Harlan Coben - Six Years

I wasn’t sure what to do.

I knew that the main house was about a quarter mile up the drive. I could leave my car here and walk it. See what’s what. But what would be the point? I hadn’t been up here in six years. The retreat probably sold the land, and the new owner probably craved privacy. That might explain all this.

Still it didn’t feel right.

What would be the harm, I thought, in going up and knocking on the door of the main house? Then again, the thick chain and no trespassing signs were not exactly welcome mats. I was still trying to decide what to do when a Kraftboro police cruiser pulled up next to me. Two officers got out. One was short and stocky with bloated gym muscles. The other was tall and thin with slicked-back hair and the small mustache of a guy in a silent movie. Both wore aviator sunglasses, so you couldn’t see their eyes.

Short and Stocky hitched up his pants a bit and said, “Can I help you?”

They both gave me hard stares. Or at least I think they were hard stares. I mean, I couldn’t see their eyes.

“I was interested in visiting the Creative Recharge retreat.”

“The what?” Stocky asked. “What for?”

“Because I need to creatively recharge.”

“You being a smart mouth with me?”

His voice had a little too much snap in it. I didn’t like the attitude. I didn’t understand the attitude either, except for the fact that they were cops in a small town and I was probably the first guy they could hassle for something other than underage drinking.

“No, Officer,” I said.

Stocky looked at Thin Man. Thin Man remained silent. “You must have the wrong address.”

“I’m pretty sure this is the place,” I said.

“There is no Creative Recharge retreat here. It closed down.”

“So which is it?” I asked.

“Pardon me?”

“Is this the wrong address,” I said, “or did the Creative Recharge retreat close down?”

Stocky didn’t like that answer. He whipped off his sunglasses and used them to point at me. “Are you being a wiseass with me?”

“I’m trying to find my retreat.”

“I don’t know anything about any retreat. This land has been owned by the Drachman family for, what, Jerry, fifty years?”

“At least,” Thin Man said.

“I was here six years ago,” I said.

“I don’t know nothing about that,” Stocky said. “I only know that you’re on private property and if you don’t get off it, I’m going to bring you in.”

I looked down at my feet. I wasn’t on the driveway or any private property. I was on the road.

Stocky moved closer to me, getting into my personal space. I confess that I was scared, but I had learned something in my years of bouncing at bars. You never show fear. That was something you always heard about when it came to the animal kingdom, and trust me, there are no wilder animals than human beings “unwinding” at late-night bars. So even though I didn’t like what was happening, even though I had no leverage and was trying to figure a safe way out of this, I didn’t back away when Stocky got all up on me. He didn’t like that. I held my ground and looked down at him. Way down. He really didn’t like that.

“Let me see some ID, hotshot.”

“Why?” I asked.

Stocky looked at Thin Man. “Jerry, go run the license plate through the system.”

Jerry nodded and headed back to the squad car.

“For what?” I asked. “I don’t understand. I’m just here for a retreat.”

“You got two choices,” Stocky said to me. “One”—he held up a pudgy finger—“you show me your identification without any more back talk. Two”—yep, another chubby digit—“I arrest you for trespassing.”

None of this felt right. I glanced behind me at a tree and saw what looked like a security camera pointed down at us. I didn’t like this. I didn’t like this at all, but there was nothing to be gained by antagonizing a cop. I needed to keep my big mouth shut.

I started to reach into my pocket to get my wallet when Stocky held up a hand and said, “Steady. Slow down.”

“What?”

“Reach into your pocket, but make no sudden moves.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

So much for keeping my big mouth shut.

“Do I look like I’m kidding? Use two fingers. Your thumb and your index finger. Move slowly.”

My wallet was deep down in my front pocket. Extracting it with two fingers took longer than it should.

“I’m waiting,” he said.

“Give me a second.”

I finally got ahold of the wallet and handed it to him. He started to look through it, as though on a scavenger hunt. He stopped at my Lanford College ID, looked at the photograph, looked at me, then he frowned.

“This you?”

“Yes.”

“Jacob Fisher.”

“Everyone calls me Jake.”

He frowned down at my photograph.

“I know,” I said. “It is hard to capture my raw animal magnetism in photography.”

“You have a college ID in here.”

I didn’t hear a question so I didn’t answer one.

“You look kind of old to be a student.”

“I’m not a student. I’m a professor. See where it says ‘staff’?”

Thin Man came back from the car. He shook his head. I guessed that meant the license plate check came back negative.

“Why would a big-time professor be coming up to our little town?”

I remembered something that I saw on television once. “I need to reach into my pocket again. That okay?”

“What for?”

“You’ll see.”

I pulled out my smartphone.

“What do you need that for?” Stocky asked.

I pointed it at him and hit the video record button. “This is on a live feed to my home computer, Officer.” That was a lie. It was only recording on my phone, but what the heck. “Everything you say and do can be seen by my colleagues.” More lies, but good ones. “I’d very much like to know why you need to see my identification and are asking so many questions about me.”

Stocky put the sunglasses back on as though that would mask the rage. He closed his lips so tight that they were quaking. He handed me back my wallet and said, “We had a complaint that you were trespassing. Despite finding you on a private property and listening to some story about a retreat that doesn’t exist, we decided to let you off with just a warning. Please leave these premises. Have a nice day.”

Stocky and Thin Man headed back to their squad car. They sat in the front and waited until I was back in mine. There was no other play here. I got into my car and drove away.

Chapter 8

I didn’t go far.

I drove to the village of Kraftboro. If it had a big, sudden influx of new construction and cash, it might raise itself to the level of small-town America. It looked like something out of an old movie. I half expected to see a barbershop quartet in straw hats. There was a general store (the sign actually said GENERAL STORE), an old “stone mill” with an unmanned “visitor’s center,” a gas station that also housed a one-chair barbershop, and a bookstore café. Natalie and I had spent a lot of time in that bookstore café. It was small, so there wasn’t much browsing, but there was a corner table and Natalie and I would sit there and read the paper and sip coffee. Cookie, a baker who’d escaped the big city, used to run the place with her partner, Denise. She always played Redemption’s Son by Joseph Arthur or Damien Rice’s O , and after a while, Natalie and I started thinking of those—gag alert—as “our” albums. I wondered whether Cookie was still there. Cookie baked what Natalie considered the greatest scones in the history of the world. Then again, Natalie loved all scones. I, on the other hand, still have trouble differentiating scones from dry, rock-hard bread.