Three Harlan Coben Novels

by Harlan Coben

  There was the same cell-phone walkie-talkie, a pair of binoculars, a gun. Wu jammed the weapon into his waist. The man still thrashed. He would not live much longer.

  Three minutes until the bell rang.

  Wu locked the van’s door behind him and hurried out. He made it back to the street where Grace Lawson was parked. Mothers lined the fence in anticipation of school being let out. Grace Lawson was out of her car now, standing by herself. That was good.

  Wu walked toward her.

  • • •

  On the other side of the schoolyard, Charlaine Swain was thinking about chain reactions and falling dominoes.

  If she and Mike hadn’t had problems.

  If she had not started up that perverted dance with Freddy Sykes.

  If she had not looked out that window when Eric Wu was there.

  If she had not opened the hide-a-key and called the police.

  But right now, as she passed the playground, the dominoes were falling more in the present: If Mike had not woken up, if he had not insisted she take care of the children, if Perlmutter had not asked her about Jack Lawson, well, without all of that, Charlaine would not have been looking in Grace Lawson’s direction.

  But Mike had insisted. He had reminded her that the children needed her. So here she was. Picking up Clay from school. And Perlmutter had indeed asked Charlaine if she knew Jack Lawson. So when Charlaine arrived at the schoolyard, it was natural, if not inevitable, that she would start scanning the grounds for the man’s wife.

  That was how Charlaine came to be looking at Grace Lawson.

  She had even been tempted to approach—hadn’t that been part of the reason she had agreed to pick up Clay in the first place?—but then she saw Grace pick up her cell phone and start talking into it. Charlaine decided to keep her distance.

  “Hi, Charlaine.”

  A woman, a popular yappy mom who had never deigned to give Charlaine the time before, now stood before her with a look of feigned concern. The newspaper had not mentioned Mike’s name, just that there was a shooting, but small towns and gossip and all that.

  “I heard about Mike. Is he okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “What happened?”

  Another woman sidled up to her right. Two others began to mosey over. Then two more. They came from every direction now, these approaching mothers, getting in her way, almost blocking Charlaine’s view.

  Almost.

  For a moment Charlaine could not move. She stood frozen, watching as he approached Grace Lawson.

  He had changed his appearance. He wore glasses now. His hair wasn’t blond anymore. But there was no doubt. It was the same man.

  It was Eric Wu.

  From more than a hundred feet away Charlaine felt the shiver when Wu put his hand on Grace Lawson’s shoulder. She saw him bend down and whisper something into her ear.

  And then she saw Grace Lawson’s whole body go rigid.

  • • •

  Grace wondered about the Asian man walking toward her.

  She figured that he would just walk by her. He was too young to be a parent. Grace knew most of the teachers. He wasn’t one of them. He was probably a new student teacher. That was probably it. She really did not give him much thought. Her mind was concerned with other things.

  She had packed enough clothes for a few days anyway. Grace had a cousin who lived near Penn State, smack in the middle of Pennsylvania. Maybe she would drive out there. Grace had not called ahead to see. She did not want to leave any trail.

  After throwing clothes in the suitcases, she had closed the door to her bedroom. She took out the small gun Cram had given her and set it on the bed. For a long time she just stared at it. She had always been fervently anti-gun. Like most rational people she was scared of what a weapon like this could do lying around the house. But Cram had put it succinctly yesterday: Hadn’t her children been threatened?

  The trump card.

  Grace wrapped the nylon ankle holster around her good leg. It felt itchy and uncomfortable. She changed into jeans with a small flare at the bottom. The gun was covered now, but there was some room down there. There was still a small bulge in the area, but no more so than if she were wearing a boot.

  She grabbed the Bob Dodd file from his office at the New Hampshire Post and drove to the school. She had a few minutes now, so she stayed in the car and started going through it. Grace had no idea what she expected to find. There were plenty of desk knickknacks—a small American flag, a Ziggy coffee mug, a return address stamper, a small Lucite paperweight. There were pens, pencils, erasers, paperclips, whiteout, thumbtacks, Post-it notes, staples.

  Grace wanted to skip past that stuff and dive into the files, but the pickings were slim. Dodd must have done all his work on a computer. She found a few diskettes, all unmarked. Maybe there would be a clue on one of those. She’d check when she got access to a computer.

  As for paperwork, all she found was press clippings. Articles written by Bob Dodd. Grace skimmed through them. Cora had been right. His stories were mostly small-time exposés. People would write in with a complaint. Bob Dodd would investigate. Hardly the sort of stuff that gets you killed, but who knows? The little things have a way of rippling.

  She was just about to give up—had given up really—when she located the desk photo in the bottom. The frame was facedown. More out of curiosity than anything else she flipped the frame over and took a look. The photograph was a classic vacation shot. Bob Dodd and his wife Jillian stood on a beach, both smiling with dazzling white teeth, both wearing Hawaiian shirts. Jillian had red hair. Her eyes were widely spaced apart. Grace suddenly understood Bob Dodd’s involvement. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was a reporter.

  His wife, Jillian Dodd, was Sheila Lambert.

  Grace closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Then she carefully put everything back in the package. She stuck it in the backseat and slipped out of the car. She needed time to think and put it together.

  The four members of Allaw—it all came back to them. Sheila Lambert, Grace now knew, had stayed in the country. She had changed her identity and gotten married. Jack had taken off for a small village in France. Shane Alworth was either dead or in parts unknown—maybe, as his mother suggested, helping the poor in Mexico. Geri Duncan had been murdered.

  Grace checked her watch. The bell would ring in a few minutes. She felt the buzz of her cell phone on her belt. “Hello?”

  “Ms. Lawson, this is Captain Perlmutter.”

  “Yes, Captain, what can I do for you?”

  “I need to ask you some questions.”

  “I’m picking up my children at school right now.”

  “Would you like me to come by your house? We can meet there.”

  “They’ll be out in two more minutes. I’ll swing by the station.” A sense of relief rushed over her. This half-baked idea of running off to Pennsylvania—that might be too much. Maybe Perlmutter knew something. Maybe, with all she now knew about that picture, he would finally believe her. “Will that be okay?”

  “That’ll be fine. I’ll be here waiting.”

  The very moment Grace snapped the receiver closed, she felt a hand touch down on her shoulder. She turned. The hand belonged to the young Asian man. He bent his head toward her ear.

  “I have your husband,” he whispered.

  chapter 42

  “Charlaine? Are you okay?”

  It was the popular yappy mother. Charlaine ignored her.

  Okay, Charlaine, think.

  What, she wondered, would the dumb heroine do? That was how she’d try to play it in the past—imagine what the waif would do and do the opposite.

  C’mon, c’mon . . .

  Charlaine tried to battle through the near-paralyzing fear. She had not expected to see this man ever again. Eric Wu was wanted. He had shot Mike. He had assaulted Freddy and held him captive. The police had his fingerprints. They knew who he was. They would send him back to prison. So what was
he doing here?

  Who cares, Charlaine? Do something.

  The answer was a no-brainer: Call the police.

  She reached into her pocketbook and pulled out her Motorola. The mothers were still barking like small dogs. Charlaine flipped the phone open.

  It was dead.

  Typical, and yet it made sense. She had used it during the chase. She had left it on all this time. The phone was two years old. The damn thing was always going dead. She glanced back across the schoolyard. Eric Wu was talking to Grace Lawson. They both began to walk away.

  The same woman asked again: “Is something wrong, Charlaine?”

  “I need to use your cell phone,” she said. “Now.”

  • • •

  Grace just stared at the man.

  “If you come with me quietly, I will take you to your husband. You will see him. You will be back in an hour. But the school bell rings in one minute. If you do not come with me, I will take out a gun. I will shoot your children. I will shoot random children. Do you understand?”

  Grace could not speak.

  “You don’t have much time.”

  She found her voice. “I’ll go with you.”

  “You drive. Just walk calmly with me. Please do not make the mistake of trying to signal someone. I will kill them. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “You may be wondering about the man assigned to protect you,” he went on. “Let me assure you that he will not interfere.”

  “Who are you?” Grace asked.

  “The bell is about to ring.” He looked off, a tiny smile on his lips. “Do you want me to be here when your children come out?”

  Scream, Grace thought. Scream like a lunatic and start running. But she could see the bulge of the gun. She could see the man’s eyes. This was no bluff. He meant it. He would kill people.

  And he had her husband.

  They began to walk to her car, side by side, like two friends. Grace’s eyes darted about the playground. She spotted Cora. Cora gave her a puzzled look. Grace did not want to risk it. She looked away.

  Grace kept walking. They reached her car. She had just unlocked the doors when the school bell rang.

  • • •

  The yappy woman rummaged through her purse. “We have a terrible calling plan. Hal is so cheap sometimes. We run out of minutes in the first week and then we need to watch ourselves the rest of the month.”

  Charlaine looked at the other faces. She did not want to cause a panic, so she kept her voice even. “Please, does anyone have a phone I can borrow?”

  She kept her eyes on Wu and Lawson. They were across the street, by Grace’s car now. She saw Grace use one of those remote controls to unlock the doors. Grace stood by the driver’s door. Wu was by the passenger’s. Grace Lawson made no move to run away. It was hard to see her face, but she didn’t look as if she was being coerced.

  The bell sounded.

  The mothers all turned toward the doors, a Pavlovian response, and waited for their children to emerge.

  “Here, Charlaine.”

  One of the mothers, eyes on the school door, handed Charlaine her cell phone. Charlaine tried not to grab it too quickly. She was raising it to her ear when she glanced over at Grace and Wu one more time. She stopped cold.

  Wu was staring directly at her.

  • • •

  When Wu saw that woman again, he started for his gun.

  He was going to shoot her. Right here. Right now. Right in front of everyone.

  Wu was not a superstitious man. He realized that the odds of her being here were reasonable. She had children. She lived in the area. There must have been two or three hundred mothers here. It would make sense that she would be one of them.

  But he still wanted to kill her.

  On the superstitious side, he would kill this demon.

  On the practical side, he would prevent her from calling the police. He would also cause a panic that would allow him to escape. If he shot her, everyone would run toward the fallen woman. It would be the ideal diversion.

  But there were problems too.

  First, the woman stood at least a hundred feet away. Eric Wu knew his strengths and weaknesses. In hand-to-hand he had no equal. With a gun, he was merely decent. He might only wound or, worse, miss altogether. Yes, there would be a panic, but without a body falling, it might not be the sort of diversion he wanted.

  His real target—the reason he was here—was Grace Lawson. He had her now. She was listening to him. She was pliable because she still held out hope that her family could survive this. If she were to see him fire a shot, standing as she was out of his reach, there was a chance that Grace Lawson would panic and bolt.

  “Get in,” he said.

  Grace Lawson opened her car door. Eric Wu stared at the woman across the schoolyard. When their eyes met, he slowly shook his head and gestured toward his waist. He wanted her to understand. She had crossed him before and he had fired. He would do so again.

  He waited until the woman lowered the phone. Still keeping his eyes on her, Wu slid into the car. They pulled out and disappeared down Morningside Drive.

  chapter 43

  Perlmutter sat across from Scott Duncan. They were in the captain’s office at the station. The air-conditioning was on the fritz. Dozens of cops in full uniform all day and no air-conditioning—the place was starting to reek.

  “So you’re on leave from the U.S. attorney’s office,” Perlmutter said.

  “That’s correct,” Duncan replied. “I’m working in private practice right now.”

  “I see. And your client hired Indira Khariwalla—check that, you hired Ms. Khariwalla on behalf of a client.”

  “I will neither confirm nor deny that.”

  “And you won’t tell me if your client wanted Jack Lawson followed. Or why.”

  “That’s correct.”

  Perlmutter spread his hands. “So what exactly do you want, Mr. Duncan?”

  “I want to know what you’ve learned about Jack Lawson’s disappearance.”

  Perlmutter smiled. “Okay, let me make sure I have this straight. I’m supposed to tell you everything I know about a murder and missing person investigation, even though your client may very well be involved. You, in turn, are supposed to tell me squat. That about cover it?”

  “No, that’s not correct.”

  “Well, help me here.”

  “This has nothing to do with a client.” Duncan crossed his ankle over his knee. “I have a personal involvement in the Lawson case.”

  “Come again?”

  “Ms. Lawson showed you the photograph.”

  “Right, I remember.”

  “The girl with her face crossed out,” he said, “was my sister.”

  Perlmutter leaned back and whistled low. “Maybe you should start at the beginning.”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I’d say I have all day, but that would be a lie.”

  As if proving the point, the door flew open. Daley jammed his head in.

  “Line two.”

  “What is it?”

  “Charlaine Swain. She says she just saw Eric Wu at the schoolyard.”

  • • •

  Carl Vespa stared at the painting.

  Grace was the artist. He owned eight of her paintings, though this was the one that moved him most. It was, he suspected, a portrait of Ryan’s last moments. Grace’s memory of that night was hazy. She hated to sound pompous about it, but this vision—this seemingly ordinary painting of a young man somehow on the verge of a nightmare—had come to her in something of an artistic trance. Grace Lawson claimed that she dreamed about that night. That, she said, was the only place that the memories existed.

  Vespa wondered.

  His home was in Englewood, New Jersey. The block had at one time been old money. Now Eddie Murphy lived at the end of the street. A power forward for the New Jersey Nets was two houses down. Vespa’s property, once owned by a Vanderbilt, was sprawl
ing and secluded. In 1988 Sharon, his then-wife, had torn down the turn-of-the-century stone edifice and built what was then considered modern. It had not aged well. The house looked like a bunch of glass cubes, stacked haphazardly. There were too many windows. The house got ridiculously hot in the summer. It looked and felt like a damn greenhouse.

  Sharon was gone now too. She had not wanted the house in the divorce. She really did not want very much at all. Vespa did not try to stop her. Ryan had been their main connection, in his death more than life. That was never a healthy thing.

  Vespa checked the security monitor for the driveway. The sedan was pulling up.

  He and Sharon had wanted more children, but it was not to be. Vespa’s sperm count was too low. He told no one, of course, subtly implying that the fault lay with Sharon. Awful to say now, but Vespa believed that if they had more children, if Ryan had at least one sibling, it would have made the tragedy, if not easier, at least bearable. The problem with tragedy is that you have to go on. There is no choice. You cannot just pull off the road and wait it out—much as you might want to. If you have other children you understand that right away. Your life may be over, but you get out of bed for others.

  Put simply, there was no reason for him to get out of bed anymore.

  Vespa headed outside and watched the sedan come to a stop. Cram got out first, a cell phone glued to his ear. Wade Larue followed. Larue did not look frightened. He looked oddly at peace, gazing at the lush surroundings. Cram mumbled something to Larue—Vespa couldn’t hear what he said—and then started up the stairs. Wade Larue wandered away as if he was on retreat.

  Cram said, “We got a problem.”

  Vespa waited, following Wade Larue with his eyes.

  “Richie is not answering his radio.”

  “Where was he stationed?”

  “In a van near the kids’ school.”

  “Where is Grace?”

  “We don’t know.”

  Vespa looked at Cram.

  “It was three o’clock. We knew she’d gone to pick up Emma and Max. Richie was supposed to tail her from there. She got to the school, we know that. Richie radioed that in. Since then, nothing.”