by Harlan Coben
Arthur looked at Myron. "Find my daughter," he said. "Please."
Win and Myron rushed back to the Jag. Win drove. Myron did not ask about the fate of the men who once possessed those four walkie-talkies. He didn't much care.
"I searched the entire grounds," Win said. "She's not here."
Myron sat and thought. He remembered telling Detective Wickner at the Little League field that he would not stop digging. And he remembered Wickner's response: "Then more people are going to die."
"You were right," Myron said.
Win kept driving.
"I didn't keep my eye on the prize. I pushed too hard."
Win said nothing.
When Myron heard the first ring, he reached for his cellular. Then he remembered that Sam had taken it from him back at the estate. The ringing was coming from Win's car phone. Win answered it. He said, "Hello." He listened for a full minute without nodding or speaking or making any noise whatsoever. Then he said, "Thank you," and hung up. He slowed the car's speed and pulled over to the side of the road. The car glided to a stop. He shifted into park and snapped off the ignition.
Win turned toward Myron, his gaze as heavy as the ages.
For a fleeting moment Myron was puzzled. But only for a moment. Then his head fell to one side, and he let out a small groan. Win nodded. And something inside Myron's chest dried up and blew away.
Peter Frankel, a six-year-old boy from Cedar Grove, New Jersey, had been missing for eight hours. Frantic, Paul and Missy Frankel, the boy's parents, called the police. The Frankels' backyard was up against a wooded water reservation area. The police and neighbors formed search parties. Police dogs were brought in. Neighbors even brought their own dogs along. Everyone wanted to help.
It did not take long to find Peter. Apparently the boy had crawled into a neighbor's toolshed and fallen asleep. When he woke up, he pushed at the door, but it was stuck. Peter was scared, of course, but no worse for wear. Everyone was relieved. The town fire whistle blew, signaling that all searchers should return.
One dog didn't heed the whistle. A German shepherd named Wally ran deeper into the woods and barked steadily until Officer Craig Reed, new with the canine corps, came to see what had upset Wally so.
When Reed arrived, he found Wally barking over a dead body. The medical examiner was called in. His conclusion: The victim, a female in her twenties, had been dead less than twenty-four hours. Cause of death: two contact gunshot wounds to the back of the head.
An hour later Cheryl Sutton, cocaptain of the New York Dolphins, positively identified the body as belonging to her friend and teammate Brenda Slaughter.
The car was still parked in the same place.
"I want to take a drive," Myron said. "Alone."
Win wiped his eyes with two fingers. Then he stepped out of the car without a word. Myron slid into the driver's seat. His foot pressed down on the accelerator. He passed trees and cars and signs and shops and homes and even people taking late-night walks. Music came from the car speakers. Myron did not bother turning it off. He kept driving. Images of Brenda tried to infiltrate, but Myron parried and sidestepped.
Not yet.
By the time he reached Esperanza's apartment, it was one in the morning. She sat alone on the stoop, almost as though she were expecting him. He stopped and stayed in the car. Esperanza approached. He could see that she had been crying.
"Come inside," she said.
Myron shook his head. "Win talked about leaps of faith," he began.
Esperanza stayed still.
"I didn't really understand what he meant. He kept talking about his own experiences with families. Marriage led to disaster, he said. It was that simple. He had seen countless people get married, and in almost every case they ended up crippling one another. It would take a huge leap of faith to make Win believe otherwise."
Esperanza looked at him and kept crying. "You loved her," she said.
He closed his eyes hard, waited, opened them. "I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about us. Everything I know--all my past experience--tells me that our partnership is doomed. But then I look at you. You are the finest person I know, Esperanza. You are my best friend. I love you."
"I love you too," she said.
"You're worth taking the leap. I want you to stay."
She nodded. "Good, because I can't leave anyway." She stepped closer to the car. "Myron, please come inside. We'll talk, okay?"
He shook his head.
"I know what she meant to you."
Again he closed his eyes tight. "I'll be at Win's in a few hours," he said.
"Okay. I'll wait for you there."
He drove off before she could say more.
By the time Myron reached his third destination, it was almost four in the morning. A light was still on. No surprise really. He rang the doorbell. Mabel Edwards opened it. She was wearing a terry-cloth robe over a flannel nightgown. She started crying and reached out to hug him.
Myron stepped back.
"You killed them all," he said. "First Anita. Then Horace. And then Brenda."
Her mouth dropped open. "You don't mean that."
Myron took out his gun and placed it against the older woman's forehead. "If you lie to me, I'll kill you."
Mabel's gaze veered quickly from shock to cold defiance. "You wired, Myron?"
"No."
"Doesn't matter. You have a gun pointed to my head. I'll say whatever you want."
The gun nudged her back into the house. Myron closed the door. The photograph of Horace was still on the fireplace mantel. Myron looked at his old friend for a brief moment. Then he turned back to Mabel.
"You lied to me," he said. "From the very beginning. Everything you told me was a lie. Anita never called you. She's been dead for twenty years."
"Who told you that?"
"Chance Bradford."
She made a scoffing noise. "You shouldn't believe a man like that."
"The phone taps," Myron said.
"What?"
"Arthur Bradford tapped your phone. For the last twenty years. He hoped Anita might call you. But we all know she never did."
"That doesn't mean anything," Mabel said. "Maybe he just missed those calls."
"I don't think so. But there's more. You told me that Horace called you last week while he was hiding. He gave you this dire warning about not trying to look for him. But again Arthur Bradford had a tap on your phone. He was looking for Horace. Why didn't he know anything about it?"
"Guess he messed up again."
Myron shook his head. "I just paid a visit to a dumb thug named Mario," he went on. "I surprised him while he was sleeping, and I did some things to him I'm not proud of. By the time I was through, Mario admitted to all kinds of crimes--including trying to get information from you with his skinny partner, just like you told me. But he swears he never punched you in the eye. And I believe him. Because it was Horace who hit you."
Brenda had called him a sexist, and he had been wondering lately about his own race issues. Now he saw the truth. His semilatent prejudices had twisted on him like a snake seizing its own tail. Mabel Edwards. The sweet old black lady. Butterfly McQueen. Miss Jane Pittman. Knitting needles and reading glasses. Big and kind and matronly. Evil could never lurk in so politically correct a form.
"You told me you moved into this house shortly after Anita disappeared. How did a widow from Newark afford it? You told me that your son worked his way through Yale Law School. Sorry, but part-time jobs do not pay that kind of money anymore."
"So?"
He kept the gun trained on her. "You knew Horace wasn't Brenda's father from the beginning, didn't you? Anita was your closest friend. You were still working at the Bradfords' home. You must have known."
She did not back down. "And what if I did?"
"Then you knew Anita ran away. She would have confided in you. And if she had run into a problem at the Holiday Inn, she would have called you, not Horace."
"Could be,"
Mabel said. "If you're talking hypothetically, I guess this is all possible."
Myron pressed the gun against her forehead, pushing her onto the couch. "Did you kill Anita for the money?"
Mabel smiled. Physically it was that same celestial smile, but now Myron thought he could see at least a hint of the decay looming beneath it. "Hypothetically, Myron, I guess I could have a bunch of motives. Money, yes--fourteen thousand dollars is a lot of money. Or sisterly love--Anita was going to leave Horace brokenhearted, right? She was going to take away the baby girl he thought was his. Maybe she was even going to tell Horace the truth about Brenda's father. And maybe Horace would know that his only sister had helped keep the secret all those years." She glared up at the gun. "Lots of motives, I'll give you that."
"How did you do it, Mabel?"
"Go home, Myron."
Myron lifted the muzzle and poked her forehead with it. Hard. "How?"
"You think I'm scared of you?"
He poked her again with the muzzle. Harder. Then again. "How?"
"What do you mean, how?" She was spitting words now. "It would have been easy, Myron. Anita was a mother. I would have quietly shown her the gun. I would have told her if she didn't do exactly as I said, I would kill her daughter. So Anita, the good mother, would have listened. She would have given her daughter a last hug and told her to wait in the lobby. I would have used a pillow to muffle the shot. Simple, no?"
A fresh flash of rage surged through him. "Then what happened?"
Mabel hesitated. Myron hit her with the gun again.
"I drove Brenda back to her house. Anita had left a note telling Horace she was running away and that Brenda wasn't his child. I tore it up and wrote another."
"So Horace never even knew that Anita had planned on taking Brenda."
"That's right."
"And Brenda never said anything?"
"She was five years old, Myron. She didn't know what was going on. She told her daddy how I picked her up and took her away from Mommy. But she didn't remember anything about a hotel. At least that's what I thought."
Silence.
"When Anita's body vanished, what did you think happened?"
"I figured that Arthur Bradford had shown up, found her dead, and did what that family always did: threw out the trash."
Another rage flash. "And you found a way to use that. With your son, Terence, and his political career."
Mabel shook her head. "Too dangerous," she said. "You don't want to stir up those Bradford boys with blackmail. I had nothing to do with Terence's career. But truth be told, Arthur was always willing to help Terence. Terence was, after all, his daughter's cousin."
The anger swelled, pressing against his skull. He wanted so much simply to pull the trigger and end this. "So what happened next?"
"Oh, come now, Myron. You know the rest of the story, don't you? Horace started looking for Anita again. After all these years. He had a lead, he said. He thought he could find her. I tried to talk him out of it, but, well, love is a funny thing."
"Horace found out about the Holiday Inn," Myron said.
"Yes."
"He spoke to a woman named Caroline Gundeck."
Mabel shrugged. "I never heard the woman's name."
"I just woke Ms. Gundeck out of a sound sleep," Myron said. "Scared her half to death. But she talked to me. Just like she talked to Horace. She was a maid back then, and she knew Anita. You see, Anita used to work hotel functions to make a little extra money. Caroline Gundeck remembered seeing Anita there that night. She was surprised because Anita checked in as a guest, not a worker. She also remembered seeing Anita's little daughter. And she remembered seeing Anita's daughter leave with another woman. A strung-out drug addict is how she described the woman. I wouldn't have guessed it was you. But Horace would have."
Mabel Edwards said nothing.
"Horace figured it out after hearing that. So he came charging over here. Still in hiding. Still with all that money on him--eleven grand. And he hit you. He got so angry that he punched you in the eye. And then you killed him."
She shrugged again. "It almost sounds like self-defense."
"Almost," Myron agreed. "With Horace, it was easy. He was on the run already. All you had to do was continue to make it look like he was in hiding. He would be a black man on the run, not a homicide. Who would care? It was like Anita all over again. All these years you did the little things to make people think she was still alive. You wrote letters. You faked phone calls. Whatever. So you decided to do the same again. Hell, it worked once, right? But the problem was, you weren't as good at getting rid of the dead as Sam."
"Sam?"
"The man who worked for the Bradfords," Myron said. "My guess is that Terence helped you move the bodies."
She smiled. "Don't underestimate my strength, Myron. I'm not helpless."
He nodded. She was right. "I keep giving you these other motives, but my guess is that it was mostly about money. You got fourteen thousand from Anita. You got eleven thousand from Horace. And your own husband, dear, sweet Roland whose picture you wept over, had an insurance policy, I'd bet."
She nodded. "Only five thousand dollars, poor soul."
"But enough for you. Shot in the head near his very own home. No witnesses. And the police had arrested you three times the previous year--twice for petty theft and once for drug possession. Seems your downward spiral began before Roland was killed."
Mabel sighed. "Are we done now?"
"No," he said.
"I think we covered everything, Myron."
He shook his head. "Not Brenda."
"Oh, right, of course." She leaned back a bit. "You seem to have all the answers, Myron. Why did I kill Brenda?"
"Because," Myron said, "of me."
Mabel actually smiled. He felt his finger tighten on the trigger.
"I'm right, aren't I?"
Mabel just kept smiling.
"As long as Brenda didn't remember the Holiday Inn, she wasn't a threat. But I was the one who told you about our visit there. I was the one who told you she was having memories. And that's when you knew you had to kill her."
She just kept smiling.
"And with Horace's body found and Brenda already a murder suspect, your job became easier. Frame Brenda and make her disappear. You kill two birds with one stone. So you planted the gun under Brenda's mattress. But again you had trouble getting rid of the body. You shot her and dumped her in the woods. My guess is that you planned on coming back another day when you had more time. What you didn't count on was the search party finding her so soon."
Mabel Edwards shook her head. "You sure can spin a tale, Myron."
"It's not a tale. We both know that."
"And we both know you can't prove any of this."
"There will be fibers, Mabel. Hairs, threads, something."
"So what?" Again her smile poked his heart like a pair of knitting needles. "You saw me hug my niece right here in this very room. If her body has fibers or threads, they'd be from that. And Horace visited me before he was murdered. I told you that. So maybe that's how he got hairs or fibers on him--if they even found any."
A hot bolt of fury exploded inside his head, almost blinding him. Myron pressed the barrel hard against her forehead. His hand started quaking. "How did you do it?"
"Do what?"
"How did you get Brenda to leave practice?"
She didn't blink. "I said I'd found her mother."
Myron closed his eyes. He tried to hold the gun steady. Mabel stared at him.
"You won't shoot me, Myron. You're not the kind of man who shoots a woman in cold blood."
He didn't pull the gun away.
Mabel reached up with her hand. She pushed the barrel away from her face. Then she got up, tightened her robe, and walked away.
"I'm going to bed now," she said. "Close the door on your way out."
He did close the door.
He drove back to Manhattan. Win and Esperanza were waiting
for him. They did not ask him where he'd been. And he did not tell them. In fact, he never told them.
He called Jessica's loft. The machine answered. When the beep sounded, he said that he planned on staying with Win for a while. He didn't know for how long. But awhile.
Roy Pomeranz and Eli Wickner were found dead in the cabin two days later. An apparent murder-suicide. Livingstonites speculated, but no one ever knew what had driven Eli over the edge. The Eli Wickner Little League backstop was immediately renamed.
Esperanza went back to work at MB SportsReps. Myron did not.
The homicides of Brenda Slaughter and Horace Slaughter remain unsolved.
Nothing that happened at Bradford Farms that night was ever reported. A publicist for the Bradford campaign confirmed that Chance Bradford had recently undergone knee surgery to repair a nagging tennis injury. He was recovering nicely.
Jessica did not return the phone message.
And Myron told only one person about his final meeting with Mabel Edwards.
SEPTEMBER 15
Two Weeks Later
The cemetery overlooked a schoolyard.
There is nothing as heavy as grief. Grief is the deepest pit in the blackest ocean, the bottomless ravine. It is all-consuming. It suffocates. It paralyzes as no severed nerve could.
He spent much time here now.
Myron heard footsteps coming up behind him. He closed his eyes. It was as he expected. The footsteps came closer. When they stopped, Myron did not turn around.
"You killed her," Myron said.
"Yes."
"Do you feel better now?"
Arthur Bradford's tone caressed the back of Myron's neck with a cold, bloodless hand. "The question is, Myron, do you?"
He did not know.
"If it means anything to you, Mabel Edwards died slowly."
It didn't. Mabel Edwards had been right that night: He was not the type to shoot a woman in cold blood. He was worse.
"I've also decided to quit the gubernatorial race," Arthur said. "I'm going to try to remember how I felt when I was with Anita. I'm going to change."
He wouldn't. But Myron didn't care.
Arthur Bradford left then. Myron stared at the mound of dirt for a while longer. He lay down next to it and wondered how something so splendid and alive could be no more. He waited for the school's final bell, and then he watched the children rush out of the building like bees from a poked hive. Their squeals did not comfort him.