Harlan Coben - Just One Look

Dellapelle nodded. “So where is the other guy?”

Perlmutter did not say anything. He just stared at the floor. Someone had indeed been held down. Someone who found a pebble and scratched two words into the floor, all in caps. A name actually, another person from that strange photograph, a name he’d just heard from Grace Lawson:

“SHANE ALWORTH.”

Charlaine Swain stayed to help Grace back to her room. Their silence was comfortable. Grace wondered about that. She wondered about a lot of things. She wondered why Jack had run away all those years ago. She wondered why he’d never touched that trust fund, why he let his sister and father control his percentage. She wondered why he’d run away not long after the Boston Massacre. She wondered about Geri Duncan and why she ended up dead two months later. And she wondered, perhaps most of all, if meeting Jack in France that day, if falling in love with him, had been more than just a coincidence.

She no longer wondered if it was all connected. She knew that it was. When they reached Grace’s room, Charlaine helped her get back into bed. She turned to go.

“Do you want to stay a few minutes?” Grace asked.

Charlaine nodded. “I’d like that.”

They talked. They started with what they had in common – children – but it was clear neither one of them wanted to stay on the subject long. An hour passed in a moment. Grace was not sure what they’d even discussed exactly. Just that she was grateful.

At nearly two in the morning the hospital phone next to Grace rang. For a moment they both just stared at it. Then Grace reached over and picked it up.

“Hello?”

“I got your message. About Allaw and Still Night.”

She recognized the voice. It was Jimmy X.

“Where are you?”

“In the hospital. I’m downstairs. They won’t let me up.”

“I’ll be down in a minute.”

The hospital lobby was quiet.

Grace was not sure how to handle this. Jimmy X sat with his forearms resting against his thighs. He didn’t look up as she hobbled toward him. The receptionist read a magazine. The security guard whistled softly. Grace wondered if the guard would be able to protect her. She suddenly missed that gun.

She stopped in front of Jimmy X, stood over him, and waited. He looked up. Their eyes met and Grace knew. She didn’t know the details. She barely knew the outline. But she knew.

His voice was almost a plea. “How did you learn about Allaw?”

“My husband.”

Jimmy looked confused.

“My husband is Jack Lawson.”

His jaw dropped. “John?”

“That’s what he went by back then, I guess. He’s upstairs right now. He may very well die.”

“Oh God.” Jimmy buried his face in his hands.

Grace said, “You know what always bothered me?”

He did not reply.

“Your running away. It doesn’t happen very much – a rock star just giving up like that. There are rumors about Elvis or Jim Morrison, but that’s because they’re dead. There was that movie, Eddie and the Cruisers, but that was a movie. In reality, well, like I said before, the Who didn’t run away after Cincinnati. The Stones didn’t after Altamont Speedway. So why, Jimmy? Why did you run?”

He kept his head low.

“I know about the Allaw connection. It’s just a matter of time before someone puts it together.”

She waited. He dropped his hands away from his face and rubbed them together. He looked toward the security guard. Grace almost took a step back, but she held her ground.

“Do you know why rock concerts used to always start so late?” Jimmy asked.

The question threw her. “What?”

“I said…”

“I heard what you said. No, I don’t know why.”

“It’s because we’re so wasted – drunk, stoned, whatever – that our handlers need time to get us sobered up enough to perform.”

“Your point being?”

“That night I nearly passed out from cocaine and alcohol.” His gaze drifted off then, his eyes red. “That’s why there was such a long delay. That was why the crowd got so impatient. If I had been sober, if I had taken the stage on time…” He let his voice drift off with a “who knows” shrug.

She didn’t want excuses anymore. “Tell me about Allaw.”

“I can’t believe it.” He shook his head. “John Lawson is your husband? How the hell did that happen?”

She didn’t have an answer. She wondered if she ever would. The heart, she knew, was strange terrain. Could that have been part of the initial attraction, something subconscious, a knowing that they had both survived that terrible night? She flashed back to meeting Jack on that beach. Had it been fate, preordained – or planned? Did Jack want to meet the woman who had come to embody the Boston Massacre?

“Was my husband at the concert that night?” she asked.

“What, you don’t know?”

“We can play this two ways, Jimmy. One, I can pretend I know everything and just want confirmation. But I don’t. I may never know the truth, if you don’t tell me. You may be able to keep your secret. But I’ll keep looking. So will Carl Vespa and the Garrisons and the Reeds and the Weiders.”

He looked up, his face so like a child’s.

“But two – and I think this is more important – you can’t live with yourself anymore. You came to my house needing absolution. You know it’s time.”

He lowered his head. Grace heard the sobs. They wracked his body. Grace did not say a word. She did not put a hand on his shoulder. The security guard glanced over. The receptionist looked up from her magazine. But that was all. This was a hospital. Adults weeping were hardly foreign in this environment. They both looked away. A minute later Jimmy’s sobs started to quiet. His shoulders no longer shook.

“We met at a gig in Manchester,” Jimmy said, wiping his nose with his sleeve. “I was with a group called Still Night. There were four bands on the roster. One of them was Allaw. That’s how I met your husband. We hung out backstage, getting stoned. He was charming and all, but you have to understand. For me the music was everything. I wanted to make Born to Run , you know. I wanted to change the landscape of music. I ate, slept, dreamed, shat music. Lawson didn’t take it too seriously. The band was fun, that’s all. They had some decent songs, but the vocals and arrangement were totally amateur. Lawson didn’t have any grand illusions about making it big or anything.”

The security guard was whistling again. The receptionist had her nose back in the magazine. A car drove up to the entrance. The guard headed outside and pointed toward the ER.

“Allaw broke up a few months later, I think. So did Still Night. But Lawson and I stayed in touch. When I started up the Jimmy X Band, I almost thought of asking him to join.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t think he was that good a musician.”

Jimmy stood so suddenly that he startled Grace. She took a step back. She kept her eyes on him, still searching to make eye contact, as if that alone could keep him in place.

“Yeah, your husband was at the concert that night. I got him five tickets in the front pit. He brought some of his old band members with him. He even brought a couple backstage.”

He stopped then. They stood there. He looked off and for a moment Grace feared that she was losing him.

“Do you remember who they were?” she asked.

“The old band members?”

“Yes.”

“Two girls. One had this bright red hair.”

Sheila Lambert. “Was the other girl Geri Duncan?”

“I never knew her name.”

“How about Shane Alworth? Was he there?”

“Was that the guy on keyboard?”