Harlan Coben: Don’t Let Go

Augie’s face starts to collapse a little at a time.

“So Reeves walks me out into the woods. Two of his men follow us. Two of his men are already there. Up ahead. He hits the flashlight and there, on the ground, naked...”

He looks up, and I can see the rage in his eyes.

“... and there, next to my daughter’s body, sobbing hysterically and holding her hand, is Leo. I’m staring down, completely numb, while Reeves starts explaining it to me. The prisoner in the truck escaped. They turned on the lights. The guys working the guard towers started shooting into the woods. No one is supposed to be out here. It’s night. Those warning signs are all over the place. The guards kill the escapee, but accidentally, in the heat of battle, I mean, Diana was screaming like crazy and running right at them, stark naked, so one of the guards, a new guy, he panicked and pulled the trigger. It wasn’t his fault, I guess. So there we are, standing there. You’d think I drop to my knees, wouldn’t you? My little girl is dead on the ground, and I want to, I want to just fall onto the ground and hold her and sob for hours. But I don’t.”

Augie looks at me. I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything.

“Leo is still blubbering away. I ask him, calm as I can, what happened. Reeves, he signals for his men to start back to camp. Leo wipes his face with his sleeve. He tells me he and Diana were out in the woods, making out, starting to go further, you know, that kind of thing. Starting to undress. He says when the lights went on, Diana jumped up and panicked. Reeves is standing there listening. I look at him. He shakes his head. He knows what I can see on your brother’s face. Leo is lying. ‘We got video,’ Reeves whispers to me. I help your brother stand. We go inside the base to look at the surveillance tape. First, Reeves shows me a video of your girlfriend. They got her on tape too. Reeves asks me if I know her. I’m too stunned not to answer. I say that’s Maura Wells. Then he nods and shows me another tape. I see Diana. She’s running and screaming. Her eyes are wide like she’s terrified, and she’s ripping her clothes off like she’s on fire. That’s how my little girl spent her last moments alive, Nap. Screaming and terrified. I actually see the bullet hit her chest. She crumples to the ground. And then coming up behind her is Leo. Reeves stops the tape. I turn to Leo. He’s cringing now. I say, ‘How come your clothes are still on?’ He’s crying. He starts making up some story about how much they both loved each other. But see, I know: Diana was going to break up with him. I get really quiet now. Like I understand him now. I’m a cop; he’s a perp. I’m working him. My heart is falling apart — it’s disintegrating in my chest, and I’m just like, ‘It’s okay, Leo,’ just tell me the truth. They’re going to do an autopsy. What drugs are in her system? I keep peppering him. He’s a kid. It doesn’t take long for Leo to crack.”

“What did he tell you?”

“It was just a joke, he kept saying. He didn’t mean to hurt her. Just a stupid prank. To get back at her.”

“What did you do?”

“I looked back at Reeves. He nodded like we both understood each other. Because I did. This was a black site. No way the government was going to let that get out, even if it meant a few civilian deaths. He left the room. Leo was still crying. I told him not to worry, it was going to be okay. I told him what he did was wrong, but really, what would he get via the legal system? Not much. In the end, all he did was slip a girl LSD. No big deal. Unlikely worst-case scenario: They might charge him with manslaughter, go on probation. I told him all this because it was true, and as I did, I took out my gun and pressed it against his forehead and pulled the trigger.”

I cringe as though I’m there, Leo, as though I am standing right next to Augie as he kills you in cold blood.

“Reeves comes back in the room. He tells me to go home, that he’ll take care of it. But I don’t leave. I stay with them. I find my daughter’s clothes. I put them on her. I don’t want her found naked. We put their bodies in the back of the pickup truck. We drive across town to the train tracks. We get ready. I’m the one who heaves Diana onto those tracks. I watch that big engine steamroll over my beautiful daughter. And I don’t blink. I don’t flinch. I need it to be horrible. The more horrible, the better. Then I go home. I wait for the call to come in. That’s it.”

I want to call him names. I want to hurt him. But it all feels so pointless, so utterly wasteful.

“You’re a good interrogator,” I say, “but Leo didn’t tell you the whole truth, did he?”

“No,” Augie says. “He protected his friends.”

I nod. “I also called Westbridge Police Station. Your rookie cop Jill Stevens answered. It always bothered me that she left Hank’s file on your desk and that you didn’t follow up. But you did follow up, didn’t you?”

“I found Hank by the basketball courts. He was pretty shook up about the whole viral-video thing. I always had a soft spot for him, so I told him he could come stay at my house for the night. We watched the Knicks game on TV. And when it was over, I made up a bed for him in the spare bedroom. He goes into the room and when he sees the photograph of Diana on the bureau, he completely loses it. He starts sobbing and crying and begging me for forgiveness. He keeps saying it was his fault and at first I don’t know what to make of it, if he’s just having some kind of manic episode, but then he says, ‘I should have never gotten that LSD.’”

“So then you knew.”

“He kinda caught himself. Like he realized he had said too much. So I had to work him. I had to work him hard. But eventually he told me about that night, about what him and Rex and Beth did. You’re not a father, so I don’t expect you to get it. But they all killed Diana. They all murdered my little girl. My daughter. My life. The three of them got to live another fifteen years. They got to breathe and laugh and grow into adults, while my baby, my world, rotted in the ground. Do you really not get why I did it?”

I don’t want to go there. “You killed Hank first.”

“Yes. I hid the body where no one would find it. But then we visited his father. I thought Tom deserved to know what happened to his son. So that’s when I strung Hank up. Cut him up so it looked like it was connected to that viral video.”

“And before that, you went up to Pennsylvania,” I say. Augie was good, thorough. He would have gotten the lay of the land, looked into Rex’s life, learned about his scam, used it. I remember Hal the bartender’s description of the killer: raggedy beard, long hair, big nose. Maura, who had only met Augie briefly at Diana’s last birthday party, described the killer the same way. “You wore a disguise, even changed the way you walked. But when the tapes from the rental car place were analyzed, you matched the height and weight. Also your voice.”

“What about my voice?”

The door from the kitchen opens. Maura and Ellie walk through it. I didn’t want them to stay, but they insisted. Ellie noted that if the two of them were men, I wouldn’t insist they leave. She was right about that. So here they are now.

Maura nods at me. “Same voice.”

“Maura says the guy who hit Rex was a pro,” I say, because I want this to end. “Yet this pro let her escape. That was my first clue. You knew Maura had nothing to do with what happened to Diana. So you didn’t kill her.”

That was it. There was really nothing more to say. I could tell him about the other clues that had pointed me toward him — how Augie had known Rex was shot twice in the back of the head even though I never told him, or how Andy Reeves, when he had me strapped down, regretted killing Diana but not a word about Leo. But all of that wasn’t important.