Gone for Good (2002)

by Harlan Coben

  I scrambled to my feet. Asselta rose straight up, like a spirit from the grave. He spread his arms. "No hug for an old friend, Willie boy?"

  He approached, and before I could react, he embraced me. He was pretty short, what with that strange long-torso, short-arms build. His cheek pressed my chest. "Been a long time," he said.

  I was not sure what to say, where to start. "How did you get in?"

  "What?" He released me. "Oh, the door was open. I'm sorry about sneaking up on you like that but..." He smiled, shrugged it away. "You haven't changed a bit, Willie boy. You look good."

  "You shouldn't have just..."

  He tilted his head, and I remembered the way he would simply lash out.

  John Asselta had been a classmate of Ken's, two years ahead of me at Livingston High School. He captained the wrestling team and was the Essex County lightweight champ two years running. He probably would have won the states, but he got disqualified for purposely dislocating a rival's shoulder. His third violation. I still remember the way his opponent screamed in pain. I remembered how some of the spectators got violently ill at the sight of the dangling appendage. I remembered Asselta's small smile as they carted his opponent away.

  My father claimed that the Ghost had a Napoleon complex. That explanation seemed too simplistic to me. I don't know what it was, if the Ghost needed to prove himself or if he had an extra Y chromosome or if he was just the meanest son of a bitch in existence.

  Whatever, he was definitely a psycho.

  No way around it. He enjoyed hurting people. An aura of destruction surrounded his every step. Even the big jocks steered clear of him.

  You never met his eye, never got in his path, because you never knew what could provoke him. He would strike with no hesitation. He'd break your nose. He'd knee you in the balls. He'd gouge your eyes. He would hit you when your back was turned.

  He gave Milt Saperstein a concussion during my sophomore year.

  Saperstein, a nerdy freshman complete with pocket protector against polyester print, had made the mistake of leaning up against the Ghost's locker. The Ghost smiled and let him go with a pat on the back. Later that day, Saperstein was walking between classes when, barn, the Ghost ran up behind him and smashed his forearm into Milt's head. Saperstein never saw him coming. He crumbled to the ground, and with a laugh, the Ghost stomped on his skull. Milt had to be taken to the emergency room at St. Barnabas.

  No one saw a thing.

  When he was fourteen if legend was true the Ghost killed a neighbor's dog by sticking firecrackers up his rectum. But worse than that, worse than pretty much anything, were the rumors that the Ghost, at the tender age of ten, stabbed a kid named Daniel Skinner with a kitchen knife. Supposedly Skinner, who was a couple of years older, picked on the Ghost, and the Ghost had responded with a knife strike straight to the heart. Rumor also had it that he spent some time in both juvie and therapy and that neither one had stuck. Ken claimed ignorance on the subject. I asked my father about it once, but he would neither confirm nor deny.

  I tried to push the past away. "What do you want, John?"

  I never understood my brother's friendship with him. My parents had not been happy about it either, though the Ghost could be charming with adults. His almost albino complexion ergo the nickname belied gentle features. He was almost pretty, with long lashes and a Dudley Do-Right cleft in the chin. I had heard that after graduation he had gone into the military. Supposedly he'd been enlisted in something clandestine involving Special Ops or Green Berets, something like that, but nobody could confirm that with any certainty.

  The Ghost did the head-tilt again. "Where's Ken?" he asked in that silky, pre-strike voice.

  I did not respond.

  "I've been gone a long time, Willie boy. Overseas."

  "Doing what?" I asked.

  He flashed me the teeth again. "Now that I'm back, I thought I'd look up my old best bud."

  I did not know what to say to that. But I suddenly flashed to when I stood on the veranda last night. The man staring at me from the end of the street. It had been the Ghost.

  "So, Willie boy, where can I find him?"

  "I don't know."

  He put his hand up to his ear. "Excuse me?"

  "I don't know where he is."

  "But how can that be? You're his brother. He loved you so."

  "What do you want here, John?"

  "Say," he said, and he showed the teeth yet again, "whatever happened to your high school hot tie Julie Miller? You two get hitched?"

  I stared at him. He held the smile. He was putting me on, I knew that. He and Julie had, strangely enough, been close. I never understood that. Julie had claimed to see something there, something under the lashing-out psychosis. I once joked that she must have pulled a thorn from his paw. I wondered now how to play it. I actually considered running, but I knew that I would never make it. I also knew that I was no match for him.

  This was creeping me out big-time.

  "You've been gone a long time?" I asked.

  "Years, Willie boy."

  "So when was the last time you saw Ken?"

  He feigned deep thought. "Oh, must have been, what, twelve years ago?

  I've been overseas since. Haven't kept up."

  "Uh-huh."

  He narrowed his eyes. "You sound like you're doubting me, Willie boy."

  He moved closer to me. I tried not to flinch. "You afraid of me?"

  "No."

  "Big bro's not here to protect you anymore, Willie boy."

  "And we're not in high school either, John."

  He looked up into my eyes. "You think the world's so different now?"

  I tried to hold my ground.

  "You look scared, Willie boy."

  "Get out," I said.

  His reply was sudden. He dropped to the floor and whipped out my legs from under me. I fell hard on my back. Before I could move, he had me wrapped up in an elbow lock. There was already tremendous pressure on the joint, but then he lifted up against my triceps. The elbow started bending the wrong way. A deep pain knifed down my arm.

  I tried to move with it. Give way. Anything to relieve the pressure.

  The Ghost spoke in the calmest voice I've ever heard. "You tell him no more hiding, Willie boy. You tell him other people could get hurt.

  Like you. Or your dad. Or your sister. Or maybe even that little Miller vixen you met with today. You tell him that."

  His hand speed was unearthly. In one move, he released my arm and shot his fist straight into my face. My nose exploded. I fell back against the floor, my head swimming, only half conscious. Or maybe I passed out. I don't know anymore.

  When I looked up again, the Ghost had vanished.

  Chapter Nineteen.

  Squares handed me a freezer bag of ice. "Yeah, but I oughta see the other guy, right?"

  "Right," I said, putting the bag on my rather tender nose. "He looks like a matinee idol."

  Squares sat on the couch and threw his boots up on the coffee table.

  "Explain."

  I did.

  "Guy sounds like a prince," Squares said.

  "Did I mention that he tortured animals?"

  "Yep."

  "Or that he had a skull collection in his bedroom?"

  "Say, that must have impressed the ladies."

  "I don't get it." I lowered the bag. My nose felt like it was jammed with crushed-up pennies. "Why would the Ghost be looking for my brother?"

  "Hell of a question."

  "You think I should call the cops?"

  Squares shrugged. "Give me his full name again."

  "JohnAsselta."

  "I assume you don't have a current residence."

  "No."

  "But he grew up in Livingston?"

  "Yes," I said. "On Woodland Terrace.

  -seven Woodland Terrace."

  "You remember his address?"

  Now it was my turn to shrug. That was the way Livingston was. You remembered stuff like that
. "His mother, I don't know what her deal was. She ran away or something when he was very young. His dad lived in a bottle. Two brothers, both older. One I think his name was Scan was a Vietnam vet. He had this long hair and matted beard and all he'd do was walk around town talking to himself. Everyone figured he was crazy. Their yard was like a junkyard, always overgrown. People in Livingston didn't like that. The cops used to ticket them for it."

  Squares wrote down the info. "Let me look into it."

  My head ached. I tried to focus. "Did you have someone like that in your school?" I asked. "A psycho who'd just hurt people for the fun of it?"

  "Yeah," Squares said. "Me."

  I found it hard to believe. I knew abstractly Squares had been a punk of biblical proportions, but the idea that he'd been like the Ghost, that I'd have shuddered as he passed me in the halls, that he would crack a skull and laugh at the sound ... it just would not compute.

  I put the ice back on my nose, wincing when it touched down.

  Squares shook his head. "Baby."

  "Pity you didn't consider a career in medicine."

  "Your nose is probably broken," he said.

  "I figured."

  "You want to go to the hospital?"

  "Nah, I'm a tough guy."

  That made him snicker. "Nothing they could do anyway." Then he stopped, gnawed on the inside of his cheek, said, "Something's come up."

  I did not like the tone of his voice.

  "I got a call from our favorite fed, Joe Pistillo."

  Again I lowered down the ice. "Did they find Sheila?"

  "Don't know."

  "What did he want?"

  "Wouldn't say. He just asked me to bring you in."

  "When?"

  "Now. He said he was calling me as a courtesy."

  "Courtesy for what?"

  "Damned if I know."

  "My name is Clyde Smart," the man said in the gentlest voice Edna Rogers had ever heard. "I'm the county medical examiner."

  Edna Rogers watched her husband, Neil, shake the man's hand. She settled for just a nod in his direction. The woman sheriff was there.

  So was one of her deputies. They all, Edna Rogers thought, had properly solemn faces. The man named Clyde was trying to dispense some comforting words. Edna Rogers shut him out.

  Clyde Smart finally moved to the table. Neil and Edna Rogers, married forty-two years, stood next to each other and waited. They did not touch. They did not gather strength from one another. Many years had passed since they had last leaned on each other.

  Finally, the medical examiner stopped talking and pulled back the sheet.

  When Neil Rogers saw Sheila's face, he reeled back like a wounded animal. He kept his eyes up now and let out a cry that reminded Edna of a coyote when a storm is brewing. She knew from her husband's anguish, even before looking herself, that there would be no reprieve, no last-minute miracle. She summoned the courage and gazed at her daughter. She reached out a hand the maternal desire to comfort, even in death, never let up but she made herself stop.

  Edna continued to stare down until her vision blurred, until Edna could almost see Sheila's face transforming, the years running backward, peeling down, until her firstborn was her baby again, her whole life ahead of her, a second chance for her mother to do it right.

  And then Edna Rogers started to cry.

  Chapter Twenty.

  "What happened to your nose?" Pistillo asked me.

  We were back in his office. Squares stayed in the waiting room. I sat in the armchair in front of Pistillo's desk. His chair, I noticed this time, was set a little higher than mine, probably for reasons of intimidation. Claudia Fisher, the agent who'd visited me at Covenant House, stood behind me with her arms crossed.

  "You should see the other guy," I said.

  "You got into a fight?"

  "I fell," I said.

  Pistillo didn't believe me, but that was okay. He put both hands on his desk. "We'd like you to run through it again for us," he said.

  "Through what?"

  "How Sheila Rogers disappeared."

  "Have you found her?"

  "Just bear with us please." He coughed into his fist. "What time did Sheila Rogers leave your apartment?"

  "Why?"

  "Please, Mr. Klein, if you could just help us out here."

  "I think she left around five in the morning."

  "You're sure about that?"

  "Think," I said. "I used the word think."

  "Why aren't you sure?"

  "I was asleep. I thought I heard her leave."

  "At five?"

  "Yes."

  "You looked at the clock?" "Are you for real? I don't know."

  "How else would you know it was five?"

  "I have a great internal clock, I don't know. Can we move on?"

  He nodded and shifted in his seat. "Ms. Rogers left you a note, correct?"

  "Yes."

  "Where was the note?"

  "You mean, where in the apartment?"

  "Yes."

  "What's the difference?"

  He offered up his most patronizing smile. "Please."

  "On the kitchen counter," I said. "It's, made of Formica, if that helps."

  "What did the note say exactly?"

  "That's personal."

  "Mr. Klein "

  I sighed. No reason to fight him. "She told me that she'd love me always."

  "What else?"

  "That was it."

  "Just that she'd love you always?"

  "Yep."

  "Do you still have the note?"

  "I do."

  "May we see it?"

  "May you tell me why I'm here?"

  Pistillo sat back. "After leaving your father's house, did you and Ms.

  Rogers head straight back to your apartment?"

  The change of subject threw me. "What are you talking about?"

  "You attended your mother's funeral, correct?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you and Sheila Rogers returned to your apartment. That was what you told us, no?"

  "That's what I told you."

  "And is it the truth?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you stop on the way home?"

  "No."

  "Can anyone verify that?"

  "Verify that I didn't stop?"

  "Verify that you two went back to your apartment and stayed there for the remainder of the evening."

  "Why would anyone have to verify that?"

  "Please, Mr. Klein."

  "I don't know if anyone can verify it or not."

  "Did you talk with anyone?"

  "No."

  "Did a neighbor see you?"

  "I don't know." I looked over my shoulder at Claudia Fisher. "Why don't you canvass the neighborhood? Isn't that what you guys are famous for?"

  "Why was Sheila Rogers in New Mexico?"

  I turned back around. "I don't know that she was."

  "She never told you that she was going?"

  "I know nothing about it."

  "How about you, Mr. Klein?"

  "How about me what?"

  "Do you know anyone in New Mexico?"

  "I don't even know the way to Santa Fe."

  "San Jose," Pistillo corrected him, smiling at the lame joke. "We have a list of your recent incoming calls."

  "How nice for you."

  He sort of shrugged. "Modern technology."

  "And that's legal? You having my phone records?"

  "We got a warrant."

  "I bet you did. So what do you want to know?"

  Claudia Fisher moved for the first time. She handed me a sheet of paper. I glanced down at what appeared to be a photocopy of a phone bill. One number an unfamiliar one was highlighted in yellow.

  "Your residence received a phone call from a pay phone in Paradise Hills, New Mexico, the night before your mother's funeral." He leaned in a little closer. "Who was that call from?"

  I studied the number, totally confused yet again. The call ha
d come in at six-fifteen in the evening. It'd lasted eight minutes. I did not know what it meant, but I didn't like the whole tone of this conversation. I looked up.

  "Should I have a lawyer?"

  That slowed Pistillo down. He and Claudia Fisher exchanged another glance. "You can always have a lawyer," he said a little too carefully.

  "I want Squares in here."

  "He'snot a lawyer."

  "Still. I don't know what the hell is going on, but I don't like these questions. I came down because I thought you had information for me.

  Instead, I'm being interrogated."

  "Interrogated?" Pistillo spread his hands. "We're just chatting."

  A phone trilled behind me. Claudia Fisher snapped up her cell phone a la Wyatt Earp. She put it to her ear and said, "Fisher." After listening for about a minute, she hung up without saying good-bye. Then she nodded some kind of confirmation at Pistillo.

  I stood up. "I've had enough of this."

  "Sit down, Mr. Klein."

  "I'm tired of your bullshit, Pistillo. I'm tired of "

  "That call," he interjected.

  "What about it?"

  "Sit down, Will."

  He'd used my first name. I did not like the sound of it. I stood where I was and waited.

  "We were just waiting for visual confirmation," he said.

  "Of what?"

  He did not reply to my query. "So we flew Sheila Rogers's parents in from Idaho. They made it official, though the fingerprints had already told us what we needed to know."

  His face grew soft. My knees buckled, but I managed to stay upright.

  He looked at me now with heavy eyes. I started to shake my head, but I knew there was no way to duck the blow.

  "I'm sorry, Will," Pistillo said. "Sheila Rogers is dead."

  Chapter Twenty-One.

  Denial is an amazing thing.

  Even as I felt my stomach twist and drop, even as I felt the ice spread out and chill me from the center, even as I felt the tears push hard against my eyes, I somehow managed to detach. I nodded while concentrating on the few details that Pistillo was willing to give me.