by Harlan Coben
Cornelius flung the door open. A woman stood there. If she was startled by their interruption, she was doing a good job of keeping it to herself. She was short and squat, maybe Latina, with a blue blazer and jeans.
She spoke first. “Are you Simon Greene?”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Elena Ramirez. I’m a private detective. I need to talk to your daughter.”
* * *
Elena Ramirez showed them a fancy embossed business card, a private investigator’s license of some kind, and an ID showing she was a retired FBI agent. They were all back in Cornelius’s apartment now. The two men sat in leather armchairs while Elena Ramirez took the green tufted sofa.
“So where is your daughter, Mr. Greene?” she asked.
“I don’t understand. Your card says you’re from Chicago.”
“That’s correct.”
“So why do you want to talk to my daughter?”
“It involves a case I’m working on,” Ramirez said.
“What case?”
“That I can’t say.”
“Miss Ramirez?”
“Please call me Elena.”
“Elena, I’m not really up for games. I don’t care what your case is and I don’t have any reason to be cagey, so I’m going to be forthright and I hope you will be too. I don’t know where my daughter is. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to locate her. I basically have no leads other than the fact that she’s probably getting high within a one-square-mile radius of where we now are. Following me so far?”
“You bet,” Elena said.
“So now you come along—a private eye from Chicago no less—and want to talk to my daughter. I’d love you to talk to her. There’s nothing I’d like more, in fact. So maybe we can help each other out by cooperating?”
Simon’s phone buzzed. He had it in his hand, constantly checking for any text updates, feeling that phantom vibration thing every ten seconds. This one was real.
Yvonne texted:
Stabilizing, which doctor says is good. Moved to a private room.
Still in a coma. Sam and Anya with us.
“Just to make sure I’m following,” Elena Ramirez said, “your daughter is missing. Is that correct?”
Simon still had his eyes on the phone’s screen. “Yes.”
“Since when?”
There was nothing to gain by being coy. “Since her boyfriend was murdered.”
Elena Ramirez took her time, crossed her arms, thought it over.
Simon said, “Elena?”
“I’m looking for a missing person too.”
“Who?”
“A twenty-four-year-old male who disappeared from the Chicago area.”
Cornelius spoke for the first time since they sat down. “How long has he been missing?”
“Since last Thursday.”
Simon asked, “Who is it?”
“I can’t divulge the name.”
“For crying out loud, Elena, if your missing twenty-four-year-old is someone my daughter knows, maybe we can help.”
Elena Ramirez considered that for a moment. “His name is Henry Thorpe.”
Simon picked up his phone and started typing.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I don’t recognize the name. I’m checking with my son and other daughter. They’d have a better handle on Paige’s friends.”
“I don’t think Paige and Henry were friends.”
“So what is the connection between them?”
Elena Ramirez shrugged. “That’s part of why I’m here. To try to find out. Without going into full detail, it seems that not long before he vanished, Henry Thorpe was in touch with either your daughter or perhaps her boyfriend, Aaron Corval.”
“In touch how?”
She took out a small notepad, licked her fingers, started paging through it. “There was a phone call first. From your daughter’s phone to Henry’s. This was two weeks ago. Then there were texts for a while, followed by emails.”
“What did the texts and emails say?”
“I don’t know. The texts are on their phones, I guess. We can’t access them. The emails were all deleted. We can see some were sent, but nothing beyond that.”
“What makes you think these communications are important?”
“I don’t know that they are, Mr. Greene. This is what I do. When someone goes missing, I look for anomalies—something that doesn’t fit into their normal routine.”
“And these emails and texts—”
“Anomalies. Can you think of any reason Henry Thorpe, a twenty-four-year-old man from Chicago, would suddenly be in touch with your daughter or Aaron Corval?”
Simon didn’t really have to think about it long. “Does Henry Thorpe have a history of drug use?”
“Some.”
“It could be that.”
“Could be,” Elena said. “But you can buy drugs in Chicago.”
“Could be something more professional in that respect.”
“Could be. But I don’t think so, do you?”
“No,” Simon said. “And either way, my daughter and your client are both missing.”
“Yes.”
“So what can I do to help?” Simon asked.
“The first thing I asked myself was why the communications moved from texting by phone to emails via a computer.”
“And?”
“And how into drugs were they? Your daughter and her boyfriend.”
Simon saw no reason to lie. “Very.”
Cornelius snapped his fingers, getting it. “Paige probably sold her phone. To raise cash for a fix.” He turned to Simon. “Happens all the time down here.”
“That phone is no longer active,” Elena agreed, “so that would be my theory too.”
Simon wasn’t so sure. “So Paige moved from using a phone to using a computer?”
“Yes.”
“So where is the computer now?”
“Probably sold that too,” Cornelius said.
“That would be my guess,” Elena said. “She could have taken it with her when she vanished, I guess. Or the killer could have stolen it. But the key question is, How did she get the computer in the first place? She couldn’t have bought it, right?”
“Unlikely,” Simon said. “I mean, if she was selling her phone to buy drugs, why would she spend the money on a computer?”
“Which means she probably stole it.”
Simon just let that sit there. His daughter. Junkie. Selling her own stuff. Thief.
And what else?
“Are you good with computers, Mr. Greene?”
“Simon. And no.”
“If you know what you’re doing—like my tech guy, Lou—you can check an IP address,” Elena said. “Sometimes you can track the computer down to a town or a street or even an individual.”
“Was Lou able to figure out who owned her computer?”
“No,” Elena said, “but it came from Amherst, Massachusetts. More specifically, the campus of Amherst College. Doesn’t your son go there?”
Chapter
Fourteen
Anya was asleep in one of those yellow molded chairs when Simon and Elena arrived in the hospital waiting room. Her head rested on her uncle Robert’s bowling ball of a shoulder. Robert, Yvonne’s husband, was a big boisterous man, thick all over, a mostly bald ex–football player with a heart-on-his-sleeve charm. He was a great litigator—juries loved his winning smile, his every-guy banter that masked a nimble legal mind, his larger-than-life pace during a cross-examination—and other than Yvonne, Robert happened to be Simon’s closest friend.
Robert gently moved Anya so that he could stand without waking her. He greeted Simon with a monster bear hug. Robert was good with the bear hugs, and for a moment, Simon closed his eyes and took it in.
“You okay?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.”
The two men let go. Both looked down at the sleeping Anya.
> “They won’t let anyone under eighteen in Ingrid’s room,” Robert explained.
“So Sam is…?”
“He and Yvonne are in with her, yeah. Room seven-one-seven.”
Robert glanced a who’s-this toward Elena Ramirez. Simon figured that she could explain, so he patted Robert’s shoulder, thanked him, and headed toward room 717. Cornelius had stayed at home. There was nothing more for him to do—he had done more than enough already—and he felt as though his time might be better used if he stayed in Mott Haven as “eyes on the ground.”
“But if you need me…” Cornelius had added, as they exchanged phone information.
Simon opened the door to Ingrid’s room. The sounds got to him first. Those damn beeping machines and sucking sounds and whatever other goddamn clanks signal the direct opposite of warmth and care.
His son, his beautiful eighteen-year-old boy, Sam, sat in the chair next to his mother’s bed. He turned toward his father, his face soaked from tears. Sam was always an emotional child, what Ingrid lovingly called “an easy cry.” Like his father. When Simon’s mother died three years ago, Sam had cried for hours straight, with zero letup, just sobbing and sobbing, and Simon couldn’t believe that the boy could do this, just keep sobbing full throttle, without passing out from sheer exhaustion.
You couldn’t comfort Sam when he was like that. As emotional as he could be, physical contact of any kind made it worse. He needed to be alone, he’d tell them. If you tried to stop him or comfort him in any way, it backfired. Even as a small child, Sam would look up through pleading eyes and say, “Just let me get it out, okay?”
Yvonne stood by the window. She gave Simon a half-hearted smile.
Simon crossed the room. He put a hand on his son’s shoulder and bent down to kiss his wife’s cheek. Ingrid looked worse to him, colorless, fading, like this whole thing was one of those scenes in a movie where Death is battling Life and right now Death had the upper hand.
He felt a hand reach into his chest and twist his heart.
He looked back over at Yvonne and signaled with a glance toward the door that he needed her to leave. Yvonne got the message right away. Without another word she slipped out of the room. Simon grabbed a chair and pulled it up next to Sam. Sam wore a red T-shirt with a Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce logo on it. Sam loved logo tees. Ingrid had bought it for him two weeks ago after Sam had told them that the food at college was okay but he had discovered that putting Sriracha sauce on everything made it better. Ingrid had dutifully gone online, found a Sriracha T-shirt, and shipped it up to him.
“You okay?”
Which was a dumb thing for Simon to say, but what else? Silent tears still cascaded down his son’s face and when Simon said those two words, Sam’s face tightened as though holding back a fresh surge. Sam was so happy up at Amherst. Where Paige had been slightly homesick at college—why the hell hadn’t they paid more attention to that? why had they listened to everyone’s unsolicited advice to give it time and not be so available to her?—Sam took to freshman campus life immediately. Everyone new that he encountered was the coolest person in the whole world. His roommate, Carlos, a slacker dude from Austin who sported a soul patch, was even cooler than that. Sam right away signed up for clubs and intramural sports and academic groups.
Ingrid would probably be annoyed that Simon had snatched him away from all that.
Sam kept his eyes on his mother. “What happened?”
“What did your aunt and uncle tell you?”
“Just that Mom had been shot. They said I’d have to wait for you.”
Yvonne and Robert had done the right thing yet again. “You know who Aaron is, right?”
“That guy Paige…”
“Yes. He was murdered.”
Sam blinked.
“And Paige has disappeared.”
“I don’t understand.”
“They lived together in the Bronx. Your mom and I went down to see if we could find her. That’s when she got shot.”
He filled his son in on the details, not stopping, not taking a breath, not letting up even when Sam started to go pale and his blinking got worse.
At some point, Sam said, “Do you think Paige did it? Do you think she killed Aaron?”
That stopped Simon cold. “Why would you ask that?”
Sam just shrugged.
“I need to ask you something, Sam.”
Sam’s eyes wandered back to his mother’s face.
“Have you seen Paige recently?”
He didn’t reply.
“Sam, it’s important.”
“Yes,” he said in a soft voice. “I saw her.”
“When?”
He wouldn’t take his eyes off his mother. “Sam?”
“Two weeks ago maybe.”
That made no sense. Sam was at school two weeks ago. There had been one break in the school year, but he was having so much fun on campus he didn’t want to leave. Unless that was a lie. Unless he really didn’t love school or damned Sriracha hot sauce or Carlos or the intramural sports or any of that.
“Where?” Simon asked.
“She came to Amherst.”
That stunned him again. “Paige came to your campus?”
He nodded. “Peter Pan Bus Lines. It’s twenty-four dollars from Port Authority.”
“Did she come up alone?”
He nodded.
“Did you know she was coming up?”
“No. She didn’t tell me. She just…showed up.”
Simon tried to envision this—that catalogue-picture-ready college quad with healthy-looking students playing Frisbee or lounging with their books in the sun being infiltrated by one who would have belonged there as much as any of them a year ago but who was now a horrible warning, like that wrecked car a police station keeps around to teach kids not to drink and drive.
Unless, again unless…
“How did she look?” Simon asked.
“The same as in that video.”
The words stomped out his small flame of hope.
“Did she tell you why she came up?”
“She said she needed to get away from Aaron.”
“Did she tell you why?”
Sam shook his head.
“So what happened?”
“She asked if she could crash with me for a few days.”
“You didn’t tell us?”
His eyes stayed on Ingrid. “She asked me not to.”
Simon wanted to say something more about that, about not trusting his parents, but now was not the time. “Your roommate didn’t mind her staying?”
“Carlos? He thought it would be cool. Like she was some school project to help the underserved or something.”
“How long did she stay?”
His voice was soft. “Not very.”
“How long, Sam?”
The tears started pushing through his eyes again.
“Sam?”
“Long enough to clean us out,” he said. The tears came, flowing down, but his voice remained clear. “Paige slept on Carlos’s blow-up mattress on the floor. We all fell asleep. When we woke up, she was gone. So was our stuff.”
“What did she take?”
“Our wallets. Our laptops. Carlos had a diamond stud.”
“How could you not have told me?”
He hated the irritation in his voice.
“Sam?”
He didn’t reply.
“Did Carlos tell his parents?”
“No. I had some money. I’m trying to make him whole.”
“Tell me how much and we’ll make him whole now. And what about you?”
“I called your office,” Sam said. “I told Emily I lost the credit card. She sent me another.”
Simon recalled that now. He hadn’t thought twice about it. Visa cards were lost or stolen all the time.
“I’m using the computers in the library for now. It’s not a big deal.”
“How could you not tell me?”
Which a
gain was dumb to harp on, but he couldn’t stop himself.
His son’s face collapsed. “It’s my fault,” Sam said.
“What? No.”
“If I had told you—”
“Nothing, Sam. It wouldn’t have changed a thing.”
“Is Mom going to die?”
“No.”
“You don’t know that.”
Which was true enough.
He didn’t protest or say any more lies. No point. The lies would aggravate rather than comfort. He glanced toward the door. Yvonne watched them from the little window in the door. Simon went over and again, when you’re this close to someone, when you spend as much time together as he and Yvonne, you just read their mind.
So Simon left the room, and Yvonne took over.
He found Elena Ramirez playing with her phone at the end of the corridor.
“Tell me,” she said.
He did.
“So that explains Paige using the laptop,” Elena said.
“So what now?” Simon asked.
Elena actually managed a smile. “You think we’re a team?”
“I think we can help each other.”
“I agree. I think we need to find the connections.” Elena played with her phone some more. “I’m sending you the details on Aaron’s family. They are having some kind of memorial service for him in the morning. Maybe you should be there. Maybe Paige will show. Look for someone hiding nearby. If not, talk to the family. See if you can figure out how Aaron might know Henry Thorpe.”
“Okay,” Simon said. “What will you be doing?”
“Visiting someone else Henry Thorpe contacted.”
“Who?”
“Don’t have a name,” Elena said. “Only a location.”
“Where?”
“A tattoo parlor in New Jersey.”
Chapter
Fifteen
The Corval Inn and Family Tree Farm was located in far east Connecticut, near the Rhode Island border. Simon arrived at eight thirty a.m. The memorial service for Aaron, according to Elena Ramirez, was to start at nine.
The inn was a white Federal-style farmhouse with tasteful additions on both sides. Green wicker rocking chairs lined the wraparound porch. A sign read FAMILY OWNED SINCE 1893. Pure New England postcard. On the right, a bus let out tourists for hayrides. The barn in the back was a “Rootin’ Tootin’ Petting Zoo” promising “petting interactions” with goats, sheep, alpacas, and chickens, though Simon wondered how specifically you went about petting a chicken.
