by Harlan Coben
“The reason I never pushed Jack? It had nothing to do with respecting privacy.”
“Then what?”
“I loved him. I loved him more than any man I’d ever met . . .”
“I feel a ‘but’ coming here.”
Grace felt the tears press against her eyes. “But it all felt so fragile. Does that make sense? When I was with him—this is going to sound so stupid—but when I was with Jack, it was the first time I was happy since, I don’t know, since my father died.”
“You’ve had a lot of pain in your life,” Cora said.
Grace did not reply.
“You were scared it would go away. You didn’t want to open yourself up to more.”
“So I chose ignorance?”
“Hey, ignorance is supposed to be bliss, right?”
“You buy that?”
Cora shrugged. “If I never checked up on Adolf, he probably would have had his fling and gotten over it. Maybe I’d be living with the man I love.”
“You could still take him back.”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
Cora thought about it. “I need the ignorance, I guess.” She picked up her glass and took a long sip.
The printer finished whirring. Grace picked up the sheets and started examining them. Most of the phone numbers she knew. Point of fact, she knew almost all of them.
But one immediately jumped out at her.
“Where’s six-oh-three area code?” Grace asked.
“Beats me. Which call?”
Grace showed her on the monitor. Cora moved the cursor over it.
“What are you doing?” Grace asked.
“You click the number, they tell you who called.”
“For real?”
“Man, what century do you live in? They have talkies now.”
“So all you have to do is click the link?”
“And it’ll tell all. Unless the number is unlisted.”
Cora clicked the left mouse button. A box appeared saying:
NO RECORD OF THAT NUMBER.
“There you go. Unlisted.”
Grace checked her watch. “It’s only nine-thirty,” she said. “Not too late to call.”
“Under the missing-husband rule, no, not too late at all.”
Grace picked up the phone and inputted the number. A piercing feedback, not unlike the one at the Rapture concert, slapped her eardrum. Then: “The number you have called”—the robotic voice stated the number—“has been disconnected. No further information is available.”
Grace frowned.
“What?”
“When was the last time Jack called it?”
Cora checked. “Three weeks ago. He talked for eighteen minutes.”
“It’s disconnected.”
“Hmm, six-oh-three area code,” Cora said, moving to another Web site. She typed in “603 area code” and hit the enter button. The answer came right up. “It’s in New Hampshire. Hold on, let’s Google it.”
“Google what? New Hampshire?”
“The phone number.”
“What will that do?”
“Your number is unlisted, right?”
“Right.”
“Hold on, let me show you something. This doesn’t work every time, but watch.” Cora typed Grace’s phone number into the search engine. “What it will do is search the entire Web for those numbers in a row. Not just phone directories. That won’t do it because, like you said, your number is unlisted. But . . .”
Cora hit return. There was one search hit. The site was for an art prize offered at Brandeis University, her alma mater. Cora clicked the link. Grace’s name and number came up. “You were judging some painting award?”
Grace nodded. “They were giving out an art scholarship.”
“Yep, there you are. Your name, address, and phone number with other judges. You must have given it to them.”
Grace shook her head.
“Throw away your eight-tracks and welcome to the Information Age,” Cora said. “And now that I know your name, I can do a million different searches. Your gallery Web page will come up. Where you went to college. Whatever. Now let’s try with this six-oh-three number. . . .”
Cora’s fingers flew again. She hit return. “Hold on. We got something.” She squinted at the screen. “Bob Dodd.”
“Bob?”
“Yes. Not Robert. Bob.” Cora looked back at Grace. “Is the name familiar?”
“No.”
“The address is a PO box in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. You ever been?”
“No.”
“How about Jack?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, he went to college in Vermont, so he might have visited New Hampshire, but we’ve never been there together.”
There was a sound from upstairs. Max cried out in his sleep.
“Go,” Cora said. “I’ll see what I can dig up on our friend Mr. Dodd.”
As Grace headed up toward her son’s bedroom, another pang struck deep in her chest: Jack was the house’s night sentinel. He handled nightmares and nocturnal requests for water. He was the one who held the kid’s foreheads at 3 A.M. when they woke up to, er, throw up. During the day, Grace took care of the sniffles, the taking of the temperatures, the heating of chicken soup, the forcing down of Robitussin. The night shift was Jack’s.
Max was sobbing when she reached his room. His cries were soft now, more a whimper, and somehow that was more pitiful than the loudest of screams. Grace wrapped her arms around him. His little body was shaking. She rocked back and forth and gently shushed him. She whispered that Mommy was here, that everything was okay, that he was safe.
It took Max a while to settle. Grace brought him to the bathroom. Even though Max was barely six, he peed like a man—that is to say, he missed the bowl entirely. He swayed, falling back asleep as he stood. When he finished, she helped him pull up his Finding Nemo pajamas. She tucked him back in and asked if he wanted to tell her about his dream. He shook his head and fell back asleep.
Grace watched his little chest rise and fall. He looked very much like his father.
After a while she headed back downstairs. There was no sound. Cora was no longer clacking the keyboard. Grace entered the office. The chair was empty. Cora stood in the corner. She gripped the wineglass.
“Cora?”
“I know why Bob Dodd’s phone was disconnected.”
There was a tightness in Cora’s voice, one Grace had never heard. She waited for her friend to continue, but she seemed to be shrinking into the corner.
“What happened?” Grace asked.
Cora downed a quick sip. “According to an article in the New Hampshire Post, Bob Dodd is dead. He was murdered two weeks ago.”
chapter 16
Eric Wu stepped inside the Sykes house.
The house was dark. Wu had left all the lights out. The intruder—whoever had taken the key out of the rock—had not turned them on. Wu wondered about that.
He had assumed the intruder was the nosey woman in the lingerie. Would she be smart enough to know not to turn the lights on?
He stopped. More than that: If you have the forethought not to turn on the lights, wouldn’t you have the foresight not to leave the hide-a-key in plain sight?
Something did not add up.
Wu lowered himself and moved behind the recliner. He stopped and listened. Nothing. If someone was in the house, he would hear them move. He waited some more.
Still nothing.
Wu mulled it over. Could the intruder have come and gone?
He doubted it. A person who would take the risk of entering with a hidden key would look around. They would probably find Freddy Sykes in the upstairs bathroom. They would call for help. Or if they left, if they found nothing amiss, they would have put the key back in the rock. None of that had happened.
What then was the most logical conclusion?
The intruder was still in the house. Not moving. Hiding.
Wu t
readed gently. There were three exits. He made sure all the doors were locked. Two doors had bolt locks. He carefully slid them into place. He took the dining room chairs and placed them in front of all three exits. He wanted something, anything, to block or at least slow down an easy escape.
Trap his adversary.
The stairway was carpeted. That made it easier to pad up in silence. Wu wanted to check the bathroom, to see if Freddy Sykes was still in the tub. He thought again about the hide-a-key in plain sight. Nothing about this setup made sense. The more he thought about it, the slower his step.
Wu tried to think it through. Start from the beginning: A person who knows where Sykes keeps a hide-a-key opens the door. He or she comes inside. Now what? If he finds Sykes, panic would ensue. He would call the police. If he doesn’t find Sykes, well, he leaves. He puts the key back in the rock and puts the rock away.
But neither one of those things had happened.
So again, what could Wu conclude?
The only other possibility that came to mind—unless he was missing something—was that the intruder had indeed found Sykes, just as Wu entered the house. There had been no time to call for help. There had only been time to hide.
But that scenario had problems too. Wouldn’t the intruder have turned on a light? Perhaps she had. Perhaps she had turned on the light, but then she saw Wu approach. She might have turned off the lights and hidden where she was.
In the bathroom with Sykes.
Wu was in the master bedroom now. He could see the crack under the bathroom door. The light was still off. Do not underestimate your foe, he reminded himself. He had made mistakes recently. Too many of them. First, Rocky Conwell. Wu had been sloppy enough to allow him to follow. That had been mistake one. Second, Wu had been spotted by the woman next door. Sloppy.
And now this.
It was tough to look at yourself critically, but Wu tried to step away and do just that. He was not infallible. Only fools believe that. Perhaps his time in prison had rusted him somehow. Didn’t matter. Wu needed to focus now. He needed to concentrate.
There were more photographs in Sykes’s bedroom. This had been Freddy’s mother’s room for fifty years. Wu knew that from his online encounters. Sykes’s father had died during the Korean War. Sykes had been an infant. The mother had never gotten over it. People react differently to the death of a loved one. Mrs. Sykes had decided to dwell with her ghost instead of the living. She spent the rest of her life in this same bedroom—in the same bed even—that she’d shared with her soldier husband. She slept on her side, Freddy said. She never let anyone, not even when young Freddy had a nightmare, touch the side of the bed where her beloved had once lain.
Wu’s hand was on the doorknob now.
The bathroom, he knew, was small. He tried to picture an angle someone might use to attack. There really was none. Wu had a gun in his duffel bag. He wondered if he should take it out. If the intruder was armed, then it could be a problem.
Overconfident? Maybe. But Wu didn’t think he’d need a weapon.
He turned the knob and pushed hard.
Freddy Sykes was still in the tub. The gag was in his mouth. His eyes were closed. Wu wondered if Freddy was dead. Probably. No one else was here. There was no place to hide. Nobody had come to Freddy’s rescue.
Wu moved toward the window. He looked out at the house now, at the house next door.
The woman—the one who’d been in the lingerie—was there.
In her house. Standing by the window.
She stared back at him.
That was when Wu heard the car door slam. There was no siren, but now, as he turned toward the driveway, he could see the red cruiser lights.
The police were here.
• • •
Charlaine Swain was not crazy.
She watched movies. She read books. Lots of them. Escapism, she had thought. Entertainment. A way to numb the boredom every day. But maybe these movies and books were oddly educational. How many times had she shouted at the plucky heroine—the oh-so-guileless, witch-skinny, raven-haired beauty—not to go into that damned house?
Too many. So now, when it had been her turn . . . uh-uh, no way. Charlaine Swain was not about to make that mistake.
She had stood in front of Freddy’s back door staring at that hide-a-key. She couldn’t go inside per her movie and book training, but she couldn’t just leave it alone either. Something was wrong. A man was in trouble. You can’t just walk away from that.
So she came up with an idea.
It was simple really. She took the key out of the rock. It was in her pocket now. She left the hide-a-key in plain view, not because she wanted the Asian guy to see it, but because that would be her excuse for calling the police.
The moment the Asian guy entered Freddy’s house, she dialed 911. “Someone is in the neighbor’s house,” she told them. The clincher: The hide-a-key was strewn on the walkway.
Now the police were here.
One cruiser had made the turn onto her block. The siren was silent. The car was not speeding bat-out-of-hell style, just moving at a clip solidly above the speed limit. Charlaine risked a look back at Freddy’s house.
The Asian man was watching her.
chapter 17
Grace stared at the headline. “He was murdered?” Cora nodded.
“How?”
“Bob Dodd was shot in the head in front of his wife. Gangland style, they called it, whatever that means.”
“They catch who did it?”
“Nope.”
“When?”
“When was he murdered?”
“Yeah, when?”
“Four days after Jack called him.”
Cora moved back toward the computer. Grace considered the date.
“It couldn’t have been Jack.”
“Uh huh.”
“It would be impossible. Jack hasn’t traveled out of the state in more than a month.”
“You say so.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, Grace. I’m on your side, okay? I don’t think Jack killed anybody either, but c’mon, let’s get a grip here.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning stop with the ‘hasn’t traveled out of state’ nonsense. New Hampshire is hardly California. You can drive up in four hours. You can fly up in one.”
Grace rubbed her eyes.
“Something else,” Cora went on. “I know why he’s listed as Bob, not Robert.”
“Why?”
“He’s a reporter. That’s his byline. Bob Dodd. Google listed one hundred and twenty-six hits on his name over the past three years for the New Hampshire Post. The obituary called him—where’s the line?—‘a hard-nosed investigative reporter, famous for his controversial exposés’—like the New Hampshire mob rubbed him out to keep him quiet.”
“And you don’t think that’s the case?”
“Who knows? But skimming through his articles, I’d say Bob Dodd was more like an ‘On Your Side’ reporter, you know—he finds dishwasher repairmen scamming old ladies, wedding photographers who bail out with the deposit, that sorta thing.”
“He could have pissed someone off.”
Cora’s tone was flat. “Yup, could have. And, what, you think it’s a coincidence—Jack calling the guy before he died?”
“No, there’s no coincidence here.” Grace tried to process what she was hearing. “Hold up.”
“What?”
“That photograph. There were five people in it. Two women, three men. This is a long shot. . . .”
Cora was already typing. “But maybe Bob Dodd is one of them?”
“There are image search engines, right?”
“Already there.”
Her fingers flew, her cursor pointed, her mouse slid. There were two pages, a total of twelve picture hits for Bob Dodd. The first page featured a hunter with the same name living out in Wisconsin. On the second page—the eleventh hit—they found a table photograph t
aken at a charity function in Bristol, New Hampshire.
Bob Dodd, a reporter for the New Hampshire Post, was the first face on the left.
They didn’t need to study it closely. Bob Dodd was African-American. Everyone in the mystery photograph was white.
Grace frowned. “There still has to be a connection.”
“Let me see if I can dig up a bio on him. Maybe they went to college together or something.”
There was a gentle rapping at the front door. Grace and Cora looked at each other. “Late,” Cora said.
The knocking came again, still soft. There was a doorbell. Whoever was there had chosen not to use it. Must know she had kids. Grace rose and Cora followed. At the door she flicked on the outside light and peered out the window on the side of the door. She should have been more surprised, but Grace guessed that maybe she was beyond that.
“Who’s that?” Cora asked.
“The man who changed my life,” Grace said softly.
She opened the door. Jimmy X stood on the stoop looking down.
• • •
Wu had to smile.
That woman. As soon as he saw those siren lights, he put it together. Her ingenuity was both admirable and grating.
No time for that.
What to do . . . ?
Jack Lawson was tied up in the trunk. Wu realized now that he should have fled the moment he saw that hide-a-key. Another mistake. How many more could he afford?
Minimize the damage. That was the key here. There was no way to prevent it all—the damage, that is. He would be hurt here. It would cost him. His fingerprints were in the house. The woman next door had probably already given the police a description. Sykes, alive or dead, would be found. There was nothing he could do about that either.
Conclusion: If he was caught, he would go to jail for a very long time.
The police cruiser pulled into the driveway.
Wu snapped into survival mode. He hurried downstairs. Through the window he saw the cruiser glide to a stop. It was dark out now, but the street was well lit. A tall black man in full uniform came out. He put on his police cap. His gun remained in his holster.
That was good.
The black police officer was barely on the walk when Wu opened the front door and smiled widely. “Something I can do for you, Officer?”
