Харлан Кобен - Run Away

“Who are these men?” Raff asked. There was an edge there now. “What do they have to do with Damien?”

“You said only you and Mr. Gorse used this IP and Wi-Fi?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Don’t ask me for the technical explanation,” she said, “but Henry Thorpe had contact with someone using this computer’s IP.”

Nap just listened.

“Meaning?” Raff said. There was more edge now.

“Meaning just that. Someone who used this computer communicated with Henry Thorpe.”

“So? This Thorpe guy could be an ink salesman for all I know.”

“He’s not.”

Elena stared at him hard.

“Damien didn’t keep secrets from me,” Raff said.

Didn’t. Finally the past tense.

“Maybe our computer was hacked or something.”

“That’s not what happened, Neil.”

“So what are you insinuating?”

“I’m not insinuating anything. I’m asking.”

“Damien wouldn’t cheat on me.”

She hadn’t really been going there, but maybe she should. Maybe there was some kind of romantic connection here. Was Henry Thorpe gay? She hadn’t bothered to ask. Then again, who in this day and age cares?

And if that was the case — if Damien and Henry were lovers — how did Aaron Corval fit into this? Wasn’t Paige Greene his girlfriend? Could that be tied in somehow? Could there be some kind of romantic entanglement Elena hadn’t yet considered at the center of this?

She didn’t see how.

Nap tapped her on the shoulder. “Can I speak to you for a moment?”

Elena got up from the chair. She put a hand on Raff’s shoulder. “Mr. Raff?”

He looked at her.

“I’m not insinuating anything. Really. I’m just trying to help find who did this.”

He nodded, his eyes down.

Nap headed out the back door. She followed him.

“What’s up?” she asked.

“Aaron Corval.”

“What about him?”

“It isn’t hard to use Google,” he said. “He was murdered days ago.”

“That’s right.”

“So you want to tell me what’s going on?”

Simon’s car route back to Manhattan ran past the Corval Inn and Family Tree Farm.

He almost drove straight past it — what was the point, and he wanted to get back to the hospital — but then again, nothing ventured, nothing gained. He pulled into the lot and parked in the same spot he’d left earlier.

The inn was quiet. If the mourners had all been heading to a reception when Enid peeled off for her club, the reception was over. He looked for any familiar faces at all — anyone who’d been at the memorial service down by that brook — but the only person who looked familiar was the woman behind the desk with the tablecloth-checked blouse. She had another map of the grounds flattened on the desk and was showing a color-coordinated young couple that Simon would anachronistically call yuppies the “most arduous hiking trail on the property.”

The woman clearly spotted Simon waiting out of the corner of her eye, and she clearly wasn’t happy about it. Simon stood, bouncing on his toes, and glanced around. There was a staircase on the right. He debated going up it, but what good would that do? There were glass doors covered with lace behind him. They would lead to another room.

Maybe the reception was in there.

As he started toward them, he heard the woman behind the desk say, “Excuse me, that room is private.”

Simon didn’t stop. He reached the door, turned the knob, and pushed into the room.

There had indeed been a reception of some sort in here. Debris from finger sandwiches and crudités sat on a stained white tablecloth in the center of the room. An antique rolltop desk complete with those mail slots and tiny file drawers was to Simon’s right. Wiley Corval swiveled from the desk and rose.

“What are you doing here?”

The woman behind the desk came in behind Simon. “I’m so sorry, Wiley.”

“It’s okay, Bernadette. I got it.”

“Are you sure? I can call—”

“I have it. Close the door and see to our guests, please.”

She threw an eye dagger at Simon before heading back into the lobby. She closed the doors a little harder than necessary, shaking the glass.

“What do you want?” he asked Simon with a snap.

Wiley Corval now wore a brown herringbone tweed vest with pewter buttons. A gold chain hung from a middle button, attached no doubt to a pocket watch that was in the vest pocket. His crisp white shirt had puffy arms moving down to a tapered cuff.

Dressed for the role of innkeeper, Simon thought.

“My daughter is missing.”

“You told me that already. I have no idea where she is. Please go away.”

“I have some questions.”

“And I don’t have to answer them.” He stood a little straighter, threw back his shoulders for effect. “I’m mourning my son today.”

There was no reason to be subtle. “Are you?” Simon asked.

Surprise came to Wiley’s face — Simon had expected that — but there was something deeper.

Fear.

“Am I what?”

“Aaron’s father.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You don’t look like him at all.”

Wiley’s mouth dropped open. “Are you serious?”

“Tell me about Aaron’s mother.”

He looked as though he were about to say something, caught himself, and then a smile crossed Wiley Corval’s face. The smile was creepy. Extra creepy. Simon almost took a step back.

“You’ve been talking to my wife.”

Something occurred to Simon at that moment, something that perhaps Enid had been hinting at, or perhaps it was seeing Wiley in the flesh, dressed right now to play some part, or perhaps it had been the expression on Wiley’s face when Simon first stumbled across him down in the woods.

There was no grief emanating from Wiley Corval.

Of course, all the clichés apply here — people grieve in their own way, just because you can’t see a man is hurting doesn’t mean he isn’t, he could be putting on a brave face — but they all rang hollow. Enid had described her husband as theatrical. Simon got that now, as if everything he did was part of an act, including his feelings.

That little boy. Living alone with a man who claimed to be his father.

Simon tried to hold back his imagination, but it became a bucking horse, running wild, running toward the worst thoughts, the most awful, depraved scenarios.

They can’t be true, Simon told himself.

And yet.

“I’ll get a court order.”

“For what?” Wiley asked, spreading his hands, the picture now of pure innocence.

“Parentage.”

“Seriously?” That damned creepy smile. “Aaron was cremated.”

“I can find his DNA in other ways.”

“Doubtful. And even if you could somehow get his DNA and mine, it would show that I’m his father.”

“You’re lying.”

“Am I?”

He’s enjoying this , Simon thought.

“And just for the sake of a fun mental exercise, suppose you did run the test and suppose it showed I wasn’t Aaron’s biological father, what would that prove?”

Simon said nothing.

“Maybe his mother cheated on me. What difference could that make all these years later? The test wouldn’t show that, of course — this is all a hypothetical; I was Aaron’s father — but what do you think you’d be able to prove?” Wiley took two steps toward Simon. “My son was a drug dealer living with your junkie daughter in the Bronx. That’s where he was murdered. Whatever gossip Enid told you, you have to see that his murder has nothing to do with his childhood.”

That made sense, of course. On the surface, there was no way to argue with any of that. There was not a scintilla of evidence that linked whatever potential awfulness had occurred to a young boy in this very inn and his bloody murder decades later in that Bronx tenement.