Darkest Fear

by Harlan Coben

  "That is where God exists," he says. "That is where all things valuable exist. True bliss can only be found inside of you. The meaning of life is not in your new home entertainment system or sports car. People must see their limitless potential. How do you make them see? Right now imagine what these families are going through."

  His voice soft, he invites me to try.

  "Technology could never conjure up the horrors you are now imagining. Sow the seeds. Sowing the seeds shows us the potential."

  Myron's heart pounded in big thuds. He sat back, shook his head, started reading again. The crazed kidnapper ranted on, his theories feverishly demented, sort of Symbionese Liberation Army by way of Ted Kaczynski. Stan Gibbs's column continued into the next day's paper. Myron hit the link and read on. During the second day, Gibbs opened with some heartbreaking quotes from the family of the victims. Then he questioned the kidnapper some more:

  I ask him how he has managed to keep these kidnappings out of the media.

  "By sowing the seeds," he repeats yet again.

  I ask for an example.

  "I tell his wife to go to the garage and open the red Stanley toolbox on the third shelf. I tell her to pick out the black pliers with the bubble grip. Then I send her to the basement. I tell her to stand in front of the Mission chair they bought the previous summer at that tag sale on the Cape. Imagine, I say, your husband tied naked to that chair. Imagine those pliers in my hand. And finally, imagine what I'll do if I see anything about him in the newspaper."

  But he does not stop there.

  "I ask her about the children. I mention their names. I mention their schools and their teachers and their favorite breakfast cereal."

  I ask him how he knows these things.

  His answer is simple. "Daddy tells me."

  Myron fell back. "Jesus," he uttered.

  Deep breaths, he told himself again. In and out. That's it. Think it through. Slowly now. Carefully. Okay, first off: Horrible as this is, what does it have to do with Davis Taylor ne Dennis Lex? Probably nothing. The worst sort of long shot. And again, horrible as this is, Myron knew that there was more to the story. More--and in a sense, less.

  The Gibbs columns drew weeks' worth of nationwide attention and criticism--until, Myron remembered, it all blew up in the most public way possible. What had happened exactly? Myron hit some keys and clicked the mouse. He started a search of articles where Stan Gibbs was the subject. They came up in date order:

  FEDS DEMAND GIBBS'S SOURCE

  The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which in recent weeks has been denying the allegations listed in Stan Gibbs's columns, took a new tack today. They demanded his notes and information.

  Dan Conway, a spokesman for the FBI, began by saying, "We know nothing about these crimes," then added, "But if Mr. Gibbs is being truthful, he has important information on a possible serial kidnapper and killer, perhaps even harboring or aiding him. We have a right to that information."

  Stan Gibbs, a popular columnist and television journalist, has refused to reveal his sources. "I'm not protecting a killer here," Mr. Gibbs said. "The families of the victims as well as the perpetrator of the crimes spoke to me under the strict condition of confidentiality. It's a cry as old as our country: I will not reveal my sources."

  The New York Herald and American Civil Liberties Union have already denounced the FBI and plan on backing Mr. Gibbs. The judge has ordered the case sealed from the public.

  Myron read on. The arguments on both sides were pretty standard. Gibbs's attorneys naturally wrapped themselves in the First Amendment, while the feds equally naturally countered that the First Amendment was not an absolute, that you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater, and that freedom of expression does not include protecting possible criminals. The country also argued the issue. It played well on CNBC and MSNBC and CNN and a bunch of other cable letters, lighting up the phone lines like a radio giveaway. The judge was about to render a verdict when the whole story exploded in a way no one expected.

  Myron hit the link:

  GIBBS FIBS?

  Reporter accused of plagiarism

  Myron read the endgame shocker: Someone had found a mystery novel published by a tiny press with a minuscule print run in 1978. The novel, Whisper to a Scream, by F. K. Armstrong, closely mirrored Gibbs's story. Too closely. Certain snippets of dialogue were pretty much copied verbatim. The crimes in the novel--kidnappings with no resolution--were too similar to what Gibbs had written to be dismissed as coincidence.

  The plagiaristic spectres of Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith and the like rose from the grave and would not disperse. Heads rolled. There were resignations and hand-wringing. For his part, Stan Gibbs refused to comment, which didn't look good. Gibbs ended up "taking a leave of absence," a modern-day euphemism for getting fired. The ACLU issued an ambiguous statement and retreated. The New York Herald quietly retracted the story, saying that the matter "was under internal review."

  After some time passed, Myron reached for the phone and dialed.

  "News desk. Bruce Taylor speaking."

  "How about meeting me for a drink?"

  "I know this is out nowadays, Myron, but I'm strictly hetero."

  "I have the ability to change you."

  "I don't think so, pal."

  "Several women I've dated started out hetero," Myron said. "But one date with me and whammo, they switched teams."

  "I love it when you're self-deprecating, Myron. It's just so real."

  "So what do you say?"

  "I'm on deadline."

  "You're always on deadline."

  "You buying?"

  "To quote my brethren during Passover seders, why should this night be different from any other night?"

  "I buy sometimes."

  "Do you even own a wallet?"

  "Hey, I'm not the one asking for favors," Bruce said. "Four o'clock. The Rusty Umbrella."

  15

  The Lex Building's wrought-iron gates lined a Fifth Avenue facade with vegetation so dense you wouldn't see light through it if a supernova burst on the other side. The famed edifice was a converted Manhattan mansion with a European courtyard and a regal art deco exterior and enough security to handle a Tyson boxing match. The building had wonderful old lines and detailed Venetian touches, except that for the sake of privacy, the windows had been converted into the smoky-limo variety. It made for a distracting and unnatural mix.

  Four blue-blazered, gray-slacked guards stood at the entrance--real guards, Myron noted, with cop eyes and KGB facial tics, not the rent-a-uniforms you saw at department stores or airports. The four of them stood silently, eyeing Myron like he was wearing a tube top in the Vatican.

  One of the guards stepped forward. "May I see some ID please?"

  Myron took out his wallet and showed him a credit card and driver's license.

  "There's no photo on the driver's license," the guard said.

  "New Jersey doesn't require them."

  "I need a photo ID."

  "I have my picture on my health club membership card."

  Cop-patient sigh. "That won't do, sir. Do you have a passport?"

  "In midtown Manhattan?"

  "Yes, sir. For the purposes of ID."

  "No," Myron said. "Besides, it's a terrible picture. Doesn't fully capture the radiant blue in my eyes." Myron batted them for emphasis.

  "Wait here, sir."

  He waited. The other three guards frowned, crossed their arms, studied him as though he might start drinking from a toilet. Myron heard a whirring noise and looked up. A security camera was on him now, focusing in. Myron waved, smiled into the lens, performed a few flexes he had picked up from watching he-man events on ESPN 2. He ended with a pretty dramatic back lat spread and waved to the appreciative crowd. The blue-blazers looked unimpressed.

  "All natural," Myron said. "I've never taken steroids."

  No replies.

  The first guard came back. "Follow me, please."

  Stepping in
to the courtyard was like stepping into C. S. Lewis's wardrobe, another world, the other side of the shrubbery, so to speak. Here in the middle of Manhattan, the street noises were suddenly very far away, muted. The garden was lush, the tile walkways forming a pattern not unlike an Oriental carpet. There was a sprouting fountain in the middle with a statue of a horse rearing back its head.

  A new set of blue-blazers greeted him by the ornate front door. This place, Myron thought, must rack up a hell of a dry-cleaning bill. They made him empty his pockets, confiscated his cell phone, frisked him by hand, ran a metal wand over his person so thoroughly he almost asked for a condom, walked him through a metal detector twice, again frisked him with a little too much gusto.

  "If you touch my wee-wee one more time," Myron said, "I'm telling my mommy."

  More no replies. Maybe the Lexes demanded not only confidentiality but a discriminating sense of humor.

  "Follow me, sir," the talking blue-blazer said.

  The stillness of the place--a building in the middle of Manhattan, for chrissake--was unnerving, the only sound now the steady echo of their footsteps against the cool marble. It was like walking through an old museum at night, the whole experience like something out of From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. The guards formed a poor man's presidential motorcade--the talking blue-blazer and a buddy three paces in front of him, two other blue-blazers three paces back. Just for fun, Myron would slow down or speed up and watch the guards do likewise. Like a really bad line dance, which was something of a redundancy. At one point he almost did a moonwalk, a la Michael Jackson, but these guys were already viewing him as a potential pedophile.

  The mahogany staircase was wide and smelled a bit like lemon Pledge. There were enormous tapestries on the wall, the kind with swords and horses and hedonistic feasts of suckling pig. There were two more blue-blazers on the second floor. Now it was their turn to inspect Myron as though they'd never seen a man before. Myron twirled for their benefit. They too seemed unimpressed.

  "You should have seen me flex before," Myron said.

  The double doors opened and Myron entered a room slightly larger than a sports arena. Two guards followed him and took up positions in the back corners. There was a big man sitting to the right in a wing chair. At least he looked big in the chair. Or maybe the chair was tiny. The man was probably in his mid-forties. His head and neck formed a near-perfect trapezoid, the top buzzed into a military crew cut. He had a flat nose and ham-hock hands and knockwurst fingers. Ex-boxer or ex-marine or probably both. A man of ninety-degree angles and granite blocks.

  Granite Man gave Myron more hard eyes, though his were more relaxed, as though Myron amused him in the way a little kitty nipping at his pant leg might. He didn't stand, choosing instead to stare at Myron and crack his knuckles one at a time.

  Myron looked at Granite Man. Granite Man cracked another knuckle.

  "Shiver," Myron said.

  No one asked him to take a seat. Hell, no one spoke. Myron stood there and waited with the three sets of eyes weighing on him.

  "Okay," Myron said. "I'm intimidated. Can we get past this, please?"

  Granite Man nodded at the two blazers. They both left. Almost simultaneously, a door on the other side of the room opened and two women appeared. They were pretty far away, but Myron guessed that the first one was Susan Lex. Her hair was done up in an impossibly neat, semi-shellacked bun, and her lips were pursed as if she'd just swallowed a live beetle. The other woman--she looked no more than eighteen or nineteen--had to be her daughter, a carbon copy with the same pursed lips and twenty-five years less wear and tear, not to mention better hair.

  Myron started to cross the room with his hand extended, but Susan Lex held up her palm in a stop gesture. Granite Man sat forward, nearly leaning into Myron's path. He gave Myron a small shake of the head, which was no easy task when you have no neck. Myron stayed where he was.

  "I don't like being threatened," Susan Lex called from across the room.

  "I apologize for that. But I had to see you."

  "And that makes it right to threaten and blackmail me?"

  Myron had no quick answer to that. "I need to talk to you about your brother Dennis."

  "So you said on the phone."

  "Where is he?"

  Susan Lex looked at Granite Man. Granite Man frowned and cracked his knuckles again. "Just like that, Mr. Bolitar?" Susan Lex said. "You call my office. You threaten me. You insist I alter my schedule to accommodate you. And then you come in here and make demands?"

  "I don't mean to be abrupt," Myron said. "But this is a matter of life and death."

  Whenever he said "a matter of life and death," he expected to hear that melodramatic dum-dum-duuuummm music.

  "That's hardly an explanation," Susan Lex said.

  "Your brother registered with the national bone marrow center," Myron said. "His marrow matched a sick child's." After the creepy say-good-bye-to-the-boy conversation last night, Myron had decided to stop being gender specific. "Without that transplant, the child will die."

  Susan Lex arched an eyebrow. The rich are really good at that, at arching eyebrows without altering anything else on their face. Myron wondered if they learned it at rich-people summer camp. Susan Lex looked at Granite Man again. Granite Man was trying to smile now. "You're mistaken, Mr. Bolitar," she said.

  Myron waited for her to say more. When she didn't, he said, "Mistaken how?"

  "If you're telling the truth, you've made a mistake. I will say no more."

  "With all due deference," Myron said, "that's not good enough."

  "It will have to be."

  "Where is your brother, Ms. Lex?"

  "Please leave, Mr. Bolitar."

  "I can still go to the press."

  Granite Man crossed his legs and started cracking his knuckles again.

  Myron turned to him. "Yes, but can you do this?" Myron patted his head with one hand and rubbed his belly with the other.

  Granite Man didn't like that one.

  "Look," Myron said, "I don't want to cause any trouble here. You're private people. I understand that. But I need to find this donor."

  "It's not my brother," Susan Lex said.

  "Then where is he?"

  "He's not your donor. More than that is none of your concern."

  "Does the name Davis Taylor mean anything to you?"

  Susan Lex repursed the lips as though a fresh beetle had sneaked through. She turned and walked out. Her daughter did likewise. Again on cue, the door behind Myron opened and the two blue-blazers filled it. More glares. They stepped fully into the room. Granite Man finally stood, which took some time. He was indeed big. Very big.

  The men approached Myron.

  "Let's go to the judges," Myron said. "Charles Nelson Reilly, your score?"

  Granite Man stepped in front of him, shoulders square, eyes calm.

  "The not introducing yourself," Myron said, doing his best Charles Nelson Reilly lisp, which was not very good. "I thought that was really very macho. And that whole silent persona combined with the amused glare. Very nicely done, really. Professional. But--and here's where you kinda lost me--the knuckle cracking, well, Gene, that was overkill, don't you think? Overall score: an 8. Comment: stick with the subtle."

  Granite Man said, "You finished?"

  "Yes."

  "Myron Bolitar. Born in Livingston, New Jersey. Mother Ellen, father Al--"

  "They like to be called El-Al," Myron interjected. "Like the Israeli airline."

  "Basketball All-American at Duke University. Picked eighth in the NBA draft by the Boston Celtics. Blew out your knee in your first preseason game, ending your career. Currently owns MB SportsReps, a sports representation firm. Dated the novelist Jessica Culver since you graduated college, but you two recently parted ways. Should I go on?"

  "You left off the part about my being a snazzy dancer. I can demonstrate if you like."

  Granite Man smirked. "You want my score on you now?"<
br />
  "Suit yourself."

  "You wisecrack too much," Granite Man said. "I know you do it to look confident, but you're trying too hard. And since you raised the issue of subtlety, your story about a dying kid needing a bone marrow transplant was touching. The only thing missing was the string quartet."

  "You don't believe me?"

  "No, I don't believe you."

  "So why am I here, then?"

  Granite Man spread his satellite-dishes excuse for hands. "That's what I'd like to know."

  The three men formed a triangle, Granite in front, the two blue-blazers in back. Granite made a small nod. One of the blazers produced a gun and aimed at Myron's head.

  This was not good.

  There are ways of disarming a man with a gun, but there's an inherent problem: It might not work. If you miscalculate or if your opponent is better than you think--something not unlikely in an opponent who knows how to handle a gun--you could get shot. That's a serious drawback. And in this particular situation there were two other opponents, both of whom looked good and were probably armed. There is a word expert fighters use for a sudden move at this juncture: suicide.

  "Whoever did your research on me left something out," Myron said.

  "What might that be?"

  "My relationship with Win."

  Granite Man didn't flinch. "You mean Windsor Horne Lockwood the Third? Family owns Lock-Horne Security and Investments on Park Avenue. Your college roommate from Duke. Since moving out of the Spring Street loft you shared with Jessica Culver, you've been living at his apartment in the Dakota. You have close business and personal ties, might even be called best friends. That relationship?"

  "That would be the one," Myron said.

  "I am aware of it. I am also aware of Mr. Lockwood's"--he paused, searching for the word-- "talents."

  "Then you know that if that bozo gets itchy"-- Myron head-gestured toward the blazer with the gun--"you die."

  Granite Man wrestled with his facial muscles and this time he achieved a smile, though not without effort. Heart's song "Barracuda" played in Myron's head. "I am not without my own, uh, talents, Mr. Bolitar."

  "If you really believe that," Myron said, "then you don't know enough about Win's, uh, talents."

  "I won't debate the point. But I will point out that he doesn't have an army like this at his disposal. Now, are you going to tell me why you're asking about Dennis Lex?"