The Stranger (13 page)

I
t was two in the morning
when Adam remembered something—or, to be more precise, someone.

Suzanne Hope from Nyack, New York.

She had been the one to steer Corinne to the Fake-A-Pregnancy website. That was where this all started, right? Corinne meets Suzanne. Suzanne fakes a pregnancy. Corinne, for some reason, decides to do the same. Maybe. And then the stranger shows up.

He brought up the search engine on his smartphone and typed in
Suzanne Hope Nyack, New York
. He figured that this would probably not work, that this woman had probably given a fake name or fake town to go along with her fake pregnancy, but almost immediately he found hits.

The White Pages listed a Suzanne Hope of Nyack, New York, as
being between the ages of thirty and thirty-five. There was both a telephone number and a street address given. Adam was about to write them down when he remembered something Ryan had taught him a few weeks back—pressing two buttons on the phone simultaneously so it takes a screenshot. He tried it, checked the image in the photo app, and saw that it was legible.

He turned off the phone and tried again to drift off to sleep.

•   •   •

The cramped
living room in Old Man Rinsky’s house smelled of Pine-Sol and cat piss. The room was packed, but that only meant that there were maybe ten people there. Still, that was all Adam would need. He spotted the bald guy who normally covered sports for
The
Star-Ledger
. There was the woman reporter he liked from the Bergen
Record
. According to Adam’s paralegal extraordinaire, Andy Gribbel, the
Asbury Park Press
and the
New Jersey Herald
were also there. The major networks weren’t interested yet, but News 12 New Jersey had sent out a camera crew.

It would be enough.

Adam leaned close to Rinsky. “You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

“You kidding?” The old man arched an eyebrow. “I’m just going to try not to enjoy it.”

Three of the reporters were jammed into the plastic-covered sofa. Another leaned on the upright piano against the wall. A birdhouse-shaped cuckoo clock hung on the far wall. There were more Hummel figurines on the end table. The once shag carpet had been trampled into something resembling artificial turf.

Adam checked his phone one last time. Still nothing on the phone tracker about Corinne. She either hadn’t charged up her phone or . . . no point in thinking about that now. The reporters were looking at him both expectantly and skeptically, half “let’s see what you got,” half “this is a waste of time.” Adam stepped forward. Mr. Rinsky stayed where he was.

“In 1970,” Adam began without preamble, “Michael J. Rinsky returned home after serving his country in the most hostile battlegrounds of Vietnam. He came back here, to his beloved hometown, and married his high school sweetheart, Eunice Schaeffer. Then, using the money he earned from his GI Bill, Mike Rinsky bought a home.”

Adam paused. Then he added, “This home.”

The reporters scribbled.

“Mike and Eunice had three boys and raised them in this very house. Mike got a job with the local police, starting as a rookie patrolman, and moved up the ranks until he was chief. He and Eunice have been important members of this community for many years. They volunteered at the local shelter, the town library, the Biddy Basketball program, the July Fourth parade. In the past nearly fifty years, Mike and Eunice touched so many lives in this town. They worked hard. When Mike left the stresses of work, he came home to relax in this very house. He rebuilt the boiler in the basement on his own. His children grew older, graduated, and moved out. Mike kept working and eventually, after thirty years, he paid off the mortgage. Now he owns this house—the house we are all in right now—outright.”

Adam glanced behind him. As if on cue—well, it was on cue—the old man hunched his shoulders, made his face droop, and held an old framed photograph of Eunice in front of him.

“And then,” Adam continued, “Eunice Rinsky got sick. We won’t invade her privacy by going into the details. But Eunice loves this house. It comforts her. New places frighten her now, and she finds solace in the place where she and her beloved husband raised Mike Junior, Danny, and Bill. And now, after a lifetime of work and sacrifice, the government wants to take this home—her home—away from her.”

The scribbling stopped. Adam wanted to let the moment weigh on them, so he reached behind him, took hold of the water bottle, and wetted his throat. When he started up again, his voice seethed and started cracking with barely controlled rage.

“The government wants to throw Mike and Eunice out of the only home they’ve ever known so some wealthy conglomerate can knock it down and build a Banana Republic.” Not strictly true, Adam thought, but close enough. “This man”—Adam gestured behind him at Old Man Rinsky, who was playing his part with gusto, managing to look even more fragile somehow—“this American hero and patriot, just wants to keep the home he worked so hard to own. That’s all. And they want to take it away from him. I ask you, does that sound like the United States of America? Does our government seize hardworking people’s property and give it to the rich? Do we throw war heroes and elderly women into the streets? Do we just take away their home after they’ve worked a lifetime to pay it off? Do we just bulldoze their dreams to create yet another strip mall?”

They were all looking at Old Man Rinsky now. Even Adam was starting to well up for real. Sure, he had left some parts out—how they had offered to pay the Rinskys more than the house was worth, for example—but this wasn’t about being balanced.
Attorneys take sides. The other side, if and when they responded, would give their spin. You were supposed to be biased. That was how the system worked.

Someone snapped a photograph of Old Man Rinsky. Then someone else. Hands were raised for questions. A reporter shouted out, asking Old Man Rinksy how he felt. He played it smart, looking lost and fragile, not so much angry as bewildered. He shrugged, held up the picture of his wife, and simply said, “Eunice wants to spend her last days here.”

Game, set, match, Adam thought.

Let the other side spin the facts all they want. The sound bite belonged to them. The better story—and that was really what the media always wanted, not the truest story but the best—belonged to them. What would make a more compelling narrative—a big conglomerate throwing a war hero and his ill wife out of their home, or a stubborn old man who is preventing rejuvenation by not taking money and moving into better digs?

It wouldn’t be close.

A half hour later, with the reporters gone, Gribbel smiled and tapped Adam on the shoulder. “It’s Mayor Gush for you.”

Adam took the phone. “Hello, Mr. Mayor.”

“You think this is going to work?”

“The
Today
show just called. They want us to come in tomorrow morning for an exclusive interview. I said not yet.”

It was a bluff, but a pretty good one.

“You know how fast a news cycle is nowadays?” Gush countered. “We can ride it out.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” Adam said.

“Why not?”

“Because for now, we have decided to make our case impersonal and corporate. But our next move will be to take it a step further.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that we will reveal that the mayor, who is working so hard to throw an old couple out of their home, may have a personal grudge against an honest cop who once arrested him, even though he let him go.”

Silence. Then: “I was a teenager.”

“Yeah, I’m sure that will play well in the press.”

“You don’t know who you’re messing with, pal.”

“I think I have a pretty good idea,” Adam said. “Gush?”

“What?”

“Build your new village around the house. It’s doable. Oh, and have a nice day.”

•   •   •

Everyone had
cleared out of the Rinskys’ house.

Adam heard the clacking of a keyboard in the breakfast nook off the kitchen. When he entered the room, he was taken aback by the sheer amount of technology that surrounded him. There were two big-screen computers and a laser printer sitting on the Formica desk. One wall was entirely corked. Photographs, clippings from newspapers, and articles printed off the Internet were hung on it with pushpins.

Rinsky had reading glasses low on his nose. The reflection of the screen made the blue in his eyes deepen.

“What’s all this?” Adam asked.

“Just keeping busy.” He leaned back and took off the glasses. “It’s a hobby.”

“Surfing the web?”

“Not exactly.” He pointed behind him. “See this photograph?”

It was a picture of a girl with her eyes closed who Adam guessed was probably between eighteen and twenty. “Is she dead?”

“Since 1984,” Rinsky said. “Her body was found in Madison, Wisconsin.”

“A student?”

“Doubt it,” he said. “You’d think a student would be easy to identify. No one ever has.”

“She’s a Jane Doe?”

“Right. So you see, me and some fellas online, we crowdsource the problem. Share information.”

“You’re solving cold cases?”

“Well, we try.” He gave Adam his “aw shucks” smile. “Like I said, it’s a hobby. Keeps an old cop busy.”

“Hey, I have a quick question for you.”

Rinsky gestured for Adam to go ahead.

“I have a witness I need to reach. I’m a firm believer in doing it in person.”

“Always better,” Rinsky agreed.

“Right, but I’m not sure if she’s home or not, and I don’t want to warn her or ask her to meet me.”

“You want to surprise her?”

“Right.”

“What’s her name?”

“Suzanne Hope,” Adam said.

“You have her phone number?”

“Yeah, Andy found it for me online.”

“Okay. How far away does she live?”

“Probably a twenty-minute drive.”

“Give me the number.” Rinksy stuck out his hand and wiggled his fingers. “I’ll show you a clever little cop technique you can use, but I’d appreciate it if you kept it to yourself.”

Adam handed him the phone. Rinsky lowered his reading glasses back down his nose, picked up the kind of black telephone Adam hadn’t seen since his childhood, and dialed the number. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I got a block on my caller ID.” Two rings later, a woman’s voice answered. “Hello?”

“Suzanne Hope?”

“Who’s asking?”

“I work for the Acme Chimney Cleaning Service—”

“Not interested, take me off your list.”

Click.

Rinsky shrugged and smiled. “She’s home.”

T
he drive took
exactly twenty minutes.

Adam pulled up to one of those sad garden apartment complexes of monotonous brick that catered to young couples saving up to buy a first home and divorced dads who were broke and/or wanted to stay near the kids. He found apartment 9B and knocked on the door.

“Who is it?”

It was a woman’s voice. She hadn’t opened the door.

“Suzanne Hope?”

“What do you want?”

He actually hadn’t planned for this. For some strange reason, he had figured that she’d open the door and invite him in and then he could explain his reason for coming here, even though he still
wasn’t sure what that reason was. Suzanne Hope was a potential thin thread, a tenuous connection to what had led Corinne to run off. Maybe he could gently pull on the thread and, to mix metaphors, learn something.

“My name is Adam Price,” he said to the closed door. “My wife is Corinne.”

Silence.

“Do you remember her? Corinne Price?”

“She’s not here,” the voice he assumed was Suzanne Hope’s said.

“I didn’t think she was,” he replied, though now that he thought about it, perhaps he had held out the smallest unspoken hope that finding Corinne would be that easy.

“What do you want?”

“Can we talk a second?”

“What about?”

“About Corinne.”

“This isn’t my business.”

Shouting through a door felt distant, of course, but Suzanne Hope was clearly not yet comfortable opening it. He didn’t want to push it and lose her completely. “What’s not your business?” he asked.

“You and Corinne. Whatever troubles you’re having.”

“What makes you think we’re having troubles?”

“Why else would you be here?”

Why indeed. Score one for Suzanne Hope. “Do you know where Corinne is?”

Down the concrete path and to the right, a postal worker eyed Adam with suspicion. Not surprising. He had thought about the
divorced dads who show up here, but of course there were divorced moms too. Adam tried to nod at the postal worker to show him that he meant no harm, but that didn’t seem to help.

“Why would I know?” the voice asked.

“She’s missing,” Adam said. “I’m trying to find her.”

Several seconds passed. Adam took a step back and kept his hands at his sides, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. Eventually, the door opened a crack. The chain was still in place, but now he could see a sliver of Suzanne Hope’s face. He still wanted to come inside and sit down, talk to her face-to-face, engage, disarm, distract, whatever it would take. But if a chain made Suzanne Hope feel safe, then so be it.

“When was the last time you saw Corinne?” he asked her.

“A long time ago.”

“How long?”

Adam saw her eyes look up to the right. He didn’t necessarily buy the idea that you could tell lies by the way the eyes move, but he did know that when someone’s eyes look up and to the right, it usually indicated that the person was visually
remembering
things, as opposed to the left, which meant visually
constructing
things. Of course, like most generalizations, you couldn’t really count on it, and visually constructing did not mean lying. If you asked someone to think of a purple cow, that would lead to visual construction, which isn’t a lie or deception.

Either way, he didn’t think she was lying.

“Maybe two, three years ago.”

“Where?”

“It was a Starbucks.”

“So you haven’t seen her since . . .”

“Since the time she figured out I was lying about being pregnant,” she finished for him. “That’s right.”

Adam hadn’t expected that answer. “No phone calls?”

“No phone calls, no e-mails, no letters, nothing. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”

The postal worker kept moving, kept delivering the mail, kept eyeing Adam. Adam put his hands to his eyes to shade the sun. “Corinne followed your lead, you know.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You know what I mean.”

Through the crack in the door, he could see Suzanne Hope nod. “She did ask me a lot of questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Where did I buy the prosthetic belly, how did I get the sonogram pictures, stuff like that.”

“So you directed her to Fake-A-Pregnancy.com.”

Suzanne Hope put her left hand against the frame of the door. “I didn’t ‘direct’ her anywhere.” Her voice had a little snap in it now.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Corinne asked, and I told her about it. That’s all. But yeah, she was almost too curious. Like we were kindred spirits.”

“I’m not following.”

“I thought she’d judge me. I mean, most people would, right? Who could blame them? Weird lady pretending she’s pregnant. But it was like we were kindred spirits. She got me right away.”

Wonderful, Adam thought, but he kept the sarcasm to himself. “If I may be so bold,” he said slowly, “how much did you lie to my wife?”

“What do you mean?”

“For one thing”—he pointed to the hand on the doorframe—“there’s no wedding band on your finger.”

“Wow, aren’t you a real-life Sherlock?”

“Were you even married?”

“Yes.”

He could hear the regret in her voice, and for a moment, he thought she would slip that hand back inside and slam the door shut.

“I’m sorry,” Adam said. “I didn’t mean—”

“It was his fault, you know.”

“What was?”

“That we couldn’t have kids. So you’d think Harold would have been more sympathetic, right? He was the one with the low sperm count. Shooting blanks. Bad swimmers. I never blamed him. It was his fault, but it wasn’t his fault, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” he said. “So you’ve never really been pregnant?”

“Never,” she said, and he could hear the devastation in her voice.

“You told Corinne you had a stillborn.”

“I thought maybe she’d understand better if I said that. Or, well, not understand. Just the opposite, really. That she would sympathize anyway. But I wanted to be pregnant so badly, and maybe that was my fault. Harold saw that. It made him withdraw. Maybe. Or maybe he never really loved me. I don’t know anymore. But I always wanted kids. Even as a little girl, I wanted a big family. My sister Sarah, who swore she’d never have any, well, she has three. And I remember how happy she was when she was pregnant. How she glowed. I guess I just wanted to see what it was like. Sarah said
being pregnant made her feel like somebody important, everyone always asking when the baby was due and wishing her luck and all that. So one day, I did it.”

“Pretended you were pregnant?”

Suzanne nodded in the doorframe. “As a gag, really. Just to see what it would be like. And Sarah was right. People held doors for me. They wanted to carry my groceries or give me their parking spot. They asked me how I was doing and really seemed to care about the answer. People get hooked on drugs, right? They get hooked on highs, and I read it’s all because of some dopamine release. Well, that’s what this did. It was a dopamine release for me.”

“Do you still do it?” he asked, though he didn’t know why he cared. Suzanne Hope had pointed his wife toward the website. He had already figured that out. There was nothing really new to learn here.

“No,” she said. “Like all addicts, I stopped when I hit rock bottom.”

“Do you mind my asking you when that was?”

“Four months ago. When Harold found out and discarded me like an old tissue.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be. It’s for the best. I’m in therapy now, and while I own this illness—it’s me, not anyone else—Harold didn’t love me. That’s what I realize now. Maybe he never did, I don’t know. Or maybe it’s because he started resenting me. A man can’t have a child and it hits home with his manhood. So maybe that’s it. But either way, I looked for validation elsewhere. Our relationship had become toxic.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam said.

“It doesn’t matter. You didn’t come to hear about that. Suffice it to say I’m happy I didn’t pay the money. Maybe that guy telling Harold my secret was the best thing to happen to me.”

A chill started somewhere in Adam’s chest and spread to his fingers. His voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else, somewhere far away. “What guy?”

“What?”

“You said a guy told your husband your secret,” he said. “What guy?”

“Oh my God.” Suzanne Hope finally opened the door and looked at him in anguish. “He told you too.”