Харлан Кобен - The Boy from the Woods

He pulled out the passport. Wilde held out his hand. Bernard hesitated and handed Naomi’s passport over. There was only one foreign stamp — Heathrow Airport in London three years ago.

“Naomi is not with my ex,” Pine said.

There was no doubt in his tone.

“Can I show you something?”

Wilde nodded.

“I don’t want you to think I’m weird or anything.” Bernard Pine turned around to the file cabinet. He fumbled for a key, unlocked it, opened the bottom drawer. He reached into the back and pulled out a magazine in protective wrap. The magazine was called SportsGlobe . The publication date was from two decades ago. On the cover was a swimsuit model.

There was a yellow Post-it marking a page. Pine carefully turned to it.

“Pia,” he said, with a longing that made even Wilde pull up. “Gorgeous, right?”

Wilde looked down at the model in the floss bikini.

“This was taken a year after we met. Pia mostly modeled lingerie and bikinis. She tried out for Sports Illustrated ’s swimsuit issue. You remember how big that used to be?”

Wilde said nothing.

“So Pia goes on an audition or whatever they call it and you know what Sports Illustrated tells her?”

He stopped and waited for Wilde to answer. To keep things moving, Wilde said, “No.”

“They say she’s too curvy. That’s the word they used. Curvy. They thought her...” — he cupped his hands in front of his chest — “had to be fake. Can you believe that? They said they were so great, they had to be implants.” He gestured toward the photograph. “But those are real. Amazing, right?”

Wilde said nothing.

“I sound like a pig, don’t I?”

Wilde chose the lie that would keep him talking. “Not really.”

“Pia and I met at a club in the East Village. I couldn’t believe my luck. I mean, every guy wanted her. But we just hit it off. She was so beautiful. I couldn’t stop staring at her. We fell pretty hard. I was working at Smith Barney back then. Making pretty sweet dollars. Pia was modeling just enough. I’m not saying it was perfect. Beautiful women, women who look like this, they always have a little crazy. It comes with the package, I guess. But back then I found that so exciting, you know, and she was just so superhot. We were in love, we had money, we had the city, we had no responsibilities...”

Bernard closed the magazine with care, as though it were a fragile religious text, and slipped it back into the protective plastic. He turned back to the file cabinet, placed it in the back, locked the drawer.

“We were together about a year when Pia told me that she couldn’t have children. This will sound weird, I guess, but we never talked about it before. I don’t know, I guess she worried about my reaction. But — and this might surprise you — I was thrilled. We were having a blast. I didn’t want a baby messing it up, and, man this will sound awful, I loved her bod so much. I had friends with hot wives. Not hot like Pia. But hot. And after childbirth, well, you know what I’m saying?”

Wilde said, “Uh-huh.”

“I’m just being honest.”

Wilde said, “Uh-huh” again.

“So we got married. Big mistake. Pia and me, we were good before we made it official. But then you start hanging around other married couples and they’re all having babies. Pia, well, what I thought was her being eccentric and maybe a little moody? Now that’s more like depression or bipolar or something like that. She started staying in bed all day. She didn’t take any more jobs. She even put on a few pounds.”

Wilde wanted to feign a gasp and say “how awful,” but he stayed silent.

“So now, of course, Pia wants a baby. I don’t know if it’s the best thing, but I love her. I want her happy. And we wouldn’t be the first people to think a baby could save our marriage, right? So we start talking about surrogates and all that, but in the end, I find this adoption agency in Maine. You pay a little more, but they make things smoother. The agency told us we would have a healthy baby in six months. Pia, well, it worked. She heard that news, she started taking care of herself again. We were back, except, you know, she became obsessed with the arrival. Suddenly she didn’t want to live in the city anymore. The city was dirty, she said. It’s no place to raise a child. So she found this place” — Bernard spread his hands — “in the real estate section of the Times . You know. Like unusual homes. So we bought it and moved out here two days before Naomi came home to us. It was all going to be great.”

Bernard Pine stopped.

“So what happened?” Wilde asked.

“I read somewhere that even adoptive mothers can suffer from postpartum depression or something similar. I don’t know if that’s what it was, but Pia kinda lost herself. It was awful. She couldn’t connect to her daughter in any way. Not even in like a cellular way. It was like our baby was a new kidney Pia’s body was rejecting.”

Interesting way to put it, Wilde thought. “So what did you do?”

“I hired nannies. Pia kept firing them. I tried to get her to see a shrink, but she flat-out refused. And I still had a job. The commute from out here to the city, no matter how you slice it, is at least an hour each way.” He closed his eyes hard, then opened them. “One day, I came home and there was a bruise on Naomi’s arm. She fell, Pia said. Another day, there was a cut over her eye. The girl is clumsy, Pia said.”

Bernard made a fist and put it near his mouth. “This is very hard to talk about.”

“Do you want a glass of water or something?”

“No, I want to get through this before I chicken out. I’ve never told this story. Not to anyone. I should have done more, I guess. I should have insisted Pia get help or...”

He stopped again, exhausted, and for a moment, Wilde feared that he wouldn’t go on.

“We’ve come this far,” Wilde said. “Tell me the rest.”

“I started to get scared for Naomi’s health. So one day, I didn’t go to work. I just pretended like I was heading to the bus, but I hung in town. I can’t say exactly why. Something felt extra-off that morning. Or maybe I had a premonition, I don’t know. I came home an hour after I left. Totally unexpected. I could hear the screaming from the driveway. Both of them. Screaming. I ran inside. They were upstairs. Pia was giving her a bath. The water. It was so hot, I could see the steam coming up off the top.”

He squeezed his eyes shut now.

“That was it. The straw that broke the camel’s back. I forced Pia to get help, though ‘help’ is a relative term. We got divorced — quietly. No reason to let the world know what happened, right? Pia gave up all parental rights. Buying my silence maybe. Or maybe she just knew that she’d never care. That was fifteen years ago. Naomi hasn’t seen her mother since.”

Wilde tried to wade past what he’d just heard, tried to get past this horrible tale and keep moving ahead with his investigation. Then: “Are you sure?”

“What do you mean?”

“Could Naomi and your ex have started seeing each other behind your back?”

“I don’t think so. Pia still battles with severe mental health issues, but she’s managed to lasso in a rich new husband. My guess? She stopped thinking about Naomi long ago.”

Hester called Aaron Gerios, a former FBI Special Agent who’d worked hostage situations and kidnappings. “I have a hypothetical situation for you.”

“A hypothetical,” Gerios repeated.

“Yes,” Hester said. “You know what the word ‘hypothetical’ means, don’t you, Aaron?”

“When you call, it means the situation is real, not hypothetical, but you can’t tell me who it is.”