Harlan Coben: Don’t Let Go

“You going to drive me?” I asked you.

“Can Dad do it? I just want to lie here for a minute.”

So Dad drove me. That’s it. Those are the last words we shared. I didn’t think twice about it at the time. When people suggested a double suicide, I did wonder about it for a moment maybe — not so much your words, but your solemn mood, lying in that bunk in the dark — but I never put much stock in it. Or if I did, maybe, like Augie with his police visit to the base that night, I pushed it aside. I didn’t want your death to be suicide, so I made myself forget about it, I guess. That’s how we all are. We pay attention to what works with our narrative. We tend to dismiss that which does not.

“Leo didn’t tell me anything,” I say now to Beth.

“Nothing about Diana? Nothing about his plans that night?”

“Nothing.”

Beth pours some more whiskey into her glass. “Here I thought you two were close.”

“What happened, Beth?”

“Why is it so important all of a sudden?”

“Not all of a sudden,” I say. “It’s always been important.”

She lifts the glass and studies her drink.

“What happened, Beth?”

“The truth won’t help you, Nap. It will only make it worse.”

“I don’t care,” I say. “Tell me.”

And she did.

“I’m the only one left now, aren’t I? The rest are dead. I think we all tried to make amends. Rex became a cop. I’m a cardiologist, but I work for the most part for the underserved. I started a clinic to help indigent people with heart problems — preventive care, treatment, medication, surgery when required. People think I’m so caring and selfless, but the truth is, I think I do good because I’m trying to counter what I did that night.”

Beth stares at the table for a long moment.

“We are all to blame, but we had a leader. It was his idea. He set the plan in motion. The rest of us, we were too weak to do anything other than go along. That makes us worse in some ways. When we were kids, I always hated the bully. But you know who I hated more?”

I shake my head.

“The kids who stood behind the bully and got off on watching. That was us.”

“Who was the leader?” I ask.

She makes a face. “You know.”

And I do. You, Leo. You were the leader.

“Leo got wind of the fact that Diana was going to break up with him. Diana was just waiting for that stupid dance to be over, which was a really sucky thing to do. Using Leo like that. God, I sound like a teenager, don’t I? Anyway, first Leo was sad, and then he grew livid. You know your brother was getting high a lot, right?”

I give a half nod.

“We all were, I guess. He was the leader in that way too. Personally I think that was what had driven the wedge between Leo and Diana. Leo liked to party; Diana was the cop’s daughter who didn’t. Whatever, Leo started getting really jacked up. He was pacing back and forth, shouting about how Diana was a bitch, about how we needed to make her pay and all that. You know about the Conspiracy Club, right?”

“Right.”

“Me, Leo, Rex, Hank, and Maura. He said the Conspiracy Club would get revenge on Diana. I don’t think any of us took it seriously. We were all supposed to meet up at Rex’s house, but Maura didn’t even show up. Which was weird. Because she’s the one who disappeared that night. I always wondered about that — why Maura ran when she wasn’t even part of the plan.”

Beth lowers her head.

“What was the plan?” I ask.

“We all had a job. Hank got the LSD.”

That surprised me. “You guys were taking LSD?”

“No, never before that night. That was part of the plan. Hank knew someone in chemistry class who made him a liquid version. Then Rex’s job, well, he provided the house. We would all meet in his basement. I would be the one who got Diana to take the stuff.”

“The LSD?”

Beth nods. “Diana would obviously never do it on her own, but she was a big Diet Coke drinker. So my role was to spike her soda. Like I said, we all had our jobs. We were all waiting and ready when Leo went to pick up Diana.”

I remember Augie talking about this, about how he thought Leo was high, how he wished like hell he could go back in time and stop Diana from walking out that door.

“So what happened next?” I ask.

“Diana was a little wary when Leo brought her down to Rex’s basement. See, that’s why I was there too. Another female face. To help her relax. We all promised that there would be no drinking. We started playing Ping-Pong. We watched a movie. And of course, we all drank sodas. Ours was mixed with vodka. Diana’s was spiked with whatever LSD concoction Hank had brought. We were all giggling and having such a good time I almost forgot why we were really there. At one point, I remember I looked at Diana and she was nearly passed out. I wondered if I overspiked the drink. I mean, she was really out of it. Anyway, I figured, okay, mission accomplished. It was over.”

She stops and looks lost. I try to knock her back on track.

“But it wasn’t over.”

“No,” Beth says, “it wasn’t.” She looks past me now, over my shoulder, like I’m no longer here and maybe right now neither is she. “I don’t know whose idea it was. I think it was Rex’s. He worked as a counselor at a sleepaway camp. He used to tell us how the kids would sleep really soundly, so sometimes at night, for a funny prank, they would carry the kid’s whole bunk out into the woods and just leave him there. They would hide and start laughing and wait for the kid to wake up and then they’d watch him freak out. Rex would tell us stories about it and they were always so funny. One time, Rex hid under the kid’s bed and kept pushing from below until the kid woke up screaming. Another time he put a kid’s hand in warm water. That was supposed to make him urinate his bed or something, but instead the kid got up like he was going to the bathroom and walked right into a bush. So Leo said — yeah, it was definitely Leo — he said, ‘Let’s take Diana out to the woods by the base.’”

Oh no...

“Anyway, that’s what we did. It’s really dark out. We’re all dragging Diana up that path. I kept waiting for someone to call it off. But no one did. There’s a clearing behind that old rock formation. You know the one. Leo wanted to leave her there because that was their old ‘make-out spot.’ He kept saying it like that, in a mocking voice. Make-out spot. Because Diana never let him go further, that’s what he said. So we dumped Diana there. Just like that. Dumped her like she was so much garbage. I remember Leo looking down at her like... like I don’t know. Like I thought he was going to rape her or something. But he didn’t. He said that we should all go hide and watch what happens. Which we did. Rex was giggling. So was Hank. I think they were just nervous, though, waiting to see how she reacted to the acid. Leo, he just glared at her. I... I just wanted it to stop. I wanted to go home. I said, ‘Maybe she’s had enough.’ I remember that I turned to Leo. I said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ And Leo, he just had the saddest look on his face. It’s like... it’s like he suddenly realized what the hell he was doing. I saw a tear run down his cheek. I said, ‘It’s okay, Leo, let’s take Diana home now.’ Leo nodded. He told Hank and Rex to cut it out with the laughing. He stood up. He started walking toward Diana, and then...”

Tears are running down her face now.

“And then what?” I ask.

“All hell broke loose,” Beth says. “It started with these giant lights. When they hit us, Diana popped up like someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on her. She started screaming and sprinting toward them. Leo ran after her. Rex, Hank, and I just stayed where we were, like we were frozen. I could see Diana’s silhouette in the lights. She’s still screaming. Louder now. She starts ripping off her clothes. All of them. And then... Then I hear gunfire. I see... I see Diana go down. Leo turns back toward us. ‘Get out of here!’ he shouts. And, I mean, he didn’t have to tell us twice. We ran. We ran like hell all the way back to Rex’s basement. We waited all night in the dark for Leo or... I don’t know. We all made a pact. We would never ever say anything about tonight. Not ever. We just stayed there, in that basement, as the hours passed, hoping for the best. We didn’t know what happened. Not that night, not even the next morning. Maybe Diana was at the hospital, maybe it would be okay. And then... then when we heard about Leo and Diana and the train tracks... we realized right away what happened. The bastards shot them and covered it up. Hank wanted to say something, go to the police, but Rex and I stopped him. What could we say? That we got the police captain’s daughter high on LSD, brought her out to the woods, and these guys ended up shooting her? So we kept our vow. We never spoke of it again. We finished up our senior years. We left town.”