Long Lost

by Harlan Coben

  He looked at me.

  "Point that thumb at me again and it will end up mid-colon."

  "Physical threats from the big man on campus," he said, a smirk splitting the narrow face. "It's like I'm back in high school."

  I was about to get into it with him, but I didn't think that would help. "We have some questions for you," I said.

  "And I'm supposed to answer them? You don't get it, do you? She was married to my best friend and then she shacks up with you on some deserted island. You know how that made him feel?"

  "Bad?" I said.

  That stopped him. He turned back to Terese. "Look, I don't mean to come on like a raging ass, but you don't belong here. Rick and Karen had a good thing. You gave this up long ago."

  I looked at Terese. She was trying very hard to hold it together.

  "Did he blame me?" she asked.

  "For what?"

  She said nothing.

  Mario's shoulder deflated along with, I assumed, his anger. His voice softened. "No, Terese, he never blamed you. Not for any of it, okay? I did, I guess, for the leaving-him part--and yeah, that's not my place. But he never blamed you, not for a second."

  She said nothing.

  "I have to get ready," Mario said. "I'm helping Karen with the arrangements. Arrangements. Like it's a choral piece. What a dumb-ass word."

  Terese still seemed a little dazed, so I stepped in. "Do you have any thoughts on who might have killed him?"

  "What are you, Bolitar, some kind of cop now?"

  "We were in Paris when he was killed," I said.

  He turned toward Terese. "You saw Rick?"

  "I never got the chance."

  "But he called you?"

  "Yes."

  "Damn." Mario closed his eyes. He still hadn't invited us in, but I sort of pressed myself into the doorway, and he stepped back. I expected a bachelor pad--I'm not sure why--but there were toys on the floor and a Pack 'n Play in the corner. Empty baby bottles were lined up on the counter.

  "I married Ginny," he said to Terese. "You remember her?"

  "Of course. I'm glad to hear you're happy, Mario."

  He took a beat, reassessing, calming down. "We have three kids. We keep saying we're going to buy a bigger place, but we like it here. And real estate is ridiculous in London."

  We stood there.

  "So Rick called you," Mario said to Terese.

  "Yes."

  He shook his head.

  I broke the silence. "Was there anybody who'd want to kill Rick?"

  "Rick was one of the best investigative reporters in the world. He pissed off a lot of people."

  "Anybody specific?"

  "Not really, no. I still don't get what this has to do with either one of you."

  I wanted to explain, but I knew that we didn't have the time. "Could you just humor us for another moment?"

  "Humor you? Like this is funny?"

  Terese said, "Please, Mario. It's important."

  "Because you say it is?"

  "You know me," she said. "You know if I'm asking it's important."

  He thought about that.

  "Mario?"

  "What do you want to know?"

  "What was Rick working on?" she asked.

  He looked off, his upper teeth working his lower lip. "A few months ago he started investigating a charitable entity called Save the Angels."

  "What about them?"

  "Frankly, I'm not sure. They started out as an evangelical group, a classic right-to-life group, protesting abortion clinics, Planned Parenthood, stem cell research, the whole deal. But they broke away. He was obsessed with learning all he could about them."

  "What did he find?"

  "Not much that I could see. The money structure seemed a little odd. We couldn't trace it down. Basically they were against abortion, against stem cell research, and really into adoptions. Truth was, I thought they seemed like a pretty solid group. I don't want to get into a pro-life versus pro-choice argument, but I think both sides would agree that adoption is a viable alternative. That seems to be the direction they headed. Instead of firebombing clinics, Save the Angels worked on getting unwanted pregnancies to term and getting the kids adopted."

  "And Rick was interested in them?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "I don't know."

  "What made him start looking into them?"

  "Again, I can't say for sure." His voice sort of died away.

  "But you have a thought."

  "It started when he went home after his father died." Mario turned to Terese. "You know about Sam?"

  "Karen told me."

  "Suicide," he said.

  "He was ill?"

  Mario nodded. "Huntington's."

  Terese looked shocked. "Sam had Huntington's disease?"

  "Surprised, huh? He kept it hidden, I guess, but when it got bad, well, he didn't want to go through that. Took the easy way out."

  "But . . . how . . . I never knew."

  "Neither did Rick. Or Sam, for that matter, until the end."

  "How is that possible?"

  "You know anything about Huntington's?" Mario asked.

  She nodded. "I did a story on it. It's strictly hereditary. One of your parents has to have it. If they do, you have a one-in-two chance of contracting it."

  "Exactly. The theory is, Sam's father--Rick's grandfather--had it, but he died in Normandy, before the illness would have taken effect. So Sam had no idea."

  "Did Rick get tested?" Terese asked.

  "I don't know. He didn't even tell Karen the whole story--just that his father found out he had a terminal illness. But anyway, he stayed over in the USA for a while. I think he was going through his father's things, settling the estate. That was when he stumbled onto this Save the Angels charity."

  "How?"

  "No idea."

  "You said they're against stem cell research. Was that somehow related to Huntington's?"

  "Could be, but Rick mostly had me run through their finances. Follow the money. That's the old motto. Rick wanted to know everything he could about it, and the people who ran it--until he told me to get off the story."

  "He gave up?"

  "No. He just wanted me to stop. Not him. Just me."

  "Do you know why?"

  "Not really. He came by and took all my files and then he said something really weird." Mario looked first at Terese, then back at me. "He said, 'You need to be careful, you have a family.'"

  We waited.

  "So I said the obvious: 'So do you.' But he just shook it off. I could see he was totally unnerved. Terese, you knew how he was. Nothing scared him."

  She nodded. "He was that way on the phone with me."

  "So I try to get him to talk to me, open up. He won't. He hurries out and I don't hear anything else from him. Ever. And then I get the call today."

  "Any clue where those files are now?"

  "He usually kept copies at the office."

  "It might help if we could see them."

  Mario just stared at her.

  "Please, Mario. You know I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important."

  He was still annoyed, but he did seem to get it. "Let me go look around for them first thing in the morning, okay?"

  I looked over at Terese. I wasn't sure how hard we pushed now. This man seemed to know Rick Collins as well as anyone. It was her call.

  "Has Rick talked about Miriam much recently?" she asked.

  Mario looked up. He took his time, and I expected an expansive answer. But all he said was, "No."

  We waited for him to elaborate. He didn't.

  "I think," Terese said, "that there's a chance that Miriam is still alive."

  If Mario Contuzzi knew something about it, then the guy had to be a psychopath. I'm not saying that people can't lie and act and fool you. I have seen it done too many times by some all-time greats. The way the all-time greats do it is to either fool themselves into believing that the lie is the truth or they a
re true honest-to-goodness psychopaths. If Mario suspected that Miriam was alive, he fit into one of those two camps.

  He made a face as though he had heard wrong. His voice had an angry edge. "What are you talking about?"

  But saying it out loud had drained her. I took over. Trying to sound somewhat sane as I told him about the blood samples and the blond hair. I didn't tell him about seeing her on the video or any of that. This was too hard to believe as it was. The best way to present it was with scientific evidence--DNA testing--not my intuition based on her walk on a grainy surveillance video.

  For a long time he said nothing.

  Then: "The blood test has to be wrong."

  We both said nothing.

  "Or, wait, they think you killed Rick, right?"

  "They originally thought Terese had a hand in it, yes."

  "What about you, Bolitar?"

  "I was in New Jersey when he was murdered."

  "So they think Terese did it, is that it?"

  "Yes."

  "And you know how cops are. They play mind games. What better mind game than this--telling you your dead daughter might still be alive?"

  Now I made a face. "How would that help land her for his murder?"

  "How am I supposed to know? But, I mean, come on, Terese. I know you want this. Hell, I want this. But how can it possibly be?"

  "'Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth,' " I said.

  "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle," Mario said.

  "Yep."

  "You ready to go that far, Bolitar?"

  "I'm ready to go out as far as I need to."

  17

  WHEN we were a block away, Terese said, "I need to visit Miriam's grave."

  We found another hansom cab and rode in silence. When we got to the fenced cemetery, we stopped at the gate. Cemeteries always have a fence and gate. What exactly were they protecting?

  "Do you want me to wait out here?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  So I stayed outside the gates, as though afraid to trample sacred ground, which, I guessed, I was. I kept Terese in sight for reasons of safety but when she bent down on her knees, I turned away and started to walk. I thought about what must be going through her mind, what images were running through her head. This, I assure you, wasn't a good idea, so I called Esperanza back in New York.

  It took her six rings to answer.

  "There's a time change, dummy."

  I looked at my watch. It was five AM in New York. "Oops," I said.

  "What now?"

  I decided to open big. I told Esperanza about the DNA and the blond girl.

  "It's her daughter?"

  "Apparently."

  "That," Esperanza said, "is seriously messed up."

  "It is."

  "So what do you need from me?"

  "I took a bunch of pictures--credit card bills, phone, whatever--and e-mailed them over," I said. "Oh, and there's some weird thing about opals or something in the To Dos."

  "Opals like the stones?"

  "No idea. Might be code."

  "I'm terrible at codes."

  "Me too, but maybe something will click. Anyway, let's start figuring out what Rick Collins was up to. Also his father committed suicide." I gave her his name and location. "Maybe we can look into that."

  "Into a suicide?"

  "Yes."

  "Look into it for what?"

  "See if there was anything suspicious, I don't know."

  There was silence. I started walking.

  "Esperanza?"

  "I like her."

  "Who?"

  "Margaret Thatcher. Who are we talking about? Terese, dopey. And you know me. I hate all your girlfriends."

  I thought about it. "You like Ali," I said.

  "I do. She's a good person."

  "Do I hear a but?"

  "But she's not for you."

  "Why not?"

  "There are no intangibles," she said.

  "What does that mean?"

  "What made you a great athlete?" Esperanza asked. "Not a good athlete. I'm talking about pro level, first-team collegiate All-American, all that."

  "Skill, hard work, genetics."

  "Lots of guys have those. But what separates you--what divides the greats from the almosts--are the intangibles."

  "And Ali and I?"

  "No intangibles."

  I heard a baby crying in the background. Esperanza's son, Hector, was eighteen months old.

  "He still doesn't sleep through the night," Esperanza said, "so you can imagine how thrilled I am about your call."

  "Sorry."

  "I'll get on it. Take care of yourself. Tell Terese to hang tough. We'll figure this out."

  She hung up. I stared at the phone. Usually Win and Esperanza hate when I get involved in stuff like this. All of a sudden the reluctance was gone. I wondered about that.

  Across the street, a man with sunglasses, black Chuck Taylor high-tops, and a green T-shirt strolled without a care. My Spidey senses started tingling. His hair was close-cropped and dark. So was his skin--what we call Semitic, which I often confuse with Latino or Arabic or Greek or heck, Italian.

  He turned the corner and vanished. I waited to see if he reappeared. He didn't. I looked around to see if someone else had now entered the scene. Several people walked by but no one else set off my Spidey senses.

  When Terese came back she was dry-eyed.

  "Should we grab a cab?" she asked.

  "Do you know this area?"

  "Yes."

  "Is there a subway station nearby?"

  I could almost hear Win saying, "In London, Myron, we call it the tube or the underground."

  She nodded. We walked two blocks. She led the way.

  "I know this sounds like the most idiotic question known to mankind," I began, "but are you okay?"

  Terese nodded. Then: "Do you believe in anything supernatural?"

  "Meaning?"

  "Ghosts, spirits, ESP, any of that."

  "No. Why, do you?"

  She didn't answer the question directly. "That was only the second time I've visited Miriam's grave," she said.

  I put my credit card in the ticket-buying machine and let Terese press the right buttons.

  "I hate it there. Not because it makes me sad. But because I don't feel anything. You would think that all that misery, all the tears that have been shed there--have you ever stopped and thought about that at a graveyard? How many people have cried. How many people have said final good-byes to loved ones. You'd think, I don't know, that all that human suffering would come swirl up in tiny particles and form some sort of negative cosmic sensation. A tingle in the bones maybe, a cold prickle on the back of the neck, something."

  "But you never felt it," I said.

  "Never. The whole idea of burying the dead and putting a stone marker over their remains . . . it seems like a waste of space, like something held over from a superstitious era."

  "Yet," I said, "you wanted to go back today."

  "Not to pay my respects."

  "Then what?"

  "This is going to sound nuts."

  "Go for it."

  "I wanted to come back to see if maybe something changed in the past decade. To see if this time I could feel something."

  "That doesn't sound so nuts."

  "Not 'feel' like that. I'm not saying this right. I thought coming back here might help us."

  "In what way?"

  Terese kept walking. "Here's the thing. I figured . . ." She stopped, swallowed.

  "What?" I said.

  She blinked into the sunlight. "I don't believe in the supernatural either--but you know what I do believe in?"

  I shook my head.

  "I believe in the maternal bond. I don't know how else to say it. I'm her mother. That's the most powerful link known to mankind, right? A mother's love for her child trumps all. So I should feel something, one way or the other. I should be able to stand by that
gravestone and know if my own daughter is alive or not. You know what I mean?"

  My gut reaction was to offer up some patronizing pap like "How could you?" or "Don't beat yourself up about it," but I stopped myself before uttering the inane. I have a son, at least biologically. He's grown now and doing his second tour overseas--this one in Kabul. I worry about him all the time--and while I don't believe it's possible, I keep thinking I would know if something bad happened to him. I will feel it or imagine a chilly gust inside my chest or some nonsense like that.

  I said, "I know what you mean."

  We headed down an escalator that seemed to go forever. I glanced behind me. No sign of Sunglasses Man.

  "So what now?" Terese asked.

  "We head back to the hotel. You start looking at what we found at Karen's. Think about that opal code, see where that leads you. Esperanza will e-mail you whatever she gets. Something happened to Rick recently--something that made him change his life and reach out to you. The best thing to do right now is figure out who killed him, why, and what he was working on the last few months. So you need to go through his stuff, see what jumps out at you."

  "What did you think of our conversation with Karen?" Terese asked me.

  "You two were close, right?"

  "Yes, very."

  "Then I will put it politely: I don't think Karen was being totally forthcoming. You?"

  "Before today I would have said I would trust her with my life," Terese said. "But you're right. She's lying about something."

  "Any idea what?"

  "No."

  "Let's maybe go back and try something else. Tell me everything you remember about the accident."

  "You think I'm holding back?"

  "Of course not. But now that you've heard all this new stuff, I'm wondering if anything about that night is striking you as different."

  "No, nothing." She looked out the window, but there was only the blur of the tunnel. "I've spent the past decade trying to forget that night."

  "I understand."

  "You don't understand. I've replayed that night in my head every single day for the past ten years."

  I said nothing.

  "I have looked at that night from every angle. I have pondered every what-if--if I had driven slower, taken a different route, left her at home, hadn't been so damn ambitious, everything. There is nothing more to remember."

  We got off the train and headed forward toward the exit.

  When we entered the lobby, my phone vibrated. Win sent the following text:

  BRING TERESE TO THE PENTHOUSE. THEN GO TO ROOM 118.

  ALONE.

  The two seconds later, Win added: PLEASE REFRAIN FROM TEXTING BACK SOME WITTY ALBEIT HOMOPHOBIC COMEBACK VIS-A-VIS THE "ALONE" COMMENT.

  Win was the only person I knew who was more verbose in texts than in person. I took Terese up to the penthouse. There was a laptop with Internet access. I pointed to it. "Maybe you can start digging into this Save the Angels charity."