Harlan Coben - The Woods

"To what?"

"I think your cologne is peeling my wallpaper. If you listen closely, you can hear it. Shh, listen."

Even Chamique smiled a little.

"Don't recant," I said to her.

"I have to."

"Then I'll charge you."

Her attorney was ready to do battle again, but Chamique put her hand on his arm. "You won't do that, Mr. Copeland." "I will."

But she knew better. I was bluffing. She was a poor, scared rape victim who had a chance of cashing in – making more money than she would probably see again in her lifetime. Who the hell was I to lecture her on values and justice?

She and her attorney stood. Horace Foley said, "We sign the agreement in the morning."

I didn't say anything. Part of me felt relief, and that shamed me. Jane Care would survive now. My father's memory-okay, my political career-wouldn't take an unnecessary hit. Best off, I was off the hook. It wasn't my doing. It was Chamiques.

Chamique offered me her hand. I took it. "Thank you," she said.

"Don't do this," I said, but there was nothing left in my try. She could see that. She smiled. Then they left my office. First Chamique, then her attorney. His cologne stayed behind as a memento.

Muse shrugged and said, "What can you do?"

I was wondering that myself.

I got home and had dinner with Cara. She had a "homework" assignment that consisted of finding things that were red in magazines and cutting them out. This would seem like a very easy task, but of course, nothing we found together would work for her. She didn't like the red wagon or the model's red dress or even the red fire engine. The problem, I soon realized, was that I was showing enthusiasm for what she'd find. I would say, "That dress is red, sweetie! You're right! I think that would be perfect!"

After about twenty minutes of this, I saw the error of my ways. When she stumbled across a picture of a bottle of a ketchup, I made my voice flat and shrugged my shoulders and said, "I don't really like ketchup."

She grabbed the scissors with the safety handles and went to work.

Kids.

Cara started singing a song as she cut. The song was from a cartoon TV show called Dora the Explorer and basically consisted of singing the word backpack over and over again until the head of a nearby parent exploded into a million pieces. I had made the mistake about two months ago of buying her a Dora the Explorer Talking Backpack ("back pack, backpack," repeat) with matching talking Map (song: "I'm the map, I'm the map, I'm the map," repeat). When her cousin, Madison, came over, they would often play Dora the Explorer. One of them would play the role of Dora. The other would be a monkey with the rather interesting moniker "Boots." You don't often meet monkeys named for footwear.

I was thinking about that, about Boots, about the way Cara and her cousin would argue over who would be Dora and who would be Boots, when it struck me like the proverbial thunderbolt.

"Daddy?"

"One second, kitten."

I ran upstairs, my footsteps shaking the house. Where the hell were those bills from the frat house? I started tearing apart the room. It took me a few minutes to find them-I had been ready to throw them all away after my meeting this morning.

Bang, there they were.

I rifled through them. I found the online charges, the monthly ones, and then I grabbed the phone and called Muse's number. She answered on the first ring.

"What's up?"

"When you were in college," I asked, "how often did you pull all-nighters?" "Twice a week minimum." "How did you keep yourself awake?" "M amp;Ms. Lots of them. The oranges are amphetamines, I swear." "Buy as many as you need. You can even expense them." "I like the tone of your voice, Cope." "I have an idea, but I don't know if we have the time." "Don't worry about the time. What's the idea concerning?" "It concerns," I said, "our old buddies Cal and Jim."

I got Cologne Lawyer Foley's home number and woke him up.

"Don't sign those papers until the afternoon," I said.

"Why?"

"Because if you do, I will make sure my office comes down on you and your clients as hard as they can. I will let it be known that we don't cut deals with Horace Foley, that we always make sure the client serves the maximum time."

"You can't do that."

I said nothing.

"I have an obligation to my client."

"Tell her I asked for the extra time. Tell her it's in her best interest."

"And what do I say to the other side?"

"I don't know, Foley, find something wrong with the paperwork maybe, whatever. Just stall until the afternoon."

"And how is that in my client’s best interest?"

"If I get lucky and hurt them, you can renegotiate. More moola in your pockets." He paused. Then: "Hey, Cope?" "What?" "She's a strange kid. Chamique, I mean." "How so?" "Most of them would have taken the money right away. I've had to push her because, frankly, taking the money early is her best move. We both know that. But she wouldn't hear of it until they sandbagged her with that Jim/James thing yesterday. See, before that, despite what she said in court, she was more interested in them going to jail than the financial payoff. She really wanted justice."

"And that surprises you?"

"You're new on this job. Me, I've been doing this for twenty-seven years. You grow cynical. So yeah, she surprised the hell out of me." "Is there a point to your telling me all this?" "Yeah, there is. Me, you know what I'm all about. Getting my one- third of the settlement. But Chamique is different. This is life-changing money for her. So whatever you're up to, Mr. Prosecutor, don't screw it up for her."

Lucy drank alone.

It was night. Lucy lived on campus in faculty housing. The place was beyond depressing. Most professors worked hard and long and saved money in the hopes that they could move the hell out of faculty housing. Lucy had lived here for a year now. Before her, an English-lit professor named Amanda Simon had spent three decades of spinster-hood in this very unit. Lung cancer cut her down at the age of fifty-eight. Her remnants remained in the smoky smell left behind. Despite ripping up the wall-to-wall carpeting and repainting the entire place, the cigarette stench remained. It was a little like living in an ashtray.

Lucy was a vodka girl. She looked out the window. In the distance, she heard music. This was a college campus. There was always music playing. She checked her watch. Midnight.

She flipped on her own tinny-speaker iPod stereo and set it on a playlist she called "Mellow." Each song was not only slow but a total heart ripper. So she would drink her vodka and sit in her depressing apartment and smell the smoke from a dead woman and listen to aching songs of loss and want and devastation. Pitiful, but sometimes it was enough to feel. It didn't matter if it hurt or not. Just to feel.

Right now, Joseph Arthur was singing "Honey and the Moon." He sang to his true love that if she weren't real, he would make her up. Wow, what a thing. Lucy tried to imagine a man, a worthy man, saying that to her. It made her shake her head in wonder.

She closed her eyes and tried to put the pieces together. Nothing fit. The past was rising up again. Lucy had spent her entire adult life running away from those damn woods at her fathers camp. She had fled across the country, all the way to California, and she had fled all the way back again. She had changed her name and hair color. But the past al ways followed. Sometimes it would let her gain a comfortable lead- lulled her into thinking that she had put enough distance between that night and the present day-but the dead always closed the gap.

In the end that awful night always found her.

But this time… how? Those journal entries… how could they exist? Sylvia Potter had barely been born when the Summer Slasher struck Camp PLUS (Peace Love Understanding Summer). What could she know about it? Of course, like Lonnie, she might have gone online, done some research, figured out that Lucy had a past. Or maybe some one, someone older and wiser, had told her something.