Hold Tight (2008)

by Harlan Coben

  "Spencer killed himself. We didn't do anything to him."

  Adam looked down through the trees. The soccer field was empty, but people were still jogging around the circle. He turned his head a little to the left. He tried to find that patch of roof, the one where Spencer had been found, but it was blocked off by the front tower. DJ moved and stood next to him.

  "My dad used to hang up here," DJ said. "When he was in high school. He was one of those bad kids, you know? He smoked dope and drank beer. He got into fights."

  "What's your point?"

  "My point is this. In those days you could survive a mistake. People looked the other way. You were a kid--you were supposed to blow off steam. My father stole a car when he was our age. Got caught too, but they worked out a side deal. Now my old man is one of the most law-abiding citizens around. But if he had grown up today, he'd be screwed. It's ridiculous. If you whistle at a girl at school, you can go to jail. If you bump into someone's chest in the hallway, you can be brought up on some kind of charges. One mistake and you're out. My dad says that's nonsense. How are we supposed to find our way?"

  "That doesn't give us a free pass."

  "Adam, in another couple of years we'll be in college. This will all be behind us. We aren't criminals. We can't let this moment ruin our lives."

  "It ruined Spencer's."

  "That's not our fault."

  "Those guys almost killed my father. He ended up in the hospital."

  "I know. And I know how I would feel if it was my father. But you can't go off half-cocked because of that. You need to calm down and think it through. I spoke to Carson. He wants us to go in and talk to him."

  Adam frowned. "Right."

  "No, I mean it."

  "He's crazy, DJ. You know that. You just said it yourself--he thinks I tried to set him up."

  Adam tried to sort it through, but he was so damn tired. He had been up all night. He was in pain and exhausted and confused. He had spent the night thinking and really had no idea what to do.

  He should have told his parents the truth.

  But he couldn't. He had messed up and gotten high too often and you start to buy that belief that the only people in the world who love you unconditionally, the only people who will love you forever no matter how you screw up, that somehow they were the enemy.

  But they'd spied on him.

  That much he now knew. They hadn't trusted him. That had gotten him furious, but really, when he thought about, had he earned their trust?

  So after last night, he panicked. He ran and stayed hidden. He just needed time to think.

  "I need to talk to my parents," he said.

  "I don't think that's a good idea."

  Adam looked at him. "Let me use your phone."

  DJ shook his head. Adam took a step toward him and made a fist. "Don't make me take it from you."

  DJ's eyes were wet. He held up a hand, took out his cell, and handed it to Adam. Adam dialed home. No answer. He dialed his father's cell. No answer. He tried his mom's. Same thing.

  DJ said, "Adam?"

  He thought about making the call. He had already called her once, staying on long enough to let her know that he was okay and making her swear not to tell his parents.

  He dialed Jill's phone.

  "Hello?"

  "It's me."

  "Adam? Please come home. I'm so scared."

  "Do you know where Mom and Dad are?"

  "Mom is picking me up at Yasmin's. Dad went to look for you."

  "Do you know where?"

  "I think he went to the Bronx or something. I heard Mom say something about that. Something about Club Jaguar."

  Adam closed his eyes. Damn. They knew.

  "Listen, I have to go."

  "Where?"

  "It'll be okay. Don't worry. When you see Mom, tell her you heard from me. Tell her I'm fine and I'll be home soon. Tell her to reach Dad and get him to come home, okay?"

  "Adam?"

  "Just tell her."

  "I'm really scared."

  "Don't worry, Jill, okay? Just keep doing what I say. It's almost over."

  He hung up and looked at DJ. "You have your car?"

  "Yeah."

  "We gotta hurry."

  NASH saw the unmarked police car pull up to the house.

  Guy Novak got out. A plainclothes cop started getting out of the car, but Novak waved him off. He reached back into the car, shook the cop's hand and stumbled in a daze toward the front door.

  Nash felt his phone vibrate. He didn't need to check the incoming number anymore. He knew it would be Joe Lewiston again. He had listened to the first desperate message a few minutes ago:

  "Oh God, Nash, what's going on? I didn't want that. Please don't hurt anyoneelse, okay? Just... I just thought you could talk to her or get the video or something. And if you know something about the other woman, please don't hurt her. Oh God, oh God..."

  Like that.

  Guy Novak entered his house. Nash moved closer. Three minutes later, the front door opened again. A woman came out. Guy Novak's girlfriend. He kissed her on the cheek. The door closed behind her. The date walked down the path. When she reached the curb, she looked back and shook her head. She might have been crying, but it was hard to tell from here.

  Thirty seconds later, she too was gone.

  Time was limited now. Somehow Nash had messed up. They had figured out who Marianne was. It was on the news. The husband had been questioned by the police. People think that law enforcement of- ficers are stupid. They are not. They have every advantage. Nash respected that. It was one of the reasons he'd gone through such great lengths to hide Marianne's identity.

  Self-preservation told him to run away, hide, sneak out of the country. But that wouldn't do. He could still help Joe Lewiston, even if Joe wouldn't help himself. He would call him later and persuade him to keep quiet. Or maybe Joe would see the light on his own. Joe was panicked right now, but he had, after all, contacted Nash to help in the first place. Maybe he would end up making the smart move.

  The itch was there. The crazy, as Nash liked to call it. He knew that there were children in the home. He had no interest in hurting them--or was that a lie? Hard to know sometimes. Humans are all about self-delusion, and Nash wasn't above wallowing in that overindulgence on occasion.

  But on a purely practical level, there was no time to wait. He had to act now. That meant--with the crazy or without it--the children could very well end up collateral damage.

  There was a knife in his pocket. He took it out now and held it in his hand.

  Nash moved toward Novak's back door and worked on the lock.

  Chapter 35.

  ROSEMARY McDevitt sat in her Club Jaguar office, her vest and tattoos now covered by a too-large gray sweatshirt. She swam in it, her hands disappearing into the long sleeves. It made her look smaller, less threatening and powerful, and Mike wondered if that was the point. She had coffee in front of her. Mike had one too.

  "The cops put a wire on you?" she asked.

  "No."

  "You mind giving me your cell phone, just to be sure?"

  Mike shrugged and tossed it to her. She turned it off and left it on the desk between them.

  Her knees were up on the chair, again disappearing into the sweatshirt. Mo was outside, waiting in the car. He hadn't wanted Mike to do this, fearing a trap, but he also knew that they had no choice. This was the best lead they had on Adam.

  Mike said, "I don't really care about what you're doing in there, except in how it relates to my son. Do you know where he is?"

  "No."

  "When did you last see him?"

  She looked up at him with doe-brown eyes. He wasn't sure if he was being worked here or not, but it didn't much matter. He wanted answers. He could play the game back if that helped.

  "Last night."

  "Where exactly?"

  "Downstairs at the club."

  "He came here to party?"

  Rosemary smiled. "I don't th
ink so."

  He let that go. "You talked to him by instant message, didn't you? You're CeeJay8115."

  She did not reply.

  "You told Adam to stay quiet and it'd be safe. He messaged you that he'd been approached by Spencer Hill's mother, right?"

  Her knees were still up on the chair. She wrapped her arms around them. "How would you know so much about his private messages, Dr. Baye?"

  "That's not your concern."

  "How did you follow him to Club Jaguar last night?"

  Mike said nothing.

  "Are you sure you want to travel down this road?" she asked.

  "I don't think I have a choice."

  She glanced over his shoulder. Mike turned around. Carson with the broken nose was glaring through the glass. Mike met his eyes and calmly waited. A few seconds later, Carson broke eye contact and hurried away.

  "They're just boys," Mike said.

  "No, they're not."

  He let it drop. "Talk to me."

  Rosemary settled back. "Let's speak in hypotheticals, okay?"

  "If that's what you want."

  "That's what I want. Let's say you're a girl from a small town. Your brother dies of a drug overdose."

  "Not according to the police. They say there is no evidence any of that happened."

  She smirked. "The feds told you that?"

  "They said they can't find anything to back up the claim."

  "I changed some of the facts, that's why."

  "Which facts?"

  "Name of the town, name of the state."

  "Why?"

  "Major reason? On the night my brother died, I was arrested for possession with intent to sell." She met his eye. "That's right. I gave my brother the drugs. I was his supplier. I leave that part out of the story. People tend to judge."

  "Go on."

  "So I formed Club Jaguar. I already told you my philosophy. I wanted to create a safe haven where kids could party and let loose. I wanted to channel their natural inclination to rebel in a protected way."

  "Right."

  "So it started that way. I busted my butt and raised enough money to get it off the ground. We opened this place in a year. You can't imagine how difficult that was."

  "I can, but I really don't need to hear about it. How about fast-forwarding to the part where you started holding pharm parties and stealing prescription pads?"

  She smiled and shook her head. "It's not like that."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I read in the paper today about a widow who did volunteer work for her local parish. Over the last five years she's skimmed twenty-eight thousand dollars from the tithing basket. Did you see that?"

  "No."

  "But you've heard of others, right? Dozen of cases like that. The guy who works for the charity and siphons off money to buy himself a Lexus--do you think one day he just woke up and decided to do that?"

  "I don't really know."

  "That church lady. You know what I bet happened? One day she's counting out the money in the tithing basket and she stays late and maybe her car is broken down and she can't get home. It's getting dark. So maybe she calls the taxi company and figures, well, she volunteers all this time and the church should pay for it. She doesn't ask. She grabs five bucks out of the basket. That's all. She's more than owed it. That's how this stuff starts, I think. It's an incremental thing. You see all these decent people getting arrested for embezzling from schools or churches or charities. They start small and move so slow it's like watching clocks--they don't even see. They don't think they're doing anything wrong."

  "And that's what happened with Club Jaguar?"

  "I thought that teens wanted to party in a social way. But it was like the midnight basketball program. They wanted to party, yes, but with booze and drugs. You can't create a place to rebel. You can't make it safe and drug-free because that's the whole purpose--they don't want it safe."

  "Your concept failed," Mike said.

  "No one showed--or if they did, they didn't stay. We were labeled as lame. We were viewed like one of those evangelical groups that make you take a virginity pledge."

  "So I don't get what happened next," Mike said. "You just started letting them bring in their own drugs?"

  "It wasn't like that. They just did. I didn't even know about it at first, but in a way it made sense. Incremental, remember? One or two kids brought some prescription drugs from home. Nothing too heavy-duty. And we aren't talking cocaine or heroin here. These were FDA-approved medicines."

  "Bull," Mike said.

  "What?"

  "These are drugs. Hard-core drugs, in many cases. There's a reason you need a prescription to get them."

  She made a scoffing noise. "Well, sure, a doctor would say that, wouldn't he? Without you being the arbiter of who gets what medicine, your business is dead--and you've already lost a lot of money to Medicare and Medicaid and all the squeezing from insurance companies."

  "That's crap."

  "Maybe it is in your case. But not every doctor is as caring as you are."

  "You're justifying a crime."

  Rosemary shrugged. "You could be right. But that was how it started--a few teens bringing in some pills from home. Medicine, when you think about. Prescribed and legal. When I first heard about it, I was upset and then I saw how many kids we were attracting. They were going to do it anyway and I was giving them a safe place. I even hired a medical practitioner. She worked at the club just in case something went wrong. Don't you see? I was getting them in the doors. They were better off here than somewhere else. I had programs too--so they could talk out their problems. You saw the flyers about counseling. Some of the kids signed up for those. We were doing more good than harm."

  Mike said, "Incremental."

  "Exactly."

  "So naturally you still need to make money," he said. "You find out how much these drugs are worth on the street. So you start asking for a cut."

  "For the house. For expenses. I hired the medical professional, for example."

  "Like the church lady needing taxi money."

  Rosemary smiled, though there was no joy in it. "Yes."

  "And then Adam walked in the door. The son of a doctor."

  It was like the cops told him. Entrepreneurial. He didn't care about her reasons really. She may be handing him a line or maybe not. It didn't much matter. She had a point about how people slip-slide into trouble. That church lady probably didn't volunteer her time in order to start skimming money. It just starts to happen. It happened in their town Little League a couple of years ago. It happened with school boards and the local mayor's office, and every time you hear it you can't believe it. You know these people. They aren't evil. Or are they? Is it circumstances that make them do it--or is it more this self-denial that Rosemary was describing?

  "What happened to Spencer Hill?" Mike asked.

  "He committed suicide."

  Mike shook his head.

  "I'm telling you what I know," she said.

  "Then why should Adam--as you put in your IM--need to keep quiet about that?"

  "Spencer Hill killed himself."

  Mike shook his head again. "He overdosed here, didn't he?"

  "No."

  "It's the only thing that makes sense. It is why Adam and his friends needed to keep quiet. They were afraid. I don't know what sort of pressure you applied. Maybe you reminded them that they'd be arrested too. This is why they all feel guilty. This is why Adam can't stand himself anymore. He was with Spencer that night. Not only was he with him, but he helped move the body to that rooftop."

  A small smile curled her lips. "You really don't have a clue, do you, Dr. Baye?"

  He didn't like the way she said that. "So tell me then."

  Rosemary still had her legs up and under her sweatshirt. It was such a teenage move; it gave her an air of youth and innocence that he knew was undeserved. "You don't know your son at all, do you?"

  "I used to."

  "No, you didn't. You think you did.
But you're his dad. You're not supposed to know all. They're supposed to break away. When I said you don't know him, I actually meant it as a good thing."

  "I'm not following."

  "You put a GPS in his phone. That was how you found out where he was. You clearly monitor his computer and read his communications. You probably think it helps, but actually it stifles. A parent isn't supposed to know what their kid is up to all the time."

  "Give them room to rebel, is that it?"

  "In part, yes."

  Mike sat up. "If I had known about you earlier, maybe I could have stopped him."

  "Do you really think that?" Rosemary tilted her head as though genuinely interested in his response. When he said nothing, she continued, "Is that your plan for the future? Monitoring your children's every move?"

  "Do me a favor, Rosemary. Don't worry about my child-rearing plans, okay?"

  She looked at him carefully. She pointed to the bruise on his forehead. "I'm sorry about that."

  "Did you sic those goths on me?"

  "No. I didn't know about that until this morning."

  "Who told you?"

  "It's not important. Last night, your son was here and it was a sensitive situation. And then, wham, you showed up. DJ Huff saw you following him. He called and Carson answered."

  "He and his buddies tried to kill me."

  "And they probably would have. Still think they're just boys?"

  "A bouncer saved me."

  "No. A bouncer found you."

  "What do you mean by that?"

  She shook her head. "When I learned they attacked you and the police came by... it was something of a wake-up call. Now I just want to find a way to end this."

  "How?"

  "I'm not sure, but that's why I wanted us to meet. To come up with a plan."

  He saw it now--why she was so willing to share all this with him. She knew that the feds were closing in, that now was the time to cash in her chips and leave the table. She wanted help and figured a scared father would fall into line.

  "I got a plan," he said. "We go to the feds and tell them the truth."

  She shook her head. "That might not be best for your son."

  "He's a minor."

  "Still. We are all in this mess together. We need to find a way to make it go away."

  "You were providing illegal drugs to minors."