by Harlan Coben
Tia nodded. "I think all parents do."
"Why do you think that is?"
"Because they look so innocent."
"Maybe." Betsy smiled. "But I think it's because we can just stare at them and marvel at them and not feel weird about it. If you stare at them like that during the day, they'll think you're nuts. But when they're sleeping..."
Her voice drifted off. She started to look around and said, "This roof is pretty big."
Tia was confused by the change of subjects. "I guess."
"The roof," Betsy said again. "It's big. There are broken bottles all over the place."
She looked at Tia. Not sure how to respond, Tia said, "Okay."
"Whoever burnt those candles," Betsy went on. "They picked the exact spot where Spencer was found. It was never in the papers. So how did they know? If Spencer was alone that night, how did they know to burn the candles exactly where he died?"
MIKE knocked on the door.
He stood on the stoop and waited. Mo stayed in the car. They were less than a mile from where Mike had gotten jumped last night. He wanted to go back to that alley, see what he could remember or dig up or, well, whatever. He really didn't have a clue. He was flailing and poking and hoping something would lead him closer to his son.
This stop, he knew, was probably his best chance.
He had called Tia and told her about having no luck with Huff. Tia had told him about her visit with Betsy Hill to the school. Betsy was still at the house.
Tia said, "Adam has been a lot more withdrawn since the suicide."
"I know."
"So maybe there's more to what happened that night."
"Like what?"
Silence.
"Betsy and I still need to talk," Tia said.
"Be careful, okay?"
"What do you mean?"
Mike did not reply, but both of them knew. The truth was, horrible as it might seem, that their interests and the Hills' interests might no longer be in harmony. Neither one of them wanted to say it. But they both knew.
"Let's just find him first," Tia said.
"That's what I'm trying to do. You work your end, I'll work mine."
"I love you, Mike."
"I love you too."
Mike knocked again. There was no answer at the door. He lifted his hand to knock a third time when the door opened. Anthony the bouncer filled the doorway. He folded his massive arms and said, "You look like hell."
"Thanks, I appreciate that."
"How did you find me?"
"I went online and looked up recent photographs of the Dartmouth football team. You only graduated last year. Your address is registered in the alumni site."
"Smart," Anthony said with a small smile. "We Dartmouth men are very smart."
"I got jumped in that alley."
"Yeah, I know. Who do you think called the police?"
"You?"
He shrugged. "Come on. Let's take a walk."
Anthony closed the door behind him. He was dressed in workout clothes. He wore shorts and one of those tight sleeveless tees that were suddenly the rage not just with guys like Anthony, who could pull it off, but guys Mike's age who simply couldn't.
"It's just a summer gig," Anthony said. "Working at the club. But I like it. I'm going to law school at Columbia in the fall."
"My wife is a lawyer."
"Yeah, I know. And you're a doctor."
"How do you know that?"
He grinned. "You're not the only one who can use college connections."
"You looked me up online?"
"Nah. I called the current hockey coach--a guy named Ken Karl, also worked as the defensive line coach on the football team. Described what you looked liked, told him you claimed to be an All-American. He said 'Mike Baye' right away. Says you were one of the best hockey players the school ever had. You still hold some scoring record."
"So does this mean we have a bond, Anthony?"
The big man didn't reply.
They headed down the stoop. Anthony turned right. A man approaching in the other direction called out, "Yo, Ant!" and the two men did a complicated handshake before moving on.
Mike said, "Tell me what happened last night."
"Three, maybe four guys kicked the crap out of you. I heard the commotion. When I got there, they were running away. One of the guys had a knife. I thought you were a goner."
"You scared them off?"
Anthony shrugged.
"Thanks."
Another shrug.
"You get a look at them?"
"Not their faces. But they were white guys. Lots of tattoos. Dressed in black. Skanky and skinny and stoned out of their freakin' minds, I bet. Lots of anger. One was cupping his nose and cursing." Anthony smiled again. "I do believe you broke it."
"And you're the one who called the cops?"
"Yup. Can't believe you're out of bed already. I figured you'd be out of commission for at least a week."
They kept walking.
"Last night, the kid with the varsity jacket," Mike said. "Had you seen him before?"
Anthony said nothing.
"You recognized my son's picture too."
Anthony stopped. He plucked sunglasses out of his collar and put them on. They covered his eyes. Mike waited.
"Our Big Green connection only goes so far, Mike."
"You said you're amazed I'm out of bed already."
"That I did."
"You want to know why?"
He shrugged.
"My son is still missing. His name is Adam. He's sixteen years old, and I think he's in a lot of danger."
Anthony kept walking. "Sorry to hear about that."
"I need some information."
"I look like the Yellow Pages to you? I live out there. I don't talk about what I see."
"Don't hand me that 'code of the street' crap."
"And don't hand me that 'Dartmouth men stick together' crap."
Mike put his hand on the big man's arm. "I need your help."
Anthony pulled away, started walking faster. Mike caught up to him.
"I'm not leaving, Anthony."
"Didn't think you would," he said. He stopped. "Did you like it up there?"
"Where?"
"Dartmouth."
"Yeah," Mike said. "I liked it a lot."
"Me too. It was like a different world. You know what I'm saying?"
"I do."
"No one in this neighborhood knew about that school."
"How did you end up there?"
He smiled, adjusted the sunglasses. "You mean a big black brother from the streets going to lily-white Dartmouth?"
"Yeah," Mike said. "That's exactly what I mean."
"I was a good football player, maybe even great. I got recruited Division 1A. Could have gone Big Ten."
"But?"
"But I also knew my limitations. I wasn't good enough to go pro. So what would be the point? No education, joke diploma. So I went to Dartmouth. Got a full ride and liberal arts degree. No matter what else, I will always be an Ivy League graduate."
"And now you're going to Columbia Law."
"Yup."
"And then? I mean, after you graduate."
"I'm staying in the neighborhood. I didn't do this to get out. I like it here. I just want to make it better."
"Good to be a stand-up guy."
"Right, but bad to be a snitch."
"You can't walk away from this, Anthony."
"Yeah, I know."
"Under different circumstances, I'd love to keep chatting about our alma mater," Mike said.
"But you got a kid to save."
"Right."
"I've seen your son before, I think. I mean, they all look alike to me, what with the black clothes and the sullen faces, like the world gave them everything and that pisses them off. I got trouble sympathizing. Out here, you get stoned to escape. What the hell do these kids have to escape from--a nice house, parents who love them?"
"I
t's not that simple," Mike said.
"I guess."
"I came from nothing too. Sometimes I think it's easier. Ambition is natural when you don't have anything. You know what you're driving for."
Anthony said nothing.
"My son is a good kid. He's going through something right now.
It's my job to protect him until he finds his way back out."
"Your job. Not mine."
"Did you see him last night, Anthony?"
"Might have. I don't know much. I really don't."
Mike just looked at him.
"There's a club for underage kids. Supposedly it's a safe place for teens to hang out. They got counselors and therapy and stuff like that, but that's supposed to be just a front to party."
"Where is it?"
"Two, three blocks down from my club."
"And when you say, 'just a front to party,' what do you mean exactly?"
"What do you think I mean? Drugs, underage drinking, stuff like that. There are rumors of mind control and crap like that. I don't believe them. One thing though. People who don't belong stay clear."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning they got a rep as very dangerous too. Maybe mobbed up, I don't know. But people don't give them trouble. That's all I mean."
"And you think my son went there?"
"If he was in that area and he was sixteen years old, yeah. Yeah, I think he probably went there."
"Does the place have a name?"
"Club Jaguar, I think. I have an address."
He gave it to him. Mike handed him his business card.
"This has all my phone numbers," Mike said.
"Uh-huh."
"If you see my son..."
"I'm not a babysitter, Mike."
"That's okay. My son isn't a baby."
TIA was holding the photograph of Spencer Hill.
"I don't see how you can be sure it's Adam."
"I wasn't," Betsy Hill said. "But then I confronted him."
"He might have just freaked out because he was seeing a picture of his dead friend."
"Could be," Betsy agreed in a way that clearly meant, Not a chance.
"And you're sure this picture was taken the night he died?"
"Yes."
Tia nodded. The silence fell on them. They were back at the Baye house. Jill was upstairs watching TV. The sounds of Hannah Montanawafted down. Tia sat there. So did Betsy Hill.
"So what do you think this means, Betsy?"
"Everyone said they didn't see Spencer that night. That he was alone."
"And you think this means that they did?"
"Yes."
Tia pressed a little. "And if he wasn't alone, what would that mean?"
Betsy thought about it. "I don't know."
"You did get a suicide note, right?"
"By text. Anyone can send a text."
Tia saw it again. In a sense the two mothers were at odds. If what Betsy Hill said about the photograph was true, then Adam had lied. And if Adam had lied, then who really knew what happened that night?
So Tia didn't tell her about the instant messages with CeeJay8115, the ones about the mother who approached Adam. Not yet. Not until she knew more.
"I missed some signs," Betsy said.
"Like?"
Betsy Hill closed her eyes.
"Betsy?"
"I spied on him once. Not really spied but... Spencer was on the computer and when he left the room, I just sneaked in. To see what he was looking at. You know? I shouldn't have. It was wrong-- invading his privacy like that."
Tia said nothing.
"But anyway I hit that back arrow, you know, at the top of the browser?"
Tia nodded.
"And... and he'd been visiting some suicide sites. There were stories about kids who had killed themselves, I guess. Stuff like that. I didn't look too long. And I never did anything about it. I just blocked."
Tia looked at Spencer in the photograph. She looked for signs that the boy would be dead within hours, as if that would somehow show on his face. There was nothing, but what did that mean?
"Did you show this picture to Ron?" she asked.
"Yes."
"What did he make of it?"
"He wonders what difference it makes. Our son committed suicide, he said, so what are you trying to figure out, Betsy? He thinks I'm doing this to get closure."
"Aren't you?"
"Closure," Betsy repeated, nearly spitting the word out as though it tasted bad in her mouth. "What does that even mean? Like somewhere up ahead there's a door and I'll walk through it and then close it and Spencer stays on the other side? I don't want that, Tia. Can you imagine anything more obscene than having closure?"
They went quiet again, the annoying laugh track from Jill's show the only sound.
"The police think your son ran away," Betsy said. "They think mine committed suicide."
Tia nodded.
"But suppose they're wrong. Suppose they're wrong about both of our boys."
Chapter 24.
NASH sat in the van and tried to figure his next move.
Nash's upbringing had been normal. He knew that psychiatric types would want to examine that statement, searching for some kind of sexual abuse or excess or streak of religious conservatism. Nash thought that they would find nothing. His were good parents and siblings. Maybe too good. They had covered for him the way families do for one another. In hindsight some might view that as a mistake, but it takes a lot for family to accept the truth.
Nash was intelligent and thus he knew early on that he was what some might call "damaged." There is the old catch-22 line that a mentally unstable person can't know, as per their illness, that they are unstable. But that was wrong. You can and do have the insight to see your own crazy. Nash knew that all his wires weren't connected or that there might be some bug in the system. He knew that he was different, that he was not of the norm. That didn't necessarily make him feel inferior--or superior. He knew that his mind went to very dark places and liked it there. He did not feel things the way others did, did not sympathize with people's pain the way others pretended they did.
The key word: "pretended."
Pietra sat in the seat next to him.
"Why does man make himself out to be so special?" he asked her.
She said nothing.
"Forget the fact that this planet--nay, this solar system--is so in- significantly small that we can't even comprehend it. Try this. Imagine you're on a huge beach. Imagine you pick up one tiny grain of sand. Just one. Then you look up and down this long beach that stretches in both directions as far as the eye can see. Do you think our entire solar system is as small as that grain of sand is to that beach in comparison to the universe?"
"I don't know."
"Well, if you did, you'd be wrong. It is much, much smaller. Try this: Imagine you're still holding that tiny grain of sand. Now not just the beach you are on, but all the beaches all over the planet, all of them, all down the coast of California and the East Coast from Maine down to Florida and on the Indian Ocean and off the coasts of Africa. Imagine all that sand, all those beaches everywhere in the world and now look at that grain of sand you're holding and still, still , our entire solar system--forget our planet--is smaller than that compared to the rest of the universe. Can you even comprehend how insignifi- cant we are?"
Pietra said nothing.
"But forget that for a moment," Nash went on, "because man is even insignificant here on this very planet. Let's take this whole argument down to just earth for a moment, okay?"
She nodded.
"Do you realize that dinosaurs walked this planet longer than man?"
"Yes."
"But that's not all. That would be one thing that would show that man is not special--the fact that even on this infinitesimally small planet we haven't even been kings the majority of the time. But take it a step farther--do you realize how much longer the dinosaurs ruled the earth than us? Two times? Five times? Te
n times?"
She looked at him. "I don't know."
"Forty-four thousand times longer." He was gesturing wildly now, lost in the bliss of his argument. "Think about that. Forty-four thousand times longer. That's more than one hundred and twenty years for every single day. Can you even comprehend it? Do you think we will survive forty-four thousand times longer than we already have?"
"No," she said.
Nash sat back. "We are nothing. Man. Nothing. Yet we feel as though we are special. We think we matter or that God considers us his favorites. What a laugh."
In college, Nash studied John Locke's state of nature--the idea that the best government is the least government because, put simply, it is closest to the state of nature, or what God intended. But in that state, we are animals. It is nonsense to think we are anything more. How silly to believe that man is above that and that love and friendship are anything but the ravings of a more intelligent mind, a mind that can see the futility and thus must invent ways to comfort and distract itself from it.
Was Nash the sane one for seeing the darkness--or were most people just self-delusional? And yet.
And yet for many years Nash had longed for normalcy.
He saw the carefree and craved it. He realized that he was way above average in intelligence. He was a straight-A student with nearly perfect SAT scores. He matriculated at Williams College, where he majored in philosophy--all the while trying to keep the crazy away. But the crazy wanted out.
So why not let it out?
There was in him some primitive instinct to protect his parents and siblings, but the rest of the world's inhabitants did not matter to him. They were background scenery, props, nothing more. The truth was--a truth he understood early--he derived intense pleasure from harming others. He always had. He didn't know why. Some people derive pleasure from a soft breeze or a warm hug or a victory shot in a basketball game. Nash derived it from ridding the planet of another inhabitant. He didn't ask this for himself, but he saw it and sometimes he could fight it and sometimes he could not.
Then he met Cassandra.
It was like one of those science experiments that start with a clear liquid and then someone adds a small drop--a catalyst--to it and it changes everything. The color changes and the complexion changes and the texture changes. Corny as it sounds, Cassandra was that catalyst.
