Gone for Good (2002)

by Harlan Coben

  Late at night. With your brother and your ex alone inside ..."

  Katy turned and looked at me.

  "I was taking a walk," I said quickly.

  Pistillo paced, pressing his advantage. "Uh-huh, sure, okay, so let's see if we got this straight. Your brother is having sex with the girl you still loved. You happen to be taking a walk by her house that night. She ends up dead. We find your brother's blood at the scene.

  And you, Will, know that your brother didn't do it."

  He stopped and gave me the grin again. "So if you were the investigating officer, who would you suspect?"

  A large stone was crushing my chest. I could not speak.

  "If you're suggesting ..."

  "I'm suggesting you go home," Pistillo said. "That's all. Go home, both of you, and stay the hell out of this."

  Chapter Thirty-Five.

  Pistillo offered to find Katy a ride home. She declined and said that she would stay with me. He didn't like that, but what could he do?

  We drove back to the apartment in silence. Once inside, I showed her my impressive collection of take-out menus. She ordered Chinese. I ran downstairs and picked it up. We spread the white boxes out on the table. I sat in my usual seat. Katy sat in Sheila's. I flashed back to Chinese with Sheila her hair tied back, fresh out of the shower and smelling sweet, in that terry-cloth robe, the freckles on her chest..

  .

  It was odd what you would always remember.

  The grief roared back at me in high, crippling waves. Whenever I stopped moving, it hit me hard and deep. Grief wears you down. If you don't guard against it, it will exhaust you past the point of caring.

  I dumped some fried rice on my plate and followed it up with a dash of lobster sauce. "Are you sure you still want to stay tonight?"

  Katy nodded.

  "I'll give you the bedroom," I said.

  "I'd rather sleep on the couch."

  "You sure?"

  "Positive."

  We pretended to eat.

  "I didn't kill Julie," I said.

  "I know."

  We pretended to eat some more.

  She finally asked, "Why were you there that night?"

  I tried to smile. "You don't buy that I was taking a walk?"

  "No."

  I put down the chopsticks as if they could shatter. I wondered how to explain this, here in my apartment, talking to the sister of the woman I once loved, sitting in the chair of the woman I'd wanted to marry.

  Both murdered. Both connected to me. I looked up and said, "I guess that maybe I wasn't really over Julie."

  "You wanted to see her?"

  "Yes."

  "And?"

  "I rang the bell," I said. "But nobody answered."

  Katy thought about it. She looked down at her plate and tried to sound casual. "Your timing was strange."

  I picked up the chopsticks.

  "Will?"

  I kept my head down.

  "Did you know your brother was there?"

  I moved the food around the plate. She lifted her head and watched me.

  I heard my neighbor open and close his door. A horn honked. Someone on the street was shouting in what might have been Russian.

  "You knew," Katy said. "You knew Ken was at our house. With Julie."

  "I didn't kill your sister."

  "What happened, Will?"

  I folded my arms across my chest. I leaned back, closed my eyes, tilted my head all the way back. I did not want to go back there, but what choice did I have? Katy wanted to know. She deserved to know.

  "It was such a strange weekend," I began. "Julie and I had been broken up over a year. I hadn't seen her in all that time. I'd tried to bump into her on school breaks, but she never seemed to be around."

  "She hadn't been home in a long while," Katy said.

  I nodded. "The same with Ken. That was what made it all so bizarre. All of a sudden, all three of us are back in Livingston at the same time. I can't remember the last time that happened. Ken was acting strangely too. He was looking out the window all the time. He wouldn't leave the house. He was up to something. I don't know what. Anyway, he asked me if I was still hung up on Julie.

  I told him no. That we were history."

  "You lied to him."

  "It was like ..." I tried to figure out how to explain this. "My brother was like a god to me. He was strong and brave and ..." I shook my head. I was not saying this right. I started again. "When I was sixteen, my parents took the family on a trip to Spain. The Costa del Sol. The whole place was one big party scene. It was sort of like Florida spring break for the Europeans. Ken and I hung out at this one disco near our hotel. On our fourth night there, a guy bumped me on the dance floor. I looked over at him. He laughed at me. I went back to dancing. Then another guy bumped me. I tried to ignore him too.

  Then the first guy, he ran up to me and just pushed me down." I stopped, tried to blink away the memory as if it were sand in my eye. I looked at her. "Do you know what I did?"

  She shook her head.

  "I yelled for Ken. I didn't jump up. I didn't push the guy back. I yelled for my big brother and scrambled away."

  "You were scared."

  "Always, "I said.

  "That's natural."

  I didn't think so.

  "So did he come?" she asked.

  "Of course."

  "And?"

  "A fight broke out. There was a big group of them from some Scandinavian country. Ken got the hell beat out of him."

  "And you?"

  "I never so much as threw a punch. I hung back and tried to reason with them, convince them to stop." The shame flushed my cheeks yet again. My brother, who had been in more than his share of fights, was right. A beating hurts for a little while. The shame of cowardice never leaves. "Ken broke his arm during the scuffle. His right arm.

  He was an incredible tennis player. Nationally ranked. Stanford was interested in him. His serve was never the same after that. He ended up not going to college."

  "That's not your fault."

  How wrong she was. "The point is, Ken always defended me. Sure, we fought the way brothers do. He'd tease me mercilessly. But he'd step in the way of a freight train to protect me. And me, I never had the courage to reciprocate."

  Katy put her hand to her chin.

  "What? "I said.

  "It's odd, that's all."

  "What is?"

  "That your brother would be insensitive enough to sleep with Julie."

  "It wasn't his fault. He asked me if I was over her. I told him I was."

  "You gave him the green light," she said.

  "Yes."

  "But then you ended up following him."

  "You don't understand," I said.

  "No, I do," Katy said. "We all do stuff like that."

  Chapter Thirty-Six.

  I fell into such a deep sleep that I never heard him sneak up on me.

  I had found fresh sheets and blankets for Katy, made sure she was comfortable on the couch, taken a shower, tried to read. The words swam by in a murky haze. I'd go back and reread and re-forget the same paragraph over and over again. I signed on to the Internet and surfed.

  I did a few push-ups, sit-ups, yoga stretches Squares had taught me. I did not want to lie down. I did not want to stop, to let the grief catch me again unawares.

  I was a worthy adversary, but eventually sleep managed to corner and take me down. I was out, falling in a totally dreamless pit, when I felt a jerk on my hand and heard the click. Still asleep, I tried to pull my hand back to my side, but it would not move.

  Something metallic dug into my wrist.

  My eyelids were fluttering open when he leapt on top of me. He landed hard, knocking the wind out of my lungs. I gulped as whoever he was straddled my chest. His knees pinned down my shoulders. Before I could mount any sort of serious struggle, my attacker yanked my free hand to the side above my head. I didn't hear the click this time, but I felt the cold metal close
around my skin.

  Both of my hands were cuffed to the bed.

  My veins flooded with ice. For a moment I simply shut down, just as I always had during physical altercations. I opened my mouth, about to scream or at least say something. My attacker grabbed the back of my head and pulled me forward. Without hesitation, he ripped off a piece of duct tape and covered my mouth. Then, for good measure, he started winding a fresh band of tape around the back of my skull and over my mouth, ten maybe fifteen times, as if he were shrink-wrapping my head.

  I could no longer speak or cry out. Breathing was a chore I had to suck the air through my broken nose. It hurt like hell. My shoulders ached from the cuffs and his body weight. I struggled, which was totally futile. I tried to buck him off me. More futile. I wanted to ask him what he wanted, what he planned to do now that I was helpless.

  And that was when I thought about Katy alone in the other room.

  The bedroom was dark. My assailant was no more than a shadow to me. He wore a mask of some kind, something dark, but I could not see what, if anything, was on it. Breathing was becoming nearly impossible. I snorted through the pain.

  Whoever he was, he finished taping my mouth. He hesitated for only a second before bouncing off me. And then, as I watched in helpless horror, he headed for the bedroom door, opened it, stepped into the room where Katy was sleeping, and closed the door behind him.

  My eyes bulged. I tried to scream, but the tape muffled any sound. I bucked like a bronco. I kicked and flailed. No progress.

  Then I stopped and listened. For a moment there was nothing. Pure silence.

  And then Katy screamed.

  Oh Christ. I bucked some more. Her scream had been brief, cut off midway, as though someone had turned off a switch. Panic took full flight now. Full, red-alert panic. I jerked hard on both cuffs. I twisted my head back and forth. Nothing.

  Katy screamed again.

  The sound was fainter this time the gasp of a wounded animal. No way anyone would hear it, and even if they did, nobody would react. Not in New York. Not at this time of night. And even if they did even if someone called the police or rushed to her rescue it would be too late.

  I freaked out then.

  My sanity felt as though it were being torn in two. I went nuts. I thrashed around, seizure style. My nose hurt like hell. I swallowed some of the fibers from the duct tape. I struggled some more.

  But I made no progress.

  Oh God. Okay, calm down. Be cool. Think a second.

  I turned my head toward my right cuff. It did not feel that tight.

  There was give there. Okay, maybe, if I went a little slower, I could pull my hand out. That was it. Calm down. Try to narrow your hand, squeeze it through.

  So I tried. I tried to will my hand into something thinner. I rounded my palm by forcing the bottom of my thumb toward the bottom of my pinky. Then I pulled down, slowly at first, then with more force. No go. The skin bunched around the metal ring and then started ripping. I did not care. I kept pulling.

  It wasn't working.

  The other room had gone quiet.

  I strained my ears for a sound. Any sound at all. Nothing. I tried to curl up my body, tried to lift myself off the bed so hard that, I don't know, maybe the bed would lift up too. Just an inch or two and then maybe it'd break on the way down. I bucked some more. The bed did indeed slide a few inches out. But it was not doing any good.

  I was still trapped.

  I heard Katy scream again. And in a scared, panic-filled voice, she shouted, "John "

  And then she was cut off again.

  John, I thought. She'd said John.

  Asselta?

  The Ghost.. .

  Oh no, please, oh God, no. I heard something muffled.

  Voices. A groan maybe. Like something being smothered by a pillow. My heart beat wildly against my rib cage. The fear struck at me from every angle. I flung my head from side to side, looked for something, anything.

  The phone.

  Could I.. . ? My legs were still free. Maybe I could swing them up, grab the phone with my feet, drop the receiver into my hand. From there I could, I don't know, maybe dial 911 or o. My feet were already on the rise. I contracted the muscles in my abdomen, lifted my legs, swung them to the right. But I was still in hysteria mode. My weight teetered to the side. I lost control of my legs. I pulled back up, trying to regain balance, and when I did, my foot hit the phone.

  The receiver clattered to the floor.

  Damn.

  Now what? My mind snapped I mean, I totally lost it. I thought of animals caught in those claw traps, the ones who gnaw off a limb to escape. I thrashed to exhaustion, at my wit's end and about to give up, when I remembered something Squares had taught me.

  Plow pose.

  That's what it was called. In Hindu: Halasana. You usually do it from a shoulder stand. You lie on your back and flip your legs all the way over your head as you lift your hips. Your toes would touch the floor behind your head. I did not know if I could go that far, but it didn't matter. I crunched my stomach and swung my legs up as hard as I could.

  I threw them back behind me. The balls of my feet thudded against the wall. My chest was up against my chin, making it harder than ever to breathe.

  I pushed against the wall with my legs. The adrenaline kicked in. The bed slid away from the wall. I pushed some more, got enough room.

  Okay, good. Now for the hard part. If the cuffs were too tight, if they did not allow my wrists to turn within them, I would either not be able to make it or dislocate both shoulders. No matter.

  Silence, dead silence, from the other room.

  I let my legs fall toward the floor. I was doing, in effect, a back somersault off the bed. The weight of my legs gave me the momentum and in a stroke of luck my wrists turned in the cuffs. My feet landed hard. I went with it, scraping the front of my thighs and abdomen on the low headboard.

  When I finished, I was standing up behind the bed.

  My hands were still cuffed. My mouth was still taped. But I was standing. I felt another surge of adrenaline.

  Okay, now what?

  No time. I bent my knees. I lowered my shoulder to the back of the headboard and I drove the bed toward the door as if I were an offensive lineman and the bed was a tackle sled. My legs moved like pistons. I did not hesitate. I did not let up.

  The bed crashed into the door.

  The collision was jarring. Pain knifed down my shoulder, my arms, my spine. Something popped and hot pain flooded my joints. Ignoring it, I pulled back and rammed the door again. Then again. The tape made my scream audible only in my own ears. The third time, I pulled extra hard on both cuffs at the precise moment the bed made contact with the wall.

  The bed rails gave way.

  I was free.

  I pushed the bed away from the door. I tried unwrapping the tape from my mouth, but it was taking too long. I grabbed the knob and turned it. I flung open the door and leapt into the darkness.

  Katy was on the floor.

  Her eyes were closed. Her body was limp. The man was straddling her chest. He had his hands on her throat.

  He was choking her.

  Without hesitation, I launched myself at him, rocket-like. It seemed to take me a long time to reach him, as if I were leaping through syrup. He saw me coming had plenty of time to prepare but it still meant that he would have to release her throat. He turned and faced me. I still couldn't see anything but a black outline. He grabbed hold of my shoulders, put his foot into my stomach, and using my own momentum, he simply rolled back.

  I flew across the room. My arms windmilled in the air. But I lucked out again. Or so I thought. I landed on the soft reading chair. It wobbled for a second. Then it toppled over from my weight. My head bounced hard against the side table before banging to the floor.

  I fought off the dizziness and tried to get to my knees. When I started rising for a second offensive, I saw something that terrified me like nothing before ever had.

>   The black-clad assailant was up too. He had a knife now. And he was heading toward Katy with it.

  Everything slowed down. What happened next took no more than a second or two. But in my mind's eye, it happened in some alternate time warp.

  Time does that. It is indeed relative. Moments fly by. And moments freeze-frame.

  I was too far away to reach him. I knew that. Even through the dizziness, through the blow from hitting my head on the table .. .

  The table.

  Where I'd placed Squares's gun.

  Was there time to reach it and turn and fire? My eyes were still on Katy and her assailant. No. Not enough time. I knew that immediately.

  The man bent over and grabbed Katy by the hair.

  As I went for the gun, I pawed at the tape on my mouth. The tape shifted enough for me to shout, "Freeze or I'll shoot!"

  His head turned in the dark. I was already scrambling on the floor. I moved flat on my stomach, crawling commando style. He saw that I was unarmed and turned back to finish what he had started. My hand found the gun. No time to aim. I pulled the trigger.

  The man startled back from the sound.

  That bought me time. I swung around with the gun, already pulling the trigger again. The man rolled back like a gymnast. I could still barely make him out, just a shadow. I started moving the gun toward the black mass, still firing. How many bullets did this thing hold?

  How many had I fired?

  He jerked back, but kept on moving. Had I hit him?

  The man jumped toward the door. I yelled for him to stop. He didn't.

  I considered firing into his back, but something, perhaps a fly-through of humanity, made me stop. He was already out the door. And I had bigger worries.

  I looked down at Katy. She was not moving.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven.

  Another officer the fifth, by my count came to hear my story.

  "I want to know how she is first," I said.

  The doctor had stopped working on me. In the movies, the doctor always defends his patients. He tells the cop that they cannot question him right now, that he needs his rest. My doctor, an emergency room intern from, I think, Pakistan, had no such hang-up. He popped back my shoulder while they began their grilling. He poured iodine on my wrist wounds. He toyed with my nose. He took out a hacksaw what a hospital was doing with a hacksaw I don't want to know and cut off my handcuffs, all while I got grilled. I was still wearing my sleeping boxers and pajama top. The hospital had covered my bare feet with paper sandals.