Harlan Coben - Stay close

“No.”

“Then who did?”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about that over the last twenty-four hours. The answer is pretty obvious, I guess. It had to be Stewart Green. He was setting you up, trying to get you alone.”

“But when I got up there…”

“Stewart Green was dead,” Ray said.

“At least, that’s what I thought.”

Ray took a deep breath. The blood filled his head. “And you were right.”

She looked confused. “What?”

“Stewart was dead.”

“You already killed him?”

“No. I told you. I wasn’t the one.”

“Then what happened?” she asked.

“You went up that path,” Ray said. “You saw his body. You thought that he was dead, so you ran back down. I saw you. In fact, I was going to stop you, make sure you were okay. Another one of those what-ifs. If I had just stopped you there. If I had asked you what happened…”

His voice drifted off.

She leaned forward. “What happened, Ray?”

“I thought… I don’t know… I thought Stewart had hurt you or something. I was confused and angry, so I hesitated. And then, well, you were gone. So I ran up the path. Toward the ruins.”

Megan studied his face. She was curious, sure, but she also cared. He could see that. He was coming to it now, and maybe, finally, she was starting to see the truth.

“When I got up there, I saw Stewart Green lying there. He was dead. His throat had been slit.” Ray leaned closer, wanted to make sure that she could see his eyes now-see what he had seen that night. “So picture it, Cassie. Picture me running up there and finding Stewart’s throat slit.”

She could see it now. All of it. “You thought… You thought I killed him.”

He didn’t bother nodding. He lowered his head.

“What did you do then, Ray?”

Tears started flowing down his face. “I panicked…”

“What did you do?”

The blood. All that blood.

“…or maybe it was just the opposite. Maybe I suddenly grew too logical. I’d seen you run away. I drew the most obvious conclusion: You’d had enough of his abuse. He was a real citizen. No one would help. So you did what you had to. You arranged to meet him in that remote spot so you could kill him, and then something made you run. Maybe you freaked out. Maybe someone spotted you. I don’t know. But you left clues. There were other cars in that lot. Someone might remember you. They’d find the body and the police would start investigating and they’d trace him back to La Creme, and in the end, well, it would all come back to you.”

She saw it now. He could tell by the expression on her face.

“So I did the only thing I could do to help you. I got rid of the body. No body, no case.”

She started shaking her head.

“Don’t you see? If there was no body, people would assume Stewart ran away. Someone might suspect you, but with no body, I knew you’d be safe.”

“What did you do, Ray?”

“I dragged him deeper in the woods. Then I went home and got a shovel to bury him. But it was February. The ground was too hard. I tried, but the dirt wouldn’t give way. Hours passed. Daylight was coming. I had to get rid of the body. So I went home and got my chain saw…”

Her hand went to her mouth.

The blood, Ray thought again, his eyes closing. So much blood.

He had wanted to stop, but once the chain saw started, Ray had no choice. He had to finish the job. He didn’t bother telling her the rest, what it felt like to saw through human flesh and bone, to put pieces of a human being, even one as deplorable as Stewart Green, into black plastic garbage bags. The only thing that got him through was the thought he was doing it to save the woman he loved. He took the bags and weighed them down with rocks and drove down to a spot he knew near Cape May. He threw the bags into the water. Then he went home and expected to find Cassie. But she wasn’t there. He called her. She didn’t reply. He spent the night shivering in his own bed, trying to get those images out of his head. They wouldn’t leave. He looked for Cassie the next day and the next. She still wasn’t there. The days turned to weeks, to months, to years. But Cassie was gone.

And all Ray had left was the blood.

Erin Anderson hit pay dirt.

She had spent most of the evening working with the feds on the IDs. It was too early for anything firm, but she had already gathered enough information about clothing and watches and jewelry to get an idea of what bones might belong to what missing man. The rest would be up to DNA. That might take some time.

When Erin got a free second, she hit the precinct computer. Broome had told her to spread out the search, look for any other violence that might connect to Mardi Gras. A few minutes later, she found one case that might fit, though it wasn’t really a direct hit.

At least, not at first.

Erin had been searching for murdered or missing men. That was why this particular case had slipped through the cracks. In the end, this particular death had been ruled self-defense rather than a homicide. Because no one was charged with a crime, the case had not been widely reported. A man named Lance Griggs was stabbed to death in his home in nearby Egg Harbor Township-not Atlantic City itself. Griggs had a long history of spousal abuse. That was why the case had now caught her eye. No, he hadn’t vanished. He hadn’t been dumped down a well. But Griggs, like so many others involved in this case, was a serial abuser.

According to the report, his wife had been hospitalized repeatedly. The neighbors reported hearing beatings over the years. The cops had visited the residence plenty of times. Erin shook her head. She had dealt with plenty of cases of spousal abuses. She had heard all the justifications, but she still, in her heart of hearts, never got why the women stayed.

Griggs had, it seemed, attacked his wife with a tire iron, breaking her leg and then pressed the bar against her throat. His wife finally broke away, grabbed a knife, and stabbed him. With Griggs’s long arrest record, there were plenty of mug shots for her to bring up. She did that now. The wife had also been arrested when the body was first discovered. Erin brought up her picture too and put them side by side.

Some happy couple.

“What are you working on?”

She turned to see Goldberg. Great, just what she needed. He, too, looked drawn and exhausted, his tie loosened to the point where it could almost double as a belt. It had been a long night for all of them.

“Probably nothing important,” Erin said, reaching for the monitor dimmer. “I was doing a little more investigating on Mardi Gras crimes.”

“Stop.”

“What?”

“Turn that back up,” Goldberg said.

Erin grudgingly did as he asked.

Goldberg stared at the screen. “And these two are involved?”

“Yes. She killed him years ago.”

He shook his head. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“How’s that?”

Goldberg pointed to the screen. “I know that woman.”

The sight of the blood on the kitchen floor worked like a punch deep in Broome’s gut.

He gripped his gun tighter and started making all kinds of prayers and promises, hoping against hope that Lorraine was still alive. Broome cursed himself for talking to her, especially in a place where anyone could see. Hadn’t he learned anything from Tawny and Harry Sutton? There were dangerous people involved in all this.

How could he have been so careless?

His heart pounded against his chest, but there was no time to waste. He had to get to her, had to try to stop the flow of blood. Broome ducked down, rolled to his right, and once again, he met up with a shock.

It wasn’t Lorraine’s dead body he saw.