the Innocent (2005)

by Harlan Coben

  "Vodka."

  Mel poured him one. Matt held the glass, looked at it, shook his head. Drinking a way his problems. Could he be a bigger cliche? He threw back the vodka and let t he warmth coast through him. He nodded for another, but Mel was already on the c ase. Matt threw that one back too.

  He started to feel better. Or to say the same thing in another way: He started t o feel less. His eyes slowly swerved from side to side. He felt, as he did in m ost places, slightly out of place-- a spy in enemy territory. He was not really c omfortable anywhere anymore-- his old softer world or his new hardened one. So h e straddled both. Truth was, he was only comfortable-- pitiful as it sounded--w hen he was with Olivia.

  Damn her.

  Third shot down the hatch. The buzzing started in the base of his skull.

  Yo, check out the big man throwing back the booze.

  He already felt a bit wobbly. He wanted that. Just make it go away, he thought.

  Not forever. He wasn't drinking away the blues. He was postponing them, for just o ne more night, just until Olivia came home and explained to him why she was in a motel room with another man, why she lied about it, why the guy knew that he h ad told her about the pictures.

  Like that. The little things.

  He pointed for another. Mel, rarely one to converse or hand out advice, poured.

  "You're a beautiful man, Mel."

  "Hey, thanks, Matt. I get that a lot, but it still means something, you know?"

  Matt smiled and looked at the glass. Just for a night. Just let it go.

  A big moose came back from the can, accidentally bumping into Matt as he walked p ast. Matt startled to, gave the moose the eye. "Watch it," Matt said.

  The moose grunted an apology, diffusing the moment. Matt was almost d isappointed. One would think he'd be smarter-- that Matt, better than anyone, k new the danger in fisticuffs of any sort-- but not tonight. Nope, tonight f isticuffs would be most welcome, yes indeed.

  Screw the consequences, right?

  He looked for Stephen McGrath's ghost. He often sat on the next bar stool. But Stephen was nowhere to be found tonight. Good.

  Matt was not a good drinker. He knew that. He could not hold his liquor. He was a lready past buzzed and nearing inebriation. The key, of course, was knowing w hen to stop-- maintaining the high without the aftermath. It was a line many p eople tried to find. It was a line most tripped over.

  Tonight he really didn't care about the line.

  "Another."

  The word came out slurred. He could hear it. It was hostile too. The vodka was m aking him angry or, more likely, letting him be. He was actually hoping for t rouble now, even while he feared it. The anger was making him focus. Or at l east that was what he wanted to believe. His thinking was no longer muddled. He k new what he wanted. He wanted to hit someone. He wanted a physical c onfrontation. It didn't matter if he crushed someone or someone crushed him.

  He didn't care.

  Matt wondered about this-- this taste for violence. About its origins. Maybe his o ld chum Detective Lance Banner was right. Prison changes you. You go in one g uy, even if you're innocent, but you come out. . .

  Detective Lance Banner.

  The keeper of the Livingston gate, the dumb hick bastard.

  Time passed. It was impossible to say how much. He eventually signaled for Mel t o come over and total him up. When he hopped off the stool, the inside of Matt's skull screamed in protest. He grabbed the bar, got his bearings. "Later, Mel."

  "Good seeing you, Matt."

  He weaved his way out, one name ringing repeatedly in his head.

  Detective Lance Banner.

  Matt remembered an incident in second grade when he and Lance had both been s even. During a recess game of Four Squares-- the dumbest game since Tetherball--

  Lance's pants had split. What made it worse, what made it one of those wholly h orrifying childhood incidents, was that Lance had not worn underwear that day.

  A nickname had been born, one that Lance hadn't been able to shake until middle s chool: "Keep It in Your Pants, Lance."

  Matt laughed out loud.

  Then Lance's voice came back to him: "We have a nice neighborhood here."

  "That so?" Matt said out loud. "Do all the kids wear underwear now, Lance?"

  Matt laughed again at his own joke. The noise echoed in the tavern, but nobody l ooked up.

  He pushed the door open. It was night now. He stumbled down the street, still c racking up at his own joke. His car was parked near his house. A couple of his q uasi-neighbors stood near it, both drinking out of brown paper bags.

  One of the two . . . homeless was the politically correct term they used n owadays, but these guys preferred the old standby winos, called out to him.

  "Yo, Matt."

  "How are you, Lawrence?"

  "Good, man." He held out the bag. "Need a swig?"

  "Nah."

  "Yo." Lawrence made a waving motion with his hand. "Looks like you been having y our fill anyway, huh?"

  Matt smiled. He reached into his pocket and peeled off a twenty. "You two get s ome of the good stuff. On me."

  A broad smile broke out on Lawrence's face. "Matt, you's all right."

  "Yeah. Yeah, I'm very special."

  Lawrence laughed at that one like it was a Richard Pryor special. Matt waved and w alked away. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his car keys. He looked at t he keys in his hand, at the car, and then he stopped.

  He was plastered.

  Matt was irrational right now. He was stupid. He'd love to beat the hell out of s omeone-- Lance Banner being number two on his list (Charles Talley was number o ne, but Matt didn't know how to find him)-- but he was not that stupid. He w ouldn't drive in this condition.

  Lawrence said, "Yo, Matt, you wanna hang with us?"

  "Maybe later, guys."

  Matt spun around and headed back toward Grove Street. The number 70 bus hit Livingston. He waited at the stop, swaying with the wind. He was the only one t here. Most of the people were traveling from the other direction-- exhausted d omestics trudging back from the wealthier environs to their far more humble a bodes.

  Welcome to the flip side of the burbs.

  When bus 70 pulled up, Matt watched the tired women descend, zombielike. Nobody s poke. Nobody smiled. Nobody was there to greet them.

  The bus ride was maybe ten miles, but what a ten miles. You went from the decay o f Newark and Irvington and suddenly it was like you hit another universe. The c hange happened in a snap. There was Maplewood and Milburn and Short Hills and f inally Livingston. Matt thought again about distance, about geography, about t he truly thinnest of lines.

  Matt rested his head against the bus window, the vibration working like a s trange massage. He thought about Stephen McGrath and that terrible night in Amherst, Massachusetts. He thought about his hands around Stephen's neck. He w ondered how hard he squeezed. He wondered if he could have let go as they fell, i f that would have made a difference. He wondered if maybe, just maybe, he g ripped the neck even tighter.

  He wondered about that a lot.

  Matt got off at the circle on Route 10 and walked toward Livingston's favorite w atering hole, the Landmark. The lot on Northfield Avenue was chock full of m inivans. Matt sneered. No thin line here. This was not Mel's. This was a g oddamn wussy bar, if ever he saw one. He pushed open the door.

  Lance Banner would be here.

  The Landmark was, of course, nothing like Mel's. It was brightly lit. It was l oud. Outkast sang about roses smelling like boo-boo-- safe ghetto music. There w as no cracked vinyl, no peeling paint, no sawdust on the floor. The Heineken s igns worked. So did the Budweiser clock, complete with moving Clydesdales. Very l ittle hard liquor was being served. Pitchers of beer lined the tables. At least h alf the men were dressed in softball uniforms with various sponsors-- Friendly's Ice Cream, Best Buy, Burrelle's Press Clipping-- and enjoying a p ost-rec-league-game celebration with teammates and opponents alike. T
here was a s mattering of college kids home on break from Princeton or Rutgers or-- gasp--m aybe Matt's almost alma mater, Bowdoin.

  Matt stepped inside and when he did, nobody turned around. Not at first.

  Everyone was laughing. Everyone was boisterous and red-faced and healthy.

  Everyone talked at the same time. Everyone smiled and swore too casually and l ooked soft.

  And then he saw his brother, Bernie.

  Except, of course, it wasn't Bernie. Bernie was dead. But man, it looked like h im. At least from the back. Matt and Bernie used to come here with fake IDs.

  They'd laugh and be boisterous and talk at the same time and swear too casually.

  They'd watch those other guys, the rec-league softball players, and listen to t hem talk about their kitchen additions, their careers, their kids, their boxes a t Yankee Stadium, their experiences coaching Little League, the lamentations o ver their declining sex lives.

  As Matt stood there, thinking about his brother, the energy of the place s hifted. Someone recognized him. A ripple began. Murmurs followed and heads t urned. Matt looked around for Lance Banner. He didn't see him. He spotted the t able with the cops-- you could just tell that was what they were-- and recognized o ne of them as the cop-kid Lance had braced him with yesterday.

  Still heavily under the influence, Matt tried to keep his walk steady. The cops g ave their best laser glares as he approached. The glares didn't faze him. Matt h ad seen much worse. The table grew silent as he approached the cop-kid.

  Matt stopped in front of him. The kid did not step back. Matt tried not to sway.

  "Where's Lance?" Matt asked.

  "Who wants to know?"

  "Good one." Matt nodded. "Say, who writes your lines?"

  "What?"

  " 'Who wants to know?' That's funny stuff, really. I mean, I'm standing in front o f you, I'm asking you directly, and you come up, bang, on the spot, no time to t hink, with, 'Who wants to know?' " Matt moved in closer. "I'm standing right h ere-- so who the hell do you think wants to know?"

  Matt heard the sound of chair legs scraping the floor, but he didn't look away.

  The cop-kid glanced toward his buddies, then back at Matt. "You're drunk."

  "So?"

  He got into Matt's face now. "So you want me to haul your ass downtown and give y ou a Breathalyzer?"

  "One"-- Matt raised his index finger--"Livingston's police station is not d owntown. It's more midtown. You've been watching too many repeats of NYPD Blue.

  Two, I'm not driving, numbnuts, so I'm not sure what a Breathalyzer is supposed t o do for you. Three, while we're on the subject of breath and you standing in m y face and all, I have mints in my pocket. I'm going to slowly reach for them s o you can have one. Or even the whole pack."

  Another cop stood. "Get out of here, Hunter."

  Matt turned toward him and squinted. It took him a second to recognize the f erret-faced man. "My God, it's Fleisher, right? You're Dougie's little b rother."

  "Nobody wants you here."

  "Nobody . . . ?" Matt turned from one man to the other. "Are you guys for real?

  You going to run me out of town now? You"-- Matt snapped, pointed--"Fleisher's l ittle brother, what's your first name?"

  He didn't answer.

  "Never mind. Your brother Dougie was the biggest pothead in my class. He dealt t o the whole school. We called him Weed, for crying out loud."

  "You talking trash about my brother?"

  "I'm not talking trash. I'm talking truth."

  "You want to spend the night in jail?"

  "For what, asswipe? You going to arrest me on some trumped-up charge? Go ahead.

  I work for a law firm. I'll sue your ass back to the high school equivalency e xam you probably never passed."

  More chair scrapes. Another cop stood. Then another. Matt's heart started doing a quick two-step. Someone reached and grabbed his wrist. Matt pulled away. His r ight hand formed a fist.

  "Matt?"

  This voice was gentle and struck a distant chord deep inside of him. Matt g lanced behind the bar. Pete Appel. His old friend from high school. They'd p layed together at the Riker Hill Park. The park was a converted Cold War m issile base. He and Pete used to play rocket ships on the cracked concrete l aunch pads. Only in New Jersey.

  Pete smiled at him. Matt relaxed the fist. The cops all stayed in place.

  "Hey, Pete."

  "Hey, Matt."

  "Good to see you, man."

  "You too," Pete said. "Look, I'm getting off now. Why don't I give you a lift h ome, okay?"

  Matt looked at the cops. Several were red-faced, ready to go. He turned back to h is old friend. "That's okay, Pete. I'll find my way."

  "You sure?"

  "Yeah. Look, man, sorry if I caused you any trouble."

  Pete nodded. "Good to see you."

  "You too."

  Matt waited. Two of the cops made a space. He did not look back as he walked out i nto the lot. He sucked in the night air and started down the street. Soon he b roke into a run.

  He had a specific destination in mind.

  Chapter 17

  LANCE BANNER WAS still smiling at Loren. "Come on, get in," he said. "We'll t alk."

  She took one more look at Marsha Hunter's house and then slid into the passenger s eat. Lance started driving around the old neighborhood.

  "So," he said, "what did you want with Matt's sister-in-law?"

  She swore Lance to secrecy but still tossed him only the bare bones-- that she w as investigating the suspicious death of Sister Mary Rose, that they weren't s ure that there was even a murder yet, that Sister Mary Rose had possibly placed a phone call to Marsha Hunter's residence. She did not tell him about the i mplants or the fact that they didn't know the nun's real identity.

  For his part, Lance informed her that Matt Hunter was married now, that he c urrently worked as a "low-level, shat-upon" paralegal in his brother's old law f irm. Matt Hunter's wife, Lance said, was from Virginia or Maryland, he couldn't r emember which. Lance also added, with a little too much enthusiasm, that he w ould be happy to help Loren look into this case.

  Loren told him not to bother, that this was her investigation, that if he t hought of something he should let her know. Lance nodded and drove her back to h er own car.

  Before Loren stepped out, she said, "Do you remember him? I mean, as a kid?"

  "Hunter?" Lance frowned. "Yeah, sure, I remember him."

  "He seemed like a pretty straight shooter."

  "So do a lot of killers."

  Loren reached for the door handle, shaking her head. "You really believe that?"

  Lance said nothing.

  "I read something the other day," Loren said. "I don't remember the details, but t he basic premise was that by the age of five, much of our future self is d etermined: how well we'll do in schools, if we'll grow up to be a criminal, our c apacity to love. You buy that, Lance?"

  "Don't know," he said. "Don't much care."

  "You've caught a lot of bad guys, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "You ever look into their past?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Seems to me," Loren said, "that I always find something. There's usually a p retty obvious case of past psychosis or trauma. On the news, the neighbors are a lways like, 'Gee, I didn't know that nice man was chopping up little kids-- he a lways seemed so polite.' But you go back, you ask their schoolteachers, you ask t heir childhood friends, they almost always tell a different story. They're n ever surprised."

  Lance nodded.

  "So what about it?" she asked. "You see anything in his past that makes Matt Hunter a killer?"

  Lance thought about it. "If it was all determined by the age of five, we w ouldn't have jobs."

  "That's not an answer."

  "Best I can do. You try to profile based on how a third-grader played on the m onkey bars, we're all screwed."

  He had a point. Either way Loren needed to keep her eye on the ball-
- right now t hat meant tracking down Matt Hunter. She got back into her car and started s outh. There was still time to get to Lockwood Corp. in Wilmington, Delaware, b efore it was too dark.

  She tried to reach Matt Hunter at the law firm, but he was gone for the day. She c alled his house and left a message on the machine: "Matt, this is Loren Muse.

  I'm an investigator with the Essex County prosecutor's office. We knew each o ther a lifetime ago, at Burnet Hill. Could you give me a call as soon as p ossible?"

  She left both her mobile and office numbers before hanging up.

  The usually two-hour ride to Delaware took her an hour and twenty minutes. Loren d idn't use the siren, but she did keep the small detachable flashing blue light o n for the entire journey. She liked speeding-- what's the point in being in law e nforcement if you can't drive fast and carry a gun?

  Randal Horne's office was a cookie-cut attorney spread. His firm took up three f loors in a warehouse of office buildings, one next to the other, an unending d rone of boxed sameness.

  The receptionist at Horne, Buckman and Pierce, a classic battle-ax who was c omfortably past her prime, eyed Loren as if she'd recognized her from a sex o ffender poster. Full frown in place, the battle-ax told her to sit.

  Randal Horne kept her waiting for a full twenty minutes-- a classic, if not t ransparent, lawyer mind game. She passed the time reading the thrilling m agazine selection, which consisted of various issues of The Third Branch, the n ewsletter of federal courts, and the American Bar Association Journal. Loren s ighed. What she wouldn't give for something with Lindsay, or Colin, on the c over.

  Horne finally came out to the reception area and moved so that he stood directly o ver her. He was younger than she'd imagined, though he had that kind of shiny f ace Loren usually associated with Botox or Jermaine Jackson. His hair was a l ittle too long, slicked back and curling around the neck. His suit was i mpeccable, though the lapels looked a little wide. Maybe that was back in.

  He skipped the introductions: "I don't really see that we have anything to d iscuss, Ms. Muse."

  Randal Horne stood close to her so that she couldn't really stand. That was o kay. He was trying to do the height thing with her. Loren was all of five-one a s it was, so she was used to it. Part of her was tempted to smash her palm into h is groin, just to get him to back up, but no, let him have his play.