Harlan Coben

by Play Dead

  Her smile vanished. How naive she had been. How fragile and elusive the few moments of joy had proved to be. But on that wonderful April day, who could have blamed such a happy, trusting girl for being blind to the cruelty that awaited her?

  May 29, 1960

  Help me. God, what have I done? The whole situation has become too much for me to handle. It’s completely out of control now. It’s taking on a life all of its own, and I don’t know where it will lead, fear the worst, but what else could possibly happen … ?

  What else, indeed? Judy turned away from the diary. She did not read any more. May thirtieth was next. Her body felt cold. She could not bear to look at the words she had written on that day, could not bear to even think about that day.

  May 30, 1960.

  Her eyes closed in pain. Enough, already. Why was she tormenting herself like this? Why, when her relationship with Colin was bringing her true happiness for the first time in thirty years, had she come here in the first place? She should just let the past be; but of course, that was not what the past wanted. It cried out, demanding that its secrets be set free. And one day, the past would have its way. One day, Judy would be dead and this safety-deposit box would at last be opened. Its secrets would be let loose into the sunshine of truth, where, hopefully, they would wither and die. One day, this small booklet written by a hopeful, guileless young woman would let Laura know why her precious David had to leave her forever. And one day, Laura would learn what happened on May twenty-ninth and …

  May 30, 1960.

  Judy put the book back in the bottom of the box, closed it, and called for the clerk to take it back. She stood there and watched the clerk walk away with her most secret possession, not knowing that she would never see it again.

  19

  TWENTY-FOUR hours had passed since Laura had kissed Graham’s cheek, made him promise to call her as soon as he learned something, bade him good-bye, and boarded the Qantas Airways flight in Cairns. Now the Pan Am jet that had originated at LAX landed with a thud. Laura stared out the window, watching the blurry mass focus into Boston’s Logan Airport as the 747 coasted to a slower speed. She was exhausted, but Laura had not slept. Whenever she closed her eyes and tried, the same question kept nudging her awake.

  What had happened to David?

  Laura still did not know. Her visit to Australia had given rise to more questions than it had answered. Maybe some of these uncertainties would be resolved when they finally located the guest list or the phone bills from the Pacific International, but then what would she do? What was she searching for, anyway? David was dead. What was the point in going through all of this?

  She went through customs, found a taxi, and settled into the backseat. Her mind was still in Australia, still trying to figure out what David’s last few hours had been like. Nothing made sense anymore. If someone had been after David’s money, why had the bastards killed him?

  Why hadn’t they just held him for ransom? Laura would have given them all the money they wanted and not said a word to anyone. But no, they chose to go through this elaborate scheme and kill David when the alternatives would have been much more profitable.

  Why go to all that trouble? Unless …

  Unless David wasn’t killed for the money.

  Laura sat up. Could that be? But why else would someone want to get rid of David? If his money was not the motive, what was? Laura’s mind clawed around for the answer, but nothing came to her. Sure, there were people whom David had alienated. But enough to kill him? Not likely. How about someone who wanted him out of basketball? How about some big-time bookie who had bet against the Celtics once too often and thought David had double-crossed him? Highly unlikely. Besides, that was hardly the mob’s style. If the mob had wanted David dead, they just would have sent some guy with a bent nose and a stiletto to do the job. There would have been no need for all this fancy cover-up.

  The taxi reached the heart of the city, passing all the familiar landmarks Laura thought of as old friends. Had David really been murdered? When Laura mentally stepped back and viewed the evidence unbiased, she could see that most of it was circumstantial at best. So David visited someone in a hotel and made a few phone calls back home—big deal. It was a long stretch from those flimsy facts to concrete proof of a murder.

  Laura glanced out the window. Reaching deeper into her mind, Laura wondered what she was really trying to find in all of this. Suppose David had been murdered. What would she do then? Would she hunt down the killers, demanding their blood like some character in a Charles Bronson film? Was she seeking vengeance, or was she just using this “investigation” as an excuse to keep reality at bay for a little while?

  Revenge had never been her game in the past. Laura’s mind traveled back to Gloria’s terrifying phone call from California the previous year. The two sisters spoke about nothing in particular, just catching up on what was going on in each other’s lives. When Gloria finally said goodbye, Laura felt baseless panic. It was nothing her sister had said, nothing in the words they exchanged, and yet the conversation kept gnawing at Laura. Something was wrong—not just the routine problems of life but seriously wrong. Deadly wrong. She decided to charter a plane and fly out to see her sister.

  “Charter a plane?” David had said. “Why the rush?”

  “I can’t explain it, David. You should have heard her voice. So lifeless. Like I was talking to someone who knew they were reaching the end.”

  T.C. met them in the airport. They flew out to San Francisco and stormed in on a group of men gang-raping Gloria. After chasing the Colombians out of the house, David wanted to beat the shit out of Gloria’s scuzzy boyfriend, Tony, and leave him for near-dead. T.C. concurred. But even though Tony had inflicted unimaginable horror onto her sister, Laura felt no need to strike back. She only wanted to save her sister. Revenge did not interest her.

  So why the change now? Why was she all of a sudden demanding her pound of flesh? She had no answer to that query. Maybe it was because David would have done the same if Laura had been the one killed. He had always fought those who harmed his loved ones with an intensity that sometimes frightened Laura. But maybe her motives were much simpler. Maybe she hoped this created conspiracy would distract her from the basic issue: David’s death. Be it murder or accident, David was dead. Nothing could change that simple fact. David was dead. Laura could say those three words easily enough, could think them, but they never truly sank in.

  “Here we are, ma’am.”

  Laura grabbed her suitcase from the trunk and paid the driver. A gust of cold wind ripped through her skin until it struck bone. By the time she reached the apartment door, the key was already in her hand. She put down her suitcase, opened the door, felt around for the light switch, found it, and flicked it up.

  Nothing happened.

  Laura moved the switch up and down a few times, but the light still did not come on. Strange. Maybe it was just a burned-out bulb. She shook her head. No way. This particular switch turned on the overhead light and two lamps. Slim chance all those bulbs blew out at the same time. It was more likely a blown fuse or a loose wire. With a sigh, she dragged her suitcase into the dark apartment. There was no light at all except for the light from the hallway and—and the glow of light peeking out from under the bedroom door.

  Laura’s body went rigid. Sounds. Sounds were coming from behind the bedroom door.

  Get out, Laura. Call the police.

  But she did not do that. Instead, she felt her foot step forward. A strange thought propelled her toward the bedroom: whoever was behind the door had something to do with David’s death. Behind that door could lurk what she had been seeking in Australia. If she ran away and called the police, the clue might have time to elude her and slip away forever. Now it was trapped in the bedroom. There was no way for it to escape without being seen.

  She moved silently now, creeping slowly toward the door. The sounds became louder. Voices. Voices and a sound she couldn’t quite place. The crack
of light under the bedroom door flickered a few times but remained on. She slunk against the wall, sliding one foot forward at a time until she reached the door.

  Laura held her breath. She could feel her heart beat wildly in her chest. She leaned her ear against the door. Voices. Unmistakable now. But what were they saying? And what the hell was she going to do now? Rush in like some kind of a superhero? Who did she think she was? Wonder Woman? What would she do—

  The voices. Two of them. She looked down and saw the light sneaking under the door reflect against her foot. And then she heard that other noise again. Softly now. So like—

  —cheering?

  She closed her eyes and felt the relief wash through her. The glow of light. The sounds. It was the television. It was only the goddamn television. She shook her head and scolded her overactive imagination. David used to tease her about it all the time. “You see conspiracy in everything, woman,” he would say whenever she came up with some harebrained scheme.

  She took a deep breath and reached for the knob. Laura began to turn it when she had a momentary vision of the television being off when she left the apartment. During that split second before the door opened, she had time to wonder why—when the whole apartment worked on one fuse—the television was now on and the lights were still out. But there was not enough time to think all of this through. The door opened, and Laura’s attention turned to the images on the television. Her face crumbled in anguish.

  David.

  It was a basketball game and there was David running upcourt. The voices were the CBS commentators for the NBA championship series.

  “Baskin moves left, fakes, pivots, dishes off to Roberts. Roberts takes the big hook shot. No good. Rebound Lakers …”

  But how … ? She looked above the set and felt her legs almost give way. The VCR. She was watching the game on her videotape machine. Someone had been here, might still be in her apartment. She was about to turn around when she saw an envelope taped to the bottom of the screen. Laura’s name had been scrawled across the front.

  Above the envelope, David made a driving left-handed layup. Time-out, Los Angeles. The players all gathered around David to congratulate him. Laura watched David smile at Earl and she felt a sharp pain. David’s smile. His wonderful, beautiful smile.

  Her legs quivered as she crossed the room. She reached forward with her right hand and plucked the envelope off the television. She had still not tried the bedroom light switch, but the television offered enough light to read. She ripped the envelope open and suddenly realized there might be fingerprints on it. Again, she shook her head no. Whoever had done this was a professional. He would not carelessly strew fingerprints around the apartment. Laura carefully lifted the note out of the envelope and read:

  Laura,

  I truly hope you enjoyed your little trip overseas. I missed you. This is just a friendly note to let you know that I can do whatever I want. You are not safe. Neither is your mother or your father or your sister. You can do nothing about it. But if you forget about me, I’ll forget about you and your family. If not, I will kill them one by one. What do you say?

  A friend

  P.S. Look under your pillow.

  Thick bile settled into Laura’s throat. She moved toward the bed and tried the lamp. This time, the light went on. The sudden brightness made Laura shade her eyes. She reread the note and lifted her pillow. She squinted at the object under it.

  Her scream pierced the still night.

  The lamp’s light reflected the gold into her eyes. But it didn’t matter. Laura could still make out the inscription on David’s ring:

  1989 NBA CHAMPIONS—BOSTON CELTICS

  THE blood. So much blood …

  “Mommy! Mommy!”

  “Get out of here, Gloria! Get out of here now!”

  So much blood. Everywhere blood …

  Gloria screamed.

  “What? What … ? Gloria?”

  She shot up in the bed. Her eyes flew open. Her body went stiff.

  Stan shook himself awake. “Gloria?”

  Her breathing came in spurts.

  “It’s all over now,” Stan whispered softly. He moved over and put his arm around her. She hesitated and then snuggled up to him. He felt her tremble against his chest. “It’s okay now, sweetheart. It’s all over.”

  She looked up at him with the eyes of a cornered animal.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Y-yes.”

  “Bad dream?”

  She nodded, her breathing beginning to even now.

  “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  Gloria nodded again but did not speak for nearly a minute.

  “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” he said.

  “No,” she answered, her voice shaky. “I do. I’m just not sure how to begin. You see”—she hesitated, searching for the right words, any words really—“it’s not the first time I’ve had this dream.”

  “Oh?”

  “When I was young, I had it a lot. I used to wake up screaming and crying, and I wouldn’t be able to stop. I remember how my mom and dad would come in and try to calm me down. They would try to hold me and tell me it was just a dream, but nothing they could do would comfort me. Then Laura would come running in—she was just a fat little kid back then, if you can believe it—and somehow she’d be able to soothe me. I wouldn’t go back to sleep until Laura promised to stay with me. She would crawl in the bed and hold my hand. Only then would I be able to sleep.”

  Stan smiled gently. “Do you think I can take Laura’s place for tonight?”

  She returned the smile. “I think so.”

  Stan looked at her. God, she was good-looking. Cute and built with a body that didn’t rest for a minute. He stared at the thin material of her negligee and at her delicious cleavage. Gloria turned him on like no other chick in the world—except for her younger sister. And that, friends and fans of ol’ Stan, my man, was the reason he stayed. Yes, folks, he had figured it out last night. The B Man didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about. Stan wasn’t falling for this chick. It was just that, well, she was hot in the sack, and more important, little Miss Instability was a rung on the ladder to his ultimate achievement: screwing the delectable Laura Ayars-Baskin.

  But even as he thought the words, Stan knew that they were not true. Like it or not, Gloria meant something to him.

  “Tell me about your dream,” he said.

  Gloria lowered her head and gripped him tighter. “I don’t remember it very well.”

  “What do you remember?”

  She shrugged nervously. “Blood.”

  “Blood?”

  She nodded. “I’m a little girl in the dream—no more than five or six. We hadn’t moved to Boston yet. We were still living in this little house in the suburbs of Chicago. It’s late at night, and I’m walking down the hall when I hear a noise from my parents’ bedroom. I slowly move toward the door, turn the knob, and …”

  “And?”

  Gloria shook her head. “I always scream and wake up before I can really see what’s going on. I only remember blood. I remember it flowing and oozing everywhere. And someone’s watching it all with an awful, hideous smile and … and—”

  “Shhh, it’s okay now.”

  She took in deep breaths and struggled to put on a nervous smile. “Sounds crazy, huh?”

  “Not at all,” Stan assured her. “We all have our childhood nightmares.”

  She sat up and faced him. “Do you?”

  “Sure. Well, not exactly a nightmare.”

  “What then?”

  He lay back, his eyes staring up. “Something very strange happened to me when I was about ten years old.”

  “What?”

  Stan continued to gaze at the ceiling. He wondered why he was about to tell Gloria a secret he had kept locked within himself for nearly thirty years—especially when he had just convinced himself that Gloria didn’t mean a mule’s load of shit to him. A
nd he had sworn to himself that he would never tell another soul this story. Never. But David was dead now. So was his mother. How could the truth hurt him anymore? He lowered his eyes toward her and just stared for a long moment. “I saw my father being murdered.”

  Gloria gasped. “But … but I thought David said he—”

  “Committed suicide? I know. That’s what everyone thought. But he didn’t. Somebody shot my father in the head and then put the gun in his hand to make it look like a suicide.”

  Gloria’s face turned white. “But … I don’t understand. How did you get away?”

  “Simple,” Stan continued. “No one saw me. I was hiding behind the couch. You see, I used to play in my dad’s office all the time, even though it drove him crazy. He used to get so pissed off when I sneaked in there and messed up all his important papers with my little games. So when I heard him coming back early, I quickly hid behind the couch. But I saw the whole thing. I saw the gun pressed against my dad’s temple. I saw the blood shoot out from his head. I’ll never forget that sight, Gloria. Never.”

  “But why didn’t you tell anybody?” she asked.

  Stan shrugged. “Good question. I don’t know really. At first, I was in shock. And then I was so scared.”

  “Scared?”

  “Of the killer. I was afraid the killer was going to come after me, too. And one other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “I think the police knew my father hadn’t committed suicide.”

  “But why—?”

  “Because of pressure from the college board. You see, my father taught at Brinlen College—”

  “Brinlen? That’s near where we lived in Chicago.”

  “It’s in the Chicago suburbs,” Stan agreed. “Anyway, Brinlen was one of those elite schools for the preppie upper class. A suicide would be a bad enough scandal for the school, but a murder? That would have been devastating to the college’s haughty image.”