Harlan Coben: Home

Win steepled his fingers. It was a familiar gesture, one that brought Myron back to younger days. “Last time I saw Brooke, we opened some very expensive wine. We sat out on a deck and looked out over the ocean. For a while, she was the Brooke I grew up with. Some people are conduits for misery. Brooke is the opposite. She brings joy. Always has. You know the cliché that some people light up a room?”

“Sure.”

“Brooke could do that from a distance. You could just think about her and be happier. You want to shield a person like that. And when you see someone like that in such pain, you want-nay, need-to relieve it.”

Win bounced his fingertips together. “So there we were, drinking wine and staring out at the ocean. Most people use alcohol to anesthetize the kind of pain Brooke faced. But with Brooke, the opposite was happening. The alcohol made the facade fall away. The smile she still forced up was gone. She confessed something to me that night.”

He stopped. Myron waited.

“For a long time, Brooke fantasized about Rhys’s homecoming. Every time the phone rang, she felt the jangle in her blood. She hoped it would be Rhys telling her he was okay. She would see him in crowded streets. She would dream about rescuing him, about seeing him, about their tearful reunion. She would constantly replay that day in her head, staying home instead of going out, taking Rhys and Patrick with her instead of leaving them with that au pair-altering something, anything, to make it not have happened. It stays with you, Brooke told me. A permanent companion. You may run a few steps ahead, but that day is always there, tapping you on the shoulder, pulling at your sleeve.”

Myron sat very still.

“I knew all this, of course. It isn’t revelatory that parents suffer. Brooke still looks wonderful. She’s a strong woman. But things have changed.”

“What do you mean, ‘changed’?”

“It has to end.”

“What do you mean?”

“That was Brooke’s confession. When the phone rings, do you know what she hopes?”

Myron shook his head.

“That it’s the police. That they’ve finally found Rhys’s body. Do you understand what I’m saying? The not knowing-the hope-has become more painful than death. And that just makes the tragedy all the more obscene. It is horrible enough that you make a mother suffer like this. But this, she told me-wishing, no matter what, that it would just end-was even worse.”

They sat in silence for a few moments.

Then Win said, “Hey, how about those Knicks?”

“Funny.”

“You need to be loose.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to King’s Cross.”

“Where you can’t really show your face.”

“I’m extraordinarily handsome. People remember me.”

“Ergo needing my help.”

“Glad my absence hasn’t dulled your sharp investigative tools.”

“So tell me everything,” Myron said. “Let’s make a plan.”

When they drove past the train station, Myron read the sign and said, “King’s Cross. Isn’t that from Harry Potter ?”

“It is.”

Myron took another look. “Cleaner than I expected.”

“Gentrification,” Win said. “But you never really get rid of the dirt. You just sweep it into dark corners.”

“And you know where those dark corners are?”

“I was told in the email.” The Bentley came to a stop. “We can’t get any closer without the risk of being seen. Take this.”

Win handed him a smartphone.

“I have a phone,” Myron said.

“Not like this one. It’s a complete monitoring system. I can follow you via GPS. I can listen in on any conversations via microphones. I can see what you see via the camera.”

“The key word,” Myron said, “is ‘via.’”

“Hilarious. Speaking of a key word, we will need a distress signal if you get into trouble.”

“How about ‘help’?”

Win looked at him blankly. “I. Missed. Your. Humor.”

“Remember when we first started out?” Myron couldn’t help but smile. “I would call you on the old cell phones and you would listen in.”

“I remember.”

“We thought we were so high tech.”

“We were,” Win said.

“Articulate,” Myron said.

“Pardon?”

“If I’m in trouble, I’ll say ‘articulate.’”

Myron headed out past the station. He realized that he was whistling a show tune-“Ring of Keys” from Fun Home -as he walked. That might strike some as odd. This situation was, after all, horrible and dangerous and deadly serious, but he’d be lying to himself if he said it wasn’t also a thrill to be working with Win again. Most of the time, it was Myron who kicked off their often foolhardy rescue missions. In fact, come to think of it, it had always been Myron. Win had been the voice of caution, the sidekick dragged along, joining in more for the fun of it than for any form of justice.

At least, that was Win’s claim.

“You,” Win would tell him, “have a hero complex. You think you can make the world better. You are Don Quixote tilting at windmills.”

“And you?”

“I’m eye candy for the ladies.”

Win.

It was still daylight, but only the naïve believe this sort of trade goes on solely under the blanket of darkness. Still, as Myron arrived at the lookout spot Win had used yesterday, he looked down and saw that this would not be easy.

The police were here.

In the spot where Win had seen probably-Patrick, there were two uniformed officers and two what looked to be lab technicians. The splattered blood, even from up here, still looked wet on the pavement. There was also a lot of it. It looked as if someone had dropped cans of paint from a great height.

The bodies were nowhere to be seen. Nor, naturally, were any streetwalkers-they knew enough to stay away from scenes like this. A dead end, Myron thought. Time for a new plan.

He turned to head back to where the Bentley had dropped him off when something caught his eye. Myron stopped. There, in the “dark corner,” as Win had put it, at the end of Railway Street, he spotted what had to be a streetwalker.

She was dressed in Seventies American Hooker-fishnet stockings, high boots (those two looks seemed to be a contradiction), a skirt that covered up as much of her as, say, a belt would, and a purple top so tight it could have been sausage casing.

Myron started toward her. When he got closer, the woman turned to him. Myron gave her a little wave.

“Looking for company?” she asked him.

“Uh, no. Not really.”

“You don’t really get how this works, do you?”

“I guess not, sorry.”

“Let’s try again: Looking for a little company?”

“You bet I am.”

The woman smiled. Myron expected something horrific in the dental category, but she had a full mouth of nice, even white teeth. He guessed her age at around fifty, but it could have been a hard forty. She was big and shapely and sloppy and spilling out everywhere, and the smile made it all kind of work.

“You’re an American,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Lots of my clients are American.”

“Doesn’t look like you have much competition.”

“Not anymore, no. See, the girls stay off the streets nowadays. Do everything with a computer or an app.”

“But you don’t.”

“Nah, it ain’t me, you know what I mean? So cold, everyone on Tinder or Ohlala or whatever. Shame really. What happened to human contact? What happened to the personal touch?”

“Uh-huh,” Myron said, because he wasn’t sure what else to say.

“Me, I like the streets. So my business model is to be something of a throwback, you know what I mean? I appeal to people’s- What do you call it?” She thought about it for a second and then snapped her fingers. “Nostalgia! Right? I mean, people are on holiday. They visit King’s Cross to see a hooker, not fiddle with their iPhone. You know what I mean?”