Harlan Coben - Play Dead

Gina Cassler looked up from her desk. ‘Good Lord, Graham, you’re all out of breath.’

He heaved in oxygen. ‘Not important,’ he managed. ‘Where are the passport cards?’

She shook her head. ‘They’re in my file cabinet. Will you relax and sit down?’

Graham collapsed into the chair like a punctured lung. ‘Hand them over, luv.’

She took out a key and unlocked the file cabinet behind her. ‘I wanted to keep them safe for you.’

‘I appreciate that.’

Her hand reached into the cabinet. ‘Can I get you something to drink, Graham?’

‘In a minute, thanks.’

She took hold of a large manila envelope and pulled it out of the file. ‘Here they are,’ she said.

‘Have you looked through them yet?’

‘Looked through them?’ she repeated, tossing the envelope across her desk. ‘For what? I don’t even know what you’re looking for.’

Graham nodded, satisfied. He took hold of the envelope and ripped it open. ‘Was there any problem getting these?’

‘None.’

‘No one asked you why you needed them?’

‘I told them I kept superlative records but one of my staff members had carelessly misplaced some data.’

Once again, Graham looked around the paper-cluttered room. ‘They bought that?’

She nodded. ‘Lucky for you they’ve never seen this office.’

He shrugged, slipped the cards out of the envelope, and began to sort through them. He piled the ones filled out by Americans on the side.

‘What do you want to drink, Graham?’

Without looking up he said, ‘Whiskey.’

Gina reached behind her into the same file cabinet and withdrew a bottle. She poured some into two shot glasses and passed one of them to Graham’s side of the desk. He ignored it.

‘Find anything yet?’ she asked.

Graham shook his head and continued to flip through the cards. When he was finished, he picked up the pile of the ones he had sorted out. He skimmed through them. On the upper corner of each card, a receptionist had jotted down the room numbers. The name and address were underneath that, followed by the nationality (most Americans just wrote U.S.A.), the passport number, date of issue, place of issue. When he reached the passport card that had room 607 scribbled on the top, he checked out the address. Boston, Massachusetts. Then he read name. A hammer blow struck Graham’s heart. He read the name again.

‘Sweet Jesus…’

‘Graham, are you all right?’

The other cards slipped through his hands and onto the floor. Graham grabbed the shot glass in front of him and threw the liquid contents down his throat.

‘Mary Ayars,’ he said. ‘Laura’s mother.’

Dr Eric Clarich had lived in Hamilton, New York, since he was three years old. He had attended John Quincy Adams Elementary School, Heritage Junior High School, Hamilton High School, Colgate College. In fact, the only time he lived outside of freezing-cold Hamilton was during his days of medical school at Cornell. Even his residency and internship had been performed at the hospital nearest to the home of his childhood, adolescence and college years.

Eric was what prep-school students would call a townie. Many claimed that his devotion and indeed obsession with Hamilton was dangerous. Dr Eric Clarich’s lack of exposure to the outside world, they claimed, would cause his outlook to be somewhat myopic. Perhaps that was true. But Eric did not worry about it very much. He had his life here. Delta, his high-school sweetheart-turned-wife, was pregnant with child number two. His new and growing practice was doing well. Life was good, solid. There was even talk of having Eric run for town council next year.

‘Isn’t she that famous model?’ one of the nurses asked him. Eric nodded solemnly. Two women had just been rushed into the emergency room. One he recognized; the other he knew very well. The two women were also related, he knew, the younger being the niece of the older. Eric had first met the older woman more than a decade ago. Professor Judy Simmons had brought Shakespeare to life for a sophomore Eric Clarich, offering insights and reflections that stunned and stimulated the lucky students who had been selected to take her class. She prided herself on being easily accessible to her students and Eric took full advantage of that fact. He would never forget the hours they had chatted over cups of herbal tea in both her faculty office and her home study. Now, from what he had been told, that study and indeed her entire home was little more than ashes.

Memories drifted gently across Eric’s mind. Professor Judy Simmons had written a glowing recommendation to Cornell’s medical school describing Eric as ‘a true Renaissance man.’ Describing someone as being truly renaissance, she explained, was the ultimate compliment. Many would-be doctors can claim a cold, impersonal knowledge of the sciences, but how many could combine that with a glowing love of literature and the arts? That, she surmised in her letter, was what made Eric Clarich, her student and friend, stand above the rest.

Eric took a deep breath and continued working. And what about the brilliant Professor Simmons herself? Would he describe her as a true Renaissance woman? Perhaps. But Judy had always been a bit of an enigma to Eric. He never understood why she never married nor even dated nor for that matter had any close friends. He had only broached the subject with her on one occasion, and she merely joked that her relationships with men read like a Dickens novel. Still, her whole attitude toward herself and the world was a little off-center. To the casual observer Judy Simmons was a pretty and cheerful woman, but beyond the facade, Eric saw her as some sort of sad-eyed, lonely character from a gothic novel Judy herself would undoubtedly cherish. Now, he could make that novel tragic.

Judy Simmons was dead.

He stared down at the charred and battered body of his friend. Eric hoped that she died quickly, that she had not survived long enough to feel her nerve endings being singed, that she had not known the agony of having her skin melted into thick clumps of waxy tallow. He prayed that fallen debris had mercifully knocked Judy unconscious before the blaze had a chance to swarm over her body and eat away at her flesh.

Dead. Another tragedy for a family that should have had everything. First, David Baskin. Now this. Two healthy bodies destroyed by two of Earth’s purest elements. Water had claimed David Baskin. Fire had taken away Judy Simmons.

‘More oxygen,’ he barked to the nurse.

‘Yes, Doctor.’

Eric turned his attention back toward his younger patient. Laura Ayars-Baskin, Judy’s famous and beautiful niece, lay on the emergency-room stretcher. He checked her pulse again and spread ointment on a burn. With proper care and bed rest, Laura would be fine. Miraculous really. Just fifteen minutes ago, she had been lying unconscious in the middle of a blazing inferno. By some bizarre twist of luck, someone had been walking past at the time, a very brave someone who rushed in and somehow managed to pull both women out of the burning wreck. This courageous fellow had then called the hospital. Paramedics were dispatched immediately, but by the time the ambulance arrived on the scene, the mystery hero was gone. Very strange. Most folks would be dialing up the local news stations to be interviewed on the eleven o’clock news. This hero decided to just take off.

‘Do you have those emergency numbers yet?’

‘Yes, Doctor. They were written in her telephone diary.’

‘Let me have them.’ The blonde nurse handed him the telephone numbers. ‘Find me if anything happens.’

‘Yes, Doctor.’

Eric Clarich walked over to the phone in the hallway. He pushed nine to get an outside line, waited for the tone, and dialed the number of Laura’s parents. After four rings, the answering machine picked up and told him that he had reached the Ayars residence. Eric left a message and replaced the receiver.