by Harlan Coben
But the feelings, if they were real, wouldn’t come.
The awful truth: Simon couldn’t even see the little girl anymore.
Oh, for the past hour he had tried. He tried again now to look at her and conjure up the angelic child he’d taken to swim classes at the 92nd Street Y, the one who sat on a hammock out in the Hamptons while he read her two full Harry Potter books over the three-day Labor Day weekend, the little girl who insisted on wearing her Statue-of-Liberty Halloween costume complete with green face two weeks early, but—and maybe it was a defense mechanism—none of those images would come to him.
Paige stumbled to a stand.
Time to make his move.
Across the mosaic, Simon stood too. His heart pounded hard against his rib cage. He could feel a headache coming on, like giant hands were pressing in against both his temples. He looked left, then right.
For the boyfriend.
Simon couldn’t say exactly how it all started spiraling, but he blamed the boyfriend for the scourge brought on his daughter and by extension his entire family. Yes, Simon had read all about how an addict has to take responsibility for her own actions, that it was the addict’s fault and the addict’s fault alone, all of that. And most addicts (and by extension, their families) had a tale to tell. Maybe their addiction started with pain medication after an operation. Maybe they traced it back to peer pressure or claimed that one-time experimentation had somehow evolved into something darker.
There was always an excuse.
But in Paige’s case—call it a weakness of character or bad parenting or whatever—it all seemed somewhat simpler:
There was Paige before she met Aaron. And Paige now.
Aaron Corval was scum—obvious, unsubtle scum—and when you blended scum and purity, the purity was forever sullied. Simon never got the appeal. Aaron was thirty-two years old, eleven years older than his daughter. In a more innocent time, this age difference had concerned Simon. Ingrid had shrugged it off, but she was used to such things from her modeling days. Now, of course, the age difference was the least of it.
There was no sign of Aaron.
A small bird of hope took flight. Could Aaron finally be out of the picture? Could this malignancy, this cancer, this parasite who fed off his daughter have finished his feast and moved on to a more robust host?
That would be good, no question about it.
Paige started east toward the path across the park, her gait a zombie-like shuffle. Simon started to make his move.
What, he wondered, would he do if she refused to go with him? That was not only a possibility but a likelihood. Simon had tried to get her help in the past, and it had backfired. He couldn’t force her. He knew that. He’d even had Robert Previdi, his brother-in-law, try to get a court order to have her committed. That hadn’t worked either.
Simon came up behind her now. Her worn sundress hung too loosely off her shoulders. There were brown spots—sun? illness? abuse?—on her back, blotting the once-flawless skin.
“Paige?”
She didn’t turn around, didn’t so much as hesitate, and for a brief second, Simon entertained the fantasy that he had been wrong, that Charlie Crowley had been wrong, that this disheveled bag of bones with the rancid smell and shot voice was not his firstborn, not his Paige, not the teenager who played Hodel in the Abernathy Academy production of Fiddler on the Roof, the one who smelled like peaches and youth and broke the audience’s heart with her “Far from the Home I Love” solo. Simon had never made it through one of her five performances without welling up, nearly breaking into sobs when Paige’s Hodel turned to Tevye and said, “Papa, God alone knows when we shall see each other again,” to which her stage father replied, “Then we will leave it in His hands.”
He cleared his throat and got closer. “Paige?”
She slowed but did not turn around. Simon reached out with a trembling hand. Her back still faced him. He rested his hand on the shoulder, feeling nothing but dried bone covered by papery skin, and tried one more time.
“Paige?”
She stopped.
“Paige, it’s Daddy.”
Daddy. When was the last time she had called him Daddy? He had been Dad to her, to all three kids, for as long as he could remember, and yet the word just came out. He could hear the crack in his voice, the plea.
She still wouldn’t turn toward him.
“Please, Paige—”
And then she broke into a run.
The move caught him off guard. Paige had a three-step lead when he snapped into action. Simon had recently gotten himself into pretty good shape. There was a health club next to his office and with the stress of losing his daughter—that was how he looked at it, as losing her—he had become obsessed with various cardio-boxing classes during his lunch hour.
He leapt forward and caught up to her pretty quickly. He grabbed Paige by the reedlike upper arm—he could have circled the flimsy bicep with his index finger and thumb—and yanked her back. The yank may have been too hard, but the whole thing—the leaps, the reach—had just been an automatic reaction.
Paige had tried to flee. He had done what was necessary to stop her.
“Ow!” she cried. “Let go of me!”
There were loads of people around, and some, Simon was sure, had turned at the sound of her cry. He didn’t care, except it added urgency to his mission. He would have to act fast now and get her out of here before some Good Samaritan stepped in to “rescue” Paige.
“Honey, it’s Dad. Just come with me, okay?”
Her back was still to him. Simon spun her so that she would have to face him, but Paige covered her eyes with the crook of her arm, as though he were shining a bright light in her face.
“Paige? Paige, please look at me.”
Her body stiffened and then, suddenly, relaxed. Paige lowered her arm from her face and slowly turned her gaze up at him. Hope again took flight. Yes, her eyes were sunken deep into the sockets and the color was yellow where it should have been white, but now, for the first time, Simon thought that maybe he saw a flicker—life—there too.
For the first time, he saw a hint of the little girl he once knew.
When Paige spoke, he could finally hear the echo of his daughter: “Dad?”
He nodded. He opened his mouth, closed it because he felt too overwhelmed, tried again. “I’m here to help you, Paige.”
She started to cry. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”
He stretched out his arms to sweep his daughter into safety, when another voice sliced through the park like a reaper’s scythe.
“What the fuck…?”
Simon felt his heart drop. He looked to his right.
Aaron.
Paige cringed away from Simon at the sound of Aaron’s voice. Simon tried to hold on to her, but she pulled her arm loose, the guitar case banging against her leg.
“Paige…” Simon said.
But whatever clarity he had seen in her eyes just a few seconds ago shattered into a million pieces.
“Leave me alone!” she cried.
“Paige, please—”
Paige started to backpedal away. Simon reached out for her arm again, a desperate man falling off a cliff and trying to grasp a branch, but Paige let out a piercing scream.
That turned heads. Lots of them.
Simon did not back away.
“Please, just listen—”
And then Aaron stepped between them.
The two men, Simon and Aaron, were eye to eye. Paige cowered behind Aaron. Aaron looked strung-out, wearing a denim jacket over a grungy white T-shirt—the latest in heroin chic minus the chic. He had too many chains around his neck and had that stubble that aimed for fashionable but fell way short, and work boots, which were always a sardonic look on someone who wouldn’t recognize a day of honest work if it kicked him in the groin.
“It’s okay, Paige,” Aaron said with a smooth sneer, still meeting
Simon’s gaze. “You just keep moving, doll.”
Simon shook his head. “No, don’t…”
But Paige, almost using Aaron’s back for leverage, pushed off and started to sprint down the path.
“Paige?” Simon shouted. “Wait! Please just—”
She was getting away. Simon veered right to go after her, but Aaron slid with him, blocking his path.
“Paige is an adult,” Aaron said. “You got no right—”
Simon cocked his fist and punched Aaron straight in the face.
He could feel the nose give way under his knuckles, heard the break like a boot stomping on a bird’s nest. Blood flowed.
Aaron went down.
That was when the two tourists from Finland screamed.
Simon didn’t care. He could still see Paige up ahead. She turned to the left, off the pavement and into the trees.
“Paige, wait!”
He jumped to the side of the fallen man and started toward her, but from the ground, Aaron grabbed his leg. Simon tried to pull free, but now he could see other people—well-meaning but confused people—approaching, a lot of them, some taking videos with their damn phones.
They were all shouting and telling him not to move.
Simon kicked free, stumbled, got his legs back. He started down the path, down toward where Paige had veered off.
But it was too late now. The crowd was on him.
Someone tried to tackle him up high. Simon threw an elbow. He heard the tackler make an oof noise and his grip slackened. Someone else wrapped their arms around Simon’s waist. Simon pulled him off like a belt, still running toward his daughter, still moving like a halfback with defenders all over him toward the goal line.
But eventually there were too many of them.
“My daughter!” he screamed. “Please…just stop her…”
No one could hear over the commotion, or perhaps they simply weren’t listening to the violent madman who had to be taken down.
Another tourist jumped on him. Then another.
As Simon finally began to fall, he looked up and saw his daughter back on the path. He landed with a crash. Then, because he tried to get back up, blows rained down on him. A lot of them. When it was all over, he would have three broken ribs and two broken fingers. He would have a concussion and need twenty-three stitches in total.
He didn’t feel a thing, except for the ripping in his heart.
Another body landed on him. He heard shouts and screams and then the police were on him too, flipping him onto his stomach, digging a knee into his spine, cuffing him. He looked up one more time and spotted Paige staring from behind a tree.
“Paige!”
But she didn’t come to him. Instead she slipped away as, once again, Simon realized that he had failed her.
Chapter
Two
For a while, the cops just left Simon facedown on the asphalt with his hands cuffed behind his back. One cop—she was female and black with a nametag that read HAYES—bent down and calmly told him that he was under arrest and then read him his rights. Simon thrashed and screamed about his daughter, begging someone, anyone, to stop her. Hayes just kept reciting the Miranda rights.
When Hayes finished, she straightened up and turned away. Simon started screaming about his daughter again. No one would listen, possibly because he sounded unhinged, so he tried to calm himself and conjure up a more polite tone.
“Officer? Ma’am? Sir?”
They all ignored him and took statements from witnesses. Several of the tourists were showing the cops videos of the incident, which, Simon imagined, did not look good for him.
“My daughter,” he said again. “I was trying to save my daughter. He kidnapped her.”
The last part was a quasi lie, but he hoped for a reaction. He didn’t get one.
Simon turned his head left and right, looking for Aaron. There was no sign of him.
“Where is he?” he shouted, again sounding unhinged.
Hayes finally looked down at him. “Who?”
“Aaron.”
Nothing.
“The guy I punched. Where is he?”
No answer.
The adrenaline rush began to taper off, allowing a nauseating level of pain to flow through his body. Eventually—Simon had no idea how much time had passed—Hayes and a tall white cop with the nametag WHITE hoisted him up and drag-walked him to a squad car. When he was in the backseat, White took the driver’s side, Hayes the passenger. Hayes, who had his wallet in her hand, turned around and said, “So what happened, Mr. Greene?”
“I was talking to my daughter. Her boyfriend got in the way. I tried to move around him…”
Simon stopped talking.
“And?” she prompted.
“Do you have her boyfriend in custody? Can you please help me find my daughter?”
“And?” Hayes repeated.
Simon was crazed, but he wasn’t insane. “There was an altercation.”
“An altercation.”
“Yes.”
“Walk us through it.”
“Walk you through what?”
“The altercation.”
“First tell me about my daughter,” Simon tried. “Her name is Paige Greene. Her boyfriend, who I believe is holding her against her will, is named Aaron Corval. I was trying to rescue her.”
“Mm-hmm,” Hayes said. Then: “So you punched a homeless guy?”
“I punched—” Simon stopped himself. He knew better.
“You punched?” Hayes prompted.
Simon didn’t reply.
“Right, that’s what I thought,” Hayes said. “You got blood all over you. Even on your nice tie. That a Hermès?”
It was, but Simon didn’t say anything more. His shirt was still buttoned all the way to the throat, the tie ideally Windsored.
“Where is my daughter?”
“No idea,” Hayes said.
“Then I don’t have anything else to say until I speak to my attorney.”
“Suit yourself.”
Hayes turned back around and didn’t say anything else. They drove Simon to the emergency room at Mount Sinai West on Fifty-Ninth Street near Tenth Avenue, where they took him immediately to X-ray. A doctor wearing a turban and looking too young to get into R-rated films put Simon’s fingers into splints and stitched up his scalp lacerations. There was nothing to be done for the broken ribs, the doctor explained, other than “restrict activity for six weeks or so.”
The rest was a surreal whirlwind: the drive to Central Booking at 100 Centre Street, the mug shots, the fingerprints, the holding cell. They gave him a phone call, just like in the movies. Simon was going to call Ingrid, but he decided to go with his brother-in-law Robert, a top Manhattan litigator.
“I’ll get someone over there right away,” Robert said.
“You can’t handle it?”
“I’m not criminal.”
“You really think I need a criminal—?”
“Yeah, I do. Plus Yvonne and I are at the shore house. It’ll take me too long to get in. Just sit tight.”
Half an hour later, a tiny woman in her early to mid seventies with curly blonde-to-gray hair and fire in her eyes introduced herself with a firm handshake.
“Hester Crimstein,” she said to Simon. “Robert sent me.”
“I’m Simon Greene.”
“Yeah, I’m a top-notch litigator, so I pieced that together. Now repeat after me, Simon Greene: ‘Not guilty.’”
“What?”
“Just repeat what I said.”
“Not guilty.”
“Beautiful, well done, brings tears to my eyes.” Hester Crimstein leaned closer. “Those are the only words you’re allowed to say—and the only time you’ll say those words is when the judge asks for a plea. You got me?”
“Got you.”
“Do we need to do a dry rehearsal?”
“No, I think I got it.”
“Good boy.”
When they headed in
to the courtroom and she said, “Hester Crimstein for the defense,” a buzz started humming through the court. The judge raised his head and arched an eyebrow.
“Counselor Crimstein, this is quite the honor. What brings you to my humble courtroom?”
“I’m just here to stop a grave miscarriage of justice.”
“I’m sure you are.” The judge folded his hands and smiled. “It’s nice to see you again, Hester.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“You’re right,” the judge said. “I don’t.”
That seemed to please Hester. “You’re looking good, Your Honor. The black robe works on you.”
“What, this old thing?”
“Makes you look thin.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” The judge sat back. “What does the defendant plead?”
Hester gave Simon a look.
“Not guilty,” he said.
Hester nodded her approval. The prosecutor asked for five thousand dollars in bail. Hester did not contest the amount. Once they went through the legal rigmarole of paperwork and bureaucracy and were allowed to leave, Simon started for the front entrance, but Hester stopped him with a hand on his forearm.
“Not that way.”
“Why not?”
“They’ll be waiting.”
“Who?”
Hester pressed the elevator button, checked the lights above the doors, said, “Follow me.”
