by Harlan Coben
“It’s just not for me.”
“I see. Are you a vegetarian?”
“I don’t eat much red meat,” Myron said.
“I’m not talking about your health. Do you ever eat any dead animals?”
“Yes.”
“So do you think it’s more humane to kill, say, a chicken or a cow than it is to kill a deer?”
“No.”
“Do you know what kind of awful torture that cow goes through before it’s slaughtered?”
“For food,” Myron said.
“Pardon?”
“Slaughtered for food.”
“I eat what I kill, Myron. Your friend up there”—she nodded to the patient deer—“she was gutted and eaten. Feel better?”
Myron thought about that. “Uh, we’re not having lunch, are we?”
That got a small chuckle. “I won’t go into the whole food chain argument,” Sophie Mayor said. “But God created a world where the only way to survive is to kill. Period. We all kill. Even the strict vegetarians have to plow fields. You don’t think plowing kills small animals and insects?”
“I never really thought about it.”
“Hunting is just more hands-on, more honest. When you sit down and eat an animal, you have no appreciation for the process, for the sacrifice made so that you could survive. You let someone else do the killing. You’re above even thinking about it. When I eat an animal, I have a fuller understanding. I don’t do it casually. I don’t depersonalize it.”
“Okay,” Myron said, “while we’re on the subject, what about those hunters who don’t kill for food?”
“Most do eat what they kill.”
“But what about those who kill for sport? I mean, isn’t that part of it?”
“Yes.”
“So what about that? What about killing merely for sport?”
“As opposed to what, Myron? Killing for a pair of shoes? Or a nice coat? Is spending a full day outdoors, coming to understand how nature works and appreciating her bountiful glory, is that worth any less than a leather pocketbook? If it’s worth killing an animal because you prefer your belt made of animal skin instead of something man-made, is it not worth killing one because you simply enjoy the thrill of it?”
He said nothing.
“I’m sorry to ride you about this. But the hypocrisy of it all drives me somewhat batty. Everyone wants to save the whale, but what about the thousands of fish and shrimp a whale eats each day? Are their lives worthless because they aren’t as cute? Ever notice how no one ever wants to save ugly animals? And the same people who think hunting is barbaric put up special fences so the deer can’t eat their precious gardens. So the deers overpopulate and die of starvation. Is that better? And don’t even get me started on those so-called ecofeminists. Men hunt, they say, but women are too genteel. Of all the sexist nonsense. They want to be environmentalists? They want to stay as close to a state of nature as possible? Then understand the one universal truth about nature: You either kill or you die.”
They both turned and stared at the deer for a moment. Proof positive.
“You didn’t come here for a lecture,” she said.
Myron had welcomed this delay. But the time had come. “No, ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” Sophie Mayor chuckled without a hint of humor. “That sounds grim, Myron.”
Myron turned and looked at her. She met his gaze and held it.
“Call me Sophie,” she said.
He nodded. “Can I ask you a very personal, maybe hurtful question, Sophie?”
“You can try.”
“Have you heard anything from your daughter since she ran away?”
“No.”
The answer came fast. Her gaze remained steady, her voice strong. But her face was losing color.
“Then you have no idea where she is?”
“No idea.”
“Or even if she’s …”
“Alive or dead,” she finished for him. “None.”
Her voice was so monotone it seemed on the verge of a scream. There was a quaking near her mouth now, a fault line starting to give way. Sophie Mayor stood and waited for his explanation, afraid perhaps to say any more.
“I got a diskette in the mail,” he began.
She frowned. “What?”
“A computer diskette. It came in the mail. I put it in my A drive, and it just started up. I didn’t have to hit any keys.”
“Self-starting program,” she said, suddenly the computer expert. “That’s not complicated technology.”
Myron cleared his throat. “A graphic came on. It started out as a photograph of your daughter.”
Sophie Mayor took a step back.
“It was the same photograph that’s in your office. On the right side of the credenza.”
“That was Lucy’s junior year of high school,” she said. “The school portrait.”
Myron nodded, though he didn’t know why. “After a few seconds her image started melting on the screen.”
“Melting?”
“Yes. It sort of dissolved into a puddle of, uh, blood. Then a sound came on. A teenage girl laughing, I think.”
Sophie Mayor’s eyes were glistening now. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
“This came in the mail?”
“Yes.”
“On a floppy disk?”
“Yes,” Myron said. Then he added for no reason: “A three-and-a-half-inch floppy.”
“When?”
“It arrived in my office about two weeks ago.”
“Why did you wait so long to tell me?” She put a hand up. “Oh, wait. You were out of the country.”
“Yes.”
“So when did you first see it?”
“Yesterday.”
“But you saw me this morning. Why didn’t you tell me then?”
“I didn’t know who the girl was. Not at first anyway. Then when I was in your office, I saw the photograph on the credenza. I got confused. I wasn’t sure what to say.”
She nodded slowly. “So that explains your abrupt departure.”
“Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Do you have the diskette? My people will analyze it.”
He reached into his pocket and withdrew it. “I don’t think it’ll be any help.”
“Why not?”
“I took it to a police lab. They said it automatically reformatted itself.”
“So the diskette is blank?”
“Yes.”
It was as though her muscles had suddenly decided to flee the district. Sophie Mayor’s legs gave way. She dropped to a chair. Her head lolled into her hands. Myron waited. There were no sounds. She just sat there, head in hands. When she looked up again, the gray eyes were tinged with red.
“You said something about a police lab.”
He nodded.
“You used to work in law enforcement.”
“Not really.”
“I remember Clip Arnstein saying something about it.”
Myron said nothing. Clip Arnstein was the man who had drafted Myron in the first round for the Boston Celtics. He also had a big mouth.
“You helped Clip when Greg Downing vanished,” she continued.
“Yes.”
“I’ve been hiring private investigators to search for Lucy for years. Supposedly the best in the world. Sometimes we seem to get close but …” Her voice drifted off, her eyes far away. She looked at the diskette in her hand as if it had suddenly materialized there. “Why would someone send this to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you know my daughter?”
“No.”
Sophie took a couple of careful breaths. “I want to show you something. Wait here a minute.” It took maybe half that time. Myron had just begun to stare into the eyes of some dead bird, noting with some dismay how closely they resembled the eyes of some human beings he knew, and Sophie was back. She handed him a sheet of paper.
Myron looked at i
t. It was an artist’s rendering of a woman nearing thirty years of age.
“It’s from MIT,” she explained. “My alma mater. A scientist there has developed a software package that helps with age progression. For missing people. So you can see what they might look like today. He made this up for me a few months ago.”
Myron looked at the image of what the teenage Lucy might look like as a woman heading toward thirty. The effect was nothing short of startling. Oh, it looked like her, he guessed, but talk about ghosts, talk about life being a series of what-ifs, talk about the years slipping away and then smacking you in the face. Myron stared at the image, at the more conservative haircut, the small frown lines. How painful must it be for Sophie Mayor to look at this?
“Does she look familiar at all?” Sophie asked.
Myron shook his head. “No, I’m sorry.”
“You’re sure?”
“As sure as you can be in these situations.”
“Will you help me find her?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer. “I can’t see how I can help.”
“Clip said you’re good at these things.”
“I’m not. But even if I were, I can’t see what I can do. You’ve hired experts already. You have the cops—”
“The police have been useless. They view Lucy as a runaway, period.”
Myron said nothing.
“Do you think it’s hopeless?” she asked.
“I don’t know enough about it.”
“She was a good girl, you know.” Sophie Mayor smiled at him, her eyes misty with time travel. “Headstrong, sure. Too adventurous for her own good. But then again I raised Lucy to be independent. The police. They think she was simply a troubled kid. She wasn’t. Just confused. Who isn’t at that age? And it wasn’t as if she ran off in the middle of the night without telling anyone.”
Against his better judgment Myron asked, “Then what happened?”
“Lucy was a teenager, Myron. She was sullen and unhappy, and she didn’t fit in. Her parents were college math professors and computer geeks. Her younger brother was considered a genius. She hated school. She wanted to see the world and live on the road. She had the whole rock ’n’ roll fantasy. One day she told us she was going off with Owen.”
“Owen was her boyfriend?”
She nodded. “An average musician who fronted a garage band, certain that his immense talent was being held back by them.” She made a lemon-sucking face. “They wanted to run off and get a record deal and become famous. So Gary and I said okay. Lucy was like a wild bird trapped in a small cage. She wouldn’t stop flapping her wings no matter what we did. Gary and I felt we had no choice in the matter. We even thought it might be good for her. Lots of her classmates were backpacking through Europe. What was the difference?”
She stopped and looked up at him. Myron waited. When she didn’t say anything, he said, “And?”
“And we never heard from her again.”
Silence.
She turned back to the mounted deer. The deer looked back at her with something akin, it seemed, to pity.
Myron said, “But Owen came back, right?”
“Yes.” She was still staring at the deer. “He’s a car salesman in New Jersey. He plays in a wedding band on weekends. Can you imagine? He dresses up in a cheap tuxedo and belts out ‘Tie a Yellow Ribbon’ and ‘Celebration’ and introduces the bridal party.” She shook her head at the irony. “When Owen came back, the police questioned him, but he didn’t know anything. Their story was so typical: They went out to Los Angeles, failed miserably, started fighting, and broke up after six months. Owen stayed out there another three months, certain this time it had been Lucy who was holding back his immense talent. When he failed again, he came back home with his tail between his legs. He said he hadn’t seen Lucy since their breakup.”
“The police checked it out?”
“So they said. But it was a dead end.”
“Do you suspect Owen?”
“No,” she said bitterly. “He’s too big a nothing.”
“Have there been any solid leads at all?”
“Solid?” She thought about it. “Not really. Several of the investigators we’ve hired think she joined a cult.”
Myron made a face. “A cult?”
“Her personality fit the profile, they said. Despite my attempts to make her independent, they claim she was just the opposite—someone needing guidance, alone, suggestible, alienated from friends and family.”
“I don’t agree,” Myron said.
She looked at him. “You said you never met Lucy.”
“The psychological profile may be right, but I doubt she’s with a cult.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Cults like money. Lucy Mayor is the daughter of an extraordinarily wealthy family. Maybe you didn’t have money when she first would have joined, but believe me, they’d know about you by now. And they would have been in touch, if for no other reason than to extort vast sums.”
She started blinking again. Her eyes closed, and she turned her back to him. Myron took a step forward and then stopped, not sure what to do. He chose discretion, kept his distance, waited.
“The not knowing,” Sophie Mayor said after some time had passed. “It gnaws at you. All day, all night, for twelve years. It never stops. It never goes away. When my husband’s heart gave out, everyone was so shocked. Such a healthy man, they said. So young. Even now I don’t know how I’ll get through the day without him. But we rarely spoke about Lucy after she disappeared. We just lay in bed at night and pretended that the other one was asleep and stared at the ceiling and imagined all the horrors only parents with missing children can conjure up.”
More silence.
Myron had no idea what to say. But the silence was growing so thick he could barely breathe. “I’m sorry,” he said.
She didn’t look up.
“I’ll go to the police,” he said. “Tell them about the diskette.”
“What good will that do?”
“They’ll investigate.”
“They already have. I told you. They think she’s a runaway.”
“But now we have this new evidence. They’ll take the case more seriously. I can even go to the media. It’ll jump-start their coverage.”
She shook her head. Myron waited. She stood and wiped her palms on the thighs of her jeans. “The diskette,” she said, “was sent to you.”
“Yes.”
“Addressed to you.”
“Yes.”
“So,” she said, “someone is reaching out to you.”
Win had said something similar. “You don’t know that,” Myron said. “I don’t want to douse your hopes, but it could be nothing more than a prank.”
“It’s not a prank.”
“You can’t be sure.”
“If it was a prank, it would have been sent to me. Or Jared. Or someone who knew her. It wasn’t. It was sent to you. Someone is reaching out to you specifically. It might even be Lucy.”
He took a deep breath. “Again I don’t want to douse your—”
“Don’t patronize me, Myron. Just say what you want to say.”
“Okay … if it were Lucy, why would she send an image of herself melting into a puddle of blood?”
Sophie Mayor did not wince, but she came close. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s not her. Maybe it’s her killer. Either way, they’re seeking you out. It’s the first solid lead in years. And if we make it loud and public, I fear that whoever sent this will go back into hiding. I can’t risk that.”
“I don’t know what I can do,” Myron said.
“I’ll pay you whatever you want. Name a price. A hundred thousand? A million?”
“It’s not the money. I just don’t see where I can help.”
“You can investigate.”
He shook his head. “My best friend and business partner is in jail for murder. My client was shot in his own home. I have other clients who
rely on me for their job security.”
“I see,” she said. “So you don’t have time, is that it?”
“It’s not a question of time. I really have nothing to go on. No clue, no connection, no source. There’s nothing to start with here.”
Her eyes pinned him down. “You can start with you. You’re my clue, my connection, my source.” She reached out and took his hand. Her flesh was cold and hard. “All I’m asking is that you look closer.”
“At what?”
“Maybe,” she said, “at yourself.”
Silence. They stood there, she holding his hand.
“That sounds good, Sophie, but I’m not sure what it means.”
“You don’t have children, do you?”
“No,” Myron said. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t sympathize.”
“So let me ask you, Myron: What would you do if you were me? What would you do if the first real clue in ten years just walked in your door?”
“The same thing you’re doing.”
So under the mounted deer, he told her he would keep his eyes open. He told her he would think about it. He told her he would try to figure out the connection.
CHAPTER 20
Back at the office Myron strapped on the Ultra Slim phone headset and started making phone calls. Very Jerry Maguire. Not just in appearance but in the fact that clients were abandoning him left and right. And he hadn’t even written a mission statement.
Win called. “Newspaper Tail’s name is Wayne Tunis. He lives in Staten Island and works in construction. He placed one call to a John McClain, telling him that he had been spotted. That’s it. They’re pretty careful.”
“So we don’t yet know who hired him?”
“That would be correct.”
“When in doubt,” Myron said, “we should go with the obvious choice.”
“Young FJ?”
“Who else? He’s been following me for months.”
“Course of action?”
“I’d like to get him off my back.”
“May I recommend a well-placed bullet through the back of the skull?”
“We’ve got enough problems without adding one more.”
“Fine. Course of action?”
“We confront him.”
