by Harlan Coben
“I don’t believe you’d do that.”
“No?”
“You’re not a killer. And even if you were, it would be too complicated. I’d leave evidence behind. I have Win covering my back. It would be too messy.”
“We’ll see,” she said, but there was no starch there. She pointed up ahead. “Turn off up here.”
She pointed to a dirt road that seemed to materialize from nowhere. There was a guardhouse fifty yards down and to the left. Myron pulled up. Susan Lex leaned over and smiled. The guard waved her through. There were no signs, no identification marks, nothing. The whole setup looked like some sort of militia compound.
After the gatehouse, the dirt road stopped and a paved one began. New pavement from the looks of it colored the dark black-gray of heavy rain. Trees crowded the sides like parade watchers. Up ahead, the road narrowed. The trees closed in too. Myron veered the car to the left and passed through wrought-iron gates guarded by two stone falcons.
“What is this?” Myron asked.
Susan Lex did not reply.
A mansion seemed to push out of the green, elbowing its way forward. The exterior was classic off-white Georgian but on an oversized scale. Palladian windows, pilasters, fancy pediments, curved balconies, brick cornering, and what looked like real stone masonry were all garnished with hints of green ivy. A set of oversized double doors were dead center, the entire edifice perfectly symmetrical.
“Park in the lot over there,” Susan Lex said.
Myron followed her finger. There was indeed a paved lot. Myron figured it contained close to twenty cars. Various makes. A BMW, a couple of Honda Accords, three Mercedes of different lineage, Fords, SUVs, one station wagon. Your basic American melting pot. Myron glanced back at the oversized manor. He noticed ramps now. Lots of them. He checked the cars. Several had MD license plates.
“A hospital,” he said.
Susan Lex smiled. “Come along.”
They headed up the brick path. Gloved gardeners were on their knees, working on the flower beds. A woman walked by in the opposite direction. She smiled politely but said nothing. They passed through an arched entranceway and into a two-story foyer. A woman seated behind the desk stood, slightly startled.
“We weren’t expecting you, ma’am,” she said.
“That’s fine.”
“I don’t have security set up.”
“That’s fine too.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Susan Lex barely broke stride. She took the sweeping staircase on her left, staying in the middle, not touching a handrail. Myron followed.
“What did she mean about security?” Myron asked.
“When I visit, they make sure the hallways are kept clear and that no one else is present.”
“To keep your secret?”
“Yes,” she said. She did not stop moving. “Perhaps you noticed that she called me ‘ma’am.’ That’s part of the discretion here. They never use names.”
When they reached the top level, Susan turned to the left. The corridor had raised wallpaper in a classic floral design and nothing else. No small tables, no chairs, no pictures in frames, no Oriental runners. They passed by maybe a dozen rooms, only two with doors open. Myron noticed that the doors were extra wide and he remembered his visit to Babies and Children’s Hospital. Extra wide doors there too. For wheelchairs and stretchers and the like.
When they reached the end of the corridor, Susan stopped, took a deep breath, looked back at Myron. “Are you ready?”
He nodded.
She opened the door and stepped inside. Myron followed. A four-poster antique bed, like something you’d see on a tour of Jefferson’s Monticello, overwhelmed the room. The walls were warm green with woodwork trim. There was a small crystal chandelier, a burgundy Victorian couch, a Persian rug with deep scarlets. A Mozart violin concerto was playing a bit too loudly on the stereo. A woman sat in the corner reading a book. She too started upright when she saw who it was.
“It’s okay,” Susan Lex said. “Would you mind leaving us for a few moments?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the woman said. “If you need anything—”
“I’ll ring, thank you.”
The woman did a semi-curtsy/semi-bow and hurried out. Myron looked at the man in the bed. The resemblance to the computer rendering was uncanny, almost perfect. Even, strangely enough, the dead eyes. Myron moved closer. Dennis Lex followed him with the dead eyes, unfocused, empty, like windows over a vacant lot.
“Mr. Lex?”
Dennis Lex just stared at him.
“He can’t talk,” she said.
Myron turned to her. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“You were right before. It’s a hospital. Of sorts. In another era, I suppose one would have called it a private sanitarium.”
“How long has your brother been here?”
“Thirty years,” she said. She moved toward the bed, and for the first time, she looked down at her brother. “You see, Mr. Bolitar, this is where the wealthy store unpleasantness.” She reached down and stroked her brother’s cheek. Dennis Lex did not respond. “We’re too cultured not to give our loved ones the best. All very humane and practical, don’t you know.”
Myron waited for her to say more. She kept stroking her brother’s cheek. He tried to see her face, but she kept it lowered and away from him.
“Why is he here?” Myron asked.
“I shot him,” she said.
Myron opened his mouth, closed it, did the math. “But you were only a child when he disappeared.”
“Fourteen years old,” she said. “Bronwyn was six.” She stopped stroking the cheek. “It’s an old story, Mr. Bolitar. You’ve probably heard it a thousand times. We were playing with a loaded gun. Bronwyn wanted to hold it, I said no, he reached for it, it went off.” She said it all in one breath, staring down at her brother, still stroking the cheek. “This is the end result.”
Myron looked at the still eyes in the bed. “He’s been here since?”
She nodded. “For a while I kept waiting for him to die. So I could officially be a murderer.”
“You were a child,” Myron said. “It was an accident.”
She looked at him and smiled. “My, that means so much coming from you, thank you.”
Myron said nothing.
“No matter,” she said. “Daddy took care of it. He arranged for my brother to have the best care. He was a very private person, my father. It was his gun. He’d left it where his children could play with it. His business and reputation were both growing. He had political aspirations at the time. He just wanted it all to go away.”
“And it did.”
She tilted her head back and forth. “Yes.”
“What about your mother?”
“What about her?”
“What did she say?”
“My mother hated unpleasantness, Mr. Bolitar. After the incident, she never saw her son again.”
Dennis Lex made a sound, a guttural scrape, nothing remotely human. Susan gently shushed him.
“Did you and Bronwyn ever get help?” Myron asked.
She cocked an eyebrow. “Help?”
“Counseling. To help you through it.”
She made a face. “Oh please,” she said.
Myron stood there, his mind circling nowhere over nothing.
“So now you know the truth, Mr. Bolitar.”
“I guess,” he said.
“Meaning?”
“I wonder why you told me all this. You could have just shown Dennis to me.”
“Because you won’t talk.”
“How can you be so sure?”
She smiled. “After you shoot your own brother, shooting strangers becomes so easy.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
“No, I suppose not.” Susan Lex turned and faced him. “The fact is, you really don’t have much to tell. As you said earlier, we both have reasons to keep our mouths shut. You’ll be arrested for kidnapping and Lord k
nows what. The evidence of my crime—if indeed it was a crime—is nonexistent. You’d be worse off than I.”
Myron nodded, but his mind still whirred. Her story might be true or just something she told him to gain sympathy, to contain the damage. Still, there was the ring of truth in her words. Maybe her reason for talking was simpler. Maybe, after all this time, she just needed someone who’d listen to her confession. Didn’t matter. None of it mattered. There was nothing here. Dennis Lex was truly a dead end.
Myron looked out the window. The sun was starting to dip away. He checked his watch. Jeremy had been missing five hours now—five hours alone with a madman—and Myron’s best lead, his only lead, was lying brain-damaged in a hospital room.
The sun was still strong, bathing the expansive garden in white. Myron saw what looked like a maze made of shrubbery. He spotted several patients in wheelchairs, legs covered with blankets, sitting by a fountain. Serene. The rays reflected off a pool of water and a statue in the middle of—
He stopped. The statue.
Myron felt the blood in his veins turn to crystal. He shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted again.
“Oh Christ,” he said.
Then he sprinted toward the stairs.
34
Susan Lex’s helicopter was starting to descend toward the sanitarium’s landing pad when Kimberly Green called him on the cell phone.
“We’ve caught Stan Gibbs,” she said. “But the boy wasn’t with him.”
“That’s because he isn’t the kidnapper.”
“You know something I don’t?”
Myron ignored the question. “Has Stan told you anything?”
“Nope. He lawyered up already. Says he won’t talk to anyone but you. You, Myron. Why don’t I find that particularly surprising?”
Had Myron responded, the helicopter’s propeller would have drowned it out. He backed off a few steps. The copter touched down. The pilot stuck his head out and waved to him.
“I’m on my way,” Myron shouted into the phone. He switched it off and turned to Susan Lex. “Thank you.”
She nodded.
He ducked and ran toward the helicopter. As they rose, Myron looked back down. Susan Lex’s chin was tilted up, her eyes still on him. He waved. And she waved back.
Stan was not in a holding cell because they had nothing to hold him on. He sat in a waiting room with his eyes on the table and let his attorney, Clara Steinberg, do the talking. Myron had known Clara—he called her Aunt Clara though there was no familial relationship—since he was too young to remember. Aunt Clara and Uncle Sidney were Mom and Dad’s closest friends. Dad had gone to elementary school with Clara. Mom had roomed with her in law school. Aunt Clara, in fact, had set up Mom and Dad on their first date. She liked to remind Myron with a wink that “you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for your aunt Clara.” Then she’d wink again. Subtle, that Clara. During the holidays, she always pinched Myron’s cheeks in admiration of his punim.
“Let me set up the ground rules, bubbe,” she said to him. Clara had gray hair and a pair of oversized glasses that magnified her eyes to Ant-Man size. She looked up at him and the giant eyes seemed to reel in everything all at once. She wore a white blouse with a gray vest, matching skirt, a kerchief around her neck, and teardrop pearl earrings. Think Shtetl Barbara Bush.
“One,” she said, “I am Mr. Gibbs’s attorney of record. I have requested that this conversation not be overheard. I have changed rooms four times to make sure the authorities don’t listen in. But I don’t trust them. They think your aunt Clara is an old dodo bird. They think we’re going to chat right here.”
“We’re not?” Myron said.
“We’re not,” she repeated. There was little hint of the cheek pincher here; if she were an athlete, you’d say that she’d strapped on her game face. “What we’re going to do first is stand up. Got me?”
“Stand up,” Myron repeated.
“Right. Then I’m going to lead you and Stan outside, across the street. I’m going to remain on the other side of the street with all those friendly agents. We do this right now, quickly, so they won’t have a chance to set up surveillance. Understood?”
Myron nodded. Stan kept his eyes on the Formica.
“Good, just so we’re all on the same page here.” She knocked on the door. Kimberly Green opened it. Clara walked past her without speaking. Myron and Stan followed. Kimberly rushed up behind them.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Change of plans, doll.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Sure I can. I’m a sweet little old lady.”
“I don’t care if you’re the Queen Mother,” Kimberly said. “You’re not going anywhere.”
“You married, hon?”
“What?”
“Never mind,” Clara said. “Try this on for size. See how it fits. My client demands privacy.”
“We already promised—”
“Shh, you’re talking when you should be listening. My client demands privacy. So he and Mr. Bolitar are going to take a little walk somewhere. You and I will watch from a distance. We will not listen in.”
“I already told you—”
“Shh, you’re giving me a headache.” Aunt Clara rolled her eyes and kept walking. Myron and Stan followed. They reached the doorway. Clara pointed to a bus depot across the street. “Sit over there,” she said to them. “On the bench.”
Myron said okay. Clara put a hand on his elbow.
“Cross at the corner,” she said. “And wait for the light.”
The two men walked to the corner and waited for the light before crossing the street. Kimberly Green and her fellow agents fumed. Clara took them by the hand and led them back toward the building’s entrance. Stan and Myron sat on the bench. Stan watched a New Jersey Transit bus go by like it carried the secret to life.
“We don’t have time to enjoy the scenery, Stan.”
Stan leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees. “This is difficult for me.”
“If it makes it any easier,” Myron said, “I know that the Sow the Seeds kidnapper is your father.”
Stan’s head fell into his hands.
“Stan?”
“How did you find out?”
“Through Dennis Lex. I found him in a private sanitarium in Connecticut. He’s been there for thirty years. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
Gibbs said nothing.
“At the sanitarium, there’s a big garden in the back. With this statue of Diana the Huntress. There’s a picture in your condo of you and your father standing in front of that same statue. He was a patient there. You don’t have to confirm or deny it. I was just there. Susan Lex has pull. An administrator told us Edwin Gibbs had been in and out of there for fifteen years. The rest is fairly obvious. Your father was there a long time. It’d be easy to learn who else was there, no matter how strict the so-called security. So he knew about Dennis Lex. And he stole his identity. It’s a hell of a twist, I’ll give him that. Fake IDs used to be somewhat pretty easy to come by. You’d visit a graveyard, find a child who died, request his social security card, bingo. But that doesn’t work anymore. Computers closed down that loophole. Nowadays when you die, your social security number dies with you. So your father took the identity of someone still alive, someone who has no use for it, someone committed permanently. In other words, he used the ID of a living person who has no life. And to go deeper undercover, he changed the person’s name. Dennis Lex became Davis Taylor. Untraceable.”
“Except you traced it.”
“I got lucky.”
“Go on,” Stan said. “Tell me what else you know.”
“We don’t have time for this, Stan.”
“You don’t understand,” he said.
“What?”
“If you’re the one who says it—if you figure it out on your own—it’s not as much a betrayal. You see?”
No time to argue. And maybe Myron did see.
“Let’s start with the question every reporter wanted to know: why you? Why did the Sow the Seeds kidnapper choose you? The answer: because the kidnapper was your father. He knew you wouldn’t turn him in. Maybe part of you hoped someone would figure it out. I don’t know. I also don’t know if you found him or he found you.”
“He found me,” Stan said. “He came to me as a reporter. Not as a son. He made that clear.”
“Sure,” Myron said, “double protection. He gets you with the fact that you’d be turning in your own father—plus he gives you an ethical foundation for remaining silent. The beloved First Amendment. You couldn’t name a source. It gave you a very neat out—you could be both moralistic and the good son.”
Stan looked up. “So you see that I had no choice.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so easy on myself,” Myron said. “You weren’t being totally altruistic. Everyone says you were ambitious. That played a part here. You got fame out of this. You were handed a monster story—the kind that propels careers into the stratosphere. You were on TV and got your own cable show. You got a big raise and invited to fancy parties. You want to tell me that wasn’t a part of it?”
“It was a by-product,” Stan said. “It wasn’t a factor.”
“You say so.”
“It’s like you said—I couldn’t turn him in, even if I wanted to. There was a constitutional principle here. Even if he wasn’t my father, I had an obligation—”
“Save it for your minister,” Myron said. “Where is he?”
Stan did not reply. Myron looked across the street.
Lots of traffic. The cars started blurring and through them, standing on the other side of the street with Kimberly Green, he saw Greg Downing.
“That man over there,” Myron said, pointing with his chin. “That’s the boy’s father.”
Stan looked, but his face didn’t change.
“There’s a kid in danger,” Myron said. “That trumps your constitutional cover.”
“He’s still my father.”
“And he’s kidnapped a thirteen-year-old boy,” Myron said.
Stan looked up. “What would you do?”
“What?”
“Would you give up your father? Just like that?”
“If he was kidnapping children? Yeah, I would.”
