Darkest Fear

by Harlan Coben

  "You like?"

  "Very nice."

  Satisfied, Master Kwon said, "Go."

  Win and Myron bowed deeply. Once in the dojang, they fell into their customary roles: Win led and Myron followed. They started with meditation. Win loved meditating, as we already graphically witnessed. He sat in the lotus position, palms tilted up, hands resting on knees, back straight, tongue folded against the upper teeth. He breathed in through his nose, forcing the air down, letting his abdomen do all the work. Myron tried to duplicate--had been trying for years--but he had never quite gotten the hang of it. His mind, even during less chaotic times, wandered. His bad knee tightened. He got fidgety.

  They cut down the stretching to only ten minutes. Again Win was effortless, executing splits and toe touches and deep bends with ease, his bones and joints as flexible as a politician's voting record. Myron had never been a naturally limber guy. When he was training seriously, he could touch his toes and complete a hurdle stretch with little problem. But just then, that felt like a long time ago.

  "I'm already sore," Myron said through a grunt.

  Win tilted his head. "Odd."

  "What?"

  "That's precisely what my date said last night."

  "You weren't kidding before," Myron said. "You really are another Red Buttons."

  They did a little sparring, and Myron immediately realized how out of shape he was. Sparring is the most tiring activity in the world. Don't believe it? Find a punching bag and pretend-box with it for one three-minute round. Just a bag that can't fight back. Try it, just one round. You'll see.

  When Esperanza came in, the sparring mercifully ceased and Myron grabbed his knees, sucking wind. He bowed to Win, threw a towel over his shoulder, grabbed some Evian. Esperanza folded her arms and waited. A group of students walked past the door, saw Esperanza, did a double take.

  Esperanza handed Myron a sheet of paper. "The birth certificate of Davis Taylor ne Dennis Lex."

  "Lex," Myron repeated. "As in ...?"

  "Yep."

  Myron scanned the photocopy. According to the document, Dennis Lex would be thirty-seven years old. His father was listed as one Raymond Lex, his mother as Maureen Lehman Lex. Born in East Hampton, New York.

  Myron handed it to Win.

  "They had another child?"

  "Apparently so," Esperanza said.

  Myron looked at Win. Win shrugged.

  "He must have died young," Win said.

  "If he did," Esperanza said, "I can't find it anywhere. There's no death certificate."

  "No one in the family ever mentioned another child?" Myron asked Win.

  "No one," Win said.

  He turned back to Esperanza. "What else you got?"

  "Not much. Dennis Lex changed his name to Davis Taylor eight months ago. I also found this." She handed him a photocopy of a news clipping. A small birth announcement from the Hampton Gazette dated thirty-seven years ago:

  Raymond and Maureen Lex of Wister Drive in East Hampton are delighted to announce the birth of their son, Dennis, six pounds eight ounces on June 18th. Dennis joins his sister Susan and his brother Bronwyn.

  Myron shook his head. "How could no one know about this?"

  "It's not all that surprising," Win said.

  "How do you figure?"

  "None of the Lex family holdings are public. They are fiercely protective of their privacy. Security around them is around-the-clock and the best money can buy. Everyone who works with them must sign confidentiality agreements."

  "Even you?"

  "I don't do confidentiality agreements," Win said. "No matter how much money is involved."

  "So they never asked you to sign one?"

  "They asked. I refused. We parted ways."

  "You gave them up as clients?"

  "Yes."

  "Why? I mean, what would have been the big deal? You keep everything confidential anyway."

  "Exactly. Clients hire me not only because of my brilliance in the ways of finance but because I am the very model of discretion."

  "Don't overlook your startling modesty," Myron added.

  "I don't need to sign a contract saying I won't reveal anything. It should be a given. It's the equivalent of signing a document saying that I won't burn down their house."

  Myron nodded. "Nice analogy," he said.

  "Yes, thank you, but I'm trying to illustrate how far this family will go to maintain their privacy. Until this inheritance feud erupted, the media had no idea how extensive Raymond Lex's holdings were."

  "But come on, Win. This is Raymond Lex's son. You'd know about a son."

  Win pointed to the top of the clipping. "Notice when the child was born--before Raymond Lex's book came out, when Lex was just a typical small-town professor. It wouldn't make news."

  "You really buy that?"

  "Do you have a better explanation?"

  "So where is the kid now? How can the son of one of America's wealthiest families have no paperwork? No credit cards, no driver's license, no IRS filings, no trail at all? Why did he change his name?"

  "The last one is easy," Win said.

  "Oh?"

  "He's hiding."

  "From?"

  "His siblings perhaps," Win said. "As I said before, this inheritance battle is rather nasty."

  "That might make sense--and I stress the word 'might'--if he'd been around before. But how can there be no paperwork on him? What is he hiding from? And why on earth would he put his name in the bone marrow registry?"

  "Good questions," Win said.

  "Very good," Esperanza added.

  Myron reread the article and looked at his two friends. "Nice to have a consensus," he said.

  13

  The mobile phone blew him out of his sleep like a shotgun blast. Myron's hand reached up blindly, his fingers bouncing along the night table until they located the phone.

  "Hello?" he croaked.

  "Is this Myron Bolitar?"

  The voice was a whisper.

  "Who is this?" Myron asked.

  "You called me."

  Still whispering, the sound like leaves skittering across pavement.

  Myron sat upright, his heartbeat picking up a little steam. "Davis Taylor?"

  "Sow the seeds. Keep sowing. And open the shades. Let the truth come in. Let the secrets finally wither in the daylight."

  Ooookay. "I need your help, Mr. Taylor."

  "Sow the seeds."

  "Yes, of course, we'll sow away." Myron flicked on the light. 2:17 A.M. He checked the LCD display on the phone. The Caller ID was blocked. Damn. "But we have to meet."

  "Sow the seeds. It's the only way."

  "I understand, Mr. Taylor. Can we meet?"

  "Someone must sow the seeds. And someone must unlock the chains."

  "I'll bring a key. Just tell me where you are."

  "Why do you wish to see me?"

  What to say? "It's a matter of life and death."

  "Whenever you sow the seeds, it's a matter of life and death."

  "You donated blood for a bone marrow drive. You're a match. A young boy will die if you don't help."

  Silence.

  "Mr. Taylor?"

  "Technology cannot help him. I thought you were one of us." Still whispering but sad now.

  "I am. Or at least I want to be--"

  "I'm hanging up now."

  "No, wait--"

  "Good-bye."

  "Dennis Lex," Myron said.

  Silence, except for the sound of breathing. Myron wasn't sure if the sound was coming from him or the caller.

  "Please," Myron said. "I'll do whatever you ask. But we have to meet."

  "Will you remember to sow the seeds?"

  Small chunks of ice dropped down his back.

  "Yes," Myron said, "I'll remember."

  "Good. Then you know what you must do."

  Myron gripped the receiver. "No," he said. "What must I do?"

  "The boy," the voice whispered. "Say one last good-bye
to the boy."

  14

  Sow the seeds?" Esperanza said. They were in Myron's office. The morning sun striped the floor with Venetian slits, two cutting across Esperanza's face. She didn't seem to mind.

  "Right," Myron said. "And something about that phrase keeps gnawing at me."

  "It was a Tears for Fears song," Esperanza said.

  " 'Sowing the Seeds of Love.' I remember."

  "Wasn't that the name of the tour too? We saw them at the Meadowlands in, what, 1988?"

  "Eighty-nine."

  "What happened to those guys?"

  "They broke up," Myron said.

  "Why do they all do that?"

  "Got me."

  "Supertramp, Steely Dan, the Doobie Brothers--"

  "Not to mention Wham."

  "They break up and then they never make anything decent on their own. They flounder around and end up a segment of VH-1's Where Are They Now?"

  "We're getting off the subject."

  Esperanza handed him a slip of paper. "Here's the office number for Susan Lex, Dennis's older sister."

  Myron read the number like it was in code and might mean something. "I had another thought."

  "What's that?"

  "If Dennis Lex exists, then he had to have gone to school, right?"

  "Maybe."

  "So let's see if we can find out where the Children Lex schooled--public, private, whatever."

  Esperanza frowned. "You mean like college?"

  "Start there, yes. Not that siblings go to the same school, but maybe they did. Or maybe they all went to Ivy League schools. Something like that. You might want to start with high school. It's more likely that they all went to the same one."

  "And if I don't find any record of him in high school?"

  "Go back even further."

  She crossed her legs, folded her arms. "How far?"

  "As far as you can."

  "And what good will this exercise in futility do us?"

  "I want to know when Dennis Lex fell off the radar screen. Did people know him in high school? In college? In grad school?"

  She did not look impressed. "And assuming I somehow manage to find, say, his elementary school, what exactly is that going to do for us?"

  "Damn if I know. I'm grasping at straws here."

  "No, you're asking me to grasp at straws."

  "Then don't do it, Esperanza, okay? It was just a thought."

  "Nah," she said with a wave of her hand. "You may be right."

  Myron put his palms on his desk, arched his back, looked left, looked right, looked up, looked down.

  "What?" she said.

  "You said I may be right. I'm waiting for the world as we know it to end."

  "Good one," Esperanza said, standing. "I'll see what I can dig up."

  She left the room. Myron picked up the telephone and dialed Susan Lex's number. The receptionist transferred the call, and a woman identifying herself as Ms. Lex's secretary picked it up. She had a voice like a steel-wool tire over gravel.

  "Ms. Lex does not see people she doesn't know."

  "It's a matter of grave importance," Myron said.

  "Perhaps you did not hear me the first time." Classic Battle-ax. "Ms. Lex does not see people she doesn't know."

  "Tell her it's about Dennis."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Just tell her that."

  Battle-ax put Myron on hold without another word. Myron listened to a Muzak version of Al Stewart's "Time Passages." Myron had thought the original was Muzak-y enough, thank you very much.

  The battle-ax came back with a snap. "Ms. Lex does not see people she doesn't know."

  "I've been thinking about that, but it doesn't really make sense."

  "Excuse me?"

  "I mean, at some time she must see people she doesn't know--otherwise she'd never meet anybody new. And if we follow my logic, how did you ever get to see her for the first time? She was willing to see you before she knew you, right?"

  "I'm hanging up now, Mr. Bolitar."

  "Tell her I know about Dennis."

  "I just--"

  "Tell her if she doesn't agree to see me, I'll go to the press."

  Silence. "Hold." A click and then the Muzak came back on. Time passed. So, mercifully, did "Time Passages," replaced by the Alan Parsons Project's "Time." Myron nearly slipped into a coma.

  Battle-ax returned. "Mr. Bolitar?"

  "Yes?"

  "Ms. Lex will give you five minutes of her time. I have an opening on the fifteenth of next month."

  "No good," Myron said. "It has to be today."

  "Ms. Lex is a very busy woman."

  "Today," Myron said.

  "That simply will not be possible."

  "At eleven. If I'm not let in, I go immediately to the press."

  "You're being terribly rude, Mr. Bolitar."

  "To the press," Myron repeated. "Do you understand?"

  "Yes."

  "Will you be there?"

  "What possible difference could that make?"

  "All this sexual tension is driving me batty. Maybe afterward we could get together for a nice cool latte."

  He heard the phone go click and smiled. The charm, he thought. It's baaaaack.

  Esperanza buzzed in. "Topless tennis, anyone?"

  "What?"

  "I got Suzze T on line one."

  He hit a button. "Hey, Suzze."

  "Hey, Myron, what's shaking?"

  "I got an offer for you to refuse."

  "You mean you're going to hit on me?"

  The charm suffers a setback. "Where are you going to be this afternoon?"

  "Same place as now," she said. "The Morning Mosh. You know it?"

  "No."

  She gave him the address, and Myron agreed to meet her there in a few hours. He hung up the phone and leaned back.

  " 'Sow the seeds,'" he said out loud.

  He stared at the wall. An hour to kill before he headed over to the Lex Building on Fifth Avenue. He could sit here and think about life and maybe contemplate his navel. No, too much of that already. He swiveled his seat to the computer, double-clicked the proper icon, connected to the Net. He tried Yahoo first and typed sow the seeds into the search field. Only one hit: a Web site for the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners. They went by the acronym SLUG. Tough guys probably. A gang. Probably wore green bandannas and engaged in drive-by waterings.

  He tried Alta Vista's search engine next, but they listed 2,501 Web pages. It was kinda like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Yahoo's search was toooo small. Alta Vista's was toooo big. They didn't have LEXIS-NEXIS at the office, but Myron tried a less powerful media engine. He typed in the same three words and pressed the return key, and bammo.

  http://vwvw.nyherald.com/archives/9800322

  Myron hit the link and the article came up:

  New York Herald

  THE MIND OF TERROR--YOUR DARKEST FEAR

  by Stan Gibbs

  Whoa, hold the phone. Myron knew the name. Stan Gibbs had been a big-time newspaper columnist, the kind of guy who regularly pontificated (read: pimped) on the cable news talk shows, though he'd been less annoying than most, which is like saying syphilis is less annoying than gonorrhea. But that had all been before the scandal gutted him like Ted Nugent over a fallen moose. Myron read:

  The phone call comes out of the blue.

  "What is your darkest fear?" the voice whispers. "Close your eyes now and picture it. Can you see it? Do you have it yet? The very worst agony you can imagine?"

  After a long pause, I say, "Yes."

  "Good. Now imagine something worse, something far, far worse ..."

  Myron took a deep breath. He remembered the series of articles. Stan Gibbs had broken a story about a bizarre kidnapper. He'd told the heart-wrenching tale of three abductions that the police had supposedly wanted to keep quiet, out of, Stan Gibbs claimed, embarrassment. No names were mentioned. He had spoken with the families under the condition of anonymity. And, the coup de grace,
the kidnapper had granted Gibbs access:

  I ask the kidnapper why he does it. Is it for the ransom?

  "I never pick up the ransom money," he says. "I usually leave explosives at the spot and burn it. But sometimes money helps me sow the seeds. That is what I'm trying to do. Sow the seeds."

  Myron felt his blood stop.

  "You all think you're safe," he continues, "in your technological cocoon. But you're not. Technology has made us expect easy answers and happy endings. But with me, there is no answer and there is no end."

  He has kidnapped at least four people: the father of two young children, age 41; a female college student, age 20; and a young couple, newlyweds ages 28 and 27. All were abducted while in the New York City area.

  "The idea," he says, "is to keep the terror going. Let it grow, not with gore or obvious bloodletting, but with your own imagination. Technology is trying to destroy our ability to imagine. But when someone you love is taken away, your mind can conjure up horrors darker than any machine--than anything even I can do. Some minds won't go that far. Some minds stop and put up a barrier. My job is to push them through that barrier."

  I ask him how he does that.

  "Sow the seeds," he repeats. "You sow the seeds over time."

  He explains that sowing the seeds means giving hope and taking it away over a sustained period of time. His first call to the victim's family is naturally devastating, but merely the beginning of a long and torturous ordeal.

  He begins the call, he claims, with a normal hello and asks the family member to please hold. After a pause, the family member hears their loved one give a blood-curdling shriek. "Just one," he says, "and it's very short. I cut them off in mid-scream.

  "This is the last they'll ever hear from their loved one," he continues. "Imagine how that scream echoes."

  But for the victim's family, it does not end there. He demands a ransom that he has no intention of claiming. He calls after midnight and asks the family to imagine their darkest fear. He convinces them that this time, he will really let their loved one go, but he is only extending hope to those who no longer have it, rekindling their agony.

  "Time and hope," he says, "sow the seeds of despair."

  The father of two has been missing for three years. The young premed college student has been missing for twenty-seven months. The newlyweds were married almost two years ago this weekend. To date, not a trace of any of them has been found. Rarely does a week pass when the families don't get a call from their tormentor.

  When I ask him if his victims are alive or dead, he is coy. "Death is closure," he explains, "and closure stops the sowing."

  He wants to talk about society, how computers and technology are doing our thinking for us, how what he does lets us see the power of the human brain.