Harlan Coben - The Woods

I was going to say I'm sorry or something equally hackneyed, but I decided to keep it to myself. "You were right," she said. "About?" "Lonnie Berger was probably my closest friend. I trusted him more than anyone. Well, except for Ira, who's got one arm locked in the strait-jacket as it is."

I tried to smile.

"By the way, how’s myself-pity act? Pretty attractive, right?"

"Actually," I said, "it is."

She turned away from the window and looked at me.

"Are we going to try again, Cope? I mean, after this is all done and we figure out what happened to your sister. Are we going back to our lives-or are we going to try to see what could happen here?"

"I love when you beat around the bush."

Lucy wasn’t smiling.

"Yeah," I said. "I want to try."

"Good answer. Very good."

"Thanks."

"I don't always want to be the one risking my heart."

"You're not," I said. "I'm there too."

"So who killed Margot and Doug?" she asked.

"Wow, that was a quick segue."

"Yeah, well, the faster we figure out what happened…" She shrugged. "You know something?" I said. "What?" "It's just so damn easy to remember why I fell for you." Lucy turned away. "I am not going to cry, I am not going to cry, I am not going to cry…" "I don't know who killed them anymore," I said.

"Okay. How about Wayne Steubens? Do you still think he did it?"

"I don't know. We do know that he didn't kill Gil Perez."

"Do you think he told you the truth?"

"He said he hooked up with you."

"Yuck."

"But that he only got to second base."

"If he counts the time he intentionally bumped into me during a softball game and copped a feel, well, then technically he's telling the truth. Did he really say that?"

"He did. He also said he slept with Margot."

"That's probably true. Lots of guys had Margot."

"Not me."

"That's because I snagged you as soon as you arrived."

"That you did. He also said that Gil and Margot had broken up."

"So?"

"Do you think it's true?" I asked.

"I don't know. But you know how camp was. It was like a life cycle in seven weeks. People were always going out and then breaking up and then finding someone new." True. "But?" "But the common theory was that both couples went into the woods to, uh, mess around." "Like we were doing," she said.

"Right. And my sister and Doug were still an item. Not in love or anything, but you know what I mean. My point is, if Gil and Margot were no longer together, why would they have been sneaking into the woods?"

"I see. So if she and Gil were broken up-and we know Gil didn't die in those woods…" I thought about what Raya Singh had suggested – a woman who had clearly known and even been close to Gil Perez, aka Manolo Santiago.

"Maybe Gil killed Margot. Maybe Camille and Doug just stumbled across that."

"So Gil silenced them."

"Right. Now he’s in trouble. Think about it. He's a poor kid. He has a brother with a criminal record. He'd be under suspicion as it was."

"So he faked like he died too," she said.

We both sat there.

"We're missing something," she said.

"I know."

"We might be getting close."

"Or we might be way off."

"One of the two," Lucy agreed.

Man, it felt good to be with her.

"Something else," I said.

"What?"

"Those journals. What were they talking about-you finding me covered with blood and me saying we can't tell anyone?"

"I don't know."

"Let's start with the first part-the part they got right. About how we sneaked away." "Okay." "How would they know that?" "I don't know," she said. "How would they know you led me away?" "Or"-she stopped, swallowed-"how I felt about you?" Silence. Lucy shrugged. "Maybe it was just obvious to anyone who saw the way I looked at you."

"I'm trying hard to focus here and not smile."

"Don't try too hard," she said. "Anyway, we got part one of the journal. Let's move on to part two."

"The stuff about me covered in blood. Where the hell did they come up with that?"

"No idea. But you know what really creeps me out?"

"What?"

"That they knew we got separated. That we did lose sight of each other."

I had wondered about that too.

"Who would know about that?" I asked.

"I never told a soul," she said.

"Neither did I."

"Someone could have guessed," Lucy said. She stopped, looked up at the ceiling. "Or…"

"Or what?"

"You never told anyone about us getting separated, right?"

"Right."

"And I never told anyone about us getting separated."

"So?"

"So then there's only one explanation," Lucy said.

"That being?"

She looked straight at me. "Someone saw us that night."

Silence.

"Gil maybe," I said. "Or Wayne."

"They're our two murder suspects, right?"

"Right."

"Then who murdered Gil?"

I stopped.

"Gil didn't kill himself and move his body," she went on. "And Wayne Steubens is in a maximum security facility in Virginia."

I thought about that.

"So if the killer wasn't Wayne and it wasn't Gil," she said, "who else is there?"

"Found her," Muse said, as she walked into my office.

Cingle Shaker followed. Cingle knew how to make an entrance, but I wasn't sure that was a conscious effort on her part. There was some thing fierce in her movements, as if the air itself better make way. Muse was no potted plant, but she looked like one next to Cingle Shaker.

They both sat. Cingle crossed the long legs.

"So," Cingle said, "MVD is after you big-time."

"Looks that way."

"It is that way. I've checked. It's a scorched-earth operation. No expense spared. No lives spared either. They destroyed your brother-in-law already. They sent a guy to Russia. They've put people on the street, I don't know how many. They had someone try to bribe your old buddy Wayne Steubens. In short, they're going to carve out any piece of your ass they can get their blade into."

"Any word on what they got?"

"Not yet, no. Just what you already know."

I told her about Lucy's journals. Cingle nodded as I spoke.

"They've done that before. How accurate are the journals?"

"A lot is wrong. I never stumbled across blood or said we have to keep this secret or anything like that. But they know how we felt about each other. They know we sneaked away and how and all that."

"Interesting."

"How would they have gotten their information?"

"Hard to say."

"Any thoughts?"

She mulled it over for a few moments. "Like I said before, this is how they operate. They want to stir something up. It doesn't matter if it's the truth or not. Sometimes you need to shift reality. Do you know what I mean?"

"No, not really."

"How to explain…?" Cingle thought about it a moment. "When I first got to MVD, do you know what I was hired to do?"

I shook my head.

"Catch cheating spouses. Its big business-adultery. My own firm too. It used to be forty percent, maybe more. And MVD is the best at it, though their methods are a tad unorthodox."

"How?"

"Depends on the case, but the first step was always the same: Read the client. In other words, see what the client really wants. Do they want the truth? Do they want to be lied to? Do they want reassurance, a way to get a divorce, what?"

"I'm not following. Don't they all want the truth?"

"Yes and no. Look, I hated that end of the business. I didn't mind surveillance or background checks-you know, following a husband or wife, checking out credit card charges, phone records, that kind of thing. That's all a tad seedy, but I get that. It makes sense. But then there's this other side of the business."

"What other side?"

"The side that wants there to be a problem. Some wives, for example, want their husbands to be cheating."