by Harlan Coben
When I'd bought the house, it'd been in foreclosure. For thirty-six years the Levinsky family had lived there, but no one really knew them. Mrs. Levinsky had been a seemingly sweet woman with a facial tic. Mr. Levinsky was an ogre who always yelled at her out on the lawn. He scared us. One time, we saw Mrs. Levinsky run out of the house in a nightgown, Mr. Levinsky chasing her with a shovel. Kids cut through every yard but theirs. When I was fresh out of college, rumors surfaced that he had abused his daughter Dina, a sad-eyed, stringy-haired waif I'd gone to school with since the first grade. Looking back on it, I must have been in a dozen classes with Dma Levinsky and I don't remember ever hearing her speak above a whisper and only then when forced to by well-meaning teachers. I never reached out to Dina. I don't know what I could have done, but I still wished that I'd tried.
Sometime during that year out of college, when the rumors of Dina's abuse began to take root, the Levinskys had upped and moved away. No one knew where. The bank took over the house and began to rent it out. Monica and I made an offer a few weeks before Tara was born.
Months later, when we first settled in, I'd stay awake at night and listen for--I don't know--sounds of some sort, for signs of the house's past, of the unhappiness within. I would try to figure out which bedroom had been Dina's and try to imagine what it'd been like for her, what it was like now, but there were no clues here. As I said earlier, a house is mortar and brick. Nothing more.
Two strange cars were parked in front of my house. My mother was standing by the front door. When I got out, she rushed me like those newscasts of returning POWs. She hugged me hard, and I got a whiff of too much perfume. I was still holding the Nike bag with the money, so it was hard for me to reciprocate.
Over my mother's shoulder, Detective Bob Regan stepped out of my house. Next to him stood a large black man with a gleaming shaved head and designer sunglasses. My mother whispered, "They've been waiting for you."
I nodded and moved toward them. Regan cupped a hand over his eyes, but only for effect. The sun was not that strong. The black man remained stonelike.
"Where have you been?" Regan asked. When I didn't reply right away, he added, "You left the hospital more than an hour ago."
I thought about the cell phone in my pocket. I thought about the bag of money in my hand. For now, I'd go for the semitruth. "I visited my wife's grave," I said.
"We need to talk, Marc."
"Step inside," I said.
We all moved back into the house. I stopped in the foyer. Monica's body had been found less than ten feet from where I now stood. Still in the entranceway, my eyes scanned the walls, looking for any telltale sign of violence. There was only one. I found it fairly quickly. Above th e Behrens lithograph near the stairwell, a bullet hole--one created from the only bullet that had not hit either Monica or me--had been spack led over. The spackle was too white for the wall. It would need a coat of paint.
I stared at it for a long moment. I heard a throat being cleared. It snapped me out of it. My mother rubbed my back and then headed to the kitchen. I showed Regan and his buddy to the living room. They took the two chairs. I took the couch. Monica and I hadn't truly decorated yet. The chairs dated back to my college dorm and looked it. The couch had come from Monica's apartment, a too-formal hand-me down that looked like something kept in storage at Versailles. It was heavy and stiff and, even in its heyday, had had very little padding.
"This is Special Agent Lloyd Tickner," Regan began, motioning toward the black man. "He's with the FBI."
Tickner nodded. I nodded back.
Regan tried to smile at me. "Good to see you're feeling better," he began.
"I'm not," I said.
He looked puzzled.
"I won't be better until I have my daughter back."
"Right, of course. About that. We have a few follow-up questions, if you don't mind."
I let them know I didn't.
Regan coughed into his fist, buying himself time. "You have to understand something. We need to ask these questions. I don't necessarily like it. I'm sure you don't either, but these questions need to be asked. You understand?"
I didn't really, but this was no time to encourage elaboration. "Go ahead," I said.
"What can you can tell us about your marriage?"
A warning light flashed across my cortex. "What does my marriage have to do with anything?"
Regan shrugged. Tickner remained still. "We're just trying to put some pieces together, that's all."
"My marriage has nothing to do with any of this."
"I'm sure you're right, but look, Marc, the truth is, the trail is getting cold here. Every day that passes hurts us. We need to explore every avenue."
"The only avenue I'm interested in is the one that leads to my daughter."
"We understand that. That's the main focus of our investigation. Finding out what happened to your daughter. And you too. Let's not forget that someone tried to kill you too, am I right?"
"I guess."
"But, see, we can't just ignore these other issues."
"What other issues?"
"Your marriage, for example."
"What about it?"
"When you got married, Monica was already pregnant, right?"
"What does that ... ?" I stopped myself. I wanted to attack with both barrels, but Lenny's words roared back at me. Don't talk to the cops without him present. I should call him. I knew that. But something about their tone and posture ... if I stopped now and said I wanted to call my lawyer, it would make me look guilty. I had nothing to hide. Why feed into their suspicions? It would only distract them. Of course, I also knew that this was how they worked, how the police played the game, but I'm a doctor. Worse, a surgeon. We often make the mistake of thinking we're smarter than everyone else.
I went with honesty. "Yes, she was pregnant. So?"
"You're a plastic surgeon, correct?"
The change of subjects threw me. "That's right."
"You and your partner travel overseas and repair cleft palates, serious facial trauma, burns, that kind of thing?"
"Something like that, yes."
"You travel a lot then?"
"A fair amount," I said.
"In fact," Regan said, "in the two years before your marriage, isn't it fair to say that you were probably out of the country more than you were in it?"
"Possibly," I said. I squirmed against the padless cushion. "Could you tell me what the relevance of any of this is?"
Regan gave me his most disarming smile. "We're just trying to get a complete picture here."
"Picture of what?"
"Your work partner"--he checked his notes--"a Ms. Zia Leroux."
"Dr. Leroux," I corrected.
"Dr. Leroux, yes, thank you. Where is she now?"
"Cambodia."
"She's performing surgery on deformed children over there?"
"Yes."
Regan tilted his head, feigning confusion. "Weren't you originally scheduled to take that trip?"
"A long time ago."
"How long ago?"
"I'm not sure I follow."
"How long ago did you take yourself off the schedule?"
"I don't know," I said. "Eight, nine months ago maybe."
"And so Dr. Leroux went instead, correct?"
"Yes, that's correct. And the point of that is ... ?"
He wouldn't bite. "You like your job, don't you, Marc?"
"Yes."
"You like traveling overseas? Doing this commendable work?"
"Sure."
Regan scratched his head too dramatically, pretending in the most obvious way to be bewildered. "So if you like the traveling, why did you cancel and let Dr. Leroux go in your place?"
Now I saw where he was heading. "I was cutting back," I said.
"On travel, you mean."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because I had other obligations."
"Those obligations being a wife and daughter, am I correct?
"
I sat up and met his eye. "Point," I said. "Is there a point to all this?"
Regan settled back. The silent Tickner did likewise. "Just trying to get a complete picture, that's all."
"You said that already."
"Yeah, hold on, give me a second here." Regan flipped through the pages of his notebook. "Jeans and a red blouse."
"What?"
"Your wife." He pointed at his notes. "You said that she was wearing jeans and a red blouse that morning."
More images of Monica flooded me. I tried to stem the tide. "So?"
"When we found her body," Regan said, "she was naked."
The tremors began in my heart. They spread down my arms, tingling my fingers.
"You didn't know?"
I swallowed. "Was she . . . ?" My voice died in my throat.
"No," Regan said. "Not a mark on her, other than the bullet holes." He did that help-me-understand head-tilt again. "We found her dead in this very room. Did she often parade in here with no clothes on?"
"I told you." Overload. I tried to process this new data, keep up with him. "She was wearing jeans and a red blouse."
"So she was dressed already?"
I remembered the sound of the shower. I remembered her coming out, throwing her hair back, lying on the bed, working the jeans over the hips. "Yes."
"Definitely?"
"Definitely."
"We've been through the whole house. We can't find a red blouse. Jeans, sure. She had several pairs. But no red blouse. Don't you think that's odd?"
"Wait a second," I said. "Her clothes weren't near her body?"
"Nope."
This made no sense. "I'll look in her closet, then," I said.
"We already did that, but sure, go ahead. Of course, I'd still like to know how clothes she was wearing ended up back in her closet, wouldn't you?"
I had no answer.
"Do you own a gun, Dr. Seidman?"
Another subject shift. I tried to keep up, but my head was spinning. "Yes."
"What kind?"
"A Smith and Wesson thirty-eight. It belonged to my father."
"Where do you keep it?"
"There's a compartment in the bedroom closet. It's on the top shelf in a lockbox."
Regan reached behind him and pulled out the metal lockbox. "This it?"
"Yes."
"Open it."
He tossed it to me. I caught it. The gray-blue metal was cold. But more than that, it felt shockingly light. I moved the wheels to the right combination and flipped it open. I poked through the legal documents--the car title, the deed on the house, the property survey-- but that was just to get my bearings. I knew right away. The gun was gone.
"You and your wife were both shot with a thirty-eight," Regan said. "And yours seems to be missing."
I kept my eyes on the box, as if I expected the weapon to suddenly materialize in it. I tried to put it together, but nothing was coming to me.
"Any idea where the gun is?"
I shook my head.
"And something else strange," Regan said.
I looked up at him.
"You and Monica were shot with different thirty-eights."
"Excuse me?"
He nodded. "Yeah, I found it hard to believe too. I made ballistics check it twice. You and your wife were shot with two different guns, both thirty-eights--and yours seems to be missing." Regan shrugged theatrically. "Help me understand, Marc."
I looked at their faces. I didn't like what I saw. Lenny's warning came back to me again, firmer this time. "I'want to call my lawyer," I said.
"You sure?"
"Yes."
"Go ahead."
My mother had been standing by the kitchen door, wringing her hands. How much had she heard? Judging by her face, too much. Mom looked at me expectantly. I nodded, and she went to call Lenny. I folded my arms, but that didn't feel right. I tapped my foot. Tickner took off the sunglasses. He met my eye and spoke for the first time.
"What's in the bag?" he asked me.
I just looked at him.
"That gym bag you been groping." Tickner's voice, belying his tough looks, had a nerdy cadence to it, a quasi-whine quality. "What's in it?"
This had all been a mistake. I should have listened to Lenny. I should have called him right away. Now I was not sure how to reply. In the background, I heard my mother urging Lenny to hurry. I was sifting through a response that might work as a semitruthful stall--none were convincing--when a sound ripped my attention away.
The cell phone, the one the kidnappers had sent to my father-in-law, began to ring.
Chapter 4
Tickner dfld Regdn waited for me to answer.
I excused myself, rising before they had a chance to react. My hand fumbled with the phone as I hurried outside. The sun hit me full in the face. I blinked and looked down at the keypad. The phone's answer button was located in a different spot from mine. Across the street, two girls donning brightly hued helmets were riding neon bikes. Ribbon strips of pink cascaded out of the handlebars of one.
When I was little, this neighborhood sheltered more than a dozen kids my age. We used to meet up after school. I don't remember what games we played--we were never organized enough for, say, a real game of baseball or anything like that--but they all involved hiding and chasing and some form of feigned (or borderline-real) violence. Childhood in suburbia is purportedly a time of innocence, but how many of those days ended in tears for at least one kid? We would argue, shift alliances, make declarations of friendship and war, and like some short term memory case, it was all forgotten the next day. A clean slate every afternoon. New coalitions forged. A new kid running home in tears.
My thumb finally touched down on the right button. I pressed it and brought the phone to my ear, all in one move. My heart thumped against my rib cage. I cleared my throat and, feeling like a total idiot, I simply said, "Hello?"
"Answer yes or no." The voice had the robotic hum of one of those customer-care phone systems, the ones that tell you to press one for service, press two to check the status of an order. "Do you have the money?" "Yes."
"You know the Garden State Plaza?"
"In Paramus," I said.
"In exactly two hours from now, I want you parked at the north lot. That's near Nordstrom's. Section Nine. Someone will approach your car."
"But--"
"If you're not alone, we disappear. If you're being followed, we disappear. If I smell a cop, we disappear. There will be s. Do you understand?"
"Yes, but when--"
Click.
I let my hand drop to my side. Numbness seeped in. I did not fight it. The little girls across the street were quarreling now. I couldn't hear the specifics, but the word my popped up a lot, that simple syllable accentuated and drawn out. An SUV sped around the corner. I watched it as though from above. The brakes shrieked. The driver-side door was open before the car had come to a complete stop.
It was Lenny. He took one look at me and picked up his pace. "Marc?"
"You were right." I nodded toward the house. Regan was standing by the door now. "They think I'm involved."
Lenny's face darkened. His eyes narrowed, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints. In sports, you call it putting on your "game face." Lenny was becoming Cujo. He stared at Regan as if deciding which limb to chew off. "You talked to them?"
"A little."
Lenny jerked his gaze toward me. "Didn't you tell them you wanted counsel?"
"Not at first."
"Damn it, Marc, I told you--"
"I got a ransom demand."
That made Lenny pull up. I checked my watch. Paramus was a forty minute ride. With traffic, it could take as much as an hour. I had time, but not much. I started filling him in. Lenny gave Regan another glare and led me farther away from the house. We stopped at the curb, those familiar cloud-gray stones that lie on property lines like sets of teeth, and then, like two children, we squatted deep and sat on them. Our knees were at our c
hins. I could see Lenny's skin between the argyle sock and tapered cuff. Squatting like this was uncomfortable as hell. The sun was in our eyes. We both looked off rather than at each other, again just like in our youths. It made it easier to spill it all out.
I spoke quickly. Midway through my recap, Regan began to move toward us. Lenny turned to him and shouted, "Your balls."
Regan stopped. "What?"
"Are you arresting my client?"
"No."
Lenny pointed toward Regan's crotch. "Then I'm going to have them bronzed and hanging from my rearview mirror, if you take another step."
Regan straightened his spine. "We have some questions for your client."
"Tough. Go abuse the rights of someone with a lesser lawyer."
Lenny made a dismissive gesture and nodded at me to continue. Regan did not look happy, but he took two steps back. I glanced at my watch again. Only five minutes had passed since the ransom call. I finished up while Lenny kept the laser glare aimed at Regan.
"You want my opinion?" he said.
"Yes."
Still glaring. "I think you should tell them."
"You sure?"
"Hell, no."
"Would you?" I said. "I mean, if it was one of your kids?"
Lenny gave it a few seconds. "I can't put myself in your place, if that's what you mean. But yeah, I think I would. I play the odds. The odds are better when you tell the cops. Doesn't mean it works out every time, but they're experts at this. We're not." Lenny put his elbows on his knees and rested his chin in his hands--a pose from his youth. "That's the opinion of Lenny the Friend," he went on. "Lenny the Friend would encourage you to tell them."
"And Lenny the Lawyer?" I asked.
"He would be more insistent. He would strongly urge you to come forward."
"Why?"
"If you go off with two million dollars and it vanishes--even if you get Tara back--their suspicions will be, to put it mildly, aroused."
"I don't care about that. I just want Tara back."
"Understood. Or should I say, Lenny the Friend understands."
Now it was Lenny's turn to check his watch. My insides felt hollow, scooped out canoe-style. I could almost hear the tick-tick. It was maddening. I tried again to do the rational thing, to list the pros on the right, the cons on the left, and then add them up. But the tick-tick would not stop.
Lenny had talked about playing the odds. I don't gamble. I'm not a risk taker. Across the street one of the little girls shouted, "I'm telling!" She stormed down the street. The other girl laughed at her and got back on her bike. I felt my eyes well up. I wished like hell Monica were here. I shouldn't be making this decision alone. She should be in on this, too.