Harlan Coben (11 page)

Oh no, not this time.

I was wearing surgical scrubs—every doctor I know has a few pairs for lounge-wear use—and I was barefoot. I sprinted to the door and threw it open. The woman was almost to the top of the block. When she saw me at the door, she stopped the hurry-walk and broke into an all-out run.

I gave chase. To hell with my feet. Part of me felt ridiculous. I am not the fastest fellow on two legs. I am probably not even the fastest on one leg—and here I was running down a strange woman because she was standing in front of my house. I don't know what I hoped to find here. The woman was probably taking a walk, and I had spooked her. She would probably call the police. I could see their reaction. Bad enough I
killed my own family and got away with it. Now I was chasing strange women around my neighborhood.

I did not stop.

The woman turned right onto Phelps Road. She had a big lead. I pumped my arms and willed my legs to pick up the pace. The pebbles on the sidewalk dug into the soles of my feet. I tried to stay on grass. She was out of view now, and I was out of shape. I had gone maybe a hundred yards and I could already hear the wheeze in my breath. My nose started running.

I reached the end of my street and made the right.

But there was no one.

The road was long and straight and well enough lit. In other words, she should still be visible. For some dumb reason I looked the other way too, behind me. But the woman was not there either. I ran the route she'd taken. I looked down Morningside Drive, but there was no sign of her.

The woman was gone.

But how?

She could not have been that fast. Carl Lewis was not that fast. I stopped, put my hands on my knees, sucked in some very necessary oxygen. Think. Okay, could she live in one of these houses? Perhaps. And if she did, so what? That meant that she was taking a walk in her own neighborhood. She had seen something that had struck her as curious. She stopped to take a look.

Like she did eighteen months ago?

Okay, first off, we don't know if it was the same woman.

So two women stopped in front of your house in the exact same spot and stood like statues?

It was possible. Or maybe it was the same woman. Maybe she liked looking at houses. Maybe she was into architecture or something.

Oh yes, the ever-desirable architecture of the seventies suburban split-level. And if her visit was totally innocent, why did she run away?

I don't know, Marc, but maybe—and this is just a stab in the dark—maybe because some lunatic chased her?

I shook the voice away and started running again, looking for I-don't-know-what. But when I passed the Zuckers' house, I came to a halt.

Was that possible?

The woman had simply disappeared. I had checked both exit roads. She was not on either one of them. So that meant, A, she lived in one of the houses, B, she was hiding.

Or C, she had taken the Zucker path in the woods.

When I was a kid, we sometimes used to cut through the Zuckers' backyard. There was a path to the middle-school fields. It was not easy to find, and Old Lady Zucker really didn't like us going through her lawn. She would never say anything, but she would stand by the window, her beehive hair glazed like a Krispy Kreme, and glare us down. After a while, we stopped using the path and took the long way.

I looked left and right. No sign of her.

Could the woman know about the path?

I sprinted into the blackness of the Zuckers' backyard. I half expected Old Lady Zucker to be at her kitchen window, glaring at me, but she had moved out to Scottsdale years ago. I don't know who lived here anymore. I didn't even know if the path was still there.

It was black-hole dark in the yard. No lights were on in the house. I tried to remember where exactly the path was. Actually, that took no time. You remember stuff like that. It's automatic. I ran toward it and something whacked me in the head. I felt the thud and fell on my back.

My head swam. I looked up. In the faint moonlight, I could see a swing set. One of those fancy wooden ones. It hadn't been there in my childhood, and in the dark, I hadn't seen it. I felt woozy, but time was key here. I leapt to my feet with too much bravado, reeling back.

The path was still there.

I headed along it as fast as I could. Branches whipped my face. I did not care. I stumbled on a root. I did not care. The Zucker path was not long, maybe forty, fifty feet. It opened into a big clearing of soccer fields and baseball diamonds. I was still making good enough time. If she had taken this route, I would be able to spot her in the recreational expanse.

I could see the smoky haze from the fluorescent lights drifting down from the field's parking lots. I burst out into the opening and quickly scanned my surroundings. I saw several sets of soccer posts and one chain-link backstop.

But no woman.

Damn.

I had lost her. Again. My heart fell. I don't know. I mean, when you
thought about it, what was the point? This whole thing was stupid, really. I looked down at my feet. They hurt like hell. I felt a trickle of what was probably blood on my right sole. I felt like an idiot. A defeated idiot, at that. I started to turn away. . . .

Hold the phone.

In the distance, under the lights of the parking lot, there was a car. One solitary car, all by its lonesome. I nodded to myself and followed my thoughts. Let's say that the car belonged to the woman. Why not? If it doesn't, well, nothing lost, nothing gained. But if it did, if she had parked here, it made sense. She parks, she goes through the woods, she stands in front of my house. Why she would do any of this, I had no idea. But for right now, I decided to go with it.

Okay, if that was the case—if that was her car—then I could conclude that she had not yet departed. No flies on me. So what had happened here? She's spotted, she runs, she starts heading down the path. . . .

. . . and she realizes that I might follow.

I almost snapped my fingers. The mystery woman would know that I had grown up in this neighborhood and thus might remember the path. And if I did, if I somehow put together (as I had) that she would use the path, then I would spot her in the opening. So what would she do?

I thought about it and the answer came pretty quickly.

She would hide in the woods along the path.

The mystery woman was probably watching me at this very moment.

Yes, I know that this argument barely reached the level of flimsy conjecture. But it felt right. Very right. So what to do? I gave a heavy sigh and said out loud, “Damn.” I slumped my shoulders as though deflated, trying hard not to oversell this, and started trudging back through the path to the Zucker place. I lowered my head, my eyes swerving left and right. I walked delicately, my ears alert, straining to hear a rustle of some sort.

The night remained silent.

I reached the end of the path and kept walking as if I were heading home. When I was deep in the thicket of darkness, I dropped to the ground. I commando-crawled back under the swing set toward the path's opening. I stopped and waited.

I don't know how long I stayed there. Probably not more than two
or three minutes. I was about to give up when I heard the noise. I was still on my stomach, my head raised. The silhouette rose and started down the path.

I scrambled to my feet, trying to stay quiet, but that was a major no-go. The woman spun toward the sound, spotting me.

“Wait,” I shouted. “I just want to talk to you.”

But she had already darted back into the woods. Off the path, the woods were thick and yep, it was plenty dark. I could lose her easily. I was not about to risk that. Not again. Maybe I couldn't
see
her, but I could still
hear
her.

I jumped into the thicket and almost immediately hit a tree. I saw stars. Man, that had been a dumb move. I stopped now and listened.

Silence.

She had stopped. She was hiding again. So now what?

She had to be nearby. I considered my options and then thought, Ah, the hell with it. Remembering where I had last heard a noise, I leapt at the spot, spread-eagle, my hands and legs stretched to the max so that my body would cover as much territory as possible. I landed on a shrub.

But my left hand touched something else.

She tried to crawl away, but my fingers closed tight around her ankle. She kicked at me with her free leg. I held on like a dog digging his teeth in.

“Let go of me!” she shouted.

I did not recognize the voice. I did not let go of her ankle.

“What the—let go of me!”

No. I got some leverage and pulled her toward me. It was still too dark, but my eyes were beginning to adjust. I gave another tug. She rolled onto her back. We were close enough now. I was finally able to see her face.

It took a few moments to register. The memory was an old one, for one thing. The face, or what I could see of it, had changed. She looked different. What gave it away, what helped me recognize her, was the way her hair had fallen in front of her face during our tussle. That was almost more familiar than the features—the vulnerability of the pose, the way she now avoided eye contact. And of course, living in that house, that house I had always so closely associated with her, had kept her image in the forefront of my memory banks.

The woman pushed her hair to the side and looked up at me. I fell back to school days, the brick building barely two hundred yards from where we now lay. Now maybe it made some sort of sense. The mystery woman had been standing in front of the house where she used to live.

The mystery woman was Dina Levinsky.

We sat at
the kitchen table. I made tea, a Tazo blend of Chinese green I'd bought at Starbucks. It was supposed to soothe. We'd see. I handed Dina a cup.

“Thank you, Marc.”

I nodded and sat across from her. I had known Dina my whole life. I knew her in the way only a kid can know another kid, the way only elementary-school classmates know each other, even—bear with me here—even though I don't think we ever really spoke to one another.

We all have a Dina Levinsky in our past. She was the class victim, the girl so much an outcast, so often teased and abused, you wonder how she stayed sane. I never picked on her, but I stood on the sidelines plenty of times. Even if I didn't reside in her childhood home, Dina Levinsky would still live in me. She lives in you too. Quick: Who was the most picked-on kid in your elementary school? Right, exactly, you remember. You remember their first and last name and what they looked like. You remember watching them walk home alone or sitting in the cafeteria in silence. Whatever, you remember. Dina Levinsky stays with you.

“I hear you're a doctor now,” Dina said to me.

“Yes. And you?”

“A graphic designer and artist. I have a show in the Village next month.”

“Paintings?”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“You were always a good artist,” I said.

She cocked her head, surprised. “You noticed?”

There was a brief pause. Then I found myself saying, “I should have done something.”

Dina smiled. “No, I should have.”

She looked good. No, she had not grown into a beauty like those ugly-duckling-swans you see in the movies. First off, Dina had never been ugly. She had been plain. Maybe she still was. Her features were still too narrow, but they worked better on an adult face. Her hair, so drippy in her youth, had body now.

“Do you remember Cindy McGovern?” she asked me.

“Sure.”

“She tortured me more than anyone.”

“I remember.”

“Well, this is funny. I had an exhibit a few years back at a gallery in midtown—and Cindy shows up. She comes up to me and gives me a big hug and kiss. She wants to talk about old times, you know, like ‘Remember how dorky Mr. Lewis was?' She's all smiles and I swear, Marc, she didn't remember what she'd been like. She wasn't pretending either. She just totally blocked out how she'd treated me. I find that sometimes.”

“Find what?”

Dina raised the cup with two hands. “No one remembers being the bully.” She hunched over, her eyes darted about the room. I wondered about my own remembrance. Had I just been on the sidelines—or was that, too, some sort of revisionist history?

“This is so messed up,” Dina said.

“Being back in this house?”

“Yeah.” She put down the cup. “I guess you want an explanation.”

I waited.

Her eyes started darting again. “You want to hear something bizarre?”

“Sure.”

“This is where I used to sit. I mean, when I was a kid. We had a rectangular table too. I always sat in the same spot. When I came in here now, I don't know, I just naturally gravitated to this chair. I guess—I guess that's part of the reason why I was here tonight.”

“I'm not sure I understand.”

“This house,” she said. “It still has a pull on me. A hold.” She leaned forward. Her eyes met mine for the first time. “You've heard the rumors, haven't you? About my father and what happened here.”

“Yes.”

“They're true,” she said.

I forced myself not to wince. I had no idea what to say. I thought about the hell of school. I tried to add on to that the hell of this house. It was unfathomable.

“He's dead now. My father, I mean. He died six years ago.”

I blinked and looked away.

“I'm okay, Marc. Really. I was in therapy—well, I mean, I still am. Do you know Dr. Radio?”

“No.”

“That's his real name. Stanley Radio. He's pretty famous for the Radio Technique. I've been with him for years. I'm much better. I'm over the self-destructive tendencies. I'm past feeling worthless. It's funny though. I got over it. No, I mean it. Most victims of abuse have commitment and sex issues. I never did. I'm able to be intimate, no problem. I'm married now. My husband is a great guy. It's not happily-ever-after, but it's pretty damn good.”

“I'm glad,” I said, because I had no idea what else to say.

She smiled again. “Are you superstitious, Marc?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Except, I don't know, when I read about your wife and daughter, I started to wonder. About this house. Bad karma and all that. Your wife was so lovely.”

“You knew Monica?”

“We'd met.”

“When?”

Dina did not reply right away. “Are you familiar with the term
trigger
?”

I remembered it from my medical school rotations. “You mean, in terms of psychiatry?”

“Yes. You see, when I read about what happened here, it was a trigger. Like with an alcoholic or anorexic. You're never fully cured. Something happens—a trigger—and you fall back into bad patterns. I started biting my nails. I started doing physical harm to myself. It was like—it was like I had to face down this house. I had to confront the past in order to defeat it.”

“And that's what you were doing tonight?”

“Yes.”

“And when I spotted you eighteen months ago?”

“Same thing.”

I sat back. “How often do you stop by?”

“Once every couple of months, I guess. I park at the school lot and come through the Zucker path. But there's more to it than that.”

“More to what?”

“My visits. See, this house still holds my secrets. I mean that literally.”

“I'm not following.”

“I keep trying to work up the courage to knock on the door again, but I can't do it. And now I'm inside, in this kitchen, and I'm okay.” She tried to smile, as if to prove the point. “But I still don't know if I can do it.”

“Do what?” I asked.

“I'm babbling.” Dina started scratching the back of her hand, hard and fast, digging her nails in and nearly breaking skin. I wanted to reach out to her, but it felt too forced. “I wrote it all down. In a journal. What happened to me. It's still here.”

“In the house?”

She nodded. “I hid it.”

“The police went through here after the murder. They searched this place pretty good.”

“They didn't find it,” she said. “I'm sure of it. And even if they did, it's just an old journal. There'd be no reason for them to disturb it. Part of me wants it to stay put. It's over and done with it, you know what I mean? Let sleeping dogs lie. But another part wants to let it out into the light. Like it's a vampire and the sunshine will kill it.”

“Where is it?” I asked.

“In the basement. You have to stand on the dryer to get to it. It's behind one of the ducts in the crawl space.” She glanced at the clock. She looked at me and hugged herself. “It's getting late.”

“Are you okay?”

The eyes were darting again. Her breathing was suddenly uneven. “I don't know how much longer I can stay here.”

“Do you want to look for your journal?”

“I don't know.”

“Do you want me to get it for you?”

She shook her head hard. “No.” She stood, gulping air now. “I better go now.”

“You can always come back, Dina. Anytime you want.”

But she wasn't listening. She was in full panic mode and heading for the door.

“Dina?”

She suddenly spun toward me. “Did you love her?”

“What?”

“Monica. Did you love her? Or was there someone else?”

“What are you talking about?”

Her face drained of color. She stared at me now, backing away, petrified. “You know who shot you, don't you, Marc?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. By the time I found my voice, Dina had turned away.

“I'm sorry, I have to go.”

“Wait.”

She flung the door open and ran out. I stood by the window and watched her scurry back up toward Phelps Road. This time, I chose not to follow.

Instead, I turned and with her words—
“You know who shot you, don't you, Marc?”
—still reverberating in my ears, I sprinted to the basement door.

 

All right, let me explain something here. I was not going down into the dingy, unfinished subdwelling to invade Dina's privacy. I did not pretend to know what was best for her, what might salve her horrendous pain. Many of my psychiatry colleagues would disagree, but sometimes I wonder if the past is better left buried. I don't have the answer, of course, and as my psychiatry colleagues would remind me, I don't ask them for their take on the best way to handle a cleft palate. So in the end, all I know for certain is that it is not my place to decide for Dina.

And I was not going in the basement out of curiosity about her past either. I had no interest in reading the details of Dina's torment. In fact, I actively did not want to know them. To speak selfishly, I was creeped out plenty just knowing such horrors had occurred in the place I call home. It was already enough in my face, thank you very much. I needed to hear or read no more.

So what exactly was I after?

I hit the light switch. A bare bulb came on. I was putting the pieces
together even as I started to descend. Dina had said several curious things. Putting aside the most dramatic for a moment, I was starting to pick up on the more subtle ones. It was a night of spontaneous behavior on my part. I decided to let the trend continue.

First off, I remembered how Dina, when she was still the mystery woman on the sidewalk, had taken a step toward the door. I know now, as Dina herself had told me, that she'd been “trying to work up the courage to knock on the door again.”

Again.

Knock on the door
again
.

The obvious implication was that Dina had, on at least one other occasion, worked up the courage to knock on my door.

Second, Dina had told me that she had “met” Monica. I could not imagine how. Yes, Monica, too, had grown up in this town, but from all I knew of her, she might as well have grown up in a different, more opulent era. The Portman estate was on the opposite end of our rather sprawling suburb. Monica had started boarding school at a young age. No one in town knew her. I remember seeing her once at the Colony movie theater over the summer of my sophomore year in high school. I had stared. She had studiously ignored me. Monica had that whole remote-beauty thing down pat by then. When I met her years later—she actually coming on to me—the flattery turned my head. Monica had seemed so fabulous at a distance.

So how, I wondered now, had my wealthy, remote, beautiful wife met poor, drab Dina Levinsky? The most likely answer, when you consider the “again” comment, was that Dina had knocked on the door and Monica had answered. They met then. They probably talked. Dina probably told Monica about the hidden journal.

“You know who shot you, don't you, Marc?”

No, Dina. But I plan on finding out.

I had reached the cement floor. Boxes that I would never throw away and never open were piled everywhere. I noticed, perhaps for the first time, that there were paint splatters on the floor. A large variety of hues. They'd probably been here since Dina's time, a reminder of her sole escape.

The washer and dryer were in the corner on the left. I moved slowly toward them in the shadowy light. I tiptoed, actually, as though I were afraid of waking Dina's sleeping dogs. Stupid really. As I said before, I
am not superstitious and even if I were, even if I believed in evil spirits and the like, there was no reason to fear angering them. My wife was dead and my daughter was missing—what else could they do to me? In fact, I should disturb them, make them act, hope they let me know what really happened to my family, to Tara.

There it was again. Tara. Everything circled back to her eventually. I don't know how she fitted into all this. I don't know how her kidnapping was connected to Dina Levinsky. It probably wasn't. But I was not turning back.

You see, Monica never mentioned meeting Dina Levinsky.

I found that odd. True, I am building this ridiculous theory on pure foam. But if Dina had indeed knocked on the door, if Monica had indeed opened it, you would think that my wife would have mentioned it to me at some point. She knew that Dina Levinsky had gone to school with me. Why keep her visit—or the fact that they had met—a secret?

I hopped up on the dryer. I had to both crouch and look above me. Dust city. Spider webs were everywhere. I saw the duct and reached up. I felt around. It was difficult. There was a web of pipes, and my arm was having trouble fitting between them. It would have been much easier for a young girl with thin arms.

Eventually I worked my hand through the copper. I slid my fingertips to the right and pushed up. Nothing. My hand crawled a few more inches over and pushed again. Something gave way.

I pulled up my sleeve and twisted my arm in another inch or two. Two pipes pressed against my skin, but they gave enough. I was able to reach into the crawl space. I felt around, found something, pulled it into view.

The journal.

It was a classic school notebook with the familiar black marble cover. I opened and paged through it. The handwriting was minuscule. It reminded me of that guy in the mall who writes names on a grain of rice. Dina's immaculate penmanship—belying, no doubt, the content—started at the very top of the sheet and ran all the way to the bottom. There were no left or right margins. Dina had used both sides of every sheet.

I did not read it. Again that was not what I had come down for. I reached back up and put the journal back in its place. I don't know how
this would set me with the gods—if just touching it would unleash a King Tut–like curse—but again I didn't care very much either.