Harlan Coben - Don’t Let Go

“What?” I say.

“I haven’t hired Rex Canton in a month.” Simon Fraser looks up at me, the relief washing over him. “I don’t know who hired him that night, but it wasn’t me.”

“Maybe someone else in your firm?”

Simon hems a bit here. “I would doubt it.”

“Rex worked exclusively for you?”

“I don’t know about that, but at this firm, well, I’m a senior partner and the only one who works family law, so...”

He doesn’t finish the thought, but I get it. Rex was his boy here. None of the other lawyers would dare hire him without Simon Fraser’s prior consent.

My mobile rings. The caller ID reads WESTBRIDGE PD. I excuse myself and step aside.

“Hello?”

It’s Augie’s voice on the other end. “I think I know why we can’t find Hank.”

When I arrive at Westbridge’s police station the next morning, Augie is waiting there with a rookie cop named Jill Stevens. I started as a Westbridge patrolman and still work as a sort of hybrid investigator for both the county and this town. Augie brought me in and then pushed me up the ladder. I like this rung — I’m a big-county investigator with a hint of small-town cop. I have zero interest in money or glory. That’s not faux modesty. I’m happy being right where I am. I solve the cases and pass on the credit. I want no further advancement or demotion. I am left alone for the most part and free of the political quicksand that sucks down so many.

I’m in my sweet spot.

The Westbridge police station is an old bank on the middle of Old Westbridge Road. Eight years ago, the new high-tech station opened on North Elm Street and flooded during a storm. With nowhere else to go during repairs, they rented space from the seen-better-days Westbridge Savings Bank, a Greco-Roman-inspired savings and loan built in 1924. It still had the bones — the marble floors and high ceilings and dark oak counters. They turned the old-school vault into a holding cell. The town council still claims that the police will move back into the North Elm Street station, but eight years later, they haven’t begun construction.

We all sit in Augie’s second-floor office, which used to be the bank manager’s. There is nothing on the walls behind him — no artwork, no flags, no awards or degrees or citations like you see in every other police captain’s office. There are no photos on his desk. To an outsider, it’s like Augie’s half packed for retirement already, but this is my mentor. Awards and citations would be boasting. Artwork would be sharing himself in ways he’d rather not. Photos... well, even when Augie had family, he didn’t want to take them to work.

Augie is behind his desk. Jill sits to my right holding a laptop and a file.

Augie says, “Three weeks ago, Hank came in with a complaint. Jill here took his statement.”

We both look at Jill. She clears her throat and opens the file. “The complainant presented himself as very agitated when he entered.”

Augie says, “Jill?”

She looks up.

“You can skip the formal talk. We’re all friends here.”

She nods and closes the file. “I’ve seen Hank around town. We all know his reputation. But I just checked the records. Hank has never come to this station before. Well, let me correct that. I mean, he’s never voluntarily come in. We’ve picked him up when he acts out, just held him for a few hours until he calms down. Not in a holding cell. Just a chair downstairs. What I mean is, he’s never come in to file a complaint.”

I try to move this along. “You said he was agitated?”

“I’ve witnessed his rantings before, so at first I was just sort of humoring him. I figured he needed to vent and that he would calm down. But he didn’t. He said people were threatening him, yelling things at him.”

“What kind of things?”

“He wasn’t clear, but he seemed genuinely scared. He said people were lying about him. Every once in a while, he’d take on a weird studious tone and start talking about defamation and slander. Like he was his own lawyer or something. The whole thing was bizarre. Until he showed us the video.”

Jill scooches her chair closer to me and opens the laptop.

“It took a while for Hank to make sense, but eventually he showed me this.” She hands me the laptop. There’s a still for a video on Facebook. I can’t make out what it is yet. A forest maybe. Green leaves from trees. My eyes travel up. The heading of the video shows the name of the page where it’d been posted.

“Shame-A-Perv?” I say out loud.

“The Internet,” Augie says, as if that explains everything. He leans back and folds his hands on his paunch.

Jill clicks the play button.

The video starts off shaky. The moving images are narrow with blurry sides, meaning it was shot on a smartphone held vertically. In the distance, I can make out a man standing alone behind the backstop of a baseball diamond.

“That’s Sloane Park,” Jill says.

I’d already recognized it. It’s the field adjacent to Benjamin Franklin Middle School.

The video jerkily zooms in on the man. No surprise — it’s Hank. He looks like what you used to call a hobo. He is unshaven. His jeans are loose and faded to the point of near white. He wears a flannel shirt unbuttoned to reveal a once-white, moth-ravaged (one hopes) undershirt.

For a second or two, nothing happens. The camera seems to settle its jitters and come into focus. Then a woman — probably the one doing the filming — whispers, “This dirty pervert exposed himself to my daughter.”

I glance at Augie, who remains stoic. Then I turn my attention back to the screen.

Judging by the up-and-down motion and the way the video is closing in on Hank, I assume the woman doing the filming is walking toward him.

“Why are you here?” the woman shouts. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Hank Stroud sees her now. His eyes go wide.

“Why are you exposing yourself to children?”

Hank’s eyes dart about like scared birds trying to find a place to land.

“Why do our police allow perverts like you to endanger our community?”

For a second Hank puts his hands up to his eyes as though blocking a bright light that doesn’t exist.

“Answer me!”

Hank bolts away.

The camera pans to follow him. Hank’s pants start to slip. He holds them up with one hand and continues to run toward the woods.

“If you know anything about this pervert,” the woman making the video says, “please post it. We need to keep our children safe!”

The video ends on that note.

I look up at Augie. “Did anyone complain about Hank?”

“People always complain about Hank.”

“That he exposed himself?”

Augie shakes his head. “Just that they don’t like the looks of him, walking around town, disheveled, he smells, he talks to himself. You know the deal.”

I do. “But never anything about exposing himself?”

“Never.” Augie gestures toward the laptop with his chin. “Take a look at the view count at the bottom of the video.”

My jaw drops: 3,789,452 views. “Whoa.”

“It went viral,” Jill says. “Hank came in here the day after it was uploaded. There were already half a million hits.”

“What did he want you to do?” I ask her.

Jill opens her mouth, thinks about it, closes it. “He just said he was scared.”

“He wanted you to protect him?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“And what did you do?”

Augie says, “Nap.”

Jill shifts in her seat. “What could I do? He was so vague about everything. I told him to come back if there was a specific threat.”

“Did you look into who posted the video?”