Harlan Coben - Home

Still, it was odd. Anyone who lived within a forty-minute drive of Chicago or Los Angeles or Houston said they were from that city. But you could live two miles from New York City and you would say you were from New Jersey. Myron grew up half an hour away from New York City and maybe five miles from Newark. He never said he was from either. Well, one time he said he was from Newark, but that was because he wanted to apply for financial aid.

You put all that together-the beauty, the blight, the sophisticated cities, the inferiority complex, the tacky, the classy-and you got the indefinable color and texture of the great state of New Jersey. Better to find the definition of New Jersey in Sinatra’s voice, in Tony Soprano’s ride, in a Springsteen song. Listen closely. You’ll get it.

Myron was a little disappointed to see that Neil Huber looked the part of a New Jersey politician. His fingers were sausage thick, a gold pinkie ring on his right hand. His suit was striped; his tie shimmered as though someone had sprayed it with tanning oil. The collar of his shirt was too tight, and when he smiled, Neil Huber resembled a barracuda.

“Myron Bolitar,” he said, greeting him with a firm handshake and showing him to a seat. The office had a plainness you might associate with your high school vice principal’s.

“I coached against you when you were in high school,” Huber said.

“I remember.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Pardon?”

“What, did you look it up when you knew we were meeting?”

Myron held out his hands, wrists together. “Caught.”

Neil gave him a good-natured wave. “No worries. So you know you beat us.”

“Yes.”

“And that you scored forty-two points.”

Myron said, “It was a long time ago.”

“I coached high school basketball for eighteen years.” He pointed a stubby finger at Myron. “You, my friend, are the best I’ve ever seen.”

“Thank you.”

“I hear you got a nephew playing.”

“I do.”

“He as special as they say?”

“I think so.”

“Good, great.” Neil Huber leaned back. “So, Myron, have we done enough of the break-the-ice, chitchat thing?”

“I think we have.”

Neil spread his hands. “What can I do for you?”

He had the prerequisite family photographs on the desk-a blond wife with big hair, grown married children, a sprinkling of young grandkids. On the wall behind him, the New Jersey State flag featured a shield with three plows and a horse’s head above it. Yep, a horse’s head. You can fill in your own Godfather joke, but it will be obvious and beneath you. Two female goddesses, the goddess of liberty (okay) and the goddess of agriculture (again too easy), stood on either side of the shield. The flag was bizarre and dense, but then again, bizarre and dense described New Jersey pretty accurately.

“It’s about a case you worked when you were a cop in Alpine,” Myron said.

“The Moore and Baldwin kidnappings,” he said.

“How did you know?”

“I was a detective. So I deduced.”

“I see.”

“Clue one”-he raised his index finger-“I worked on very few major cases. Clue two”-he was making a peace sign now-“I worked on exactly one major case that remains unsolved. Clue three”-you get the drift with the fingers-“one of the abducted boys was just found after ten years.” He lowered his hand. “Yes, sir, really took all my powers of deduction to come up with that one. Myron?”

“What?”

“Did you know the Moores are going on CNN in a few hours?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Instead of a big press conference, they’re doing a sit-down with Anderson Cooper at noon.” He leaned forward. “Please tell me you’re not press.”

“I’m not press.”

“So what’s your interest in this?”

Myron debated how to play it. “Could I just say it’s a long story?”

“You could. It won’t get you anywhere. But you could.”

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Plus, politico though he might appear, Myron was taking a shine to Neil Huber. Why not be honest if you can?

“I’m the one who rescued Patrick.”

“Come again?”

“In London. Like I said, it’s a long story. My friend is Rhys Baldwin’s cousin. He got a tip on his whereabouts. We tracked him down.”

“Whoa.”

“Yes.”

“You said it was a long story.”

“Right.”

“Maybe you should tell it to me.”

Myron gave him as much as he could without incriminating or even mentioning Win by name. Still, Neil Huber wasn’t an idiot. It wouldn’t be difficult to find out who Rhys’s cousin was. But so what?

When he finished, Neil said, “Holy crap.”

“Yeah.”

“So I still don’t get why you’re here.”

“I’m looking into the case again.”

“I thought you became a sports agent or something.”

“It’s complicated.”

“I suppose it is,” Neil said.

“I just want to take a fresh look at it.”

Neil nodded. “You figure I made a mistake and maybe you can look at it and see what I was missing?”

“It’s been ten years,” Myron said. “We know new things now.” He thought about how Win had put it. “It’s like a car trip where you don’t know where you’re going. Last week, we only knew the start. Now we know where the car was a few days ago.”

Neil frowned. “What?”

“It sounded better when my friend said it.”

“I’m just busting your balls. Look, I only had the case a short time. The FBI took it away from me pretty fast.” He tilted back in his chair and rested his hands on his belly. “Ask away.”

“So yesterday I was at the crime scene.”

“The Baldwins’ house.”

“Yes. And I was trying to piece together how it all happened. That backyard is wide open, and the kitchen has those big windows.”

“Plus,” Neil added, “there’s a gate by the driveway entrance. And fencing around the property.”

“Exactly. And there’s the timing.”

“The timing?”

“They were kidnapped around noon. Most kids are still in school at the time. How did the kidnappers know they’d be home?”

“Ah,” Neil said.

“Ah?”

“You see holes.”

“I do.”

“You think the official scenario doesn’t add up.”

“Something like that.”

“And you think, what, we didn’t notice all this stuff ten years ago? We raised all the issues you’re raising now. And more of them. But you know what? Lots of crimes don’t make sense. You can poke holes in almost anything. Take the gate, for example. The Baldwins never closed it. It was useless. The backyard? The Baldwins had lawn furniture. You could sneak up that way. Or you could press your body against the back of the house and no one would see you until you were by the windows.”

“I see,” Myron said. “So you satisfied your doubts?”

“Whoa, I never said that.”

Neil Huber loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt. The red in his face seemed to drain away. Now Myron did have a sense of déjà vu. He could see the younger man, the coach for the other team, or maybe it was just a fake memory he was concocting for the occasion.

“I had doubts,” he said, his voice a little quieter now. “We all did, I guess. But at the end of the day, the two boys were gone. We followed every angle we could find. Stranger abductions like this-breaking into a house, asking for a ransom-are extremely rare. So we looked hard at the parents. We looked hard at the families, the neighbors, the teachers.”

“How about the nanny?”

“Au pair,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“She wasn’t a nanny. She was an au pair. Big difference.”