Harlan Coben - The Final Detail

Win turned the TV off. “Need a refill?”

Myron shook his head. “So what did Sawyer Wells tell you?”

“Not very much, I'm afraid. Clu was a drug addict. He tried to help him. Blah, blah, blah. Sawyer is leaving the Yankees, you know.”

“I didn't.”

“He credits them with raising him out of obscurity. But alas, now it's time for dear Sawyer to take hold of his reins and motivate more minions. He's going to start touring soon.”

“Like a rock star?”

Win nodded. “Complete with overpriced T-shirts.”

“Are they black?”

“I don't know. But at the end of each performance he encores after frenzied fans flick their Bics and shout, 'Freebird!' ”

“That's so 1977.”

“Isn't it? But I did a little checking. Guess who's sponsoring the tour.”

“Budweiser, the undisputed King of Beer?”

“Close,” Win said. “His new publisher. Riverton Press.”

“As in Vincent Riverton, former owner of the New York Yankees?”

“The very.”

Myron whistled, processed it, came up with nothing. “With all the buyouts in publishing, Riverton owns half the books in town. Probably means nothing.”

“Probably,” Win agreed. “If you have more questions, Sawyer is giving a seminar tomorrow at the Cagemore Auditorium at Reston University. He imnted me to attend. I'm allowed to bring a date.”

“I don't put out on the first date.”

“And you're proud of that?”

Myron took a deep chug. Maybe he was getting older, but Yoo-Hoo didn't have the same kick anymore. He craved a venti-size skim iced latte with a splash of vanilla, though he hated ordering it in front of other men. “I'm going to try to find out about Clu's autopsy tomorrow.”

“Through this Sally Li?”

Myron nodded. “She's been in court, but she's supposed to be back at the morgue tomorrow morning.”

“Think she'll tell you anything?”

“I don't know.”

“You may have to turn on the charm again,” Win said. “Is this Sally Li of the heterosexual persuasion?”

“She is now,” Myron said. “But once I turn on the charm-”

“All bets are off, yes.”

“Charm so potent,” Myron said, “he can turn a woman against men.”

“You should print that on your business card.” Win did that snifter circle, palm up and under the glass. “Before our old chum Billy Lee perished, did he reveal anything of import?”

“Not really,” Myron said. “Just that he thought I was the one who killed Clu and now wanted to kill him.”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm what?”

“Once again, your name rears its ugly head.”

“He was a strung-out addict.”

“I see,” Win said. “So he was just ranting?”

Silence.

“Somehow,” Myron said, “I keep ending up in the middle of this.”

“So it seems.”

“But I can't imagine why.”

“Life's little mysteries.”

“I also can't figure out how Billy Lee fits into any of this: into Clu's murder, into Esperanza's affair with Bonnie, into Clu getting thrown off the team, into Clu signing with FJ, into any of it.”

Win put down his snifter and stood. “I suggest we sleep on it.”

Good advice. Myron crawled under the covers and plunged immediately into slumber land. It was several hours later-after the REM and alpha sleep cycles, when he started rising to consciousness and his brain activity started going haywire-that it came to him. He thought again about FJ and about his having tailed Myron. He thought about what FJ had said, about how he had even seen Myron at the cemetery before Myron disappeared with Terese in the Caribbean.

And a big click sounded in his head.

He called FJ at nine in the morning. FJ's secretary said that Mr. Ache could not be disturbed. Myron told her it was urgent. Sorry, Mr. Ache was out of the office. But, Myron reminded her, you just said he could not be disturbed. He cannot be disturbed, the secretary countered, because he is not in the office. Ah.

“Tell him I want to meet with him,” Myron said. “And it has to be today.”

“I can't promise you-”

“Just tell him.”

He looked at his watch. He was meeting Dad at “the Club” at noon. It gave him time to try to rendezvous with Sally Li, chief medical examiner for Bergen County. He called her office and told her he wanted to talk.

“Not here,” Sally said. “You know the Fashion Center?”

“It's one of the malls on Route Seventeen, right?”

“On the Ridgewood Avenue intersection, yeah. There's a sub shop outside the Bed, Bath and Beyond. Meet me there in an hour.”

“Bed, Bath and Beyond is part of the Fashion Center?”

“Must have something to do with the Beyond part.”

She hung up. He got in the rental car and started out to Paramus, New Jersey. Motto: There's No Such Thing as Too Much Commerce. The town of Paramus was like a muggy, jam-packed elevator with some jerk holding the door-open button and shouting, “Come on, we can squeeze in one more strip mall.”

Nothing about the Fashion Center was particularly fashionable; the mall was in fact so unhip that teenagers didn't even hang out there. Sally Li sat on a bench, an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips. She wore green hospital scrubs and rubber sports sandals with no socks- footwear sported by many a coroner because it made cleaning off blood and guts and other human debris easy with a simple garden hose.

Okay, a little background here: For the past decade or so, Myron had been involved in an on-again, off-again romance with Jessica Culver. More recently they'd been in love. They'd moved in together. And now it was over. Or so he thought. He was not sure what exactly had happened. Objective observers might point to Brenda. She came along and changed a lot of things. But Myron was not sure.

So what's that have to do with Sally Li?

Jessica's father, Adam Culver, had been the Bergen County chief medical examiner until he was murdered several years ago. Sally Li, his assistant and close friend, had taken his place. That was how Myron knew her.

He approached. “Another no-smoking mall?”

“No one uses the word no anymore,” Sally said. “They say free instead. This isn't a no-smoking mall; it's a smoke-free zone. Next they'll call underwater an air-free zone. Or the Senate a brain-free zone.”

“So why did you want to meet here?”

Sally sighed, sat up. “Because you want to know about Clu Raid's autopsy, right?”

Myron hesitated, nodded.

“Well, my superiors-and I use that term knowing I don't even have equals-would frown upon seeing us together. In fact, they'd probably try to fire my ass.”

“So why take the risk?” he asked.

“First off, I'm going to change jobs. I'm going back West, probably UCLAl Second, I'm cute, female, and what they now call Asian-American. It makes it harder to fire me. I might make a stink and the politically ambitious hate to look like they're beating up a minority. Third, you're a good guy. You figured out the truth when Adam was killed. I figure I owe you.” She took the cigarette out of her mouth, put it back in the package, took out another one, put it in her mouth. “So what do you want to know?”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Myron said, “I thought I'd have to turn on my charm.”

“Only if you want to get me naked.” She waved a hand. “Ah, who am I kidding? Go ahead, Myron, fire away.”

“Injuries?” Myron asked.

“Four bullet wounds.”

“I thought there were three.”

“So did we at first. Two to the head, both at close range, either one of which would have been fatal. The cops thought there was only one. There was another in the right calf, and another in the back between the shoulder blades.”