Harlan Coben - Caught

"I think you should leave now."

"I plan to. I also plan to head straight to the police. You know they'll be able to reconstruct that night now. They'll give the other kids at the party immunity. They'll find out you were at the motel, maybe go through the nearby surveillance tapes. They'll realize you planted the phone. The medical examiner will take another look at Haley's corpse. Your web of lies will fall apart with ease."

Wendy turned to leave.

"Wait." Jenna swallowed. "What do you want?"

"The truth."

"Are you wearing a wire?"

"A wire? You watch too much TV."

"Are you wearing a wire?" she asked again.

"No." Wendy spread her arms. "Do you want to-what's the correct terminology?-pat me down?"

The two moving men came back into the house. One said, "It okay if we clear out the teenager's bedroom next, Mrs. Wheeler?"

"Fine," Jenna said. She looked back at Wendy. There were tears in her eyes. "Let's talk out back."

Jenna Wheeler led the way. She slid open the glass door. There was a pool in the back. A blue float drifted alone on the water. Jenna stared at it for a moment. She lifted her eyes and let them travel around the yard, as though she were the prospective buyer.

"It was an accident," Jenna said. "When you hear what happened, I'm hoping you'll understand. You're a mother too."

Wendy felt her heart sink.

"Amanda isn't a popular kid. Sometimes that's okay. You find other interests or you make friends with other unpopular kids. You know how it is. But Amanda wasn't like that. She got picked on a lot. No one ever invited her to parties. It became worse for her after I defended Dan, but really, I'm not sure that was much of a factor. Amanda was the type who cared too much. She sat up in her room and cried all the time. Noel and I didn't know what to do."

She stopped.

"So you decided to throw a party," Wendy said.

"Yes. I won't go into all the details, but it seemed the smart move for all involved. Did you know that all that week, the seniors had been driving to the Bronx because they found someplace that served underage teens? Ask Charlie, he'll tell you."

"Leave my son out of this."

Jenna put up both hands in mock surrender. "Fine, whatever. But that's the truth. They'd all go to this club and get wasted and then they'd drive home. So Noel and I figured we could host something in the house. We would stay upstairs, out of the way, and, well, we would just leave a cooler of beer out. It wasn't like we would push it on them, but come on, you were in high school once. Kids drink. We figured at least we could channel it toward the safest possible environment."

Wendy flashed on that Project Graduation booth with the "Not in Our House" campaign, the one against parents hosting parties. "Safety overkill," that father had called it, and maybe, on one level, she had agreed.

"I assume that Haley McWaid was there?" Wendy said.

Jenna nodded. "She didn't really like Amanda. She'd only been to the house once before. She was just using her for the alcohol, I guess. I mean, only a handful of kids showed up. And Haley McWaid was upset. She was heartbroken about not getting into the University of Virginia. She had a big fight with Kirby. That's why he left early."

Her voice faded away. Jenna looked at the pool water again.

"So what happened?" Wendy asked.

"Haley died."

She said it just like that.

The moving men clunked down the stairs. One cursed. Wendy stood there with Jenna Wheeler. The sun beat down upon them. The yard was hushed, holding its breath.

"She drank too much," Jenna said. "Alcohol overdose. Haley was a small girl. She found an unopened bottle of whiskey in the cabinet. She drank it all. Amanda thought she had just passed out."

"You didn't call nine-one-one?"

She shook her head. "Noel is a doctor. He tried everything to revive that poor girl. But it was too late." Jenna finally turned away from the pool. She looked at Wendy with imploring eyes. "I need you to put yourself in our position for a moment, okay? The girl was dead. Nothing could bring her back."

"Dead is dead," Wendy said, echoing what Jenna had said about her ex-husband during their last meeting.

"You're being sarcastic, but yes, dead is dead. Haley was gone. It was a terrible accident, but there was no bringing her back. So we stood over her body. Noel kept trying to do CPR, but it was useless. Think about it. You're a reporter. You've covered stories on these parties, haven't you?"

"I have."

"You know that parents have ended up going to jail, right?"

"Right. It's called manslaughter."

"But it was an accident. Don't you see? She drank too much. It happens."

"Four thousand times a year," Wendy said, remembering Safety Officer Pecora stating that statistic.

"So Haley is lying there. She's dead. And we don't know what to do. If we call the police, we go to prison. An open-and-shut case. Our lives would be ruined."

"Better than being dead," Wendy said.

"But what good would that do? Don't you get that? Haley was already dead. Destroying our lives wouldn't bring her back. We were terrified. Don't get me wrong. We felt horrible about Haley. But there is nothing to do for the dead. We were scared-you get that, right?"

Wendy nodded. "I do."

"I mean, put yourself in our shoes. Your whole family is about to be destroyed. What would you have done?"

"Me? I probably would have buried her body in a state park."

Silence.

"That's not funny," Jenna said.

"But that's what you did, isn't it?"

"Imagine it's your home. Imagine that Charlie came up to you in your bedroom and brought you downstairs and one of his friends was lying dead. You didn't make the kid drink. You didn't force the alcohol down his throat. And now you might go to jail for this. Or Charlie might. What would you have done to protect your family?"

This time, Wendy said nothing.

"We didn't know what to do, so, yes, we panicked. Noel and I put the body in the trunk of our car. I know how it sounds, but again, we saw another alternative. If we called the police, we were done-and the girl would still be dead. That's what I kept telling myself. I would have sacrificed my own life to bring her back-but that wasn't possible."

"So you buried her in the woods?"

"That wasn't the initial plan. We were going to drive to Irvington or some city, and just, well, we were going to leave her somewhere so she could be found right away-but then we realized that the autopsy would show alcohol poisoning. The police would be able to trace it back to us. So we knew that we had to hide her. I felt horrible about this-about Ted and Marcia not knowing. But I didn't really know what else to do. And then when people started assuming Haley had run away, well, wasn't that better than knowing for certain that your child is dead?"

Wendy did not reply.

"Wendy?"

"You said to put yourself in your shoes."

"Yes."

"Now I'm putting myself in Ted's and Marcia's shoes. Was it your hope that they'd never find out the truth? That one day their daughter was there and the next she vanished and so for the rest of their lives they'd rush to every doorbell and wonder about every phone call?"

"Is that worse than knowing your daughter is dead?"

Wendy did not bother giving an answer.

"And you have to understand," Jenna continued. "We were living in a sort of suspended hell too. Every time our doorbell or the phone rang, we wondered if it was the police."

"Wow," Wendy said, "I feel horrible for you."

"I'm not telling you that to gain your sympathy. I'm trying to explain what happened next."

"I think I know what happened," Wendy said. "You were Dan's next of kin. When the police came to you and told you he was dead, well, it was fortuitous, wasn't it?"