Harlan Coben - Just One Look

“What?”

“The window. Look down at the sidewalk. Come on, I’ll show you.”

Grace limped toward the huge picture window and pointed down. Sandra Koval moved warily, as if she expected that Grace would push her through it. But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t it at all.

When Sandra Koval looked down, a small gasp escaped her lips. On the sidewalk below them, pacing like two lions, were Carl Vespa and Cram. Grace turned away and started for the door.

“Where are you going?” Sandra asked.

“Oh,” Grace said. She wrote something down on a piece of paper. “This is Captain Perlmutter’s phone number. You have your choice. You can call and leave with him. Or you can take your chances with the sidewalk.”

She put the piece of paper on the conference table. And then, without looking back, Grace left the room.

Sandra Koval chose to call Captain Stuart Perlmutter. She then lawyered up. Hester Crimstein, the legend herself, was going to represent her. It would be a tough case to make, but the DA thought, because of certain developments, that he could do it.

One of those developments was the return of Allaw’s redheaded member, Sheila Lambert. When Sheila read about the arrest-and the media appeal for her help-she came forward. The man who shot her husband fit the description of the man who threatened Grace at the supermarket. His name was Martin Brayboy. He’d been caught and had agreed to testify for the prosecution.

Sheila Lambert also told prosecutors that Shane Alworth had been at the concert that night but that he had decided at the last minute not to go backstage and confront Jimmy X. Sheila Lambert wasn’t sure why he’d changed his mind, but she speculated that Shane realized John Lawson was too high, too wired, too willing to snap.

Grace was supposed to find comfort in that, but she’s not sure she did.

Captain Stuart Perlmutter had hooked up with Scott Duncan’s old boss, Linda Morgan, the U.S. attorney. They managed to turn one of the men from Carl Vespa’s inner circle. Rumor has it they’ll be arresting him soon, though it will be hard to nail him on Jimmy X’s murder. Cram called Grace one afternoon. He told her Vespa wasn’t fighting back. He stayed in bed a lot. “It’s like watching a slow death,” he told her. She didn’t really want to hear it.

Charlaine Swain brought Mike home from the hospital. They returned to their regularly scheduled lives. Mike is back at work. They watch TV together now instead of in separate rooms. Mike still falls asleep early. They’ve upped their lovemaking somewhat, but it’s all too self-conscious. Charlaine and Grace have become close friends. Charlaine never complains but Grace can see the desperation. Something, Grace knows, will soon give.

Freddy Sykes is still recuperating. He put his house up for sale and is buying a condo in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.

Cora remained Cora. Enough said on that subject.

Evelyn and Paul Alworth, Jack’s-or in this case, she should say, Shane’s-mother and brother, have also come forward. Over the years Jack had used the trust money to pay for Paul’s schooling. When he started working with Pentocol Pharmaceuticals, Jack moved his mother into that condominium development so they could be closer. They had lunch together at the condo at least once a week. Both Evelyn and Paul wanted very much to be a part of the children’s lives-they were, after all, Emma and Max’s grandmother and uncle-but they understood that it would be best to take it slow.

As for Emma and Max, they handled the tragedy in very different ways.

Max likes to talk about his father. He wants to know where Daddy is, what heaven is like, if Daddy really sees them. He wants to be assured that his father can still observe the key events of his young life. Grace tries to answer him the best she can-tries to sell it, as it were-but her words have the stilted hollow of the dubious. Max wants Grace to make up “Jenny Jenkins” rhymes with him in the tub, like Jack used to do, and when she does, Max laughs and he sounds so much like his father that Grace thinks her heart might explode right then and there.

Emma, her father’s princess, never talks about Jack. She does not ask questions. She does not look at photographs or reminisce. Grace tries to facilitate her daughter’s needs, but she is never sure what approach to take. Psychiatrists talk about opening up. Grace, who has suffered her share of tragedies, is not so sure. There is, she’s learned, something to be said for denial, for severing and compartmentalizing.

Strangely enough, Emma seems happy. She’s doing well in school. She has lots of friends. But Grace knows better. Emma never writes poetry anymore. She won’t even look at her journal. She insists now on sleeping with her door shut. Grace stands outside her daughter’s bedroom at night, often very late, and sometimes she thinks she hears soft sobs. In the morning, after Emma goes to school, Grace checks her daughter’s room.

Her pillow is always wet.

People naturally assume that if Jack were still alive, Grace would have a lot of questions for him. That’s true, but she no longer cares about the details of what a stoned, scared kid of twenty did in the face of that devastation and aftermath. In hindsight he should have told her. But then again suppose he had? Suppose Jack had told her right in the beginning? Or a month into their relationship? A year? How would she have reacted? Would she have stayed? She thinks about Emma and Max, about the simple fact that they are here, and the road untraveled brings a shiver.

So late at night, when Grace lies alone in their too-large bed and talks to Jack, feeling very strange because, really, she doesn’t believe he’s listening, her questions are more basic: Max wants to sign up for the Kasselton traveling soccer team, but isn’t he too young for that kind of commitment? The school wants to put Emma in an accelerated English program, but will that put too much pressure on her? Should we still go to Disney World in February, without you, or will that be too painful a reminder? And what, Jack, should I do about those damn tears on Emma’s pillow?

Questions like that.

Scott Duncan came by a week after Sandra’s arrest. When she opened the door, he said, “I found something.”

“What?”

“This was in Geri’s stuff,” Duncan said.

He handed her a beat-up cassette. There was no label on it but faintly, in black ink, someone had written: ALLAW.

They moved silently into the den. Grace stuck the cassette in her player and pressed the play button.

“Invisible Ink” was the third song.

There were similarities to “Pale Ink.” Would a court of law have found Jimmy guilty of plagiarism? It would be a close call, but Grace figured that the answer, after all these years, was probably no. There were plenty of songs that sounded alike. There was also a fine line between influence and plagiarism. “Pale Ink,” it seemed to her, probably straddled that blurry line.

So much that went wrong did-straddled a blurry line, that is.

“Scott?”

He did not turn toward her.

“Don’t you think it’s time we cleared the air?”

He nodded slowly.

She was not sure how to put this. “When you found out your sister was murdered, you investigated with a passion. You left your job. You went all out.”

“Yes.”

“It wouldn’t have been hard to find out she had an old boyfriend.”

“Not hard at all,” Duncan agreed.

“And you would have found out that his name was Shane Alworth.”

“I knew about Shane before all this. They dated for six months. But I thought Geri had died in a fire. There was no reason to follow up with him.”

“Right. But now, after you talked to Monte Scanlon, you did.”