Harlan Coben - Gone for Good

Squares wrote down the info. "Let me look into it."

My head ached. I tried to focus. "Did you have someone like that in your school?" I asked. "A psycho who'd just hurt people for the fun of it?"

"Yeah," Squares said. "Me."

I found it hard to believe. I knew abstractly Squares had been a punk of biblical proportions, but the idea that he'd been like the Ghost, that I'd have shuddered as he passed me in the halls, that he would crack a skull and laugh at the sound… it just would not compute.

I put the ice back on my nose, wincing when it touched down.

Squares shook his head. "Baby."

"Pity you didn't consider a career in medicine."

"Your nose is probably broken," he said.

"I figured."

"You want to go to the hospital?"

"Nah, I'm a tough guy."

That made him snicker. "Nothing they could do anyway." Then he stopped, gnawed on the inside of his cheek, said, "Something's come up."

I did not like the tone of his voice.

"I got a call from our favorite fed, Joe Pistillo."

Again I lowered down the ice. "Did they find Sheila?"

"Don't know."

"What did he want?"

"Wouldn't say. He just asked me to bring you in."

"When?"

"Now. He said he was calling me as a courtesy."

"Courtesy for what?"

"Damned if I know."

"My name is Clyde Smart," the man said in the gentlest voice Edna Rogers had ever heard. "I'm the county medical examiner."

Edna Rogers watched her husband, Neil, shake the man's hand. She settled for just a nod in his direction. The woman sheriff was there. So was one of her deputies. They all, Edna Rogers thought, had properly solemn faces. The man named Clyde was trying to dispense some comforting words. Edna Rogers shut him out.

Clyde Smart finally moved to the table. Neil and Edna Rogers, married forty-two years, stood next to each other and waited. They did not touch. They did not gather strength from one another. Many years had passed since they had last leaned on each other.

Finally, the medical examiner stopped talking and pulled back the sheet.

When Neil Rogers saw Sheila's face, he reeled back like a wounded animal. He kept his eyes up now and let out a cry that reminded Edna of a coyote when a storm is brewing. She knew from her husband's anguish, even before looking herself, that there would be no reprieve, no last-minute miracle. She summoned the courage and gazed at her daughter. She reached out a hand the maternal desire to comfort, even in death, never let up but she made herself stop.

Edna continued to stare down until her vision blurred, until Edna could almost see Sheila's face transforming, the years running backward, peeling down, until her firstborn was her baby again, her whole life ahead of her, a second chance for her mother to do it right.

And then Edna Rogers started to cry.

"What happened to your nose?" Pistillo asked me.

We were back in his office. Squares stayed in the waiting room. I sat in the armchair in front of Pistillo's desk. His chair, I noticed this time, was set a little higher than mine, probably for reasons of intimidation. Claudia Fisher, the agent who'd visited me at Covenant House, stood behind me with her arms crossed.

"You should see the other guy," I said.

"You got into a fight?"

"I fell," I said.

Pistillo didn't believe me, but that was okay. He put both hands on his desk. "We'd like you to run through it again for us," he said.

"Through what?"

"How Sheila Rogers disappeared."

"Have you found her?"

"Just bear with us please." He coughed into his fist. "What time did Sheila Rogers leave your apartment?"

"Why?"

"Please, Mr. Klein, if you could just help us out here."

"I think she left around five in the morning."

"You're sure about that?"

"Think," I said. "I used the word think."

"Why aren't you sure?"

"I was asleep. I thought I heard her leave."

"At five?"

"Yes."

"You looked at the clock?" "Are you for real? I don't know."

"How else would you know it was five?"

"I have a great internal clock, I don't know. Can we move on?"

He nodded and shifted in his seat. "Ms. Rogers left you a note, correct?"

"Yes."

"Where was the note?"

"You mean, where in the apartment?"

"Yes."

"What's the difference?"

He offered up his most patronizing smile. "Please."

"On the kitchen counter," I said. "It's, made of Formica, if that helps."

"What did the note say exactly?"

"That's personal."

"Mr. Klein "

I sighed. No reason to fight him. "She told me that she'd love me always."

"What else?"

"That was it."

"Just that she'd love you always?"

"Yep."

"Do you still have the note?"

"I do."

"May we see it?"

"May you tell me why I'm here?"

Pistillo sat back. "After leaving your father's house, did you and Ms. Rogers head straight back to your apartment?"

The change of subject threw me. "What are you talking about?"

"You attended your mother's funeral, correct?"

"Yes."

"Then you and Sheila Rogers returned to your apartment. That was what you told us, no?"

"That's what I told you."

"And is it the truth?"

"Yes."

"Did you stop on the way home?"

"No."

"Can anyone verify that?"

"Verify that I didn't stop?"

"Verify that you two went back to your apartment and stayed there for the remainder of the evening."

"Why would anyone have to verify that?"

"Please, Mr. Klein."

"I don't know if anyone can verify it or not."

"Did you talk with anyone?"

"No."

"Did a neighbor see you?"

"I don't know." I looked over my shoulder at Claudia Fisher. "Why don't you canvass the neighborhood? Isn't that what you guys are famous for?"

"Why was Sheila Rogers in New Mexico?"

I turned back around. "I don't know that she was."

"She never told you that she was going?"

"I know nothing about it."

"How about you, Mr. Klein?"

"How about me what?"

"Do you know anyone in New Mexico?"

"I don't even know the way to Santa Fe."

" San Jose," Pistillo corrected him, smiling at the lame joke. "We have a list of your recent incoming calls."

"How nice for you."

He sort of shrugged. "Modern technology."

"And that's legal? You having my phone records?"

"We got a warrant."

"I bet you did. So what do you want to know?"

Claudia Fisher moved for the first time. She handed me a sheet of paper. I glanced down at what appeared to be a photocopy of a phone bill. One number an unfamiliar one was highlighted in yellow.

"Your residence received a phone call from a pay phone in Paradise Hills, New Mexico, the night before your mother's funeral." He leaned in a little closer. "Who was that call from?"

I studied the number, totally confused yet again. The call had come in at six-fifteen in the evening. It'd lasted eight minutes. I did not know what it meant, but I didn't like the whole tone of this conversation. I looked up.

"Should I have a lawyer?"

That slowed Pistillo down. He and Claudia Fisher exchanged another glance. "You can always have a lawyer," he said a little too carefully.

"I want Squares in here."

"He'snot a lawyer."

"Still. I don't know what the hell is going on, but I don't like these questions. I came down because I thought you had information for me. Instead, I'm being interrogated."

"Interrogated?" Pistillo spread his hands. "We're just chatting."

A phone trilled behind me. Claudia Fisher snapped up her cell phone a la Wyatt Earp. She put it to her ear and said, "Fisher." After listening for about a minute, she hung up without saying good-bye. Then she nodded some kind of confirmation at Pistillo.