Harlan Coben - Tell No One

"Sure," I said. "You think I'm as gullible as Flaky Wendy."

"Yes and no. See, part of Omay's con is the want, Beck. Wendy falls for it because she wants to believe in all that mumbo-jumbo."

"And I want to believe Elizabeth is alive?"

"More than any dying man in a desert wants to find an oasis," she said. "But that's not really my point either."

"Then what is?"

"I learned that just because you can't see any other explanation doesn't mean that one doesn't exist. It just means you can't see it."

I leaned back and crossed my legs. I watched her. She turned away from my gaze, something she never does. "What's going on here, Shauna?"

She wouldn't face me.

"You're not making any sense," I said.

"I think I was pretty damn clear-"

"You know what I mean. This isn't like you. On the phone you said you needed to talk to me. Alone. And for what? To tell me that my dead wife is, after all, still dead?" I shook my head. "I don't buy it."

Shauna didn't react.

"Tell me," I said.

She turned back. "I'm scared," she said in a tone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

"Of what?"

The answer didn't come right away. I could hear Linda rustling around in the kitchen, the tinkling of plates and glasses, the sucking pop when she opened the refrigerator. "That long warning I just gave you," Shauna finally continued. "That was as much for me as for you."

"I don't understand."

"I've seen something." Her voice died out. She took a deep breath and tried again. "I've seen something that my rational mind can't explain away. Just like in my story about Omay. I know there has to be another explanation, but I can't find it." Her hands started moving, her fingers fidgeting with buttons, pulling imaginary threads off her suit. Then she said it: "I'm starting to believe you, Beck. I think maybe Elizabeth is still alive."

My heart leapt into my throat.

She rose quickly. "I'm going to mix a mimosa. Join me?"

I shook my head.

She looked surprised. "You sure you don't want-"

"Tell me what you saw, Shauna."

"Her autopsy file."

I almost fell over. It took me a little time to find my voice. "How?"

"Do you know Nick Carlson from the FBI?"

"He questioned me," I said.

"He thinks you're innocent."

"Didn't sound that way to me."

"He does now. When all that evidence started pointing at you, he thought it was all too neat."

"He told you that?"

"Yes."

"And you believed him?"

"I know it sounds naive, but yeah, I believed him."

I trusted Shauna's judgment. If she said that Carlson was on the level, he was either a wonderful liar or he'd seen through the frame-up. "I still don't understand," I said. "What does that have to do with the autopsy?"

"Carlson came to me. He wanted to know what you were up to. I wouldn't tell him. But he was tracking your movements. He knew that you asked to see Elizabeth's autopsy file. He wondered why. So he called the coroner's office and got the file. He brought it with him. To see if I could help him out on that."

"He showed it to you?"

She nodded.

My throat was dry. "Did you see the autopsy photos?"

"There weren't any, Beck."

"What?"

"Carlson thinks someone stole them."

"Who?"

She shrugged. "The only other person to sign out the file was Elizabeth's father."

Hoyt. It all circled back to him. I looked at her. "Did you see any of the report?"

Her nod was more tentative this time.

"And?"

"It said Elizabeth had a drug problem, Beck. Not just that there were drugs in her system. He said that the reports showed the abuse was long-term."

"Impossible," I said.

"Maybe, maybe not. That alone wouldn't be enough to convince me. People can hide drug abuse. It's not likely, but neither is her being alive. Maybe the tests were wrong or inconclusive. Something. There are explanations, right? It can somehow be explained away."

I licked my lips. "So what couldn't be?" I asked.

"Her height and weight," Shauna said. "Elizabeth was listed as five seven and under a hundred pounds."

Another sock in the gut. My wife was five four and closer to a hundred fifteen pounds. "Not even close," I said.

"Not even."

"She's alive, Shauna."

"Maybe," she allowed, and her gaze flicked toward the kitchen. "But there's something more."

Shauna turned and called out Linda's name. Linda stepped into the doorway and stayed there. She looked suddenly small in her apron. She wrung her hands and wiped them on the apron front. I watched my sister, puzzled.

"What's going on?" I said.

Linda started speaking. She told me about the photographs, how Elizabeth had come to her to take them, how she'd been only too happy to keep her secret about Brandon Scope. She didn't sugarcoat or offer explanations, but then again, maybe she didn't have to. She stood there and poured it all out and waited for the inevitable blow. I listened with my head down. I couldn't face her, but I easily forgave. We all have our blind spots. All of us.

I wanted to hug her and tell her that I understood, but I couldn't quite pull it off. When she'd finished, I merely nodded and said, "Thanks for telling me."

My words were meant to be a dismissal. Linda understood. Shauna and I sat there in silence for almost a full minute.

"Beck?"

"Elizabeth's father has been lying to me," I said.

She nodded.

"I've got to talk to him."

"He didn't tell you anything before."

True enough, I thought.

"Do you think it'll be different this time?"

I absentmindedly patted the Glock in my waistband. "Maybe," I said.

Carlson greeted me in the corridor. "Dr. Beck?" he said.

Across town at the same time, the district attorney's office held a press conference. The reporters were naturally skeptical of Fein's convoluted explanation (vis-à-vis me), and there was a lot of backpedaling and finger-pointing and that sort of thing. But all that seemed to do was confuse the issue. Confusion helps. Confusion leads to lengthy reconstruction and clarification and exposition and several other emotions." The press and their public prefer a simpler narrative.

It probably would have been a rougher ride for Mr. Fein, but by coincidence, the D.A.'s office used this very same press conference to release indictments against several high-ranking members of the mayor's administration along with a hint that the "tentacles of corruption" – their phrase – may even reach the big man's office. The media, an entity with the collective attention span of a Twinkie filled two-year-old, immediately focused on this shiny new toy, kicking the old one under the bed.

Carlson stepped toward me. "I'd like to ask you a few questions."

"Not now," I said.

"Your father owned a gun," he said.

His words rooted me to the floor. "What?"

"Stephen Beck, your father, purchased a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight. The registration showed that he bought it several months before he died."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"I assume you inherited the weapon. Am I correct?"

"I'm not talking to you." I pressed the elevator button.

"We have it," he said. I turned, stunned. "It was in Sarah Goodhart's safety-deposit box. With the pictures."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Why didn't you tell me this before?"

Carlson gave me a crooked smile.

"Oh right, I was the bad guy back then," I said. Then, making a point of turning away, I added, "I don't see the relevance."

"Sure you do."

I pressed the elevator button again.

"You went to see Peter Flannery," Carlson continued. "You asked him about the murder of Brandon Scope. I'd like to know why."

I pressed the call button and held it down. "Did you do something to the elevators?"