Harlan Coben - Long Lost

“She left about five minutes after you did.”

I stayed behind the glass door, waiting for him to unlock it. He didn’t. I thought about what he had just said. “Did you have us under surveillance?”

“I don’t have the manpower to follow you both,” he said. “But tell me: What did you make of her story about the car accident?”

“How. .?” Now I saw it. “You bugged our room?”

Berleand nodded. “You’re not getting much action.”

“Very funny.”

“Or pathetic,” he countered. “So what did you make of her story?”

“What do you mean what did I make of it? It’s horrible.”

“You believed her?”

“Of course. Who’d make up something like that?”

Something crossed his face.

“Are you telling me it’s not true?”

“No, it all seems to check out. Miriam Collins, age seven, died in the accident off the A-Forty highway in London. Terese was seriously hurt. But I’m having the entire file sent to my office for review.”

“Why? It was ten years ago. It doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

He didn’t reply. He just pushed the glasses back up his nose. I felt a tad on display in this Plexiglas holding cell.

“I assume your colleagues from the crime scene filled you in on what happened,” I said.

“Yes.”

“You guys need to find that green van.”

“We already did,” Berleand said.

I moved closer to the Plexiglas door.

“The van was a rental,” Berleand said. “They dumped it at CDG Airport.”

“Rented with a credit card?”

“Under an alias, yes.”

“You need to stop all flights out.”

“Out of the largest airport in the country?” Berleand frowned. “Any other crime-stopping tips?”

“I’m just saying-”

“It’s been two hours. If they flew out, they’re gone.”

Another cop came into the room, handed Berleand a piece of paper, and left. Berleand studied it.

“What’s that?” I asked.

I ignored Berleand’s lame attempt at humor. “You know this isn’t a coincidence,” I said. “I saw a blond girl in the back of that van.”

He was still reading the sheet of paper. “You mentioned that, yes.”

“It could have been Collins’s daughter.”

“Doubtful,” Berleand said.

I waited.

“We reached the wife,” Berleand said. “Karen Tower. She’s fine. She didn’t even know her husband was in Paris.”

“Where did she think he was?”

“I don’t know all the details yet. They live in London now. Scotland Yard delivered the news. Apparently there have been some marital difficulties.”

“And what about the daughter?”

“Well, that’s the thing,” Berleand said. “They don’t have a daughter. They have a four-year-old son. He’s home safe and sound with his mother.”

I tried to process that one. “The DNA test showed the blood definitely belonged to Rick Collins’s daughter,” I began.

“Yes.”

“No doubts?”

“No doubts.”

“And the long blond hair was tied to the blood?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“So Rick Collins has a daughter with long blond hair,” I said more to myself than him. It didn’t take time to come up with an alternate scenario. Maybe it was because I was in France, supposed land of the mistress. Even the former president openly had one, didn’t he?

“A second family,” I said.

Of course it wasn’t just the French. There was that New York politician who got caught drunk driving on his way to visit his second family. Men have kids with their mistresses all the time. Add in Berleand’s belief that there were marriage difficulties between Rick Collins and Karen Tower and it added up. Of course, there were still major holes to fill-like why Collins would call Terese, his first wife, and tell her it was urgent to see him in Paris-but one step at a time.

I started explaining my theory to Berleand, but I could see that he wasn’t buying so I stopped the sell.

“What am I missing?” I asked.

His cell phone trilled. Again Berleand spoke in French, leaving me totally in the dark. I’d have to take a Berlitz course or something when I got home. When he hung up, he quickly unlocked the holding cell and waved for me to come out. I did. He started down the corridor at a hurried pace.

“Berleand?”

“Come on. I need to show you something.”

We headed back into the Groupe Berleand room. Lefebvre was there. He looked at me as if I’d just dropped out of his worst enemy’s anus. He was hooking up another monitor to the computer, flat screen and maybe thirty inches wide.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Berleand sat at the keyboard. Lefebvre backed off. There were two other cops in the room. They too stood back by the wall. Berleand looked at the monitor, then at the keyboard. He frowned. On his desk was the dispenser for towelettes. He pulled one out and started wiping down the keyboard.

Lefebvre said something in French that sounded like a complaint.

Berleand snapped something back, gesturing to the keyboard. He finished wiping it down and then started typing.

“The blond girl in the van,” Berleand said to me. “How old would you say she was?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think.”

I tried, shook my head. “All I saw was long blond hair.”

“Sit down,” he said.

I pulled up a chair. He opened an e-mail and downloaded a file.

“More video will be coming in,” he said, “but this still-frame is the clearest.”

“Of what?”

“Surveillance camera from the de Gaulle airport lot.”

A color photograph came up-I’d expected something grainy and black-and-white, but this one was fairly clear. Tons of cars-duh, it’s a parking lot-but people too. I squinted.

Berleand pointed to the upper right. “Is that them?”

The camera was unfortunately so far away that the subjects could only be seen at a great distance. There were three men. One was covering his face with something white, a shirt maybe, staving off the blood. Scar Head.

I nodded.

The blond girl was there too, but now I understood his question. From this angle-a back shot-I couldn’t really tell her age but she certainly wasn’t six or seven or even ten or twelve, unless she was unusually tall. She was full grown. The clothing suggested a teenager, someone young, but nowadays it is hard to know for certain.

The blonde walked between the two healthier men. Scar Head was on the far right.

“It’s them,” I said. Then I added: “What did we figure the daughter would have had to be? Seven or eight. The blond hair, I guess. It threw me. I overreacted.”

“I’m not so sure.”

I looked at Berleand. He took off his glasses, placed them on the table, and rubbed his face with both hands. He barked out something in French. The three men, including Lefebvre, left the room. We were alone.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked.

He stopped rubbing his face and looked at me. “You are aware that no one at the cafe saw the other man pull a gun on you.”

“Of course they didn’t. It was under the table.”

“Most people would have put up their hands and gone quietly. Most people would not have thought to smash the man’s face with a table, grab his gun, and shoot his accomplice in the middle of the boulevard.”

I waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, I added: “What can I say? I’m the balls.”

“The man you shot-he was unarmed.”

“Not when I shot him. His cohorts took the gun when they fled. You know this, Berleand. You know I didn’t just make this up.”

We sat there for another minute. Berleand stared at the monitor.

“What are we waiting for?”

“Video to come in,” he said.