the Innocent (2005)

by Harlan Coben

  Everyone stopped.

  "Wait a second," Ed Steinberg began. "So this Clyde Rangor murders a stripper.

  Darrow catches the case. A few days later, Rangor and his girlfriend Lemay v anish. And now, what, ten years later, we get Darrow's fingerprints at Emma Lemay's murder scene?"

  "That pretty much sums it up, yes."

  There was more silence. Loren tried to digest this.

  "Here's the important thing," Yates continued, leaning forward. "If Emma Lemay s till had materials pertinent to this case-- or if she left information on the w hereabouts of Clyde Rangor-- we believe that Investigator Muse is in the best p osition to find it."

  "Me?"

  Yates turned toward her. "You have a relationship with her colleagues. Lemay l ived with the same group of nuns for seven years now. The Mother Superior c learly trusts you. What we need you to concentrate on is that angle-- in finding o ut what Lemay knew or what she had."

  Steinberg looked at Loren and shrugged. Joan Thurston moved around her desk. She o pened a mini-fridge. "Anybody want a drink?" she asked.

  They didn't reply. Thurston shrugged, grabbed a bottle, began to shake it. "How a bout you, Adam? You want something?"

  "Just a water."

  She tossed him a bottle.

  "Ed? Loren?"

  They both shook their heads. Joan Thurston twisted off the cap and took a deep s ip. She moved back in front of her desk.

  "Okay, time to stop the dance," Thurston said. "What else have you learned, Loren?"

  Loren. Already calling her Loren. Again she checked with Steinberg. Again he n odded.

  "We found several connections between all of this and an ex-con named Matt Hunter," Loren said.

  Thurston's eyes narrowed. "Why does that name ring a bell?"

  "He's local, from Livingston. His case made the papers years back. He got into a f ight at a college party--"

  "Oh, right, I remember," Thurston interrupted. "I knew his brother Bernie. Good l awyer, died much too young. I think Bernie got him a job at Carter Sturgis when h e got out."

  "Matt Hunter still works there."

  "And he's involved in this?"

  "There are connections."

  "Such as?"

  She told them about the phone call from St. Margaret's to Marsha Hunter's r esidence. They did not seem all that impressed. When Loren started filling them i n on what she'd learned this very night-- that Matt Hunter had, in all l ikelihood, gotten into a fight with Charles Talley at the Howard Johnson's--t hey sat up. For the first time Yates started jotting notes in the leather pad.

  When she finished, Thurston asked, "So what do you make of it, Loren?"

  "Truth? I don't have a clue yet."

  "We should look at this guy Hunter's time in prison," Yates said. "We know Talley was in the system too. Maybe they met along the way. Or maybe Hunter s omehow got involved with Comb-Over's people."

  "Right," Thurston said. "Could be that Hunter is the one cleaning up the loose e nds for Comb-Over."

  Loren kept quiet.

  "You don't agree, Loren?"

  "I don't know."

  "What's the problem?"

  "This may sound hopelessly naive, but I don't think Matt Hunter is working as s ome kind of hit man. He has a record, yes, but that's from a fight at a frat p arty fifteen years ago. He had no priors and has been clean ever since."

  She did not tell him that they'd gone to school together or that her "gut" d idn't like it. When other investigators used that rationale, Loren wanted to g ag.

  "So how do you explain Hunter's involvement?" Thurston asked.

  "I don't know. It might be a more personal thing. According to the front-desk g uy, his wife was staying at the hotel without him."

  "You think it's a lovers' quarrel?"

  "It could be."

  Thurston looked doubtful. "Either way, we all agree that Matt Hunter is i nvolved?"

  Steinberg said, "Definitely." Yates nodded hard. Loren stayed still.

  "And right now," Thurston continued, "we have more than enough to arrest and i ndict. We have the fight, the call, all that. We'll get DNA soon linking him to t he dead man."

  Loren hesitated. Ed Steinberg did not. "We got enough to arrest."

  "And with Hunter's record, we can probably get a no-bail situation. We can put h im in the system and keep him there for a little while, right, Ed?"

  "I'd bet on it, yeah," Steinberg said.

  "Pick him up then," Joan Thurston said. "Let's get Hunter's ass back behind bars p ronto."

  Chapter 35

  MATT AND OLIVIA were alone in Marsha's guest room.

  Nine years ago Matt had spent his first night as a free man in this room. Bernie h ad brought him home. Marsha had been outwardly polite, but looking back on it, t here must have been some serious reservations. You move into a house like this t o escape people like Matt. Even if you know he's innocent, even if you think h e's a good guy and got a bad break, you don't want your life enmeshed with his.

  He is a virus, a carrier of something malevolent. You have children. You want to p rotect them. You want to believe, as Lance Banner did, that the manicured lawns c an keep this element out.

  He thought about his old college buddy Duff. At one time Matt had believed that Duff was tough. Now he knew better. Now he could kick Duff's ass around the c orner without breaking a sweat. He wasn't being boastful. He didn't think that w ith any pride. It was just a fact of life. His buddies who thought they were t ough-- the Duffs of the world-- man, they had no idea.

  But tough as Matt had become, he'd spent his first night of freedom in this room c rying. He couldn't exactly say why. He had never cried in prison. Some would s ay that he simply feared showing weakness in such a horrible place. That was p art of it, maybe. Maybe it was just a "saving up" outlet, that now he was c rying for four years of anguish.

  But Matt didn't think so.

  The real reason, he suspected, had more to do with fear and disbelief. He could n ot accept that he was really free, that prison was really behind him. It felt l ike a cruel hoax, that this warm bed was an illusion, that soon they'd drag him b ack and lock him away forever.

  He'd read how interrogators and hostage-takers try to break spirits by holding m ock executions. That would work, Matt thought, but what would undoubtedly be m ore effective, what would unquestionably make a man crack, would be the o pposite-- pretending you were going to set him free. You get the guy dressed, y ou tell him that his release has been all arranged, you say good-bye and b lindfold him and drive him around and then, when they stop and take him inside a nd pull off his blindfold, he finds that he is back where he started, that it w as all a sick joke.

  That was how it felt.

  Matt sat now on the same queen-size mattress. Olivia stood with her back to him.

  Her head was lowered. Her shoulders were still high, still proud. He loved her s houlders, the sinew of her back, the knot of gentle muscles and supple skin.

  Part of him, maybe most of him, wanted to say, "Let's just forget it. I don't n eed to know. You just said that you love me. You just told me that I am the o nly man you ever loved. That's enough."

  When they arrived Kyra had come out and met them in the front yard. She had been c oncerned. Matt remembered when she first moved in over the garage. He'd noted t hat she was "just like the Fonz." Kyra had no idea what he'd been talking a bout. Funny what you think about when you're terrified. Marsha looked concerned t oo, especially when she saw Matt's bandages and noticed his tentative step. But Marsha knew him well enough to know that now was not the time for questions.

  Olivia broke the silence. "Can I ask you something?"

  "Sure."

  "You said something on the phone about receiving pictures."

  "Yes."

  "May I see them, please?"

  He took out his cell phone and held it up. Olivia turned and took it from him w ithout touching his skin. He watched her face now. She concentrated in that way h e knew s
o well. Her head tilted a little to the side, the same as it always did w hen something confused her.

  "I don't understand this," she said.

  "Is that you?" he asked. "With the wig?"

  "Yes. But it wasn't like that."

  "Like what?"

  Her eyes stayed on the camera. She hit the replay button, watched the scene a gain, shook her head. "Whatever you want to think of me, I never cheated on y ou. And the man I met with. He was wearing a wig too. So he could look like the g uy in the first picture, I guess."

  "I figured that."

  "How?"

  Matt showed her the window, the gray skies, the ring on the finger. He explained a bout the drought and about blowing up the pictures in Cingle's office.

  Olivia sat next to him on the bed. She looked so damn beautiful. "So you knew."

  "Knew what?"

  "Deep in your heart, despite what you saw here, you knew that I'd never cheat on y ou."

  He wanted to reach out and take her in his arms. He could see her chest hitching a little, trying to hold it together.

  Matt said, "I just need to ask you two questions before you begin, okay?"

  She nodded.

  "Are you pregnant?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said. "And before you ask the second question-- yes, it's yours."

  "Then I don't care about the rest. If you don't want to tell me, you don't have t o. It doesn't matter. We can just run off, I don't care."

  She shook her head. "I don't think I can run again, Matt." She sounded so worn.

  "And you can't just do that either. What about Paul and Ethan? What about Marsha?"

  She was right, of course. He didn't know how to put it. He shrugged and said, "I j ust don't want things to change."

  "Neither do I. And if I could come up with a way around this, I would. I'm s cared, Matt. I've never been so scared in my life."

  She turned to him. She reached out and cupped the back of his head. She leaned f orward and kissed him. She kissed him hard. He knew that kiss. It was the p relude. Despite what was happening, his body reacted, began to sing. The kiss g rew hungrier. She moved closer, pressed against him. His eyes rolled back.

  They turned a little, and Matt's ribs suddenly screamed. Pain shot down his s ide. He stiffened. His low cry chased the moment away. Olivia released him, p ulled away. She lowered her eyes.

  "Everything I've ever told you about me," she said, "was a lie."

  He did not react. He was not sure what he had expected her to say-- not this-- but h e just sat and waited.

  "I didn't grow up in Northways, Virginia. I didn't go to UVA-- I didn't even go t o high school. My father wasn't the town doctor-- I don't know who my father w as. I never had a nanny named Cassie or any of that. I made it all up."

  Outside the window a car turned onto the street, the headlights dancing against t he wall as it passed. Matt just sat there, still as a stone.

  "My real mother was a strung-out junkie who gave me to Child Services when I was t hree. She died from an OD two years later. I bounced around from foster home to f oster home. You don't want to know what they were like. I did that until I ran a way when I was sixteen. I ended up near Las Vegas."

  "When you were sixteen?"

  "Yes."

  Olivia's voice had taken on a strange monotone now. Her eyes were clear, but she s tared straight ahead, two yards past him. She seemed to be waiting for a r eaction. Matt was still fumbling, trying to take this all in.

  "So those stories about Dr. Joshua Murray . . . ?"

  "You mean the young girl with the dead mother and the kindly father and the h orses?" She almost smiled. "Come on, Matt. I got that from a book I read when I w as eight."

  He opened his mouth but nothing came out. He tried again. "Why?"

  "Why did I lie?"

  "Yes."

  "I didn't really lie so much as . . ." She stopped, looked up . . . "so much as d ied. I know that sounds melodramatic. But becoming Olivia Murray was more than j ust a fresh start. It was like I was never that other person. The foster child w as dead. Olivia Murray of Northways, Virginia, took her place."

  "So everything . . ." He put his hands up. "It was all a lie?"

  "Not us," she said. "Not how I feel about you. Not how I act around you. Nothing a bout us was ever a lie. Not one kiss. Not one embrace. Not one emotion. You d idn't love a lie. You loved me."

  Loved, she had said. You loved me. The past tense.

  "So when we met in Las Vegas, you weren't in college?"

  "No," she said.

  "And that night? At the club?"

  Her eyes met his. "I was supposed to be working."

  "I don't understand."

  "Yeah, Matt. Yeah, you do."

  He remembered the Web site. The stripper site.

  "You danced?"

  "Danced? Well, yes, the politically correct term is exotic dancer. All the girls u se that term. But I was a stripper. And sometimes, when they made me. . . ."

  Olivia shook her head. Her eyes started to water. "We'll never get past this."

  "And that night," Matt said, a surge of anger coursing through him, "what, I l ooked like I had money?"

  "That's not funny."

  "I'm not trying to be funny."

  Her voice had steel in it now. "You have no idea what that night meant to me. It c hanged my life. You never got it, Matt."

  "Never got what?"

  "Your world," she said. "It's worth fighting for."

  He wasn't sure what she meant-- or if he wanted to know what she meant. "You said y ou were in foster homes."

  "Yes."

  "And that you ran away?"

  "My last foster home encouraged this line of work. You can't imagine how badly y ou want to get out. So they told us where to go. My last foster mother's s ister-- she ran the club. She got us fake IDs."

  He shook his head. "I still don't see why you didn't tell me the truth."

  "When, Matt?"

  "When what?"

  "When should I have told you? That first night in Las Vegas? How about when I c ame to your office? Second date? Engagement? When should I have told you?"

  "I don't know."

  "It wasn't that easy."

  "It wasn't easy for me to tell you about my time in prison either."

  "My situation involves more than me," she said. "I made a pact."

  "What kind of pact?"

  "You have to understand. I might have been able to risk it, if it was just me.

  But I couldn't risk it for her."

  "Who?"

  Olivia looked away and didn't say anything for a long time. She took a piece of p aper out of her back pocket, unfolded it slowly, and handed it to him. Then she t urned her face away from him again.

  Matt took the piece of paper and turned it over. It was an article printed out f rom the Nevada Sun News Web site. He read it. It didn't take long.

  Woman Slain Las Vegas, NV-- Candace Potter, age 21, was found slain in a trailer park off Route 15. The cause of death was strangulation. Police would not comment about t he possibility of sexual assault. Ms. Potter worked as a dancer at the Young Thangs, a nightclub on the outskirts of the city, using the stage name Candi Cane. Authorities said the investigation was ongoing and that they were f ollowing up some promising leads.

  Matt looked up. "I still don't get it." Her face was still turned away from him.

  "You promised this Candace person?"

  She chuckled without humor. "No."

  "Then who?"

  "What I said before. About not really lying to you. About it being more like I d ied."

  Olivia turned toward him.

  "That's me," she said. "I used to be Candace Potter."

  Chapter 36

  WHEN LOREN GOT BACK to the county prosecutor's office, Roger Cudahy, one of the t echno guys who'd gone to Cingle's office, was sitting with his feet up on her d esk, his hands folded behind his head.

  "Comfy?" Loren said.

  His smile was
wide. "Oh yeah."

  "Don't we look like the proverbial cat who ate the proverbial canary."

  The smile stayed. "Not sure that proverbial applies, but again: Oh yeah."

  "What is it?"

  With his hands still behind his head, Cudahy motioned toward the laptop. "Take a l ook."

  "On the laptop?"

  "Oh yeah."

  She moved the mouse. The darkened screen came to life. And there, filling up the e ntire screen, was a snapshot of Charles Talley. He was holding his hand up. His h air was blue-black. He had a cocky grin on his face.

  "You got this off Cingle Shaker's computer?"

  "Oh yeah. It came from a camera phone."

  "Nice work."

  "Hold up."

  "What?"

  Cudahy continued to grin. "As Bachman Turner Overdrive used to sing, you ain't s een nothing yet."

  "What?" Loren said.

  "Hit the arrow key. The right one."

  Loren did it. The shaky video started up. A woman in a platinum-blonde wig came o ut of the bathroom. She moved toward the bed. When the video was finished, Cudahy said, "Comments?"

  "Just one."

  Cudahy put out his palm. "Lay it on me."

  Loren slapped him five. "Oh yeah."

  Chapter 37

  "IT WAS ABOUT a year after I met you," Olivia said.

  She stood across the room. The color was back in her face. Her spine was s traighter. It was as though she was gaining strength, telling him all this. For h is part, Matt tried not to process yet. He just wanted to absorb.

  "I was eighteen years old, but I'd already been in Vegas for two years. A lot of u s girls lived in old trailers. The manager of the club, an evil man named Clyde Rangor, had a couple of acres a mile down the road. It was just desert. He put u p a chain-link fence, dragged in three or four of the most beaten-down trailers y ou'd ever seen. And that's where we lived. The girls, they came and went, but a t this time I was sharing the trailer with two people. One was new, a girl n amed Cassandra Meadows. She was maybe sixteen, seventeen years old. The other w as named Kimmy Dale. Kimmy was away that day. See, Clyde used to send us out on r oad trips. We'd strip in some small town, do three shows a day. Easy money for h im. Good tips for us, though Clyde kept most of that too."

  Matt needed to get his bearings, but there was just no way. "When you started t here, you were how old?" he asked.