Darkest Fear

by Harlan Coben

  The woman was first. She wore a pumpkin-orange blazer, blue jeans, sneakers, and ball-and-chain earrings. The word that came to mind was husky. Not big really. Husky. Everything was husky--even her hair, a sort of canned-corn yellow. The guy riding in on her fumes was geeky thin with a pointy head and a small, greased shock of black hair. He looked like an upside-down pencil. He spoke first.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. Bolitar," Pencil said.

  "Good afternoon."

  "I'm Special Agent Rick Peck," he said. "This is Special Agent Kimberly Green."

  The orange-blazered Green did a caged-lion pace. Myron nodded at her. She nodded back but grudgingly, like her teacher had just told her to apologize for something she didn't do.

  Pencil Peck continued. "Mr. Bolitar, we'd like to ask you a few questions."

  "What about?"

  Peck kept his eyes on his notes and spoke like he was reading. "Today you visited one Stan Gibbs at 24 Acre Drive. Is that correct?"

  "How do you know I didn't visit two Stan Gibbs?"

  Peck and Green exchanged a glance. Then Peck said, "Please, Mr. Bolitar, we'd appreciate your cooperation. Did you visit Mr. Gibbs?"

  "You know I did," Myron said.

  "Fine, thank you." Peck wrote something down slowly. Then he looked up. "We'd very much like to know the nature of your visit."

  "Why?"

  "You are the first visitor Mr. Gibbs has had since moving to his current residence."

  "No, I mean, why do you want to know?"

  Green crossed her arms. She and Peck looked at each other again. Peck said, "Mr. Gibbs is part of an ongoing investigation."

  Myron waited. No one said anything. "Well, that pretty much clears it up."

  "That's all I can say for the moment."

  "Same here."

  "Pardon?"

  "If you can't say any more, I can't say any more."

  Kimberly Green put her hands on the table, gave a toothy grimace--husky teeth?--and leaned down like she might take a bite out of him. The canned-corn hair smelled like Pert Plus. She eyeballed him--must have read a memo on intimidating glares--and then spoke for the first time. "Here's how we're going to play it, asshole. We're going to ask you questions. You're going to listen to them and then you're going to answer them. You got it?"

  Myron nodded. "I want to make sure I got this straight," he said to her. "You're playing bad cop, right?"

  Peck picked up the ball. "Mr. Bolitar, no one is interested in making trouble here. But we'd very much like your cooperation in this matter."

  "Am I under arrest?" Myron asked.

  "No."

  "Bye then."

  He started to stand. Kimberly Green gave him a shove mid-rise and he fell back into the chair. "Sit down, asshole." She looked over at Peck. "Maybe he's part of it."

  "You think so?"

  "Why else would he be so reluctant to answer questions?"

  Peck nodded. "Makes sense. An accomplice."

  "We can probably arrest him now," Green said. "Lock him up for the night, maybe leak it to the press."

  Myron looked up at her. "Gasp," he said. "Now. I. Am. Really. Scared. Second gasp."

  She narrowed her eyes. "What did you say?"

  "Don't tell me," Myron said. "Maybe I'm guilty of aiding and abetting. That's my personal favorite. Does anyone actually get prosecuted for that?"

  "You think we're playing games here?"

  "I do. And by the way, how come you're all called 'special' agent? Doesn't that sound like something someone made up one day? Like a kid's game to raise self-esteem. 'We're promoting you from agent to special agent, Barney,' and then what, super-special agent?"

  Green grabbed his lapels and leaned his chair back. "You're not funny."

  Myron looked at her hands gripping him. "Are you for real?"

  "You want to try me?" she said.

  Peck said, "Kim."

  She ignored him and kept her glare on Myron. "This is serious," she said.

  Her tone aimed for angry but came out more like a frightened plea. Two more agents entered. With the four delivery boys, that made eight. This was something big. What, Myron had no idea. The murder of Melina Garston maybe. But that was doubtful. The locals usually handled murders. You don't call in the feds.

  The new guys came at Myron in different ways, but there were only so many routes to travel and Myron knew them all. Threatening, friendly, flattering, insulting, building up, belittling, hard, soft, every sell. They denied him the bathroom, they made excuses to keep him longer, all the while they're working him and he's working them and neither one is giving. Sweat started flowing, mostly from them, the stains and stench filling the air, metastasizing into something Myron could swear was genuine fear.

  Kimberly Green came in and out and she kept shaking her head at him. Myron wanted to cooperate, but here's the pertinent cliche: Once the genie is out of the bottle, you can't put it back in. He didn't know what they were investigating. He didn't know if it would benefit Jeremy to talk or hurt him. But once he spoke, once his words were in the public domain, he couldn't take them back. Any leverage he might later be able to apply would be gone. So, for now, even if he might want to help, he wouldn't. Not until he learned more. He had the contacts. He could find out quickly enough, make an informed decision.

  Sometimes, negotiating meant shutting up.

  When things wound down, Myron got up to leave. Kimberly Green blocked his path. "I'm going to make your life hell," she said.

  "That your way of asking me out?"

  She leaned back as if he'd slapped her. When she recovered, she shook her head slowly. "You have no idea, do you?"

  Shutting up, he reminded himself. Myron pushed past her and headed outside.

  20

  He called Emily from the car. "I thought I was being stood up," she said.

  Myron checked out the rearview mirror and spotted what might be another fed tail. No matter. "Sorry," he said. "Something came up."

  "Involving the donor?"

  "I don't think so."

  "You still in Jersey?" Emily asked.

  "Yes."

  "Come on over. I'll reheat dinner."

  He wanted to say no. "Okay."

  Franklin Lakes was about sprawling. Everything sprawled. The houses were mostly new construction, big brick mansions on eternal cul-de-sacs, little gates at the front of the driveways that opened with push-button or intercom, like that would really protect the owners from what lay outside the lush lawns and pedicure-clipped hedges. The interiors were sprawling too, dining rooms big enough to house helicopters, remote-controlled blinds, Sub-Zero/Viking Stove kitchens with marble islands that overlooked family rooms the size of movie theaters, always with complicated state-of-the-art entertainment centers.

  Myron rang the bell and the door opened and for the first time in his life, Myron was face-to-face with his son.

  Jeremy smiled at him. "Hi."

  Strong, totally alien surges ricocheted haphazardly through Myron, his nervous system melting down and in overdrive all at once. His diaphragm contracted and his lungs stopped. So, he was sure, did his heart. His mouth weakly opened and closed like a dying fish on a boat deck. Tears headed up and pushed toward the eyes.

  "You're Myron Bolitar, right?" Jeremy said.

  An ocean-shell rushing filled Myron's ears. He managed a nod.

  "You played ball against my dad," Jeremy said, still with the smile that ripped at the corners of Myron's heart. "In college, right?"

  Myron found his voice. "Yes."

  The kid nodded back. "Cool."

  "Yeah."

  A horn honked. Jeremy leaned to the right and looked behind Myron. "That's my ride. Later."

  Jeremy leaped past Myron. Myron numbly turned and watched the boy jog down the driveway. Imagination maybe, but that gait was oh-so-familiar. From Myron's old game films. More surges. Oh Christ ...

  Myron felt a hand on his shoulder, but he ignored it and watched the boy. The car door opened a
nd swallowed Jeremy into the darkness. The driver's window slid down and a pretty woman called out, "Sorry I'm late, Em."

  From behind him, Emily said, "No problem."

  "I'll take them to school in the morning."

  "Great."

  A wave and the pretty woman's window slid back into place. The car started on its way. Myron watched it disappear down the road. He felt Emily's eyes on him. He slowly turned to her.

  "Why did you do that?"

  "I thought he'd be gone by now," Emily said.

  "Do I really look that stupid?"

  She stepped back into the house. "I want to show you something."

  Trying to get his legs back, his head wobbly, and his internal referee still giving him the eight count, Myron followed her silently up the stairway. She led him down a darkened corridor lined with modern lithographs. She stopped, opened a door, and flipped on the lights. The room was teenage-cluttered, as if someone had put all the belongings in the center of the room and dropped a hand grenade on them. The posters on the walls--Michael Jordan, Keith Van Horn, Greg Downing, Austin Powers, the words YEAH, BABY! across his middle in pink tie-dye lettering--had been hung askew, all tattered corners and missing pushpins. There was a Nerf basketball hoop on the closet door. There was a computer on the desk and a baseball cap dangling from a desk lamp. The corkboard had a mix of family snapshots and construction-paper crayons signed by Jeremy's sister, all held up by oversized pushpins. There were footballs and autographed baseballs and cheap trophies and a couple of blue ribbons and three basketballs, one with no air in it. There were stacks of computer-game CD-ROMs and a Game Boy on the unmade bed and a surprising amount of books, several opened and facedown. Clothes littered the floor like war wounded; the drawers were half open, shirts and underwear hanging out like they'd been shot mid-escape. The room had the slight, oddly comforting smell of kids' socks.

  "He's a slob," she said. Leaving off the obvious "like you."

  Myron stayed still.

  "He keeps Oxy 10 in his desk drawer," Emily said. "He thinks I don't know. He's at that age where crushes keep him up all night, but he's never even kissed a girl." She walked over to the corkboard and snatched up a photograph of Jeremy. "He's beautiful, don't you think?"

  "This isn't helping, Emily."

  "I want you to understand."

  "Understand what?"

  "He's never been kissed. He is going to die and he's never even kissed a girl."

  Myron held up his hands. "I don't know what you want me to say here."

  "Try to understand, okay?"

  "I don't need melodrama. I understand."

  "No, Myron, you don't. You look back at the night and see it as some sort of Gothic blunder. We did something sinful and for that we all paid a heavy price. If we could just go back and erase that tragic mistake, well, it's all so Hamlet and Macbeth, isn't it? Your ruined basketball career, Greg's future, our marriage--all laid to waste in that one moment of lust."

  "It wasn't lust."

  "Let's not go through that argument again. I don't care what it was. Lust, stupidity, fear, fate. Call it whatever the hell you want to--but I would never want to go back. That 'mistake' was the best thing that ever happened to me. Jeremy, our son, came out of that mess. Do you hear what I'm saying? I'd destroy a million careers and marriages for him."

  She looked at him, challenging. He said nothing.

  "I'm not religious and I don't believe in fate or destiny or any of that," she went on. "But maybe, just maybe, there had to be a balance. Maybe the only way to produce something so wonderful was to surround the event with so much destruction."

  Myron started backing out of the room. "This isn't helping," he said again.

  "Yes," she said, "it is."

  "You want me to find the donor. I'm trying to do that. But this kind of distraction doesn't help. I need to stay detached."

  "No, Myron, you need attachment. You need to get emotional. You have to understand the stakes--your son, that beautiful boy who opened the door--is going to die before he's even kissed a girl." She moved closer to him and looked into his eyes and Myron thought that her eyes had never looked so clear before.

  "I watched you play every game at Duke," she said. "I fell in love with you on that court--not because you were the team star or because you were graceful or athletic. You were so open out there, so raw and emotional. And the more emotional you got, the more pressure there was, the better you played. If the game was a blowout, you lost interest. You needed it to matter. You needed to be double-teamed with only a few seconds on the clock. You needed to lose control a little."

  "This isn't a game, Emily."

  "Right," she said. "The stakes are higher. The emotion should be higher. I want you desperate, Myron. That's when you're at your best."

  He looked at the photograph of Jeremy, and he knew that he was feeling something that he had never felt before. He blinked, caught the expression on his face in the closet-door mirror, and for a moment he saw his own father staring back.

  Emily hugged him then. She buried her face in his shoulder and started to cry. Myron held on tight. They stood that way for several minutes before making their way downstairs. Over dinner, Emily told him about Jeremy, and he soaked in every story. They moved to the couch and broke out the photo albums. Emily tucked her legs under her, her elbow on the top of the couch, her head leaning on the heel of her hand, and told him more. It was nearly two in the morning when she walked him to the door. They were holding hands.

  "I know you spoke to Dr. Singh," she said in the open door.

  "Yes."

  She let loose a deep breath. "I'm just going to say this, okay?"

  "Okay."

  "I've been keeping track. I bought one of those home tests. The, uh, optimum conception day will be Thursday."

  He opened his mouth but she stopped him with her hand.

  "I know all the arguments against this, but it might be Jeremy's only chance. Don't say anything. Just think about it."

  She closed the door. Myron stared at it for a few moments. He tried to conjure up the moment Jeremy had opened it, the crooked smile on the boy's face, but already the image was hazy and fading fast.

  21

  First thing in the morning, Myron called Terese. Still no answer. He frowned at the phone. "Am I getting the big kiss-off?" he asked Win.

  "Doubtful," Win said. He was reading the newspaper and wearing silk pajamas with a matching bathrobe and slippers. Give him a pipe and he could have been something Noel Coward created on an off day.

  "What makes you say that?"

  "Our Ms. Collins appears to be rather direct," Win said. "If you were being tossed into the dung heap, you'd know the smell."

  "And then there's the part about my being irresistible to women," Myron said.

  Win turned the page.

  "So what's she up to?"

  Win tapped his chin with his index finger. "What's the term you relationship people use? Oh, yes. Space. Perhaps she needs some space."

  " 'Needing space' is usually a code phrase for the big kiss-off."

  "Yes, well, whatever." Win crossed his legs. "You want me to look into it?"

  "Into what?"

  "What Ms. Collins might be up to."

  "No."

  "Fine," Win said. "Let's move on, shall we? Tell me about your encounter with the Federal Bureau of Investigation."

  Myron recapped the interrogation.

  "So we don't know what they wanted," Win said.

  "Correct."

  "Not a clue?"

  "Nothing. Except that they were scared."

  "Curious."

  Myron nodded.

  Win took a sip of tea, pinky up. Oh, the horrors that pinky had witnessed, partaken in, even. They sat in Win's formal dining room and used a silver tea set. Victorian mahogany table with lion-paw feet, silver tea set, silver milk pitcher, boxes of Cap'n Crunch and some new cereal called Oreo, which is exactly what you would imagine. "Theorizing at this
juncture is a waste of time. I'll make some calls, see what I can find out."

  "Thanks."

  "I'm still not sure I see a connection between Stan Gibbs and our blood donor."

  "It's a long shot," Myron agreed.

  "More than that. A newspaper columnist makes up a story about a serial kidnapper and now--what?--we think the fictional character is the donor?"

  "Stan Gibbs claims the story is real."

  "Does he now?"

  "Yes."

  Win rubbed his chin. "Pray tell, why does he not defend himself?"

  "No clue."

  "Presumably because he is guilty," Win said. "Man is, above all, selfish. He's into self-preservation. It's instinctive. He does not martyr himself. He cares about one thing above all else: saving his hide."

  "Assuming I agree with your sunny view of human nature, wouldn't you agree that man would lie to save himself?"

  "Of course," Win said.

  "So armed with this pretty decent defense--the idea that the serial kidnapper copycatted the novel--why wouldn't Stan use it to defend himself, even if he was guilty of plagiarism?"

  Win nodded. "I like the way you're thinking."

  "Cynically, yes."

  The intercom buzzed. Win pressed the button, and the doorman announced Esperanza. A minute later, she swept into the room, grabbed a chair, and poured herself a bowl of Oreo cereal.

  "Why do they always say it's 'part of this complete breakfast'?" Esperanza asked. "Every single time, every single cereal. What's all that about?"

  Nobody replied.

  Esperanza took a spoonful, looked at Win, head-gestured toward Myron. "I hate it when he's right," she said to Win.

  "A bad omen," Win agreed.

  Myron said, "I was right?"

  She turned her gaze to Myron. "I did that school check on Dennis Lex. I tracked down any and all educational institutions any of his siblings or parents had gone to. Nothing. College, high school, middle school--even grammar school. No trace of Dennis Lex."

  "But?" Myron said.

  "Preschool."

  "You're kidding me."

  "Nope."

  "You found his preschool?"

  "I'm more than just a great piece of ass," Esperanza said.

  Win said, "Not to me, my dear."

  "You're sweet, Win."

  Win bowed his head slightly.

  "Miss Peggy Joyce," Esperanza said. "She still teaches and runs the Shady Wells Montessori School for Children in East Hampton."