the Innocent (2005)

by Harlan Coben

  "Yeah," Kimmy said, "I remember him."

  "He's retired now. Max Darrow, I mean. He says they know who killed her, but t hey don't know where he is."

  Kimmy felt the tears coming to her eyes. "It was a long time ago."

  "You and my mom were friends?"

  Kimmy managed to nod. She still remembered it all, of course. Candi had been m ore than a friend to her. In this life you don't find too many people you can t ruly count on. Candi had been one-- maybe the only one since Mama died when Kimmy was twelve. They had been inseparable, Kimmy and this white chick, s ometimes calling themselves, professionally at least, Pic and Sayers from the o ld movie Brian's Song. And then, like in the movie, the white friend died.

  "Was she a prostitute?" the girl asked.

  Kimmy shook her head and told a lie that felt like truth. "Never."

  "But she stripped."

  Kimmy said nothing.

  "I'm not judging her."

  "What do you want then?"

  "I want to know about my mother."

  "It doesn't make any difference now."

  "It does to me."

  Kimmy remembered when she first heard the news. She'd been onstage out near Tahoe doing a slow number for the lunch crowd, the biggest group of losers in t he history of mankind, men with dirt on their boots and holes in their hearts t hat staring at naked women only made bigger. She hadn't seen Candi for three d ays running, but then again Kimmy had been on the road. Up there, on that s tage, that was where she first overheard the rumors. She knew something bad had g one down. She'd just prayed it hadn't involved Candi.

  But it had.

  "Your mother had a hard life," Kimmy said.

  The girl sat rapt.

  "Candi thought we'd find a way out, you know? At first she figured it'd be a guy a t the club. They'd find us and take us away, but that's crap. Some of the girls t ry that. It never works. The guy wants some fantasy, not you. Your mother l earned that pretty quick. She was a dreamer but with a purpose."

  Kimmy stopped, looked off.

  "And?" the girl prompted.

  "And then that bastard squashed her like she was a bug."

  The girl shifted in her chair. "Detective Darrow said his name was Clyde Rangor?"

  Kimmy nodded.

  "He also mentioned a woman named Emma Lemay? Wasn't she his partner?"

  "In some things, yeah. But I don't know the details."

  Kimmy did not cry when she first heard the news. She was beyond that. But she h ad come forward. She risked everything, telling that damn Darrow what she knew.

  Thing is, you don't take too many stands in this life. But Kimmy would not b etray Candi, even then, even when it was too late to help. Because when Candi d ied, so did the best parts of Kimmy.

  So she talked to the cops, especially Max Darrow. Whoever did this-- and yeah, s he was sure it was Clyde and Emma-- could hurt her or kill her, but she wouldn't b ack down.

  In the end, Clyde and Emma had not confronted her. They ran instead.

  That was ten years ago now.

  The girl asked, "Did you know about me?"

  Kimmy nodded slowly. "Your mother told me-- but only once. It hurt her too much t o talk about it. You have to understand. Candi was young when it happened.

  Fifteen, sixteen years old. They took you away the moment you popped out. She n ever even knew if you were a boy or girl."

  The silence hung heavy. Kimmy wished that the girl would leave.

  "What do you think happened to him? Clyde Rangor, I mean."

  "Probably dead," she said, though Kimmy didn't believe it. Cockroaches like Clyde don't die. They just burrow back in and cause more hurt.

  "I want to find him," the girl said.

  Kimmy looked up at her.

  "I want to find my mother's killer and bring him to justice. I'm not rich, but I h ave some money."

  They were both quiet for a moment. The air felt heavy and sticky. Kimmy wondered h ow to put this.

  "Can I tell you something?" she began.

  "Of course."

  "Your mother tried to stand up to it all."

  "Up to what?"

  Kimmy pressed on. "Most of the girls, they surrender. You see? Your mother never d id. She wouldn't bend. She dreamed. But she could never win."

  "I don't understand."

  "Are you happy, child?"

  "Yes."

  "You still in school?"

  "I'm starting college."

  "College," Kimmy said in a dreamy voice. Then: "You."

  "What about me?"

  "See, you're your mother's win."

  The girl said nothing.

  "Candi-- your mother-- wouldn't want you mixed up in this. Do you understand?"

  "I guess I do."

  "Hold on a second." Kimmy opened her drawer. It was there, of course. She didn't h ave it out anymore, but the photograph was right on top. She and Candi smiling o ut at the world. Pic and Sayers. Kimmy looked at her own image and realized t hat the young girl they'd called Black Magic was a stranger, that Clyde Rangor m ight as well have pummeled her body into oblivion too.

  "Take this," she said.

  The girl held the picture as if it were porcelain.

  "She was beautiful," the girl whispered.

  "Very."

  "She looks happy."

  "She wasn't. But she would be today."

  The girl put her chin up. "I don't know if I can stay away from this."

  Then maybe, Kimmy thought, you are more like your mother than you know.

  They hugged then, made promises of staying in touch. When the girl was gone, Kimmy got dressed. She drove to the florist and asked for a dozen tulips. Tulips h ad been Candi's favorite. She took the four-hour trip to the graveyard and k nelt by her friend's grave. There was no one else around. Kimmy dusted off the t iny headstone. She had paid for the plot and stone herself. No potter's grave f or Candi.

  "Your daughter came by today," she said out loud.

  There was a slight breeze. Kimmy closed her eyes and listened. She thought that s he could hear Candi's voice, silenced so long, beg her to keep her daughter s afe.

  And there, with the hot Nevada sun pounding on her skin, Kimmy promised that she w ould.

  Chapter 2

  IRVINGTON, NEW JERSEY

  JUNE 20

  "ACAMERA PHONE," Matt Hunter muttered with a shake of his head.

  He looked up for divine guidance, but the only thing looking back was an e normous beer bottle.

  The bottle was a familiar sight, one Matt saw every time he stepped out of his s agging two-family with the shedding paint job. With its crown 185 feet in the a ir, the famed bottle dominated the skyline. Pabst Blue Ribbon used to have a b rewery here, but they abandoned it in 1985. Years ago, the bottle had been a g lorious water tower with copper-plated steel plates, glossy enamel, and a gold s topper. At night spotlights would illuminate the bottle so that Jerseyites c ould see it from miles around.

  But no more. Now the color looked beer-bottle brown but it was really rust red.

  The bottle's label was long gone. Following its lead, the once-robust n eighborhood around it had not so much fallen apart as slowly disintegrated.

  Nobody had worked in the brewery for twenty years. From the eroding ruins, one w ould think it would have been much longer.

  Matt stopped on the top step of their stoop. Olivia, the love of his life, did n ot. The car keys jangled in her hand.

  "I don't think we should," he said.

  Olivia did not break stride. "Come on. It'll be fun."

  "A phone should be a phone," Matt said. "A camera should be a camera."

  "Oh, that's deep."

  "One gizmo doing both . . . it's a perversion."

  "Your area of expertise," Olivia said.

  "Ha, ha. You don't see the danger?"

  "Er, nope."

  "A camera and a phone in one"-- Matt stopped, searching for how to c ontinue--"it's, I don't know, it's interspecies breeding w
hen you think about i t, like one of those B-movie experiments that grows out of control and destroys a ll in its path."

  Olivia just stared at him. "You're so weird."

  "I'm not sure we should get camera phones, that's all."

  She hit the remote and the car doors unlocked. She reached for the door handle.

  Matt hesitated.

  Olivia looked at him.

  "What?" he asked.

  "If we both had camera phones," Olivia said, "I could send you nudies when y ou're at work."

  Matt opened the door. "Verizon or Sprint?"

  Olivia gave him a smile that made his chest thrum. "I love you, you know."

  "I love you too."

  They were both inside the car. She turned to him. He could see the concern and i t almost made him turn away. "It's going to be okay," Olivia said. "You know t hat, right?"

  He nodded and feigned a smile. Olivia wouldn't buy it, but the effort would c ount toward something.

  "Olivia?" he said.

  "Yes?"

  "Tell me more about the nudies."

  She punched his arm.

  But Matt's unease returned the moment he entered the Sprint store and started h earing about the two-year commitment. The salesman's smile looked somehow s atanic, like the devil in one of those movies where a naive guy sells his soul.

  When the salesman whipped out a map of the United States-- the "nonroaming" a reas, he informed them, were in bright red-- Matt started to back away.

  As for Olivia, there was simply no quelling her excitement, but then again his w ife had a natural lean toward the enthusiastic. She was one of those rare p eople who finds joy in things both large and small, one of those traits that d emonstrates, certainly in their case, that opposites do attract.

  The salesman kept jabbering. Matt tuned him out, but Olivia gave the man her f ull attention. She asked a question or two, just out of formality, but the s alesman knew that this one was not only hooked, lined, and sinkered but fried u p and halfway down the gullet.

  "Let me just get the paperwork ready," Hades said, slinking away.

  Olivia gripped Matt's arm, her face beaming. "Isn't this fun?"

  Matt made a face.

  "What?"

  "Did you really use the word 'nudie'?"

  She laughed and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  Of course Olivia's giddiness-- and nonstop beaming-- was due to much more than the c hanging of their mobile phone service. Purchasing the camera phones was merely a symbol, a signpost, of what was to come.

  A baby.

  Two days ago, Olivia had taken a home pregnancy test and, in a move Matt found o ddly loaded with religious significance, a red cross finally appeared on the w hite stick. He was stunned silent. They had been trying to have a child for a y ear-- pretty much since they first got married. The stress of continuous failure h ad turned what had always been a rather spontaneous if not downright magical e xperience into well-orchestrated chores of temperature taking, calendar m arkings, prolonged abstinence, concentrated ardor.

  Now that was behind them. It was early, he warned her. Let's not get ahead of o urselves. But Olivia had a glow that could not be denied. Her positive mood was a force, a storm, a tide. Matt had no chance against it.

  That was why they were here.

  Camera phones, Olivia had stressed, would allow the soon-to-be threesome to s hare family life in a way their parents' generation could never have e nvisioned. Thanks to the camera phone, neither of them would miss out on their c hild's life-defining or even mundane moments-- the first step, the first words, t he average play-date, what-have-you.

  That, at least, was the plan.

  An hour later, when they returned to their half of the two-family home, Olivia g ave him a quick kiss and started up the stairs.

  "Hey," Matt called after her, holding up his new phone and arching an eyebrow.

  "Want to try out the, uh, video feature?"

  "The video only lasts fifteen seconds."

  "Fifteen seconds." He considered that, shrugged, and said, "So we'll extend f oreplay."

  Olivia understandably groaned.

  They lived in what most would consider a seedy area, in the strangely comforting s hadow of the giant beer bottle of Irvington. When he was fresh out of prison, Matt had felt he deserved no better (which worked neatly because he could afford l ittle better) and despite protestations from family, he began renting space n ine years ago. Irvington is a tired city with a large African-American p opulation, probably north of eighty percent. Some might reach the obvious c onclusion about guilt over what he'd had to be like in prison. Matt knew that s uch things were never so simple, but he had no better explanation other than he c ouldn't yet return to the suburbs. The change would have been too fast, the l and equivalent of the bends.

  Either way, this neighborhood-- the Shell gas station, the old hardware store, t he deli on the corner, the winos on the cracked sidewalk, the cut-throughs to Newark Airport, the tavern hidden near the old Pabst brewery-- had become home.

  When Olivia relocated from Virginia, he figured that she'd insist on moving to a b etter neighborhood. She was used to, he knew, if not better, definitely d ifferent. Olivia grew up in the small hick town of Northways, Virginia. When Olivia was a toddler, her mother ran off. Her father raised her alone.

  On the elderly side for a new dad-- her father was fifty-one when Olivia was b orn-- Joshua Murray worked hard to make a home for him and his young daughter.

  Joshua was the town doctor of Northways-- a general practitioner who worked on e verything from six-year-old Mary Kate Johnson's appendix to Old Man Riteman's g out.

  Joshua was, according to Olivia, a kind man, a gentle and wonderful father who d oted on his only true relative. There was just the two of them, father and d aughter, living in a brick town house off Main Street. Dad's medical office was a ttached, on the right side off the driveway. Most days, Olivia would sprint h ome after school so that she could help out with the patients. She would cheer u p scared kids or gab with Cassie, the long-time receptionist/nurse. Cassie was a "sorta nanny" too. If her father was too busy, Cassie cooked dinner and helped Olivia with her homework. For her part, Olivia worshipped her father. Her dream--a nd yes, she thought now that it sounded hopelessly naive-- had been to become a d octor and work with her father.

  But during Olivia's senior year of college, everything changed. Her father, the o nly family Olivia had ever known, died of lung cancer. The news took Olivia's l egs out from under her. The old ambition of going to medical school-- following i n her father's footsteps-- died with him. Olivia broke off her engagement to her c ollege sweetheart, a premed named Doug, and moved back to the old house in Northways. But living there without her father was too painful. She ended up s elling the house and moving to an apartment complex in Charlottesville. She t ook a job with a computer software company that required a fair amount of t ravel, which was, in part, how she and Matt rekindled their previously t oo-brief relationship.

  Irvington, New Jersey, was a far cry from either Northways or Charlottesville, Virginia, but Olivia surprised him. She wanted them to stay in this place, seedy a s it was, so that they could save the money for the now-under-contract dream h ouse.

  Three days after they bought the camera phones, Olivia came home and headed s traight upstairs. Matt poured a glass of lime-flavored seltzer and grabbed a f ew of those cigar-shaped pretzels. Five minutes later he followed her. Olivia w asn't in the bedroom. He checked the small office. She was on the computer. Her b ack was to him.

  "Olivia?"

  She turned to him and smiled. Matt had always disdained that old cliche about a s mile lighting up a room, but Olivia could actually do that-- had that whole "turn the world on with her smile" thing going on. Her smile was contagious. It w as a startling catalyst, adding color and texture to his life, altering e verything in a room.

  "What are you thinking?" Olivia asked him.

  "That you're smoking hot."<
br />
  "Even pregnant?"

  "Especially pregnant."

  Olivia hit a button, and the screen vanished. She stood and gently kissed his c heek. "I have to pack."

  Olivia was heading to Boston on a business trip.

  "What time is your flight?" he asked.

  "I think I'm going to drive."

  "Why?"

  "A friend of mine miscarried after a plane ride. I just don't want to chance it.

  Oh, and I'm going to see Dr. Haddon tomorrow morning before I go. He wants to r econfirm the test and make sure everything is all right."

  "You want me to go?"

  She shook her head. "You have work. Come next time, when they do a sonogram."

  "Okay."

  Olivia kissed him again, her lips lingering. "Hey," she whispered. "You happy?"

  He was going to crack a joke, make another double entendre. But he didn't. He l ooked straight into those eyes and said, "Very."

  Olivia moved back, still holding him steady with that smile. "I better pack."

  Matt watched her walk away. He stayed in the doorway for another moment. There w as a lightness in his chest. He was indeed happy, which scared the hell out of h im. The good is fragile. You learn that when you kill a boy. You learn that w hen you spend four years in a maximum-security facility.

  The good is so flimsy, so tenuous, that it can be destroyed with a gentle puff.

  Or the sound of a phone.

  Matt was at work when the camera phone vibrated.

  He glanced at the caller ID and saw that it was Olivia. Matt still sat at his o ld partner desk, the kind where two people face each other, though the other s ide had been empty for three years now. His brother, Bernie, had bought the d esk when Matt got out of prison. Before what the family euphemistically called "the slip," Bernie had big ideas for the two of them, the Hunter Brothers. He w anted nothing to change now. Matt would put those years behind him. The slip h ad been a bump in the road, nothing more, and now the Hunter Brothers were back o n track.

  Bernie was so convincing that Matt almost started to believe it.

  The brothers shared that desk for six years. They practiced law in this very r oom-- Bernie lucrative corporate while Matt, barred from being a real attorney b ecause he'd been a convicted felon, handled the direct opposite, neither l ucrative nor corporate. Bernie's law partners found the arrangement odd, but p rivacy was something neither brother craved. They had shared a bedroom for t heir entire childhood, Bernie on the top bunk, a voice from above in the dark.