Gone for Good (2002)

by Harlan Coben

  But most damaging or encouraging, depending on your viewpoint was the blood found at the scene. Some of it belonged to Ken. A large splotch of his blood was in the basement, and small drips made a trail up the stairs and out the door. And then another splotch was found on a shrub in the Millers' backyard. The Klein family theory was that the real murderer had killed Julie and seriously wounded (and eventually killed) my brother. The police's theory was simpler: Julie had fought back.

  There was one more thing that backed the family theory something directly attributable to me, which was why, I guess, no one took it seriously.

  That is, I saw a man lurking near the Miller house that night.

  Like I said, the authorities and press have pretty much dismissed this I am, after all, interested in clearing my brother but it is important in understanding why we believe what we believe. In the end, my family had a choice. We could accept that my brother murdered a lovely young woman for no reason, that he then lived without any visible income in hiding for eleven years (this don't forget despite extensive media coverage and a major police search) or we could believe that he had consensual sex with Julie Miller (ergo much of the physical evidence), and that whatever mess he had gotten himself into, whoever had terrified Ken so, maybe whoever I saw outside the house on Coddington Terrace that night had somehow set him up for a murder and made sure his body would never be found.

  I'm not saying it was a perfect fit. But we knew Ken. He didn't do what they said. So what was the alternative?

  Some people did give credence to our family's theory, but most were conspiracy nuts, the kind who think Elvis and Jimi Hendrix are jamming on some island off Fiji. The TV stories gave it lip service that was so tongue-in-cheek you'd expect your television to smirk at you. As time went by, I grew quieter in my defense of Ken. Selfish as this might sound, I wanted a life. I wanted a career. I didn't want to be the brother of a famous murderer on the run.

  Covenant House, I'm sure, had reservations about hiring me. Who would blame them? Even though I'm a senior director, my name is kept off the letterhead. I never appear at fund-raising functions. My job is strictly behind-the-scenes. And most of the time, that's okay with me.

  I looked again at the picture of a man so familiar yet totally unknown to me.

  Had my mother been lying from the beginning?

  Had she been helping Ken while telling my father and me she thought he was dead? When I think back on it now, it was my mother who had been the strongest proponent of the Ken-dead theory. Had she been sneaking him money the whole time? Had Sunny known where he was from the start?

  Questions to ponder.

  I wrested my eyes away and opened a kitchen cabinet. I'd already decided that I wouldn't go out to Livingston this morning the thought of sitting in that coffin of a house for another day made me want to scream and I really needed to go to work. My mother, I was sure, would not only understand but encourage. So I poured myself a bowl of Golden Grahams cereal and dialed Sheila's work voice mail. I told her I loved her and I asked her to call me.

  My apartment well, it's our apartment now is on 24th Street and Ninth Avenue, not far from the Chelsea Hotel. I usually walk the seventeen blocks north to Covenant House, which was on 41sttreet, not far from the West Side Highway. This used to be a great location for a runaway shelter in the days before the cleanup of 42nStreet, when this stretch of stench was a bastion of in-your-face degradation.

  Forty-second Street had been a sort of Hell's Gate, a place for the grotesquely amative intermingling of species. Commuters and tourists would walk past prostitutes and dealers and pimps and head shops and porno palaces and movie theaters, and when they'd reach the end, they'd either be titillated or they'd want to take a shower and get a shot of penicillin. In my view, the perversion was so dirty, so depressing, it had to weigh you down. I am a man. I have lusts and urges like most guys I know. But I never understood how anyone could confuse the filth of toothless crack heads for eroticism.

  The city's cleanup, in a sense, made our jobs harder. The Covenant House rescue van had known where to cruise. The runaways were out in the open, more obvious. Now our task wasn't as clear-cut. And worse, the city itself wasn't really cleaner just cleaner to look at. The so-called decent folk, those commuters and tourists I mentioned before, were no longer subjected to blacked-out windows reading ADULTS ONLY or crumbling marquees announcing pun-porn titles like SHAVING RYAN'S PRIVATES or BONFIRE OF THE PANTIES. But sleaze like this never really dies. Sleaze is a cockroach. It survives. It burrows and it hides. I don't think you can kill it.

  And there are negatives to hiding the sleaze. When sleaze is obvious, you can scoff and feel superior. People need that. It's an outlet for some. Another advantage to in-the-open sleaze: Which would you rather face an obvious frontal assault or a snakelike danger gliding through the high grass? Finally and maybe I'm looking at this too closely you can't have a front without a back, you can't have an up without a down, and I'm not sure you can have light without dark, purity without sleaze, good without evil.

  The first honk didn't make me turn around. I live in New York City.

  Avoiding honks while strolling the avenues was tantamount to avoiding water while swimming. So it was not until I heard the familiar voice yell "Hey, asshole" that I turned around. The Covenant House van screeched alongside me. Squares was the driver and sole occupant. He lowered the window and whipped off his sunglasses.

  "Get in," he said.

  I opened the door and hopped up. The outreach van smelled of cigarettes and sweat and faintly of bologna from the sandwiches we hand out every night. There were stains of every size and stripe on the carpeting. The glove compartment was just an empty cavern. The springs in the seats were shot.

  Squares kept his eyes on the road. "What the hell are you doing?"

  "Going to work."

  "Why?"

  "Therapy," I said.

  Squares nodded. He'd been up all night driving the van an avenging angel searching for kids to rescue. He didn't look worse for wear, but then again, he hadn't started out too sparkly anyway. His hair was eighties Aerosmith-long, parted in the middle and on the greasy side. I don't think I'd ever seen him clean-shaven, but I'd never seen him with a full beard or even a nifty-neat Miami Vice growth either. The patches of skin that were visible were pockmarked. His work boots were scuffed to a near whiteness. His jeans looked like they'd been trampled in a prairie by buffalo, and the waist was too big, giving him that ever-desirable repairman-butt-plunge look. A pack of Camels was rolled up in his sleeve. His teeth were tobacco-stained the yellow of a Ticonderoga pencil.

  "You look like shit," he said.

  "That means something," I said, "coming from you."

  He liked that one. We called him Squares, short for Four Squares, because of the tattoo on his forehead. It was, well, four squares, two by two, so that it looked exactly like a four squares court you still see on playgrounds. Now that Squares was a big-time yoga instructor with videos and a chain of schools, most people assumed that the tattoo was some sort of significant Hindu symbol. Not so.

  At one time, it had been a tattoo of a swastika. He'd just added four lines. Closed it up.

  It was hard for me to imagine this. Squares is probably the least judgmental person I've ever known. He's probably also my closest friend. When he first told me the origins of the squares, I was appalled and shocked. He never explained or apologized, and like Sheila, he never talked about his past. Others have filled in pieces.

  I understand better now.

  "Thanks for sending the flowers," I said.

  Squares didn't reply.

  "And for showing up," I added. He had brought a group of Covenant House friends in the van. They'd pretty much made up the entire non family funeral brigade.

  "Sunny was great people," he said.

  "Yeah."

  A moment of silence. Then Squares said, "But what a shitty turnout."

  "Thanks for pointing that out."

 
"I mean, Jesus, how many people were there?"

  "You're quite the comfort, Squares. Thanks, man." "You want comfort?

  Know this: People are assholes." "Let me get out a pen and write that down." Silence. Squares stopped for a red light and sneaked a glance at me. His eyes were red. He unrolled the cigarette pack from his sleeve. "You want to tell me what's wrong?"

  "Uh, well, see, the other day? My mother died."

  "Fine," he said, "don't tell me."

  The light turned green. The van started up again. The image of my brother in that photograph flashed across my eyes. "Squares?"

  "I'm listening."

  "I think," I said, "that my brother is still alive."

  Squares didn't say anything right away. He withdrew a cigarette from the pack and put it in his mouth.

  "Quite the epiphany," he said.

  "Epiphany," I repeated with a nod.

  "Been taking night courses," he said. "So why the sudden change of heart?"

  He pulled into the small Covenant House lot. We used to park out on the street, but people would break in and sleep there. We did not call the cops, of course, but the expense of the broken windows and stripped locks became cumbersome. After a while, we kept the van doors unlocked so the inhabitants could just go inside. In the morning, whoever was first to arrive at the center would knock against the van. The night's tenants would get the message and scurry away.

  We had to stop that too, though. The van became not to get too graphic here too disgusting for use. The homeless are not always pretty. They vomit. They soil themselves. They often cannot find rest-room facilities. Enough said.

  Still sitting in the van, I wondered how to approach this. "Let me ask you a question."

  He waited.

  "You've never given me your take on what happened to my brother," I said.

  "That a question?"

  "More an observation. Here's the question: How come?"

  "How come I never gave you my take on your brother?"

  "Yes."

  Squares shrugged. "You never asked."

  "We talked about it a lot."

  Squares shrugged again.

  "Okay, I'm asking now," I said. "Did you think he's alive?"

  "Always."

  Just like that. "So all those talks we had, all those times I made convincing arguments to the contrary ..."

  "I wondered who you were trying to convince, me or you."

  "You never bought my arguments?"

  "Nope," Squares said. "Never."

  "But you never argued with me either."

  Squares took a deep drag on the cigarette. "Your delusion seemed harmless."

  "Ignorance is bliss, eh?"

  "Most of the time, yeah."

  "But I made some valid points," I said.

  "You say so."

  "You don't think so?"

  "I don't think so," Squares said. "You thought your bro didn't have the resources to hide, but you don't need resources. Look at the runaways we meet every day. If one of them really wanted to disappear, presto, they'd be gone."

  "There isn't an international manhunt for any of them."

  "International manhunt," Squares said with something close to disgust.

  "You think every cop in the world wakes up wondering about your brother?"

  He had a point especially now that I realized he may have gotten financial help from my mother. "He wouldn't kill anyone."

  "Bullshit," Squares said.

  "You don't know him."

  "We're friends, right?"

  "Right."

  "You believe that one day I used to burn crosses and shout' Heil Hitler'?"

  "That's different."

  "No, it's not." We stepped out of the van. "You asked me once why I didn't get rid of the tattoo altogether, remember?"

  I nodded. "And you told me to fuck off."

  "Right. But the fact is, I could have removed it by laser or done a more elaborate cover-up. But I keep it because it reminds me."

  "Of what? The past?"

  Squares flashed the yellows. "Of potential," he said.

  "I don't know what that means."

  "Because you're hopeless."

  "My brother would never rape and murder an innocent woman."

  "Some yoga schools teach mantras," Squares said. "But repeating something over and over does not make it true."

  "You're pretty deep today," I said.

  "And you're acting like an asshole." He stubbed out the cigarette.

  "You going to tell me why you've had this change of heart?"

  We were near the entrance.

  "In my office," I said.

  We hushed as we entered the shelter. People expect a dump, but our shelter is anything but. Our philosophy is that this should be a place you'd want your own kids to stay if they were in trouble. That comment stuns donors at first like most charities, this one seems very removed from them but it also strikes them where they live.

  Squares and I were silent now, because when we are in our house, all our focus, all our concentration, is aimed at the kids. They deserve nothing less. For once in their often sad lives, they are what matters most. Always. We greet each kid like and pardon the way I phrase this a long-lost brother. We listen. We never hurry. We shake hands and hug. We look them in the eye. We never look over their shoulder. We stop and face them full. If you try to fake it, these kids will pick it up in a second. They have excellent bullshit-o-meters. We love them hard in here, totally and without conditions. Every day we do that. Or we just go home. It doesn't mean that we are always successful. Or even successful most of the time. We lose a lot more than we save. They get sucked back down into the streets. But while here, in our house, they will stay in comfort. While here, they will be loved.

  When we entered my office, two people one woman, one man were waiting for us. Squares stopped short. He lifted his nostrils and sniffed the air, hound-dog style.

  "Cops," he said to me.

  The woman smiled and stepped forward. The man stayed behind her, casually leaning again the wall. "Will Klein?"

  "Yes?" I said.

  She unfurled her ID with a flourish. The man did the same thing. "My name is Claudia Fisher. This is Darryl Wilcox. We're both special agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

  "The feds," Squares said to me, thumbs up, like he was impressed I ranked such attention. He squinted at the ID, then at Claudia Fisher.

  "Hey, how come you cut your hair?"

  Claudia Fisher snapped the ID closed. She arched an eyebrow at Squares. "And you are?"

  "Easily aroused," he said.

  She frowned and slid her eyes back to me. "We'd like a few words with you." Then she added, "Alone."

  Claudia Fisher was short and semi-perky, the dedicated student athlete from high school who was a little too tightly wound the type who had fun but never spontaneously. Her hair was indeed short and feathered back, a bit too late-seventies but it fit. She had small hoop earrings and a strong bird nose.

  We are naturally suspicious of law enforcement here. I have no desire to protect criminals, but I do not want to be a tool in their apprehension either. This place has to be a safe haven. Cooperating with law enforcement would cripple our street cred and really, our street cred is everything. I like to think of us as neutral.

  Switzerland for the runaways. And of course, my personal history the way the feds have handled my brother's situation does little to endear me to them either.

  "I'd rather he stayed," I said.

  "This has nothing to do with him."

  "Think of him as my attorney."

  Claudia Fisher took Squares in the jeans, the hair, the tattoo. He pulled on imaginary lapels and wriggled his eyebrows.

  I moved to my desk. Squares flopped into the chair in front of it and threw his work boots onto the desktop. They landed with a dusty thud.

  Fisher and Wilcox remained standing.

  I spread my hands. "What can I do for you, Agent Fisher?"
/>   "We're looking for one Sheila Rogers."

  That had not been what I expected.

  "Can you tell us where we might find her?"

  "Why are you looking for her?" I asked.

  Claudia Fisher gave me a patronizing smile. "Would you mind just telling us where she is?"

  "Is she in trouble?"

  "Right now" she paused a beat and changed the smile "we'd just like to ask her some questions."

  "What about?"

  "Are you refusing to cooperate with us?"

  "I'm not refusing anything."

  "Then please tell us where we might locate Sheila Rogers."

  "I'd like to know why."

  She looked at Wilcox. Wilcox gave her a very small nod. She turned back to me. "Earlier today, Special Agent Wilcox and I visited Sheila Rogers's place of employment on 18th Street. She was not present. We inquired as to where we might locate her. Her employer informed us that she had called in sick. We checked her last known place of residence. The landlord informed us that she moved out several months ago. Her current residence was listed as yours, Mr. Klein, on 378

  West 24th Street. We visited there. Sheila Rogers was not present,"

  Squares pointed at her. "You talk real purdy."

  She ignored him. "We don't want trouble, Mr. Klein."

  "Trouble?" I said.

  "We need to question Sheila Rogers. We need to question her right away. We can do it the easy way. Or, if you choose not to cooperate, we can travel an alternate, though less pleasant, avenue."

  Squares rubbed his hands together. "Ooo, a threat."

  "What's it going to be, Mr. Klein?"

  "I'd like you to leave," I said.

  "How much do you know about Sheila Rogers?"

  This was turning weird. My head started aching. Wilcox reached into his jacket pocket apd took out a sheet of paper. He handed it to Claudia Fisher. "Are you aware," Fisher said, "of Ms. Rogers's criminal record?"

  I tried to keep a straight face, but even Squares reacted to that one.

  Fisher started reading from the sheet of paper. "Shoplifting.

  Prostitution. Possession with intent to sell."

  Squares made a scoffing noise. "Amateur hour."