Harlan Coben - The Final Detail

“Look, mister, I'm friendly with all the cops around here. I say the word, they'll lock you up for trespassing.”

“I understand your concerns,” Myron said. “How about if we talk by phone?”

“Just go away.”

The little boy started crying.

“Go away,” she repeated. “Or I'll call the police.”

More crying.

“Okay,” Myron said. “I'm leaving.” Then, figuring what the hey, he shouted, “Does the name Lucy Mayor mean anything to you?”

The child's crying was the only reply.

Myron let loose a sigh and started back to the car. Now what? He hadn't even been able to see her. Maybe he could poke around the house, try to peek in a window. Oh, that was a great idea. Get arrested for peeping. Or worse, scare a little kid. And she'd call the cops for sure-

Hold the phone.

Barbara Cromwell said that she was friendly with the police in town. But so was Myron. In a way. Wilston was the town where Clu had been nabbed on that first drunk driving charge when he was in the minors. Myron had gotten him off with the help of two cops. He scanned the memory banks for names. It didn't take him long. The arresting officer was named Kobler. Myron didn't remember his first name. The sheriff was a guy named Ron Lem-mon. Lemmon was in his fifties then. He might have retired. But odds were pretty good one of them would still be on the force. They might know something about the mysterious Barbara Cromwell.

Worth a shot anyway.

One might expect the Wilston police station to be in a dinky little building. Not so. It was in the basement of a tall, fortresslike structure of dark, old brick. The steps down had one of those old bomb shelter signs, the black and yellow triangles still bright in the ominous circle. The image brought back memories of Burnet Hill Elementary School and the old bombing drills, a somewhat intense activity in which children were taught that crouching in a corridor was a suitable defense against a Soviet nuclear blitzkrieg.

Myron had never been to the station house before. After Clu's accident he'd met with the two cops in the back booth of a diner on Route 9. The whole episode took less than ten minutes. No one wanted to hurt the up-and-coming superstar. No one wanted to ruin Clu's promising young career. Dollars changed hands-some for the arresting officer, some for the sheriff in charge. Donations, they'd called it with a chuckle. Everyone smiled.

The desk sergeant looked up at Myron when he came in. He was around thirty and, like so many cops nowadays, built as if he spent more time in the weight room than the doughnut shop. His nametag read “Hobert.” “May I help you?”

“Does Sheriff Lemmon still work here?”

“No, sorry to say. Ron died, oh, gotta be a year now. Retired about two years before that.”

“I'm sony to hear that.”

“Yeah, cancer. Ate through him like a hungry rat.” Hobert shrugged as if to say, What can you do?

“How about a guy named Kobler? I think he was a deputy about ten years ago.”

Hobert's voice was suddenly tight. “Eddie's not on the force anymore.”

“Does he still live in the area?”

“No. I think he lives in Wyoming. May I ask your name, sir?”

“Myron Bolitar.”

“Your name sounds familiar.”

“I used to play basketball.”

“Nah, that's not it. I hate basketball.” He thought a moment, then shook his head. “So why are you asking about two former cops?”

“They're sort of old friends.”

Hobert looked doubtful.

“i wanted to ask them about someone a client of mine has become involved with.”

“A client?”

Myron put on his helpless-puppy-dog smile. He usually used it on old ladies, but hey, waste not, want not. “I'm a sports agent. My job is to look after athletes and, well, make sure they're not being taken advantage of. So this client of mine has an interest in a lady who lives in town. I just wanted to make sure she's not a gold digger or anything.”

Two words: truly lame.

Hobert said, “What's her name?”

“Barbara Cromwell.”

The officer blinked. “This a joke?”

“No.”

“One of your athletes is interested in dating Barbara Cromwell?”

Myron tried a little backpedal. “I might have gotten the name wrong,” he said.

“I think maybe you have.”

“Why's that?”

“You mentioned Ron Lemmon before. The old sheriff.”

“Right.”

“Barbara Cromwell is his daughter.”

For a moment Myron just stood there. A fan whirred. A phone rang. Hobert said, “Excuse me a second,” and picked it up. Myron heard none of it. Someone had frozen the moment. Someone had suspended him above a dark hole, giving Myron plenty of time to stare down at the nothingness, until suddenly the same someone let go. Myron plunged down into the black, his hands wheeling, his body turning, waiting, almost hoping, to smash against the bottom.

Myron stumbled back outside. He walked the town square. He grabbed something to eat at a Mexican place, wolfing it down without even tasting the food. Win called.

“We were correct,” Win said. “Hester Crimstein was trying to divert our attention”

“She admitted it?”

“No. She offers no explanation. She claims that she will speak with you and only you and only in person. She then pushed me for details on your whereabouts.”

No surprise.

“Would you like me to”-Win paused-“interrogate her?”

“Please no,” Myron said. “Ethics aside, I don't think there's much need anymore.”

“Oh?”

“Sawyer Wells said he was a drug counselor at Rockwell.”

“I remember.”

“Billy Lee Palms was treated at Rockwell. His mother

“Not a coincidence,” Myron said. “It explains everything.”

When he finished talking to Win, he strolled the main street of Wilston seven or eight times over. The shopkeepers, light on business, smiled at him. He smiled back. He nodded hello to the large assortment of people passing by. The town was so stuck in the sixties, the kind of place where people still wore unkempt beards and black caps and looked like Seals and Crofts at an outdoor concert. He liked it here. He liked it a lot.

He thought about his mother and his father. He thought about them getting old and wondered why he could not accept it. He thought about how his father's “chest pains” were partially his fault, how the strain of his running away had at least tangentially contributed to what happened. He thought about what it would have been like for his parents if they had suffered the same fate as Sophie and Gary Mayor, if he had disappeared at seventeen without a trace and were never found. He thought about Jessica and how she claimed she would fight for him. He thought about Brenda and what he had done. He thought about Terese and last night and what, if anything, it meant. He thought about Win and Esperanza and the sacrifices that friends make.

For a long time he did not think about Clu's murder or Billy Lee's death. He did not think about Lucy Mayor and her disappearance and his connection to it. But that lasted only so long. Eventually he made a few phone calls, did some digging, confirmed what he already suspected.

The answers never come with cries of “Eureka!” You stumble toward them, often in total darkness. You stagger through an unlit room at night, tripping over the unseen, lumbering forward, bruising your shins, toppling over and righting yourself, feeling your way across the walls and hoping your hand happens upon the light switch. And then -to keep within this piss-poor but sadly accurate analogy -when you find the switch, when you flick it on and bathe the room in light, sometimes the room is just as you pictured it. And then sometimes, like now, you wonder if you'd have been better off staying forever stumbling in the dark.