the Innocent (2005)

by Harlan Coben

  Loren leaned forward and surprised herself: She took the nun's hand. Mother Katherine too seemed startled by the gesture. Her blue eyes looked into Loren's.

  "Promise me you will keep what I'm about to tell you to yourself," Mother Katherine said. "It's very important. In this climate especially. Even the whiff o f scandal--"

  "I won't cover anything up."

  "Nor would I want you to," she said, now giving her the theologically offended t one. "We need to get to the truth. I seriously considered the idea of just"--s he waved her hand--"of just letting this go. Sister Mary Rose would have been b uried quietly and that would have been the end of it."

  Loren kept her hand on the nun's. The older woman's hand was dark, like it was m ade of balsam wood. "I'll do my best."

  "You must understand. Sister Mary Rose was one of our best teachers."

  "She taught social studies?"

  "Yes."

  Loren searched the memory banks. "I don't remember her."

  "She joined us after you graduated."

  "How long had she been at St. Margaret's?"

  "Seven years. And let me tell you something. The woman was a saint. I know the w ord is overused, but there is no other way to describe her. Sister Mary Rose n ever asked for glory. She had no ego. She just wanted to do what was right."

  Mother Katherine took back her hand. Loren leaned back and recrossed her legs.

  "Go on."

  "When we-- by we, I mean two sisters and myself-- when we found her in the m orning, Sister Mary Rose was in her nightclothes. She, like many of us, was a v ery modest woman."

  Loren nodded, trying to encourage.

  "We were upset, of course. She had stopped breathing. We tried mouth-to-mouth a nd chest compressions. A local policeman had recently visited to teach the c hildren about lifesaving techniques. So we tried it. I was the one who did the c hest compressions and. . . ." Her voice trailed off.

  ". . . And that was when you realized that Sister Mary Rose had breast i mplants?"

  Mother Katherine nodded.

  "Did you mention this to the other sisters?"

  "Oh, no. Of course not."

  Loren shrugged. "I don't really understand the problem," she said.

  "You don't?"

  "Sister Mary Rose probably had a life before she became a nun. Who knows what it w as like?"

  "That's just it," Mother Katherine said. "She didn't."

  "I'm not sure I follow."

  "Sister Mary Rose came to us from a very conservative parish in Oregon. She was o rphaned and joined the convent when she was fifteen years old."

  Loren considered that. "So you had no idea that . . . ?" She made halfhearted b ack-and-forth gestures in front of her own chest.

  "Absolutely no idea."

  "How do you explain it then?"

  "I think"-- Mother Katherine bit her lip--"I think Sister Mary Rose came to us u nder false pretenses."

  "What sort of false pretenses?"

  "I don't know." Mother Katherine looked up at her expectantly.

  "And," Loren said, "that's where I come in?"

  "Well, yes."

  "You want me to find out what her deal was."

  "Yes."

  "Discreetly."

  "That would be my hope, Loren. But we need to find the truth."

  "Even if it's ugly?"

  "Especially if it's ugly." Mother Katherine rose. "That's what you do with the u gly of this world. You pull it into God's light."

  "Yeah," Loren said. "Into the light."

  "You're not a believer anymore, are you, Loren?"

  "I never was."

  "Oh, I don't know about that." Loren stood, but Mother Katherine still towered o ver her. Yep, Loren thought, twelve feet tall. "Will you help me?"

  "You know I will."

  Chapter 4

  SECONDS PASSED. Matt Hunter guessed it was seconds. He stared at the phone and w aited. Nothing happened. His mind was in deep freeze. It came out and when it d id, he longed for the deep freeze to return.

  The phone. He turned it over in his hand, studying it as if he'd never seen it b efore. The screen, he reminded himself, was small. The images were jerky. The t int and color were off. The glare had also been a problem.

  He nodded to himself. Keep going.

  Olivia was not a platinum blonde.

  Good. More, more . . .

  He knew her. He loved her. He was not the best catch. He was an ex-con with few b right prospects. He had a tendency to withdraw emotionally. He did not love or t rust easily. Olivia, on the other hand, had it all. She was beautiful. She was s mart, had graduated summa cum laude from the University of Virginia. She even h ad some money her father left her.

  This wasn't helping.

  Yes. Yes, it was because, despite all that, Olivia had still chosen him-- the e x-con with zero prospects. She had been the first woman he'd told about his p ast. No other had hung around long enough for it to become an issue.

  Her reaction?

  Well, it hadn't been all flowers. Olivia's smile-- that drop-you-to-your-knees p ow-- had dimmed for a moment. Matt wanted to stop right there. He wanted to walk a way because there was no way he could handle being responsible for dimming, e ven for a brief moment, that smile. But the flicker hadn't lasted long. The b eam soon returned to full wattage. Matt had bitten down on his lip in relief.

  Olivia had reached across the table and taken his hand and, in a sense, had n ever let it go.

  But now, as Matt sat here, he remembered those first tentative steps when he l eft the prison, the careful ones he took when he blinked his eyes and stepped t hrough the gate, that feeling-- that feeling that has never totally left him--t hat the thin ice beneath him could crack at any time and plunge him into the f reezing water.

  How does he explain what he just saw?

  Matt understood human nature. Check that. He understood subhuman nature. He had s een the Fates curse him and his family enough to come up with an explanation o r, if you will, an anti-explanation for all that goes wrong: In sum, there is n o explanation.

  The world is neither cruel nor joyous. It is simply random, full of particles h urtling, chemicals mixing and reacting. There is no real order. There is no p reordained cursing of the evil and protecting of the righteous.

  Chaos, baby. It's all about chaos.

  And in the swirl of all that chaos, Matt had only one thing-- Olivia.

  But as he sat in his office, eyes still on that phone, his mind wouldn't let it g o. Now, right now, at this very second . . . what was Olivia doing in that h otel room?

  He closed his eyes and sought a way out.

  Maybe it wasn't her.

  Again: the screen, it was small. The video, it was jerky. Matt kept going with t hat, running similar rationalizations up the flagpole, hoping one would fly.

  None did.

  There was a sinking feeling in his chest.

  Images flooded in. Matt tried to battle them, but they were overwhelming. The g uy's blue-black hair. That damned knowing smirk. He thought about the way Olivia would lean back when they made love, biting her lower lip, her eyes half c losed, the tendons in her neck growing taut. He imagined sounds too. Small g roans at first. Then cries of ecstasy . . .

  Stop it.

  He looked up and found Rolanda still staring at him.

  "Was there something you wanted?" he asked.

  "There was."

  "And?"

  "I've been standing here so long, I forget."

  Rolanda shrugged, spun, left the office. She did not close the door behind her.

  Matt stood and moved to the window. He looked down at a photograph of Bernie's s ons in full soccer gear. Bernie and Marsha had used this picture for their Christmas card three years ago. The frame was one of those faux bronze numbers y ou get at Rite-Aid or a similar drugstore-cum-frame store. In the photograph Bernie's boys, Paul and Ethan, were five and three and smiled like it. They d idn't smile like that anymore. They were good kids, wel
l-adjusted and all, but t here was still an inescapable, underlying sadness. When you looked closely, the s miles were more cautious now, a wince in the eye, a fear of what else might be t aken from them.

  So what to do now?

  The obvious, he decided. Call Olivia back. See what's what.

  It sounded rational on one level and ridiculous on another. What did he really t hink would happen here? Would the first sound he heard be his wife breathing h eavily, a man's laughter in the background? Or did he think Olivia would answer w ith her usual sunny voice and then-- what?-- he'd say, "Hi, hon, say, what's up w ith the motel?"-- in his mind's eye it was no longer a hotel room, but now a d ingy no-tell motel, changing the h to an m adding a whole new significance--"and t he platinum wig and the smirking guy with the blue-black hair?"

  That didn't sound right.

  He was letting his imagination run away with him. There was a logical e xplanation for all this. Maybe he couldn't see it yet, but that didn't mean it w asn't there. Matt remembered watching those TV specials about how magicians did t heir tricks. You watched the trick and you couldn't fathom the answer and once t hey showed it to you, you wondered how you could have been so stupid to miss it t he first time. That was what this was like.

  Seeing no other option, Matt decided to call.

  Olivia's cell was programmed into his speed dial in the number one spot. He p ressed down on the button and held it. The phone began to ring. He stared out t he window and saw the city of Newark. His feelings for this city were, as a lways, mixed. You see the potential, the vibrancy, but mostly you see the decay a nd shake your head. For some reason he flashed back to the day Duff had visited h im in prison. Duff had started bawling, his face red, looking so like a child.

  Matt could only watch. There was nothing to say.

  The phone rang six times before going into Olivia's voice mail. The sound of his w ife's animated voice, so familiar, so . . . his, made his heart stutter. He w aited patiently for Olivia to finish. Then the beep sounded.

  "Hey, it's me," he said. He could hear the tautness in his tone and fought a gainst it. "Could you give me a call when you have a second?" He paused. He u sually ended with a perfunctory "love you," but this time he hit the end button w ithout adding what had always come so naturally.

  He kept looking out the window. In prison what eventually got to him was not the b rutality or the repulsion. Just the opposite. It was when those things became t he norm. After a while Matt started to like his brothers in the Aryan Nation--a ctually enjoyed their company. It was a perverse offshoot of the Stockholm s yndrome. Survival is the thing. The mind will twist to survive. Anything can b ecome normal. That was what made Matt pause.

  He thought about Olivia's laugh. How it took him away from all that. He wondered n ow if that laugh was real or just another cruel mirage, something to mock him w ith kindness.

  Then Matt did something truly strange.

  He held the camera phone out in front of him, arm's distance, and snapped a p icture of himself. He didn't smile. He just looked into the lens. The p hotograph was on the little screen now. He looked at his own face and was not s ure what he saw.

  He pressed her phone number and sent the picture to Olivia.

  Chapter 5

  TWO HOURS PASSED. Olivia did not call back.

  Matt spent those two hours with Ike Kier, a pampered senior partner who wore his g ray hair too long and slicked back. He came from a wealthy family. He knew how t o network and not much else, but sometimes that was enough. He owned a Viper a nd two Harley-Davidsons. His nickname around the office was Midlife, short for Midlife Crisis.

  Midlife was bright enough to know that he was not that bright. He thus used Matt a lot. Matt, he knew, was willing to do most of the heavy lifting and stay b ehind the scenes. This allowed Midlife to maintain the big corporate client r elationship and look good. Matt cared, he guessed, but not enough to do a nything about it.

  Corporate fraud may not be good for America, but it was damned profitable for t he white-shoe, white-collar law firm of Carter Sturgis. Right now they were d iscussing the case of Mike Sterman, the CEO of a big pharmaceutical company c alled Pentacol, who'd been charged with, among other things, cooking the books t o manipulate stock prices.

  "In sum," Midlife said, giving the room his best you-the-jury baritone, "our d efense will be . . . ?" He looked to Matt for the answer.

  "Blame the other guy," Matt said.

  "Which other guy?"

  "Yes."

  "Huh?"

  "We blame whoever we can," Matt said. "The CFO"-- Sterman's brother-in-law and f ormer best friend--"the COO, the C Choose-Your-Favorite-Two-Letter Combination, t he accounting firm, the banks, the board, the lower-level employees. We claim s ome of them are crooks. We claim some of them made honest mistakes that s teamrolled."

  "Isn't that contradictory?" Midlife asked, folding his hands and lowering his e yebrows. "Claiming both malice and mistakes?" He stopped, looked up, smiled, n odded. Malice and mistakes. Midlife liked the way that sounded.

  "We're looking to confuse," Matt said. "You blame enough people, nothing sticks.

  The jury ends up knowing something went wrong, but you don't know where to place t he blame. We throw facts and figures at them. We bring up every possible m istake, every uncrossed t and undotted i. We act like every discrepancy is a h uge deal, even if it's not. We question everything. We are skeptical of e veryone."

  "And what about the bar mitzvah?"

  Sterman had thrown his son a two-million-dollar bar mitzvah, featuring a c hartered plane to Bermuda where both Beyonce and Ja Rule performed. The v ideotape-- actually, it was a surround-sound DVD-- was going to be shown to the j ury.

  "A legitimate business expense," Matt said.

  "Come again?"

  "Look who was there. Executives from the big drug chains. Top buyers. Government o fficials from the FDA who approve drugs and give out grants. Doctors, r esearchers, whatever. Our client was wining and dining clients-- a legit American business practice since before the Boston Tea Party. What he did was f or the good of the company."

  "And the fact that the party was for his son's bar mitzvah?"

  Matt shrugged. "It works in his favor, actually. Sterman was being brilliant."

  Midlife made a face.

  "Think about it. If Sterman had said, 'I'm throwing a big party to win over i mportant clients,' well, that wouldn't have helped him develop the r elationships he was looking for. So Sterman, that sly genius, went with s omething more subtle. He invites his business associates to his son's bar m itzvah. They are caught off guard now. They find it sweet, this family guy i nviting them to something personal rather than hitting them up in some stuffy b usiness venue. Sterman, like any brilliant CEO, was creative in his approach."

  Midlife arched an eyebrow and nodded slowly. "Oh, I like that."

  Matt had figured as much. He checked his cell phone, making sure it was still p owered up. It was. He checked to see if there were any messages or missed c alls. There were none.

  Midlife rose. "We'll do more prep tomorrow?"

  "Sure," Matt said.

  He left. Rolanda stuck her head in the door. She looked down the hall in the d irection of Midlife, faked sticking a finger down her throat, and made a g agging noise. Matt checked the time. Time to get moving.

  He hurried out to the firm's parking lot. His gaze wandered, focusing on nothing a nd everything. Tommy, the parking lot attendant, waved to him. Still dazed, Matt may have waved back. His spot was in the back, under the dripping pipes.

  The world was about the pecking order, he knew, even in parking lots.

  Someone was cleaning a green Jag belonging to one of the founding partners. Matt t urned. One of Midlife's Harleys was there, covered by a see-through tarp. There w as a tipped-over shopping cart. Three of the four wheels had been ripped off t he cart. What would someone want with three shopping-cart wheels?

  Matt's eyes drifted over the cars on the s
treet, mostly gypsy cabs, and noticed a gray Ford Taurus because the license plate was MLH- 472, and Matt's own i nitials were MKH, pretty close, and things like that were distractions.

  But once in his car-- once alone with his thoughts-- something new started gnawing a t him.

  Okay, he thought, trying his best to stay rational. Let's assume the worst-- that w hat he saw on the camera phone were the opening moments of a tryst of some k ind.

  Why would Olivia send it to him?

  What would be the point? Did she want to get caught? Was this a cry for help?

  That didn't really add up.

  But then he realized something else: Olivia hadn't sent it.

  It had come from her phone, yes, but she-- assuming that was Olivia with the p latinum wig-- didn't seem to realize that the camera was on her. He remembered t hinking that. She was the subject of the film-- the filmee, if you will, not the f ilmer.

  So who sent it? Was it Mr. Blue-Black Hair? If so, then who snapped the first p icture, the one of Blue-Black? Had he taken it himself?

  Answer: No.

  Blue-Black had his palm up as if waving. Matt remembered the backside of a ring o n his finger-- or what he thought was a ring. He really wasn't up for looking at t he picture again. But he thought about it. Could that have been a wedding band?

  No, the ring was on the right hand.

  Either way, who had taken Blue-Black's picture?

  Olivia?

  Why would she send it to him? Or was the picture sent to him inadvertently? Like m aybe someone hit the wrong number on the speed dial?

  It seemed unlikely.

  Was there a third person in the room?

  Matt couldn't see it. He mulled it over some more, but nothing came together.

  Both calls had originated from his wife's phone. Got that. But if she was having a n affair, why would she want him to know?

  Answer-- and yes, his reasoning was getting circular-- she wouldn't.

  So who would?

  Matt thought again of the cocky smirk on Blue-Black's face. And his stomach r oiled. When he was younger, he used to feel too much. Strange to imagine it n ow, but Matt had been too sensitive. He'd cry when he lost a basketball game, e ven a pickup game. Any slight would stay with him for weeks. All of that c hanged the night Stephen McGrath died. If prison teaches you one thing, it's h ow to deaden yourself. You show nothing. Ever. You never allow yourself a nything, even an emotion, because it will either be exploited or taken away.