One False Move

by Harlan Coben

  He continued up the drive, both hands on the wheel. Part of him wanted to stall; most of him wanted to get at Arthur Bradford immediately. He knew the truth now. Some of it anyway. Enough to save Brenda.

  Maybe.

  The grounds were silk black, the farm animals silent. The mansion loomed above him, floating almost, only tenuously connected with the world beneath it. Myron parked and got out of the car. Before he reached the door, Mattius the Manservant was there. It was ten o'clock at night, but Mattius still displayed fall butler garb and rigid spine. He said nothing, waiting with almost inhuman patience.

  When Myron reached him, Mattius said, "Mr. Bradford will see you in the library."

  Myron nodded. And that was when someone hit him in the head. There was a thud, and then a thick, blackening numbness swam through him. His skull tingled. Still reeling, Myron felt a bat smash the back of his lower thighs. His legs buckled, and he dropped to his knees.

  "Win," he managed.

  A boot stomped him hard between the shoulder blades. Myron crashed facefirst into the ground. He felt the air whoosh out of him. There were hands on him now. Searching. Grabbing out the weapons.

  "Win," he said again.

  "Nice try." Sam stood over him. He was holding Myron's phone. "But I hung it up, I Spy."

  Two other men lifted Myron by the armpits and quickly dragged him into the foyer and down the corridor. Myron tried to blink out the fuzzies. His entire body felt like a thumb hit with a hammer. Sam walked in front of him. He opened a door, and the two men tossed Myron in like a sack of peat moss. He started to roll down steps, but he managed to stop his descent before he hit bottom.

  Sam stepped inside. The door closed behind him.

  "Come on," Sam said. "Let's get this done."

  Myron managed to sit up. A basement, Myron realized. He was on the steps of a basement.

  Sam walked toward him. He reached out a hand. Myron took it and pulled himself to his feet. The two men walked down the steps.

  "This section of the basement is windowless and cement-lined," Sam said. Like he was giving a house tour. "So the only way in or out is through that door. Understand?"

  Myron nodded.

  "I got two men at the top of the steps. They're going to spread out now. And they're pros, not like that Mario asswipe. So no one is getting through that door. Understand?"

  Another nod.

  Sam took out a cigarette and put it between his lips. "Lastly, we saw your buddy jump out of the trunk. I got two marine sharpshooters hidden out there. Persian Gulf War vets. Your friend comes anywhere near the house, he's toast. The windows are all alarmed. The motion detectors are set. I'm in radio contact with all four of my men under four different frequencies." He showed Myron a walkie-talkie of some kind with a digital readout.

  "Different frequencies," Myron repeated. "Wow."

  "I say all this not to impress you but to stress how dumb a flight attempt would be. Do you understand?"

  One more nod.

  They were in a wine cellar now. It smelled as robust and oaky as, well, a perfectly aged chardonnay. Arthur was there. His face was skull-like, his skin drawn up tautly against his cheekbones. Chance was there too. He was sipping red wine, studying the color, trying very hard to look casual.

  Myron glanced about the wine cellar. Lots of bottles in crisscrossed shelves, all tilted slightly forward so the corks would remain properly moist. A giant thermometer. A few wooden barrels, mostly for show. There were no windows. No doors. No other visible entranceways. In the center of the room was a hefty mahogany table.

  The table was bare except for a gleaming set of pruning shears.

  Myron looked back at Sam. Sam smiled, still holding a gun.

  "Label me intimidated," Myron said.

  Sam shrugged.

  "Where is Brenda?" Arthur demanded.

  "I don't know," Myron said.

  "And Anita? Where is she?"

  "Why don't you ask Chance?" Myron said.

  "What?"

  Chance sat up. "He's crazy."

  Arthur stood. "You're not leaving here until I'm satisfied that you're not holding out on me."

  "Fine," Myron said. "Then let's get to it, Arthur. You see, I've been dumb about this whole thing. I mean, the clues were all there. The old phone taps. Your keen interest in all this. The earlier assault on Anita. Ransacking Horace's apartment and taking Anita's letters. The cryptic calls telling Brenda to contact her mother. Sam cutting those kids' Achilles tendons. The scholarship money. But you know what finally gave it away?"

  Chance was about to say something, but Arthur waved him into silence. He strummed his chin with his index finger. "What?" he asked.

  "The timing of Elizabeth's suicide," Myron said.

  "I don't understand."

  "The timing of the suicide," Myron repeated, "and more important, your family's attempt to alter it. Why would Elizabeth kill herself at six in the morning--at the exact moment Anita Slaughter was coming to work? Coincidence? Possibly. But then why did you all work so hard to change the time? Elizabeth could have just as easily had her accident at six A.M. as midnight. So why the change?"

  Arthur kept his back straight. "You tell me."

  "Because the timing was not incidental," Myron said. "Your wife committed suicide when she did and how she did for a reason. She wanted Anita Slaughter to see her jump."

  Chance made a noise. "That's ridiculous."

  "Elizabeth was depressed," Myron continued, looking straight at Arthur. "I don't doubt that. And I don't doubt that you once loved her. But that was a long time ago. You said she hadn't been herself for years. I don't doubt that either. But three weeks before her suicide Anita was assaulted. I thought one of you beat her. Then I thought that maybe Horace did it. But the most noticeable injuries were scratches. Deep scratches. Like a cat, Wickner said." Myron looked at Arthur. Arthur seemed to be shrinking in front of him, being sucked dry by his own memories.

  "Your wife was the one who attacked Anita," Myron said. "First she attacked her, and then three weeks later, still despondent, she committed suicide in front of her--because Anita was having an affair with her husband. It was the final mental straw that broke her, wasn't it, Arthur? So how did it happen? Did Elizabeth walk in on you two? Did she seem so far gone that you got careless?"

  Arthur cleared his throat. "As a matter of fact, yes. That's pretty much how it happened. But so what? What does that have to do with the present?"

  "Your affair with Anita. How long did it last?"

  "I don't see the relevance of that."

  Myron looked at him for a long moment. "You're an evil man," he said. "You were raised by an evil man, and you have much of him in you. You've caused great suffering. You've even had people killed. But this wasn't a fling, was it? You loved her, didn't you, Arthur?"

  He said nothing. But something behind the facade began to cave in.

  "I don't know how it happened," Myron continued. "Maybe Anita wanted to leave Horace. Or maybe you encouraged her. It doesn't matter. Anita decided to run away and start new. Tell me what the plan was, Arthur. Were you going to set her up in an apartment? A house out of town? Surely no Bradford was going to marry a black maid from Newark."

  Arthur made a noise. Half scoff. Half groan. "Surely," he said.

  "So what happened?"

  Sam kept several steps back, his gaze moving from the basement door to Myron. He whispered into his walkie-talkie every once in a while. Chance sat frozen, both nervous and comforted; nervous about what was being unearthed; comforted because he believed it would never leave this cellar. Perhaps he was right.

  "Anita was my last hope," Arthur said. He bounced two fingers off his lips and forced up a smile. "It's ironic, don't you think? If you come from a disadvantaged home, you can blame the environment for your sinful ways. But what about an omnipotent household? What about those who are raised to dominate others, to take what they want? What about those who are raised to believe that they are special
and that other people are little more than window dressing? What about those children?"

  Myron nodded. "Next time I'm alone," he said, "I'll weep for them."

  Arthur chuckled. "Fair enough," he said. "But you have it wrong. I was the one who wanted to run away. Not Anita. Yes, I loved her. When I was with her, every part of me soared. I can't explain it any other way."

  He didn't have to. Myron thought of Brenda. And he understood.

  "I was going to leave Bradford Farms," he continued. "Anita and I were going to run away together. Start on our own. Escape this prison." He smiled again. "Naive, wouldn't you say?"

  "So what happened?" Myron asked.

  "Anita changed her mind."

  "Why?"

  "There was someone else."

  "Who?"

  "I don't know. We were supposed to meet up in the morning, but Anita never showed. I thought maybe her husband had done something to her. I kept an eye on him. And then I got a note from her. She said she needed to start new. Without me. And she sent back the ring."

  "What ring?"

  "The one I gave her. An unofficial engagement ring."

  Myron looked over at Chance. Chance said nothing. Myron kept his eyes on him for a few more seconds. Then he turned back to Arthur.

  "But you didn't give up, did you?"

  "No."

  "You searched for her. The phone taps. You've had the taps in place all these years. You figured Anita would call her family one day. You wanted to be able to trace the call when she did."

  "Yes."

  Myron swallowed hard and hoped he would be able to keep his voice from cracking. "And then there were the microphones in Brenda's room," he said. "And the scholarship money. And the severed Achilles tendons."

  Silence.

  Tears welled up in Myron's eyes. Same with Arthur's. Both men knew what was coming. Myron pressed on, struggling to maintain an even and steady tone.

  "The microphones were there so that you could keep an eye on Brenda. The scholarships were set up by someone with a great deal of money and financial expertise. Even if Anita had gotten her hands on cash, she wouldn't have known how to funnel it through the Cayman Islands. You, on the other hand, would. And lastly the Achilles tendons. Brenda thought it was her father who did it. She thought her father was being overprotective. And she was right."

  More silence.

  "I just called Norm Zuckerman and got Brenda's blood type from the team medical records. The police had Horace's blood type from the autopsy report. They weren't related, Arthur." Myron thought of Brenda's light coffee skin next to the far darker tones of her parents. "That's why you've been so interested in Brenda. That's why you were so quick to help keep her out of prison. That's why you're so worried about her right now. Brenda Slaughter is your daughter."

  Tears were streaming down Arthur's face now. He did nothing to stop it.

  Myron went on. "Horace never knew, did he?"

  Arthur shook his head. "Anita got pregnant early in our relationship. But Brenda still ended up dark enough to pass. Anita insisted we keep it a secret. She didn't want our child stigmatized. She also--she also didn't want our daughter raised in this house. I understood."

  "So what happened to Horace? Why did he call you after twenty years?"

  "It was the Aches, trying to help Davison. Somehow they found out about the scholarship money. From one of the lawyers, I think. They wanted to cause mischief for me in the governor's race. So they told Slaughter about it. They thought he'd be greedy and follow the money line."

  "But he didn't care about the money," Myron said. "He wanted to find Anita."

  "Yes. He called me repeatedly. He came to my campaign headquarters. He wouldn't let go. So I had Sam discourage him."

  The blood in the locker. "He was beaten?"

  Arthur nodded. "But not badly. I wanted to scare him off, not hurt him. A long time ago Anita made me promise never to harm him. I tried my best to keep that promise."

  "Sam was supposed to keep an eye on him?"

  "Yes. To make sure he didn't cause any trouble. And, I don't know, maybe I had hopes he would find Anita."

  "But he ran."

  "Yes."

  It made sense, Myron thought. Horace had gotten a bloody nose. He had gone to nearby St. Barnabas after the beating. He cleaned himself up. Sam had scared him, yes, but only enough to convince Horace that he had to go into hiding. So he cleared out his bank account and disappeared. Sam and Mario searched. They followed Brenda. They visited Mabel Edwards and threatened her. They checked the tap on her phone. Eventually Horace called her.

  And then?

  "You killed Horace."

  "No. We never found him."

  A hole, Myron thought. There were still a few of them he hadn't plugged. "But you did have your people make cryptic calls to Brenda."

  "Just to see if she knew where Anita was. The other calls--the threatening ones--came from the Aches. They wanted to find Horace and finalize the contract before the opener."

  Myron nodded. Again it made sense. He turned and stared down Chance. Chance met the gaze and held it. He had a small smile on his face.

  "Are you going to tell him, Chance?"

  Chance rose and went face-to-face with Myron. "You're a dead man," he said, almost leering. "All you've done here is dig your own grave."

  "Are you going to tell him, Chance?"

  "No, Myron." He gestured to the pruning shears and leaned closer. "I'm going to watch you suffer and then die."

  Myron reared back and head-butted Chance square on the nose. He held back at the last moment. If you head-butt at full strength, you could literally kill a person. The head is both heavy and hard; the face being hit is neither. Picture a wrecking ball heading for a bird's nest.

  Still, the blow was effective. Chance's nose did the equivalent of a gymnastic split. Myron felt something warm and sticky on his hair. Chance fell back. His nose gushed. His eyes were wide and shocked. No one rushed to his aid. Sam in fact seemed to be smiling.

  Myron turned to Arthur. "Chance knew about your affair, didn't he?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "And he knew about your plans to run away?"

  This time the answer came slower. "Yes. But what of it?"

  "Chance has been lying to you for twenty years. So has Sam."

  "What?"

  "I just spoke to Detective Wickner. He was there that night too. I don't know what happened exactly. Neither did he. But he saw Sam carry Anita out of the Holiday Inn. And he saw Chance in the car."

  Arthur glared at his brother. "Chance?"

  "He's lying."

  Arthur took out a gun and pointed it at his brother. "Tell me."

  Chance was still trying to stem the blood flow. "Who are you going to believe? Me or--"

  Arthur pulled the trigger. The bullet smashed Chance's knee, splintering the joint. Blood spurted. Chance howled in agony. Arthur aimed the gun at the other knee.

  "Tell me," he said.

  "You were insane!" Chance shouted. Then he gritted his teeth. His eyes grew small yet strangely clear, as though the pain were sweeping the debris away. "Did you really think Father was going to let you just run off like that? You were going to destroy everything. I tried to make you see that. I talked to you. Like a brother. But you didn't want to listen. So I went to see Anita. Just to talk. I wanted her to see how destructive this whole idea was. I meant her no harm. I was just trying to help."

  Chance's face was a bloody mess, but Arthur's was a far more horrid sight. The tears were still there, still flowing freely. But he was not crying. His skin was gray-white, his features contorted like a death mask. Something behind his eyes had been short-circuited by his rage. "What happened?"

  "I found her room number. And when I got there, the door was ajar. I swear, Anita was like that when I arrived. I swear it, Arthur. I didn't touch her. At first I thought maybe you had done it. That maybe you two had a fight. But either way, I knew it would be a mess if it leaked out.
There were too many questions, too many loose ends. So I called Father. He arranged the rest. Sam came over. He cleaned the place up. We took the ring and forged that note. So you'd stop looking."

  "Where is she now?" Myron asked.

  Chance looked at him, puzzled. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "Did you take her to a doctor? Give her money? Did you--"

  "Anita was dead," Chance said.

  Silence.

  Arthur let out a harrowing, primitive wail. He collapsed to the floor.

  "She was dead when I got there, Arthur. I swear it."

  Myron felt his heart sink into deep mud. He tried to speak, but no words came out. He looked over at Sam. Sam nodded. Myron met his eye. "Her body?" he managed.

  "I get rid of something," Sam said, "it's gone for good."

  Dead. Anita Slaughter was dead. Myron tried to take it in. All these years Brenda had felt unworthy for nothing.

  "So where is Brenda?" Myron asked.

  The adrenaline was starting to wear off, but Chance still managed to shake his head. "I don't know."

  Myron looked over at Sam. Sam shrugged.

  Arthur sat up. He hugged his knees and lowered his head. He began to cry.

  "My leg," Chance said. "I need a doctor."

  Arthur did not move.

  "We also need to kill him," Chance said through a clenched jaw. "He knows too much, Arthur. I know you're grief-stricken, but we can't let him ruin everything."

  Sam nodded at that. "He's right, Mr. Bradford."

  Myron said, "Arthur."

  Arthur looked up.

  "I'm your daughter's best hope."

  "I don't think so," Sam said. He aimed the gun. "Chance is right, Mr. Bradford. It's too risky. We just admitted covering up a murder. He has to die."

  Sam's walkie-talkie suddenly squeaked. Then a voice came through the tinny speaker: "I wouldn't do that if I were you."

  Win.

  Sam frowned at the walkie-talkie. He turned a knob, changed frequency. The red digital readout changed numbers. Then he pressed the talk button. "Someone got to Forster," Sam said. "Move in and take him out."

  The response was Win's best Star Trek Scottie: "But I can't hold her, Captain. She's breaking up!"

  Sam remained calm. "How many radios you got, buddy?"

  "Collect all four, now in specially marked packages."

  Sam whistled his appreciation. "Fine," he said. "So we got ourselves a stalemate. Let's talk it through."

  "No." This time it wasn't Win speaking. It was Arthur Bradford. He fired twice. Both bullets hit Sam in the chest. Sam slumped to the floor, twitched, and then lay still.