Харлан Кобен - Win

I understand this. I, too, sometimes feel that way about those who inhabit my socioeconomic sphere.

You see me, and you think I look down on you. You feel resentment and envy toward me. All your own failures, both real and perceived, rise up and want to target me.

Even worse, I appear to be a soft, easy, pampered target.

Today’s teenagers might dub my face “punch-worthy.”

Inevitably, all of the above led to ugly incidents in my childhood. For the sake of brevity, I will talk about one. During a visit to the Philadelphia Zoo when I was ten years old, decked out in a blue blazer with my school crest sewn onto the chest pocket, I wandered away from my well-heeled pack. A group of inner-city students — yes, you can read into that as you might — surrounded me, mocked me, and then beat me. I ended up hospitalized, in a coma for a short time, and in a suddenly interesting life cycle, I nearly lost the same kidney Bobby Lyons had so recently pummeled.

The physical pain of that beating was bad. The shame that ten-year-old boy felt from cowering, from feeling helpless and terrified, was far worse.

In short, I never wanted to experience that again.

I had a choice then. I could, as my father urged, “stay amongst my own” — hide behind those wrought-iron gates and well-manicured hedges — or I could do something about it.

You know the rest. Or at least you think you do. Human beings, as Sadie noted, are complex. I had the financial means, the motivation, the past trauma, the innate skills, the disposition, and perhaps, when I am most honest with myself, some sort of loose screw (or primitive survival mechanism?) that allows me to not only thrive but take some pleasure from acts of violence.

Take all those components, puree them in a blender, and voilà. Here I am.

In a hospital bed. Unconscious.

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. I don’t know whether I dreamed this or not, but I may have opened my eyes and seen Myron sitting bedside. I did that for him when we scraped him off the pavement after our own government tortured him. Other times I hear voices — my father’s, my biological daughter’s, my deceased mother’s — but since I know for certain that at least one of those voices cannot be real, perhaps I am imagining the rest.

I am, however, alive.

Per my “plan” — I use that word in the loosest sense possible — I’d managed to fold enough of my body across the driver’s seat belt harness before the crash. It kept me strapped in during impact. I don’t know the fate of Teddy’s two brothers. I don’t know what the authorities believed happened. I don’t know how many hours or days it has been since the crash.

As I begin to swim up to the surface of awareness, I let my mind wander. I have begun piecing some of this case together, or at least it feels that way. Hard to know for certain. I am still mostly unconscious, if that’s what you call this cusp, and thus many of my purported solutions — about the LLC, about the bank robbery, about the murder of Ry Strauss — seem plausible now but may, like many a dream, turn into utter nonsense when I awake.

I reach a stage where I can sense consciousness, yet I hesitate. I’m not sure why. Part is exhaustion, a weariness so heavy that even the act of opening my eyes would seem a task far too rigorous in my current condition. I feel as though I’m strapped down in one of the dreams where you’re running through deep snow and thus moving too slowly. I’m also trying to listen and gather intel, but the voices are unintelligible, muffled, like Charlie Brown’s parents or the audial equivalent of a shower curtain.

When I finally do blink my eyes open, it is not a family member nor Myron sitting bedside. It’s Sadie Fisher. She bends toward me — close enough that I can smell her lilac shampoo — and whispers in my ear.

“Not a word to the police until we talk.”

Then Sadie calls out, “I think he’s awake,” and moves to the side. Medical professionals — doctors and nurses, I assume — descend. They take vitals and give me ice chips for the thirst. It takes a minute or two, but I’m able to answer their simple, medically related questions. They tell me that I suffered head trauma, that the bullet missed my vital organs, that I will be fine. After some time passes, they ask me if I have any questions. I catch Sadie’s eye. She gives the smallest shake of the head. I, in turn, shake mine.

Perhaps an hour later — time is hard to judge — I am upright in the bed. Sadie works hard to clear the room. The staff grudgingly obey. Once they are gone, Sadie takes a small speaker out of her purse, fiddles with her phone, and starts blasting music.

“In case someone is listening in,” Sadie tells me when she moves closer.

“How long have I been here?” I ask.

“Four days.” Sadie pulls a chair toward the bed. “Tell me what happened. All of it.”

I do, though the pain medication is making me loopy. She listens without interrupting. I ask for more ice chips while I tell the tale. She pours them into my mouth.

When I finish, Sadie says, “The driver, as you already know, is dead. So is one of the two assailants, Robert Lyons. He flew through the windshield on impact. The other brother — he goes by Trey — suffered broken bones, but since there wasn’t enough to hold him on, he’s gone home to ‘convalesce’ in western Pennsylvania.”

“What did Trey claim?”

“Mr. Lyons is choosing not to speak to the authorities at this time.”

“What do the police think happened?”

“They aren’t saying, except for the fact that they’ve pieced together that the driver had his throat slit by you. They have some forensics — the position of your body behind the corpse, the way the blade fit into your sleeve, the blood on your hands, stuff like that. It probably isn’t court conclusive, but it’s enough so that the cops know.”

“Did you tell them about the brothers threatening you?” I ask.

“Not yet. I can always do that later. If I tell them now, they will want to know why they threatened me. Do you understand?”

I do.

“The cops are already connecting the dots between what happened to Teddy Lyons in Indiana and what happened in that van. For your sake, as my client, I don’t want to help them.”

Logical. “Advice?” I ask.

“The police are here. They want you to make a statement. I say we don’t give them one.”

“I already forget what happened anyway,” I say. “Head trauma, you know.”

“And you’re still too weak to question,” Sadie adds.

“I am, yes, though I still want to be released as soon as possible. I can recuperate better at home.”

“I’ll see whether I can arrange it.”

Sadie rises.

“We kept this quiet, Win. Out of the papers.”

“Thank you.”

“There were other people who wanted to stay bedside. I advised against it because I wanted to make certain you spoke to me first. They all understood.”

I nod. I don’t ask who. It doesn’t matter.

“Thank you,” I say. “Now get me out of here.”

But it isn’t that easy.

Two days later I am moved out of the ICU into a private room. It is there, at three in the morning, while I am still blessedly riding the edge between the morphine highway and full slumber, that I sense more than hear my hospital room door open.

This is not uncommon, of course. Anyone who has endured a prolonged stay in a medical facility knows that you are prodded and probed at the strangest hours of the night, almost as though the intent is to keep you from any true REM sleep. Perhaps, to again use a superhero analogy, my Spidey senses were tingling, but I somehow know that whoever was broaching was not a nurse or physician or a member of the custodial crew.