Darkest Fear

by Harlan Coben

  Stan shook his head.

  " 'Say one last good-bye to the boy,' " Myron said.

  "What?"

  "That's what the Sow the Seeds killer said to me on the phone. The boy. I made a mistake when he called me. I told him a boy needed help. After that, I only used the word 'child.' When I spoke to Susan Lex. When I spoke to you. I said a thirteen-year-old child needs a transplant."

  "So?"

  "So when we talked in the car that night, you asked what I was really after, what my real interest in all this was. Remember?"

  "Yes."

  "And I said I already told you."

  "Right."

  "And you said, 'That boy who needs a bone marrow transplant?" You said, 'That boy.' How did you know he was a boy, Stan?"

  Win turned toward Stan. Stan looked at Win's face.

  "Is that your proof?" Stan countered. "I mean, is this supposed to be a Perry Mason moment or something? Maybe you slipped up, Myron. Or maybe I just assumed it was a boy. Or I heard wrong. That's not evidence."

  "You're right. It's not. It just got me thinking, that's all."

  "Thoughts aren't proof."

  "Wow," Win said. "Thoughts aren't proof. I'll have to remember that one."

  "But there is proof," Myron said. "Definitive proof."

  "Impossible," Stan said, but his voice warbled now. "What?"

  "I'll get to that in a moment. First let me back off on my indignation a little."

  "I don't understand."

  "At the end of the day, what you did was scummy, no question about it. But in its own way, it was almost ethical. Win and I often discuss the ends justifying the means. You could claim that's what happened here. You tried to turn your father in before he struck again. You did all you could to make sure nobody else was harmed. Jeremy was never in any real danger. You couldn't know that Greg would be shot. So in the end, you scared a boy, but so what? Next to the murder and destruction your father would have continued to wreak, it was nothing. So you did some good. The ends perhaps justified the means. Except for one thing."

  Stan didn't bite.

  "Jeremy's bone marrow transplant. He needs that to live, Stan. You know that. You also know that you're the match, not your father. That was why you slipped him that cyanide pill. Because once we dragged your father to the hospital and realized that he wasn't a match, well, we would have investigated. We would have realized that Edwin Gibbs was not Davis Taylor ne Dennis Lex. So you had to have him kill himself and then you pushed for a quick cremation. I don't mean to make it sound as harsh or cold as all that. You didn't murder your father. He took the pill all on his own. He was a sick man. He wanted to die. It's yet another case of the ends justifying the means."

  Myron took a moment and just looked into Stan's eyes. Stan did not look away. In a sense, this was more agenting work. Myron was negotiating here--the most important negotiation of his life. He had put his opponent in a corner. Now he needed to reach out. Not help him yet. He had to keep him in the corner. But he had to start reaching out. Just a little.

  "You're not a monster," Myron said. "You just didn't count on the complication of being a bone marrow match. You want to do right by Jeremy. It's why you've gone so nuts trying to help the bone marrow drive. If they find another donor, it takes you off the hook. Because you're in this lie too deep now. You couldn't admit the truth--that you are the match. It would ruin you. I understand that."

  Stan's eyes were wide and wet, but he was listening.

  "Before I told you that I had proof," Myron said. "We checked the bone marrow registry. Know what we found, Stan?"

  Stan didn't reply.

  "You're not registered," Myron said. "Here you are telling everybody to sign up and you yourself aren't in their computer. The three of us know why. It's because you'd be a match. And if you matched, there would be those questions again."

  Stan gave defiance one last shot. "That's not proof."

  "Then how will you explain not registering?"

  "I don't have to explain anything."

  "A blood test will prove it conclusively. The registry still has the blood that Davis Taylor gave during the marrow drive. We can do a DNA test with yours, see if it matches up."

  "And if I don't agree to a test?"

  Win took that one. "Oh, you'll give blood," he said with just the slightest smile. "One way or another."

  Something on Stan's face broke then. He lowered his head. The defiance was over. He was trapped in the corner now. No way to escape. He'd start looking for an ally. It always happened in negotiations. When you're lost, you look for an out. Myron had reached out before. It was time to do it again.

  "You don't understand," Stan said.

  "Strangely enough, I do." Myron moved a little closer to Stan. He made his voice soft yet unyielding. Total command mode. "Here's what we're going to do, Stan. You and I are going to make a deal."

  Stan looked up, confused but also hopeful. "What?"

  "You are going to agree to donate bone marrow to save Jeremy's life. You'll do it anonymously. Win and I can set that up. No one will ever know who the donor was. You do that, you save Jeremy, I forget the rest."

  "How can I believe you?"

  "Two reasons," Myron said. "One, I'm interested in saving Jeremy's life, not ruining yours. Two"--he tilted both palms toward the ceiling--"I'm no better. I bent rules here too. I let the ends justify the means. I assaulted a man. I kidnapped a woman."

  Win shook his head. "There's a difference. His reasons were selfish. You, on the other hand, were trying to save a boy's life."

  Myron turned to his friend. "Weren't you the one who said that motives are irrelevant? That the act is the act?"

  "Sure," Win said. "But I meant that to apply to him, not you."

  Myron smiled and faced Stan again. "I'm not your moral superior. We both did wrong. Maybe we can both live with what we've done. But if you let a boy die, Stan, you cross the line. You can't go home again."

  Stan closed his eyes. "I would have found a way," he said. "I would have gotten another fake ID, given blood under a pseudonym. I was just hoping--"

  "I know," Myron said. "I know all about it."

  Myron called Dr. Karen Singh. "I found a matching donor."

  "What?"

  "I can't explain. But he has to stay anonymous."

  "I explained to you that all the bone marrow donors remain anonymous."

  "No. The bone marrow registry can't know about this either. We have to find a place that can harvest the marrow without knowing the patient's identity."

  "Can't be done."

  "Yeah, it can."

  "No doctor will agree--"

  "We can't play these games, Karen. I have a donor. No one can know who he is. Make it work."

  He could hear her breathing.

  "He'll have to be retested," she said.

  "No problem."

  "And pass a physical."

  "Done."

  "Then okay. Let's get this started."

  When Emily heard about the donor, she gave Myron a curious look and waited. He didn't explain. She never asked.

  Myron visited the hospital the day before the marrow transplant was to begin. He peeked his head around the doorjamb and saw the boy sleeping. Jeremy was bald from the chemo. His skin had a ghostly glow, like something withering from a lack of sunshine. Myron watched his son sleeping. Then he turned and went home. He didn't come back.

  He returned to work at MB SportsReps and lived his life. He visited his father and mother. He hung out with Win and Esperanza. He landed a few new clients and started rebuilding his business. Big Cyndi handed in her wrestling resignation and took over the front desk. His world was wobbly but back on the axis.

  Eighty-four days later--Myron kept count--he got a call from Karen Singh. She asked him to visit her office. When he arrived, she wasted no time.

  "It worked," she said. "Jeremy went home today."

  Myron started to cry. Karen Singh moved around her desk. She sat on
the arm of his chair and rubbed his back.

  Myron knocked on the half-open door.

  "Enter," Greg said.

  Myron did so. Greg Downing was sitting up in a chair. He'd grown a beard during his long hospital stretch.

  He smiled at Myron. "Nice to see you."

  "Same here. I like the beard."

  "Gives me that Paul Bunyan touch, don't you think?"

  "I was thinking more along the lines of Sebastian Cabot as Mr. French," Myron said.

  Greg laughed. "Going home on Friday."

  "Great."

  Silence.

  "You haven't visited much," Greg said.

  "Wanted to give you time to heal. And grow that beard in fully."

  Greg tried another laugh, but he sort of choked on it. "My basketball career is over, you know."

  "You'll get over it."

  "That easy?"

  Myron smiled. "Who said anything about easy?"

  "Yeah."

  "But there are more important things in life than basketball," Myron said. "Though sometimes I forget that."

  Greg nodded again. Then he looked down and said, "I heard about you finding the donor. I don't know how you did it--"

  "It's not important."

  He looked up. "Thank you."

  Myron was not sure what to say to that. So he kept quiet. And that was when Greg shocked him.

  "You know, don't you?"

  Myron's heart stopped.

  "That was why you helped," Greg said. His voice was pure flat-line. "Emily told you the truth."

  The muscles around Myron's throat tightened. There was a whooshing sound in his head.

  "Did you take a blood test?" Greg asked.

  Myron managed a nod this time. Greg closed his eyes. Myron swallowed and said, "How long ...?"

  "I'm not sure anymore," Greg said. "I guess right away."

  He knows. The words fell on Myron, smacking down like raindrops, beading and rolling off, impenetrable. He's always known ....

  "For a while I fooled myself into believing it wasn't so," Greg said. "It's amazing what the mind can do sometimes. But when Jeremy was six, he had his appendix out. I saw his blood type on a chart. It pretty much confirmed what I'd known all along."

  Myron didn't know what to say. The realization pushed down on him, swept away the months of blocking like so many children's toys. The mind can indeed do amazing things. He looked at Greg and it was like seeing something in the proper light for the first time and it changed everything. He thought about fathers again. He thought about real sacrifice. He thought about heroes.

  "Jeremy's a good boy," Greg said.

  "I know," Myron said.

  "You remember my father? Screaming on the sidelines like a lunatic?"

  "Yes."

  "I ended up looking just like him. Spitting image of my old man. He was my blood. And he was the cruelest son of a bitch I ever knew," Greg said. Then he added, "Blood never meant much to me."

  A strange echo filled the room. The background noises faded away and there was just the two of them, staring at one another from across the most bizarre chasm.

  Greg moved back to the bed. "I'm tired, Myron."

  "Don't you think we should talk about this?"

  "Yeah," Greg said. He laid back and shut his eyes a little too tightly. "Maybe later. But right now I'm really tired."

  At the end of the day, Esperanza stepped into Myron's office, sat down, and said, "I don't know much about family values or what makes a happy family. I don't know the best way to raise a kid or what you have to do to make him happy and well adjusted, whatever the hell 'well adjusted' means. I don't know if it's best to be an only child or have lots of siblings or be raised by two parents or a single parent or a gay couple or a lesbian couple or an overweight albino. But I know one thing."

  Myron looked up at her and waited.

  "No child could ever be harmed by having you in his life."

  Esperanza stood and went home.

  Stan Gibbs was playing in the yard with his boys when Myron and Win pulled into the driveway. His wife--at least, Myron guessed it was his wife--sat in a lawn chair and watched. A little boy rode Stan like a horsey. They other boy lay on the ground giggling.

  Win frowned. "How very Norman Rockwell."

  Myron and Win stepped out of the car. Stan the horsey looked up. The smile stayed on when he saw them, but you could see it starting to lose its grip at the edges. Stan hoisted his son off his back and said something to him Myron couldn't hear. The boy gave an "Aaaw, Dad." Stan jumped to his feet and ruffled the boy's hair. Win frowned again. As Stan jogged toward them, his smile faded away like the end of a song.

  "What are you doing here?"

  Win said, "Back together with the wife, are we?"

  "We're giving it a go."

  "Touching," Win said.

  Stan turned toward Myron. "What's going on here?"

  "Tell the kids to go inside, Stan."

  "What?"

  Another car pulled in the driveway. Rick Peck was driving. Kimberly Green was in the passenger seat. Stan's face lost color. He snapped a look at Myron.

  "We had a deal," he said.

  "Remember how I told you that you had two choices when the novel was discovered?"

  "I'm not in the mood--"

  "I said you could run or you could tell the truth. Remember?"

  Stan's facade tottered, and for the first time, Myron saw the rage.

  "I left out a third choice. A choice you yourself pointed out to me the first time we met. You could have said that the Sow the Seeds kidnapper was a copycat. That he had read the book. It might have helped you out. Taken some of the heat off."

  "I couldn't do that."

  "Because it would have led to your father?"

  "Yes."

  "But you didn't know your father had written the book. Isn't that right, Stan? You said you never knew about the book. I remember that from the first time we talked. I've been watching you say the same thing on TV. You claim you didn't even know your father wrote it."

  "All true," Stan said, and the facade slipped back into place. "But--I don't know--maybe subconsciously I suspected something somehow. I can't explain it."

  "Good," Myron said.

  "Damn good," Win added.

  "The problem was," Myron said, "you had to say you hadn't read it. Because if you had, well, Stan, you'd be a plagiarizer. All this work, all your big plans to regain your reputation--it would be for nothing. You'd be ruined."

  "We discussed this already."

  "No, Stan, we didn't. At least not this part of it." Myron held up the evidence bag with the sheet of paper inside.

  Stan set his jaw.

  "Know what this is, Stan?"

  He said nothing.

  "I found it in Melina Garston's apartment. It says 'With love, Dad.' "

  Stan swallowed. "So?"

  "Something about it bothered me from the beginning. First off, the word 'Dad.' "

  "I don't understand--"

  "Sure you do, Stan. Melina's sister-in-law called George Garston 'Papa.' When I spoke to him, he referred to himself as 'Papa.' So why would he sign a note like this 'Dad'?"

  "That doesn't mean anything."

  "Maybe, maybe not. The second thing that bothered me: Who writes a note like this--on the top inside of a folded card? People use the bottom half, right? But see, Stan, this wasn't a card. It was a sheet of a paper folded in half. That's the key. Then there are those tears along the left edge. See them, Stan? Like someone had ripped it out of something."

  Win handed Myron the novel that had been sent to Kimberly Green. Myron opened it and laid the piece of paper inside it.

  "Something like a book."

  It was a perfect match.

  "Your father wrote this inscription," Myron said. "To you. Years ago. You'd known about the book all along."

  "You can't prove that."

  "Come on, Stan. A handwriting analyst will have no trouble with this. The Le
xes weren't the ones who found the book. Melina Garston did. You asked her to lie for you in court. She did. But then she started growing suspicious. So she dug around your house and found this book. She's the one who mailed it to Kimberly Green."

  "You have no proof--"

  "She sent it in anonymously because she still cared about you. She even tore out the inscription so no one, most especially you, would ever know where the book had come from. You had plenty of enemies. Like Susan Lex. And the feds. She probably hoped you'd think they did it. At least for a little while. But you knew right away it was Melina. She didn't count on that. Or your reaction."

  Stan's hands tightened into fists. They started shaking.

  "The victims' families wouldn't speak to you, Stan. And you needed that for your article. You ended up following the book more than reality. The feds thought it was to fool them. But that wasn't it. Maybe your father told you he was the killer, but nothing else. Maybe the real story wasn't as interesting, so you needed to embellish. Maybe you weren't that good of a writer and you really felt you needed those family quotes. I don't know. But you plagiarized. And the only one who could tie you to that book was Melina Garston. So you killed her."

  "You'll never prove it," Stan said.

  "The feds will dig hard now. The Lexes will help. Win and I will help. We'll find enough. If nothing else, the jury--and the world--will hear all you did in this. They'll hate you enough to convict."

  "You son of a bitch." Stan cocked his fist and aimed it at Myron. With an almost casual movement, Win swept his leg. Stan fell down in a heap. Win pointed and laughed. Stan's sons watched it all.

  Kimberly Green and Rick Peck got out of the car. Myron signaled them to wait, but Kimberly Green shook her head. They cuffed Stan hard and dragged him away. His sons still watched. Myron thought about Melina Garston and his silent vow. Then he and Win headed back to the car.

  "You always intended to turn him in," Win said.

  "Yes. But first I had to make sure he went along with donating the bone marrow."

  "And once you knew Jeremy was okay--"

  "Then I told Green, yes."

  Win started the car. "The evidence is still marginal. A good attorney will be able to poke holes."

  "Not my problem," Myron said.

  "You'd be willing to let him walk?"

  "Yes," Myron said. "But Melina's father has juice. And he won't."

  "I thought you advised him against taking the law into his own hands."

  Myron shrugged. "No one ever listens to me."

  "That's true," Win said.

  Win drove.