Harlan Coben - The Innocent

The phone rang six times before going into Olivia's voice mail. The sound of his wife's animated voice, so familiar, so… his, made his heart stutter. He waited patiently for Olivia to finish. Then the beep sounded.

"Hey, it's me," he said. He could hear the tautness in his tone and fought against it. "Could you give me a call when you have a second?" He paused. He usually ended with a perfunctory "love you," but this time he hit the end button without adding what had always come so naturally.

He kept looking out the window. In prison what eventually got to him was not the brutality or the repulsion. Just the opposite. It was when those things became the norm. After a while Matt started to like his brothers in the Aryan Nation- actually enjoyed their company. It was a perverse offshoot of the Stockholm syndrome. Survival is the thing. The mind will twist to survive. Anything can become normal. That was what made Matt pause.

He thought about Olivia's laugh. How it took him away from all that. He wondered now if that laugh was real or just another cruel mirage, something to mock him with kindness.

Then Matt did something truly strange.

He held the camera phone out in front of him, arm's distance, and snapped a picture of himself. He didn't smile. He just looked into the lens. The photograph was on the little screen now. He looked at his own face and was not sure what he saw.

He pressed her phone number and sent the picture to Olivia.

TWO HOURS PASSED. Olivia did not call back.

Matt spent those two hours with Ike Kier, a pampered senior partner who wore his gray hair too long and slicked back. He came from a wealthy family. He knew how to network and not much else, but sometimes that was enough. He owned a Viper and two Harley-Davidsons. His nickname around the office was Midlife, short for Midlife Crisis.

Midlife was bright enough to know that he was not that bright. He thus used Matt a lot. Matt, he knew, was willing to do most of the heavy lifting and stay behind the scenes. This allowed Midlife to maintain the big corporate client relationship and look good. Matt cared, he guessed, but not enough to do anything about it.

Corporate fraud may not be good for America, but it was damned profitable for the white-shoe, white-collar law firm of Carter Sturgis. Right now they were discussing the case of Mike Sterman, the CEO of a big pharmaceutical company called Pentacol, who'd been charged with, among other things, cooking the books to manipulate stock prices.

"In sum," Midlife said, giving the room his best you-the-jury baritone, "our defense will be…?" He looked to Matt for the answer.

"Blame the other guy," Matt said.

"Which other guy?"

"Yes."

"Huh?"

"We blame whoever we can," Matt said. "The CFO"- Sterman's brother-in-law and former best friend-"the COO, the C Choose-Your-Favorite-Two-Letter Combination, the accounting firm, the banks, the board, the lower-level employees. We claim some of them are crooks. We claim some of them made honest mistakes that steamrolled."

"Isn't that contradictory?" Midlife asked, folding his hands and lowering his eyebrows. "Claiming both malice and mistakes?" He stopped, looked up, smiled, nodded. Malice and mistakes. Midlife liked the way that sounded.

"We're looking to confuse," Matt said. "You blame enough people, nothing sticks. The jury ends up knowing something went wrong, but you don't know where to place the blame. We throw facts and figures at them. We bring up every possible mistake, every uncrossed t and undotted i . We act like every discrepancy is a huge deal, even if it's not. We question everything. We are skeptical of everyone."

"And what about the bar mitzvah?"

Sterman had thrown his son a two-million-dollar bar mitzvah, featuring a chartered plane to Bermuda where both Beyoncé and Ja Rule performed. The videotape- actually, it was a surround-sound DVD- was going to be shown to the jury.

"A legitimate business expense," Matt said.

"Come again?"

"Look who was there. Executives from the big drug chains. Top buyers. Government officials from the FDA who approve drugs and give out grants. Doctors, researchers, whatever. Our client was wining and dining clients- a legit American business practice since before the Boston Tea Party. What he did was for the good of the company."

"And the fact that the party was for his son's bar mitzvah?"

Matt shrugged. "It works in his favor, actually. Sterman was being brilliant."

Midlife made a face.

"Think about it. If Sterman had said, 'I'm throwing a big party to win over important clients,' well, that wouldn't have helped him develop the relationships he was looking for. So Sterman, that sly genius, went with something more subtle. He invites his business associates to his son's bar mitzvah. They are caught off guard now. They find it sweet, this family guy inviting them to something personal rather than hitting them up in some stuffy business venue. Sterman, like any brilliant CEO, was creative in his approach."

Midlife arched an eyebrow and nodded slowly. "Oh, I like that."

Matt had figured as much. He checked his cell phone, making sure it was still powered up. It was. He checked to see if there were any messages or missed calls. There were none.

Midlife rose. "We'll do more prep tomorrow?"

"Sure," Matt said.

He left. Rolanda stuck her head in the door. She looked down the hall in the direction of Midlife, faked sticking a finger down her throat, and made a gagging noise. Matt checked the time. Time to get moving.

He hurried out to the firm's parking lot. His gaze wandered, focusing on nothing and everything. Tommy, the parking lot attendant, waved to him. Still dazed, Matt may have waved back. His spot was in the back, under the dripping pipes. The world was about the pecking order, he knew, even in parking lots.

Someone was cleaning a green Jag belonging to one of the founding partners. Matt turned. One of Midlife's Harleys was there, covered by a see-through tarp. There was a tipped-over shopping cart. Three of the four wheels had been ripped off the cart. What would someone want with three shopping-cart wheels?

Matt's eyes drifted over the cars on the street, mostly gypsy cabs, and noticed a gray Ford Taurus because the license plate was MLH- 472, and Matt's own initials were MKH, pretty close, and things like that were distractions.

But once in his car- once alone with his thoughts- something new started gnawing at him.

Okay, he thought, trying his best to stay rational. Let's assume the worst- that what he saw on the camera phone were the opening moments of a tryst of some kind.

Why would Olivia send it to him?

What would be the point? Did she want to get caught? Was this a cry for help?

That didn't really add up.

But then he realized something else: Olivia hadn't sent it.

It had come from her phone, yes, but she- assuming that was Olivia with the platinum wig- didn't seem to realize that the camera was on her. He remembered thinking that. She was the subject of the film- the filmee, if you will, not the filmer.

So who sent it? Was it Mr. Blue-Black Hair? If so, then who snapped the first picture, the one of Blue-Black? Had he taken it himself?

Answer: No.

Blue-Black had his palm up as if waving. Matt remembered the backside of a ring on his finger- or what he thought was a ring. He really wasn't up for looking at the picture again. But he thought about it. Could that have been a wedding band? No, the ring was on the right hand.

Either way, who had taken Blue-Black's picture?

Olivia?

Why would she send it to him? Or was the picture sent to him inadvertently? Like maybe someone hit the wrong number on the speed dial?