by Harlan Coben
"You too."
We moved away from Paige Wesson and started for the door. My phone buzzed. It was Esperanza.
"I was able to get through to someone at Carver Academy," Esperanza said. "They have no student registered with the first name Carrie."
"Bummer," I said. I thanked her, hung up, filled in Berleand.
Berleand said, "Any suggestions?"
"We split up and show her picture to the students in here," I said.
I scanned the room and saw a table with three teenage boys in the corner. Two wore varsity jackets, the kind with the name stenciled on the front and the pleather sleeves, the same kind I'd worn when I was at Livingston High. The third was pure prep boy--the set jaw, the fine bone structure, the collared polo shirt, the expensive khaki pants. I decided to start with them.
I showed them the picture.
"Do you know her?"
Prep Boy did the talking. "I think her name is Carrie."
Pay dirt.
"Do you know her last name?"
Three head shakes.
"Does she go to your school?"
"No," Prep Boy said. "She's a townie, I assume. We've seen her around."
Varsity Jacket One said, "She's hot."
Prep Boy with the set jaw nodded his agreement. "And she has a terrific ass."
I frowned. Meet Mini-Win, I thought.
Berleand looked over at me. I signaled that I might have something. He joined us.
"Do you know where she lives?" I asked.
"No. But Kenbo had her."
"Who?"
"Ken Borman. He had her."
Berleand said, "Had her?"
I looked at him. Berleand said, "Oh. Had her."
"Where can we find Kenbo?" I asked.
"He's in the weight room on campus."
They gave us directions and we were on our way.
37
I expected Kenbo to be bigger.
When you hear a nickname like Kenbo and you hear he's had the hot blonde and that he's in the weight room, a certain image of a muscle-headed pretty boy sort of rises to the surface. That wasn't the case here. Kenbo had hair so dark and straight it had to be colored and ironed. It hung over one eye like a heavy black curtain. His complexion was pale, his arms reedy, his fingernails polished black. We called this look "goth" way back in my day.
When I handed him the photograph, I saw his eye--I could see only one because the other was covered by the hair--widen. He looked up at us and I could see fear on his face.
"You know her," I said.
Kenbo stood up, backed up a few steps, turned, and then suddenly sprinted away. I looked at Berleand. He said, "You don't expect me to chase him, do you?"
I took off after him. Kenbo was outside now, dashing across the rather spacious Carver Academy campus. The gunshot wound ached but not enough to slow me down. There were very few students out and about, no teachers that I could see, but someone was bound to call the authorities. This couldn't be good.
"Wait!" I shouted.
He didn't. He spun left and disappeared behind a brick building. He wore his pants fashionably loose, too loose, and that helped. He had to keep hitching them up. I followed, closing the gap. I felt an ache in my knee, a reminder of my old injury, and leapt a wire-mesh fence. He ran across a sports field made of artificial turf. I didn't bother calling out again. That would only waste strength and time. He was heading to the outskirts of campus, away from witnesses, and I took this as a positive thing.
When he reached an opening near the woods, I dived for his feet, wrapped my arms around his leg in a manner that would have made any NFL defensive back envious, and drove him to the ground. He fell harder than I would have liked, spinning away from me, trying to kick me off.
"I'm not going to hurt you," I shouted.
"Just leave me alone."
I actually straddled his chest and pinned his arms, as if I were his big brother. "Calm down."
"Get off me!"
"I'm just trying to find this girl."
"I don't know anything."
"Ken--"
"Get off me!"
"Promise you won't run?"
"Get off. Please!"
I was pinning down a helpless, terrified high school kid. What would I do for an encore? Drown a kitten? I rolled off him.
"I'm trying to help this girl," I said.
He sat up. There were tears on his face. He wiped them away and hid his face in his arm.
"Ken?"
"What?"
"This girl is missing and probably in serious danger."
He looked up at me.
"I'm trying to find her."
"You don't know her?"
I shook my head. Berleand was finally in view.
"Are you cops?"
"He is. I'm working on this for a personal reason."
"What reason?"
"I'm trying to help"--I didn't see any other way to say it--"I'm trying to help her birth mother locate her. Carrie is missing, and she may be in serious trouble."
"I don't understand. Why come to me?"
"Your friends told us you dated her."
He lowered his head again.
"In fact, they said you did more than just date her."
He shrugged. "So?"
"So what's her full name?"
"You don't know that either?"
"She's in trouble, Ken."
Berleand had caught up to us. He was breathing heavily. He reached into his pocket--I thought for a pencil--and pulled out a cigarette. Yeah, that should help.
"Carrie Steward," he said.
I looked at Berleand. He nodded, wheezed, managed to say: "I'll call it in."
He grabbed his phone and started walking, phone in the air, searching for service.
"I don't understand why you ran," I said.
"I lied," he said. "To my friends, okay? I never slept with her. I just said that."
I waited.
"We met at the library, actually. I mean, she was so beautiful, you know? And she was surrounded by these two other blondes, all staring off like something out of Children of the Corn. It was spooky. Anyway I'm watching her for like three days and she finally goes off by herself and I walk up and say hi. She totally ignores me at first. I mean, I've been given the cold shoulder but this chick is giving me chills. But I figure, what have I got to lose? So I keep talking and I have my iPod, right, so I ask her what music she likes and she says she doesn't like music. I couldn't believe it, so I play her something from Blue October. I can see her face change. The power of music, right?"
He stopped. I looked over. Berleand was on the phone. I texted the name "Carrie Steward" to both Esperanza and Terese. Let them start digging into her too. I kept waiting for someone from the school to start over toward us, but so far, no one had. We both sat on the grass now, facing back toward the campus. The sun was beginning to dip down, painting the sky burnt orange.
"So what happened?" I asked.
"We started talking. She told me her name was Carrie. She wanted to hear other songs. But she kept looking around, like she was afraid her friends would see her hanging out with me. Made me feel like a loser, but maybe it was a townie-versus-preppy thing, I don't know. That's what I thought anyway. At first. We met a few more times after that. She would be at the library with her friends and then we'd sneak out in the back and just talk and listen to music. One day I told her about a band that was playing in Nor-walk. I asked her if she wanted to go. Her face turned white. She looked so scared. I said, no big deal, but Carrie said, maybe we could try. I said I could pick her up at her house. She freaked. I mean, really freaked."
The air was getting cool. Berleand finished on the phone. He looked back at me, saw our faces, knew it was best to stay away.
"So what happened next?"
"So she tells me to park at the end of Duck Run Road. She said she'd meet me there at nine o'clock. So I park there a few minutes before nine. It's dark out. I'm just sitting there. T
here's no light on the road or anything. I'm waiting. It's nine fifteen now. I hear a noise and then suddenly my car door opens and I'm being pulled out."
Ken stopped. There were more tears on his face. He wiped them away.
"Someone punches me straight in the mouth. Knocks out two teeth." He showed me. "They drag me out of the car. I don't know how many of them. Four, maybe five, and they're kicking me. I just cover up, you know, put my hands over my head, and I think I'm going to die. Then I'm rolled onto my back. And held down. I still can't see any faces--and man, I don't want to. One of them puts a knife right in front of me. He says, 'She doesn't want you to talk to her again. If you say a word about this, we kill your family.' "
Ken and I sat there and said nothing for a few moments. I looked over at Berleand. He shook his head. Nothing on Carrie Steward.
"That's it," he said. "I never saw her again. Or any of those kids she hung out with. It's like they disappeared."
"Did you tell anyone?"
He shook his head.
"How did you explain your injuries?"
"I said I got jumped outside the concert. You won't tell anyone, will you?"
"I won't tell anyone," I said. "But we need to find her, Ken. Do you have any clue where Carrie might be?"
He said nothing.
"Ken?"
"I asked her where she lived. She wouldn't tell me."
I waited.
"But one day"--he stopped, took a deep breath--"I followed her after she left the library."
Ken looked away and blinked.
"So you know where she lives?"
He shrugged. "Maybe, I don't know. I don't think so."
"Can you show me where you followed her to?"
Ken shook his head. "I can give you directions," he said. "But I don't want to go with you, okay? Right now I just want to go home."
38
THE chain that blocked our way had a sign on it that read: PRIVATE ROAD.
We pulled ahead and parked around the corner. There was nothing in view but crop fields and woods. So far, our various sources had come up with nothing on any Carrie Steward. The name may have been a pseudonym, but everyone was still searching. Esperanza called me and said, "I have something that might interest you."
"Go ahead."
"You mentioned a Dr. Jimenez, a young resident who worked with Dr. Cox when he was starting up CryoHope?"
"Right."
"Jimenez is also connected to Save the Angels. He attended a retreat that they sponsored sixteen years ago. I'm going to run a search on him, see if he can give us some information on the embryo adoption."
"Okay, good."
"Is Carrie short for anything?" she asked.
"I don't know. Maybe Caroline?"
"I'll check and get back to you when I know something."
"One more thing." I gave her the closest intersection. "Can you Google the address and see what you come up with?"
"Nothing coming up under the address in terms of who lives there. Looks like you're on farmland or something. No idea who owns it. Want me to look into it?"
"Please."
"Back to you as soon as I can."
I hung up. Berleand said, "Take a look."
He pointed at a tree near the front of the road. A security camera was aimed at the entrance.
"Strict security," he said, "for a farm."
"Ken told us about the private road. He said Carrie walked up it."
"If we do that, we will most certainly be seen."
"If the camera is even in use. It could be just a prop."
"No," Berleand said. "A prop would be more in plain sight."
He had a point.
"We could simply walk up the road anyway," I said.
"Trespassing," Berleand added.
"Big deal. We need to do something here, right? There must be a farmhouse or something up the drive." Then I thought about something. "Wait a second."
I called Esperanza back.
"You're in front of the computer, right?"
"Right," she said.
"Google-map the location I just gave you."
Quick typing. "Okay, got it."
"Now click the Satellite Photo option and zoom in."
"Hold on . . . okay, it's up."
"What's up that small road on the right side of the road?"
"Lots of green and what looks like a pretty big house from the top. Maybe two hundred yards from where you are, no more. It's all alone up there."
"Thanks."
I hung up. "There's a big house."
Berleand took off his glasses, cleaned them, held them up to the light, cleaned them some more. "What do we think is going on here exactly?"
"Truth?"
"Preferably."
"I don't have a clue."
"Do you think Carrie Steward is in that big house?" he asked.
"Only one way to find out," I said.
WITH the chain blocking the driveway, we decided to take it on foot. I called Win and filled him in on everything that was going on in case something went very wrong. He decided to come up after he checked on Terese one more time. Berleand and I debated and concluded that we might as well try just going up to the door and ringing the bell.
There was still light, but the sun was in its death throes. We stepped over the chain, started up the middle of the road, past the security camera. There were trees on either side of us. It seemed at least half of them had a NO TRESPASSING sign stapled to them. The road wasn't paved but it seemed to be in pretty good shape. In some spots there was gravel, but for the most part it was loose dirt. Berleand made a face and walked on tiptoes. He kept wiping his hands against the sides of his legs and licking his lips.
"I don't like this," he said.
"Don't like what?"
"Dirt, the woods, bugs. It all feels so unclean."
"Right," I said, "but that strip joint, Upscale Pleasures, that was sanitary."
"Hey, that was a classy gentlemen's club. Didn't you read the sign?"
Up ahead, I saw a line of shrubs and over that, a little bit in the distance, I could make out a gray-blue mansard roof.
A little ding sounded in my head. I picked up my pace.
"Myron?"
Behind us I heard the chain drop to the ground and a car come up. I moved faster, wanting to get a better look. I glanced behind me as a county police car pulled up. Berleand stopped. I didn't.
"Sir? You're trespassing on private property."
I rounded the corner. There was a fence surrounding the property. More security. But now, from this vantage point, I could see the mansion straight on.
"Stop right there. That's far enough."
I did stop. I looked ahead at the mansion. The sight confirmed what I'd suspected the moment I had seen the mansard roof. The house looked like the perfect bed-and-breakfast--a picturesque, almost overdone Victorian home with turrets, towers, stained-glass windows, a lemonade porch, and yep, a blue-gray mansard roof.
I had seen the house on the Save the Angels Web site.
It was one of their homes for unwed mothers.
TWO police officers got out of the car.
They were young and muscle-bloated and had the cocky cop-stride. They also wore Mountie hats. Mountie hats, I thought, looked silly and seemed counterproductive to law enforcement activities, but I kept that to myself.
"Something we can do for you gentlemen?" one of the officers said.
He was the taller of the two, his shirtsleeves cutting into his biceps like two tourniquets. His name tag said "Taylor."
Berleand took out the photograph. "We are looking for this girl."
The officer took the photograph, glanced at it, handed it to his partner with the name tag "Erickson." Taylor said, "And you are?"
"Captain Berleand from the Brigade Criminelle in Paris."
Berleand handed Taylor his badge and identification. Taylor took it with two fingers as though Berleand had handed him a paper bag full of steaming dog poo. H
e studied the ID for a moment and then gestured toward me with his chin. "And who's your friend here?"
I waved. "Myron Bolitar," I said. "Nice to meet you."
"How are you involved in this, Mr. Bolitar?"
I was going to say, long story, but thought that maybe it wasn't really that complicated: "The girl we're looking for may be the daughter of my girlfriend."
"May be?" Taylor turned back to Berleand. "Okay, Inspector Clouseau, you want to tell me what you're doing here?"
"'Inspector Clouseau,'" Berleand repeated. "That's very funny. Because I'm French, right?"
Taylor just stared at him.
"I'm working on a case involving international terrorism," Berleand said.
"That a fact?"
"Yes. This girl's name has come up. We believe she lives here."
"Do you have a warrant?"
"Time is of the essence."
"I will take that as a no." Taylor sighed, glanced at his partner Erickson. Erickson chewed gum, showed nothing. Taylor looked over at me. "This true, Mr. Bolitar?"
"It is."
"So your girlfriend's maybe daughter is somehow mixed up with an international terrorist investigation?"
"Yes," I said.
He scratched an itch on his baby-faced cheek. I tried to guess their ages. Probably still in their twenties, though they could pass for high schoolers. When did cops start looking so damn young?
"Do you know what this place is?" Taylor asked.
Berleand started shaking his head, even as I said, "It's a home for unwed mothers."
Taylor pointed at me, nodded. "That's supposed to be confidential."
"I know," I said.
"But you're exactly right. So you can see how they might be touchy about their privacy."
"We do," I said.
"If a place like this isn't a safe haven, well, what is? They come here to escape prying eyes."
"I get that."
"And you're sure your girlfriend's maybe daughter isn't just here because she's pregnant?"
Now that I thought about it, that was a fair question. "That's irrelevant. Captain Berleand can tell you. This is about a terror plot. If she's pregnant or not, it makes no difference."
"The people who run this place. They've never caused any trouble."
"I understand that."
"And this is still the United States of America. If they don't want you on their property, you have no right to be here without a warrant."
"I understand that too," I said. Looking at the mansion, I asked, "Were they the ones who called you?"
Taylor squinted at me then, and I figured he was about to tell me that was none of my business. Instead he too looked toward the house and said, "Strangely enough, no. Normally they do. When kids trespass, whatever. We found out about you from Paige Wesson at the library and then someone else saw you chasing a kid over at Carver Academy."