Harlan Coben (22 page)

“Like his wife being stripped down and killed?”

“Like that,” Regan said. “Or maybe something worse.”

“What's worse?”

A beeping sound came from the corridor. They could hear the nearby nurse's station. Someone was bitching about a shift time or schedule change.

“We said we're missing something,” Regan said slowly. “We've been saying that from the beginning. But maybe it's just the opposite. We've been
adding
something.”

Tickner frowned.

“We keep adding Dr. Seidman. Look, we both know the score. In cases like this, the husband is always involved. Not nine times out of ten—ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Every scenario we've devised includes Seidman.”

Tickner said, “And you think that's wrong?”

“Listen to me a second. We've had Seidman in our sights from the get-go. His marriage was not idyllic. He got married because his wife was pregnant. We seized on all that. But if their marriage had been friggin'
Ozzie and Harriet
, we'd still say, ‘Nah, no one is that happy,' and leap on that. So whatever we've stumbled across, we've tried to fit it into that reality: Seidman had to be involved. So for just a second, let's take him out of the equation. Let's pretend he's innocent.”

Tickner shrugged. “Okay, so?”

“Seidman talked about a connection with Rachel Mills. One that's lasted all these years.”

“Right.”

“He sounded a little obsessed with her.”

“A little?”

Regan smiled. “Suppose the feeling was mutual. Check that. Suppose it was more than mutual.”

“Okay.”

“Now remember. We're assuming Seidman didn't do it. That means he's telling us the truth. About everything. About when he last saw Rachel Mills. About those photographs. You saw his face, Lloyd. Seidman isn't that great an actor. Those pictures shocked him. He didn't know about them.”

Tickner frowned. “Hard to say.”

“Well, there was something else I noticed about those pictures.”

“What?”

“How come that private eye didn't get any pictures of the two of them together? We have her outside the hospital. We have him coming out. We have her going out. But none of them together.”

“They were careful.”

“How careful? She was hanging outside his place of work. If you're being careful, you don't do that.”

“So what's your theory?”

Regan smiled. “Think about it. Rachel had to know Seidman was inside the building. But did he have to know she was outside?”

“Wait a second,” Tickner said. A smile started coming to his face. “You think she was stalking him?”

“Maybe.”

Tickner nodded. “And—whoa—we're not talking about just any woman here. We're talking about a well-trained federal agent.”

“So one, she would know how to run a professional kidnapping operation,” Regan added, raising a finger. He raised another. “Two, she would know how to kill someone and get away with it. Three, she would
know how to cover her tracks. Four, she would know Marc's sister, Stacy. Five”—the thumb now—“she'd be able to use her old contacts to find and set the sister up.”

“Holy Christ.” Tickner looked up. “And what you said before. About seeing something so horrible Seidman doesn't remember.”

“How about seeing the love of your life shooting you? Or your wife. Or . . .”

They both stopped.

“Tara,” Tickner said. “How does the little girl fit into all this?”

“A way of extorting money?”

Neither one of them liked that. But whatever other answers they came up with, they liked those even less.

“We can add something else,” Tickner said.

“What?”

“Seidman's missing thirty-eight.”

“What about it?”

“His gun was in a lockbox in his closet,” Tickner said. “Only someone close to him would know where it was hidden.”

“Or,” Regan added, seeing something else now, “maybe Rachel Mills brought her own thirty-eight. Remember that two were used.”

“But that raises another question: Why would she need two guns?”

Both men frowned, ran a few new theories through their heads, and came up with a solid conclusion. “We're still missing something,” Regan said.

“Yep.”

“We need to go back and get some answers.”

“Like?”

“Like why did Rachel skate on the murder of her first husband?”

“I can ask around,” Tickner said.

“Do that. And let's get a man on Seidman. She has four million dollars now. She might want to eliminate the only guy who can still tie her to this.”

Zia found my
clothes in the closet. Bloodstains darkened my jeans, so we decided to go with surgical scrubs. She ran down the hall and found me a pair. Wincing from the cracked ribs, I slipped them on and tied the string waist. It would be a slow go. Zia checked to see if the coast was clear. She had a backup plan in case the feds were still watching. Her friend, Dr. David Beck, had been involved in a major federal case a few years ago. He knew Tickner from that. Beck was on call. If it came to it, he was waiting at the end of the hall and would try to slow them down with some sort of reminiscence.

In the end, we didn't need Beck. We simply walked out. No one questioned us. We made our way through the Harkness Pavilion and out into the courtyard north of Fort Washington Avenue. Zia's car was parked in the lot on 165th and Fort Washington. I moved gingerly. I felt sore as hell, but basically all right. Marathon running and heavy lifting would be out, but the pain was controllable and I had full range of motion. Zia had slipped me a bottle of Vioxx, the fifty-milligram big-boys. They'd be good because they worked without making you drowsy.

“If anyone asks,” she said, “I'll tell them I took public transportation and that my car is home. You should be okay for a while.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Actually, can I also trade cell phones?”

“Sure, why?”

“They might try, I don't know, to track me down using mine.”

“They can do that?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

She shrugged and dug out her cell. It was a tiny thing, the size of a compact mirror. “You really think Tara is alive?”

“I don't know.”

We hurried up the parking garage's cement steps. The stairwell stank, as always, of urine.

“This is insane,” she said. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I got my pager. You need me, you page me.”

“I will.”

We stopped at the car. Zia handed me the keys.

“What?” I said to her.

“You got a pretty big ego, Marc.”

“This your idea of a pep talk?”

“Just don't let it get you hurt or anything,” Zia said. “I need you.”

I hugged her and slipped into the driver's seat. I started north on the Henry Hudson, dialing Rachel's number. The night was clear and still. The lights from the bridge made the dark water look like a star-filled sky. I heard two rings and then Rachel picked up. She didn't say anything and then I realized why. She probably had Caller ID and didn't recognize the number.

“It's me,” I said. “I'm using Zia's phone.”

Rachel asked, “Where are you?”

“About to get on the Hudson.”

“Keep going north to the Tappan Zee. Cross it and start heading west.”

“Where are you now?”

“By that huge Palisades Mall.”

“In Nyack,” I said.

“Right. Keep in phone touch. We'll find a place to hook up.”

“I'm on my way.”

 

Tickner was on his mobile phone, filling in O'Malley. Regan hurried back into the lounge. “Seidman's not in his room.”

Tickner looked annoyed. “What do you mean, he's not in his room?”

“How many different ways are there to interpret that, Lloyd?”

“Did he go down to X ray or something?”

“Not according to the nurse,” Regan said.

“Damn. The hospital has security cameras, right?”

“Not on every room.”

“But they have to cover the exits.”

“They must have a dozen exits here. By the time we get the tapes and review them—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Tickner thought about it. He put the phone back to his ear. “O'Malley?”

“I'm here.”

“You heard?”

“Yup.”

“How long will it take you to get phone logs from both Seidman's hospital room and cell phone?” Tickner asked.

“Immediate calls?”

“It would have to have been in the past fifteen minutes, yeah.”

“Give me five.”

Tickner pressed the “end” button. “Where's Seidman's lawyer?”

“I don't know. I think he said he was leaving.”

“Maybe we should give him a ring.”

“He didn't hit me as the helpful type,” Regan said.

“That was before, when we thought his client was a wife-and-baby killer. We're now theorizing that an innocent man's life is in danger.” Tickner handed Regan the business card Lenny had given him.

“Worth a shot,” Regan said, and began dialing.

 

I caught up with Rachel just over the north New Jersey–south New York border town of Ramsey. Using our phones we managed to hook up in the parking lot of the Fair Motel on Route 17 in Ramsey, New Jersey. The motel was a no-tell, complete with a sign proudly reading
COLOR TV
! (as if most motels were still using black and white) where all the letters (and the exclamation point) are a different color, in case you don't know what the word
color
means. I always liked the name. The Fair Motel. We're not great, we're not terrible. We're, well, Fair. Honesty in advertising.

I pulled into the lot. I was scared. I had a million questions for Rachel, but in the end, it all boiled down to different variations of the same thing. I wanted to know about her husband's death, sure,
but more than that, I wanted to know about those damn private-eye pictures.

The lot was dark, most of the light coming off the highway. The stolen Parks Department van sat by a Pepsi machine on the far right side. I pulled next to it. I never saw Rachel leave the van, but the next thing I knew she had slid into the passenger seat next to me.

“Start moving,” she said.

I turned to confront her, but her face made me pull up short. “Jesus, are you all right?”

“I'm fine.”

Her right eye was swollen over like a boxer's who had gone the distance. There were yellow-purple bruises around her neck. Her face had a giant red mark across both cheeks. I could see scarlet indentations from where her attacker had dug in his fingers. The fingernails had even broken the skin. I wondered if there was deeper trauma to her face, if whatever blow she took to the eye had been powerful enough to break a bone. I doubted it. A break like that would normally knock someone out of commission. Then again, best-case scenario and these were only surface wounds: It was amazing she was still upright.

“What the hell happened?” I asked.

She had her Palm Pilot out. The screen was dazzlingly bright in the dark of the car. She looked down at it and said, “Take Seventeen south. Hurry, I don't want to get too far behind.”

I put the car in reverse, backed up, started down the highway. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the bottle of Vioxx. “These should help deaden the pain.”

She pulled off the top. “How many should I take?”

“One.”

Her index finger scooped it out. Her eyes never left the Palm Pilot's screen. She swallowed it down and said thanks.

“Tell me what happened,” I said.

“You first.”

I filled her in as best I could. We stayed on Route 17. We passed the Allendale and Ridgewood exits. The streets were empty. The shops—and, man, there were lots of them, the entire highway pretty much one continuous strip mall—were all closed up. Rachel listened without interrupting. I glanced at her as I drove. She looked in pain.

When I finished, she asked, “Are you sure it wasn't Tara in the car?”

“Yes.”

“I called my DNA guy again. The layers are still matching up. I don't get that.”

Neither did I. “What happened to you?”

“Somebody jumped me. I was watching you through the night-vision goggles. I saw you put down the money bag and start walking. There was a woman in the bushes. Did you see her?”

“No.”

“She had a gun. I think she planned on killing you.”

“A woman?”

“Yes.”

I wasn't sure how to react to that. “Did you get a good look at her?”

“No. I was about to call out a warning when this monster grabbed me from behind. Strong as hell. He lifted me off my feet by my head. I thought he was going to rip my skull off.”

“Jesus.”

“Anyway, a cop car drove by. The big guy panicked. He punched me here”—she pointed to the swollen eye—“and it was lights-out. I don't know how long I was lying on the pavement. When I woke up, the cops were all over the place. I was huddled in a corner in the dark. I guess they didn't see me or figured I was a homeless guy sleeping one off. Anyway, I checked the Palm Pilot. I saw the money was on the move.”

“Which direction?”

“South, walking near 168th Street. Then suddenly they went still. See, this thing”—she gestured to the screen—“works two ways. I zoom in, I can get as close as a quarter mile. I go out a little farther, like right now, I get more an idea than an exact address. Right now, based on the speed, I figure they're driving about six miles ahead of us still on Route Seventeen.”

“But when you first spotted them, they were on 168th Street?”

“Right. Then they start heading downtown fast.”

I thought about it. “The subway,” I said. “They took the A train from the 168th Street stop.”

“That's what I figured. Anyway, I stole the van. I started downtown. I was near the seventies when all of a sudden they started going east. This time it was more stop and go.”

“They were stopping for lights. They had a car now.”

Rachel nodded. “They sped up on the FDR and Harlem River Drive. I tried to cut across town, but that took too long. I fell behind by five, six miles. Anyway, you know the rest.”

We slowed for night construction near the Route 4 interchange. Three lanes became one. I looked at her, at the bruises and the swelling, at the giant handprint on her skin. She looked back at me and didn't say a word. My fingers reached out and caressed her face as gently as I knew how. She closed her eyes, the tenderness seemingly too much, and even in the midst of all this we both knew that it felt right. A stirring, an old one, a dormant one, started deep inside of me. I kept my eyes on that lovely, perfect face. I pushed back her hair. A tear escaped her eye and ran down her cheek. She put her hand on my wrist. I felt the warmth start there and spread.

Part of me—and, yes, I know how this will sound—wanted to forget this quest. The kidnapping had been a hoax. My daughter was gone. My wife was dead. Someone was trying to kill me. It was time to start again, a new chance, a way, this time, to get it right. I wanted to turn the car around and start heading in the other direction. I wanted to drive—keep driving—and never ask about her dead husband and those pictures on the CD. I could forget all that, I knew I could. My life was filled with surgical procedures that altered the surface, that helped people begin anew, that improved what was visible and thus what was not. That could be what would happen here. A simple face-lift. I would make my first incision the day before that damn frat party, pull the fourteen-year-old folds across time, close the suture at now. Stick the two moments together. Nip and tuck. Make those fourteen years disappear, as though they'd never happened.

Rachel opened her eyes now and I could see that she was thinking pretty much the same thing, hoping I'd call it off and turn around. But of course, that could not be. We blinked. The construction cleared. Her hand left my forearm. I risked another glance at Rachel. No, we were not twenty-one years old anymore, but that didn't matter. I saw that now. I still loved her. Irrational, wrong, stupid, naïve, whatever. I still loved her. Over the years, I might have convinced myself otherwise, but I had never stopped. She was still so damn beautiful, so damn perfect, and when I thought of how close she'd just come to death, those giant hands smothering away her breath, those niggling doubts began to
soften. They wouldn't go away. Not until I knew the truth. But no matter what the answers were, they would not consume me.

“Rachel?”

But she suddenly sat up, her eyes back on the Palm Pilot.

“What is it?” I asked.

“They've stopped,” Rachel said. “We'll be on them in two miles.”