Harlan Coben - Fool Me Once

“Why wouldn’t you tell me something like that?” he asked.

“I was going to.”

“But?”

“But you already think I’m unstable.”

Shane made the annoying buzzing noise again. “Wrong. I may think you need help—”

“Exactly. You’re all over me to call Wu. And what would you have thought if I told you I thought I saw my murdered husband on a nanny cam?”

“I would have listened,” Shane said. “I would have listened and tried to help you get to the bottom of it.”

She knew that he meant it. Shane grabbed a chair, moved it close to her, sat down.

“Tell me what happened. Exactly.”

No point in hiding it anymore. She told Shane about the nanny cam, about Isabella using pepper spray, about Joe’s missing clothes and her visit to the Burkett workers’ compound where Isabella lived. When she was finished, Shane said, “I remember that shirt. If you imagined it all, why would it be missing?”

“Who knows?”

Shane rose and started for the stairs.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to check his closet, see if it’s there.”

She was going to protest, but this was how Shane was. He had to play it all the way through. She waited. He came back five minutes later.

“Gone,” he said.

“Which doesn’t mean anything,” Maya added. “A million reasons a shirt wouldn’t be in his closet.”

Shane sat back across from her and plucked his lower lip. Five seconds passed. Then ten. “Let’s talk it out for a bit.”

Maya just waited.

“You remember what General Dempsey said when he visited camp?” Shane asked. “About predictability in the theater?”

She nodded. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said that, of all human endeavors, the one that is most unpredictable is warfare. The only cardinal rule about what happens in battle is that you never know what will happen in battle. You have to be ready for what seems impossible.

“So let’s play it through,” Shane said. “Let’s say that you really did see Joe on that nanny cam.”

“He’s dead, Shane.”

“I get that. But just... let’s go step by step. Just as an exercise.”

She rolled her eyes for him to get on with it.

“Okay, so you look at this nanny cam on, what, your TV?”

“Laptop. You plug in an SD card.”

“Right, sorry. The SD card. That’s the one Isabella took after she sprayed you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so you put this SD card into your laptop. You see Joe playing with Lily on the couch. Let’s eliminate the obvious. It wasn’t, like, an old recording, right?”

“Right.”

“Are you sure? You said Eileen gave the nanny cam to you after the funeral. But could someone have put in an old recording or something? A tape someone made of the two of them before Joe was killed?”

“No. Lily was wearing exactly what she was wearing that day. It was filmed at the exact right angle, taken from that very spot on the shelf and aimed at the couch. There was a trick to it, sure. Had to be. Joe was, I don’t know, photoshopped or something. But it wasn’t an old piece of film.”

“Okay, so we’ve eliminated that possibility.”

This was getting ridiculous. “What possibility?”

“That it was an old tape. So let’s try something else.” Shane started plucking his lip again. “Let’s pretend — just for the sake of argument — that it really was Joe. That he’s still alive.” Shane held up his hands, even though she hadn’t said anything. “I know, I know, but just bear with me, okay?”

Maya bit back the sigh and shrugged a “suit yourself.”

“How would you do it?” he asked. “If you were Joe and you wanted to fake your death.”

“Fake my death and then, what, sneak into my house and play with my kid? I don’t know, Shane. Why don’t you tell me? You obviously have a theory.”

“Not a theory exactly, but...”

“Does it involve zombies?”

“Maya?”

“Yes?”

“You use sarcasm when you’re being defensive.”

She frowned. “Those psych courses,” she said. “They are really paying off.”

“I don’t know what you’re so afraid of here.”

“I’m afraid of wasting my time. But okay, Shane. Forget zombies. Give me your theory. How would you fake your death, if you were Joe?”

Shane kept plucking at his lip. Maya was afraid he might draw blood.

“Here is how I might do it,” he said. “I might hire two street punks. I might give them guns with blanks.”

“Wow,” Maya said.

“Just let me finish, but I’ll skip the mights if you don’t mind. I, Joe, would set it up. I would have blood capsules or something like that. So it looks real. Joe was the one who liked that spot in the park, right? He knew the lighting situation. He knew it would be dark enough so you wouldn’t see exactly what was going on. Think about it. Do you really believe those two punks just happened to be there? Wasn’t that odd to you?”

“Wait, that’s the part you find odd?”

“That whole robbery angle...” Shane shook his head. “It always felt like nonsense to me.”

Maya sat there. Kierce had already proven that the robbery angle was nonsense when the ballistics test told him that the same gun had killed both Joe and Claire. Obviously Shane didn’t know that.

“Suppose it was all a setup,” Shane said, warming up to his outlandish conspiracy theory. “Suppose these two punks were hired to fire blanks and make it look like Joe was dead.”

“Shane?”

“Yes.”

“You realize how crazy that sounds, right?”

He kept plucking that lower lip.

“The cops were there too, Shane, remember? People saw the body.”

“Okay, let’s take that one at a time. First off, the people who saw the body. Sure. If you were the only witness, it wouldn’t be enough. So Joe lies there with the fake blood or whatever. In the dark. A few people see him. It’s not like they took his pulse or anything.”

Maya shook her head. “Are you kidding?”

“Do you see a problem with my theory?”

“Where to begin?” Maya countered. “What about the cops?”

He spread his hands. “Didn’t you yourself tell me that a payoff had been made?”

“To Kierce, you mean? Your new buddy who you liked and seemed to follow the rules?”

“I could be wrong about him. Wouldn’t be the first time. And maybe Kierce made sure he was on duty when the murder happened. If it was a setup, Joe would know the when and where. So Kierce made sure his name came up in the rotation. Or maybe, I don’t know, the Burketts also paid off the chief or captain or whatever so Kierce’s name came up and he was first on the scene.”

“You should make one of those YouTube conspiracy tapes, Shane. Was 9/11 an inside job too?”

“I’m giving you possibilities, Maya.”

“So let me get this straight,” she said. “They were all in on it. The punk kids who Kierce arrested. The cops at the scene. The medical examiner. I mean, if Joe is carted off as dead, there’s an autopsy, right?”

“Hold up,” Shane said.

“What?”

“Didn’t you say that there was some kind of issue with the death certificate?”

“A bureaucratic snafu. And stop plucking at your lip, please.”

Shane almost smiled. “There are holes in what I’m saying. I admit that. I could ask Kierce to see the autopsy photos—”

“Which he won’t give you.”

“I can be pretty resourceful.”

“Don’t be. Oh, and if they went to this much trouble, who’s to say they couldn’t doctor up some autopsy photos too?”

“Good point.”

“I was being sarcastic.” Maya shook her head. “He’s dead, Shane. Joe is dead.”