Caught (2010)

by Harlan Coben

  Another minute passed before Frank Tremont said, "That phone was found under Mercer's bed in his hotel room in Newark, not far from where we now sit."

  Hester and Grayson stayed silent.

  "It belongs to a missing girl named Haley McWaid."

  Ed Grayson, retired federal marshal who should have known better, actually groaned. Hester turned to him. Grayson's face drained of color as though someone had opened a spigot and let out all the blood. Hester grabbed his arm again, squeezed, tried to bring him back.

  Hester tried to buy some time. "You can't possibly think that my client--"

  "You know what I think, Hester?" Frank Tremont interrupted. He was gaining confidence, his voice full of bluster. "I think your client killed Dan Mercer because Mercer was getting off for what he did to your client's son. That's what I think. I think your client decided to take the law into his own hands--and on one level, I can't blame him. If someone did that to my kid, yeah, sure, I'd go after him. Honest to God, I would. And then I'd hire the best lawyer I could because the truth is, the victim here is so unsympathetic--such a bucket of scum--that he could indeed get shot in front of the home crowd at a Giants game and no one would convict."

  He glared at Hester. Hester folded her arms and waited.

  "But that's the problem with taking the law into your own hands. You don't know where it will lead. So now--oh, and this is all hypothetically speaking, right?--your client killed the only man who may have told us what happened to a seventeen-year-old girl."

  "Oh God," Grayson said. He dropped his face in his hands.

  Hester said, "A moment with my client."

  "Why?"

  "Just get the hell out." Then, thinking better of it, she leaned into Grayson's ear and whispered, "Do you know something about this?"

  Grayson leaned away and looked at her in horror. "Of course not."

  Hester nodded. "Okay."

  "Look, we don't think your client hurt Haley McWaid," Frank continued. "But we're pretty damn sure Dan Mercer did. So now we need to know everything we can to find Haley. Everything. Including where Mercer's body is. And we're running against the clock here. For all we know, Dan was holding her someplace secret. Haley could be tied up, scared, hurt, who knows? We're digging up his yard. We are asking neighbors, coworkers, friends, even his ex about places he liked to go. But the clock is ticking--and that girl may be alone, starving or trapped or worse."

  "And," Hester said, "you think a corpse might tell you where she is?"

  "It could, yes. He may have a clue on his body or in his pockets, something. Your client needs to tell us where Dan Mercer is."

  Hester shook her head. "Do you really expect me to allow my client to incriminate himself?"

  "I expect your client to do the right thing here."

  "For all I know you're making this all up."

  Frank Tremont stood. "What?"

  "I've dealt with cops and their tricks before. Confess and we can save the girl."

  He leaned down. "Take a close look at my face. Do you really think this is a ploy?"

  "Could be."

  Walker said, "It's not."

  "And I'm supposed to take your word for it?"

  Both Walker and Tremont just looked at her. They all knew--this was real. De Niro couldn't give this good a performance.

  "Still," Hester said, "I won't let my client incriminate himself."

  Tremont got up, his face red. "Is that how you feel, Ed?"

  "Talk to me, not my client."

  Frank ignored her. "You're a law enforcement officer." He leaned right into Ed Grayson's lowered face. "By killing Dan Mercer, you may be responsible for killing Haley McWaid."

  "Back off," Hester said.

  "You can live with yourself, Ed? With your conscience? If you think I'm going to waste time on legal maneuvers--"

  "Wait," Hester said, her voice suddenly calm. "You're basing this connection simply on this phone?"

  "What?"

  "That's all you have? This phone in his hotel room?"

  "What, you don't think that's enough?"

  "That's not what I asked you, Frank. I asked, what else have you got?"

  "Why do you care?"

  "Just tell me."

  Frank Tremont looked back at Walker. Walker nodded. "His ex-wife," Frank said. "Mercer used to visit her house. Apparently so did Haley McWaid."

  "You think that's where Mercer met this girl?"

  "We do."

  Hester nodded. Then: "Let my client go now, please."

  "You're joking, right?"

  "Right now."

  "Your client killed our only lead!"

  "Wrong," Hester snapped. Her voice boomed through the room. "If what you're saying is true, Ed Grayson gave you your only lead."

  "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "How did you bumbling idiots finally find this phone?"

  No one answered.

  "You searched Dan Mercer's room. Why? Because you thought that my client had murdered him. So without that, you'd have nothing. Three months of investigating and you had nothing. Until today. Until my client handed you your only clue."

  Silence. But Hester wasn't done.

  "And while we're on the subject, Frank, I know who you are. Essex County investigator Frank Tremont, who botched up that high-profile murder case a few years back. Washed-up has-been ridden out by his boss Loren Muse because of his lazy-ass incompetence, right? And here you are, on your last case, and what happens? Rather than redeem yourself and your pitiful career, you never bother to even look at a well-known pedophile who crossed paths with the victim in a fairly obvious way. How the hell did you miss that, Frank?"

  Now it was Frank Tremont who was losing color in his face.

  "And now, lazy cop that you are, you have the nerve to come raining down on my client as an accessory? You should be thanking him. All these months on the case and you found nothing. Now you're closer than you've ever been to finding this poor girl because of what you allege my client did."

  Frank Tremont deflated right in front of them.

  Hester nodded at Grayson. They both started to rise.

  Walker said, "Where do you think you're going?"

  "We're leaving."

  Walker looked to Tremont to protest. Tremont was still reeling. Walker picked up the ball. "Like hell you are. Your client is under arrest."

  "I want you to listen to me," Hester said. Her voice was softer now, almost apologetic in tone. "You're wasting your time."

  "How do you figure?"

  She looked him dead in the eye. "If we knew something that could help that girl, we would tell you."

  Silence.

  Walker tried for bravado, but it wasn't there anymore. "Why don't you let us decide what might help?"

  "Yeah," Hester said, standing all the way up now, flicking a glance at Tremont, then back to Walker. "You've both done so much to inspire confidence so far. What you need to do is concentrate on finding that poor girl--not on prosecuting a man who may be the only hero in all this."

  There was a knock on the door. A young cop opened it and leaned in. All eyes turned toward him. Walker said, "What's up, Stanton?"

  "I found something on her phone. I think you're going to want to see this."

  Caught

  Chapter 19

  FRANK TREMONT AND MICKEY WALKER followed Stanton down the corridor. "Hester Crimstein is an amoral shark with scruples that would shame a street hooker," Walker said to him.

  "You know all that incompetency stuff was just to throw us off our game."

  "Uh-huh."

  "You've been all over this case. You've done more than anyone could."

  "Right."

  "So have the FBI and the big-time profilers and your entire office. Nobody could have foreseen this."

  "Mickey?"

  "Yeah."

  "If I need to get stroked," Frank said, "I'll find someone a lot hotter and more feminine than you, okay?"

  "Yeah, okay." />
  Stanton led them to a corner room in the basement where the tech guys hung out. Haley McWaid's iPhone was plugged into a computer. Stanton pointed at the screen. "This is basically her cell phone blown up for you to see on this bigger monitor."

  "Okay," Frank Tremont said. "So what's up?"

  "I found something in an app."

  "A what?"

  "An app. A phone application."

  Tremont hoisted up his pants by the belt. "Pretend I'm an old fossil who still can't program his Betamax."

  Stanton pressed a button. The screen turned black with small icons neatly aligned in three rows. "These are apps for the iPhone. See, she had iCal, which is where Haley kept her appointments, like lacrosse games and homework, on a calendar; Tetris--that's a game, and so is Moto Chaser; Safari is her Web browser; iTunes so she could download songs. Haley loves music. There's this other music app program called Shazam. It--"

  "I think we get the gist," Walker said.

  "Right, sorry."

  Frank stared at Haley's iPhone. What song, he wondered, had she listened to last? Did she like faster rock or heartbreaking ballads? Typical old fart, Frank had made fun of these devices, kids texting and e-mailing and walking around with earbuds, but in a sense, the device was a life. Her friends would be listed in her address book, her school schedule in the calendar, her favorite songs in some playlist, photos that made her smile--like the one taken with Mickey Mouse--in her photo file.

  Hester Crimstein's accusation was there. True, Dan Mercer had no history of violence or rape, seemed to be into girls younger than this, and really, the fact that his ex-wife lived in the same large town was hardly a big warning sign. But Crimstein's words about incompetence hammered him, and in them, Frank feared that he heard the echo of a truth.

  He should have seen it.

  "Anyway," Stanton said, "I don't mean to go into too much detail, but this is a little weird. Haley downloaded a bunch of songs like every teenager, but none since her disappearance. Same with surfing the Web. I mean, you know every place she visited on her iPhone because you got the server to show you. So what I saw in the browser won't surprise you much. She had done some searches on University of Virginia--I guess she was bummed that she didn't get in, right?"

  "Right."

  "So there was also a search for some girl named Lynn Jalowski, who's from West Orange, a lacrosse player who got into UVA, so I guess maybe she was looking up a rival."

  "We know all this," Frank said.

  "Right, the server--so you also know about the instant messages, the texts, stuff like that, though I have to say, Haley did a lot less of it than most of her friends. But see, there's a separate app we didn't really know about for Google Earth. You probably know what that is."

  "Humor me," Frank said.

  "Watch this. It's basically a built-in GPS feature."

  Stanton picked up Haley's iPhone and tapped a picture of the earth. The giant globe spun and then the satellite camera zoomed down, the planet growing bigger--first the United States, then the East Coast, then down to New Jersey--until it stopped about a hundred yards above the building where they now stood. It read: "50 W Market Street, Newark, NJ."

  Frank's jaw dropped. "Will this tell you everyplace this iPhone went?"

  "I wish," Stanton said. "No. You have to turn the feature on. Haley didn't. But you can look up any address or place and see a satellite photo of it on the map. Anyway, I'm having some experts figure out exactly why, but I guess Google Earth is self-contained so you never saw her searches on the server. The history also can't tell when a search was made, just that it was and where."

  "And Haley looked up places?"

  "Only two since she downloaded the app."

  "Well?"

  "One was her own home. My guess is, when she first downloaded it, she turned it on and it showed where she was. So that really doesn't count."

  "And the other?"

  Stanton clicked and the giant Google Earth globe spun again. They watched it zoom in on New Jersey again. It stopped in a wooded area with one building in the middle.

  "Ringwood State Park," Stanton announced. "It's about forty miles away from here. The heart of the Ramapo Mountains. That building is the Skylands Manor in the middle of the park. It's surrounded by at least five thousand acres of woods."

  There was a second, maybe two, of silence. Frank could feel his heart beating in his chest. He looked at Walker. No words were exchanged. They knew. When something like this lands in your lap, you just know. The park was pretty big. Frank remembered a few years ago when some survivalist had hidden in the surrounding woods for more than a month. You could build a small lodging, hide it under trees and bush, lock someone up there.

  Or, of course, you could bury someone where they'd never be found.

  Tremont was the first to check the time. Midnight. Hours more of darkness. Panic set in. He quickly called Jenna Wheeler. If she didn't answer, he'd drive his car through her front door to get the answer.

  "Hello?"

  "Dan liked to hike, didn't he?"

  "Right."

  "Any favorite spots?"

  "I know he used to like the trail in Watchung."

  "How about Ringwood State Park?"

  Silence.

  "Jenna?"

  A moment passed before she spoke.

  "Yeah," she said, her voice faraway. "I mean, years ago, when we were married, we used to take the Cupsaw Brook Loop up there all the time."

  "Get dressed. I'll have a car pick you up." Frank Tremont hung up and turned to Walker and Stanton. "Helicopters, dogs, bulldozers, lights, shovels, rescue squads, park rangers, every available man, local volunteers. Let's get moving."

  Walker and Stanton both nodded.

  Frank Tremont flipped open his phone again. He took a deep breath, felt the punch from Hester Crimstein's earlier words, and then he dialed Ted and Marcia McWaid.

  AT FIVE AM, Wendy was jarred awake by the phone. She had only fallen asleep two hours earlier. She had stayed up and surfed and started to put things together. Nothing on Kelvin Tilfer. Was he the exception that proved the rule? She didn't know yet. But the more she surfed the other four--the further she dug into their histories--the stranger the Princeton suitemate scandals became.

  Wendy reached blindly for the phone and croaked out a hello.

  Vic skipped the niceties. "Do you know Ringwood State Park?"

  "No."

  "It's in Ringwood."

  "You must have been an insightful reporter, Vic."

  "Get up there."

  "Why?"

  "That's where cops are looking for that girl's body."

  She sat up. "Haley McWaid's?"

  "Yep. They think Mercer dumped her in the woods."

  "What pointed them in that direction?"

  "My source said something about Google Earth on her iPhone. I'll get a camera crew to meet you."

  "Vic?"

  "What?"

  Wendy put her hand through her hair, tried to quiet her racing mind. "I don't know if I have the stomach for this one."

  "Boo-friggin'-hoo. Get moving."

  He hung up. Wendy got out of bed, showered, and dressed. She had her TV makeup case always at the ready, which was pretty sick when you thought about where she was headed. Welcome to the world of television news. As Vic had so poetically put it, boo-friggin'-hoo.

  She walked past Charlie's room. It was a wreck, yesterday's shirt and shorts balled up on the floor. When you lose a husband, you learn not to waste time on stuff like that. She looked past it, at her sleeping son, and thought about Marcia McWaid. Marcia had woken up like this, looked into her child's room like this, and found the bed empty. Now, three months later, Marcia McWaid was waiting for word as law enforcement officers scoured a state park for her missing daughter.

  That was what people like Ariana Nasbro didn't quite get. The fragility of it all. The ripples one horror can unleash. How any carelessness can plummet you down that pit of despair. How it
can all be irreparable.

  Yet again, Wendy said the silent prayer of every parent: Don't let anything harm him. Please just keep him safe.

  Then she got into her car and drove to the state park where the police were searching for the girl who hadn't been in that bed in the morning.

  Caught

  Chapter 20

  THE SUN ROSE at five forty-five AM.

  Patricia McWaid, Haley's younger sister, stood in the middle of the activity storm and didn't move. Since the police found Haley's iPhone, it felt as though they had gone back to those numbing first days--stapling up posters, calling all her friends, visiting her favorite spots, updating her missing-girl Web site, handing out her photograph at the local malls.

  Investigator Tremont, who had been so nice to her family, seemed to have aged about ten years in the last few days. He forced up a smile for her and said, "How you doing, Patricia?"

  "Fine, thank you."

  He patted her shoulder and moved on. People did that a lot with Patricia. She didn't stand out. She wasn't particularly special. That didn't bother her. Most people aren't particularly special, though they may think they are. Patricia was content with her situation--or at least she had been. She missed Haley. Patricia did not relish attention. Unlike her big sister, she hated competition and avoided the limelight. Now she was a "pity celebrity" at school, the popular girls acting friendly, wanting to get close to her so they could say at parties, "Oh, that missing girl? Well, I'm friends with her sister!"

  Patricia's mother was helping to organize the search parties. Mom was pure strength, like Haley, a pantherlike power to their walks, as if even a stroll was a challenge to those around them. Haley led. Always. And Patricia followed. Some people thought that bothered her. It didn't. Her mother would sometimes get on her, tell her, "You need to be more decisive," but Patricia never saw the need. She didn't like making decisions. She was just as happy seeing the movie Haley liked. She didn't care whether they ate Chinese or Italian. What was the big deal? When you think about it, what's so great about being decisive?