?”

  “Hello, Marc. This is Edgar Portman.”

  Monica’s father. That explained Lenny’s reaction. Edgar’s voice was, as always, way too formal. Some people weigh their words. A select few, like my father-in-law, take each one and put it on a scale before letting it leave their mouths.

  I was momentarily taken aback. “Hello, Edgar,” I said stupidly. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine, thank you. I feel remiss, of course, for not having called you earlier. I understood from Carson that you were busy recuperating from your wounds. I felt it best if I let you be.”

  “Thoughtful,” I said with nary a whiff of sarcasm.

  “Yes, well, I understand you’re being released today.”

  “That’s right.”

  Edgar cleared his throat, which seemed out of character for him. “I was wondering if perhaps you could stop by the house.”

  Thehouse. Meaning his. “Today?”

  “As soon as possible, yes. And alone please.”

  There was silence. Lenny gave me a puzzled look.

  “Is something wrong, Edgar?” I asked.

  “I have a car waiting downstairs, Marc. We’ll talk more when you arrive.”

  And then, before I could say another word, he was gone.

  The car, a black Lincoln Town Car, was indeed waiting.

  Lenny wheeled me outside. I was familiar with this area, of course. I had grown up scant miles from St. Elizabeth. When I was five years old, my father had rushed me to the emergency room here (twelve stitches) and when I was seven, well, you already know too much about my salmonella visit. I’d gone to medical school and did my residency at what was then called Columbia Presbyterian in New York, but I returned to St. Elizabeth for a fellowship in ophthalmology for reconstruction.

  Yes, I am a plastic surgeon, but not in the way you think. I do the occasional nose job, but you won’t find me working with sacks of silicone or any of that. Not that I’m judging. It just isn’t what I do.

  I work in pediatric reconstructive surgery with my former medical school classmate, a fireball from the Bronx named Zia Leroux. We work for a group called One World WrapAid. Actually, Zia and I founded it. We take care of children, mostly overseas, who suffer deformities either through birth, poverty, or conflict. We travel a lot. I have worked on facial smashes in Sierra Leone, on cleft palates in Upper Mongolia, on Crouzon’s in Cambodia, on burn victims in the Bronx. Like most people in my field, I’ve done extensive training. I’ve studied ENT—ears, nose, and throat—with a year of reconstructive, plastics, oral, and, as I mentioned above, ophthalmology. Zia’s training history is similar, though she’s stronger with the maxillofacial.

  You may think of us as do-gooders. You’d be wrong. I had a choice. I could do boob jobs or tuck back the skin of those who were already too beautiful—or I could help wounded, poverty-stricken children. I chose the latter, not so much to help the disadvantaged, but alas, because that is where the cool cases lie. Most reconstructive surgeons are, at heart, puzzle lovers. We’re weird. We get jazzed on circus-sideshow congenital anomalies and huge tumors. You know those medical textbooks that have hideous facial deformities that you have to dare yourself to look at? Zia and I love that stuff. We get off on repairing it—taking what’s shattered and making it whole—even more.

  The fresh air tickled my lungs. The sun shone as if it were the first day, mocking my gloom. I tilted my face toward the warmth and let it soothe me. Monica used to like to do that. She claimed that it “destressed” her. The lines in her face would disappear as if the rays were gentle masseurs. I kept my eyes closed. Lenny waited in silence, giving me the time.

  I have always thought of myself as an overly sensitive man. I cry too easily at dumb movies. My emotions are easily manipulated. But with my father, I never cried. And now, with this terrible blow, I felt—I don’t know—beyond tears. A classic defense mechanism, I assumed. I had to push forward. It’s not so different from my business: When cracks appear, I patch them up before they become full-fledged fissures.

  Lenny was still fuming from the phone call. “Any idea what that old bastard wants?”

  “Not a one.”

  He was quiet a moment. I know what he was thinking. Lenny blamed Edgar for his father’s death. His old man had been a middle manager at ProNess Foods, one of Edgar’s holdings. He had slaved for the company twenty-six years and had just turned fifty-two years old when Edgar orchestrated a major merger. Lenny’s father lost his job. I remember seeing Mr. Marcus sitting slump shouldered at the kitchen table, meticulously stuffing his résumé into envelopes. He never found work and died two years later of a heart attack. Nothing could convince Lenny that the two events were unrelated.

  He said, “You sure you don’t want me to come?”

  “Nah, I’ll be all right.”

  “Got your cell?”

  I showed it to him.

  “Call me if you need anything.”

  I thanked him and let him walk away. The driver opened the door. I winced my way in. The drive was not far. Kasselton, New Jersey. My hometown. We passed the split-levels of the sixties, the expanded ranches of the seventies, the aluminum sidings of the eighties, the McMansions of the nineties. Eventually the trees grew denser. The houses sat farther back from the road, protected by t
he lush, away from the great unwashed who might happen by. We were nearing old wealth now, that exclusive land that always smelled of autumn and woodsmoke.

  The Portman family had first settled in this thicket immediately following the Civil War. Like most of suburban Jersey, this had been farmland. Great-great-grandfather Portman slowly sold off acreage and made a fortune. They still had sixteen acres, making their lot one of the largest in the area. As we climbed the drive, my eyes drifted left—toward the family burial plot.

  I could see a small mound of fresh dirt.

  “Stop the car,” I said.

  “Sorry, Dr. Seidman,” the driver replied, “but I was told to bring you right up to the main house.”

  I was about to protest but thought better of it. I waited until the car stopped by the front door. I got out and headed back down the drive. I heard the driver say, “Dr. Seidman?” I kept going. He called after me again. I ignored him. Despite the lack of rain, the grass was a green usually reserved for rain forests. The rose garden was in full bloom, an explosion of color.

  I tried to hurry on, but my skin still felt as if it might rip. I slowed. This was only my third visit inside the Portman family estate—I had seen it from the outside dozens of times in my youth—and I had never visited the family plot. In fact, like most rational people, I did my best to avoid it. The idea of burying your kin in your backyard like a family pet . . . it was one of those things that rich people do that we regular folk could never quite grasp. Or would want to.

  The fence around the plot was maybe two feet high and blindingly white. I wondered if it’d been freshly painted for the occasion. I stepped over the superfluous gate and walked past the modest gravestones, keeping my eye on the dirt mound. When I reached the spot, a shudder tore through me. I looked down.

  Yep, a recently dug grave. No stone yet. The marker on it, printed up in wedding-invitation calligraphy, read simply:OUR MONICA .

  I stood there and blinked. Monica. My wild-eyed beauty. Our relationship had been turbulent—a classic case of too much passion in the beginning and not enough near the end. I don’t know why that happens. Monica was different, no question. At first that crackle, that excitement, had been a draw. Later, the mood swings simply made me weary. I didn’t have the patience to dig deeper.

  As I looked down at the pile of dirt, a painful memory jabbed at me. Two nights before the attack, Monica had been crying when I came to the bedroom. It was not the first time. Not even close. Playing my part in the stage show that was our lives, I asked her what was wrong, but my heart was not in it. I used to ask with more concern. Monica never replied. I would try to hold her. She would go rigid. After a while the nonresponsiveness got tiresome, taking on a boy-who-cried-wolf aspect that eventually frosts the heart. Living with a depressive is like that. You can’t care all the time. At some point, you have to start to resent.

  At least, that was what I told myself.

  But this time, there was something different: Monica did indeed reply to me. Not a long reply. One line, actually. “You don’t love me,” she said. That was it. There was no pity in her voice. “You don’t love me.” And while I managed to utter the necessary protestations, I wondered if maybe she was right.

  I closed my eyes and let it all wash over me. Things had been bad, but for the past six months anyway, there had been an escape for us, a calm and warm center in our daughter. I glanced at the sky now, blinked again, and then looked back down at the dirt that covered my volatile wife. “Monica,” I said out loud. And then I made my wife one last vow.

  I swore on her grave that I would find Tara.

  A servant or butler or associate or whatever the current term was led me down the corridor and into the library. The décor was understated though unequivocally rich—finished dark floors with simple oriental carpets, old-Americana furniture that was solid rather than ornate. Despite his wealth and large plot of land Edgar was not one for show wealth. The termnouveau riche was to him profane, unspeakable.

  Dressed in a blue cashmere blazer, Edgar rose from behind his expansive oak desk. There was a feather quill pen on the top—his great-grandfather’s, if I recall—and two bronze busts, one of Washington and one of Jefferson. I was surprised to see Uncle Carson sitting there too. When he’d visited me in the hospital, I had been too frail to embrace. Carson made up for that now. He pulled me close. I held on to him in silence. He, too, smelled of autumn and woodsmoke.

  There were no photographs in the room—no family-vacation snapshots, no school portraits, no shot of the man and his missus decked out at a charity formal. In fact, I do not think I had ever seen a photograph anywhere in the house.

  Carson said, “How are you feeling, Marc?”

  I told him that I was as well as could be expected and turned toward my father-in-law. Edgar did not come around the desk. We did not embrace. We did not, in fact, even shake hands. He gestured toward the chair in front of the desk.

  I did not know Edgar very well. We had only met three times. I do not know how much money he has, but even out of these dwellings, even on a city street or at a bus depot, hell, even naked, you could tell that the Portmans were from money. Monica had the bearing too, the one ingrained over generations, the one that cannot be taught, the one that may literally be genetic. Monica’s choice to live in our relatively modest dwelling was probably a form of rebellion.

  She had hated her father.

  I was not a big fan of his either, probably because I had met his type before. Edgar thinks himself a pull-up-by-the-bootstraps sort, but he himself earned his money the old-fashioned way: He inherited it. I don’t know many superwealthy people, but I noticed that the more things were handed to you on a silver platter, the more you complain about welfare mothers and government handouts. It is bizarre. Edgar belongs to that unique class of the entitled who have deluded themselves into believing that they somehow earned their status through hard work. We all live with self-justification, of course, and if you have never fended for yourself, if you live in luxury and have done nothing to deserve it, well, that is going to compound your insecurities, I guess. But it shouldn’t make you such a prig, to boot.

  I sat. Edgar followed suit. Carson remained standing. I stared at Edgar. He had the plump of the well fed. His face was all soft edges. The normal ruddy on his cheeks, so far from anything rawbone, was gone now. He laced his fingers and rested them on his paunch. He looked, I was somewhat surprised to see, devastated, drawn, and sapless.

  I saysurprised , because Edgar always struck me as pure id, a person whose own pain and pleasure trumped all others’, who believed those who inhabited the space around him were little more than window dressing for his own bemusement. Edgar had now lost two children. His son, Eddie the Fourth, had died while speeding under the influence ten years ago. According to Monica, Eddie veered across the double yellow line and plowed into the semi on purpose. For some reason, she blamed her father. She blamed him for a lot of things.

  There is also Monica’s mother. She “rests” a lot. She takes “extended vacations.” In short, she is in and out of institutions. Both times we met, my mother-in-law was propped up for some social affair, well dressed and powdered, lovely and too pale, a vacancy in her eyes, a slur in her speech, a sway in her stance.

  Except for Uncle Carson, Monica had been estranged from her family. As you might imagine, I hardly minded.

  “You wanted to see me?” I said.

  “Yes, Marc. Yes, I did.”

  I waited.

  Edgar put his hands on his desk. “Did you love my daughter?”

  I was caught off guard, but I still said, “Very much,” with no hesitation.

  He seemed to see the lie. I worked hard to keep my gaze steady. “She still wasn’t happy, you know.”

  “I’m not sure you can blame me for that,” I said.

  He nodded slowly. “Fair point.”

  But my own pass-the-buck defense didn’t really work on me. Edgar’s words were a fresh body blow. The
guilt came roaring back.

  “Did you know that she was seeing a psychiatrist?” Edgar asked.

  I turned toward Carson first, then back to Edgar. “No.”

  “She didn’t want anyone to know.”

  “How did you find out?”

  Edgar did not reply. He stared down at his hands. Then he said: “I want to show you something.”

  I sneaked another look at Uncle Carson. His jaw was set. I thought I saw a tremble. I turned back to Edgar. “Okay.”

  Edgar opened his desk drawer, reached in, and pulled out a plastic bag. He raised it into view, gripping the bag at the corner between his forefinger and thumb. It took a moment, but when I realized what I was looking at, my eyes went wide.

  Edgar saw my reaction. “You recognize it then?”

  I couldn’t speak at first. I glanced over at Carson. His eyes were red. I looked back at Edgar and nodded numbly. Inside the plastic bag was a small swatch of clothing, maybe three inches by three inches. The pattern was one I had seen two weeks ago, moments before being shot.

  Pink with black penguins.

  My voice was barely a hush. “Where did you get this?”

  Edgar handed me a large brown envelope, the kind with bubble wrap on the inside. This too, was protected in plastic. I turned it around. Edgar’s name and address had been printed on a white label. There was no return address. The postmark read New York City.

  “It came in today’s mail,” Edgar said. He gestured to the swatch. “Is it Tara’s?”

  I think I said yes.

  “There’s more,” Edgar said. He reached into the drawer again. “I took the liberty of putting everything in plastic bags. In case the authorities need to test it.”