Harlan Coben: Don’t Let Go

I don’t bother correcting her.

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m Lieutenant Stacy Reynolds,” she says. “This is Detective Bates.”

I don’t like the vibe I’m getting here. I suspect that they are here to deliver bad news of some sort, like someone close to me has died. I had done the condolence bit many times in my official capacity. It’s not my forte. But pitiful as it may sound, I couldn’t even imagine who in my life meant enough to me for anyone to send out a squad car. The only person is Ellie, and she’s in Westbridge, New Jersey, too, not Pennsylvania.

I skip the “Nice to meet you” and head straight for the “So what’s this all about?”

“Do you mind if we come in?” Reynolds says with a weary smile. “It’s been a long drive.”

“I could use the bathroom,” Bates adds.

“Hit the head later,” I say. “Why are you here?”

“No need to be testy,” Bates says.

“No need to be coy either. I’m a cop, you’ve come a long way, let’s not draw this out.”

Bates glares at me. I don’t give a rat’s buttock. Reynolds puts a hand on his arm to defuse the situation. I still don’t give a rat’s buttock.

“You’re right,” Reynolds says to me. “I’m afraid we have some bad news.”

I wait.

“There’s been a murder in our district,” she continues.

“A cop killing,” Bates adds.

That gets my attention. There is murder. And there is a cop killing. You don’t want those to be two separate things, one being worse than the other, but you don’t want a lot of things.

“Who?” I ask.

“Rex Canton.”

They wait to see if I show anything. I don’t, but I’m trying to work the angles.

“You knew Sergeant Canton?” she asks.

“I did,” I say. “A lifetime ago.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

I am still trying to figure out why they are here. “I don’t remember. High school graduation maybe.”

“Not since then?”

“Not that I remember.”

“But you might have?”

I shrug. “He might have come for a homecoming or something.”

“But you’re not sure.”

“No, I’m not sure.”

“You don’t seem broken up about his murder,” Bates says.

“On the inside I’m dying,” I say. “I’m just supertough.”

“No need for sarcasm,” Bates says. “A fellow officer is dead.”

“No need to waste our time either. I knew him in high school. That’s it. I haven’t seen him since. I didn’t know he lived in Pennsylvania. I didn’t even know he was on the job. How was he killed?”

“Gunned down during a traffic stop,” Reynolds says.

Rex Canton. I knew him back in the day, of course, but he was more your friend, Leo. Part of your high school posse. I remember the goofy picture of you all dressed up as some mock rock band for the school talent show. Rex played the drums. He had a gap between his two front teeth. He seemed like a nice enough kid.

“Can we cut to it?” I ask.

“Cut to what?”

I am so not in the mood. “What do you want with me?”

Reynolds looks up at me, and maybe there’s a hint of a smile on her face. “Any guesses?”

“None.”

“Let me use your toilet before I pee on your stoop. Then we’ll talk.”

I move out of the doorway to usher them in. Reynolds goes first. Bates waits, hopping up and down a bit. My mobile rings. Ellie again. I hit ignore and send her a text that I’ll call her back as soon as I can. I hear the water running as Reynolds washes her hands. She comes out; Bates goes in. He is, uh, loud. As the old saying goes, he needed to pee like a racehorse.

We move into the living room and settle in. Ellie fixed up this room, too. She aimed for “woman-friendly man cave” — wood paneling and huge-screen TV, but the bar is acrylic and the leatherette loungers are an odd shade of mauve.

“So?” I say.

Reynolds looks at Bates. He nods. Then she turns back to me. “We found fingerprints.”

“Where?” I ask.

“Pardon?”

“You said Rex was gunned down during a traffic stop.”

“That’s right.”

“So where was his body found? His squad car? The street?”

“The street.”

“So you found fingerprints where exactly? On the street?”

“The where isn’t important,” Reynolds tells me. “The who is.”

I wait. Neither speaks. So I say, “Who do the prints belong to?”

“Well, that’s part of the problem,” she says. “See, the fingerprints got no hits on any criminal database. The person has no record. But you see, they were still in the system.”

I have always heard the expression “the hairs on my neck stood up,” but I don’t think I ever quite got it until now. Reynolds waits, but I won’t give her the satisfaction. She’s carrying this ball now. I’ll let her take it to the goal line.

“The prints got a hit,” she continues, “because ten years ago, you, Detective Dumas, put them in the database, describing her as a ‘person of interest.’ Ten years ago, when you first joined the force, you asked to be notified if there was ever a hit.”

I try not to show the shock, but I don’t think I’m doing too good a job. I’m flashing back, Leo. I’m flashing back fifteen years. I’m flashing back to those summer nights when she and I would walk by moonlight to that clearing on Riker Hill and lay out a blanket. I flash back to that heat, of course, the exquisiteness and purity of that lust, but mostly I flash back to the “after,” me flat on my back, still catching my breath, staring up into the night sky, her head on my chest, her hand on my stomach, and for the first few minutes we would be silent, and then we would start talking in a way that made me know — know — I would never get tired of talking to her.

You would have been the best man.

You know me. I never needed a lot of friends. I had you, Leo. And I had her. Then I lost you. And then I lost her.

Reynolds and Bates are studying my face now. “Detective Dumas?”

I snap out of it. “Are you telling me the prints belong to Maura?”

“They do, yes.”

“But you haven’t found her yet.”

“No, not yet,” Reynolds says. “Do you want to explain?”

I grab my wallet and house keys. “I’ll do it on the ride. Let’s go.”

Reynolds and Bates naturally want to question me right now.

“In the car,” I insist. “I want to see the scene.”

We are all heading down the brick walkway my father put in himself twenty years ago. I take the lead. They hurry to catch up.

“Suppose we don’t want to take you with us,” Reynolds says.

I stop walking and do a toodle-oo finger wave. “Buh-bye, then. Safe ride back.”

Bates really doesn’t like me. “We can compel you to answer.”

“You think? Okay.” I turn to head back inside. “Let me know how that turns out.”

Reynolds gets up in my face. “We are trying to find a cop killer here.”

“Me too.”

I’m a very good investigator — I just am, no reason for false modesty here — but I need to see the scene myself. I know the players. I may be able to help. Either way, if Maura is back, there is no way I’m letting this go.

I don’t really want to explain all this to Reynolds and Bates.

“How long is the ride?” I ask.

“Two hours if we speed.”

I spread my arms, welcoming-like. “You’ll have me alone in a car for all that time. Imagine all the questions you can ask.”

Bates frowns. He doesn’t like it, or maybe he’s so used to playing bad cop to Reynolds’s reasonable one that he is set on automatic. They will cave. We all know this. It is just a question of how and when.