the Innocent (2005)

by Harlan Coben

  "Matt, this is Loren Muse. I'm an investigator with the Essex County p rosecutor's office. We knew each other a lifetime ago, at Burnet Hill. Could y ou give me a call as soon as possible?"

  She left two numbers-- office and cell.

  Matt put the phone back in its cradle. So Lance was trying to get a jump on his c ounty counterpart. Or they were working together. Whatever. He wondered what it c ould be about. Lance had said something about St. Margaret's in East Orange.

  Something about a nun there.

  What could it possibly have to do with him?

  Whatever, it couldn't be good.

  He didn't want to speculate. He also didn't want to get caught unawares. So he h eaded into the computer room and ran a classic Google search. He searched for St. Margaret's in East Orange and got too many hits. He tried to remember the n un's name. Sister Mary Something. He added that into the mix. "Sister Mary"

  "St. Margaret's" "East Orange."

  No relevant hits.

  He sat back and thought it through. Nothing came to him. He wouldn't call Loren b ack. Not yet. It could wait until morning. He could say that he was out d rinking-- Lance would back that up-- and forgot to check his messages.

  His head started clearing. He thought about his next move. Even though he was a lone in the house, Matt checked the corridor and closed the door. Then he o pened the closet door, reached toward the back, and pulled out the lockbox. The c ombination was 878 because those numbers had absolutely no link to his life.

  He'd just made them up on the spot.

  Inside the lockbox was a gun.

  He stared at it. The semiautomatic was a Mauser M2. Matt had bought it off the s treets-- it's not hard to do-- when he got out of jail. He'd told no one-- not Bernie, not Olivia, not Sonya McGrath. He was not sure how to explain why he o wned it. One would again think that his past would have taught him the danger o f such actions. It had, he supposed, but with a twist. Now that Olivia was h aving a baby, yes, he'd have to get rid of the gun. But he wasn't sure that h e'd be able to go through with it.

  The prison system has its share of critics. Most problems are obvious and, to s ome extent, organic, what with the fact that you are, for the most part, caging b ad people with other bad people. But the one thing that was definitely true was t hat prison taught you all the wrong skills. You survive by being aloof, by i solating yourself, by fearing any alliance. You are not shown how to assimilate o r become productive-- just the opposite. You learn that no one can be trusted, t hat the only person you can truly count on is yourself, that you must be ready t o protect yourself at all times.

  Having the gun gave Matt a strange feeling of comfort.

  He knew it was wrong. He knew the odds were much greater that the gun would lead t o disaster rather than salvation. But there it was. And now, with the world c aving in on him, he was eyeing it for the first time since he'd bought it.

  The phone startled him. He quickly closed the lockbox, as if someone had s uddenly entered the room, and picked up the receiver.

  "Hello?"

  "Guess what I was doing when you called."

  It was Cingle.

  "I'm sorry," Matt said. "I know it was late."

  "No, no. Guess. C'mon. Okay, forget it, I'll tell you. I was putting out for Hank. He takes forever. I was getting so bored I almost picked up mid, er, t hrust. But men, well, they're so sensitive, you know?"

  "Cingle?"

  "What's up?"

  "The pictures you downloaded from my phone."

  "What about them?"

  "Do you have them?"

  "You mean the files? They're at the office."

  "Did you blow them up?"

  "My tech guy did, but I haven't had a chance to study them."

  "I need to see them," Matt said. "Blown up, that is."

  "Why?"

  "I have a thought."

  "Uh oh."

  "Yes, uh oh. Look, I know it's late, really late, but if you could meet me down a t your office--"

  "Now?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm on my way."

  "I owe you."

  "Time and a half," Cingle said. "See you in forty-five minutes."

  He grabbed his keys-- he was sober enough now to drive-- jammed his cell phone and w allet into his pocket, started for the door. Then he remembered the Mauser s emiautomatic. It was still on the desktop. He considered his next move.

  He picked up the gun.

  Here was something that they never tell you: Holding a gun feels great. On t elevision, the average person always acts all repulsed when the gun is first h anded to them. They make a face and say, "I don't want that thing!" But the t ruth is, having a gun in your hand-- the cold steel against your skin, the w eight in your palm, the very shape, the way your hand naturally coils around t he grip, the way your index finger slides into the trigger loop-- it feels not o nly good, but right and even natural.

  But no, he shouldn't.

  If he somehow got caught carrying a piece, with his record, there would be huge p roblems. He knew that.

  But he still jammed the gun into the waist of his pants.

  When Matt opened his front door, she was walking up the stoop. Their eyes met.

  Matt wondered if he would have recognized her had he not just heard her name f rom Lance and listened to the message on the machine. Hard to say. The hair was s till short. That tomboyish quality remained. She looked very much the same to h im. Again there was something to that-- to running into adults you only knew as k ids in elementary school, how you can still recognize them by seeing the small c hild there.

  Loren Muse said, "Hey, Matt."

  "Hey, Loren."

  "Long time."

  "Yeah."

  She managed a smile. "Do you have a second? I need to ask you a few questions."

  Chapter 23

  STANDING ON HIS FRONT STOOP, Matt Hunter asked, "Is this about that nun at St.

  Margaret's?"

  Loren was startled by that one, but Hunter held up his hand.

  "Don't get excited," he said. "I know about the nun because Lance already q uestioned me."

  She should have known. "So you want to fill me in?"

  Matt shrugged, didn't say anything. She pushed past him, stepped into his foyer, a nd took a look around. Books were piled everywhere. Some had fallen, looking l ike crumbling towers. There were framed photographs on the table. Loren studied t hem. She picked one up.

  "This your wife?"

  "Yes."

  "Pretty."

  "Yes."

  She put the picture down and turned to him. It would be corny to say that his p ast was written on his face, that prison had somehow not only changed the i nside, but the outside as well. Loren wasn't a fan of that stuff. She didn't b elieve the eyes were the windows to the soul. She had seen killers with b eautiful, kind eyes. She had met brilliant people who had that open-eyed v acancy thing going on. She had heard jurors say, "I knew he was innocent the m inute he walked in the court-- you can just tell" and knew that it was total, a wful nonsense.

  But that said, there was something in Matt Hunter's stance, in the tilt of the c hin maybe, in the line of the mouth. The damage, the defensiveness, emanated f rom him. She couldn't put her finger on why, but it was there. Even if she h adn't known that he'd served hard time after a fairly comfortable childhood, w ould she still feel this unmistakable vibe?

  She thought the answer was yes.

  Loren couldn't help but think back to Matt as a kid, a good, goofy, s weet-natured kid, and a pang of sorrow skipped through her.

  "What did you tell Lance?" she asked.

  "I asked him if I was a suspect."

  "A suspect in what?"

  "In anything."

  "And what did he say?"

  "He was evasive."

  "You're not a suspect," she said. "Not yet anyway."

  "Whew."

  "Was that sarcasm?"

  Matt Hunter shrugged. "Could you ask your questions
quickly? I have to be s omeplace."

  "Have to be someplace"-- she repeated, making a production of checking her w atch--"at this hour?"

  "I'm something of a party animal," he said, stepping back onto the stoop.

  "I somehow doubt that."

  Loren followed. She glanced about the neighborhood. There were two men drinking o ut of brown paper bags and singing an old Motown classic.

  "That the Temptations?" she asked.

  "Four Tops," he said.

  "I always mix those two up."

  She turned back to him. He spread his hands.

  "Not exactly Livingston, is it?" Matt said.

  "I heard you're moving back."

  "It's a nice town to raise a family."

  "You think?"

  "You don't?"

  She shook her head. "I wouldn't go back."

  "That a threat?"

  "No, that's meant to be literal. I, me, Loren Muse, would never want to live t here again."

  "To each his own then." He sighed. "We done with the small talk now?"

  "Guess so."

  "Fine. So what happened to this nun, Loren?"

  "We don't know yet."

  "Come again?"

  "Did you know her?"

  "I don't even remember what Lance told me her name was. Sister Mary Something."

  "Sister Mary Rose."

  "What happened to her?"

  "She died."

  "I see. So how do I fit in?"

  Loren debated how to play this. "How do you think?"

  He sighed and started to walk past her. "Good night, Loren."

  "Wait, okay, that was dumb. Sorry."

  Matt turned back to her.

  "Her phone logs."

  "What about them?"

  "Sister Mary Rose made one call we can't figure out."

  Matt's face showed nothing.

  "Did you know her or not?"

  Matt shook his head. "No."

  "Because the log shows that she placed a call to your sister-in-law's residence i n Livingston."

  He frowned. "She called Marsha?"

  "Your sister-in-law denied receiving any calls from anyone at St. Margaret's. I a lso talked to that Kylie girl who rents from her."

  "Kyra."

  "What?"

  "Her name is Kyra, not Kylie."

  "Right, whatever. Anyway, I know you stay there a lot. I know, in fact, that you s tayed there last night."

  Matt nodded. "So you figured-- drumroll, please-- that I must be the one this nun c alled," he finished for her.

  She shrugged. "Makes sense."

  Matt took a deep breath.

  "What?"

  "Isn't this the part where I get all angry and say it only makes sense because y ou have a bias against an ex-con, even though he's served his time and paid his d ebt to society?"

  That made her smile. "What, you just want to skip the indignation? Move right to y our denial?"

  "It would speed things up," he said.

  "So you don't know Sister Mary Rose?"

  "No. For the record, I don't know any Sister Mary Rose. I don't even think I k now any nuns. I don't know anybody connected with St. Margaret's, except, well, a ccording to Lance, you went there, so I guess the answer would be: only you. I h ave no idea why Sister Mary Rose would call Marsha's house or even if indeed s he called Marsha's house."

  Loren decided to shift tracks. "Do you know a man named Max Darrow?"

  "Did he call Marsha too?"

  "How about a straight answer, Matt? Do you know a Max Darrow from Raleigh Heights, Nevada, yes or no?"

  Jolt. Loren saw it. A small one-- the smallest of tells on Matt's face. But it w as there-- a slight widening in the eyes. He recovered in less than a second.

  "No," he said.

  "Never heard of him?"

  "Never. Who is he?"

  "You'll read about him in the paper tomorrow. You mind telling where you were y esterday? I mean, before you got to Marsha's house."

  "Yes, I do mind."

  "How about telling me anyway?"

  He looked off, closed his eyes, opened them again. "This is beginning to sound m ore like a full-fledged, suspectlike interrogation, Detective Muse."

  "Inspector Muse," she said.

  "Either way, I think I've answered enough questions for tonight."

  "So you're refusing?"

  "No, I'm leaving." Now it was Matt's turn to check his watch. "I really have to g o."

  "And I assume you're not going to tell me what you're up to?"

  "You assume correctly."

  Loren shrugged. "I could always follow you."

  "I'll save you the time. I'm heading to the MVD offices in Newark. What I do o nce I'm inside remains my own business. Have a pleasant night."

  He started down the stairs.

  "Matt?"

  "What?"

  "This might sound weird," Loren said, "but it was good seeing you. I mean, I w ish it were under different circumstances."

  He almost smiled. "Same here."

  Chapter 24

  NEVADA, MATT THOUGHT. Loren Muse had asked him about a man from Nevada.

  Twenty minutes after leaving Loren on his stoop, Matt was in Cingle's office.

  He'd spent the drive running the interrogation through his head. One word kept c oming back to him: Nevada.

  Max Darrow, whoever the hell he was, was from Nevada.

  And Olivia had been checking a Web site for a newspaper called the Nevada Sun News.

  Coincidence?

  Yeah, right.

  The offices at MVD were silent. Cingle sat at her desk, wearing a black Nike s weat suit. Her hair was swept back in a long ponytail. She hit the power button t o boot up the computer.

  "Have you heard anything about the death of a nun at St. Margaret's?" he asked.

  Cingle frowned. "That the church in East Orange?"

  "Yes. It's also a school."

  "Nope."

  "How about anything involving a man named Max Darrow?"

  "Like what?"

  Matt quickly explained the questions from his old classmates Lance Banner and Loren Muse. Cingle sighed and took notes. She said nothing, only raising an e yebrow when he mentioned finding a computer cookie leading to a stripper Web s ite. "I'll look into it."

  "Thanks."

  She swiveled the computer monitor so they could both view it. "Okay, so what do y ou want to see?"

  "Can you blow up the still shot of Charles Talley that came in on my cell p hone?"

  She started moving the mouse and clicking. "Let me explain something quickly."

  "I'm listening."

  "This enhancement program. Sometimes it's a miracle worker, sometimes a total p iece of crap. When you take a digital picture, the quality is dependent on the p ixels. That's why you get a camera with as many pixels as possible. Pixels are d ots. The more dots, the clearer the picture."

  "I know all this."

  "Your camera phone has a pretty crappy pixel reading."

  "I know that too."

  "So you know that the more you blow up the image, the less clear it becomes.

  This software program uses some kind of algorithm-- yeah, I know, big word. Put s imply, it guesses what should be there based on whatever clues it comes up w ith. Coloring, shading, ridges, lines, whatever. It's far from exact. There's a l ot of trial and error. But that said . . ."

  She pulled up the picture of Charles Talley. This time Matt skipped the b lue-black hair, the smirk, the entire face. He ignored the red shirt and white w alls. He only had eyes for one thing.

  He pointed at it. "See this?"

  Cingle put on a pair of reading glasses, squinted, looked at him. "Yes, Matt," s he said deadpan. "We call it a window."

  "Can you blow it up or enhance it any more?"

  "I can try. Why, you think there's something out that window?"

  "Not exactly. Just do it, please."

  She shrugged, placed the cursor over it, blew it up. The window
now took up half t he screen.

  "Can you make it any clearer?"

  Cingle hit something called fine tune. Then she looked at Matt. He smiled at h er.

  "Don't you see?"

  "See what?"

  "It's gray. That much I could tell on the camera phone. But now look. There are r aindrops on the window."

  "So?"

  "So this picture was sent to me yesterday. You see any rain yesterday? Or the d ay before?"

  "But wait, isn't Olivia supposed to be in Boston?"

  "Maybe she was, maybe she wasn't. But there hasn't been rain in Boston either.

  There hasn't been rain anywhere in the Northeast."

  Cingle sat back. "So what does it mean?"

  "Hold up, check something else first," Matt said. "Bring up the camera phone v ideo and play it slowly."

  Cingle minimized the photograph of Charles Talley. She started clicking icons a gain. Matt felt the rush. His leg started shaking. His head began to clear.

  The video started playing. Matt tried to watch the woman with the p latinum-blonde wig. Later, maybe he'd go through it step-by-step, confirm that i t was indeed Olivia. He remained fairly certain that it was. But that wasn't t he issue right now.

  He waited until the woman started moving, waited for the flash of light.

  "Hit pause."

  Cingle was quick. She hit it with the light still there.

  "Look," he said.

  Cingle nodded. "Well, I'll be damned."

  The sun was bursting through the window.

  "The photograph and the video weren't taken at the same time," she said.

  "Exactly."

  "So what happened? They downloaded the first picture onto Olivia's phone or m aybe took a picture of a picture?"

  "Something like that."

  "I still don't get it."

  "I'm not sure I do either. But . . . start the tape rolling again. Slow motion."

  Cingle did as he asked.

  "Stop." He looked at it. "Blow up the guy's left hand."

  It was a shot from the palm side of the hand. Again it was blurry when she first b lew it up. She used the software enhancer. The hand came more into focus.

  "Just skin," Matt said.

  "So?"

  "No ring or wedding band. Let's switch back to our photograph of Charles Talley."

  This one was easier. The photograph had a better resolution. The figure of Charles Talley was larger. His hand was up, palm wide open, almost as if s topping traffic.