by Harlan Coben
Myron said okay. Clara put a hand on his elbow.
"Cross at the corner," she said. "And wait for the light."
The two men walked to the corner and waited for the light before crossing the street. Kimberly Green and her fellow agents fumed. Clara took them by the hand and led them back toward the building's entrance. Stan and Myron sat on the bench. Stan watched a New Jersey Transit bus go by like it carried the secret to life.
"We don't have time to enjoy the scenery, Stan."
Stan leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees. "This is difficult for me."
"If it makes it any easier," Myron said, "I know that the Sow the Seeds kidnapper is your father."
Stan's head fell into his hands.
"Stan?"
"How did you find out?"
"Through Dennis Lex. I found him in a private sanitarium in Connecticut. He's been there for thirty years. But you already knew that, didn't you?"
Gibbs said nothing.
"At the sanitarium, there's a big garden in the back. With this statue of Diana the Huntress. There's a picture in your condo of you and your father standing in front of that same statue. He was a patient there. You don't have to confirm or deny it. I was just there. Susan Lex has pull. An administrator told us Edwin Gibbs had been in and out of there for fifteen years. The rest is fairly obvious. Your father was there a long time. It'd be easy to learn who else was there, no matter how strict the so-called security. So he knew about Dennis Lex. And he stole his identity. It's a hell of a twist, I'll give him that. Fake IDs used to be somewhat pretty easy to come by. You'd visit a graveyard, find a child who died, request his social security card, bingo. But that doesn't work anymore. Computers closed down that loophole. Nowadays when you die, your social security number dies with you. So your father took the identity of someone still alive, someone who has no use for it, someone committed permanently. In other words, he used the ID of a living person who has no life. And to go deeper undercover, he changed the person's name. Dennis Lex became Davis Taylor. Untraceable."
"Except you traced it."
"I got lucky."
"Go on," Stan said. "Tell me what else you know."
"We don't have time for this, Stan."
"You don't understand," he said.
"What?"
"If you're the one who says it--if you figure it out on your own--it's not as much a betrayal. You see?"
No time to argue. And maybe Myron did see. "Let's start with the question every reporter wanted to know: why you? Why did the Sow the Seeds kidnapper choose you? The answer: because the kidnapper was your father. He knew you wouldn't turn him in. Maybe part of you hoped someone would figure it out. I don't know. I also don't know if you found him or he found you."
"He found me," Stan said. "He came to me as a reporter. Not as a son. He made that clear."
"Sure," Myron said, "double protection. He gets you with the fact that you'd be turning in your own father--plus he gives you an ethical foundation for remaining silent. The beloved First Amendment. You couldn't name a source. It gave you a very neat out--you could be both moralistic and the good son."
Stan looked up. "So you see that I had no choice."
"Oh, I wouldn't be so easy on myself," Myron said. "You weren't being totally altruistic. Everyone says you were ambitious. That played a part here. You got fame out of this. You were handed a monster story--the kind that propels careers into the stratosphere. You were on TV and got your own cable show. You got a big raise and invited to fancy parties. You want to tell me that wasn't a part of it?"
"It was a by-product," Stan said. "It wasn't a factor."
"You say so."
"It's like you said--I couldn't turn him in, even if I wanted to. There was a constitutional principle here. Even if he wasn't my father, I had an obligation--"
"Save it for your minister," Myron said. "Where is he?"
Stan did not reply. Myron looked across the street.
Lots of traffic. The cars started blurring and through them, standing on the other side of the street with Kimberly Green, he saw Greg Downing.
"That man over there," Myron said, pointing with his chin. "That's the boy's father."
Stan looked, but his face didn't change.
"There's a kid in danger," Myron said. "That trumps your constitutional cover."
"He's still my father."
"And he's kidnapped a thirteen-year-old boy," Myron said.
Stan looked up. "What would you do?"
"What?"
"Would you give up your father? Just like that?"
"If he was kidnapping children? Yeah, I would."
"Do you really think it's that easy?"
"Who said anything about easy?" Myron said.
Stan put his head back in his hands. "He's sick and he needs help."
"And there's also an innocent boy out there."
"So?"
Myron looked at him.
"I don't mean to sound callous, but I don't know this boy. He has no connection to me. My father does. That's what matters here. You hear about a plane crash, right? You hear about how two hundred people die and you sigh and you go on with your life and you thank God it wasn't your loved one in the plane. Don't you do that?"
"What's your point?"
"You do that because the people on the plane are strangers. Like this boy. We don't care about strangers. They don't count."
"Speak for yourself," Myron said.
"Are you close to your father, Myron?"
"Yes."
"And in your heart of hearts, in your deepest, most honest moments, if you could sacrifice his life to save those two hundred people on the airplane, would you do it? Think about it. If God came down to you and said, 'Okay, that plane never crashed. Those people all arrive safely. In exchange, your father will die.' Would you make that trade?"
"I'm not into playing God."
"But you're asking me to," Stan said. "I turn my father in, they'll kill him. He'll get the lethal injection. If that's not playing God, I don't know what is. So I'm asking you. Would you trade those two hundred lives for your father's?"
"We don't have time--"
"Would you?"
"Okay, if it was my father shooting down the plane," Myron said, "yes, Stan, I would make that trade."
"And suppose your father wasn't culpable? If he was sick or deranged?"
"Stan, we don't have time for this."
Something in Stan's face dropped. He closed his eyes.
"There's a boy out there," Myron said. "We can't let him die."
"And if he's already dead?"
"I don't know."
"You'll want my father dead."
"Not by my hand," Myron said.
Stan took a deep breath and looked over at Greg Downing. Greg stared back, stared right through him. "Okay," he said at last. "But we go alone."
"Alone?"
"Just you and me."
Kimberly Green had a major conniption. "Are you insane?"
They were back inside, sitting around the Formica table. Kimberly Green, Rick Peck, and two other faceless feds were hunched together as one. Clara Steinberg sat with her client. Greg sat next to Myron. Jeremy's kidnapping had siphoned all the blood from Greg's face. His hands looked sucked dry, his skin almost crisp, his eyes too solid and unblinking. Myron put a hand on his shoulder. Greg didn't seem to notice.
"You want my client to cooperate or not?" Clara asked.
"I'm supposed to let my number one suspect go?"
"I'm not running away," Stan said.
"How am I supposed to know that?" Kimberly countered.
"It's the only way," Stan said, his voice a plea. "You'll go in with guns blazing. Someone is going to get hurt."
"We're professionals," Green countered. "We don't go in with guns blazing."
"My father is unstable. If he sees a lot of cops, I can guarantee there will be bloodshed."
"Doesn't have to be that way," she said. "It's up to him."
>
"Exactly," Stan said. "I'm not taking that chance with my father's life. You let us go. You don't follow us. I'll have him surrender to you. Myron will be with me the whole time. He's armed and he has a cell phone."
"Come on," Myron said. "We're wasting time here."
Kimberly Green chewed on her lower lip. "I don't have the authorization--"
"Forget it," Clara Steinberg said.
"Excuse me?"
Clara pointed a meaty finger at Kimberly Green. "Listen up, missy, you haven't arrested Mr. Gibbs, correct?"
Green hesitated. "That's correct."
Clara turned to Stan and Myron and waved the backs of both hands at them. "So shoo, go, good-bye. We're talking nonsense here. Hurry along. Shoo."
Stan and Myron slowly rose.
"Shoo."
Stan looked down at Kimberly. "If I spot a tail, I'm calling this off. You got me?"
She stewed in silence.
"You've been trailing me for three weeks now. I know what one of your tails looks like."
"She won't tail you."
It was Greg Downing. He and Stan locked eyes again. Greg stood. "I want to go with you too," Greg said. "And I probably have the strongest interest in keeping your father alive."
"How do you figure?"
"Your father's bone marrow can save my son's life. If he dies, so does my son. And if Jeremy has been hurt ... well, I'd like to be there for him."
Stan didn't waste a lot of time thinking about it. "Let's hurry."
35
Stan drove. Greg sat in the front passenger seat, Myron in the back. "Where are we going?" Myron asked.
"Bernardsville," Stan said. "It's in Morris County."
Myron knew the town.
"My grandmother died three years ago," Stan said. "We haven't sold the house yet. My father sometimes stays there."
"Where else does he stay?"
"Waterbury, Connecticut."
Greg looked back at Myron. The old man, the blond wig. It clicked for both of them at the same time.
"He's Nathan Mostoni?"
Stan nodded. "That's his main alias. The real Nathan Mostoni is another patient at Pine Hills--that's what we call that fancy loony bin, Pine Hills. Mostoni was the one who came up with the idea of using the identification of the committed, mostly for scams. He and my father became close friends. When Nathan slipped into total delirium, my father took his identity."
Greg shook his head, made two fists. "You should have turned the crazy bastard in."
"You love your son, don't you, Mr. Downing?"
Greg gave Stan a look that could have bored holes through titanium. "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"
"Would you want your son to turn you in one day?"
"Don't hand me that. If I'm a raving psychopathic maniac, yeah, my son can turn me in. Or better, he can put a bullet in my head. You knew your old man was sick, right? The least you could have done was get him help."
"We tried," Stan said. "He was in institutions most of his adult life. It didn't do any good. Then he ran off. When he finally called me, I hadn't seen him in eight years. Imagine that. Eight years. He calls me and tells me he needs to talk to me as a reporter. He made that clear. As a reporter. No matter what he told me, I couldn't reveal the source. He made me promise. I was confused as all hell. But I agreed. And then he told me his story. What he'd been doing. I could barely breathe. I wanted to die. I wanted to just dry up and die."
Greg put his fingers to his mouth. Stan concentrated on the road. Myron stared out the window. He thought about the father of three young children, age forty-one; the female college student, age twenty; and the young newlyweds, ages twenty-eight and twenty-seven. He thought about Jeremy's scream over the phone. He thought about Emily waiting at the house, her mind sowing the seeds, sick and blackening.
They got off Route 78 and took 287 north. They exited onto winding streets with no straightaways. Bernardsville was about old money and rustic wealth, a town of converted mills and stone houses and waterwheels. There were fields of long brown grass swaying in death, everything a little too old and too neatly overgrown.
"It's on this road," Stan said.
Myron looked out. His mouth was dry. He felt a tingle deep in his belly. The car traveled down another corkscrew of a street, the loose gravel crunching under the tires. There were deeply wooded lots commingling with your standard suburban front lawns. Plenty of center-hall colonials and those mid-seventies ranches that aged like milk left out on the counter. A yellow sign warned about children at play, but Myron saw none.
They pulled into a cake-dried driveway with weeds poking up through the cracks. Myron lowered his window. There was plenty of burnt-out grass, but the sweet summer smell of lillies still loomed and even cloyed. Crickets droned. Wildflowers blossomed. Not a hint of menace.
Up ahead Myron spotted what looked like a farmhouse. Black shutters stood out against the white clapboards. There were lights coming from inside, giving the house a glow that was big and soft and oddly welcoming. The front porch was the type that craved a swinging settee and a pitcher of lemonade.
When the car reached the front of the house, Stan shifted into park and turned off the ignition. The crickets eased up. Myron almost waited for someone to note that it was "Quiet" and for someone else to add, "Yeah, too quiet."
Stan turned to them. "I think I should go in first," he said.
Neither man argued. Greg stared out the window at the house, probably conjuring up unspeakable horrors. Myron's left leg started jackhammering. It often did when he was tense. Stan reached for the door handle.
That was when the first bullet smashed through the front passenger-side window.
The glass exploded, and Myron saw Greg's head fly back at a rate it was never supposed to achieve. A thick gob of crimson smacked Myron in the cheek.
"Greg!"
No time. Instincts took over. Myron grabbed Greg, pushed him down, trying to keep his own head down too. Blood. Lots of it. From Greg. He was bleeding, bleeding heavily, but Myron couldn't tell from where. Another bullet rang out. Another window shattered, raining shards of glass down on Myron's head. He kept his hand on top of Greg, tried to cover him, protect him. Greg's own hand fumbled absently on his chest and face, calmly searching for the bullet hole. Blood kept flowing. From the neck. Greg's neck. Or collarbone. Whatever. He couldn't see through the blood. Myron tried to stop the flow with his bare hand, pushing the sticky liquid away, finding the wound with his finger, applying pressure with his palm. But the blood slipped through the cracks between his fingers. Greg looked up at him with big eyes.
Stan Gibbs put his hands over his head and ducked into a quasi-emergency-landing position. "Stop!" he yelled, almost childlike. "Dad!"
Another bullet. More glass shards. Myron reached into his pocket and pulled out his gun. Greg grabbed his hand and pulled it down. Myron looked at him.
"Can't kill him," Greg said to Myron. There was blood in his mouth now. "If he dies ... Jeremy's only hope."
Myron nodded, but he didn't put the gun away. He looked over at Stan. In the distance, they heard a helicopter. Then sirens. The feds were on their way. No surprise. There was no way they weren't going to follow. By air, at the very least.
Greg's breathing was short spurts. His eyes were going hazy-gray.
"We got to do something here, Stan," Myron said.
"Just stay down," Stan said. Then he opened the car door and shouted, "Dad!"
No reply.
Stan got out of the car. He raised his hands and stood. "Please," he shouted. "They'll be here soon. They'll kill you."
Nothing. The air was so motionless that Myron thought he could still hear the echoes from the gun blasts.
"Dad?"
Myron lifted his head a little and risked a glance. A man stepped out from behind the side of the house. Edwin Gibbs wore full army fatigues with combat boots. He had an ammunition belt hanging off his shoulder. His rifle was pointed toward the
ground. Myron could see it was Nathan Mostoni, though he looked twenty years younger. His head was high, chin up. His back was straight.
Greg made a gurgling sound. Myron ripped off his shirt and pushed it against the wound. But Greg's eyes were closing. "Stay with me," Myron urged. "Come on, Greg. Stay here."
Greg did not reply. His eyes fluttered and closed. Myron felt his heart slam into his throat. "Greg?"
He felt for a pulse. It was there. Myron was no doctor, but it didn't feel strong. Oh damn. Oh come on.
Outside the car, Stan moved closer to his father. "Please," Stan said. "Put down the rifle, Dad."
The fed cars poured into the driveway. Brakes squealed. Feds jumped out of their vehicles, took position using the open doors as shields, aimed their weapons. Edwin Gibbs looked confused, panicked, Frankenstein's monster suddenly surrounded by angry villagers. Stan hurried toward him.
The air seemed to thicken, molasses-like. It was hard to move, hard to breathe. Myron could almost feel the officers tense up, fingers itchy, tips touching the cold metal of the trigger. He let go of Greg for a moment and shouted, "You can't shoot him!"
A fed had a megaphone. "Put down the rifle! Now!"
"Don't shoot!" Myron shouted.
For a moment nothing happened. Time did that in-and-out motion where everything rushes and freezes all at one time. Another fed car skidded up the driveway. A news van followed, screeching when it hit the brakes. Stan kept walking toward his father.
"You are surrounded," the megaphone said. "Drop the rifle and put your hands behind your head. Drop to your knees."
Edwin Gibbs looked left, looked right. Then he smiled. Myron felt the dread rise up in his chest. Gibbs lifted his rifle.
Myron rolled out of the car. "No!"
Stan Gibbs broke into a sprint. His father spotted him, his face calm. He aimed the rifle at his approaching son. Stan kept running. Time did stop this time, waiting for the blast of gunfire. But it didn't come. Stan had gained on him too fast. Edwin Gibbs closed his eyes and let his son tackle him. The two men fell to the ground. Stan stayed on top of his father, blanketing him, leaving no space open.
"Don't shoot him," Stan yelled. His voice sounded hurt, again so childlike. "Please don't shoot him."
Edwin Gibbs lay on his back. He let go of the rifle. It dropped into the grass. Stan pushed it away, still on top of his father, still shielding him from harm. They stayed there until the officers took over. They gently removed Stan and then rolled Edwin Gibbs onto his stomach, cuffing his hands behind his back. The news camera caught it all.
