by Harlan Coben
"So," Wendy said, "you decided to take them down a peg."
"Do you blame me? I'm the only one who paid a price for what happened, and now it was like I was finished in their eyes. Done. Like I wasn't worth saving. My family was rich, they said. Ask them for help."
Phil couldn't escape his family, Wendy thought--their wealth, their position. He could want to be like his struggling friends, but he was never really one of them in their eyes--because when push came to shove, he simply didn't belong with the poor any more than they belonged with the rich.
"You learned about viral marketing from the Fathers Club," she said.
"Yes."
"That should have tipped me off. I just looked again. Farley was trashed. Steve was trashed. I was trashed. And there was already enough about Dan online. But you, Phil. There isn't a word about your embezzling crimes online. Why? If someone was out to get all of you, why didn't he blog about your stealing from the company? In fact, nobody knew about it. You told the Fathers Club that you were laid off. It wasn't until my friend Win informed me that you'd actually been fired for stealing two million dollars that you suddenly opened up about it. And when you knew I was down at Princeton, you even got in front of that one too--telling the guys you got expelled."
"All true," Phil said.
"So let's get to your setups. First, you got some girl to play Chynna, Dan's teenage girl, and Farley's hooker."
"That's right."
"Where did you find her?"
"She's just a hooker I hired to play two roles. It wasn't all that complicated. As for Steve Miciano, well, how hard is it to plant drugs in a man's trunk and tell the police to take a look? And Dan . . ."
"You used me," Wendy said.
"It was nothing personal. One night I saw your TV show and figured, wow, what better way to get back at someone?"
"How did you do it?"
"What was so complicated about it, Wendy? I wrote that first e-mail from Ashlee, the thirteen-year-old girl in the SocialTeen room. Then I posed as Dan in the room. I hid the photographs and the laptop in his house when I visited him. My hooker pretended to be a troubled teen named Chynna. When you told me in my online persona as 'pedophile Dan'"--he made quote marks with his fingers--"to show up at a particular time and place, Chynna simply asked Dan to meet her at the same time and place. Dan showed up, your cameras were rolling . . ." He shrugged.
"Wow," she said.
"I'm sorry you got involved. And I'm even sorrier I started all those rumors about you. I went too far there. That was a mistake. I feel terrible about that. That's why I'm here now. To make it up to you."
He kept saying that--that part about being here for her. It was maddening. "So you did all that," she said, "you went after all these guys, just for revenge?"
He lowered his head. His answer surprised her. "No."
"Don't be easy on yourself, Phil. You lost everything, so you decided to take down the innocent with you."
"The innocent?" For the first time, anger crept into his voice.
"They weren't innocent."
"You mean because of what they did that night at the dean's house."
"No, that's not what I mean. I mean, because they were guilty."
Wendy made a face. "Guilty of what?"
"Don't you get it? Farley did sleep with hookers. He was a horrible womanizer. Everyone knew. And Steve did use his standing as a medical doctor to illegally sell and dispense prescription drugs. Ask the cops. They couldn't nail him for it. But they knew. See, I didn't set them up. I exposed them."
There was silence now, a deep hum, and Wendy felt her body shake. They were coming to it now. He waited, knowing that she would prompt him.
"And what about Dan?" Wendy asked.
His breathing got a little funny. He tried to get himself under control, but the past was coming at him fast now. "That's why I'm here, Wendy."
"I don't understand. You just said Farley was a womanizer and that Steve was a drug pusher."
"Yes."
"So I'm asking the obvious question--was Dan Mercer really a pedophile?"
"Do you want the truth?"
"No, Phil, after all this I want you to lie to me. Did you set him up so he could be brought to justice?"
"With Dan," he said slowly, "I guess nothing went as planned."
"Please stop with the semantics. Was he a pedophile, yes or no?"
He looked to the left and summoned up something inside him. "I don't know."
That was not the answer she'd been expecting. "How can that be?"
"When I set him up, I didn't think he was. But now, I'm not so sure."
The answer made her head spin. "What the hell does that mean?" "I told you I went to Farley and Steve," he said. "And that they weren't interested in helping me."
"Yes."
"Then I went to Dan." Phil lifted the gun, switched it to his other hand.
"How did he react?"
"We sat in his crappy house. I mean, I didn't even know why I bothered. What could he do? He had absolutely no money. He worked with the poor. So Dan asked me if I wanted a beer. I took one. Then I told him what had happened to me. He listened with a sympathetic ear. When I finished Dan looked me in the eye and said he was so glad I came by. Why, I asked him. He told me how he'd visited Christa Stockwell all these years. I was shocked. And then he told me the final truth."
Wendy saw it now--what Christa Stockwell had kept from her.
"What did Dan tell you when he first came?"
"That's between us."
Wendy looked up at him. "Dan threw the ashtray."
Phil nodded. "He saw me duck down behind the bed. The other guys--Farley, Steve, and Kelvin--they had started sneaking out already. They were halfway down the stairs by the time Christa Stockwell started reaching for that light switch. Dan just wanted to distract her. Give me a chance to run. So he threw the ashtray."
"And it smashed the mirror into her face."
"Yes."
She imagined the moment. She imagined Dan confessing and Christa merely accepting it. They were college kids on a scavenger hunt, after all. Was it all that easy to forgive? For Christa, maybe it was.
"And all these years," Wendy said, "you never knew."
"I never knew. Dan lied about it. He tried to explain why. He was a poor kid, he said. He was on scholarship and scared. It wouldn't help me anyway. It would just destroy him--and for what?"
"So he kept quiet."
"Like the others, he figured I had money. I had family and connections. I could pay off Christa Stockwell. So he never said a word. He just let me take the fall for what he'd done. So you see, Wendy, Dan wasn't so innocent. In fact, in many ways, he was the guiltiest of all."
She thought about it, about the rage Phil must have felt when he learned that he had paid for the crime committed by Dan.
"But he wasn't a child molester, was he?"
Phil thought about that one. "I didn't think so, no. At least, I didn't at first."
She tried to sort through it, tried to make sense of it. And then she remembered Haley McWaid.
"My God, Phil. What did you do?"
"Those guys are right. I'm done. Whatever else was left of me-- whatever good was there-it's gone now too. That's what revenge does to you. It eats away at your soul. I should have never opened that door."
Wendy didn't know what door he meant anymore--the one to the dean's house all those years ago or the one to the hatred that made him seek revenge. Wendy remembered what Christa Stockwell had said about hatred, how holding on to it makes you let go of everything else.
But they still weren't done. There was still the matter of Haley McWaid.
"So when Dan got off," Wendy began, "I mean, when the judge let him go . . ."
The smile on his face chilled her. "Go on, Wendy."
But she couldn't. She tried to follow it, but suddenly none of it made sense.
"You're wondering about Haley McWaid, aren't you? You're wondering how she fits in."<
br />
Wendy couldn't speak.
"Go on, Wendy. Say what you were going to say."
But she saw it now. It made no sense.
His expression was calmer now, almost serene. "I hurt them, yes. Did I break the law? I'm not even sure. I hired a girl to lie about Farley and play a part with Dan. Is that a crime? A misdemeanor maybe. I pretended I was someone else in a chat room--but isn't that what you do? You said that the judge let Dan go. That's true, but so what? I wasn't necessarily trying to send them to jail. I just wanted them to suffer. And they did, didn't they?"
He waited for an answer. Wendy managed a nod.
"So why then would I set him up for murder?"
"I don't know," she managed.
Phil leaned forward and whispered, "I didn't."
Wendy couldn't breathe. She tried to slow it down, think it through, take a step back somehow. Haley McWaid had been murdered three months before she was found. Why? Did Wendy think, what, that Phil had killed her just in case Dan got off so Phil could pin it on him?
Did that make sense?
"Wendy, I'm a father. I couldn't kill a teenage girl. I couldn't kill anyone."
It was, she realized, a huge leap between viral trashing and murder, between getting back at some old classmates and killing a teenage girl.
The truth started to sink in, numbing her.
"You couldn't have planted the iPhone in his room," Wendy said slowly. "You didn't know where he was." Her head wouldn't stop spinning. She tried to focus, tried to make sense of this, but the answer was now so obvious. "It couldn't have been you."
"That's right, Wendy." He smiled, and the look of peace returned to his face. "That's why I'm here. Remember? I told you that I came here for you, not me. That's my final gift to you."
"What gift? I don't understand. How did that iPhone get in Dan's room?"
"You know the answer, Wendy. You're worried you ruined an innocent man. But you didn't. There's only one explanation why that phone was in his hotel room: Dan had it the whole time."
She just looked at him. "Dan killed Haley?"
"Of course," he said.
She couldn't move, couldn't breathe.
"And now you know everything, Wendy. You're free. I'm sorry for it all. I don't know whether it makes up for what I did to you, but it will have to do. Like I said in the beginning, that's why I came here--to help you."
Phil Turnball lifted his gun then. He closed his eyes and looked almost peaceful. "Tell Sherry I'm sorry," he said. Wendy raised her hands, shouted at him to stop, started toward him.
But she was too far away.
He placed the muzzle under his chin, aimed up, and pulled the trigger.
Caught
Chapter 36
FIVE DAYS LATER
THE POLICE CLEANED UP the mess.
Both Walker and Tremont came by to check up on her and hear the story. She tried to be as detailed as possible. The media, too, took a pretty big interest. Farley Parks released a statement condemning those who had "rushed to judgment" but did not reenter the race. Dr. Steve Miciano refused any interviews and announced that he was stepping down from practicing medicine to "pursue other interests."
Phil Turnball had been right about them.
Life returned to quasi-normal in quick order. Wendy was cleared by NTC of any sort of sexual misconduct, but work had become an impossible place. Vic Garrett couldn't look her in the eye. He gave all his assignments to her via his personal assistant, Mavis. So far, the assignments had been crap. If that didn't change, she would take a more aggressive stand.
But not quite yet.
Pops announced that he would be hitting the road by the weekend. He had stayed on to make sure Wendy and Charlie were okay, but as Pops noted, he was "a ramblin' man, a rolling stone." Staying in one place didn't suit him. Wendy understood, but God, she'd miss him.
Amazingly, while her workplace had accepted that the rumors online about her were not true, many of her fellow Kasseltonians did not. She was ignored in the supermarket. The mothers kept away from her during school pickup. On day five, two hours before Wendy was to head out to her PR committee meeting for Project Graduation, Millie Hanover called: "For the sake of the children, I suggest you step down from serving on any committee."
"For the sake of the children," Wendy replied, "I suggest you suck eggs."
She slammed the phone down. From behind her she heard clapping. It was Charlie. "All right, Mom."
"That woman is so narrow-minded."
Charlie laughed. "Remember I told you how I wanted to skip health class because it promotes promiscuity?"
"Yes."
"Cassie Hanover gets excused because her mother's afraid it might corrupt her morals. Funny thing is, her nickname is 'Hand Job' Hanover. I mean, the girl's a total slut."
Wendy turned and watched her lanky son approach the computer. He sat down and started typing, keeping his eyes on the screen.
"Speaking of total sluts," Wendy began.
He looked up at her. "Huh?"
"There are some rumors going around about me. They were put in blogs online."
"Mom?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think I live in a cave?"
"You've seen them?"
"Of course."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
Charlie shrugged, went back to typing.
"I want you to know they aren't true."
"You mean you don't sleep around to get ahead?"
"Don't be a wiseass."
He sighed. "I know it's not true, Mom. Okay? You don't have to tell me that."
She was trying very hard not to cry. "Are your friends giving you a hard time about it?"
"No," he said. Then: "Well, okay, Clark and James want to know if you dig younger men."
She frowned.
"Kidding," he said.
"Good one."
"Lighten up." He started typing.
She started to head out of the room, give him his privacy. If she had done that, it would all have been over now. They had the answers. Phil set up his friends. Dan had snapped and killed Haley. The fact that they couldn't find a motive was irksome but life works that way sometimes.
But she didn't leave the room. She was feeling teary and alone and so she asked her son, "What are you doing?"
"Going through my Facebook."
That reminded her of her fake profile, the Sharon Hait one, the one she'd used to "friend" Kirby Sennett.
"What's a Red Bull party?" she asked.
Charlie stopped typing. "Where did you hear that term?"
Wendy reminded him of how she'd used the fake profile to get in touch with Kirby Sennett. "Kirby invited 'Sharon' to a Red Bull party."
"Show me," he said.
Charlie logged out and stepped away from the computer. Wendy sat down, signed in as "Sharon Hait." It took her a second to remember the password ("Charlie") before she got in. She brought up the invitation and showed it to him.
"Lame," Charlie said.
"What?"
"Okay, you know how the school has these strict zero-tolerance rules, right?"
"Right."
"And Principal Zecher is like a Nazi on this stuff. I mean, if a kid is seen drinking, he can't play for any sports teams, can't be in the New Players shows, he reports it to the college admissions people, the whole works."
"Yes, I know."
"And you know how teens are idiots and always posting pictures of themselves drinking on stuff like, well, Facebook?"
"Yes."
"So anyway, someone came up with the idea of Red Bulling the photos."
"Red Bulling?"
"Yeah. So let's say you go to a party and you're drinking a can of Bud and because you're a loser with self-esteem issues, you think, wow, I'm so cool, I want everyone to see how cool I am. You ask someone to take your picture drinking this Bud so you can put it online so you can show off to your lame-o friends. Thing is, suppose Principal Zecher or his Third Reich minio
ns stumble across it? You're screwed. So what you do is, you photoshop a Red Bull over your beer can."
"You're kidding."
"I kid not. Makes sense when you think about it. Here."
He leaned over her and clicked the mouse. A bunch of photos of Kirby Sennett popped up. He started clicking through them. "See? Look how many times he, his pals, and their various skanks drink Red Bull."
"Don't call them skanks."
"Whatever."
Wendy started clicking through them. "Charlie?"
"Yeah."
"Have you ever been to a Red Bull party?"
"Destination: Loserville."
"Does that mean no?"
"It means no."
She looked at him. "Have you ever been to a party where people drank alcohol?"
Charlie rubbed his chin. "Yes."
"Did you drink?"
"Once."
She turned back to the computer, kept clicking, kept watching Kirby Sennett and his redfaced companions with the Red Bulls. In some of the pictures, you could see the photoshopping. The can of Red Bull was too big or too small or over the fingers or slightly askew.
"When?" she asked.
"Mom, it's okay. It was once. Sophomore year."
She was debating how far to take the conversation when she saw the photograph that changed everything. Kirby Sennett sat front and center. There were two girls behind him, both with their backs to the cameras. Kirby had a wide smile. He held the Red Bull in his right hand. He wore a New York Knicks T-shirt and a black baseball cap. But what drew her eyes, what made her stop and take another look, was the couch he sat on.
It was bright yellow with blue flowers.
Wendy had seen that couch before.
Alone--just the photograph--it would have meant nothing to her. But now she remembered Phil Turnball's last words, about how he was offering her a "gift," that she wouldn't have to blame herself for setting up an innocent man. Phil Turnball believed it--and Wendy had wanted to believe it too. That was the thing. It left her off the hook. Dan had been a killer. She hadn't set up an innocent man. She had, in fact, brought down a murderer.
