by Harlan Coben
41
The police cleaned up. Corbett had questions, but Myron was not in the mood. He left as soon as the detective was distracted. He sped to the police station where Linda Coldren was about to be released. He took the cement steps three or four at a clip, looking like a spastic Olympian timing the triple jump.
Victoria Wilson almost—the key word being almost—smiled at him. “Linda will be out in a few minutes.”
“Do you have that tape I asked you to get?”
“The phone call between Jack and the kidnapper?”
“Yes.”
“I have it,” she said. “But why—”
“Please give it to me,” Myron said.
She heard something in his tone. Without argument, she reached into her handbag and pulled it out. Myron took it. “Do you mind if I drive Linda home?” he said.
Victoria Wilson regarded him. “I think maybe that would be a good idea.”
A policeman came out. “She’s ready to leave,” he said.
Victoria was about to turn away, when Myron said, “I guess you were wrong about digging into the past. The past ended up saving our client.”
Victoria held his eye. “It’s like I said before,” she began. “You never know what you will find.”
They both waited for the other to break the eye contact. Neither did until the door behind them opened.
Linda was back in civilian clothes. She stepped out tentatively, like she’d been in a dark room and wasn’t sure her eyes could handle the sudden light. Her face broke into a wide smile when she saw Victoria. They hugged. Linda dug her face into Victoria’s shoulder and rocked in her arms. When they released, Linda turned and hugged Myron. Myron closed his eyes and felt his muscles unbunch. He smelled her hair and felt the wondrous skin of her cheek against his neck. They embraced for a long time, almost like a slow dance, neither wanting to let go, both perhaps a little bit afraid.
Victoria coughed into her fist and made her excuses. With the police leading the way, Myron and Linda made it to the car with a minimum of press fuss. They strapped on their seat belts in silence.
“Thank you,” she said.
Myron said nothing. He started the car. For a while neither of them spoke. Myron switched on the air-conditioning.
“We have something here, don’t we?”
“I don’t know,” Myron said. “You were worried about your son. Maybe that’s all it was.”
Her face said that she was not buying. “How about you?” Linda asked. “Did you feel anything?”
“I think so,” he said. “But part of that might be fear, too.”
“Fear of what?”
“Of Jessica.”
She gave a weary grin. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those guys who fears commitment.”
“Just the opposite. I fear how much I love her. I fear how much I want to commit.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Jessica left me once before. I don’t want to be exposed like that again.”
Linda nodded. “So you think that’s what it was? Fear of abandonment?”
“I don’t know.”
“I felt something,” she said. “For the first time in a very long time. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had affairs. Like with Tad. But that’s not the same thing.” She looked at him. “It felt nice.”
Myron said nothing.
“You’re not making this very easy,” Linda said.
“We have other things to talk about.”
“Like what?”
“Victoria filled you in on Esme Fong?”
“Yes.”
“If you remember, she had a solid alibi for Jack’s murder.”
“A night clerk at a big hotel like the Omni? I doubt that will hold up on scrutiny.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Myron said.
“Why do you say that?”
Myron did not answer. He turned right and said, “You know what always bothered me, Linda?”
“No, what?”
“The ransom calls.”
“What about them?” she asked.
“The first one was made on the morning of the kidnapping. You answered. The kidnappers told you that they had your son. But they made no demands. I always found that odd, didn’t you?”
She thought about it. “I guess so.”
“Now I understand why they did that. But back then, we didn’t know what the real motive for the kidnapping was.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Esme Fong kidnapped Chad because she wanted revenge on Jack. She wanted to make him lose the tournament. How? Well, I’d thought that she’d kidnapped Chad to fluster Jack. Make him lose his focus. But that was too abstract. She wanted to make sure Jack lost. That was her ransom demand right from the beginning. But you see, the ransom call came in a little late. Jack was already at the course. You answered the phone.”
Linda nodded. “I think I see what you’re saying. She had to reach Jack directly.”
“She or Tito, but you’re right. That’s why she called Jack at Merion. Remember the second call, the one Jack got after he finished the round?”
“Of course.”
“That was when the ransom demand was made,” Myron said. “The kidnapper told Jack plain and simple—you start losing or your son dies.”
“Hold up a second,” Linda said. “Jack said they didn’t make any demands. They told him to get some money ready and they’d call back.”
“Jack lied.”
“But …?” She stopped, and then said, “Why?”
“He didn’t want us—or more specifically, you—to know the truth.”
Linda shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
Myron took out the cassette Victoria had given him. “Maybe this will help explain.” He pushed the tape into the cassette player. There were several seconds of silence and then he heard Jack’s voice like something from beyond the grave:
“Hello?”
“Who’s the chink bitch?”
“I don’t know what—”
“You trying to fuck with me, you dumb son of a bitch? I’ll start sending you the fucking brat in little pieces.”
“Please—”
“What’s the point of this, Myron?” Linda sounded a little annoyed.
“Just hold on another second. The part I’m interested in is coming up.”
“Her name is Esme Fong. She works for a clothing company. She’s just here to set up an endorsement deal with my wife, that’s all.”
“Bullshit.”
“It’s the truth, I swear.”
“I don’t know, Jack.…”
“I wouldn’t lie to you.”
“Well, Jack, we’ll just see about that. This is gonna cost you.”
“What do you mean?”
“One hundred grand. Call it a penalty price.”
“For what?”
Myron hit the STOP button. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“ ‘Call it a penalty price.’ Clear as day.”
“So?”
“It wasn’t a ransom demand. It was a penalty.”
“This is a kidnapper, Myron. He’s probably not all that caught up in semantics.”
“ ‘One hundred grand,’ ” Myron repeated. “ ‘Call it a penalty price.’ As if a ransom demand had already been made. As if the hundred grand was something he’d just decided to tack on. And what about Jack’s reaction? The kidnapper asks for one hundred grand. You would figure he would just tell him fine. But instead he says, ‘For what?’ Again, because it’s in addition to what he’s already been told. Now listen to this.” Myron pushed the PLAY button.
“Never you fucking mind. You want the kid alive? It’s gonna cost you one hundred grand now. That’s in—”
“Now hold on a second.”
Myron hit the STOP button again. “ ‘It’s gonna cost you one hundred grand now.’ ” Myron repeated. “Now. That’s the key word. Now. Again as if it’s something new. As
if before this call there was another price. And then Jack interrupts him. The kidnapper says, ‘That’s in—’ when Jack jumps in. Why? Because Jack doesn’t want him to finish the thought. He knew that we were listening. ‘That’s in addition.’ I’d bet anything that was the next word he was about to say. ‘That’s in addition to our original demand.’ Or ‘that’s in addition to losing the tournament.’ ”
Linda looked at him. “But I still don’t get it. Why wouldn’t Jack just tell us what they wanted?”
“Because Jack had no intention of complying with their demand.”
That stopped her. “What?”
“He wanted to win too badly. More than that—he needed to win. Had to. But if you learned the truth—you who had won so often and so easily—you would never understand. This was his chance at redemption, Linda. His chance of going back twenty-three years and making his life worth living. How badly did he want to win, Linda? You tell me. What would he have sacrificed?”
“Not his own son,” Linda countered. “Yes, Jack needed to win. But not badly enough to forfeit his own son’s life.”
“But Jack didn’t see it that way. He was looking through his own rose-tinted prism of desire. A man sees what he wants to, Linda. What he has to. When I showed you and Jack the bank videotape, you both saw something different. You didn’t want to believe your son could do something so hurtful. So you looked for explanations that would counter that evidence. Jack did just the opposite. He wanted to believe that his son was behind it. That it was only a big hoax. That way he could continue to try his hardest to win. And if by some chance he was wrong—if Chad had indeed been kidnapped—well, the kidnappers were probably bluffing anyway. They’d never really go through with it. In other words, Jack did what he had to do: He rationalized the danger away.”
“You think his desire to win clouded his thinking that much?”
“How much clouding did he need? We all had doubts after watching that bank tape. Even you. So how hard would it be for him to go the extra step?”
Linda sat back. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe I buy it. But I still don’t see what this has to do with anything.”
“Bear with me a little while longer, okay? Let’s go back to when I showed you the bank videotape. We’re at your house. I show the tape. Jack storms out. He is upset, of course, but he still plays well enough to keep the big lead. This angers Esme. He’s ignoring her threat. She realizes that she has to up the ante.”
“By cutting off Chad’s finger.”
“It was probably Tito, but that’s not really relevant right now anyway. The key thing is, the finger is severed, and Esme wants to use it to show Jack she’s serious.”
“So she plants it in my car and we find it.”
“No,” Myron said.
“What?”
“Jack finds it first.”
“In my car?”
Myron shook his head. “Remember that Chad’s key chain has Jack’s car keys on it as well as yours. Esme wants to warn Jack, not you. So she puts the finger in Jack’s car. He finds it. He’s shocked, of course, but he’s in the lie too deep now. If the truth came out, you’d never forgive him. Chad would never forgive him. And the tournament would be over for him. He has to get rid of the finger. So he puts the finger in an envelope and writes that note. Remember it? ‘I warned you not to seek help.’ Don’t you see? It’s the perfect distraction. It not only draws attention away from him, but it also gets rid of me.”
Linda chewed on her lower lip. “That would explain the envelope and pen,” she said. “I bought all the office supplies. Jack would have had some in his briefcase.”
“Exactly. But here is where things get really interesting.”
She arched an eyebrow. “They’re not interesting now?”
“Just hold on. It’s Sunday morning. Jack is about to head into the final round with an insurmountable lead. Bigger than he had twenty-three years ago. If he loses now, it would be the greatest golf collapse in history. His name would forever be synonymous with choking—the one thing Jack hated more than anything else. But on the other hand, Jack was not a complete ogre. He loved his son. He knew now that the kidnapping was not a hoax. He was probably torn, not sure what to do. But in the end he made a decision. He was going to lose the tournament.”
Linda said nothing.
“Stroke by stroke, we watched him die. Win understands the destructive side of wanting to win far better than I. He also saw that Jack had the fire back, that old need to win. But despite all that, Jack still tried to lose. He didn’t completely collapse. That would have looked too suspicious. But he started dropping strokes. He made it close. And then he purposely fumbled big-time in the stone quarry and lost his lead.
“But imagine what was going on in his head. Jack was fighting against everything that he was. They say a man can’t drown himself. Even if it means saving his own child’s life, a man cannot keep himself under water until his lungs burst. I’m not so sure that’s any different than what Jack was trying to do. He was literally killing himself. His sanity was probably ripping away like divots on the course. On the eighteenth green, the survival instinct took over. Maybe he started rationalizing again—or more likely, he just couldn’t help himself. But we both saw the transformation, Linda. We saw his face suddenly crystallize on eighteen. Jack stroked that putt home and tied the score.”
Linda’s voice was barely audible. “Yes,” she said. “I saw him change.” She sat up in her seat and let loose a long breath. “Esme Fong must have been in a panic by then.”
“Yes.”
“Jack had left her no choice. She had to kill him.”
Myron shook his head. “No.”
She looked confused again. “But it adds up. Esme was desperate. You said so yourself. She wanted vengeance for her father, and on top of that she was now worried about what would happen if Tad Crispin lost. She had to kill him.”
“One problem,” Myron said.
“What?”
“She called your house that night.”
“Right,” Linda said. “To set up the meeting at the course. She probably told Jack to come alone. To not tell me anything.”
“No,” Myron said. “That’s not what happened.”
“What?”
“If that was what happened,” Myron continued, “we’d have the call on tape.”
Linda shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“Esme Fong did call your house. That part is true. My bet is that she just threatened him some more. Let him know that she meant business. Jack probably begged forgiveness. I don’t know. I’ll probably never know. But I’d bet he ended the call by promising to lose the next day.”
“So?” Linda said. “What does that have to do with the call being taped?”
“Jack was going through hell,” Myron went on. “The pressure was too much. He was probably close to a breakdown. So he ran out of the house—just as you said—and ended up at his favorite place in the world. Merion. The golf course. Did he go out there just to think? I don’t know. Did he bring the gun with him, maybe even contemplating suicide? Again, I don’t know. But I do know that the tape machine was still hooked up to your phone. The police confirmed that. So where did the tape of that last conversation go?”
Linda’s tone was suddenly more measured. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, Linda, you do.”
She gave him a look.
“Jack might have forgotten the call was recorded,” Myron continued. “But you didn’t. When he ran out of the house, you went down to the basement. You played the tape. And you heard everything. What I’m telling you in this car is not new to you. You knew why the kidnappers had taken your child. You knew what Jack had done. You knew where he liked to go when he took his walks. And you knew you had to stop him.”
Myron waited. He missed the turnoff, took the next one, U-turned back onto the highway. He found the right exit and put on his blinker.
“Jack did bring the gun,” L
inda said too calmly. “I didn’t even know where he kept it.”
Myron gave a slight nod, silently trying to encourage.
“You’re right,” she continued. “When I played back the tape, I realized that Jack couldn’t be trusted. He knew it too. Even with the threat of his own son’s death, he had nailed that putt on eighteen. I followed him out to the course. I confronted him. He started to cry. He said he would try to lose. But”—she hesitated, weighed her words—“that drowning man example you gave. That was Jack.”
Myron tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry.
“Jack wanted to kill himself. And I knew he had to. I’d listened to the tape. I’d heard the threats. And I had no doubts: If Jack won, Chad was dead. I also knew something else.”
She stopped and looked at Myron.
“What?” he said.
“I knew Jack would win. Win was right—the fire was back in Jack’s eyes. But it was a raging inferno now. One that even he couldn’t control anymore.”
“So you shot him,” Myron said.
“I struggled to get the gun from him. I wanted to injure him. Seriously injure him. If there was the possibility he could play again, I was afraid the kidnapper might just hold on to Chad indefinitely. The voice on the phone sounded that desperate. But Jack wouldn’t surrender the gun—nor would he pull it away from me. It was weird. He just held on and looked at me. Almost like he was waiting. So I curled my finger around the trigger and pulled.” Her voice was very clear now. “It didn’t go off accidentally. I had hoped to wound him seriously, not kill him. But I fired. I fired to save my son. And Jack ended up dead.”
More silence.
“Then you headed back to the house,” Myron said. “You buried the gun. You saw me in the bushes. When you got inside, you erased the tape.”
“Yes.”
“And that was why you released that press announcement so early. The police wanted to keep it quiet, but you needed the story to go public. You wanted the kidnappers to know that Jack was dead, so they’d let Chad go.”
“It was my son or my husband,” Linda said. She turned her body to face him. “What would you have done?”
“I don’t know. But I don’t think I would have shot him.”
