by Harlan Coben
“And I just got a call from Mary in the ER. The cops actually went to the hospital to double-check I was there. Can you believe this?”
“They wanted an alibi for me too,” Simon said. “Hester thinks it’s just routine.”
“I don’t understand though. What happened exactly? Aaron was killed?”
“Murdered, yes.”
“And where is Paige?”
“No one seems to know.”
Laszlo the dog started pawing Simon’s leg. They both looked down and into the dog’s soulful eyes.
“Let’s take her for a walk,” Simon said.
Five minutes later, they crossed Central Park West at Sixty-Seventh Street, Laszlo pulling hard on the leash. On their left, in plain view yet somehow slightly hidden, was a tiny playground bursting with color. A lifetime ago, and yet not that long ago, they used to bring Paige, then Sam, then Anya here to play. They’d sit on a bench, able to watch the entire playground without so much as turning their heads, feeling safe and secure in the midst of this enormous park in this enormous city, less than a block from their home.
They headed past the Tavern on the Green, the famed restaurant, and turned right to head south. A group of schoolchildren in matching yellow T-shirts—easy to spot on field trips—filed past them. Simon waited until they were out of earshot.
“The murder,” Simon said. “It was gruesome.”
Ingrid wore a long thin coat. She dug her hands into her pockets. “Go on.”
“Aaron was mutilated.”
“How?”
“Do you really need the details?” he asked.
Ingrid almost smiled. “Strange.”
“What?”
“You’re the one who can barely stomach the violence in R-rated movies,” she said.
“And you’re the physician who never so much as blinks at the sight of blood,” he finished for her. “But maybe I understand better now.”
“How’s that?”
“What Hester told me—it didn’t gross me out. Maybe because it’s real. So you just react. Like you with a patient in the ER. On the screen I have the luxury of looking away. In real life…”
His voice just faded away.
“You’re stalling,” Ingrid said.
“Which is dumb, I know. According to Hester’s source, the killer slit Aaron’s throat, though she said that’s a tame way of putting it. The knife went deep into his neck. Almost took off his head. They sliced off three fingers. They also cut off…”
“Pre- or post-mortem?” Ingrid asked in her physician tone.
“What?”
“The amputations. Was he still alive for them?”
“I don’t know,” Simon said. “Does it matter?”
“It might.”
“I’m not following.”
Laszlo stopped and did the butt-sniff greeting with a passing collie.
“If Aaron was still alive when they cut him up,” Ingrid said, “someone may have been trying to get information out of him.”
“What kind of information?”
“I don’t know. But now no one can find our daughter.”
“You think…?”
“I don’t think anything,” Ingrid said.
They both stopped. Their eyes met and for a brief moment, despite all the people walking by, despite the horror of what they were going through, Simon fell back into her eyes and she fell into his. He loved her. She loved him. Simple but there you have it. You both have careers and you raise kids and there are victories and defeats and you just sort of coast along, living your life, the days long, the years short, and then every once in a while, you remember to pull up and look at your partner, your life partner, really look at the one who travels down the lonely road right by your side, and you realize how much you are in this together.
“To the police,” Ingrid said, “Paige is just a worthless junkie. They won’t look for her, and if they do, it will be to arrest her as an accessory or worse.”
Simon nodded. “So it’s up to us.”
“Yes. Where was Aaron murdered?”
“In their apartment in Mott Haven.”
“You know that address?”
He nodded. Hester had given it to him.
“We can start there,” Ingrid said.
* * *
The Uber driver drove up to two concrete barriers, set up on the street like something you’d see in a war zone. “Can’t go no further.” The driver—named Achmed—turned around and frowned at Simon. “You sure this is it?”
“It is.”
Achmed looked dubious. “If you’re looking to make a buy, I know a safer place—”
“We’re fine, thanks,” Ingrid said.
“I don’t mean no offense.”
“None taken,” Simon said.
“You’re, uh, not going to give me a one-star rating because of this, are you?”
“You’re pure five stars, my man,” Simon said, opening the passenger door.
“We’d give you six if we could,” Ingrid added.
They slipped out of the Toyota. Simon wore gray sweats and sneakers. Ingrid was in jeans and a sweater. They both wore baseball caps, hers with the classic New York Yankees NY overlap, his with a golf club logo, a giveaway at a charity outing. Everything discreet, casual, trying to blend in, which wasn’t happening.
The four-level walk-up of decrepit brick wasn’t so much falling apart as flaking away, fraying at the seams like an old coat. The fire escape looked ready to give at the gentlest push, far more rust than metal, posing the question if burns were worse than tetanus. On the sidewalk, a much-mistreated mattress had been thrown atop black plastic trash bags, crushing them into misshapen masses. The front stoop looked as though it shed concrete dust. The metallic-gray door had some kind of ornate graffiti lettering spray-painted on it. Car parts and old tires were strewn across the tall weeds next door, all surrounded, for some odd reason, by a fresh chain-link fence topped with razor wire—as if anyone would ever want to steal any of that stuff. The building to the right, perhaps a once-proud brownstone, had plywood covering broken glass, giving it a look of loneliness and despair that shattered Simon’s heart anew.
Paige, his baby, had lived here.
Simon turned to look at Ingrid. She stared at the building too, a look of loss on her face. Her eyes gazed up, above the rooftops to the public-housing high-rises looming in the near distance.
“So now what?” Simon asked her.
Ingrid took in their surroundings. “We didn’t really think this through, did we?”
She stepped toward the graffiti-laden door, turned the knob without hesitation, and pushed hard. The door grinded open grudgingly. When they stepped into what one might generously dub a foyer, the stale, acrid odor, a mix of the musty and the rotting, encircled them. A bare light bulb, dangling from the ceiling with no fixture, provided a modicum of twenty-five-watt illumination.
She lived here, Simon thought. Paige lived in this place.
He thought about life choices, about bad decisions and forks in the road, and what moves, what sliding doors, had led Paige to this hell-spawned place. It was his fault, wasn’t it? Of course it had to be in some way. The butterfly effect. Change one thing, you change everything. The constant what-ifs—if only he could go back and change something. Paige had wanted to write. Suppose he had sent one of her essays to his friend at that local literary magazine, the one that worked off donations, and had gotten it published. Would she have focused more on her writing then? Paige had been denied early decision to Columbia. Should Simon have pushed his alma mater more, gotten more of his old friends to contact Admissions? Yvonne’s father-in-law had been on the board at Williams. She could have done something there, if he’d pushed it. And that was the big stuff, of course. Anything could have changed her course, right? Paige wanted a cat for her dorm room, but he didn’t get it for her. She had a fight with Merilee, her best friend in seventh grade, and he as a father had done nothing to patch it up. Pai
ge liked American cheese on her turkey sandwich, not cheddar, but sometimes Simon forgot and used the wrong one.
You could drive yourself mad.
She’d been such a good girl too. The best daughter in the world. Paige hated to get in trouble and when she did, even for something minor, her eyes would fill with tears so that Simon couldn’t bear to scold her. But maybe he should have. Maybe that would have helped. It was just that she cried so damn easily, and it got under his skin because the truth, the truth he never had the courage to tell her, was that he cried easily too—too easily—pretending something was wrong with his contact lens or that he had nonexistent allergies or leaving the room altogether rather than admitting it. Maybe if he had, it would have made it easier for her and she could have found some kind of outlet or way to bond with her father who chose to keep up some kind of false machismo, some kind of idea that if her dad didn’t cry, maybe she’d feel safe, more protected. Instead it just made her more vulnerable in the end.
Ingrid had already started up the warped stairs. When she realized Simon was not with her, she turned and said, “You okay?”
He snapped out of it, nodded, followed her. “Third floor,” he said. “Apartment B.”
There were broken pieces of what might have once been a sofa on the first landing. Crushed beer cans and overflowing ashtrays were piled high. Simon peered down the hall as they made the turn for the next floor. A thin black man in a wifebeater tee and threadbare denim stood at the end of the hallway. The man had a white beard so thick and curly it looked as though he were eating a sheep.
On the third floor, there was yellow tape that read CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS forming an X in front of a heavy metal door with the letter B on it. Ingrid did not hesitate or slow down. She reached for the knob and tried to turn it.
The knob wouldn’t move.
She stepped back and gestured for Simon to give it a try. He did. He twisted the knob back and forth and pushed and pulled.
Locked.
The walls around them might very well be decaying to the point that maybe Simon could punch his fist through one and enter that way, but this locked door was not about to surrender.
“Hey.”
The simple word, spoken in a normal tone of voice, shattered the stale air like a gunshot. Simon and Ingrid jumped at the sound and turned. It was the thin black man with the sheep beard. Simon checked for an exit route. There was none except via the way they came, and that path was blocked now.
Slowly and without conscious thought, Simon took a step to slip in front of Ingrid, putting himself between her and the man.
For a moment no one spoke. The three of them just stood in that grimy corridor and didn’t move. Someone on the floor above them turned up music with a loud thumping bass and an angry vocalist.
Then the man said, “You’re looking for Paige.”
It wasn’t a question.
“You,” the man said, raising his hand and pointing a bony finger at Ingrid. “You’re her mother.”
“How did you know?” Ingrid asked.
“You look exactly like her. Or does she look like you?” He petted the sheep beard. “I always mix that up.”
“Do you know where Paige is?” Simon asked.
“Is that why you’re here? You’re looking for her?”
Ingrid took a step toward him. “Yes. Do you know where she is?”
He shook his head. “Sorry.”
“But you know Paige?”
“Yeah, I know her. I live right below them.”
“Is there somebody else who might know?” Simon asked.
“Somebody else?”
“Like a friend.”
The man smiled. “I’m her friend.”
“Maybe another friend then.”
“I don’t think so.” He gestured with the beard toward the door. “You trying to get in?”
Simon looked at Ingrid. Ingrid said, “Yeah, we were hoping to see…”
His eyes narrowed. “See what?”
“I don’t know, to tell you the truth,” Ingrid said.
“We’re just trying to find her,” Simon added.
The man stroked the sheep beard some more, pulling at the end as though to make it longer. “I can let you in,” he said.
He reached into his pocket and fished out a key.
“How do you have…?”
“Like I said, I’m her friend. Don’t you have a friend who has your key, just in case you get locked out or something?” He started toward them. “If the cops get mad about ripping the tape, I’m blaming it on you. Come on, let’s go inside.”
* * *
The apartment was a claustrophobic hovel, maybe half the size of Paige’s college dorm room. There were two single mattresses, one on the floor by the right wall, one up against the wall on the left. Just mattresses. No beds. No other furniture at all.
Paige’s guitar was propped up in the right-hand corner. Her clothes were on the floor in three stacks next to it. The place was a cyclone of a mess, but her clothes were neatly folded. Simon stared at them and felt Ingrid slip her hand into his and squeeze. Paige had always taken good care of her clothes.
On the left side of the room, dried blood stained the wood.
“Never did no one harm, your daughter,” the black man said. “Except herself.”
Ingrid turned her eyes toward him. “What’s your name?”
“Cornelius.”
“I’m Ingrid. This is Paige’s father, Simon. But you’re wrong, Cornelius.”
“About?”
“She hurt more than herself.”
Cornelius considered that before nodding. “Guess that’s true, Ingrid. But there’s a lot of good in her, you know. Still. She’d play chess with me a lot.” He met Simon’s eye. “She told me you taught her.”
Simon nodded, afraid to speak.
“She loved to walk Chloe. That’s my dog. Cocker spaniel. Said she had a dog of her own back home. Said she missed her. I get that Paige hurt you, but I’m talking here about intent. Seen it before, I’ll see it again. It’s the devil—he gets ahold of you. He pokes and prods until he finds your weakness and then, see, he wiggles right through your skin and gets into your bloodstream. Could be through drink. Could be through gambling. Could be through a virus, like cancer or something. Or the devil could be in the smack, the rock, the meth, whatever. It’s all the devil in different forms.”
He turned and looked down at the blood on the floor.
“The devil could even be a man,” Cornelius said.
“I assume you knew Aaron too?” Simon asked.
Cornelius just kept staring at the blood. “You know all my talk about the devil getting into your bloodstream?”
Ingrid said, “Yes.”
“Sometimes he don’t need to do any poking or prodding. Sometimes a man does it for him.” Cornelius looked up at them. “I don’t like wishing someone dead, but I tell you—there were times I came up here and he’d be so wasted, Paige too, lying in their own stink, and I’d look at him, at what he done, and I’d daydream…”
His voice faded away.
“Did you talk to the police?” Ingrid asked.
“They talked to me, but I got nothing to say to them.”
“When did you last see Paige?”
Cornelius hesitated. “I kinda hoped you guys would tell me.”
“What do you mean?”
There was a noise in the corridor. Cornelius stuck his head out. A young couple stumbled toward them, arms wrapped around each other, limbs so entwined it was hard to say where one began and the other ended.
“Cornelius,” the young man said, a lilt in his voice. “What’s happening, mah man?”
“All good, Enrique. How are you, Candy?”
“Love ya, Cornelius.”
“Love you too.”
“You cleaning out the place?” Enrique asked.
“Nah. Just making sure it’s all okay.”
“Dude was a turd.”
“Enrique!” Candy said.
“What?”
“The man is dead.”
“So now he’s a dead turd. That better?”
Enrique peered in the door, saw Simon and Ingrid, and asked, “Who that with you?”
“Just some cops,” Cornelius said.
That changed their demeanor. Suddenly their slow saunter became more purposeful.
“Uh, nice to meet you,” Candy said.
They unwound their limbs and hurried their step, both disappearing into a room at the end of the hall. Cornelius kept the smile on his face until the couple was out of sight.
“Cornelius?” Ingrid said.
“Hmm.”
“When did you last see Paige?”
He turned slowly, his eyes taking in the sad room. “What I’m going to tell you,” he said, “well, I didn’t tell the police this for obvious reasons.”
They waited.
“You have to understand. Maybe I’ve been sugarcoating, telling you how nice Paige was to Chloe and me. But fact is, she was a mess. A junkie. When she was in my place—I mean, like when she came by to play chess or get a bite to eat—truth is, and I don’t like saying it, I kept an eye on her. You know what I’m saying? I always worried she’d steal something because that’s what junkies do.”
Simon knew. Paige had stolen from them too. Cash went missing from Simon’s wallet. When several pieces of Ingrid’s jewelry disappeared, Paige claimed innocence in near Oscar-worthy performances.
That’s what junkies do.
A junkie.
His daughter was a junkie. Simon had never let himself articulate that, but hearing it come from Cornelius’s lips just made it land with a horrible, undeniable thud.
“Two days before Aaron got killed, I saw Paige. Down by the front door. I was coming in. She was flying down the stairs. Almost tumbling. Like someone was chasing her. She was going so fast, I thought she’d lose her step.”
Cornelius looked up and off now, as though he could still see her.
“I put my hands out, like to break her fall.” Cornelius lifted his arms, palms up, demonstrating. “I called out to her. But she just sprinted past me and outside. Didn’t even break her stride. I mean, that’s happened before.”
