Harlan Coben - Home

A hospital sign-several signs, now that Myron looked around-read NO MOBILE PHONE USE. People were staring. Myron put his away with an apologetic shrug and headed for the check-in desk.

“I’m here to see a patient.”

“Name of the patient?”

“Patrick Moore.”

“And your name?”

“Myron Bolitar.”

“Please wait one moment.”

Myron’s eyes scanned the room. He spotted Brooke and Chick sitting by a window in the corner of the waiting area. Brooke lifted her eyes, met his, and stood. He hurried toward her.

“What’s wrong?” Brooke asked.

“What did the police tell you?”

“Nothing. We haven’t been allowed up to see him.”

“Do you know his room number?”

“Yes, Nancy told me yesterday. It’s 322.”

Myron turned. “Let’s go.”

“What happened?”

He hurried around the corner. There was a security guard. “Pass, please.”

“No,” Myron said.

That confused the guard. “What?”

His name tag read LAMY.

Myron was big, six four, 225. He knew when to make himself even bigger. Like now. “I need to go up to the third floor and check on a patient.”

“Then get a pass.”

“There are two ways this can go, uh, Lamy. I can knock you on your ass and embarrass you, and who knows the repercussions. You may be tougher than you look, in which case I will be forced to hurt you. Maybe more than I want to. Or you can go with me up the stairs and see that I’m just going to look in on a patient, making sure that the patient is okay, and then come right back down again.”

“Sir, I must insist-”

“Your call.”

Myron didn’t give the guard time. He rushed past him and started sprinting up the stairs. The security guard hurried after him, but there wasn’t much jump in his step.

“Stop! Desk Two calling for assistance! Intruder in the stairwell.”

Myron didn’t bother to slow down. He ran up the stairs. His knee, the one that had ended his career so long ago, ached a bit, but that didn’t slow him. He didn’t know if Brooke or Chick were behind him. He didn’t much care. The guard would call for backup. They would get there or they wouldn’t. They’d arrest him or they wouldn’t. But either way, they wouldn’t be able to stop him in time.

He pushed open the door at the third floor. Room 302 was in front of him. He turned to the right and sprinted past room 304. Behind him he heard someone yell, “Stop! Stop now!”

He didn’t listen.

He ran until he reached room 322. He opened the door and stepped inside as he heard more footsteps approach him. He didn’t move. He stood and waited, but it was just as he had suspected.

The bed-and indeed the room-was empty.

There were some hassles with the guards, but not many.

Myron backed out of the room and started back toward the exit, hands raised. The guards weren’t sure what to do about this intrusion. The man had run into an empty room. Was that reason to try to hold him? Myron explained that he wasn’t going anywhere anyway, and that seemed to satisfy them.

Chick went crazy, especially when the cops’ reaction was one of utter calm: They couldn’t hold Patrick; he was a victim, not a criminal, and he wanted to go home with his parents.

“Did you ask him about my son?” Chick screamed.

Of course they had, the cops told him in measured voices. Patrick and his parents claimed he didn’t know anything relevant and was too traumatized to talk about it.

Chick: “And you let that slide?”

The cops gave a polite sigh and a small shrug. They did not let it slide. But at the end of the day, they couldn’t force a traumatized and injured teenager to talk to them. The boy indicated that he wanted to return to the United States with his parents. The doctors agreed that might be best. There was no legal reason to hold him against his will.

It went on for some time, but it was pointless.

So now, two hours after discovering that the Moore family was on a private plane back to the United States, Brooke and Chick Baldwin held the press conference in the ballroom at the Grosvenor House on Park Lane.

Myron and Win stood in the back and watched.

“She doesn’t look like a grieving mother, does she?” Win said.

He was talking about Brooke.

“That doesn’t mean she’s not.”

“No, but I told her to cry a little for the camera.”

Myron nodded. “That would be good.”

“I don’t know if she can. I told her the public wants to see the pain. If they don’t, they assume you cannot possibly be suffering.”

“I remember when the boys first disappeared,” Myron said. “All those news sources about your cousin’s”-Myron made the quote marks in the air-“‘demeanor.’”

“Even then she didn’t show enough anguish for the cameras,” Win said.

“Right. So some columnist started to theorize that maybe she was involved. It was her house, her nanny-and worst of all, she showed little outward sign of distress.”

“Pathetic,” Win said.

“Exactly. If Brooke had sobbed and collapsed, the world would have sobbed along with her. Instead they used her.”

“I remember. It started up the whole stay-at-home-mom debate. Brooke was neglectful. She was spoiled, just another rich woman who hired an au pair because she didn’t want to take care of her own children.”

“No one wants to think it can happen to them,” Myron said.

“So they look for blame,” Win said. “It’s part of the human condition.”

Up on the podium, the police did most of the talking. Brooke stared out at seemingly nothing. She did not, despite Win’s instructions, cry. Chick, in that natty suit, hardly cut a sympathetic image either, but at least you could see the devastation on his face.

Myron leaned toward his friend. “It’s good to have you back, Win.”

“Yes,” Win said. “Yes, it is.”

The police told the story in the vaguest terms possible. One of the American boys missing for ten years, Patrick Moore, had been rescued in London. No details on how. They didn’t take credit for it. They didn’t give Myron credit either.

Which was more than fine with him.

The police believed that the other missing teen, Rhys Baldwin, the son of these two long-suffering parents, might be close by too. A reporter shouted out, “How do you know?” The police ignored him. When they flashed up an old picture of Rhys, age six, along with several age-progression illustrations, Myron saw the first crack in Brooke’s facade.

But she didn’t cry.

“They’re flying back when this is done,” Win said.

“They’re not staying?”

Win shook his head. “They want to go home. They know there is nothing they can do in London. You need to go with them. You need to figure out a way to get Patrick to talk. You need to start at the beginning and move toward me.”

“You mean the original scene of the crime?”

“Yes.”

“You think we need to go back that far?”

“The story may have ended up here-but it started in that house.”

“What do you make of the Moores sneaking back home with Patrick?”

“Nothing good,” Win said.

“It could be that he’s just too traumatized to talk.”

“Could be.”

“What else could it be really?”

“What you said before,” Win said.

“What’s that?”

“We’re missing something.”

Then the police flashed up a photograph of Fat Gandhi, giving his name as Chris Alan Weeks, and saying he wasn’t a suspect but a person of interest. The man in the photograph had hair and looked fifty pounds thinner than the man Myron had encountered.

“Do we want the police to find him,” Win asked, “or me?”