Harlan Coben - Live Wire

“Do you like ice cream?” the man asked.

Myron spread his hands. “Who doesn’t like ice cream?”

“Not many people, knock wood.” The man rapped a Formica tabletop with his knuckles as they passed. “What flavor can I get you?”

“I’m fine, thank you.”

But he wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Kimberly?”

The woman in the wheelchair looked up.

“Make our guest here the SnowCap Melter.”

“Sure thing.”

The store was blanketed with the SnowCap ice cream logo. That should have given it to him. SnowCap. Snow. Myron took another look at the man’s face. The fifteen years had been neither a friend nor an enemy to the man-normal aging-but now Myron started to put it together.

“You’re Karl Snow,” Myron said. “Alista’s father.”

“Are you a cop?” he asked Myron.

Myron hesitated.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve got nothing to say.”

Myron decided to give him a push. “Are you going to help cover up another murder?”

Myron expected shock or outrage, but instead he got a firm headshake. “I read the papers. Suzze T died of an overdose.”

Maybe a bigger push: “Right, and your daughter just fell out a window.”

Myron regretted the words the moment they escaped his lips. Too much too soon. He waited for the eruption. It didn’t come. Karl Snow’s face sagged. “Sit down,” he said. “Tell me who you are.”

Myron sat facing Karl Snow and introduced himself. Behind Snow, Lauren’s birthday party was growing happily rowdy. Myron thought about the obvious juxtaposition-a girl’s birthday party being hosted by a man who lost his own-but then he let it go.

“The news said she overdosed,” Karl Snow said. “Is that true?”

“I’m not sure,” Myron said. “That’s why I’m looking into it.”

“I don’t get it. Why you? Why not the police?”

“Could you just tell me why she was here?”

Karl Snow leaned back, pushed his glasses back up his nose. “Let me ask you something before we get into this. Do you have any evidence at all that Suzze T was murdered-yes or no?”

“For one thing,” Myron said, “there’s the fact that she was eight months pregnant and looking forward to starting a family.”

He did not look impressed. “That doesn’t sound like much evidence.”

“It’s not,” Myron said. “But here’s what I do know for certain. Suzze drove out here yesterday. She talked to you. A few hours later, she was dead.”

He glanced behind him. The young woman in the wheelchair started toward them with an ice cream monstrosity. Myron started to get up to help, but Karl Snow shook his head. Myron stayed where he was.

“One SnowCap Melter,” the woman said, putting it in front of Myron. “Enjoy.”

The Melter would have trouble fitting in the trunk of a car. Myron half expected the table to tilt over. “This is for one person?” Myron asked.

“Yep,” she said.

He looked at her. “Does it come with angioplasty or maybe a shot of insulin?”

She rolled her eyes. “Golly, I’ve never heard that one before.”

Karl Snow said, “Mr. Bolitar, meet my daughter Kimberly.”

“Nice to meet you,” Kimberly said, awarding him with the kind of smile that makes the cynical think about the celestial. They chatted for a minute or two-she was the store manager, Karl just owned the place-and then she wheeled herself back behind the counter.

Karl was still watching his daughter when he said, “She was twelve when Alista…” He stopped, as though not sure what word to use. “Their mother died two years earlier from breast cancer. I didn’t handle it well. I started drinking too much. Kimberly was born with CP. She needed constant care. I guess that Alista, well, I guess she slipped through the cracks.”

As if on cue, a big laugh exploded from the party behind him. Myron glanced over at Lauren, the birthday girl. She too was smiling, a ring of chocolate around her mouth.

“I have no interest in hurting you or your daughter,” Myron said.

“If I talk to you now,” he said slowly, “I need you to promise me I won’t see you again. I can’t have the media back in our lives.”

“I promise.”

Karl Snow rubbed his face with both hands. “Suzze wanted to know about Alista’s death.”

Myron waited for him to say more. When he didn’t, he asked, “What did she want to know?”

“She wanted to know if Gabriel Wire killed my daughter.”

“What did you say?”

“I told her that after meeting privately with Mr. Wire, I no longer believed that he was culpable. I told her that, in the end, it was a tragic accident and that I was satisfied with that result. I also told her that the settlement is confidential, so that was really all I could say.”

Myron just stared at him. Karl Snow had said it all in a practiced monotone. Myron waited for Snow to meet his eye. He didn’t. Instead Snow shook his head and said softly, “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

Myron didn’t know whether he was talking about Suzze or Alista. Karl Snow blinked, looked off toward Kimberly. The sight seemed to give him strength. “Have you ever lost a child, Mr. Bolitar?”

“No.”

“I’ll spare you the clichés. In fact, I’ll spare you altogether. I know how people view me: the unfeeling father who took a big payday in exchange for letting his daughter’s killer go free.”

“And that wasn’t the case?”

“Sometimes you have to love a child privately. And sometimes you have to grieve privately.”

Myron was not sure what that meant, so he waited.

“Eat some of the ice cream,” Karl said, “or Kimberly will notice. That girl has eyes in the back of her head.”

Myron reached for the spoon and tried the whipped cream with the first layer of what looked like cookies ’n’ cream. Manna.

“Good?”

“Manna,” Myron said.

He smiled again, but there was no joy in it. “Kimberly invented the Melter.”

“She’s a genius.”

“She’s a good daughter. And she loves this place. I messed up with Alista. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“Is that what you told Suzze?”

“In part. I tried to make her understand my position at the time.”

“Which was?”

“Alista loved HorsePower-and like every teenage girl, she was totally gaga over Gabriel Wire.” Something crossed his face. He looked away, lost. “Alista’s birthday was coming up. Sweet sixteen. I didn’t have the money to throw her a big party, but I knew that HorsePower was going to play a concert at Madison Square Garden. I guess they didn’t play many concerts-I never really followed them-but I knew that there was this Ticketmaster on the basement level of this Marshalls Department Store on Route Four. So I woke up at, like, five in the morning and got on line. You should have seen it. No one else there was over thirty, and I’m standing there, waiting for two hours, to buy tickets to the concert. When I got to the window, the woman started typing into the computer and first she tells me that it’s sold out and then, well, then she says, ‘No, wait, I have only two left,’ ” and I was never so happy to buy something in my life. Like it was kismet, you know? Like it was supposed to happen.”

Myron nodded as noncommittally as he could.

“So I get home and Alista’s birthday is still a week away so I figure I’m going to wait. I tell Kimberly about them. And we’re both dying. I mean, those tickets are burning a hole in my pocket. You ever have that? Where you buy someone something so special that you just can’t wait to give it?”

“Sure,” Myron said softly.

“So that’s how it is with me and Kimberly. We end up driving to Alista’s high school. We park there and I get Kimberly out and into her chair and Alista comes out and we’re just smiling like two cats that ate the canary. Alista makes a face at us, the way teenage girls do, and she says, ‘What?’ ” and I just held up the tickets and Alista”-he stopped, his world rolling back all those years-“she just screamed and threw her arms around my neck and squeezed so hard…”