by Harlan Coben
“Recognize these?” he asked.
“Just the yellow sweater,” she said. “It’s my dad’s old varsity sweater from Tarlow High School.”
“Funny thing to hide under a bed up here.”
Jessica’s eyes lit up. “Nancy’s message! Jesus Christ, she said my dad told her all about Kathy’s yellow sweater.”
“Whoa, slow down a second. What did Nancy say exactly?”
“She said—and I quote verbatim—‘He told me all about that favorite yellow sweater he gave Kathy. Such a sweet story.’ Those were her exact words. My father never wore it. Kathy did. Like a nightshirt or kick-around-the-house shirt.”
“Did your dad give it to her?”
“Yes.”
“So how did he get it back?”
“I don’t know. I imagine it was in her personal belongings at school.”
“Which doesn’t explain why he asked Nancy Serat about it. Or why it’s hidden under his bed.”
They stood in silence.
“We’re missing something here,” she said.
“Maybe your father saw something in these clothes we can’t see yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Myron admitted. “But these clothes were clearly significant to him. Maybe he found them somewhere unusual. Or maybe the police found them.”
“But Kathy was wearing blue the night she left. That’s been established.”
Myron remembered the testimony of the sorority sisters and the photograph. But then again …
“One way to check on that.”
“How?”
He ran out to the car. Darkness had finally laid claim on the long summer day. He turned on the phone, hoping they weren’t too far out of a calling area. Three of those little bars lit up. Enough for the phone to work. He tried Dean Gordon’s office. It rang twenty times. No answer. He tried the dean’s house. It was picked up on the third ring.
Dean Gordon said, “Hello?”
“What was Kathy wearing when she came to your house?” No need for identification or pleasantries.
“Wearing? A blouse and skirt of some kind.”
“What color?”
“Blue. I think the blouse was ripped a bit.”
Myron hung up.
Jessica said, “Back to square one.”
Maybe, Myron thought. But the flash of an image seared across his mind. He couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t even make out what it was exactly. But it had been there, and it would come back.
“Let’s go,” she said softly, taking his hand. The car light provided enough illumination to see the look in her eyes. They were beautiful eyes, so light colored they were almost yellow. “I want to get away from here.”
He closed the car door, feeling suddenly choked up. The car light went out, basking them in darkness. He couldn’t see her face anymore. “Where do you want to go?”
From the darkness he heard her voice. “Someplace,” she said, “where we can be alone.”
Chapter 37
They found a high-rise Hilton in Mahwah.
Myron checked them in to the best available suite. Jessica stood next to him. The hotel concierge swung his line of vision from Myron to Jessica, eyeing her lustily and Myron jealously. A formal affair was in full swing in the lobby. Men in tuxes, women in long gowns. But every man stared agog at Jessica, who was dressed in jeans and a button-down red blouse.
Myron was used to it. When they were first together, he had taken an almost perverse pleasure in seeing men stare, the familiar you-look-but-I-touch-ha-ha school of macho sneering. But then he started seeing things in the looks that weren’t there, and the even more familiar male insecurity burrowed through his rationality.
Jessica was practiced at this. She knew how to ignore the looks without looking cold, bothered, or interested.
Their room was on the sixth floor. They had barely closed the door when they kissed. Jessica’s tongue circled and gently darted, making his whole body spasm helplessly. He began to unbutton her blouse. His mouth went dry. He actually gasped when he saw her again. Breathlessness made him heady. He cupped a warm breast, feeling the delicious weight in his hand. She moaned into his mouth.
They moved to the bed.
Their lovemaking had always been intense, all-consuming, but this was somehow more animalistic, needier, and yet more tender.
Later, much later, Jessica sat up, kissed him gently on the cheek. “That,” she said, “was awesome.”
Myron shrugged. “Not bad.”
“Not bad?”
“For me. For you it was awesome.”
She swung her legs out of bed and slipped into a hotel robe. “I did enjoy myself,” she said.
“Sounded like it.”
“I was a tad noisy, huh?”
“The Who in concert is a tad noisy. You were loud.”
She stood above the bed, smiling. The robe was tied loosely, showing plenty of cleavage and legs that were so long, they were almost intimidating. “I didn’t hear you complain.”
“How could you,” Myron said, “over all your screaming?”
“What time is it?”
“Midnight.” He reached for the phone. “Hungry?”
She gave him a look he felt in his toes. Well, not exactly his toes. “Famished,” she said.
“For food, Jess. Food.”
“Oh.”
“Ever learn about the male’s ‘time for recovery’ in health class?”
“Must have been absent that day.”
“The three R’s. Replenishment, restoration, recuperation.” He looked at the menu. “Damn.”
“What?”
“No oysters.”
“Myron?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a hot tub in the bathroom.”
“Jess …”
She looked at him with who-me innocence. “We can soak until the food comes. Recuperate. One of the three R’s.”
“Just soak?”
“Just soak.”
She had said soak. He was sure of it. Soak. Not soap. But that was how it started. She soaped him back to life. Myron tried to fight it, almost afraid of how good it felt. But he couldn’t. Jess toyed with him, pushed him to the edge, let him teeter, then pulled him back. Myron was helpless. Words like heaven, ecstasy, paradise, ambrosia floated through his mind.
Total surrender.
With a whispered “Now,” she let him go. His nerve endings surged and sang. The white-hot explosion was so powerful, his ears popped. The bright light hurt his eyes.
“Awesome,” he managed.
She lay back, smiling. “Not bad.”
There was a knock on the door. Probably room service. Neither one of them moved.
“Why don’t you get it,” she said.
“My legs,” he said. “They can’t move. I may never walk again.”
Another knock.
“I’m not dressed,” she said.
“And what am I, ready for a press conference?”
“Bet you’d get good coverage.”
Myron moaned at the joke.
Another knock.
“Come on, Myron. Just throw a towel around your shapely ass and get moving.”
The second woman to mention his ass in the same day. Yowzer. He grabbed the bath towel and headed for the door. Another knock.
“One second.”
He opened the door. It wasn’t their food.
“Maid service,” Win said. “May I turn down your bed?”
“Didn’t you see the Do Not Disturb sign?”
Win glanced at the doorknob. “Sorry. No speaka da English.”
“How the hell did you find us?”
“I traced down your charge card,” he said, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “You checked in here at eight twenty-two P.M.” Win leaned his head in the doorway. “Hello, Jessica.”
From the bathroom. “Hi, Win.” Myron heard her stepping out of the Jacuzzi. The image of wate
r cascading down her naked body came to him like a deep punch.
“Come on in,” he grumbled.
“Thank you.” Win handed him a manila folder. “Thought you might want to take a look at this.”
Jessica came in from the bathroom. The robe was tied tighter. She was drying her hair with a towel. “What’s up?” she asked.
“The police rap sheet of one Fred Nickler, aka Nick Fredericks,” Win said.
“Imaginative alias,” Myron said.
“For an imaginative fellow.”
Jessica sat on the bed. “He’s the porno publisher, right?”
Myron nodded. The rap sheet was not very long. He started with the most recent dates. Traffic violations, two DWIs, one arrest for mail fraud.
“Nineteen seventy-eight,” Win said.
Myron skipped down. June 30, 1978. Fred Nickler had been arrested for endangering the welfare of a child. Charges dropped.
“So?”
“Mr. Nickler was involved in kiddie porn,” Win explained. “He was only a small-time photographer back then. But he was nabbed with his hand, so to speak, in the cookie jar. More precisely, taking photographs of an eight-year-old boy.”
Jessica said, “Jesus.”
Myron remembered their meeting. “ ‘Just an honest guy trying to make an honest buck.’ ”
“Indeed.”
Jessica asked, “Why were the charges dropped?”
“Ah,” Win said, pointing a finger in the air, “that’s where things get interesting. In many ways it’s not an uncommon story. Fred Nickler was only the photographer. A little fish. The authorities wanted the bigger fish. The little fish ratted out the big fish in exchange for leniency.”
“And they dropped the charges completely?” Myron said “Not even a misdemeanor?”
“Not even. It seems that Mr. Nickler also agreed to help out the police from time to time.”
“So what’s the significance?”
“This entire arrangement was negotiated between Nickler and the officer in charge of the investigation,” Win said. He shot a quick glance at Jessica.
“The officer in charge of the investigation was your friend Paul Duncan.”
Chapter 38
“That’s our man,” Win said. “Mr. Junior Horton.”
Horty looked like an ex–football player. Big and wide, all veins and bulges. His arms looked like corded wood. He was dressed for a rap video. His button-down St. Louis Cardinals baseball shirt was untucked. His baggy shorts reached down past his knees. No socks. Black Reebok high-tops. A Chicago White Sox baseball cap. Dark sunglasses and lots of jewelry.
It was nine in the morning. One Hundred Thirty-second Street in Manhattan. The street was quiet. Horty was making a drug deal. He had been in and out of jail plenty of times, his one long stint of freedom during his time at Reston U. Drugs, mostly. Armed robbery, once. Two sexual assault charges. Twenty-four years old and a complete punk. Like most inmates he had spent his prison time lifting weights. Pumping iron. Our penal institutions develop violent men’s physical strength, so when they get out, they’ll be able to intimidate and maim with far greater skill. Nice system.
Jessica was not with them. She was packing her father’s office—that is, the morgue—and checking for any additional bombshells. Myron had managed to talk her out of confronting Paul Duncan until they knew a little more. She listened grudgingly, but that was how Jessica usually listened anyway.
Horty finished the transaction with a kid who looked no older than twelve, slapped him five, headed west. He wasn’t wearing a Walkman, but he walked as though he were. Very jittery. His eyes were red. Every few steps he would snort the air and wipe his nose with the back of his hand.
“Boys and girls, can you say ‘Cokehead’?”
“Probably has the flu,” Win said.
“The Colombian strain.”
They ducked out of sight as he approached. When Horty reached the lip of the alley, Myron stepped in front of him.
“Junior Horton?”
Horty gave him a scornful street glare. “Who the fuck wants to know?”
“Snappy comeback,” Myron said.
“Get the fuck out of my way or I kick your ass.” He spotted Win. “Both your ass.”
“Asses,” Win corrected. “One ass. Two asses. Plural.”
“What the fuck—”
“We want to talk to you,” Myron said.
“Hey, fuck you, man.”
Myron turned to Win. “He’s a real badass.”
“Indeed,” Win said. “I may wet myself.”
Horty stepped toward Win. He had at least six inches and sixty pounds on him. Horty probably thought he was being clever, going after and intimidating the little guy. Myron tried not to smile when Horty spat, “Gonna fuck you up big-time.”
“If you curse again,” Win said in the tone of a preschool teacher, “I will be forced to silence you.”
“You?” Horty laughed heartily. He flexed for a moment and then lowered his nose until it almost touched Win’s. Win did not move. “Little piece of upper-crust whitebread gonna shut me up? Fuck—”
Win barely moved. His arm shot up, delivered a palm strike to the solar plexus, and was back at his side in what seemed like a tenth of a second. Horty stumbled back, gasping, unable to get any oxygen into his lungs.
“I asked you not to curse,” Win said.
It took Horty nearly half a minute to recover. When he did, the lips started flapping again. “Fucking cheap-shot motherfucker,” he said rising. “I gonna tear you a brand-new asshole.”
He charged Win, his arms outstretched as though tackling a fullback. Win sidestepped him and delivered a quick roundhouse kick, again hitting the solar plexus. Horty folded and went down. His face was a mixture of fury, pain, surprise, and of course, embarrassment. He looked around to make sure nobody was watching. He was, after all, getting his butt whipped by Mr. Wonderbread.
“There are two hundred and six bones in the body,” Win said evenly. “Next time I break one.”
But Horty wasn’t listening. His eyes bulged. Rage twisted his face—not to mention his limited ability to reason. Horty stood, stumbling, pretending he was more hurt than he was. The element of surprise. When Horty was close enough, he made his move.
He must have been really coked up, Myron mused. Or really stupid. Probably both.
Win leaned away and snapped a sidekick toward Horty’s lower leg. There was a cracking sound, like stepping on a dry twig. Horty screamed and went down. Win raised his leg for an ax kick, but Myron stopped him with a shake of his head.
“Two hundred five,” Win said, lowering his foot gently, “and counting.”
“You broke my f—” He stopped, holding his leg and rolling back and forth. “You broke my leg!”
“Your right tibia,” Win corrected.
“Who the—who are you?”
Myron said, “We’re going to ask you a few questions. You’re going to answer them.”
“My leg, man. I need a doctor.”
“When we’re finished.”
“Look, I just work for Terrell. He gave me this territory. You gotta a problem with that, you speak to him, okay?”
“We don’t want to talk to you about that.”
“Please, man, I’m begging you. My leg.”
“You used to attend Reston University.”
A surprised look replaced the pained one. “Yeah, so? You want my résumé?”
“You knew Kathy Culver.”
Panic now. “You guys cops?”
“No.”
Silence.
“You knew Kathy Culver.”
“Kathy who?”
Win said, “Number two-oh-five. The left femur. The femur is the largest bone in the body—”
“Okay, I knew her. So what?”
“How did you meet?” Myron asked.
“At a party. Her first week of school.”
“Did you ever date?”
“Date?” Horty laugh
ed at that one. “No. She wasn’t the kind you date.”
“What kind was she?”
“The kind who sucked off my Johnson first night. Willie’s too.”
“Who is Willie?”
“My roomie.”
“He play football?”
“Yeah.” Then he added, “But only special teams,” as if that made him a lower species of being.
“Go on.”
“Man, why you want to hear this?”
“Go on.”
Horty shrugged. The leg was swelling badly, but the coke was numbing the pain enough to keep him going. “You see, we had this party. At Moore House. Where all the brothers lived. Kathy, she was like the only white chick there. So she comes in dressed like a prime-time ho. I mean, she was all that, you know? We start rapping and shit, you know. Did a little nose-candy like a Hoover vac. She liked the stuff. Then we start slow-dancing.” The grin returned with the memory. “Grinding, you know. She put her hand on the Black Blade right there on the dance floor. Starts rubbing it and shit. So I take her upstairs, and she sucks me off. But that ain’t all. She takes a camera—a fucking camera!—out of her bag and asks me to take pictures. No shit! Close-ups, she wants, of her and the Black Blade.”
Myron’s stomach began to churn again. Win looked on with his usual noninterest.
Horty continued. “Next night, she come back. Takes on me and Willie at the same time. We take more pictures, have a good old time. ’Cept this time I had my camera too.”
“So you took some pictures of your own.”
“Shit, yeah.”
“Did you and Kathy have any more, uh, encounters?”
“Nope. She moved on to other dudes, though. Primelooking babe for such a ho. All blond and built and shit.”
“You talk to her after that?”
He shrugged. “Little. Not much. But once she started up with Christian, man, it was a whole other story.”
“What do you mean?”
“She be all nose up in the air, like her shit don’t stink no more. Two of them all lovey-dovey and shit, like they was going steady on a TV show. All of a sudden the slut thinks she’s some fucking pure-ass cherry. I mean, the ho been riding the Blade like a fucking bronco, and now she don’t even say how-do. That ain’t right. That just ain’t right.”
