Харлан Кобен - Win

“What would have been?”

“A turban. Except you guys are terrible at tying them. Anyway, using the software, I made Arlo look clean-shaven with short hair. I mean, Oral Roberts University. It isn’t exactly a spot for campus radicals, right? Then I tried some alumni contacts from that era. Class officers. People like that. The groups are pretty active on Facebook. I got a fair amount of responses. Most were useless, but two people thought the image looked like a guy named Ralph.”

“Ralph what?”

“That’s the thing. They didn’t know. It was all very vague, which, I thought, was what you’d want if you were kind of hiding out. Still, I had a first name. I had the years he may have been on campus. So my next step was, I had to get hold of the yearbooks from those years.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“E-Yearbook. It’s a website. They have full scans of every page from tons of yearbooks. High schools and colleges. You can see them online if you pay a fee. If you pay a slightly higher fee, they’ll send you a scan of your entire yearbook.”

Kabir is trying my patience. “So you looked through them for the name Ralph?”

“Right, looked through the headshots. There were several Ralphs, but none that looked like Arlo Sugarman.”

“He was probably smart enough to skip picture day.”

“Probably, yeah. Am I taking too long telling you this?”

“I think it would be best to pick up the pace.”

“Okay, cutting to the chase: This may sound a little complicated, but when I ran a facial recognition search through the yearbook scan pages, I came up with this.”

Kabir opens Arlo Sugarman’s folder and pulls out a black-and-white image.

“This is page 138 of the Oral Roberts University yearbook from 1974.”

He hands me the page. The heading reads “Theater Moments.” There are five photographs spread across two pages. One features a woman wearing angel wings. One features what looks like the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet . One features four men dressed in medieval garb playing musical instruments and singing.

The second from the right, playing a mandolin, is Arlo Sugarman.

“Whoa,” I say out loud.

In the old image, Sugarman wears black-framed glasses, which he hadn’t in any previous photographs I had seen. He is clean-shaven. The curly locks are cut shorter. You wouldn’t recognize him unless you were looking closely, which, it seems, the facial recognition software had been.

“Long story short, I located the student who directed that show. His name is Fran Shovlin. He works at a megachurch in Houston. Nice guy. He remembers Ralph as Ralph Lewis. What’s interesting is, there was a Ralph Lewis in that class, but he was sick and didn’t seem to attend any classes. So I think Arlo just used his name.”

“Makes sense.”

“According to Shovlin, the only thing he really remembers about Ralph was that he dated a woman named Elena. I looked her up. She’s Elena Randolph now. She’s divorced and owns a beauty salon in Rochester, New York. I called her, but as soon as I mentioned the name Ralph Lewis, she hung up on me. I’ve called back, but she refuses to talk.”

“Interesting,” I say. “And I assume you’ve done every kind of search under the name Ralph Lewis?”

Kabir nods. “Nothing pops up.”

Not surprising. Sugarman probably changed identities several times over the years. There was a chance that Ralph Lewis was never an identity, that he just used that name knowing the confusion with the real Ralph Lewis would keep him off the radar. It would be hard to pull off that stunt today — colleges keep track of students, have greater security concerns — but back in the seventies, anyone could have probably walked onto a campus and sat in on classes and not been questioned.

Kabir and I agree on a schedule. I will visit Parker’s mother and Rowan’s father at the Crestmont Assisted Living Village tomorrow at one p.m. It will be easiest to drive there — the ride would only be about ninety minutes — and then if I decide it would help, I can grab a private plane at nearby Morristown Airport and fly to Rochester to confront Elena Randolph. Kabir will take care of all the details.

“You know what to do with Elena Randolph,” I say.

“On it,” Kabir says, rising from the chair.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?” I ask.

“Nah. Got a hot date.”

“How hot?” I ask.

“I like her, man.”

“You can keep the copter for the night,” I say.

“Huh?”

“Keep the copter. Take her to my beach club on Fishers Island. I can arrange a table on the ocean.”

Kabir does not reply. He instead points to the files stacked on the table. “Should I leave these here for you?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks for the generous offer, Boss. But I think I’ll pass.”

I wait a beat. Then I say, “May I inquire why?”

“If I do something this grand on our fourth date,” Kabir replies with a shrug, “what will I do for the fifth?”

“Wise,” I say.

My mobile vibrates. When I see the caller is Angelica Wyatt, I feel the spike of fear and hit the green button with dizzying speed. Before I can skip my customary “Articulate,” Angelica says, “Ema is fine.”

Amazing how well Angelica knows me, especially considering how little she knows me. And yes, this is Angelica Wyatt. The Angelica Wyatt, the movie star.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“Ema has been asking for you.”

Ema is a high school senior. She is also my biological daughter.

“I brought her to the hospital to see you,” Angelica tells me.

This displeases me. “You shouldn’t have.” I glare at Kabir, but I’m still talking to Ema’s mother. “How did she even know I was—?”

“You were supposed to have breakfast with her that morning,” Angelica replies.

“Oh,” I say. “Right.”

“She’s worried, Win.”

I don’t say anything. I don’t like this.

“When can she see you?” Angelica asks.

“Would tomorrow work?”

“Your place?” Angelica asks. “Dinner?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll drop her off.”

“You can come too, if you’d like.”

“That’s not how we do this, Win.”

Angelica is right, of course. We agree on a time. I hang up and continue to glare at Kabir.

“Ema called looking for you,” Kabir explains, “and I know you wouldn’t want me to lie to her.”

I frown because he is correct, and I don’t like it. “How much does she know?”

“Just that you were hospitalized. I told her you’d be okay. She didn’t believe me. She wanted to stay in your room.”

I am not sure how to react to this. I am often left adrift and unsure when it comes to Ema. This new relationship, if that is what we want to call it, often leaves me teetering and unbalanced.

Which reminds me.

“Trey Lyons,” I say.

“What about him?”

“Sadie said he went home to convalesce.”

“In western Pennsylvania,” Kabir says. “To some ranch or something.”

“I want eyes on him, twenty-four seven.”

“Got it.”

“Two men. I want to know where he is at all times. Run a background check too.”

Sometime later, with Kabir on the copter and heading back to Manhattan for his hot albeit serious date, I am back at the practice green, working on my putting, trying to clear my head, when I spot Cousin Patricia coming over the hill. She strides toward me with her shoulders back, her face set on grim, and one does not need to be a body-language expert to see that something is amiss.

Because I’m quick on the uptake, I say, “Something amiss?”

“You let me be a cowardly chickenshit,” she tells me.