Three Harlan Coben Novels (89 page)

W
ade Larue sat next to his lawyer, Sandra Koval.

He wore brand-new clothes. The room did not smell of prison, that horrid combination of decay and disinfectant, of fat guards and urine, of stains that never come out, and that in and of itself was a strange adjustment. Prison becomes your world, getting out an impossible daydream, like imagining life on other planets. Wade Larue had gone inside at the age of twenty-two. He was now thirty-seven. That meant he had spent pretty much all his adult years inside that place. That smell, that horrid smell, was all he knew. Yes, he was still young. He had, as Sandra Koval repeated mantralike, his whole life in front of him.

It didn’t feel like that right now.

Wade Larue’s life had been ruined by a school play. Growing up in a small town in Maine everyone agreed that Wade had the acting chops. He was a crummy student. He was not much of an athlete. But he could sing and dance and, most important, he had what one local reviewer called—this after seeing Wade star as Nathan Detroit in
Guys and Dolls
sophomore year—“supernatural charisma.” Wade had that something special, that intangible that separated talented wannabes from the real deals.

Before his senior year of high school, Mr. Pearson, the high-school play director, called Wade into his office to tell him about his “impossible dream.” Mr. Pearson had always wanted to put on
Man of
La Mancha
, but he never had a student, not until now, who could handle the role of Don Quixote. Now, for the first time, he wanted to give it a go with Wade.

But come September Mr. Pearson moved away and Mr. Arnett took over as director. He held tryouts—usually a formality for Wade Larue—but Mr. Arnett was hostile. To the shock of everyone in town he ended up picking Kenny Thomas, a total no-talent, to play Don Quixote. Kenny’s father was a bookie and Mr. Arnett, rumor had it, was into him for over twenty grand. You do the math. Wade was offered the role of the barber—one song!—and ended up quitting.

Here was how naïve Wade was: He thought that his quitting would cause a town-wide uproar. High schools are made up of types. The handsome quarterback. The basketball captain. The school president. The lead in every school play. He thought the townsfolk would rally against the injustice that had befallen him. But no one said a thing. At first, Wade figured that they were scared of Kenny’s father and his possible mob connections, but the truth was far simpler: They didn’t care. Why should they?

It is so easy to inch your way into foul territory. The line is so thin, so flimsy. You just step over it, just for a second, and sometimes, well, sometimes you can’t make your way back. Three weeks later Wade Larue got drunk, broke into the school, and vandalized the sets for the play. He was caught by the police and suspended from school.

And so the slide began.

Wade ended up taking too many drugs, moving to Boston to help sell and distribute, grew paranoid, carried a gun. And now here he was, sitting at this podium, a famous felon blamed for the death of eighteen people.

The faces glaring up at him were familiar from his trial fifteen years ago. Wade knew most of the names. At the trial they would stare with a combination of grief and bewilderment, still woozy from the sudden blow. Wade had understood back then, sympathized even. Now, fifteen years later, the glares were more hostile.
Their grief and bewilderment had crystallized into a purer cut of anger and hate. At the trial, Wade Larue had avoided the glares. But no more. He kept his head up. He met their eyes. His sympathy, his understanding, had been decimated by their lack of forgiveness. He had never meant to hurt anyone. They knew that. He had apologized. He had paid a huge price. They, these families, still chose hate.

To hell with them.

Sandra Koval waxed eloquent from the seat next to him. She spoke of apologies and forgiveness, of turning corners and transformations, of understanding and the human desire for a second chance. Larue tuned her out. He spotted Grace Lawson sitting next to Carl Vespa. He should have felt tremendous fear seeing Vespa in the flesh, but no, he was beyond that now. When Wade was first put in prison, he had been badly beaten—first by people working for Vespa and then by those hoping to curry favor. Guards included. There had been no escape from the constant fear. Fear, like the smell, had become a natural part of him, his world. Maybe that explained why he was immune to it now.

Larue eventually made friends at Walden, but prison is no character-builder, despite what Sandra Koval was now telling this audience. Prison strips you down to your barest state, the state of nature, and what you do to survive is never pretty. No matter. He was out now. That was in the past. You move on.

But not quite yet.

The room was beyond silent, a vacuuming feel, as if the very air had been sucked out of it. The families all sat there, unmoved both physically and emotionally. But there was no energy there. They were hollow entities, devastated and powerless. They could not hurt him. Not anymore.

Without warning Carl Vespa rose. For a second—no longer than that—Sandra Koval was thrown. Grace Lawson stood too. Wade Larue could not understand why they were together. It made no sense. He wondered if it changed anything, if he would soon meet Grace Lawson.

Did it matter?

When Sandra Koval finished, she leaned over to him and whispered, “Come on, Wade. You can take the back way out.”

Ten minutes later, out on the streets of Manhattan, Wade Larue was free for the first time in fifteen years.

He stared up at the skyscrapers. Times Square was his first destination. It would be noisy and crowded with people—real, live non-convicts. Larue did not want solitude. He did not crave green grass or trees—you could see those from his prison cell in the sticks of Walden. He wanted lights and sounds and people, real people, not prisoners, and yes, perhaps, the company of a good (or better, bad) woman.

But that would have to wait. Wade Larue checked his watch. It was almost time.

He started west on Forty-third Street. There was still a chance to back out of this. He was achingly close to the Port Authority bus terminal. He could hop on a bus, any bus, and start anew someplace. He could change his name, maybe his face a little, and try out for local theater. He was still young. He still had the chops. He still had that supernatural charisma.

Soon, he thought.

He needed to clear this up. Put it behind him. When he was being released, one of the prison counselors had given him the standard lecture about this being either a new start or a bad end, it was all up to him. The counselor was right. Today he would either put this all behind him or he would die. Wade doubted that there would be an in between.

Up ahead he saw a black sedan. He recognized the man leaning against the side, his arms crossed. It was the mouth you couldn’t forget, the way the teeth were all twisted together. He had been the first to beat Larue all those years ago. He wanted to know what had happened the night of the Boston Massacre. Larue had told him the truth: He didn’t know.

Now he did.

“Hey, Wade.”

“Cram.”

Cram opened the door. Wade Larue slid into the back. Five minutes later they were on the West Side Highway heading toward the endgame.

E
ric Wu watched the limousine pull up to the Lawson residence.

A large man who looked like anything but a chauffeur stepped out of the car, pulled his jacket together hard so he could work the button, and opened the back door. Grace Lawson stepped out. She headed for her front door without saying good-bye or looking behind her. The large man watched her pick up a package and go inside. Then he got back in the car and pulled out.

Wu wondered about him, the large man. Grace Lawson, he’d been told, might have protection now. She had been threatened. Her children had been threatened. The large chauffeur was not with the police. Wu was certain of that. But he was no simple driver either.

Best to be cautious.

Keeping a good distance away, Wu began to circle the perimeter. The day was clear, the foliage bursting with green. There were many places to hide. Wu did not have binoculars—it would have made the task easier—but that was not important. He spotted one man within minutes. The man was stationed behind the detached garage. Wu crept closer. The man was communicating with a cell-phone walkie-talkie. Wu listened. He only picked up snippets, but it was enough. There was someone in the house too. Probably another man on the perimeter, on the other side of the street.

This was not good.

Wu could still handle it. He knew that. But he would have to strike fast. He would first have to know the exact location of the other perimeter man. He would take one out with his hands and one with the gun. He would need to rush the house. It could be done. There would be lots of bodies. The man inside could be tipped off. But it could be done.

Wu checked his watch. Twenty minutes until three.

He started circling back toward the street when the back door of the Lawson home opened. Grace stepped out. She had a suitcase. Wu stopped and watched. She put the suitcase in the trunk. She went back inside. She came out with another suitcase and a package—the same one, he thought, that he’d seen her pick up at the front door.

Wu hurried back to the car he was using—ironically enough, her Ford Windstar, though he’d switched license plates at the Palisades Mall and slapped on some bumper stickers to draw attention away from that fact. People remembered bumper stickers more than license plates or even makes. There was one about him being a proud parent of an honor roll student. A second, for the New York Knicks, read
ONE TEAM
,
ONE NEW YORK
.

Grace Lawson got behind the wheel of her car and started it up. Good, Wu thought. It would be much easier to grab her wherever she stopped. His instructions were clear. Find out what she knows. Get rid of the body. He put the Windstar in gear but kept his foot on the brake. He wanted to see if anyone else followed. No one pulled out after her. Wu kept his distance.

There were no other tails.

The men had been ordered to protect the house, he guessed, not her. Wu wondered about the suitcases, about where she might be headed, about how long this journey might take. He was surprised when she started taking small side streets. He was even more surprised when she pulled to a stop near a schoolyard.

Of course. It was nearing three o’clock. She was picking up her children from school.

He thought again about the suitcases and what they might mean. Was her intention to pick up her children and take a trip? If that was
the case, it might be someplace far away. It might be hours before she stopped.

Wu did not want to wait hours.

On the other hand she might head straight back home, back into the protection of the two men on the perimeter and the one in the house. That was not good either. He would have the old set of problems, plus, in either case, children would now be involved. Wu was neither bloodthirsty nor sentimental. He was pragmatic. Grabbing a woman whose husband had already run off may raise suspicions and even police involvement, but if you add dead bodies, possibly two dead children, the attention becomes nearly intolerable.

No, Wu realized. It would be best to grab Grace Lawson here and now. Before the children came out of the schoolyard.

That did not give him much time.

Mothers began to congregate and mingle, but Grace Lawson stayed in her car. She seemed to be reading something. The time was 2:50. That gave Wu ten minutes. Then he remembered the earlier threat. They had told her that they would take her children. If that was the case, it was entirely possible that there were men watching the school too.

He had to check fast.

It didn’t take long. The van was parked a block away, at the end of a cul-de-sac. So obvious. Wu considered the possibility that there was more than one. He did a quick scan and saw nothing. No time anyway. He had to strike. The school would be letting out in five minutes. Once the kids were present, it would complicate everything exponentially.

Wu had dark hair now. He put on gold-framed glasses. He had the loose-fitting casual clothes. He tried to make himself look timid as he was walked toward the van. He looked around as if lost. He moved straight to the back door and was about to open it when a bald man with a sweaty brow popped his head out.

“What do you want, pal?”

The man was dressed in a blue velour sweat suit. There was no shirt under the jacket, just mounds of chest hair. He was big and
gruff. Wu reached out with his right hand and cupped the back of the man’s head. He snapped his arm forward and planted his left elbow deep in the man’s adam’s apple. The throat simply collapsed. The entire windpipe gave way like a brittle branch. The man went down, his body thrashing like a fish on the dock. Wu pushed him deeper into the van and slid inside.

There was the same cell-phone walkie-talkie, a pair of binoculars, a gun. Wu jammed the weapon into his waist. The man still thrashed. He would not live much longer.

Three minutes until the bell rang.

Wu locked the van’s door behind him and hurried out. He made it back to the street where Grace Lawson was parked. Mothers lined the fence in anticipation of school being let out. Grace Lawson was out of her car now, standing by herself. That was good.

Wu walked toward her.

• • •

On the other side of the schoolyard, Charlaine Swain was thinking about chain reactions and falling dominoes.

If she and Mike hadn’t had problems.

If she had not started up that perverted dance with Freddy Sykes.

If she had not looked out that window when Eric Wu was there.

If she had not opened the hide-a-key and called the police.

But right now, as she passed the playground, the dominoes were falling more in the present: If Mike had not woken up, if he had not insisted she take care of the children, if Perlmutter had not asked her about Jack Lawson, well, without all of that, Charlaine would not have been looking in Grace Lawson’s direction.

But Mike had insisted. He had reminded her that the children needed her. So here she was. Picking up Clay from school. And Perlmutter had indeed asked Charlaine if she knew Jack Lawson. So when Charlaine arrived at the schoolyard, it was natural, if not inevitable, that she would start scanning the grounds for the man’s wife.

That was how Charlaine came to be looking at Grace Lawson.

She had even been tempted to approach—hadn’t that been part of
the reason she had agreed to pick up Clay in the first place?—but then she saw Grace pick up her cell phone and start talking into it. Charlaine decided to keep her distance.

“Hi, Charlaine.”

A woman, a popular yappy mom who had never deigned to give Charlaine the time before, now stood before her with a look of feigned concern. The newspaper had not mentioned Mike’s name, just that there was a shooting, but small towns and gossip and all that.

“I heard about Mike. Is he okay?”

“Fine.”

“What happened?”

Another woman sidled up to her right. Two others began to mosey over. Then two more. They came from every direction now, these approaching mothers, getting in her way, almost blocking Charlaine’s view.

Almost.

For a moment Charlaine could not move. She stood frozen, watching as he approached Grace Lawson.

He had changed his appearance. He wore glasses now. His hair wasn’t blond anymore. But there was no doubt. It was the same man.

It was Eric Wu.

From more than a hundred feet away Charlaine felt the shiver when Wu put his hand on Grace Lawson’s shoulder. She saw him bend down and whisper something into her ear.

And then she saw Grace Lawson’s whole body go rigid.

• • •

Grace wondered about the Asian man walking toward her.

She figured that he would just walk by her. He was too young to be a parent. Grace knew most of the teachers. He wasn’t one of them. He was probably a new student teacher. That was probably it. She really did not give him much thought. Her mind was concerned with other things.

She had packed enough clothes for a few days anyway. Grace had a cousin who lived near Penn State, smack in the middle of
Pennsylvania. Maybe she would drive out there. Grace had not called ahead to see. She did not want to leave any trail.

After throwing clothes in the suitcases, she had closed the door to her bedroom. She took out the small gun Cram had given her and set it on the bed. For a long time she just stared at it. She had always been fervently anti-gun. Like most rational people she was scared of what a weapon like this could do lying around the house. But Cram had put it succinctly yesterday: Hadn’t her children been threatened?

The trump card.

Grace wrapped the nylon ankle holster around her good leg. It felt itchy and uncomfortable. She changed into jeans with a small flare at the bottom. The gun was covered now, but there was some room down there. There was still a small bulge in the area, but no more so than if she were wearing a boot.

She grabbed the Bob Dodd file from his office at the
New Hampshire Post
and drove to the school. She had a few minutes now, so she stayed in the car and started going through it. Grace had no idea what she expected to find. There were plenty of desk knickknacks—a small American flag, a Ziggy coffee mug, a return address stamper, a small Lucite paperweight. There were pens, pencils, erasers, paperclips, whiteout, thumbtacks, Post-it notes, staples.

Grace wanted to skip past that stuff and dive into the files, but the pickings were slim. Dodd must have done all his work on a computer. She found a few diskettes, all unmarked. Maybe there would be a clue on one of those. She’d check when she got access to a computer.

As for paperwork, all she found was press clippings. Articles written by Bob Dodd. Grace skimmed through them. Cora had been right. His stories were mostly small-time exposés. People would write in with a complaint. Bob Dodd would investigate. Hardly the sort of stuff that gets you killed, but who knows? The little things have a way of rippling.

She was just about to give up—had given up really—when she located the desk photo in the bottom. The frame was facedown. More out of curiosity than anything else she flipped the frame over and
took a look. The photograph was a classic vacation shot. Bob Dodd and his wife Jillian stood on a beach, both smiling with dazzling white teeth, both wearing Hawaiian shirts. Jillian had red hair. Her eyes were widely spaced apart. Grace suddenly understood Bob Dodd’s involvement. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was a reporter.

His wife, Jillian Dodd, was Sheila Lambert.

Grace closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose. Then she carefully put everything back in the package. She stuck it in the backseat and slipped out of the car. She needed time to think and put it together.

The four members of Allaw—it all came back to them. Sheila Lambert, Grace now knew, had stayed in the country. She had changed her identity and gotten married. Jack had taken off for a small village in France. Shane Alworth was either dead or in parts unknown—maybe, as his mother suggested, helping the poor in Mexico. Geri Duncan had been murdered.

Grace checked her watch. The bell would ring in a few minutes. She felt the buzz of her cell phone on her belt. “Hello?”

“Ms. Lawson, this is Captain Perlmutter.”

“Yes, Captain, what can I do for you?”

“I need to ask you some questions.”

“I’m picking up my children at school right now.”

“Would you like me to come by your house? We can meet there.”

“They’ll be out in two more minutes. I’ll swing by the station.” A sense of relief rushed over her. This half-baked idea of running off to Pennsylvania—that might be too much. Maybe Perlmutter knew something. Maybe, with all she now knew about that picture, he would finally believe her. “Will that be okay?”

“That’ll be fine. I’ll be here waiting.”

The very moment Grace snapped the receiver closed, she felt a hand touch down on her shoulder. She turned. The hand belonged to the young Asian man. He bent his head toward her ear.

“I have your husband,” he whispered.