by Harlan Coben
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
She did not like the lilt in his tone.
“What about your recent”—Vespa looked up, scanning for the word—“visitor?”
“You mean Scott Duncan?”
Vespa had the oddest grin. “You are aware, of course, that Scott Duncan works for the U.S. attorney’s office.”
“Used to,” she corrected.
“Yes, used to.” His voice was too relaxed. “What did he want with you?”
“I told you.”
“Did you?” He shifted in his chair, but he still did not face her. “Did you tell me everything?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just a question. Was this Mr. Duncan your only recent visitor?”
Grace did not like how this was going. She hesitated.
“Nobody else you’d like to tell me about?” he continued.
She tried to search his face for a clue, but he kept it turned away from her. What was he talking about? She mulled it over, replayed the past few days . . .
Jimmy X?
Could Vespa somehow know about Jimmy stopping by after his concert? It was possible, of course. He had found Jimmy in the first place—it would stand to reason that he’d have someone following him. So what should Grace do here? Would saying something now just compound the issue? Maybe he didn’t know about Jimmy. Maybe opening her mouth now would just get her in deeper trouble.
Play it vague, she thought. See where it goes. “I know I asked for your help,” she said, her tone deliberate. “But I think I’d like to handle this on my own now.”
Vespa finally turned toward her and faced her full. “Really?”
She waited.
“Why is that, Grace?”
“Truth?”
“Preferably.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“You think I’d harm you?”
“No.”
“Then?”
“I just think it might be best—”
“What did you tell him about me?”
The interruption caught her off guard. “Scott Duncan?”
“Is there anyone else you talked to about me?”
“What? No.”
“So what did you say to Scott Duncan about me?”
“Nothing.” Grace tried to think. “What could I tell him anyway?”
“Good point.” He nodded, more to himself than at Grace. “But you were never very specific on why Mr. Duncan paid you this visit.” Vespa folded his hands and put them on his lap. “I’d very much like to know the details.”
She didn’t want to tell him—didn’t want him involved anymore—but there was no way to avoid it. “It’s about his sister.”
“What about her?”
“Do you remember the girl crossed out in that picture?”
“Yes.”
“Her name was Geri Duncan. She was his sister.”
Vespa frowned. “And that’s why he came to you?”
“Yes.”
“Because his sister was in the photograph?”
“Yes.”
He sat back. “So what happened to her, this sister?”
“She died in a fire fifteen years ago.”
Vespa surprised Grace then. He didn’t ask a follow-up question. He didn’t ask for clarification. He simply turned away and stared out the window. He did not speak again until the car pulled into the driveway. Grace opened the door to get out, but there was some kind of locking system on it, like the safety lock she’d used when the kids were small, and she could not open it from the inside. The burly driver came around and took hold of the door handle. She wanted to ask Carl Vespa what he planned on doing now, if he’d indeed leave them alone, but his body language was wrong.
Calling him in the first place had been a mistake. Telling him she wanted him out of this may have compounded it.
“I’ll keep my men on until you pick up the children from school,” he said, still not facing her. “Then you’ll be on your own.”
“Thank you.”
“Grace?”
She looked back at him.
“You should never lie to me,” he said.
His voice was ice. Grace swallowed hard. She wanted to argue, to tell him that she hadn’t, but she worried that it would sound too defensive—protesting too much. So she simply nodded.
There were no good-byes. Grace headed up the walk alone. Her step teetered from something more than the limp.
What had she done?
She wondered about her next step. Her sister-in-law had said it best: Protect the children. If Grace were in Jack’s shoes, if she had gone missing for whatever reason, that would be what she’d want. Forget me, she’d tell him. Keep the children safe.
So now, like it or not, Grace was out of the rescue business. Jack was on his own.
She’d pack now. She’d wait until three o’clock, until school was let out, and then she’d pick up the children and drive to Pennsylvania. She’d find a hotel where you didn’t need a credit card. Or a B&B. Or a rooming house. Whatever. She’d call the police, maybe that Perlmutter even. She’d tell him what was going on. But first she needed her children. Once they were safe, once she had them in her car and was on the road, she’d be okay.
She reached her front door. There was a package on the step. She bent down and picked it up. The box had a New Hampshire Post logo on it. The return address read: Bobby Dodd, Sunrise Assisted Living.
It was Bob Dodd’s files.
chapter 40
Wade Larue sat next to his lawyer, Sandra Koval.
He wore brand-new clothes. The room did not smell of prison, that horrid combination of decay and disinfectant, of fat guards and urine, of stains that never come out, and that in and of itself was a strange adjustment. Prison becomes your world, getting out an impossible daydream, like imagining life on other planets. Wade Larue had gone inside at the age of twenty-two. He was now thirty-seven. That meant he had spent pretty much all his adult years inside that place. That smell, that horrid smell, was all he knew. Yes, he was still young. He had, as Sandra Koval repeated mantralike, his whole life in front of him.
It didn’t feel like that right now.
Wade Larue’s life had been ruined by a school play. Growing up in a small town in Maine everyone agreed that Wade had the acting chops. He was a crummy student. He was not much of an athlete. But he could sing and dance and, most important, he had what one local reviewer called—this after seeing Wade star as Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls sophomore year—“supernatural charisma.” Wade had that something special, that intangible that separated talented wannabes from the real deals.
Before his senior year of high school, Mr. Pearson, the high-school play director, called Wade into his office to tell him about his “impossible dream.” Mr. Pearson had always wanted to put on Man of La Mancha, but he never had a student, not until now, who could handle the role of Don Quixote. Now, for the first time, he wanted to give it a go with Wade.
But come September Mr. Pearson moved away and Mr. Arnett took over as director. He held tryouts—usually a formality for Wade Larue—but Mr. Arnett was hostile. To the shock of everyone in town he ended up picking Kenny Thomas, a total no-talent, to play Don Quixote. Kenny’s father was a bookie and Mr. Arnett, rumor had it, was into him for over twenty grand. You do the math. Wade was offered the role of the barber—one song!—and ended up quitting.
Here was how naïve Wade was: He thought that his quitting would cause a town-wide uproar. High schools are made up of types. The handsome quarterback. The basketball captain. The school president. The lead in every school play. He thought the townsfolk would rally against the injustice that had befallen him. But no one said a thing. At first, Wade figured that they were scared of Kenny’s father and his possible mob connections, but the truth was far simpler: They didn’t care. Why should they?
It is so easy to inch your way into foul territory. The line is so thin, so flim
sy. You just step over it, just for a second, and sometimes, well, sometimes you can’t make your way back. Three weeks later Wade Larue got drunk, broke into the school, and vandalized the sets for the play. He was caught by the police and suspended from school.
And so the slide began.
Wade ended up taking too many drugs, moving to Boston to help sell and distribute, grew paranoid, carried a gun. And now here he was, sitting at this podium, a famous felon blamed for the death of eighteen people.
The faces glaring up at him were familiar from his trial fifteen years ago. Wade knew most of the names. At the trial they would stare with a combination of grief and bewilderment, still woozy from the sudden blow. Wade had understood back then, sympathized even. Now, fifteen years later, the glares were more hostile. Their grief and bewilderment had crystallized into a purer cut of anger and hate. At the trial, Wade Larue had avoided the glares. But no more. He kept his head up. He met their eyes. His sympathy, his understanding, had been decimated by their lack of forgiveness. He had never meant to hurt anyone. They knew that. He had apologized. He had paid a huge price. They, these families, still chose hate.
To hell with them.
Sandra Koval waxed eloquent from the seat next to him. She spoke of apologies and forgiveness, of turning corners and transformations, of understanding and the human desire for a second chance. Larue tuned her out. He spotted Grace Lawson sitting next to Carl Vespa. He should have felt tremendous fear seeing Vespa in the flesh, but no, he was beyond that now. When Wade was first put in prison, he had been badly beaten—first by people working for Vespa and then by those hoping to curry favor. Guards included. There had been no escape from the constant fear. Fear, like the smell, had become a natural part of him, his world. Maybe that explained why he was immune to it now.
Larue eventually made friends at Walden, but prison is no character-builder, despite what Sandra Koval was now telling this audience. Prison strips you down to your barest state, the state of nature, and what you do to survive is never pretty. No matter. He was out now. That was in the past. You move on.
But not quite yet.
The room was beyond silent, a vacuuming feel, as if the very air had been sucked out of it. The families all sat there, unmoved both physically and emotionally. But there was no energy there. They were hollow entities, devastated and powerless. They could not hurt him. Not anymore.
Without warning Carl Vespa rose. For a second—no longer than that—Sandra Koval was thrown. Grace Lawson stood too. Wade Larue could not understand why they were together. It made no sense. He wondered if it changed anything, if he would soon meet Grace Lawson.
Did it matter?
When Sandra Koval finished, she leaned over to him and whispered, “Come on, Wade. You can take the back way out.”
Ten minutes later, out on the streets of Manhattan, Wade Larue was free for the first time in fifteen years.
He stared up at the skyscrapers. Times Square was his first destination. It would be noisy and crowded with people—real, live non-convicts. Larue did not want solitude. He did not crave green grass or trees—you could see those from his prison cell in the sticks of Walden. He wanted lights and sounds and people, real people, not prisoners, and yes, perhaps, the company of a good (or better, bad) woman.
But that would have to wait. Wade Larue checked his watch. It was almost time.
He started west on Forty-third Street. There was still a chance to back out of this. He was achingly close to the Port Authority bus terminal. He could hop on a bus, any bus, and start anew someplace. He could change his name, maybe his face a little, and try out for local theater. He was still young. He still had the chops. He still had that supernatural charisma.
Soon, he thought.
He needed to clear this up. Put it behind him. When he was being released, one of the prison counselors had given him the standard lecture about this being either a new start or a bad end, it was all up to him. The counselor was right. Today he would either put this all behind him or he would die. Wade doubted that there would be an in between.
Up ahead he saw a black sedan. He recognized the man leaning against the side, his arms crossed. It was the mouth you couldn’t forget, the way the teeth were all twisted together. He had been the first to beat Larue all those years ago. He wanted to know what had happened the night of the Boston Massacre. Larue had told him the truth: He didn’t know.
Now he did.
“Hey, Wade.”
“Cram.”
Cram opened the door. Wade Larue slid into the back. Five minutes later they were on the West Side Highway heading toward the endgame.
chapter 41
Eric Wu watched the limousine pull up to the Lawson residence.
A large man who looked like anything but a chauffeur stepped out of the car, pulled his jacket together hard so he could work the button, and opened the back door. Grace Lawson stepped out. She headed for her front door without saying good-bye or looking behind her. The large man watched her pick up a package and go inside. Then he got back in the car and pulled out.
Wu wondered about him, the large man. Grace Lawson, he’d been told, might have protection now. She had been threatened. Her children had been threatened. The large chauffeur was not with the police. Wu was certain of that. But he was no simple driver either.
Best to be cautious.
Keeping a good distance away, Wu began to circle the perimeter. The day was clear, the foliage bursting with green. There were many places to hide. Wu did not have binoculars—it would have made the task easier—but that was not important. He spotted one man within minutes. The man was stationed behind the detached garage. Wu crept closer. The man was communicating with a cell-phone walkie-talkie. Wu listened. He only picked up snippets, but it was enough. There was someone in the house too. Probably another man on the perimeter, on the other side of the street.
This was not good.
Wu could still handle it. He knew that. But he would have to strike fast. He would first have to know the exact location of the other perimeter man. He would take one out with his hands and one with the gun. He would need to rush the house. It could be done. There would be lots of bodies. The man inside could be tipped off. But it could be done.
Wu checked his watch. Twenty minutes until three.
He started circling back toward the street when the back door of the Lawson home opened. Grace stepped out. She had a suitcase. Wu stopped and watched. She put the suitcase in the trunk. She went back inside. She came out with another suitcase and a package—the same one, he thought, that he’d seen her pick up at the front door.
Wu hurried back to the car he was using—ironically enough, her Ford Windstar, though he’d switched license plates at the Palisades Mall and slapped on some bumper stickers to draw attention away from that fact. People remembered bumper stickers more than license plates or even makes. There was one about him being a proud parent of an honor roll student. A second, for the New York Knicks, read ONE TEAM, ONE NEW YORK.
Grace Lawson got behind the wheel of her car and started it up. Good, Wu thought. It would be much easier to grab her wherever she stopped. His instructions were clear. Find out what she knows. Get rid of the body. He put the Windstar in gear but kept his foot on the brake. He wanted to see if anyone else followed. No one pulled out after her. Wu kept his distance.
There were no other tails.
The men had been ordered to protect the house, he guessed, not her. Wu wondered about the suitcases, about where she might be headed, about how long this journey might take. He was surprised when she started taking small side streets. He was even more surprised when she pulled to a stop near a schoolyard.
Of course. It was nearing three o’clock. She was picking up her children from school.
He thought again about the suitcases and what they might mean. Was her intention to pick up her children and take a trip? If that was the case, it might be someplace far away. It might be hours before she stopped.
On the other hand she might head straight back home, back into the protection of the two men on the perimeter and the one in the house. That was not good either. He would have the old set of problems, plus, in either case, children would now be involved. Wu was neither bloodthirsty nor sentimental. He was pragmatic. Grabbing a woman whose husband had already run off may raise suspicions and even police involvement, but if you add dead bodies, possibly two dead children, the attention becomes nearly intolerable.
No, Wu realized. It would be best to grab Grace Lawson here and now. Before the children came out of the schoolyard.
That did not give him much time.
Mothers began to congregate and mingle, but Grace Lawson stayed in her car. She seemed to be reading something. The time was 2:50. That gave Wu ten minutes. Then he remembered the earlier threat. They had told her that they would take her children. If that was the case, it was entirely possible that there were men watching the school too.
He had to check fast.
It didn’t take long. The van was parked a block away, at the end of a cul-de-sac. So obvious. Wu considered the possibility that there was more than one. He did a quick scan and saw nothing. No time anyway. He had to strike. The school would be letting out in five minutes. Once the kids were present, it would complicate everything exponentially.
Wu had dark hair now. He put on gold-framed glasses. He had the loose-fitting casual clothes. He tried to make himself look timid as he was walked toward the van. He looked around as if lost. He moved straight to the back door and was about to open it when a bald man with a sweaty brow popped his head out.
“What do you want, pal?”
The man was dressed in a blue velour sweat suit. There was no shirt under the jacket, just mounds of chest hair. He was big and gruff. Wu reached out with his right hand and cupped the back of the man’s head. He snapped his arm forward and planted his left elbow deep in the man’s adam’s apple. The throat simply collapsed. The entire windpipe gave way like a brittle branch. The man went down, his body thrashing like a fish on the dock. Wu pushed him deeper into the van and slid inside.
