Harlan Coben - The Woods

"They think maybe you had something to do with those murders."

"Wonderful, thank you. So what happened next, Lonnie? They tell you to plant these journals, right?"

"Yes."

"Who wrote them?"

"I don't know. I guess they did."

"You keep saying they. How many of them were there?"

"Two."

"And what were their names, Lonnie?"

"I don't know. Look, they were private eyes, okay? Like that. They said they'd been hired by one of the victim's families."

One of the victim's families. A lie. A bald-faced lie. It was MVD, the private investigation firm in Newark. It was suddenly starting to make a lot of sense. All of this was.

"They mentioned the name of this client?"

"No. They said it was confidential."

"I bet. What else did they say?"

"They told me that their firm was looking into these old murders. That they didn't believe the official version, blaming them on the Summer Slasher."

I looked at Lucy. I had filled her in on my visits with Wayne Steubens and Geoff Bedford. We talked about that night, our own role, the mistakes we made, the past certainty that all four were dead and that Wayne Steubens had killed them.

We had no idea what to think anymore.

"Anything else?"

"That's it."

"Oh, come on now, Lonnie."

"That's all I know, I swear."

"No, I don't think so. I mean, these guys sent Lucy those journals to get her to react, right?" He said nothing. "You were supposed to watch her. You were supposed to tell them what she said and did. That's why you came in here the other day and told her how you found out all that stuff online about her past. You hoped that she'd confide in you. That was part of your assignment, wasn't it? You were supposed to exploit her trust and worm your way even deeper into her good graces."

"It wasn't like that."

"Sure it was. Did they offer you a bonus if you got that dirt?"

"A bonus?"

"Yes, Lonnie, a bonus. As in more money."

"I didn't do this for money."

I shook my head. "That would be a lie."

"What?"

"Let's not pretend it was all about fear of being exposed or altruism in finding a killer. They paid you, didn't they?"

He opened his mouth to deny it. I closed it before he bothered.

"The same investigators who dig up old arrests," I said. "They have access to bank accounts. They can find, for example, five-thousand-dollar cash deposits. Like the one you made five days ago at the Chase in West Orange."

The mouth closed. I had to hand it to Muses investigating skills. She really was incredible.

"I didn't do anything illegal," he said.

"That's debatable, but I'm not in the mood right now. Who wrote the journal?" "I don't know. They gave me the pages, told me to feed it to her slowly."

"And did they tell you how they got that information?"

"No."

"No idea?"

"They said they had sources. Look, they knew everything about me. They knew everything about Lucy. But they wanted you, pal. That's all they cared about. Anything I could get her to say about Paul Cope-land-that was their main concern. They think maybe you're a killer."

"No, they don't, Lonnie. They think maybe you're an idiot who can muddy up my name."

Perplexed. Lonnie worked very hard on looking perplexed. He looked at Lucy. "I'm really sorry. I would never do anything to hurt you. You know that."

"Do me a favor, Lonnie," she said. "Just get the hell out of my face."

Alexander "Sosh" Stekierky stood alone in his penthouse.

Man gets used to his environment. That was how it was. He was getting comfortable. Too comfortable for a man with his beginnings. This lifestyle was now the expected. He wondered if he was still as tough as he once was, if he could still walk into those dens, those lairs, and lay waste without fear. The answer, he was certain, was no. It wasn't age that had weakened him. It was comfort.

As a young child, Sots family had gotten ensnared in the horrible siege of Leningrad. The Nazis surrounded the city and caused unspeakable suffering. Sosh had turned five on October 21, 1941, a month after the blockade began. He would turn six and seven with the siege still on. In January of 1942, with rations set at a quarter pound of bread a day, Soshs brother, Gavrel, age twelve, and his sister, Aline, age eight, died of starvation. Sosh survived eating stray animals. Cats mostly. People hear the stories, but they can't fathom the terror, the agony. You are power less. You just take it. But even that, even that horror-you get used to it. Like comfort, suffering can become the norm.

Sosh remembered when he first came to the USA. You could buy food anywhere. There were no long lines. There were no shortages. He remembered buying a chicken. He kept it in his freezer. He couldn't believe it. A chicken. He would wake up late at night in a cold sweat. He would run to the freezer and open it up and just stare at the chicken and feel safe.

He still did that.

Most of his old Soviet colleagues missed the old days. They missed the power. A few had returned to the old country, but most had stayed. They were bitter men. Sosh hired some of his old colleagues because he trusted them and wanted to help. They had history. And when times were hard and his old KGB friends were feeling particularly sorry for themselves, Sosh knew that they too opened their refrigerators and marveled at how far they'd come.

You don't worry about happiness and fulfillment when you're starving.

It is good to remember that.

You live among this ridiculous wealth and you get lost. You worry about nonsense like spirituality and inner health and satisfaction and relationships. You have no idea how lucky you are. You have no idea what it is like to starve, to watch yourself turn to bones, to sit by hopelessly while someone you love, someone otherwise young and healthy slowly dies, and a part of you, some horrible instinctive part of you, is almost happy because now you will get a bite-and-a-half-size sliver of bread today instead of just a bite size.

Those who believe that we are anything other than animals are blind. All humans are savages. The ones who are well fed are just lazier. They don't need to kill to get their food. So they dress up and find so- called loftier pursuits that make them believe that they are somehow above it all. Such nonsense. Savages are just hungrier. That was all. You do horrible things to survive. Anyone who believes that they are above that is delusional.

The message had come in on his computer.

That was how it worked nowadays. Not by phone, not in person. Computers. E-mails. It was so easy to communicate that way and not be traced. He wondered how the old Soviet regime would have handled the Internet. Controlling information had been such a large part of what they did. But how do you control it with something like the Internet? Or maybe it wasn't that big of a difference. In the end, the way you rounded up your enemies was through leaks. People talked. People sold one another out. People betrayed their neighbors and loved ones. Some times for a hunk of bread. Sometimes for a ticket to freedom. It all de pended on how hungry you were.

Sosh read the message again. It was short and simple and Sosh wasn't sure what to do about it. They had a phone number. They had an ad dress. But it was the first line of the e-mail that he kept coming back to. So simply stated.

He read it again:

WE FOUND HER.

And now he wondered what he should do about it.

I put a call in to Muse. "Can you find Cingle Shaker for me?"

"I guess. Why, what's up?"

"I want to ask her some questions about how MVD works."

"I'm on it."

I hung up and turned back to Lucy. She was still looking out the window.

"You okay?"

"I trusted him."