Caught (2010)

by Harlan Coben

  "Right."

  "And you guys figure she met up with this Kirby kid?"

  "Right."

  "Did Kirby confirm it?"

  "Not fully, no. Look, there's evidence they were an item. Some texts, e-mails, stuff like that. Seems like Haley liked the idea of keeping it a secret, probably because the kid was a punk. No big deal. The kid lawyered up. Not unusual, even if you're innocent. Rich parents, spoiled brat of a kid, you know the deal."

  "And this was Haley's boyfriend?"

  "Seems so, yeah. But Kirby told us that he and Haley broke up about a week before she vanished. That matches when she last sneaked out."

  "And you obviously looked at Kirby?"

  "Sure, but the kid is a small-time asshat. Don't get me wrong. We looked at Kirby hard and long. But he was in Kentucky when she disappeared. His alibi is completely solid. We checked him out six ways to Sunday. There's no way he had anything to do with it, if that's where you're going with this."

  "That's not where I'm going at all," Wendy said.

  Tremont hoisted his pants by the buckle. "You want to share with the class then?"

  "Dan Mercer dates younger girls. Haley McWaid leaves her house--no signs of violence, a break-in, nothing. What I'm saying is that maybe the mysterious boyfriend wasn't Kirby Sennett. Maybe it was Dan Mercer."

  Tremont took his time with that one. He chewed at something in his mouth, something that apparently tasted bad. "So you think, what, Haley ran away with this perv on her own accord?"

  "I'm not willing to go that far yet."

  "Good," Tremont said, and there was steel in his voice. "Because this is a good kid. A really good kid. I don't want her parents hearing crap like this. They don't deserve that."

  "I'm not casting any aspersions here."

  "Okay. Just so we're clear."

  "But for the sake of argument," Wendy said, "let's say Haley did run away with Mercer. It would explain why there was no evidence of foul play. And maybe it also explains the iPhone in the motel room."

  "How?"

  "Haley runs away with Dan Mercer. He ends up getting killed. So she hurries out of the motel room--never looks back. I mean, think about it. If Dan Mercer had grabbed and killed her, why would he hold on to her iPhone?"

  "As a trophy?"

  Wendy frowned. "Do you really buy that?"

  Tremont said nothing.

  "You found this state park on her Google Earth, right?"

  "Right."

  "Pretend you're Haley. You wouldn't look up the place a kidnapper was going to hold you or bury you or whatever."

  "But," Tremont finished for her, "you might look up a place where you were going to meet up with your boyfriend to run away."

  Wendy nodded.

  Tremont sighed. "She's a good kid."

  "We're not making a moral judgment here."

  "No?"

  Wendy let that go.

  "So let's say you're right," Tremont said. "Where would Haley be now?"

  "I don't know."

  "And why would she leave her phone in the motel?"

  "Maybe she had to rush out. Maybe she couldn't go back to the room for some reason. Maybe she's scared because Dan was killed and she's hiding."

  "So she had to rush out," Tremont repeated, cocking his head. "And so she, what, left her iPhone under the bed?"

  Wendy thought about that. No answer came to her.

  "Let's take it step by step," Tremont said. "First, I'll send some guys down to the motel--to all the crap holes where Dan stayed--and see if anyone remembers him being with a teenage girl."

  "Good," Wendy said. Then: "One other thing."

  "What?"

  "When I saw Dan before he was shot, someone had beaten him pretty good."

  Tremont saw where she was going with this. "So you figure that maybe Haley McWaid, if she was with him, might have seen that beating." He nodded. "Maybe that's why she ran."

  But now that he said it out loud, that didn't sound right to Wendy. There was a false note here. She tried to think it through. There was still more--like how did the scandals involving Stearns 109 fit in? She was about to present that angle to Tremont, but right now it still seemed too far out there. She needed to look into it more. That meant going back to Phil and Sherry Turnball, maybe calling Farley Parks and Steven Miciano, trying to find Kelvin Tilfer.

  "So maybe you should look into who assaulted Dan Mercer," she said.

  A half-smile crossed Tremont's face. "Hester Crimstein had an interesting theory on that."

  "Hester Crimstein, the TV judge?"

  "Right. She's also Ed Grayson's attorney. According to her hypothetical, her client gave Dan Mercer that beating."

  "How does she figure?"

  "See, we found Dan Mercer's blood in Grayson's car. We said that, along with your testimony, was clear evidence Grayson murdered Mercer."

  "Okay."

  "But Crimstein--God, she's good--she says, well, your witness, you, said Mercer had been beaten. So, she says, maybe Grayson and Mercer got into a fight a day or two earlier. And maybe that's how the blood ended up in the car."

  "You buy that?"

  Tremont shrugged. "Not really, no, but that's not the point."

  "It's pretty brilliant on her part," Wendy said.

  "Yep. Crimstein and Grayson pretty much figured a way to negate all the evidence. We have blood DNA--but a fight gives that a plausible explanation. Yes, Grayson had gun residue on his hand, but the owner of the Gun-O-Rama shooting range confirmed that he was there an hour after you saw him shoot Mercer. The owner says Grayson is one of the best shots he's ever seen, so he remembers him well. You witnessed him killing Dan Mercer--but there's no body, no gun, and he wore a mask."

  Something was niggling the back of Wendy's brain. It was there, just out of sight, but she couldn't quite get to it.

  Tremont said, "You know what I'm going to ask of you now, right?"

  "I think so."

  "The McWaids have been through hell. I don't want to put them through more. You can't report this yet."

  Wendy said nothing.

  "We have nothing, anyway, but a few whacked-out theories," he went on. "I promise to let you have anything we learn first. But for the sake of the investigation--for the sake of Haley's parents--you can't say anything yet. Deal?"

  The niggling was still there. Tremont was waiting. "Deal," she said.

  BACK BEHIND THE CRIME SCENE TAPE, Wendy was only mildly surprised to see Ed Grayson leaning against her car. He tried to look casual, but he wasn't pulling it off. His finger toyed with a cigarette. He put it in his mouth and sucked on it as though he were deep underwater and it was a breathing tube.

  "Sticking another GPS on my back bumper?" she asked.

  "I have no idea what you mean."

  "Sure. You were just checking for a flat, right?"

  Grayson took another deep drag. His face hadn't seen a razor, but that was true of more than half the men who'd gotten up here at such an early hour. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked a lot worse than the man who had just yesterday confidently explained to her his theories on vigilantism. She thought about that, about his visit to her house.

  "Did you really think I'd help you kill him?" she asked.

  "Truth?"

  "That'd be nice, yeah."

  "You might've agreed with what I said in theory. You maybe even started to waver a little when I raised Ariana Nasbro. But no, I never thought you'd help."

  "So you were just giving it a shot?"

  He didn't reply.

  "Or was your visit all an excuse to put that GPS on my car?"

  Ed Grayson slowly shook his head.

  "What?" she asked.

  "You don't have a clue, do you, Wendy?"

  She stepped closer to the driver's door. "Why are you here, Ed?"

  He looked off toward the woods. "I wanted to help with the search."

  "They wouldn't let you?"

  "What do you think?"

  "Sounds like
you feel guilty."

  He took another drag. "Do me a favor, Wendy. Skip the analysis."

  "So what do you want with me?"

  "Your opinion."

  "On?"

  He pinched the cigarette between his fingertips and studied it as though it held an answer. "Do you think Dan killed her?"

  She wondered how to answer that. "What did you do with his body?"

  "You talk first. Did Dan kill Haley McWaid?"

  "I don't know. Maybe he just locked her up, and right now, because of what you did, she's starving to death."

  "Nice try." He scratched at his cheek. "But the cops laid that guilt trip on me already."

  "Didn't work?"

  "Nope."

  "Are you going to tell me what you did with the body?"

  "My. My." He spoke in pure monotone. "I. Have. No. Idea. What. You're. Talking. About."

  This was getting her nowhere--and she had places to go. The niggling had something to do with her research on the Princeton group. Dan and Haley running away together--okay, maybe. But what about all those scandals involving his old roommates? Could be nothing. Probably was. But she was missing something huge here.

  "So what do you want from me?" she asked.

  "I'm trying to figure out whether Dan really kidnapped this girl."

  "Why?"

  "Trying to help the investigation, I guess."

  "So you can sleep better at night?"

  "Maybe."

  "So what answer will make you sleep better?" she asked.

  "I don't follow."

  "Well, if Dan killed Haley, would you feel better about what you did? Like you said before, he was bound to do it again. You stopped him--albeit a little late. And if Dan did not kill her, well, you're still convinced he would have hurt someone else, right? So either way, killing him was the only way to stop him. Seems the only way you lose sleep is if Haley is alive somewhere and you put her in further danger."

  Ed Grayson shook his head. "Just forget it." He started to walk away.

  "Am I missing something?" she asked.

  "Like I said before." Grayson tossed the cigarette and never broke stride. "You don't have a clue."

  Caught

  Chapter 23

  SO NOW WHAT?

  Wendy could keep looking for clues that proved Dan and Haley were involved in some kind of consensual, albeit wrong, relationship, but what was the point? The police now had that theory. They would run with it. She needed to attack from another angle.

  The five Princeton roommates.

  Four out of five had been felled by scandals in the past year. The fifth, well, maybe he had too, but it just wasn't online. So she headed back to the Starbucks in Englewood to continue her investigation. When she entered, even before she spotted the Fathers Club, the sound of Ten-A-Fly's rapping blew forth from the overhead speakers.

  Charisma Carpenter, I love you

  You ain't no carpenter's dream, you ain't flat as board,

  And you ain't easy to screw. . . .

  "Yo, hey."

  It was Ten-A-Fly. She stopped. "Hi."

  Ten-A-Fly was decked out in a Grass Roots zip-up blue hoodie. On his head he wore the hood over a red baseball cap with a brim so big a trucker in 1978 would have been embarrassed to wear it while on the CB. Behind him Wendy could see the guy with the tennis whites. He was typing madly on a laptop. The younger father with the baby sling was walking back and forth and making cooing noises.

  Ten-A-Fly jiggled a bling bracelet that looked like a Halloween prop. "Saw you at my gig last night."

  "Yep."

  "You likey?"

  Wendy nodded. "It was, uh, phat, dawg."

  That pleased him. He held up his fist for a knuckle pound. She obliged. "You're a TV reporter, right?"

  "Right."

  "So are you here to do a story on me?"

  Tennis Whites on the laptop added, "You should." He pointed to the screen. "We're getting a lot of action here."

  Wendy circled around and looked at the laptop. "You're on eBay?"

  "It's how I make a living now," Tennis Whites said. "Since I got laid off--"

  "Doug here was at Lehman Brothers," Ten-A-Fly interrupted. "He saw the bad coming, but nobody would listen to him."

  "Whatever," Doug said, waving a hand with modesty. "Anyway, I stay solvent with eBay. First, I sold pretty much everything I owned. Then I started going to garage sales, buying things, fixing them up, reselling them."

  "And you can make a living at that?"

  He shrugged. "No, not really. It's something to do."

  "Like tennis?"

  "Oh, I don't play."

  She just looked at him.

  "My wife does. Second wife actually. Some would call her a trophy wife. She kept whining about how she gave up this wonderful career to watch the kids, but really, she plays tennis all day. When I lost my job, I suggested that she go back to work. She told me that it was too late now. So she still plays tennis every day. And she hates me now. She can barely look at me. So I wear the tennis whites too."

  "Because . . . ?"

  "I don't know. A protest, I guess. I dumped a good woman--hurt her horribly--for a hottie. Now the good woman has moved on and doesn't even have the good sense to be mad at me anymore. I guess I got what I deserved, right?"

  Wendy had no interest in going there. She looked at the screen. "What are you selling now?"

  "Ten-A-Fly souvenirs. I mean, we're selling his CD, of course."

  There were copies on the table. Ten-A-Fly dressed like Snoop Dogg on a bender making gangsta hand signs that made one think not so much of intimidation as an unusual state of palsy. The CD was titled Unsprung in Suburbia.

  "Unsprung?" Wendy asked.

  "Ghetto slang," Doug of the Tennis Whites explained.

  "For?"

  "You don't want to know. Anyway, we're selling those CDs, T-shirts, caps, key chains, posters. But now I'm putting up one-of-a-kind items. Like, see here, that's the actual bandana Ten-A-Fly wore onstage last night."

  Wendy looked and couldn't believe the bidding. "It's up to six hundred dollars?"

  "Six-twenty now. Like I said, a lot of action. The panties a fan threw up onstage are also a hot item."

  Wendy looked back at Fly. "Wasn't the fan your wife?"

  "Your point?"

  Good question. "Absolutely none. Is Phil here?"

  As she asked the question, Wendy spotted him behind the counter talking to the barista. He was smiling when he turned and saw her. The smile anvil-dropped off his face. Phil hurried toward her. Wendy met him halfway.

  "What are you doing here?"

  "We need to talk."

  "We already talked."

  "We need to talk more."

  "I don't know anything."

  She took a step closer to him. "Do you not get that there is still a girl missing?"

  Phil closed his eyes. "Yeah, I get it," he said. "It's just . . . I don't know anything."

  "Five minutes. For Haley's sake."

  Phil nodded. They moved over to a table in the corner. It was rectangular and had a handicap logo with the words "Please offer this table to our disabled customers."

  "During your freshman year at Princeton," Wendy said, "who else did you and Dan room with in college?"

  Phil frowned. "What could that possibly matter?"

  "Just answer, okay?"

  "There were five of us. Besides Dan and me, there was Farley Parks, Kelvin Tilfer, and Steve Miciano."

  "Did you guys room together other years?"

  "Are you serious?"

  "Please."

  "Yeah. Well, sophomore year--or maybe junior--Steve did a semester in Spain. Barcelona or Madrid. And junior year, I think, Farley lived in a frat house."

  "You didn't join a fraternity?"

  "No. Oh, and I was gone first semester senior year. Did a program in London. Happy?"

  "Do you guys stay in touch?"

  "Not really."

  "How about Kelv
in Tilfer?"

  "I haven't heard from him since graduation."

  "Do you know where he lives?"

  Phil shook his head. A barista brought over a cup of coffee and placed it in front of Phil. Phil looked toward Wendy, seeing if she wanted one, but she shook him off. "Kelvin was from the Bronx. Maybe he's back there, I don't know."

  "How about the others? You ever talk to them?"

  "I hear from Farley, though it's been a while. Sherry and I held a fund-raiser for him last year. He was running for Congress, but it didn't work out."

  "Well, Phil, that's the thing."

  "What is?"

  "It didn't work out for any of you."

  He put his hand on the cup but didn't lift it. "I'm not following."

  She took the printouts from a manila envelope and laid them on the desk.

  "What's this?" he asked.

  "Let's start with you."

  "What about me?

  "A year ago, you go down for embezzling over two million dollars."

  His eyes widened. "How do you know that number?"

  "I have my sources."

  "The charges are total crap. I didn't do it."

  "I'm not saying you did. Just bear with me, okay? First, you go down for embezzling." She opened another folder. "Two months later, Farley gets ruined by a political scandal involving a prostitute." The next file. "A month or so after that, Dan Mercer gets nailed on my TV show. And then, skip ahead another two months, Dr. Steve Miciano gets arrested for illegally possessing prescription drugs."

  The files with various online printouts sat on the table. Phil stared at them, his hands down as though afraid to touch them.

  "Don't you think it's a hell of a coincidence?" she asked.

  "What about Kelvin?"

  "I don't have anything on him yet."

  "You found this all out in one day?"

  "It didn't take much. I just did a simple Web search."

  From behind her, Ten-A-Fly said, "May I see those?"

  She turned. They were all there--the rest of the Fathers Club. "You were eavesdropping?"

  "Don't take offense," Doug said. "People come in here and talk about the most personal things in the loudest of voices. It's like they think someone lowered a cone of silence around them. You just get used to listening in. Phil, this trumped-up embezzling charge--is that the reason they fired you?"