Harlan Coben

by Play Dead

  Mary’s mouth dropped open. “It can’t be.”

  “It’s true.”

  “But James never said a word. He never threw me out. He loved you and raised you like his own. Why?”

  “I don’t know, Mother. I suspect it has something to do with his love for you.”

  Mary’s whole face emanated bleakness. She shook her head. “Not James,” she said weakly. “He’s a doctor. He would never hurt anyone.”

  She knelt beside her mother. “We have to find him, Mother. We have to confront him and find out what really happened.”

  The roar of a blasting engine made them both turn. Laura opened the front door and peered out. Gloria’s car raced up the road at what had to be a hundred miles an hour. As she turned into the driveway, one of the tires swung up onto the grass but Gloria did not pause or even hesitate until she came to a stop near the front door. She jumped out of the car.

  “Gloria, what the hell—” Laura saw her sister’s face and stopped. Gloria’s eyes were wide and frenzied and out of control. Her right hand grasped the diary and a white envelope.

  “Richard Corsel came to see you,” Gloria called back.

  “What?”

  “He told me to give you this envelope. He said it would answer all your questions.”

  Laura’s heart got caught in her throat. The missing money. Richard had traced down the missing money.

  “And May thirtieth,” Gloria shouted, holding up the diary. “Something terrible happened on May thirtieth.”

  JAMES was back in his car and on the road in a matter of minutes. He had to give David credit. Creating Mark Seidman had been a stroke of genius. James realized that Judy was right, that David had not committed suicide. With the help of his cop friend (he could never have pulled it off by himself), David had faked his own death and taken on a new identity: Mark Seidman. Genius and yet so simple.

  James imagined the scene in Australia six months earlier. After David had met up with Mary at the Pacific International Hotel, David realized that he would have to give up Laura, that he would have to leave her for her own good. At the same time, he could not tell her why—lest he hurt her further.

  So what was the logical solution?

  Disappear off the face of the Earth, of course.

  And how do you do that without giving up everything you have?

  You transfer your money around via Switzerland, fake an accidental drowning, go in for a little cosmetic surgery, take on a new identity.

  Who would suspect such a thing from a wealthy, successful basketball star who had just married the world’s most beautiful woman? From a man who seemed to have everything?

  No one—not even Mary, James, or Judy.

  There was only one potential flaw in the plan but it could be worked around: David’s unusual jump shot. Somebody was sure to recognize it. But so what? If Mark Seidman’s style of play was similar to David Baskin’s, what would that prove? It would take a wild stretch of the imagination to leap from a resemblance in shooting form to a fraudulent death.

  Only someone who knew about the past could possibly suspect the truth. That, David must have thought, involved two people: Mary and Judy. Sinclair was dead. James, he thought incorrectly, knew nothing of what had taken place.

  Mary, of course, was no threat at all. In the first place, she knew nothing about basketball. And even if she did by some odd coincidence figure it out, she would never say anything. She would just be thankful that David was out of Laura’s life.

  Judy, however, was another story. She was both intelligent and a big basketball fan. She might just be able to figure it out. But where was the threat in that? If Judy figured out what David had done, she would certainly not tell anyone. After all, David and Laura were brother and sister. David had done this to protect Laura from the truth. Why would Judy do something to rehash what had happened when it would bring only more pain and misery to her niece?

  James smiled. Why indeed?

  Only James knew why Judy chose to expose Mark Seidman’s true identity. You see, Mary did not tell David the whole story during their meeting in Australia—not because she was trying to hide something. No, in fairness to Mary she told David everything she knew. Unfortunately for them, that was not enough. She did not know about … May 30, 1960.

  That was the day after Sinclair Baskin died. Mary had never learned what happened on the evening of May 30, 1960. Only two people knew. Only two people had witnessed the event that had taken place on May 30, 1960. One had recently burned to death. The other was about to commit one last murder.

  May 30, 1960.

  When Judy had first realized that David was still alive, she snapped into action. His strange survival was her last chance at redemption—her last chance to save Laura from the clutches of the past. James, on the other hand, had seen David’s survival as the path to his family’s destruction. He knew that Judy was going to tell Laura and Mary everything. He knew that she was going to reveal secrets that she had promised to take with her to the grave. So James did the only thing he could. He had helped Judy keep her promise.

  He had escorted her to the grave.

  He had set the house on fire with her and all her damn diaries in it. The secret of the past had burned into nothing but worthless smoke and ashes. There had however been a serious miscalculation in Judy’s death: Laura had gotten caught in the blaze. But that was not his fault. Mary had started it. She should have never slept with Sinclair. And Judy was at fault, too. She should have kept her mouth shut. Lucky for both of them that the mystery man had saved Laura. James now had a pretty good idea of who that mystery man was.

  It was a pity that he had to die.

  James drove through the Fenway and turned onto Storrow Drive. David Baskin and the Boston Garden were only five minutes away.

  GLORIA moved up the front porch and into the house. The three women stared at one another, each noticing the horrifying pallor of the other two and wondering if they, too, looked like they were wearing death masks.

  Laura spoke first. “What happened on May thirtieth?”

  Gloria wanted to tell her sister and yet she wanted to put it off for even a few more moments. “The diary will explain everything,” she said, “but you’d better read Mr. Corsel’s note first. He said it was urgent.”

  Laura could feel beads of sweat on her forehead despite the cold. The envelope was plain and white—the kind you could buy in any stationery or card store. She took it from Gloria’s hand and ripped the seal. She withdrew a small note card, also of unmarked white paper. Richard Corsel had a marvelous economy of words, but Laura understood why. The less said, the better:

  Please destroy this note as soon as you have read it. The name of the person who now controls the missing money is Mark Seidman.

  Her legs almost gave way.

  Gloria and Mary moved in. They led Laura to the couch in the den. All three sat down.

  “What does it say?” Gloria asked.

  Laura’s head swirled, but somewhere in the gyrations, she saw a faint light. At first she swore it was just her imagination—a case of desire turning a hope into a reality. It was all so crazy. It was a mirage—it had to be. And yet the more it ran through her mind, the more she understood everything: why T.C. had lied to her, why David had called the bank, why she had felt so strange around Mark Seidman, why he had been afraid to go near her, why his jump shot was so familiar, why T.C. had helped him sneak out during the cocktail party when he had one of his …

  “It’s okay. I got you.”

  A muffled cry.

  “Hang in there, old buddy. Just lean on me. I’ll have you home soon.”

  “I didn’t want to see her, T.C. I didn’t want to go near her.”

  Tears ran down Laura’s face. Her mind tried to accept that she was finally face-to-face with the truth. “He’s still alive.”

  “Who?” Gloria asked. “What are you talking about?”

  She held up the piece of paper. “This proves it. Mark
Seidman is really David.”

  “What?” Mary shouted.

  The pieces began to come together in her mind even as she spoke. “David never drowned. He never committed suicide. He just wanted us all to think he was dead. He wanted you to think he was out of the way and he wanted to protect me from the truth. It all makes sense now. And T.C. was in on it.”

  “But what about his ring showing up under your pillow?” Gloria asked.

  “That had to be T.C.’s doing. He was trying to scare me off. He was afraid I would learn the truth.”

  Laura ran for the phone.

  “What are you doing?” Mary asked.

  “I’m calling Clip Arnstein. I want to find out where Mark Seidman lives.”

  “No!” Mary screamed. “Don’t you see? This doesn’t change anything. You can’t be with him. David is still your brother.”

  Laura spun back toward her mother as if the words she had spoken had wrapped themselves around her throat and pulled. “But—”

  It was Gloria who raised her hand to silence her. Her tear-streaked face mourned her own loss but Gloria now realized that there was hope for Laura.

  “No, he’s not,” she said.

  Mary looked at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “David is not your brother,” Gloria repeated, handing Laura the diary. “May thirtieth. Read May thirtieth.”

  ONLY a few blocks to go. Nothing could save David now.

  James felt his sweat cling his shirt to his body. He hated perspiration. He kept extra dress shirts in his office so that he could always change into something fresh. But he would be able to change soon enough, as soon as he took care of this problem.

  He was no professional killer—that was for sure—but he had managed to leave no clues behind and provide himself with good alibis. Take Judy’s murder, for example. If anybody wanted to know where James had been at the time of the fire, Dr. Eric Clarich would gladly confirm that James was five hours away in Boston. Dr. Clarich would testify that he had called Boston Memorial Hospital half an hour after the fire had been set and reached James.

  Conclusion: James could not possibly have been involved. No sense in digging any deeper.

  How had James pulled that one off? If he had been up at Colgate committing a murder, how could he have miraculously returned to Boston in time for the expected emergency call? Simple. He hadn’t. He’d merely set his office extension to transfer automatically all of his calls to a pay phone not five minutes from St. Catherine’s Hospital in Hamilton, New York. Brilliant, no? Then all he had to do was make his way to the airport, wait a few hours, and show up at the hospital all harried as if he had just rushed all the way from Boston.

  That part had gone very smoothly.

  His real moment of fear had come when he finally did arrive at the hospital and saw Mary was already there. Panic washed through him. There was only one way she could have gotten from Boston to Hamilton so fast. She had to have been on her way up to Colgate to talk to Judy. Had Mary reached her in time? Had Judy had a chance to tell her anything before she died? Luckily, the answer was no. One look at Mary told him that she still knew nothing of what had occurred on May 30, 1960. Besides, Laura was the one Judy wanted to tell, not Mary.

  BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEE—

  James reached for his belt and turned off his stupid beeper. Damn. He would have to call in. If not, the hospital would start making calls and James did not want that.

  In the distance, James saw his target: the Boston Garden. It could wait another couple of minutes. He pulled over to the side of the road, got out of the car, and trotted over to the phone booth.

  GLORIA’S words jolted Laura like an electric shock. “What do you mean, David is not my brother?”

  “May thirtieth,” Gloria repeated. “Read it.”

  Laura took the diary from her sister and moved down toward the couch. Mary sat next to her in order to read over her shoulder.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Mary said.

  Gloria swallowed. “Just read.”

  Laura opened the book. Her fingers fumbled the pages back and forth until at last she arrived on the right day:

  May 30, 1960

  This nightmare will never end. I spun the web and now I am caught in it. James’s plan is completely insane and completely ingenious. He has turned Mary’s own charms of seduction to his favor and me into his unwilling accomplice.

  “You’re involved in this, too,” James told me in a cruel voice. “I will tell everyone that you helped me kill Sinclair Baskin.”

  “I’ll deny it. It will be your word against mine.”

  His smile was so diabolical, so evil. “You are so stupid sometimes,” he spit out. “Who do you think a jury is going to believe—a jealous harlot who slept with a married man and then betrayed her own sister or a wronged doctor who is a pillar of the community?”

  I said nothing. I was too scared to speak.

  “You are going to help me with this because once you do, our secret and our fates will be eternally sealed together. Neither one of us will be able to reveal the other’s sin without condemning themselves as well. After today, we will go on as if nothing has changed. We will never speak of this again.”

  “But can’t you see that this is all wrong?”

  His face clouded over. “I know it’s wrong. Murdering Sinclair Baskin, well, that was justice. This time, it is not so cut and dried.”

  “Then don’t do it,” I urged. “Forget this whole crazy scheme. Forget about everything. I’ll never tell anyone, I swear.”

  “No,” he said firmly. “I can’t just forget and go on. I have to make things right—even if it means the death of an innocent soul. Don’t you see? Mary will unwittingly go along with this. Sinclair has abandoned her and she is certainly not going to tell me the truth. What other option does she have?”

  “None,” I admitted. “She’ll have to pretend that the child is yours.”

  James smiled. “Exactly. So let’s make her wish come true, shall we?”

  The house was pitch-dark. In the den I could hear the radio playing a familiar tune but I couldn’t place the name. James and I crept down the hallway past little Gloria’s room. My niece is such a sweet, pretty child. I wonder what her young mind will remember of this night. I pray she will recall nothing.

  We were a few feet from their bedroom door when I whispered, “Are you sure Mary is unconscious?”

  “I gave her enough drugs to knock out a horse. She’ll feel nothing until morning. Then I’ll give her a fresh batch.”

  We reached the door. He swung it open, the dim light from the hall fell onto Mary’s sleeping body. She did not move.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “Please, James, think about this.”

  He grabbed my arm. “Let’s go.”

  He pulled me in with him and shut the door. He flicked on the overhead light, illuminating the room. Mary still did not stir.

  He smiled. “You see what I mean? Out like a light, the no-good whore.”

  “Then why do you stay with her?”

  He looked at me as though I had asked a priest why he believed in God if there was so much cruelty in the world. “Because I love her,” he said, and I think I understood.

  He took out his medical bag and opened it. His hand reached in and pulled out a metallic instrument. “I took this from the hospital. Menacing-looking, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. My body felt so damn cold. I stepped back and back again until I ran into the wall and could go back no farther. James’s face changed as if he had put on a mask. He was now the doctor again. He took the device and went to work. At the first sight of blood, I nearly vomited. I closed my eyes but my ears could still hear the scraping sounds. I wished he would hurry. I wished it was over.

  Time passed, and finally the sounds stopped. Another life had been terminated. “Clean this mess up,” he said to me. “Make it fast.”

  “Do I have to?”
<
br />   “Yes. Now hurry.”

  Before I could move more than a few steps, the door flew open. I turned in time to see little Gloria standing in the doorway. Her eyes were wide with fear.

  “Mommy! Mommy!” she shouted, her eyes staring at the puddle of blood between her mother’s legs.

  “Get out of here, Gloria!” James shouted. “Get out of here now!”

  The child did not move. She was frozen in some kind of trance. I grabbed her and hurried her out of the room, away from the blood… .

  Laura could not stop shaking. Neither could Mary.

  “It’s true,” Gloria said. “Every word. The nightmare I could never remember … this is it. It all came back to me as soon as I read Judy’s words. I could see the blood. I could see Mom’s body sprawled out on the bed. I could see the twisted look on Dad’s face. I even remember see- ing Judy huddled in the corner.”

  “He aborted the fetus,” Laura uttered.

  Gloria nodded.

  Laura stared at her mother, who was quivering as if she were in the grip of a fever. Everything began to click together. “He turned all your tricks against you, Mother,” Laura said. “You ended up being the one who was fooled about the identity of the real father, not him. You ended up being the one tricked into seducing him so that he could impregnate you for real. You were the one who got so caught up in the bliss of fooling James that you dismissed my ‘late arrival’ as your good fortune.”

  “And my difficult pregnancy?” she asked.

  Laura nodded. “He caused that, too. He kept you drugged out so you wouldn’t be able to guess what was going on. You told me you were feeling sick but were afraid to go to a doctor, right? It would have been too dangerous, you said, because Dad might find out. That gave him the time he needed. You continuously slept with him because you wanted to fool him into thinking he was the father when all along he was trying to get you pregnant for real.”