by Harlan Coben
It was time to pay Carol Culver a visit.
Chapter 41
Myron pulled up in front of the familiar Victorian house on Heights Road in Ridgewood. He hesitated. He should have told Jessica about this, but there are things a woman might be more willing to tell a casual acquaintance than a daughter. This might be one of them.
Carol Culver answered the door. She was wearing an apron and those industrial rubber gloves. She smiled when she saw him, but the smile did not reach her eyes. “Hello, Myron.”
“Hello, Mrs. Culver.”
“Jessica isn’t home right now.”
“I know. I wanted to talk to you, if you have a minute.”
The smile stayed. But a shadow crossed over the face. “Come on in,” she said. “Can I get you something to drink? Maybe a little tea?”
“That would be nice.”
He stepped inside. He and Jessica had not visited here often during their time together. A major holiday or two, that was it. Myron never liked the house. Something about it was stifling, as though the air were too heavy for normal breathing.
He sat down on a couch that was hard as a park bench. The decor was solemn. Lots of religious memorabilia. Lots of madonnas and crosses and gold-leaf paintings. Lots of halos and serene faces looking skyward.
Two minutes later Carol reappeared, minus the gloves and apron, plus some tea and shortbread cookies. She was an attractive woman. She didn’t really look like her daughters, but Myron had seen pieces of her in both of them. Jessica’s straight posture. Kathy’s shy laugh.
“So how have you been?” she asked.
“Fine, thank you.”
“It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you, Myron.”
“Yes.”
“Are you and Jessica …?” She feigned embarrassment. She did that a lot. “I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”
She poured the tea. Myron sipped it and nibbled on a cookie. Carol Culver did likewise.
“Tomorrow’s the memorial service,” she said. “Adam donated his corpse to a medical school, you know. The spirit was all that mattered to him. The body was worthless tissue. I guess that’s part of being a pathologist.”
Myron nodded, took another sip.
“Well, I just can’t believe this weather,” she rambled, a distracted smile frozen to her face. “It’s so hot out. If we don’t have rain soon, the whole front lawn will be brown. And we just paid to have it reseeded last season—”
“The police will be here soon,” Myron interrupted. “I thought we should talk first.”
She put her hand to her chest. “The police?”
“They’ll want to talk to you.”
“Me? What about?”
“They know about the fight,” he said. “A neighbor was walking a dog. He heard you and Dr. Culver.”
She stiffened. Myron waited, but she said nothing.
“Dr. Culver wasn’t feeling sick that night, was he?”
The color ebbed from her face. She put down her cup of tea and dabbed the corners of her mouth with a cloth napkin.
“He never intended to go to that medical conference in Denver, isn’t that right, Mrs. Culver?”
She lowered her head.
“Mrs. Culver?”
No movement.
“I know this isn’t easy,” Myron said gently. “But I’m trying to find Kathy.”
Her eyes remained on the floor. “Do you really think you can, Myron?”
“It’s possible. I don’t want to give you false hope, but I think it’s possible.”
“Then you think she might be alive?”
“There’s a chance, yes.”
She finally raised her head. The eyes were wet. “You do what you have to do to find her, Myron.” Her voice was surprisingly steady and strong. “She’s my daughter. My baby. She has to come first. No matter what.”
Myron waited for Carol Culver to continue, but she fell back into silence. After nearly a full minute, Myron said, “Dr. Culver just pretended he was going to that medical conference.”
She took a deep breath and nodded.
“You thought he’d left that morning.”
Another androidlike nod.
“Then he surprised you here.”
“Yes.”
Myron’s soft voice seemed to boom in the room. An antique clock ticked maddeningly. “Mrs. Culver, what did he see when he arrived?”
Tears began to flow. She lowered her head again.
“Did he see you,” Myron continued, “with another man?”
Nothing.
“Was the man Paul Duncan?”
She lifted her head. Her eyes met his. “Yes,” she said. “I was with Paul.”
Myron waited again.
“Adam set a trap,” she continued, “and we got caught.” The words were once again steady and strong. “He had become suspicious. I don’t know how. So he did just what you said—pretended to go to a conference in Denver. He even had me arrange his flights, so I would be sure he was gone.”
“What happened when your husband saw you?”
Shaking fingers rubbed her cheeks. She stood, turned away. “Exactly what you’d expect to happen when a man finds his wife and best friend in bed. Adam went crazy. He’d been drinking pretty heavily, which didn’t help matters. He shouted at me, called me horrible names. I deserved that. I deserved a lot worse. He threatened Paul. We tried to calm him down, but of course that was impossible.”
She picked up the tea again. Each word was making her a little stronger, making it a little easier to breathe. “Adam stormed out. I was scared. Paul went after him. But Adam drove off. Paul left after that.”
“How long have you and Paul Duncan …?” His voice just sort of mumbled away.
“Six years.”
“Did anybody else know?”
Her composure gave way. Not slowly. But as if a small bomb had blown it off her face. She crumbled, weeping freely. A realization came to Myron. He felt his blood freeze.
“Kathy,” he whispered. “Kathy knew.”
The sobbing grew more intense.
“She found out,” he continued, “during her senior year.”
Carol tried to stop her tears, but that took time. Myron remembered how Kathy had worshiped her mother, the perfect woman, the woman who balanced old-fashioned values with a sense of the modern. Carol Culver had been a homemaker and a shop owner. She had raised three beautiful children. She had instilled in her children more than just a sense of what is now popularly called “family values.” For her values had been a rigid doctrine that she insisted her children follow. Jessica had rebelled. So had Edward. Only Kathy had been successfully locked in, like a lion kept in too small a cage.
And she had finally broken free.
“Kathy …” Carol Culver stopped, shut her eyes tightly. “She walked in on us.”
“And that was when she changed,” Myron finished.
Carol Culver nodded, her eyes still squeezed closed. “I did that to her. Everything that happened was because of me. God forgive me.” Then she shook her head. “No. I don’t deserve forgiveness. I don’t want it. I just want my baby back.”
“What did Kathy do when she saw you two?”
“Nothing. At first. She just turned and ran away. But the next day she broke up with her boyfriend Matt. And from there—she made sure I paid for what I’d done. For all the years I’d been a hypocrite. For all the years I lied to her. She wanted to hurt me in the worst way possible.”
“She began to sleep around,” Myron said.
“Yes. And she made sure I knew all about it.”
“By telling you?”
Carol Culver shook her head. “Kathy wouldn’t talk to me anymore.”
“So how did you find out?”
She hesitated. Her face was drawn, her skin pulled tight against her cheekbones. “Photographs,” she said simply.
Something else clicked into place. Horty and the camera. “She gave you photos of herself wit
h men.”
“Yes.”
“White men, black men, sometimes more than one.”
Her eyes closed again, but she managed to say, “And not just men. It started slowly. A couple of nude pictures of her. Like the one in that magazine.”
“You saw that same picture before?”
“Yes. It even had the name of a photographer stamped on the back.”
“Global Globes Photos?”
“No. It was something like Forbidden Fruit.”
“Do you still have the picture?”
She shook her head.
“You threw them away?”
She shook her head again. “I wanted to destroy them. I wanted to burn them and pretend I’d never seen them. But I couldn’t. Kathy was punishing me. Keeping them was a form of penitence. I never told anyone about them, but I couldn’t just throw them away. You see that, Myron, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“So I hid them in the attic. In an old storage box. I thought they’d be safe there.”
Myron saw where this was going. “Your husband found them.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“A few months ago. He never told me about it. But of course I knew by the way he was acting. I checked the attic. The pictures were gone. Adam assumed that Kathy had hidden them up there. He had no idea she’d sent them to me. Or maybe he did. Maybe that’s how he became suspicious of Paul and me. I don’t know.”
“Do you know what your husband did with those pictures, Mrs. Culver?”
“No. They were so awful. So painful to look at. I think Adam destroyed them.”
Myron doubted it. They both sat in silence for several minutes. Finally Myron said, “Jessica is going to want to know.”
Carol Culver nodded. “You tell her, Myron.”
She showed him to the door. He stopped at his car and turned back around. He studied the gray Victorian house. Twenty-six years ago a young family had moved in. They’d put up swings in the backyard and a basketball hoop in the driveway. They’d owned a station wagon, carpooled to Little League and choir practice, attended PTA meetings, hosted birthday parties. Myron could almost see it all happening, like a life insurance commercial playing in his head.
He slid into his car and drove away.
Chapter 42
Myron was thinking about threads again.
Threads like Gary Grady. Dean Gordon. Nancy Serat. Carol Culver. Christian Steele. Fred Nickler. Paul Duncan. Ricky Lane. Horty and the thugs. But there was one thread he had overlooked.
Otto Burke.
Suppose Jake was right. Suppose the magazines had been sent out to wreak vengeance or maybe to satisfy some misguided or irrational anger. Either way, it meant that everyone who had received a copy of Nips was in some way connected to Kathy Culver.
Except Otto Burke.
How did he fit in? Otto hadn’t even known Kathy Culver.
Or had he?
Myron got off Route 4 at the Garden State Plaza Mall and took Route 17 south to Route 3. New Jersey, land of routes. He pulled into the Meadowlands and parked near the Titans’ executive offices. He found the general manager’s office and asked for Larry Hanson.
He was let in almost immediately. He quickly explained the reason for his visit.
Larry Hanson watched him without expression. His huge hands were folded on his desk. His neck strained the top button. Larry was about fifty, but he hadn’t gone to flab. He looked, Myron thought not for the first time, like Sergeant Rock in the old comic strips. Should have been chewing on a big cigar.
The office was adorned with trophies. Larry had been named league MVP twice. He’d been All-Pro twelve times. He had been elected into the Football Hall of Fame on the first ballot. There were plenty of his old football photos, from high school through college and into the pros. Black-and-whites and colors. Same crew cut. Same gritty smile. Different poses, including plenty of knee-up, straight-arm favorites from yesteryear.
When Myron finished, Larry studied his big hands for a minute, as if they were something he’d never noticed before.
“Why ask me?” he said. “Why don’t you ask Otto Burke about the magazine?”
“Because he won’t tell me.”
“And what makes you think I will?”
“Because you’re not a complete asshole.”
Larry’s mouth twitched toward a smile, but he caught himself. “Coming from you,” he said, “that really means a lot.”
Myron said nothing.
“This is important, huh?”
Myron nodded.
Larry sat back. “Burke didn’t get the magazine in the mail. He heard about it from a private detective.”
Myron shifted in his chair. “Otto was having Christian investigated?”
Larry’s tone was flat. “A man of Otto Burke’s unquestionable integrity would never stoop to such a level.”
“Under the desk,” Myron said, “you’re crossing your fingers.”
Again the twitch/smile. “This doesn’t leave this room, Bolitar. You understand?”
“Cross my heart.” Myron motioned such with his hand.
“Burke has a whole security division,” Larry explained. “They poke into everyone on the payroll. Including yours truly. They also have a source network all over the place. The credo is pretty simple: If you got dirt on a Titan, Burke will pay top dollar for it. So one of these sources came across the magazine.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s a steady reader.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Brian Sanford. A true sleazeball. He works out of Atlantic City. The casino route. Spies on gamblers, that kind of thing. A Titan puts a quarter in a slot machine, he reports it, especially since that whole Michael Jordan thing started. Burke likes to be kept informed. Gives him the edge in negotiating.”
Myron stood. “Thanks. I appreciate it.”
“Hey, Bolitar. This don’t make us buddies or nothing. We talk again, I still hate your guts. You got it?”
Myron said, “We’re having a warm moment now, aren’t we, Larry?”
Hanson leaned his elbows on the desk, pointing a finger at Myron. “I still think you’re a little pissant piece of dog shit. And next time I see you, I’ll prove it.”
Myron spread his arms. “Come on, Larry. How about that hug now?”
“Wiseass.”
“Does that mean no?”
“Do me a favor, Bolitar.”
“Name it, bright eyes.”
“Get the fuck out of my office.”
Chapter 43
Myron called Brian Sanford. Answering machine. Myron said he had a real big case, one that paid ten grand, and he’d stop by his office tonight at seven o’clock. Brian Sanford would be there. For ten grand, a guy like Sanford would let his mother take a bullet in the gut.
Myron dialed his office.
Esperanza said, “MB SportReps.”
“Did you show Lucy the photo?”
“Yep.”
“And?”
“You found your buyer.”
Myron said, “Lucy was sure?”
“Positive.”
“Thanks.”
He hung up. An hour to kill. Myron headed over to the county medical examiner’s office—Dr. Adam Culver’s old office. Just a hunch, but worth checking out.
The building was a one-level brick building. Institutional, almost like a small elementary school. The furniture was metal chairs with thin padding, again like a schoolteacher’s. The waiting room magazines were pre-Watergate. The tiled floor was worn and yellowed with age, like the “before” shot on a Mr. Clean commercial. There was nothing even remotely decorative.
“Is Dr. Li in?” he asked the receptionist.
“I’ll buzz her.”
Sally Li was dressed in hospital scrubs, but there was no blood or anything on them. She was Chinese, approaching forty, but she could have passed for much younger. She wore bifocals. A pack of cig
arettes was stashed in her front pocket. Cigarettes with a surgeon’s gown. Like bowling shoes with a tuxedo.
They had met a couple of times in the past. Sally Li came to many Culver family functions. She had been Adam’s right-hand woman for the past decade. Myron greeted her with a kiss on the cheek.
“Jessica told me you were looking into Adam’s death,” she said without preamble.
He nodded. “Can we talk for a minute?”
“Sure.” She led him to her office. Again, institutional. No personal stuff. Lots of pathology textbooks. A metal desk. Metal chair. A small tape recorder she probably used during autopsies. Her degrees on the wall. She wasn’t married, had no children, so there was no picture on the desk. Big ashtray, though. Overflowing.
She struck a match, lit up, and said, “How’s tricks?”
“An MD smoking,” Myron said. “Tsk, tsk.”
“My patients never complain.”
“Good point.”
She took a deep drag. “So what do you want to know?”
“Did you and Adam ever have an affair?”
“Yes.” No hesitation. She looked him right in the eye. “About four years ago. Lasted a week.”
“Did Adam have a lot of affairs?”
“Got me. A few, I guess. Why do you ask?”
“I’m just trying to put a few things together.”
“Vis-à-vis his murder?”
“Right.”
She took off her glasses. “What does Adam’s love life have to do with it?”
“Probably nothing,” Myron admitted. “How had Adam been acting the last couple months?”
“A bit wacko,” she said. Again no hesitation.
“In what way?”
She gave that one some thought. “Businesswise, he wasn’t letting me help him on a lot of big cases. He was keeping them all to himself.”
“And that was unusual?”
“That was unheard of. We always worked on big cases together.”
“These cases,” Myron said. “Were they the girls found in the woods upstate?”
She looked at him. “You want to tell me how you knew that?”
“Just a guess.”
“Hell of a guess, Myron.”
“You said big cases. I read the papers. Those are the big cases they keep talking about.”
Sally didn’t believe him, but she didn’t push it either.