The Boy from the Woods

by Harlan Coben

  “Why do you care?”

  “It’s a long story, but I will never betray Naomi. Do you hear me? Whatever you tell me, you can trust me to do whatever I can to help.”

  “But if I tell you,” Pia said, “I’d be betraying Naomi’s trust too.”

  “You can trust me.”

  “Do you work for Bernard?”

  “No.”

  “Swear?”

  “I care about your daughter, not your ex-husband. Yes, I swear.”

  Pia slipped the sunglasses back onto her face. “Naomi called me.”

  “When?”

  “A few days ago.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She said someone working for Bernard might call me again asking for her. Like you did last time. She said not to say anything.”

  “Why would she say that?”

  “I think…I think she planned on running away from her father. She thought that maybe if people thought she was with me, it would throw him off the scent.”

  “And you were okay with that? With her running away?”

  “I was happy about it. She needed to escape from him.”

  “I don’t understand,” Hester said. “You say he’s abusive. Your ex, I mean.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “And yet,” Hester said, trying to keep her voice even, “you left your daughter with him?”

  She took off the sunglasses again. “I’ve gone through a lot of therapy. You have no idea how much, how weak I was, how troubled. There was nothing I could have done. And there was a hard truth I had to face, Ms. Crimstein—in order for me to recover and heal and move on.”

  “What hard truth is that?”

  “Bernard was right about one thing. I didn’t want to adopt her in the first place. The hard truth is—and it took me a long time to forgive myself for this—I couldn’t connect to Naomi. Maybe it was because she wasn’t my blood. Maybe at the time, I just wasn’t cut out to be a mother. Maybe it was my chemistry physically reacting to hers or the bad situation with her father. I don’t know. But I could never really connect with the girl.”

  The bile rose in Hester’s throat. She swallowed it back down. “So you just left Naomi with him.”

  “I had no choice. You have to see that.”

  Hester pulled back her chair and stood. “If you hear from Naomi, have her call me immediately.”

  “Ms. Crimstein?”

  Hester looked down at her.

  “Who do you believe?”

  “You mean you or Bernard?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “I think it does, yes.”

  “I don’t,” Hester said. “You either abused your daughter or you selfishly left her behind. Either way, you abandoned a little girl to a man you just described as a monster. Even when you ‘recovered’ and ‘healed,’ even when you got married and moved into this ritzy town house, you just left that poor girl alone with a damaged man. You didn’t protect her. You didn’t think about her. You just ran away, Pia—and you left Naomi behind.”

  Pia kept her head down, her eyes on the table.

  “So in the end, I don’t care if he’s lying or you are. You are scum either way, and I hope you never have a moment’s peace.”

  * * *

  When Dash and Delia Maynard saw their son’s severed finger, they reacted in two very different ways.

  Dash dropped to the ground, totally collapsed, like a marionette with all its strings cut at the same time. His fall was so sudden that Wilde jumped back a step, careful not to jar the finger from its perch atop the ice pack. Not that the jarring would have any effect. If that was the case, the fact that Wilde had just rushed back from that spot in the woods, more sprinting than jogging, would surely have been the culprit.

  Delia froze. For a few moments, she didn’t move, didn’t even react to her husband’s fall. She just stared down at the finger. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, her face began to cave. Her head fell to one side. Her lips quivered, her eyes blinked. She reached out toward the finger, a mother wanting to offer some kind of comfort. Wilde pulled the cooler back, not wanting her to touch or contaminate it.

  “The EMTs will be arriving soon,” Wilde told her as gently as he could. He glanced at the gate behind him. “They’ll do their best to preserve it.”

  When he closed the cooler, Delia let out a moan. Wilde handed the cooler to Rola and nodded. She took it outside the gate for the ambulance. There was, Rola had already learned, a decent chance that the finger could be reattached if they ran the proper medical protocols.

  On the grass, Dash pushed up with his arms and made his way to his knees.

  Delia finally spoke. “What do they want? What do they want?” Her voice started off in pure monotone, but slowly grew louder, more frenzied. “We gave them the tapes. What do they want from us? What do they want?”

  There was a ping.

  It took them all a second to react to it, but then Dash, his eyes doing the thousand-yard stare, reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. His hand shook.

  “What is it?” Delia asked.

  Dash read it, got to his feet, and handed his wife the phone. Wilde moved close to read over her shoulder.

  Send the tape we want in the next thirty minutes or we will send the coordinates for your son’s entire arm. If you contact the police, he will die in terrible pain.

  “What tape?” Delia shouted. “There is no tape. We don’t have…”

  Dash started hurrying up the drive toward the house.

  “Dash?” she called to him.

  He didn’t reply.

  “Dash?”

  She ran behind him.

  “Oh God, what did you do?”

  Dash still wouldn’t speak, but tears streamed down his face.

  “Dash?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What did you do, Dash?”

  “I didn’t think he was really in danger. I didn’t…”

  He broke into a full sprint. Delia called out to him, but he didn’t respond. She continued to give chase. Wilde, his shirt already coated with sweat, followed them as they entered through the side door and up the turret into the library. Dash hurried up the stairs. He moved behind his desk and started typing on the laptop.

  “Talk to me,” Delia said.

  Dash glanced up. He spotted Wilde and said, “Get out of here.”

  “No.”

  “I said—”

  “I heard you,” Wilde said. “But that’s not going to happen.”

  “You’re fired.”

  “Cool.”

  Wilde didn’t move.

  “You have no right to be here.”

  “Then throw me out,” Wilde said.

  “Dash,” Delia said, “tell me. Please?”

  “Not in front of him.”

  “Yeah, Dash,” Wilde said, “in front of me. Stop wasting time.”

  Delia moved closer to her husband and put her hands on his face. “Baby, look at me,” she said, turning his face to hers. The gesture was surprisingly tender. “Tell me, Dash. Please? Tell me now.”

  Dash swallowed, the tears back now. “He did it. He killed him.”

  “What are you talking—?”

  “Rusty killed Christopher.”

  Her hands slid down off his face as she shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  “That night,” Dash said. “We’d all been drinking at the Lockwood. Rusty and Christopher, you know how they were. The two of them almost came to blows. I broke it up. Christopher stormed out. Then I got a call at, I don’t know, one in the morning. It was Rusty in a panic. He begged me to come over. I could tell from his voice that it was bad. So I went and, well, you know me.”

  Delia’s voice was far away. “You taped it.”

  “It’s what I do. You know that.”

  “Which camera?”

  “Why do you—?”

  “Which camera, Dash?”


  “The hidden pocket one.”

  Delia closed her eyes.

  Wilde took out his phone and checked the app. It was all coming together now.

  “You were in Philadelphia that night,” Dash said to her, “researching some project for that congressional subcommittee. When I got there…”

  He stopped.

  “What?” Delia said.

  Dash seemed unable to speak now. He flipped the computer screen around so it was facing Delia and Wilde. He pressed the play button and collapsed back.

  For a few seconds, the screen remained a grainy black. Then a door flew open, and a young Rusty Eggers was there. Judging by the height, the camera must have been placed somewhere near Dash’s breast pocket. The view was grainy and somewhat distorted, like a fish-eye, like watching the whole thing through a peephole.

  Several things struck Wilde all at once. First, the obvious: Rusty looked so damn young. He was probably around twenty years old here, and for some reason, even though he hadn’t aged poorly or anything, the effect of seeing Rusty Eggers at this age was strange, like some kind of “before it all went wrong” picture.

  The second thing was, Rusty seemed remarkably calm and controlled. For a moment, his gaze turned directly to the lens, almost as though he knew it was there.

  Third: His smile was broad. Too broad.

  “Thanks for coming,” Rusty said.

  “You said it was urgent?”

  The voice of young Dash.

  “Yeah, come in.”

  Rusty moved to the side, out of sight. The camera took two steps forward as Dash entered. There was the sound of a bolt slide. Wilde figured that Rusty had just locked the door behind them.

  “What’s going on?” Dash asked.

  Rusty stepped back into view. “I really appreciate you coming.”

  “What the…?” Dash suddenly sounded terrified. “Is that blood on your hand?”

  With the broad smile still plastered to his face, Rusty reached toward the lens with an open hand covered with blood.

  “Rusty?”

  The hand moved north of the camera lens, grabbed what must have been Dash’s shoulder, and jerked him forward.

  “What the hell, Rusty! Let go of me.”

  He didn’t. Rusty dragged Dash forward. The picture on the screen lurched. The breast-pocket viewpoint combined with the fish-eye quality of the lens made it difficult to keep track of what was happening when there was movement. Lots of things were a blur for the next few seconds. Wilde spotted a bookshelf maybe. A rug. Some wall hangings.

  The movement slowed down a bit. A tile floor. A stove, fridge.

  The kitchen.

  Wilde risked a glance at Delia. She stared at the screen transfixed.

  Then on the screen, Wilde heard Dash let out a sharp gasp.

  Rusty moved close to him, blocking the camera for a moment. He whispered, probably in Dash’s ear, “Don’t scream.”

  Then Rusty let Dash go and took a step back. The camera panned down to the tile floor, swung a little to the right, and stopped cold.

  There, lying on his back in a pool of blood, eyes open and unblinking, was Christopher Anson. For a few seconds, the camera didn’t move, didn’t jerk, didn’t shake. It was almost as though Dash couldn’t even breathe.

  Then Dash said in a hushed, horrified tone, “Oh my God.”

  “It was self-defense, Dash.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Christopher broke in,” Rusty said. His tone was low and serene in a way that chilled the room more than the scariest of screams. “I had no choice, Dash. Dash? Do you hear me?”

  The camera veered away from the dead body and back to Rusty, the fish-eye lens making his face look huge. There was still a hint of a smile, but Rusty’s distorted eyes were black and cold.

  “Christopher broke in,” Rusty said again, as though he were explaining the situation to a small child. There was no mania in his tone. No emotion, no panic, no crazy. “I think he was high on drugs, Dash. That’s my guess. He probably bought them after he left the bar. You saw how angry Christopher was, right?”

  Dash didn’t or maybe couldn’t answer. Rusty moved closer. When Rusty spoke again, his voice—still calm, still in total control—had just a bit more bite:

  “You saw that, right?”

  “Uh, yeah, I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  “I mean, yeah, I did, of course.” Then: “We need to call the police, Rusty.”

  “Oh no, that’s not going to happen.”

  “What?”

  “I killed him.”

  “You…you said it was—”

  “Self-defense, yes. But who’s going to believe me, Dash—me against the Anson family and their connections?” Rusty’s face grew larger as he moved closer to Dash’s chest. His voice was again a whisper. “No one.”

  “But…I mean, we have to call the police.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Rusty stepped back. “Dash, listen to me.”

  The camera moved a little to the left. Casually, almost too nonchalantly, Rusty started to raise his right hand. Dash cried out. He startled back, so that everything was a blur. A few seconds later, the lens regained focus.

  Now Wilde could see what was in Rusty’s hand.

  A knife still wet with blood.

  Dash: “Rusty…”

  “I need your help, my friend.”

  “I…I think I should leave.”

  “No, Dash, you can’t do that.”

  “Please…”

  “You’re my friend.” Rusty smiled again. “You’re the only one I can trust. But if you don’t want to help me”—Rusty turned his gaze to the knife in his hand, not overtly threatening, not even pointing it at Dash—“I don’t know what to do.”

  Silence.

  Rusty dropped the knife hand to his side. “Dash?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll help me?”

  “Yeah,” Dash said. “I’ll help.”

  That was where the tape cut out.

  For a few moments, Delia and Wilde just stood there and stared at the blank screen. No one moved. In the distance, Wilde heard a clock chime. He looked around at the opulence of the great library, but opulence is a false facade. It doesn’t really protect or even enhance. It just fools you into feeling safe.

  Dash had his head in his hands. He rubbed his face.

  “So you tell me,” Dash said. “Suppose I said no to him?”

  Delia put a shaking hand to her mouth, as though muffling her own scream.

  “Delia?”

  She shook her head.

  “Listen to me, please. You know Rusty. You know what he would have done to me if I had tried to walk away.”

  Delia closed her eyes, wishing it all away.

  “So what did you do?” Wilde asked.

  Dash turned his gaze toward Wilde. “I had a car. Rusty didn’t. That’s why he chose me, I guess. We moved Christopher’s body into my trunk and dumped him in that alley. Then Rusty wiped his fingerprints off the knife and threw it in the dumpster. We figured the police would think it was a drug deal or robbery gone wrong. I hoped maybe later, I don’t know, I would feel safe and then maybe I could send the tape in to the police. But of course, my voice is also on it. And when you watch it, Rusty didn’t really threaten me, did he?”

  Delia finally found her voice. “Rusty chose you,” she said, “because you’re weak.”

  Dash blinked, his eyes wet.

  Delia looked down at him. “So you just kept the tape?”

  “Yes.”

  “And at some point, you told Rusty you had it?”

  Dash nodded. “As an insurance policy. I was the only one who knew what he’d done. But I made it clear if something happened to me—”

  “The tape would come out.”

  “Yes. It bonded us in an odd way.”

  “And you never told me,” Delia said. “All these years together. All th
at we shared, and you never told me.”

  “It was part of the understanding.”

  “We broke up right after that,” Delia said. “Rusty and me.”

  Dash said nothing.

  “Was that part of the deal, Dash?”

  “He is a terrible man. I just wanted you to be safe.”

  She glared at him.

  “Delia?”

  Her voice was pure ice. “Send them the tape, Dash. My son’s life is in jeopardy. Send the goddamn tape right now.”

  Wilde waited until Dash clicked the button. After it was done, Dash sat back in his chair, spent. Delia stood next to him. She didn’t move. She didn’t put her hand on his shoulder. She didn’t look at him. Someone had just detonated a bomb in this room, leaving these two people in rubble and ruins that would be impossible to rebuild.

  They were shattered and would never be made whole.

  No reason to watch it.

  Wilde turned and left. They didn’t ask where he was going, or maybe they couldn’t speak. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t reply. Not yet anyway. He’d heard all he needed to hear from them.

  He thought that maybe he had the answers now.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SIX

  Rola drove him in the Honda Odyssey. There were three car seats in the back. Five pink sippy cups with screwed-on lids and side handles were on the floor by his feet. Cheerios and Goldfish crackers were scattered everywhere. The cloth seats felt as though they’d been coated in pancake syrup.

  Rola smiled. “The mess is freaking you out, right?”

  “I’m fine,” Wilde managed.

  “Sure you are. Want to tell me where we’re headed?”

  “Just keep heading north on 87.”

  Wilde had debated driving himself, but he might need someone for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that Wilde wasn’t a very good driver. He could do the local roads, but big interstates loaded with various trucks and cars and merging vehicles were not his forte. He also had the phone in his hand, tracking the two GPS locators, and he didn’t want to do that and handle a busy highway at the same time.

  He needed time to sort through his next move.

  “Take exit sixteen,” Wilde said.

  “The one for Harriman?”

  “Yes.”

  Rola asked, “Are we going to Woodbury Commons?”

  “What?”

  “It’s a ginormous mall of outlet stores, right past the toll plaza. Nike, Ralph Lauren, Tory Burch, OshKosh B’gosh, a zillion others. Factory stores. The kids love the Children’s Place. Ever been? Supposed to be huge discounts, but my friend Jane, who knows more about retail shopping than anyone, says, when you add in the travel and the lower quality—”