by Harlan Coben
He did not draw his weapon. Wu had counted on that. This was a family neighborhood in the great American expanse known as the suburbs. A Ho-Ho-Kus police officer probably responds to several hundred possible burglaries during his career. Most, if not all, were false alarms.
“We got a call about a possible break-in,” the officer said.
Wu frowned, feigning confusion. He took a step outside but kept his distance. Not yet, he thought. Be nonthreatening. Wu’s moves were intentionally laconic, setting a slow pace. “Wait, I know. I forgot my key. Someone probably saw me going in through the back.”
“You live here, Mr. . . . ?”
“Chang,” Wu said. “Yes, I do. Oh, but it’s not my house, if that’s what you mean. It belongs to my partner, Frederick Sykes.”
Now Wu risked another step.
“I see,” the officer said. “And Mr. Sykes is . . . ?”
“Upstairs.”
“May I see him please?”
“Sure, come on in.” Wu turned his back to the officer and yelled up the stairs. “Freddy? Freddy, throw something on. The police are here.”
Wu did not have to turn around. He knew the tall black man was moving up behind him. He was only five yards away now. Wu stepped back into the house. He held the door open and gave the officer what he thought was an effeminate smile. The officer—his name tag read Richardson—moved toward the door.
When he was only a yard away, Wu uncoiled.
Office Richardson had hesitated, perhaps sensing something, but it was too late. The blow, aimed for the center of his gut, was a palm strike. Richardson folded in half like a deck chair. Wu moved closer. He wanted to disable. He did not want to kill.
An injured policeman produces heat. A dead policeman raises the temperature tenfold.
The cop was doubled over. Wu hit him behind the legs. Richardson dropped to his knees. Wu used a pressure point technique. He dug the knuckles of his index fingers into both sides of Richardson’s head, up and into the ear cavity under the cartilage, an area known as Triple Warmer 17. You need to get the right angle. Go full strength and you could kill someone. You needed precision here.
Richardson’s eyes went white. Wu released the hold. Richardson dropped like a marionette with its strings cut.
The knockout would not last long. Wu took the handcuffs from the man’s belt and cuffed his wrist to the stairwell. He ripped the radio from his shoulder.
Wu considered the woman next door. She’d be watching.
She would surely call the police again. He wondered about that, but there was no time. If he tried to attack, she would see him and lock the door. It would take too long. His best bet was to use time and surprise here. He hurried to the garage and got into Jack Lawson’s minivan. He checked the cargo area in the back.
Jack Lawson was there.
Wu moved to the driver’s seat now. He had a plan.
• • •
Charlaine had a bad feeling the moment she saw the policeman step out of the car.
For one thing, he was alone. She had assumed that there would be two of them, partners, again from TV—Starsky and Hutch, Adam-12, Briscoe and Green. She realized now that she had made a mistake. Her call had been too casual. She should have claimed to see something menacing, something frightening, so that they would have arrived more wary and prepared. Instead she had simply come across as a nosey neighbor, a dotty woman who had nothing better to do but call the cops for any little thing.
The policeman’s body language too was all wrong. He sauntered toward the door, slack and casual, not a care in the world. Charlaine couldn’t see the front door from where she was, only the driveway. When the officer disappeared from view, Charlaine felt her stomach drop.
She considered shouting out a warning. The problem was—and this might sound strange—the new Pella windows they had installed last year. They opened vertically, with a hand crank. By the time she slid open both locks and cranked the handle, well, the officer would already be out of sight. And really, what could she yell? What kind of warning? What in the end did she really know?
So she waited.
Mike was in the house. He was downstairs in the den, watching the Yankees on the YES Network. The divided night. They never watched TV together anymore. The way he flipped the remote was maddening. They liked different shows. But really, she didn’t think that was it. She could watch anything. Still Mike took the den; she had the bedroom. They both watched alone, in the dark. Again she didn’t know when that had started. The children weren’t home tonight—Mike’s brother had taken them to the movies—but when they were, they stayed in their own rooms. Charlaine tried to limit the Web surf time, but it was impossible. In her youth, friends talked on the phone for hours. Now they instant-messaged and lord-knew-what over the Internet.
This was what her family became—four separate entities in the dark, interacting with one another only when necessary.
She saw the light go on in the Sykes garage. Through the window, the one covered with flimsy lace, Charlaine could see a shadow. Movement. In the garage. Why? There would be no need for the police officer to be in there. She reached for the phone and dialed 911, even as she began to head for the stairs.
“I called you a little while ago,” she told the 911 operator.
“Yes?”
“About a break-in at my neighbor’s house.”
“An officer is responding.”
“Yeah, I know that. I saw him pull up.”
Silence. She felt like a dope.
“I think something might have happened.”
“What did you see?”
“I think he may have been attacked. Your officer. Please send someone quickly.”
She hung up. The more she’d explain, the stupider it would sound.
The familiar churning noise started up. Charlaine knew what it was. Freddy’s electric garage door. The man had done something to the cop. He was going to escape.
And that was when Charlaine decided to do something truly stupid.
She thought back to those wicked-witch-thin heroines, the ones with the mind-scooped stupidity, and wondered if any of them, even the most brain dead, had ever done something so colossally stupid. She doubted it. She knew that when she looked back on the choice she was about to make—assuming she survived it—she would laugh and maybe, just maybe, have a little more respect for the protagonists who enter dark homes in just their bra and panties.
Here was the thing: The Asian guy was about to escape. He had hurt Freddy. He had hurt a cop; she was sure of it. By the time the cops responded, he would be gone. They wouldn’t find him. It would be too late.
And if he got away, then what?
He had seen her. She knew that. At the window. He had probably already figured out that she was the one who called the police. Freddy could be dead. So too the cop. Who was the only witness left?
Charlaine.
He would come back for her, wouldn’t he? And even if he didn’t, even he decided to let her be, well, at best, she would live in fear. She’d be jumpy in the night. She’d look for him in crowds during the days. Maybe he would simply want revenge. Maybe he would go after Mike or the kids. . . .
She could not let that happen. She had to stop him now.
How?
Wanting to prevent his escape was all fine and good, but let’s stay real here. What could she do? They didn’t own a gun. She couldn’t just run outside and jump on his back and try to claw his eyes. No, she had to be cleverer than that.
She had to follow him.
On the surface it sounded ridiculous, but add it up. If he got away, the result would be fear. Pure, unadulterated, probably unending terror until he was captured, which might be never. Charlaine had seen the man’s face. She had seen his eyes. She couldn’t live with that.
Following him—running a tail, as they say on TV—made sense, when you considered the alternatives. She would follow him in her car. She would keep her distance. She would have the cell
phone. She would be able to tell the police where he was. The plan did not involve following him long, just until the police could take over. Right now, if she didn’t act, she knew what would happen: The police would arrive; the Asian man would be gone.
There was no alternative.
The more she thought about it, the less nutsy it sounded. She’d be in a moving car. She’d stay comfortably behind him. She’d be on her cell phone with a 911 operator.
Wasn’t that safer than letting him go?
She ran downstairs.
“Charlaine?”
It was Mike. He stood there, in the kitchen, standing over the sink eating peanut-butter crackers. She stopped for a second. His eyes probed her face in a way only he could, in a way only he ever had. She fell back to her days at Vanderbilt, when they first fell in love. The way he looked at her then, the way he looked at her now. He was skinnier back then and so handsome. But the look, the eyes, they were the same.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I need”—she stopped, caught her breath—“I need to go somewhere.”
His eyes. Probing. She remembered the first time she ever saw him, that sunny day at Centennial Park in Nashville. How far had they come? Mike still saw. He still saw her in a way that no one else ever had. For a moment Charlaine could not move. She thought that she might cry. Mike dropped the crackers into the sink and started toward her.
“I’ll drive,” Mike said.
chapter 18
Grace and the famous rocker known as Jimmy X were alone in the den-cum-playroom. Max’s Game Boy was lying on its back. The battery case had broken, so now the two double As were held in place by Scotch tape. The game cartridge, lying next to it as if it’d been spit out, was called Super Mario Five, which, according to Grace’s less than sophisticated eye, appeared to be exactly the same as Super Mario One through Four.
Cora had left them alone and returned to her role as cybersleuth. Jimmy had still not spoken. He sat with his forearms against his thighs, his head hanging, reminding Grace of the first time she’d seen him, in her hospital room not long after she regained consciousness.
He wanted her to talk first. She could see that. But she had nothing to say to him.
“I’m sorry to stop by so late,” he said.
“I thought you had a gig tonight.”
“Already over.”
“Early,” she said.
“The concerts usually end by nine. It’s how the promoters like it.”
“How did you know where I lived?”
Jimmy shrugged. “I guess I’ve always known.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t answer and she didn’t push it. For several seconds the room was dead silent.
“I’m not sure how to begin,” Jimmy said. Then, after a brief pause, he added, “You still limp.”
“Good opening,” she said.
He tried to smile.
“Yes, I limp.”
“From . . . ?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I got off easy.”
The shadow crossed his face. His head, the one he’d finally worked up the nerve to lift, dropped back down as if it had learned its lesson.
Jimmy still had the cheekbones. The famed blond locks were gone, from either genetics or a razor’s edge, she couldn’t tell which. He was older, of course. His youth was over and she wondered if that was true for her too.
“I lost everything that night,” he began. Then he stopped and shook his head. “That didn’t come out right. I’m not here for pity.”
She said nothing.
“Do you remember when I came to see you at the hospital?”
She nodded.
“I’d read every newspaper story. Every magazine story. I watched all the news reports. I can tell you about every kid that died that night. Every one of them. I know their faces. I close my eyes, I still see them.”
“Jimmy?”
He looked up again.
“You shouldn’t be telling me this. Those kids had families.”
“I know that.”
“I’m not the one to give you absolution.”
“You think that’s what I came here for?”
Grace did not reply.
“It’s just . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know why I came, okay? I saw you tonight. At the church. And I could see you knew who I was.” He tilted his head. “How did you find me anyway?”
“I didn’t.”
“The man you were with?”
“Carl Vespa.”
“Oh Christ.” He closed his eyes. “Father of Ryan.”
“Yes.”
“He brought you?”
“Yes.”
“What does he want?”
Grace thought about that. “I don’t think he knows.”
Now it was Jimmy’s turn to stay silent.
“He thinks he wants an apology.”
“Thinks?”
“What he really wants is his son back.”
The air felt heavy. She shifted in her chair. Jimmy’s face had no color.
“I tried, you know. To apologize, I mean. He’s right about that. I owe them that. At the very least. And I’m not talking about that stupid photo op with you at the hospital. My manager wanted that. I was so stoned I just went along. I could barely stand.” He stared at her. He had those same intense eyes that had made him an instant MTV darling. “Do you remember Tommy Garrison?”
She did. He had died in the stampede. His parents were Ed and Selma.
“His picture touched me. I mean, they all did, you know. These lives, they were all just starting out. . . .” He stopped again, took a deep breath, tried again. “But Tommy, he looked like my kid brother. I couldn’t get him out of my head. So I went to his house. I wanted to apologize to his parents. . . .” He stopped.
“What happened?”
“I got there. We sat at their kitchen table. I remember I put my elbows on it and the whole thing teetered. They had this linoleum floor, half coming up. The wallpaper, this awful yellow flowered stuff, was peeling off the walls. Tommy was their only child. I looked at their lives, at their empty faces . . . I couldn’t bear it.”
She said nothing.
“That was when I ran.”
“Jimmy?”
He looked at her.
“Where have you been?”
“Lot of places.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you just give it all up?”
He shrugged. “There wasn’t all that much, really. The music business, well, I won’t go into it, but let’s just say I hadn’t received much money yet. I was new. It takes a while to get serious money. I didn’t care. I just wanted out.”
“So where do you go?”
“I started in Alaska. Worked gutting fish, if you can believe that. Did that for about a year. Then I started traveling, played with a couple of small bar bands. In Seattle I found a group of old hippies. They used to do IDs for members of the Weather Underground, that kinda thing. They got me new papers. The closest I came back here, I played with a cover band in an Atlantic City casino for a while. At the Tropicana. I dyed my hair. I stuck to the drums. Nobody recognized me, or if they did, they didn’t much care.”
“Were you happy?”
“You want the truth? No. I wanted to come back. I wanted to make amends and move on. But the longer I was gone, the harder it was, the more I longed for it. The whole thing was a vicious circle. And then I met Madison.”
“The lead singer of Rapture?”
“Yeah. Madison. Can you believe that name? It’s huge now. You remember that movie Splash, the one with Tom Hanks and what’s-her-name?”
“Daryl Hannah,” Grace said automatically.
“Right, the blond mermaid. Remember that scene where Tom Hanks is trying to come up with a name for her and he says all kinds of stuff like Jennifer or Stephanie and they’re walking p
ast Madison Avenue and he just mentions the street name and she wants it to be her name and that’s a big laugh in the movie, right, a woman named Madison. Now it’s a top-ten name.”
Grace let it go.
“Anyway, she’s from a farm town in Minnesota. She ran away to the Big Apple when she was fifteen, ended up strung out and homeless in Atlantic City. She landed at a homeless shelter for runaway teens. She found Jesus, you know the deal, trading one addiction for another, and started singing. She has a voice like a Janis Joplin angel.”
“Does she know who you are?”
“No. You know how Shania has Mutt Lange in the background? That’s what I wanted. I like working with her. I like the music, but I wanted to stay out of the spotlight. At least that’s what I tell myself. Madison is painfully shy. She won’t perform unless I’m onstage with her. She’ll get over that, but for now I figured drums are a pretty good disguise.”
He shrugged, tried a smile. There was still a hint of the old knock-’em-back charisma. “Guess I was wrong about that.”
They were silent for a moment.
“I still don’t understand,” Grace said.
He looked at her.
“I said before I’m not the one to give you absolution. I meant that. But the truth is, you didn’t fire a gun that night.”
Jimmy stayed still.
“The Who. When they had that stampede in Cincinnati, they got over it. And the Stones, when that Hell’s Angel killed a guy at their concert. They’re still playing. I can see wanting out for a little while, a year or two . . .”
Jimmy looked to the right. “I should leave.”
He stood.
“Going to disappear again?” she asked.
He hesitated and then reached into his pocket. He pulled out a card and handed it to her. There were ten digits on it and nothing more. “I don’t have a home address or anything, just this mobile phone.”
He turned and started for the door. Grace did not follow. Under normal circumstances, she might have pushed him, but in the end, his visit was an aside, a not very important one in the scheme of things. Her past had a curious pull, that was all. Especially now.
“Take care of yourself, Grace.”
“You too, Jimmy.”
She sat in the den, feeling the exhaustion begin to weigh on her shoulders, and wondered where Jack was right now.