Harlan Coben - Tell No One

Shauna started fumbling in her purse.

"Looking for something?"

"A cigarette," she said. "You have one?"

"Sorry, no."

"Damn." She stopped, met his eye. "Why are you telling me all this?"

"I have four dead bodies. I want to know what's going on."

"Four?"

"Rebecca Schayes, Melvin Bartola, Robert Wolf – those are the two men we found at the lake. And Elizabeth Beck."

KillRoy killed Elizabeth."

Carlson shook his head.

"What makes you so sure?"

He held up the manila folder. "This, for one."

"What is it?"

"Her autopsy file."

Shauna swallowed. Fear coursed through her, tingling her fingers. The final proof, one way or the other. She tried very hard to keep her voice steady. "Can I take a look?"

"Why?"

She didn't reply.

"And more important, why was Beck so eager to see it?"

"I don't know what you mean," she said, but the words rang hollow in her own ears and, she was sure, his.

"Was Elizabeth Beck a drug user?" Carlson asked.

The question was a total surprise. "Elizabeth? Never."

"You're sure?"

"Of course. She worked with drug addicts. That was part of her training."

"I know a lot of vice cops who enjoy a few hours with a prostitute."

"She wasn't like that. Elizabeth was no Goody Two-shoes, but drugs? Not a chance."

He held up the manila envelope again. "The tox report showed both cocaine and heroin in her system."

"Then Kellerton forced them into her."

"No," Carlson said.

"What makes you so sure?"

"There are other tests, Shauna. Tissue and hair tests. They show a pattern of use going back several months at the least."

Shauna felt her legs weaken. She slumped against a wall. "Look, Carlson, stop playing games with me. Let me see the report, okay?"

Carlson seemed to consider it. "How about this?" he said. "I'll let you see any one sheet in here. Any one piece of information. How about that?"

"What the hell is this, Carlson?"

"Good night, Shauna."

"Whoa, whoa, hold up a sec." She licked her lips. She thought about the strange emails. She thought about Beck's running from the cops. She thought about the murder of Rebecca Schayes and the toxicology report that couldn't be. All of a sudden, her convincing demonstration on digital imaging manipulation didn't seem so convincing.

"A photograph," she said. "Let me see a photograph of the victim."

Carlson smiled. "Now, that's very interesting."

"Why's that?"

"There are none in here."

"But I thought-"

"I don't understand it either," Carlson interrupted. "I've called Dr. Harper. He was the M.E. on this one. I'm seeing if he can find out who else has signed out for this file. He's checking as we speak."

"Are you saying someone stole the photographs?"

Carlson shrugged. "Come on, Shauna. Tell me what's going on."

She almost did. She almost told him about the emails and the street cam link. But Beck had been firm. This man, for all his fancy talk, could still be the enemy. "Can I see the rest of the file?"

He moved it toward her slowly. The hell with blasé, she thought. She stepped forward and grabbed it from his hand. She tore it open and found the first sheet. As her eyes traveled down the page, a block of ice hardened in her stomach. She saw the body's height and the weight and stifled a scream.

"What?" Carlson asked.

She didn't reply.

A cell phone rang. Carlson scooped it out of his pants pocket. "Carlson."

"It's Tim Harper."

"Did you find the old logs?"

"Yes."

"Did someone else sign out Elizabeth Beck's autopsy?"

"Three years ago," Harper said. "Right after it was placed into cold storage. One person signed it out."

"Who?"

"The deceased's father. He's also a police officer. His name is Hoyt Parker."

Larry Gandle sat across from Griffin Scope. They were outside in the garden portico behind Scope's mansion. Night had taken serious hold, blanketing the manicured grounds. The crickets hummed an almost pretty melody, as though the super-rich could even manipulate that. Tinkling piano music spilled from the sliding glass doors. Lights from inside the house provided a modicum of illumination, casting shadows of burnt red and yellow.

Both men wore khakis. Larry wore a blue Polo shirt. Griffin had on a silk button-down from his tailor in Hong Kong. Larry waited, a beer cooling his hand. He watched the older man sitting in perfect copper-penny silhouette, facing his vast backyard, his nose tilted up slightly, his legs crossed. His right hand dangled over the arm of the chair, amber liquor swirling in his snifter.

"You have no idea where he is?" Griffin asked.

"None."

"And these two black men who rescued him?"

"I have no idea how they're involved. But Wu is working on it."

Griffin took a sip of his drink. Time trudged by, hot and sticky. "Do you really believe she's still alive?"

Larry was about to launch into a long narrative, offering evidence for and against, showing all the options and possibilities. But when he opened his mouth, he simply said, "I do."

Griffin closed his eyes. "Do you remember the day your first child was born?"

"Yes."

"Did you attend the birth?"

"I did."

"We didn't do that in our day," Griffin said. "We fathers paced in a waiting room with old magazines. I remember the nurse coming out to get me. She brought me down the hall and I still remember turning the corner and seeing Allison holding Brandon. It was the strangest feeling, Larry. Something welled up inside me so that I thought I might burst. The feeling was almost too intense, too overwhelming. You couldn't sort through or comprehend it. I assume that all fathers experience something similar."

He stopped. Larry looked over. Tears ran down the old man's cheeks, sparkling off the low light. Larry remained still.

"Perhaps the most obvious feelings on that day are joy and apprehension – apprehension in the sense that you are now responsible for this little person. But there was something else there too. I couldn't put my finger on it exactly. Not then anyway. Not until Brandon's first day of school."

Something caught in the old man's throat. He coughed a bit and now Larry could see more tears. The piano music seemed softer now. The crickets hushed as though they were listening too.

"We waited together for the school bus. I held his hand. Brandon was five years old. He looked up at me in that way children do at that age. He wore brown pants that already had a grass stain on the knee. I remember the yellow bus pulling up and the sound the door made when it opened. Then Brandon let go of my hand and started climbing up the steps. I wanted to reach out and snatch him back and take him home, but I stood there, frozen. He moved inside the bus and I heard that noise again and the door slid closed. Brandon sat by a window. I could see his face. He waved to me. I waved back and as the bus pulled away, I said to myself, "There goes my whole world." That yellow bus with its flimsy metal sides and its driver I didn't know from Adam charioted away what was in effect everything to me. And at that moment, I realized what I had felt the day of his birth. Terror. Not just apprehension. Cold, stark terror. You can fear illness or old age or death. But there's nothing like that small stone of terror that sat in my belly as I watched that bus pull away. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Larry nodded. "I think I do."

"I knew then, at that moment, that despite my best efforts, something bad could happen to him. I wouldn't always be there to take the blow. I thought about it constantly. We all do, I guess. But when it happened, when-" He stopped and finally faced Larry Gandle. "I still try to bring him back," he said. "I try to bargain with God, offering him anything and everything if he'll somehow make Brandon alive. That won't happen, of course. I understand that. But now you come here and tell me that while my son, my whole world, rots in the ground… she lives." He started shaking his head. "I can't have that, Larry. Do you understand?"