Harlan Coben: Don’t Let Go

I’m not buying it, but they aren’t selling it hard either.

The phone clipped to Bates’s belt rings. He reaches for it and steps away. Two seconds later, he says, “Where?” There is a pause. Then he hangs up and turns to Reynolds. There is an edge in his voice. “We need to go.”

They drop me at a bus depot so barren I wait for a tumbleweed to blow through it. No one is working the ticket counter. I don’t even think they have a ticket counter.

Two blocks down the road I find a “no-tell motel” that promises all the glamour and amenities of a herpes sore, which in this case is a logical metaphor on several levels. The sign advertises hourly rates, “color TV” (do some motels still offer black-and-white?), and “theme rooms.”

“I’ll take the gonorrhea suite,” I say.

The guy behind the desk tosses me a key so fast I fear that I may be getting the suite I requested. The color scheme for the room could most generously be dubbed “faded yellow,” though it seems suspiciously close to the urine family. I strip off the bedspread, remind myself that I’m up-to-date on my tetanus shots, and risk lying down.

Captain Augie didn’t come to our house after I broke into Maura’s.

I think he was afraid Dad would have a seizure if he saw that squad car pull into our driveway again. I’ll never let go of that image — the squad car making the turn as though in slow motion, Augie opening the driver’s-side door, his world-weary steps up our walk. Augie’s own life had already been blown apart hours before — and now there he was, knowing his visit would do the same to ours.

Anyway, that’s why Augie cornered me heading to school about my breaking into Maura’s house, instead of going to my dad.

“I don’t want to get you in trouble,” Augie told me, “but you can’t do stuff like that.”

“She knows something,” I said.

“She doesn’t,” Augie told me. “Maura’s just a scared kid.”

“You talked to her?”

“Trust me, son. You have to let her go.”

I did — still do — trust him. I didn’t — still haven’t — let her go.

I put my hands behind my head and stare at the stains on the ceiling. I try not to speculate on how the stains might have gotten there. Augie is on the beach at the Sea Pine Resort in Hilton Head right now with a woman he met on some senior online-dating site. No way I want to interrupt that. Augie divorced eight years ago. His marriage to Audrey took a fatal hit “that night,” but it limped along for another seven years before mercifully being put to sleep. It took Augie a long time to start dating again, so why blow it up with speculation?

Augie would be home in a day or two. It could wait.

I debate calling Ellie and bouncing my insane hypotheses off her, but suddenly there is a heavy, insistent knock. I throw my feet off the bed. Two uniformed cops are at the door. They both wear scowls. They say that sometimes you start looking like your spouse. It applies to police partners too, I guess. In this case, both are white and overmuscled and have prominent foreheads. If I met them again, it would be hard to remember which was which.

“Mind if we come in?” Cop One sneers.

“You got a warrant?” I ask.

“No.”

“Yes,” I say.

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, I mind if you come in.”

“Too bad.”

Cop Two pushes by me. I let him. They both come in and close the door.

Cop One offers up another sneer. “Nice dump you got here.”

This, I assume, is supposed to be some kind of clever insult. Like I’d personally worked on the décor.

“We hear you’re holding out on us,” Cop One says.

“Rex was our friend.”

“And a cop.”

“And you’re holding out on us.”

I don’t really have the patience for this, so I pull out my gun and aim it between the two of them. Their mouths make surprised O s.

“What the hell...?”

“You entered my motel room without a warrant,” I say.

I point the gun at one, then the other, then back to the middle.

“It would be easy to shoot you both, stick your pieces in your hands, claim the shooting was justified.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Cop One asks.

I hear the fear in his voice, so I move toward him. I give him my best crazy eyes. I’m good at the crazy eyes. You know this, Leo.

“You want to have an ear fight with me?” I ask him.

“A what?”

“Your brah” — I gesture with my head toward Cop Two — “leaves. We lock the door. We put down our weapons. One of us walks out of this room with the other’s ear in his mouth. What do you say?”

I lean closer and make a biting motion.

“You’re fucking nuts,” Cop One says.

“You got no idea.” And now I’m so into it, I almost hope he’ll take me up on it. “You in, big guy? What do you say?”

There is a knock on the door. Cop One practically leaps toward the knob to open it.

It’s Stacy Reynolds. I hide the gun behind my leg. Reynolds is clearly not happy to see her colleagues. She glares at them. They both lower their heads like chastened school bullies.

“What the hell are you two clowns doing here?”

Cop Two says, “Just...,” and then he actually shrugs.

“He knows stuff,” Cop One says. “We were just doing some legwork for you.”

“Get out. Now.”

They do. Reynolds now notices my piece against my leg. “What the fuck, Nap?”

I holster the gun. “Don’t worry about it.”

She shakes her head. “Cops would be better at their jobs if God gave them bigger dicks.”

“You’re a cop,” I remind her.

“Me especially. Come on. I need to show you something.”

Hal, the bartender at Larry and Craig’s Bar and Grille, has a wistful look on his face.

“She was smoking hot,” Hal says. A small frown begins to surface. “Too hot for that old dude, that’s for sure.”

Larry and Craig’s Bar and Grille clearly has a bar and clearly has no grille. It’s that kind of place. The sticky floor is coated in sawdust and peanut shells. That combo stench of stale beer and vomit wafts from said floor and fills all nostrils. I don’t need to take a piss, but if I do, I know the urinal won’t flush but will be overflowing with ice cubes.

Reynolds nods at me to take the lead.

“What did she look like?” I ask.

Hal is still frowning. “What part of ‘hot’ isn’t good English?”

“Redhead, brunette, blonde?”

“Brunette is brown, right?”

I glance at Reynolds. “Yeah, Hal. Brunette is brown.”

“Brunette.”

“Anything else?”

“Hot.”

“Yeah, we got that.”

“Built,” Hal says.

Reynolds sighs. “And she was with a guy, right?”

“She was out of his league, that I can tell you.”

“And you have,” I remind him. “Did they come in together?”

“No.”

“Who came in first?” Reynolds asks.

“The geezer did.” Hal gestures toward me. “Sat right where you are now.”

“What did he look like?” I ask.

“Midsixties, long hair, raggedy beard, big nose. Looked like a guy who rode a hog, but he was dressed in a gray suit, white shirt, blue tie.”

“He you remember,” I say.

“Huh?”

“He you remember. But her?”

“If you saw the way she wore that black dress, you wouldn’t remember much else either.”

“So he’s sitting here alone drinking,” Reynolds says, getting us back on track. “How long before the woman came in?”

“I don’t know. Twenty, thirty minutes.”

“Then she comes in and...?”

“She makes an entrance, you know what I’m saying?”

“We do,” I say.