Harlan Coben: Don’t Let Go

“Nap?”

“I need you to look something up for me,” I say.

The security feed at Sal’s Rent-A-Vehicle is of better quality. I watch the video in silence. As is too often the case with security footage, this camera is also set up high. Every bad guy knows about this, and so they do the simple things to beat it. Here, the guy with the stolen ID in the name of Dale Miller is wearing a baseball cap pulled low. He keeps his head down so that it’s impossible to see his features with any sort of clarity. I can maybe make out the start of a beard. He limps.

“A pro,” I tell Reynolds.

“Meaning?”

“Cap pulled low, head down, fake limp.”

“How do you know the limp is fake?”

“The same way I knew Maura’s walk. A walk can be distinctive. What’s the best way to hide that and get you to focus on something meaningless?”

“Fake a limp,” Reynolds says.

We head outside Sal’s shack of a rental office and into the cool night air. In the distance, I see a man light up a cigarette. He lifts his head and breathes out a long smoke plume, just like Dad used to do. I took up smoking after Dad died and kept at it for more than a year. I know how nuts that is. Dad died of lung cancer after a lifetime of smoking, and yet my reaction to his horrible death was to smoke. I liked stepping outside alone with a cigarette like this guy is doing. Maybe that was the appeal for me — when I lit up, people stayed away from me.

“We can’t rely on the age thing either,” I say. “The long hair, the beard — he could be wearing a disguise. Lots of times a guy will pretend to be old so you underestimate him. Rex pulls over an old man for a DUI, he may let his guard down.”

Reynolds nods. “I’ll still have an expert comb through the surveillance tape frame by frame. Maybe they’ll get something more distinct.”

“Sure.”

“You have a theory, Nap?”

“Not really.”

“But?”

I watch the guy take a deep drag and let it out through his nose. I’m a Francophile now — wine, cheese, fluency in the language, the whole kit ’n’ caboodle, which may also explain my short-lived smoking. The French smoke. A lot. Of course, I came by my Francophilism, to invent a word, honestly, what with being born in Marseilles and spending the first eight years of my life in Lyon. It isn’t a show thing for me like it is with those pretentious twat waffles who know nothing about wine but suddenly need a special carrying case and treat the pulled cork like a lover’s tongue.

“Nap?”

“Do you believe in hunches, Reynolds? Do you believe in cop intuition?”

“Fuck no,” Reynolds says. “Every stupid mistake I’ve seen a cop make stems from their reliance on” — she makes quote marks with her fingers — “‘hunches’ and ‘intuition.’”

I like Reynolds. I like her a lot. “Exactly my point.”

It’s been a long day. It feels like I whacked Trey with the bat a month ago. I’ve been working off adrenaline, and now I’m tapped out. But like I said before, I like Reynolds. Maybe I owe her too. So I figure, why not?

“I had a twin brother. His name was Leo.”

She waits.

“You know anything about this?” I ask.

“No; should I?”

I shake my head. “Leo had this girlfriend named Diana Styles. We all grew up in Westbridge, where you picked me up.”

“Nice town,” Reynolds says.

“It is, yeah.” I don’t know how to tell this. It makes no sense, so I just keep rambling. “So our senior year, my brother, Leo, is dating Diana. One night, they go out. I’m not around. I have a hockey game in another town. We were playing Parsippany Hills. Funny what you remember. I had two goals and two assists.”

“Impressive.”

I half smile at my old life. If I close my eyes, I can still recall every moment of that game. My second goal was the game winner. Shorthanded. I stole the puck right before the blue line, flew down the left side, juked the goalie, lifted the backhander over his shoulder. Life before, life after.

An airport shuttle van marked with the words “Sal’s Rent-A-Vehicle” pulls up to the front of the little hut. Weary travelers — everyone looks weary when they’re renting a car — fall out and get in line.

“So you had a hockey game in another town,” Reynolds prompted.

“And that night, Leo and Diana were hit by a train. They died instantly.”

Reynolds’s hand goes to her mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

I say nothing.

“Was it an accident? Suicide?”

I shrug. “No one knows. Or at least I don’t.”

The last guy off the shuttle is an overweight businessman dragging an oversized suitcase with a broken wheel. His face is neon red from exertion.

“Was there an official finding?” Reynolds asks.

“Accidental deaths,” I say. “Two high school kids, plenty of booze in their system, some drugs too. People used to walk on those railroad tracks, sometimes doing stupid dares. Another kid died up there in the seventies trying to jump the track. Anyway, the entire school freaked out, went into mourning. The deaths got plenty of sanctimonious media coverage as a warning to others: young, attractive, drugs, drinking, what is wrong with our society, you know the deal.”

“I do,” Reynolds says. Then: “You said senior year.”

I nod.

“That was when you were dating Maura Wells.”

She’s good.

“So when exactly did Maura run off?”

I nod again. Reynolds gets it.

“Shit,” she says. “How soon after?”

“A few days later. Her mother claimed I was a bad influence. She wanted her daughter out of this terrible town with teens who got stoned and drunk and walked in front of trains. Maura supposedly transferred to a boarding school.”

“Happens,” Reynolds says.

“Yep.”

“But you didn’t buy it?”

“Nope.”

“Where was Maura the night your brother and his girlfriend died?”

“I don’t know.”

Reynolds sees it now. “That’s why you’re still searching for her. It’s not just her spellbinding cleavage.”

“Though we shouldn’t just discount that.”

“Men,” Reynolds says. She moves toward me. “You think — what? — Maura knows something about your brother’s death?”

I say nothing.

“Why do you think that, Nap?”

I make quote marks with my fingers. “‘Hunch,’” I say. “‘Intuition.’”

I have a life and a job, so I get a car service to drive me home.

Ellie calls me and asks for an update, but I tell her it can wait. We plan a breakfast at the Armstrong Diner for the morning. I turn off my phone, close my eyes, and sleep the rest of the ride. I pay the driver and offer to add more so he can find a motel for the night.

“Nah, I gotta get back,” the driver tells me.

I overtip. For a cop, I’m fairly rich. Why wouldn’t I be? I’m Dad’s sole heir. Some people claim that money is the root of all evil. Could be. Others say that money can’t buy you happiness. That may be true. But if you handle it right, money buys you freedom and time, and those are a lot more tangible than happiness.

It’s past midnight, but I still get in my car and head to Clara Maass Medical Center in Belleville. I flash my ID and find Trey’s floor. I peek in his room. Trey is asleep, his leg in the air wrapped in an enormous cast. No visitors. I flash my ID at a nurse and tell her I’m investigating his assault. She tells me that Trey won’t be walking on his own for at least six months. I thank her and leave.

I go home to the empty house, get in bed, stare at the ceiling. Sometimes I forget how odd it is for a single guy to be living in a house in this kind of neighborhood, but I’m used to it by now. I think about how that night started with such promise. I’d come home from that win against Parsippany Hills so fired up. Ivy League scouts were there that night. Two made me offers on the spot. I couldn’t wait to tell you about it, Leo. I sat in the kitchen with Dad and waited for you to get home. Good news was never yet good news until I shared it with you. So Dad and I talked and waited, but we were both listening with half an ear for your car to pull into the driveway. Most kids in town had a curfew, but Dad never gave us one. Some parents in town saw that as lazy parenting, but Dad shrugged and said he trusted us.