by Harlan Coben
“I did. Very recently, as a matter of fact.”
“Any surprises?”
“Not a one. I’m so boring too.”
“Seriously?”
“No parents or siblings. The closest thing was a second cousin.”
“That’s a start,” she said.
Wilde shook his head. “No, Hester, it’s not. If you’re looking for a missing kid—son, brother, whatever—you’d be on that DNA site. No one is looking for me, ergo no one cares. I don’t mean that in a pity-me way. But they left a small child alone in those woods for years—”
“You don’t know that,” Hester said, interrupting.
Wilde turned to look at her, but she wouldn’t look back at him.
“Don’t know what?” he asked.
“How long you were out there.”
“Not exactly, no.”
“It could have been days.”
Wilde didn’t know what to make of this. “What are you talking about? Your son and I played for years.”
“Years.” Hester made a scoffing sound. “Come on.”
“What?”
“You were two little boys. You think you could have kept a secret like that for years?”
“That’s what we did.”
“That’s what you think you did. You know how time slows down when you’re little. It could have been days, maybe weeks, but years?”
“I have memories, Hester.”
“I don’t doubt that. But don’t you think maybe it could have been just a few days’ worth? You always say you have no memory of any time before you were in the woods. So maybe—just hear me out, okay?—maybe something happened to you, something so traumatic that you blocked everything from before. Maybe, since you’ve retained nothing about your life from before this traumatic event, those memories are now magnified and so what may have been a few days seem like years.”
That wasn’t what happened. Wilde knew that.
“Hikers spotted me months and even years earlier.”
“They said they spotted a little boy. Might have been you, might have been someone else.”
But Wilde wasn’t buying it. He remembered breaking into homes—lots of them. He remembered traveling miles. He remembered that red banister and those screams.
“It doesn’t matter,” Wilde said. “Even if you’re right, no one looked for that boy.”
“That’s why you need to find out the truth—to feel whole.”
Wilde made a face. “Did you really say ‘to feel whole’?”
“Not my finest moment, I admit. But you know what I mean. You have issues with intimacy and connection, Wilde. That’s not a secret. It doesn’t take a genius to see it all began with this abandonment. So maybe if you got some understanding of what caused it, of what really happened—”
“I’d be more normal?”
“You know what I mean.”
“It won’t change anything.”
“That’s probably so,” Hester said. “Then again, there’s another reason.”
“That being?”
“I’m curious as hell,” Hester said, throwing up her hands. “Aren’t you?”
Wilde checked his watch. “Fifteen minutes to the ransom deadline. Let’s go find the Maynards.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY
The Maynards sat in the same two burgundy wingback chairs. Not surprisingly, they both looked stressed to the max. Their skin was drawn, complexions ashen, their eyes bloodshot. Somewhat surprisingly, they were both smartly dressed in expensive couture. Dash, sporting tan slacks with a crease that could slice deli meat, did the talking.
“Please fill us in on anything new,” Dash said to Wilde.
Wilde did his best. They both listened without moving, almost as though they were trying to stay perfectly still and not show anything or maybe, more likely, they were just working hard to hold it together and figured that if any part of them cracked, that would be it, they’d totally burst open. When Wilde finished, Dash and Delia turned to one another. Delia nodded once.
“Delia and I have talked this to death. We’ve reviewed the evidence. We’ve tried to map out a timeline of what our son did last night. We’ve talked to both of you extensively, and we’ve bounced around the various theories we’ve heard.”
He reached out and took his wife’s hand.
“The truth is, we don’t know whether this is a kidnapping or a hoax or something else entirely. Neither, it seems, do either of you.”
“I don’t,” Hester said. “Wilde?”
“Impossible to know for certain.”
“Exactly,” Dash said. “Which is why, after extensive discussion, Delia and I have decided that the best course of action, the safest course, is to send the tapes. We can’t send them all. The file would be too large, plus, well, how would anyone know how many hours we have? I don’t even know.”
“Why do you have so much footage?” Hester asked.
“It’s always been my way,” Dash said.
“He’s a documentarian first,” Delia added.
Wilde nodded, looked about the room, then decided to go for it. “Is that why you’re taping us now?”
Silence. Then Dash: “What are you talking about?”
Wilde took out his phone. “I have a network scanner app that detects if there are listening devices or cameras in a room. Right now, it’s spotting networks and ISPs that can only be explained by the fact that we have cameras on us.”
Dash leaned back and crossed his legs. “I’m a documentarian. I record our lives as well. I don’t think I’ll ever use it—”
“Do we have to do this now?” Delia snapped.
“No,” Wilde said. “You’re right. Let’s concentrate on the task at hand.”
It had all been a bluff. There were indeed apps for scanning or mapping out networks and detecting hidden cameras. People were using them to make sure, for example, that Airbnb hosts weren’t spying on them. But Wilde didn’t have one on his phone.
It was five minutes until the 4:00 p.m. deadline. A laptop was set up on the oak coffee table between them. Dash hit the link that had been sent to them before. A screen came with a countdown clock indicating the link would be live in four minutes and forty-seven, forty-six, forty-five seconds.
“My team will try to trace down the ISP when we go live,” Wilde said, “but I’m told that even a simple VPN will prevent us from getting anything significant.”
They silently watched the clock go under the four-minute mark.
“So what’s on the tapes?” Hester asked.
“Outtakes from the show,” Dash said. “Behind-the-scenes stuff. The writers’ room where we hashed out ideas. Stuff like that.”
“Uh-huh,” Hester said. “In the ransom email, they asked you to upload the ‘truly damaging’ tape to a special folder.”
Hester waited. No one spoke.
“Are you going to do that?”
Delia said, “Yes.”
“What’s on it?”
“We don’t see how that’s relevant to you.”
“Excuse me?”
“We don’t want to share any of this. We are being forced to for the safety of our son.”
“So you’re willing to share it with an anonymous kidnapper, but not your attorney?”
“We see no reason to show it to anyone,” Dash said. “But as Mr. Wilde here pointed out, these people didn’t ask for a public release. So perhaps they’ll keep it to themselves, perhaps not. Either way, this is not a confidence we want to betray, even to you. We are betraying it, if you will, for the safety of our son.”
Hester looked at Wilde and shook her head. Then she turned back and glared at both of the Maynards. “I hope you two know what you’re doing.”
When the clock clicked down to zero, Dash Maynard refreshed the page. The page was simple. There were two yellow boxes. One was marked: VIDEOS-UPLOAD, the other: SPECIAL FOLDER-UPLOAD.
Under them, the instructions said:
Cli
ck both links. We will not communicate with you until the videos start uploading.
Whoever was behind this, Wilde said, was good. No negotiation, no back-and-forth.
Dash let loose a long breath. Delia placed a comforting, familiar hand on his shoulder.
“Here goes,” Dash said.
He clicked first the special folder button, then the videos one. The files began to upload. A minute passed. Then another. Finally, a new icon appeared. An envelope. Dash moved the cursor over it and clicked it.
We will need to review the files.
If you did as we requested, your son will be returned to you tomorrow at exactly noon. We will contact you with his location.
Delia’s eyes filled with tears. “At noon?”
Dash took his wife’s hand.
“Our son has to spend another night with these people?”
“He’ll be okay,” Dash said. “We’ve done all we can.”
“Have we?” Delia asked.
Silence.
Dash turned toward Wilde and Hester. “What do we do now?”
“If you still don’t want to go to the authorities—” Hester began.
“We don’t.”
Hester shrugged. “Then I guess we wait.”
* * *
When they were back outside, Hester said to Wilde, “We aren’t going to wait, are we?”
“I’m not sure what we can do.”
“Are you going to hang here?” Hester asked.
“If I’m not on the grounds, I’ll be close by.”
“Same,” Hester said. “I may go out and grab a bite to eat, if that’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay.”
Hester started to wring her hands together, twisting the rings on her fingers. For the first time, Wilde noticed that she was no longer wearing her wedding band. Had she been six years ago? He couldn’t remember.
“With Oren Carmichael,” she added.
Hester Crimstein blushed. She actually blushed.
“Second date in two nights,” Wilde said.
“Yes.”
“Yippee.”
“Don’t be a wiseass.”
“If you don’t want to sleep at Laila’s, maybe you can sleep at Oren’s.”
“Stop that.” Her blush deepened. “I’m not a hussy, you know.”
Wilde smiled. It felt nice to be normal, even if only for a few seconds. “Go to dinner,” he said. “Enjoy.”
“He’s a nice man,” she said. “Oren, I mean.”
“And he’s a hunk with broad shoulders.”
“Is he? I barely noticed.”
“Go, Hester.”
“You’ll call if there are any changes?”
“I will.”
“Wilde?”
He turned.
“There’s been no one since Ira.”
“Then it’s about time,” Wilde said.
* * *
Tony’s Pizza and Sub looked exactly like its name.
There was a counter with two guys in white aprons flipping pizzas. There was a letter-board menu above their heads for walk-ins who didn’t want table service or, if you took a booth, a waitress, always a local high school girl, handed you a menu that was both laminated and sticky. The tablecloth, no surprise, was checkered red. Each table was cluttered with a napkin dispenser, an assortment of shakers for parmesan and oregano and the like, and a half-burned candle jammed into the top of an empty Chianti bottle. A television that hung from the ceiling played either sports or the news. Right now, it was playing Hester’s very own network.
Decked out in his cop uniform, Oren sat in a booth toward the back. He stood the moment he spotted her, which seemed very formal in this place.
“Hey,” Oren said.
He kissed her cheek and took her hand. Hester gave his hand a squeeze and slid into the booth.
“I bet you’ve been here a million times,” Oren said.
Tony’s was a town mainstay and less than a mile from her old house. It also purportedly had the best pizza within a ten-mile radius.
“No,” Hester said. “In fact, this is the first time I’ve been here in more than thirty years.”
“Seriously?”
Hester nodded. “On the first night we moved into town, Ira and I brought the boys here for dinner. We were exhausted and starved—it’d been a long day. Anyway, there was only one open table, but they wouldn’t let us sit there unless we promised to order full dinners and no pizza. I don’t remember the details, but whatever, they were rude to us. So Ira got furious. He was slow to anger, Ira, but when he did…anyway, we left without eating. Ira wrote the owner a letter, if you can believe it. Typed it up. But he never heard back. So Ira forbade us from going or ordering from them. I don’t know how many thousands of dollars they lost over the years from that incident. The boys, they were so loyal to Ira that even if they were invited to a birthday party here or their Little League team came after a game, they’d refuse to eat.” Hester looked up. “Why am I telling you this story?”
“Because it’s interesting,” Oren said. “Do you want to go someplace else? The Heritage Diner maybe?”
“Can I tell you a funny thing?”
“Sure.”
“I had my assistant check. Tony’s was sold four years ago. If the old ownership was still here, I wouldn’t have come.”
Oren smiled. “So we’re safe to stay?”
“Yes.” Hester shook her head. “I’m sorry.”
“For?”
“Bringing up Ira like that. First date I bring up Cheryl. Second date I bring up Ira.”
“Getting all the elephants out of the room,” Oren said. “I like that. Why are you in town anyway? Visiting Matthew and Laila?”
Hester shook her head. “Doing work for clients.”
“In our little hamlet?”
“I can’t say more.”
He got it. The waitress dropped off a slice of margherita pizza for each of them. Hester took a bite and closed her eyes. It tasted like nirvana.
“Good, right?” Oren asked.
“I’m hating Ira right about now.”
He chuckled and picked up his slice. “I’m guessing the Maynards.”
“What?”
“Your clients. The Maynards. I would have guessed just Dash Maynard, but you said you were visiting clients. With an S.”
“I can’t confirm or deny—”
“I wouldn’t expect you to.”
“Why do you think it’s the Maynards?”
“The helicopter. When they fly in, they have to clear the airspace with us. So I know it flew out of Manhattan this morning. Then you pulled up in an Uber, not your black Escalade driven by Tim.”
“I’m impressed,” Hester said.
Oren shrugged. “I’m a trained detective.”
“I can’t talk about it though.”
“I don’t want you to talk about it,” he said. “I’m just really glad you’re here with me.”
Despite everything—the ghosts, the ransom, this place—Hester could feel her face blush to the color of the pizza’s tomato sauce.
“I’m glad I’m here too,” Hester said.
For a few minutes, the world shrunk down to the size of the gorgeous man across the table from her and the ambrosia-like pizza on the table between them. She relished the escapism. It wasn’t something Hester often craved. She liked being in the mix. She found it stressful to be out of the loop.
A few people stopped by the table, mostly to see Oren, but some of the faces were familiar to her too. The Gromans, who used to play tennis with Ira on Saturday mornings. Jennifer Tallow, that super-nice librarian whose son had been friendly with Jeff. Everyone knew Oren, of course. When you’re a cop that long in a town this size, it’s its own form of celebrity. She couldn’t tell whether Oren enjoyed the attention or was polite to a fault out of obligation.
“When exactly do you retire?” she asked him.
“Three months from now.”
“And you
r plans?”
Oren shrugged. “They’re fluid.”
“Do you think you’ll stay in town?”
“For right now.”
“You’ve lived out here a long time,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Ever think about living in a city instead?”
“Yes,” he said. “I think about it.”
When his phone sounded, the expression on his face hardened. “That’s my work ring. I have to take it.”
Hester gestured for him to go ahead. It was interesting, she thought, the echo between him having a “work ring” and her last night with her various phone vibrations. Oren picked up the phone and said, “Yep.” A few seconds passed. “Okay, who is closest to Tony’s? Good, okay, have him swing around and pick me up.” He hung up the phone.
“Sorry, I have to go. I might not be long if you want to wait or…”
“No, that’s okay. I told Laila I’d come by.”
He stood. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, no problem. I’ll get an Uber.”
“Okay, thanks.” He threw two twenties down on the table. “I’ll call you later.”
“An emergency?” Hester asked.
“It’s just a car accident on Mountain Road. I’ll call you when I’m done.”
Oren hurried for the door as a squad car pulled up to the front. He didn’t look back and see what he’d left behind. Hester just sat there. She couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. The blood had frozen in her veins. Her lungs stopped. She could hear her pulse, her heartbeat growing impossibly loud until it was the only sound she could hear.
“It’s just a car accident on Mountain Road…”
Like it happened all the time. Like it was no big deal.
A tear escaped and ran down her cheek. She could feel more tears building, a guttural cry rising in her throat that would need to be released soon. Time was growing short. Hester found her legs. She managed to stand and stumble toward the bathroom. When she was inside, she closed the door, locked it, and muffled her scream with her hand.
Hester couldn’t say how long she stayed there. No one knocked on the door or any of that, so she imagined only a minute or two passed. No more. She got herself together. She looked in the mirror, splashed water on her face, and saw David’s ghost in the reflection.
“It’s just a car accident on Mountain Road…”
