by Harlan Coben
But how did it work? Nothing about it made sense.
She ran it through one more time. Her husband plays in a band. One time the band plays at the same time as a band featuring Jimmy X. A year or two later—depending on if Jack had been a senior or a year postgrad—the now famous Jimmy X plays a concert that she, young Grace Sharpe, attends. She gets injured in a melee that night. Another three years pass. She meets Jack Lawson on an entirely different continent and they fall in love.
It didn’t mesh.
The elevator dinged on the ground level. Cram said, “You sure you’re okay?”
“Groovy,” she said.
“Still twenty minutes until the press conference begins. I figured it would be better if you went alone, try to grab your sister-in-law beforehand.”
“You’re a fount of ideas, Cram.”
The doors opened. “Third floor,” he said. Grace stepped inside and let the elevator swallow her whole. She was alone. There would not be much time. She took out her cell phone and the card Jimmy X had given her. She pressed in the number and hit send. It went immediately into his voice mail. Grace waited for the beep:
“I know about Still Night playing with Allaw. Call me.”
She left her number and hung up. The elevator came to a stop. When she stepped off, there was one of those black signs with the changeable white letters, the kind that tell you in what room the Ratzenberg’s bar mitzvah or Smith-Jones wedding is being held. This one read: “Burton-Crimstein Press Conference.” Advertising the firm. She followed the arrow to a door, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.
The whole thing was like one of those courthouse movie scenes—that pinnacle cinematic moment when the surprise witness bursts through the double doors. When Grace walked in, there was that sort of collective gasp. The room hushed. Grace felt lost. She glanced around and what she saw made her head spin. She took a step back. The faces of grief, older but no more at peace, swirled about her. There they were again—the Garrisons, the Reeds, the Weiders. She flashed back to the early days at the hospital. She had seen everything through the haze of Halcion, as if through a shower curtain. It felt the same today. They approached in silence. They hugged her. None of them said a word. They didn’t have to. Grace accepted the embraces. She could still feel the sadness emanating from them.
She saw the widow of Lieutenant Gordon MacKenzie. Some said that he had been responsible for pulling Grace to safety. Like most true heroes, Gordon MacKenzie rarely talked about it. He claimed not to remember what he did exactly, that yes, he opened doors and pulled people out, but that it was more out of reaction than anything approaching bravery.
Grace gave Mrs. MacKenzie an extra long hug.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Grace said.
“He found God.” Mrs. MacKenzie held on. “He’s with Him now.”
There was really nothing to say to that, so Grace just nodded. She let her go and looked over the woman’s shoulder. Sandra Koval had entered the room from the other side. She spotted Grace at almost the same moment and a strange thing happened. Her sister-in-law smiled, almost as if she’d expected this. Grace stepped away from Mrs. MacKenzie. Sandra tilted her head, signaling her to step forward. There was a velvet rope. A security guard stepped in her way.
“It’s okay, Frank,” Sandra said. He let Grace pass.
Sandra led the way. She hurried down a corridor. Grace limped behind, unable to catch up. No matter. Sandra stopped and opened a door. They stepped into a huge ballroom. Waiters busily laid out the silverware. Sandra led her to a corner. She grabbed two chairs and turned them so that they faced each other.
“You don’t seem surprised to see me,” Grace said.
Sandra shrugged. “I figured you were following the case in the news.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Doesn’t matter, I guess. Until two days ago you didn’t know who I was.”
“What’s going on, Sandra?”
She did not answer right away. The tinkling of the silverware provided background music. Sandra let her gaze wander toward the waiters in the center room.
“Why are you representing Wade Larue?”
“He was charged with a crime. I’m a criminal defense lawyer. It’s what I do.”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“You want to know how I stumbled upon this particular client, is that it?”
Grace said nothing.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.”
“You, Grace.” She smiled. “You’re the reason I represent Mr. Larue.”
Grace opened her mouth, closed it, started again. “What are you talking about?”
“You never really knew about me. You just knew that Jack had a sister. But I knew all about you.”
“I’m still not following.”
“It’s simple, Grace. You married my brother.”
“So?”
“When I learned you were going to be my sister-in-law, I was curious. I wanted to learn about you. Makes sense, right? So I had one of my investigators do a background check. Your paintings are wonderful, by the way. I bought two. Anonymously. They’re in my home out in Los Angeles. Spectacular stuff, really. My older daughter, Karen—she’s seventeen—loves them. She wants to be an artist.”
“I don’t see what this has to do with Wade Larue.”
“Really?” Her voice was strangely cheerful. “I’ve worked criminal defense since I graduated law school. I started by working with Burton and Crimstein in Boston. I lived there, Grace. I knew all about the Boston Massacre. And now my brother had fallen in love with one of the Massacre’s major players. It piqued my curiosity even more. I started reading up on the case—and guess what I realized?”
“What?”
“That Wade Larue had been railroaded by an incompetent lawyer.”
“Wade Larue was responsible for the death of eighteen people.”
“He fired a gun, Grace. He didn’t even hit anyone. The lights went out. People were screaming. He was under the influence of drugs and alcohol. He panicked. He believed—or at least, honestly imagined—that he was in imminent danger. There was no way, no way at all, that he could have known what the outcome would be. His first lawyer should have cut a deal. Probation, eighteen months away tops. But no one really wanted to work this case. Larue was sent to jail to rot. So yes, Grace, I read about him because of you. Wade Larue had been shafted. His old attorney screwed him and ran.”
“So you took the case?”
Sandra Koval nodded. “Pro bono. I came to him two years ago. We started preparing for the parole hearing.”
Something clicked. “Jack knew, didn’t he?”
“That I don’t know. We don’t talk, Grace.”
“Are you still going to tell me you didn’t talk to him that night? Nine minutes, Sandra. The phone company says the call lasted nine minutes.”
“Jack’s call had nothing to do with Wade Larue.”
“What did it have to do with?”
“That photograph.”
“What about it?”
Sandra leaned forward. “First you answer a question for me. And I need the truth here. Where did you get that picture?”
“I told you. It was in my packet of film.”
Sandra shook her head, not believing her. “And you think the guy from Photomat stuck it in there?”
“I don’t know anymore. But you still haven’t explained—what about the picture made him call you?”
Sandra hesitated.
“I know about Geri Duncan,” Grace said.
“You know what about Geri Duncan?”
“That she’s the girl in the picture. And that she was murdered.”
That made Sandra sit up. “She died in a fire. It was an accident.”
Grace shook her head. “It was set intentionally.”
“Who told you that?”
“Her brother.”
“Wait, how do you know her brother?”
“She wa
s pregnant, you know. Geri Duncan. When she died in that fire, she was carrying a baby.”
Sandra stopped and looked up in horror. “Grace, what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to find my husband.”
“And you think this is helping?”
“You told me yesterday you didn’t know anyone in the picture. But you just admitted you knew Geri Duncan, that she died in a fire.”
Sandra closed her eyes.
“Did you know Shane Alworth or Sheila Lambert?”
Her voice was soft. “Not really, no.”
“Not really. So their names are not totally unfamiliar to you?”
“Shane Alworth was a classmate of Jack’s. Sheila Lambert, I think, was a friend from a sister college or something. So what?”
“Did you know that the four of them played together in a band?”
“For a month maybe. Again so what?”
“The fifth person in the picture. The one with her head turned. Do you know who she is?”
“No.”
“Is it you, Sandra?”
She looked up at Grace. “Me?”
“Yes. Is it you?”
There was a funny look on Sandra’s face now. “No, Grace, it’s not me.”
“Did Jack kill Geri Duncan?”
The words just came out. Sandra’s eyes opened as if she’d been slapped. “Are you out of your mind?”
“I want the truth.”
“Jack had nothing to do with her death. He was overseas already.”
“So why did the picture freak him out?”
She hesitated.
“Why, dammit?”
“Because he didn’t know Geri was dead until then.”
Grace looked confused. “Were they lovers?”
“Lovers,” she repeated, as if she’d never heard the word before. “That’s a pretty mature term for what they were.”
“Wasn’t she dating Shane Alworth?”
“I guess. But they were all just kids.”
“Jack was fooling around with his friend’s girlfriend?”
“I don’t know how friendly Jack and Shane were. But yes, Jack slept with her.”
Grace’s head began to whirl. “And Geri Duncan got pregnant.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“But you know she’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“And you know Jack ran away.”
“Before she died.”
“Before she was pregnant?”
“I just told you. I never knew she was pregnant.”
“And Shane Alworth and Sheila Lambert, they’re both missing too. You want to tell me it’s all a coincidence, Sandra?”
“I don’t know.”
“So what did Jack say when he called you?”
She let loose a deep sigh. Her head dropped. She was silent for a while.
“Sandra?”
“Look, that picture has to be, what, fifteen, sixteen years old? When you just gave it to him like that, out of the blue . . . how did you think he’d react? With Geri’s face crossed out. So Jack went to the computer. He did a Web search—I think he used the Boston Globe’s archives. He found out she’s been dead this whole time. That was why he called me. He wanted to know what happened to her. I told him.”
“Told him what?”
“What I knew. That she died in a fire.”
“Why would that make Jack run out?”
“That I don’t know.”
“What made him run overseas in the first place?”
“You have to let this go.”
“What happened to them, Sandra?”
She shook her head. “Forget the fact that I’m his attorney and that it’s protected. It is simply not my place. He’s my brother.”
Grace reached out and took Sandra’s hands in hers. “I think he’s in trouble.”
“Then what I know can’t help him.”
“They threatened my children today.”
Sandra closed her eyes.
“Did you hear what I said?”
A man in a business suit leaned into the room. He said, “It’s time, Sandra.” She nodded and thanked him. Sandra pulled her hands away, stood, smoothed out the lines of her suit.
“You have to stop this, Grace. You have to go home now. You have to protect your family. It’s what Jack would want you to do.”
chapter 38
The threat at the supermarket had not taken.
Wu was not surprised. He had been raised in an environment that stressed the power of men and the subordination of women, but Wu had always found it to be more hope than truth. Women were harder. They were more unpredictable. They handled physical pain better—he knew this from personal experience. When it came to protecting their loved ones, they were far more ruthless. Men would sacrifice themselves out of machismo or stupidity or the blind belief that they would be victorious. Women would sacrifice themselves without self-deception.
He had not been in favor of making the threat in the first place. Threats left enemies and uncertainty. Eliminating Grace Lawson earlier would have been routine. Eliminating her now would be riskier.
Wu would have to return and handle the job himself.
He was in Beatrice Smith’s shower, dyeing his hair back to its original color. Wu usually wore it bleached blond. He did this for two reasons. The first reason was basic: He liked the way it looked. Vanity, perhaps, but when Wu looked in the mirror he thought the surfer-blond, gel-spiked style worked on him. Reason two, the color—a garish yellow—was useful because it was what most people remembered. When he brought his hair back to its natural state of everyday Asian-black, flattened it down, when he changed his clothes from the modern hip style to something more conservative, donned a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles, well, the transformation was very effective.
He grabbed Jack Lawson and dragged him down into the basement. Lawson did not resist. He was barely conscious. He was not doing well. His mind, already stretched, had perhaps snapped. He would not survive much longer.
The basement was unfinished and damp. Wu remembered the last time he’d been in a similar setting, out in San Mateo, California. The instructions had been specific. He had been hired to torture a man for exactly eight hours—why eight Wu had never learned—and then break bones in both the man’s legs and arms. Wu had manipulated the broken bones so that the jagged edges sat next to nerve bundles or near the surface of the skin. Any movement, even the slightest, would cause excruciating pain. Wu locked the basement and left the man by himself. He checked up on him once a day. The man would plead, but Wu would just stare silently. It took eleven days for the man to die of starvation.
Wu found a strong pipe and chained Lawson to it. He also cuffed his arms behind his back around a support wall. He put the gag back into his mouth.
Then he decided to test the binds.
“You should have gotten every copy of that photograph,” Wu whispered.
Jack Lawson’s eyes rolled up.
“Now I’ll have to pay your wife a visit.”
Their gazes locked. A second passed, no more, and then Lawson sprang to life. He began to flail. Wu watched him. Yes, this would be a good test. Lawson struggled for several minutes, a fish dying on the line. Nothing gave way.
Wu left him alone then, still fighting his chains, to find Grace Lawson.
chapter 39
Grace did not want to stay for the press conference.
Being in the same room with all these mourners . . . She didn’t like to use the term “aura,” but it seemed to fit. The room had a bad aura. Shattered eyes stared at her with a yearning that was palpable. Grace understood, of course. She was no longer the conduit to their lost children—too much time had passed for that. Now she was the survivor. She was there, alive and breathing, while their children rotted in the grave. On the surface there was still affection, but beneath that Grace could feel rage at the unfairness of it all. She had lived—their children had not. The years had offer
ed no reprieve. Now that Grace had children of her own, she understood in a way that would have been impossible fifteen years ago.
She was about to slide out the back door when a hand took firm hold of her wrist. She turned and saw it was Carl Vespa.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“Home.”
“I’ll give you a ride.”
“That’s okay. I can hire a car.”
His hand, still on her wrist, tightened for a brief moment and again Grace thought she saw something detonate behind his eyes. “Stay,” he said.
It was not a request. She searched his face, but it was oddly calm. Too calm. His demeanor—so off with the surroundings, so different from the flash of fury she’d seen last night—frightened her anew. Was this really the man she was trusting with her children’s lives?
She sat next to him and watched Sandra Koval and Wade Larue take to the podium. Sandra pulled the microphone closer and started up with the standard clichés about forgiveness and starting over and rehabilitation. Grace watched the faces around her shut down. Some cried. Some pursed their lips. Some visibly shook.
Carl Vespa did none of that.
He crossed his legs and leaned back. He surveyed the proceedings with a casualness that scared her more than the worst scowl. Five minutes into Sandra Koval’s statement, Vespa’s eyes shifted toward Grace. He saw that she’d been watching him. Then he did something that made her shiver.
He winked at her.
“Come on,” he whispered. “Let’s get out of here.”
With Sandra still talking, Carl Vespa rose and headed for the door. Heads turned and there was a brief hush. Grace followed. They took the elevator down in silence. The limousine was right out front. The big burly guy was in the driver’s seat.
“Where’s Cram?” Grace asked.
“On an errand,” Vespa said, and Grace thought she saw the trace of a smile. “Tell me about your meeting with Ms. Koval.”
Grace recounted her conversation with her sister-in-law. Vespa stayed silent, gazing out the window, his index finger gently tapping his chin. When she finished, he asked, “Is that everything?”
