Harlan Coben - Six Years

“No, it’s not like that.” I looked back at that cottage on the hill. “I’m looking for her.”

“The artist?”

“Yes.”

She studied my face. “Is she missing?”

“I don’t know.”

Our eyes met. She didn’t nod, but she didn’t have to. “She means a great deal to you.”

It wasn’t a question, but I answered it anyway. “Yes. I realize that this is making no sense.”

“It isn’t,” Delia Sanderson agreed. “But you believe that my husband knew something about her. That’s why you’re really here.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Again I saw no reason to lie. “This will sound insane.”

She waited.

“Six years ago, I saw your husband marry Natalie Avery in a small chapel in Vermont.”

Delia Sanderson blinked twice. She rose from the couch and started to back away from me. “I think you better leave.”

“Please just listen to me.”

She closed her eyes, but, hey, you can’t close your ears. I talked fast. I explained about going to the wedding six years ago, about seeing Todd’s obituary, about coming to the funeral, about believing that maybe I was mistaken.

“You were mistaken,” she said when I finished. “You have to be.”

“So that painting. It’s a coincidence?”

She said nothing.

“Mrs. Sanderson?”

“What are you after?” she asked in a soft voice.

“I want to find her.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

She nodded. “Because you’re in love with her.”

“Yes.”

“Even though you saw her marry another man six years ago.”

I didn’t bother responding. The house was maddeningly quiet. We both turned and looked back at that cottage on the hill. I wanted it to change somehow. I wanted the sun to rise a little higher or to see a light on in one of the windows.

Delia Sanderson moved a few yards farther away from me and took out her phone.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I googled you yesterday. After you called me.”

“Okay.”

“I wanted to make sure that you were who you said you were.”

“Who else would I be?”

Delia Sanderson ignored my question. “There was a picture of you on the Lanford website. Before I opened the door, I checked through the peephole to make sure.”

“I’m not following.”

“Better to be safe than sorry, I figured. I worried that maybe whoever murdered my husband . . .”

I understood now. “Would come back for you?”

She shrugged.

“But you saw it was me.”

“Yes. So I let you in. But now I’m wondering. I mean, you came here under false pretenses. How do I know that you aren’t one of them?”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

“So for right now I’m keeping my distance, if that’s okay with you. I’m standing pretty close to the front door. If I see you start to rise, I hit this button for nine-one-one and run. Do you understand?”

“I’m not with—”

“Do you understand?”

“Of course,” I said. “I won’t move from this seat. But can I ask you a question?”

She gestured for me to go ahead.

“How do you know I don’t have a gun?”

“I’ve been watching since you entered. There’d be no place for you to conceal it in that outfit.”

I nodded. Then I said, “You don’t really believe I’m here to hurt you, do you?”

“I don’t. But like the saying goes, better safe than sorry.”

“I know that story about a wedding in Vermont sounds crazy,” I said.

“It does,” Delia Sanderson said. “And yet, it’s too crazy to be a lie.”

We gave it another moment. Our eyes wandered back to that cottage up on the hill.

“He was such a good man,” Delia Sanderson said. “Todd could have made a fortune in private practice, but he worked almost exclusively for Fresh Start. You know what that is?”

The name was not entirely unfamiliar, but I couldn’t place it. “I’m afraid that I don’t.”

She actually smiled at that. “Wow, you really didn’t do your homework before you came. Fresh Start is the charity Todd founded with some other Lanford graduates. It was his passion.”

I remembered it now. There had been a mention of it in his obituary, though I didn’t know it had any connection to Lanford. “What did Fresh Start do?”

“They operated on cleft palates overseas. They worked on burns and scars and performed various other necessary cosmetic surgeries. The procedures were life-changing. Like the name, they gave people a fresh start. Todd dedicated his life to it. When you said that you saw him in Vermont, I knew that couldn’t be true. He was working in Nigeria.”

“Except,” I said, “he wasn’t.”

“So you’re telling this widow that her husband lied to her.”

“No. I’m telling her that Todd Sanderson was in Vermont on August twenty-eighth, six years ago.”

“Marrying your ex-girlfriend, the artist?”

I didn’t bother replying.

A tear ran down her cheek. “They hurt Todd. Before they killed him. They hurt him badly. Why would someone do something like that?”

“I don’t know.”

She shook her head.

“When you say they hurt him,” I said slowly, “do you mean that they did more than kill him?”

“Yes.”

Again I didn’t know how to ask the question with any sort of sensitivity, so I settled on directness: “How did they hurt him?”

But even before she replied, I thought that maybe I knew the answer.

“With tools,” Delia Sanderson said, a sob coming to her throat. “They cuffed him to a chair and tortured him with tools.”

Chapter 18

When my plane landed back in Boston, there was a message on my new phone from Shanta Newlin. “I heard you got kicked off campus. We should talk.”

I called her back as I walked through the airport terminal. When Shanta picked up, she asked me where I was.

“Logan Airport,” I said.

“Nice trip?”

“Delightful. You said we needed to talk.”

“In person. Come straight to my office from the airport.”

“I’m not welcome on campus,” I said.

“Oh, right, I forgot for a second. Judie’s again? Be there in an hour.”

Shanta was sitting at the corner table when I arrived. She had a drink in front of her. The drink was bright pink and had a pineapple on top. I pointed at it.

“All you’re missing is a little umbrella,” I said.

“What, you figured me as more a scotch-and-soda girl?”

“Minus the soda.”

“Sorry. With me, the fruitier the drink, the better.”

I slid into the chair across from her. Shanta picked up the drink and took a sip from the straw.

“I heard you were involved in a student attack,” she said.

“Are you working for President Tripp now?”

She frowned over her fruity drink. “What happened?”

I told her the whole story—Bob and Otto, the van, the self-defense killing, the escape from the van, the roll down the hill. Her expression didn’t change, but I could see the wheels moving behind her eyes.

“You told the police this?”

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of?”

“I was pretty drunk. They seem to think I fabricated the bit about being kidnapped and killing a guy.”

She looked at me as though I were perhaps the biggest fool ever to inhabit this planet. “Did you really tell the police that part?”

“At first. Then Benedict reminded me that maybe it wasn’t the best idea to admit to killing a man, even if it was in self-defense.”

“You get your legal advice from Benedict?”

I shrugged. Once again I thought about keeping my mouth shut. I had been warned, hadn’t I? There was also the promise. Shanta sat back and sipped her drink. The waitress came over and asked what I wanted. I pointed at the fruity drink and indicated that I wanted a “virgin” one of those too. I don’t know why. I hate fruity drinks.