Harlan Coben - Long Lost

We slipped toward the front door without saying good-bye. I looked behind me and spotted little Matthew slumped in a chair in the corner. He was wearing a dark suit.

Four-year-olds don’t belong in dark suits. Four-year-olds belong in goalie uniforms next to their dads.

Mario Contuzzi answered the door without asking who it was. He was thin and wiry and reminded me of a Weimaraner dog. He jabbed a narrow face in Terese’s direction.

“You have some nerve.”

“Nice to see you too, Mario.”

“I just got a call from a friend at Karen’s. He says you popped in unannounced. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“What were you thinking?” Mario’s head snapped toward me. “And why would you bring this asswipe, of all people?”

“Do I know you?” I asked.

Mario wore those tortoiseshell glasses I always thought were trying too hard. He was wearing suit pants and a white dress shirt that he had been in the midst of buttoning. “I don’t have time for this. Please leave.”

“We need to talk,” Terese said.

“Too late.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He spread his arms. “You left, Terese, remember? You had your reasons, maybe. That’s fine. Your choice. But you left and now that he’s dead you finally want to have a little chitchat? Forget it. I have nothing to say to you.”

“That was a long time ago,” she said.

“Precisely my point. Rick waited for you to come back. Did you know that? For two years, he waited. You were distraught and depressed-we all understood that-but that didn’t stop you from shacking up with Mr. Basketball here.”

He pointed at me with his thumb. I was Mr. Basketball here.

“Rick knew about that?” Terese asked.

“Of course. We thought you were devastated, vulnerable maybe. We kept an eye on you. I think Rick hoped you’d come back. Instead you go off to some little island for a private orgy with Hoop Head.”

He pointed at me with the thumb again. Now I was Hoop Head.

Terese said, “You were following me?”

“We were keeping an eye on you, yes.”

“For how long?”

He didn’t reply. Suddenly his sleeve needed to be unrolled.

“How long, Mario?”

“We always knew where you were. I’m not saying we discussed it anymore and you’ve been at that refugee center for the past six years so it’s not like we checked all the time. But we knew. That’s why I’m surprised to see you with Bozo the SuperJock here. We thought you dumped this meathead years ago.”

He waved his thumb in my face again.

“Mario?” I said.

He looked at me.

“Point that thumb at me again and it will end up mid-colon.”

“Physical threats from the big man on campus,” he said, a smirk splitting the narrow face. “It’s like I’m back in high school.”

I was about to get into it with him, but I didn’t think that would help. “We have some questions for you,” I said.

“And I’m supposed to answer them? You don’t get it, do you? She was married to my best friend and then she shacks up with you on some deserted island. You know how that made him feel?”

“Bad?” I said.

That stopped him. He turned back to Terese. “Look, I don’t mean to come on like a raging ass, but you don’t belong here. Rick and Karen had a good thing. You gave this up long ago.”

I looked at Terese. She was trying very hard to hold it together.

“Did he blame me?” she asked.

“For what?”

She said nothing.

Mario’s shoulder deflated along with, I assumed, his anger. His voice softened. “No, Terese, he never blamed you. Not for any of it, okay? I did, I guess, for the leaving-him part-and yeah, that’s not my place. But he never blamed you, not for a second.”

She said nothing.

“I have to get ready,” Mario said. “I’m helping Karen with the arrangements. Arrangements. Like it’s a choral piece. What a dumb-ass word.”

Terese still seemed a little dazed, so I stepped in. “Do you have any thoughts on who might have killed him?”

“What are you, Bolitar, some kind of cop now?”

“We were in Paris when he was killed,” I said.

He turned toward Terese. “You saw Rick?”

“I never got the chance.”

“But he called you?”

“Yes.”

“Damn.” Mario closed his eyes. He still hadn’t invited us in, but I sort of pressed myself into the doorway, and he stepped back. I expected a bachelor pad-I’m not sure why-but there were toys on the floor and a Pack ’n Play in the corner. Empty baby bottles were lined up on the counter.

“I married Ginny,” he said to Terese. “You remember her?”

“Of course. I’m glad to hear you’re happy, Mario.”

He took a beat, reassessing, calming down. “We have three kids. We keep saying we’re going to buy a bigger place, but we like it here. And real estate is ridiculous in London.”

We stood there.

“So Rick called you,” Mario said to Terese.

“Yes.”

He shook his head.

I broke the silence. “Was there anybody who’d want to kill Rick?”

“Rick was one of the best investigative reporters in the world. He pissed off a lot of people.”

“Anybody specific?”

“Not really, no. I still don’t get what this has to do with either one of you.”

I wanted to explain, but I knew that we didn’t have the time. “Could you just humor us for another moment?”

“Humor you? Like this is funny?”

Terese said, “Please, Mario. It’s important.”

“Because you say it is?”

“You know me,” she said. “You know if I’m asking it’s important.”

He thought about that.

“Mario?”

“What do you want to know?”

“What was Rick working on?” she asked.

He looked off, his upper teeth working his lower lip. “A few months ago he started investigating a charitable entity called Save the Angels.”

“What about them?”

“Frankly, I’m not sure. They started out as an evangelical group, a classic right-to-life group, protesting abortion clinics, Planned Parenthood, stem cell research, the whole deal. But they broke away. He was obsessed with learning all he could about them.”

“What did he find?”

“Not much that I could see. The money structure seemed a little odd. We couldn’t trace it down. Basically they were against abortion, against stem cell research, and really into adoptions. Truth was, I thought they seemed like a pretty solid group. I don’t want to get into a pro-life versus pro-choice argument, but I think both sides would agree that adoption is a viable alternative. That seems to be the direction they headed. Instead of firebombing clinics, Save the Angels worked on getting unwanted pregnancies to term and getting the kids adopted.”

“And Rick was interested in them?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“What made him start looking into them?”

“Again, I can’t say for sure.” His voice sort of died away.

“But you have a thought.”

“It started when he went home after his father died.” Mario turned to Terese. “You know about Sam?”

“Karen told me.”

“Suicide,” he said.

“He was ill?”

Mario nodded. “Huntington’s.”

Terese looked shocked. “Sam had Huntington’s disease?”

“Surprised, huh? He kept it hidden, I guess, but when it got bad, well, he didn’t want to go through that. Took the easy way out.”

“But. . how. . I never knew.”

“Neither did Rick. Or Sam, for that matter, until the end.”

“How is that possible?”

“You know anything about Huntington’s?” Mario asked.

She nodded. “I did a story on it. It’s strictly hereditary. One of your parents has to have it. If they do, you have a one-in-two chance of contracting it.”