Харлан Кобен - Run Away

He turned and looked down at the blood on the floor.

“The devil could even be a man,” Cornelius said.

“I assume you knew Aaron too?” Simon asked.

Cornelius just kept staring at the blood. “You know all my talk about the devil getting into your bloodstream?”

Ingrid said, “Yes.”

“Sometimes he don’t need to do any poking or prodding. Sometimes a man does it for him.” Cornelius looked up at them. “I don’t like wishing someone dead, but I tell you — there were times I came up here and he’d be so wasted, Paige too, lying in their own stink, and I’d look at him, at what he done, and I’d daydream...”

His voice faded away.

“Did you talk to the police?” Ingrid asked.

“They talked to me, but I got nothing to say to them.”

“When did you last see Paige?”

Cornelius hesitated. “I kinda hoped you guys would tell me.”

“What do you mean?”

There was a noise in the corridor. Cornelius stuck his head out. A young couple stumbled toward them, arms wrapped around each other, limbs so entwined it was hard to say where one began and the other ended.

“Cornelius,” the young man said, a lilt in his voice. “What’s happening, mah man?”

“All good, Enrique. How are you, Candy?”

“Love ya, Cornelius.”

“Love you too.”

“You cleaning out the place?” Enrique asked.

“Nah. Just making sure it’s all okay.”

“Dude was a turd.”

“Enrique!” Candy said.

“What?”

“The man is dead.”

“So now he’s a dead turd. That better?”

Enrique peered in the door, saw Simon and Ingrid, and asked, “Who that with you?”

“Just some cops,” Cornelius said.

That changed their demeanor. Suddenly their slow saunter became more purposeful.

“Uh, nice to meet you,” Candy said.

They unwound their limbs and hurried their step, both disappearing into a room at the end of the hall. Cornelius kept the smile on his face until the couple was out of sight.

“Cornelius?” Ingrid said.

“Hmm.”

“When did you last see Paige?”

He turned slowly, his eyes taking in the sad room. “What I’m going to tell you,” he said, “well, I didn’t tell the police this for obvious reasons.”

They waited.

“You have to understand. Maybe I’ve been sugarcoating, telling you how nice Paige was to Chloe and me. But fact is, she was a mess. A junkie. When she was in my place — I mean, like when she came by to play chess or get a bite to eat — truth is, and I don’t like saying it, I kept an eye on her. You know what I’m saying? I always worried she’d steal something because that’s what junkies do.”

Simon knew. Paige had stolen from them too. Cash went missing from Simon’s wallet. When several pieces of Ingrid’s jewelry disappeared, Paige claimed innocence in near Oscar-worthy performances.

That’s what junkies do.

A junkie.

His daughter was a junkie. Simon had never let himself articulate that, but hearing it come from Cornelius’s lips just made it land with a horrible, undeniable thud.

“Two days before Aaron got killed, I saw Paige. Down by the front door. I was coming in. She was flying down the stairs. Almost tumbling. Like someone was chasing her. She was going so fast, I thought she’d lose her step.”

Cornelius looked up and off now, as though he could still see her.

“I put my hands out, like to break her fall.” Cornelius lifted his arms, palms up, demonstrating. “I called out to her. But she just sprinted past me and outside. Didn’t even break her stride. I mean, that’s happened before.”

“What’s happened before?” Ingrid asked.

Cornelius turned his attention to her. “Paige just sprinting by me, like that. Like she’s so out of it, she doesn’t know who I am. Lots of times, she runs to that empty lot next door. You see it when you come in?”

They both nodded.

“Got that razor wire up front, but there’s an opening around the side. Goes there to get her fix from Rocco.”

“Rocco?”

“Local dealer. Aaron worked for him.”

Ingrid said, “Aaron dealt drugs?”

Cornelius cocked an eyebrow. “That surprise you?”

Simon and Ingrid exchanged a glance. It did not.

“Point is, when a junkie needs a fix, you could put NFL defensemen in her way and she’d break through. So what I’m saying is, that part — her sprinting out like that — that isn’t what made it strange.”

“So what did make it strange?” Simon asked.

“Paige had bruises on her face.”

Simon felt a rushing in his ears. His own voice sounded far away. “Bruises?”

“Some blood too. Like she’d taken a beating.”

Simon’s hands tightened into fists. The rage crawled up him, heating his entire body. Drugs, junkie, strung-out, whatever — somehow he could either deal or block on all that.

But someone had punched his little girl.

Simon could see it, a cruel hand tightening into a fist — tightening just as his was now — and then the fist cocking back, a sneer on the face, and that fist launching straight at his helpless daughter.

Anger, fury, rage consumed him.

If it was Aaron — and if Aaron could somehow be alive and standing in front of him right this very moment — Simon would kill him without a moment’s hesitation or thought. No regret. No guilt.

He’d end him.

Simon felt Ingrid’s hand on his arm, a warm touch, an attempt perhaps to bring him back.

“I get what you’re feeling,” Cornelius said, looking straight at Simon.

“So what did you do?” Simon asked.

“Who says I did anything?”

“Because you get what I’m feeling,” Simon said.

“Doesn’t mean I did anything. I’m not her father.”

“So you just shrugged and went about your day?”

“Could be.”

Simon shook his head. “You wouldn’t just let something like that slide.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Cornelius said.

“If you did,” Simon said, “it would never leave this room.”

Cornelius glanced toward Ingrid. She nodded as if to reassure.

“Please tell us the rest,” Ingrid said.

Cornelius fiddled with the gray-white beard. He took another look around the room, making a face as though he’d just entered the room for the first time and realized the filth.

“Yeah, I came up here.”

“And?”

“And I banged on the door. It was locked. So I took out my key. Just like I did today. I opened the door...”

The music upstairs stopped. The room was completely silent now.

Cornelius looked down to the mattress on the right. “Aaron was right there. Passed out. Stench so bad I could barely breathe. I just wanted to run out of there, forget the whole thing.”

He stopped.

“So what did you do?” Ingrid asked.

“I checked his knuckles.”

“Pardon?”

“The knuckles on Aaron’s right hand, they were scraped up. Fresh scrapes too. So I knew then. No surprise, I guess. It’d been him who beat her. So I stood over him...”

Again he stopped. This time he closed his eyes.

Ingrid stepped toward him. “It’s okay.”

“Like I told you before, I daydreamed about it, Ingrid. Maybe... maybe I would have done more, if I got the chance. I don’t know. If that punk was awake. If he was awake and tried to explain himself. Maybe then I would have just exploded. You know what I’m saying? So I’m standing there and I’m staring down at this piece of garbage. And maybe this time, after what I’d seen, maybe I thought I’d do more than just shake my head and shuffle away.”

Cornelius opened his eyes.

“But I didn’t.”

“You left the room,” Ingrid said.