The Stranger (23 page)

G
abrielle’s car climbed up
Skyline Drive into the Ramapo Mountains. The road was only forty-five minutes from Manhattan, but it might as well have been in another world. There were legends about the tribes who still lived in this area. Some called them the Ramapough Mountain Indians or the Lenape Nation or the Lunaape Delaware Nation. Some believed the people were Native American. Others claimed that they dated back to Dutch settlers. Still others thought they were Hessian soldiers who fought for the British during the American Revolution or were freed slaves who found a home in the barren woods in northern New Jersey. Many, too many, had dubbed them, perhaps derogatorily, the Jackson Whites. The origin of that name also remained a mystery but probably had something to do with their multiracial appearance.

As is always the case with such people, scary stories surrounded them. Teenagers drove up Skyline Drive and scared one another with tales of kidnappings, of being dragged into the woods, of ghosts crying out for revenge. It was all myth, of course, but myth can be a powerful thing.

Where the hell was Gabrielle going?

They were heading into the wooded areas of the mountains. The elevation was causing Adam’s ears to clog up. She cut back onto Route 23. Adam followed her nearly an hour, until she crossed the narrow Dingman’s Ferry Bridge into Pennsylvania. The roads were less traveled now. Adam again wondered how far to stay behind in order not to be spotted. He erred against caution, figured that it would be better to be spotted and possibly confronted than to lose Gabrielle altogether.

He checked his phone. The battery was low. Adam stuck the phone into his glove-compartment charger. A mile farther up the road, Gabrielle took a right. The woods grew denser. She slowed and turned onto what looked like a dirt driveway. A faded stone sign read
LAKE
CHARMAINE
—
P
RIVATE
. Adam veered to the right and stopped behind an evergreen. He couldn’t just pull his car into the driveway, if indeed it was a driveway.

So what was his next move?

He opened the glove compartment and checked the phone. The battery hadn’t had much of a chance to charge, but it was still hovering at ten percent. That could be enough. He pocketed it and got out of his car. Now what? Just walk up to this Lake Charmaine and ring the bell?

He found an overgrown path in the woods running parallel to the driveway. That would do. The sky above him was a beautiful
robin’s-egg blue. Branches jutted into the pathway, but Adam pushed through them. The woods were silent, save the sounds Adam himself was causing. He stopped every once in a while to listen for . . . for anything, but now, as he got deeper into the woods, he couldn’t even hear the passing cars on the road anymore.

When Adam stepped into a clearing, he saw a buck nibbling on some leaves. The buck looked up at Adam, saw he meant no harm, went back to nibbling. Adam kept moving, and soon the lake rose before him. Under other circumstances, he would have loved being up here. The lake was as still as a mirror, reflecting the green of the trees and the robin’s-egg blue of the sky. The view was intoxicating and soothing and so damned peaceful, and man oh man, would it be wonderful to just sit down and stare at it for a little while. Corinne loved lakes. The ocean scared her a bit. Waves, in her view, were often violent and unpredictable. But lakes were quiet paradise. Before the boys were born, he and Corinne had rented a lake house in northern Passaic County. He remembered lazy days, both of them sharing a humungo hammock, him with a newspaper, her with a book. He remembered watching Corinne read, the way her eyes would narrow as they crossed the page, a look of pure concentration on her face—and then, every once in a while, Corinne would look up from her book. Corinne would smile at him and he would smile back and then their gaze would drift to the lake.

A lake like this one.

He spotted a house on the right. It looked abandoned except for one car sitting in front of it.

Gabrielle’s.

The house was either a log cabin or one of those snap-together
facsimiles. Hard to tell from here. Adam carefully padded down the hill, ducking behind trees and shrubbery as he went. He felt foolish, like a kid playing capture the flag or paintball or something. He tried to think of another time in his life when he had done this, when he’d had to sneak up on someone, and his mind had to travel all the way back to the Y summer camp when he was eight.

Adam still wasn’t sure what he’d do when he got close to the house, but for a split second, he wished he was armed. He didn’t own a handgun or anything like that. Maybe that was a mistake. His uncle Greg had taken him shooting a few times when he was in his early twenties. He liked it and knew that he could handle a weapon. In hindsight, that would have been the smart play. He was dealing with dangerous people. Killers, even. He reached into his pocket and felt for his phone. Should he call someone? He didn’t know who or even what to say. Johanna would still be on her flight. He could text or call Andy Gribbel or Old Man Rinsky, but what would he tell them?

Where you are, for one thing.

He was about to grab his phone and do just that when he spotted something that made him freeze.

Gabrielle Dunbar stood alone in the clearing. She was staring right at him. He felt the rage build up inside him. He took a step closer, expecting her to run off or say something. She didn’t.

She just stood there and watched him.

“Where’s my wife?” he shouted.

Gabrielle kept staring.

Adam took another step into the clearing. “I said—”

Something smacked him so hard in the back of the head that Adam could actually feel his brain jarring loose from its moorings.
He dropped to his knees, seeing stars. Working on pure instinct, Adam somehow managed to turn and look up. A baseball bat was coming down on the top of his skull like an axe. He tried to duck or turn away or at least lift a protective arm.

But it was much too late.

The bat landed with a dull thud, and everything went dark.

J
ohanna Griffin was
a natural rule follower, so she didn’t turn off the airplane mode on her smartphone until they’d stopped moving on the active runway. The flight attendant made the standard “welcome to Newark where the temperature is” announcement as Johanna’s texts and e-mails loaded up.

Nothing from Adam Price.

The past twenty-four hours had been exhausting. Kimberly had been hysterical. Extracting her horrible story had been painstaking and time-consuming. Johanna had tried to be understanding, but what on God’s green earth had that kid been thinking? Poor Heidi. How had she reacted to the news about her daughter and that horrible website? Johanna thought back to that videotape of Heidi
in the Red Lobster parking lot. Heidi’s body language made complete sense now. In a way, Johanna had been watching an assault on that tape. That guy, that goddamn stranger, was pummeling her friend with his words, breaking her heart with his revelations.

Did he comprehend the damage he was wreaking?

So Heidi had gone home after that. She had called Kimberly and gotten her daughter to tell the truth. She had stayed rational and calm, even as she withered away inside. Or maybe Heidi hadn’t withered away. Maybe, because Heidi was the least judgmental person Johanna had ever known, she had dealt with the bad news and was ready to fight back. Who knew? Heidi had comforted her daughter. She had then tried to figure a way of removing her from the terrible mess she had gotten herself into.

And maybe that had gotten her killed.

Johanna still didn’t know what had happened to Heidi, but clearly it was somehow connected to the revelation that her daughter had become a whore—forget the more marketable terms like
sugar
baby
—for three different men. Johanna had started to dig into it, but that would take time. Kimberly didn’t know the men’s real names, which was another wow, but hey, there was a reason they were called johns. Johanna had spoken to the president of the sugar babies website, listened to her rationalizations, and wanted to take a long, hot shower after she hung up. She—yes, in a nice feminist touch, the site was run by a woman—defended her company’s “business arrangements” and her clients’ “right to privacy” and said there was no way she would reveal any information without a court order.

Since the company was located in Massachusetts, that would take time.

Then, after dealing with this crap, the annoyed county homicide cops wanted a full debriefing on Johanna’s renegade trip to New Jersey. This wasn’t about ego for her. She wanted the bastard who killed her friend caught. Period. So she told them everything, including what Kimberly had just told her, and now those guys were getting the court order and putting manpower toward figuring out who the stranger was and what his connection to the murders might be.

All of that was good. But it didn’t mean Johanna was taking herself off the case.

Her cell phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number, but the area code was 216, which meant the call was from someone close to home. She picked up and said hello.

“This is Darrow Fontera.”

“Who?”

“I’m the head of security for Red Lobster. We met when you asked for surveillance footage.”

“Yes, right. What can I do for you?”

“I had asked you to return the DVD when you were done.”

Was this guy for real? Johanna opened her mouth to tell him to go pound sand, but then she thought better of it. “We aren’t done with the investigation yet.”

“Could you please make a copy, then, and return the original DVD to us?”

“What’s the big deal?”

“That’s protocol.” The tone was pure bureaucrat. “We provide one DVD copy only. If others are needed—”

“I only took one copy.”

“No, no, you were the second.”

“Pardon?”

“The other police officer got a copy before you.”

“Wait, what other police officer?”

“We took a scan of his ID. He’d retired from New York, but he said . . . oh, wait, here it is. His name is Kuntz. John Kuntz.”

F
irst came the pain.

For a few moments, the pain shut out everything else. It was all-consuming, driving out any sort of awareness about where Adam might be or what had happened to him. His skull felt as if it’d been cracked into bone fragments, the jagged edges floating around and tearing through brain tissue. Adam kept his eyes closed and tried to ride it out.

Second came the voices.

“When’s he going to wake up?” . . . “You didn’t have to hit so hard.” . . . “I wasn’t taking a chance.” . . . “You got the gun, right?” . . . “Suppose he doesn’t regain consciousness? . . . “Hey, he came here to kill us, remember? . . . “Hold up, I think he’s moving. . . .”

Awareness started to creep in, clawing its way past the pain and numbness. He was lying on cold ground, his right cheek on a rough, hard floor. Concrete maybe. Adam tried to open his eyes, but it felt like spiders had spun webs across them. When he blinked hard, a fresh surge of pain nearly made him gasp out loud.

When his eyes finally did open, he saw a pair of Adidas sneakers. He tried to remember what had happened. He’d been following Gabrielle. He remembered that now. He’d been following her to a lake and then. . . .

“Adam?”

He knew that voice. He had heard it only once before, but it had echoed in his head ever since. With his cheek still on the concrete, he forced his gaze upward.

The stranger.

“Why did you do it?” the stranger asked him. “Why did you kill Ingrid?”

•   •   •

Thomas Price
was taking a test in AP English class when the classroom phone rang. His teacher, Mr. Ronkowitz, picked up the phone, listened for a moment, and then said, “Thomas Price, please go to the principal’s office.”

His classmates, like millions of classmates have done all over the world a million times over, made an “ooo, you’re in trouble” noise as he grabbed his books, stuffed them in his backpack, and headed out. The corridor was empty now. That always felt odd to Thomas, an empty high school corridor, like a ghost town or haunted house. His footsteps echoed as he hurried toward the office. He had no
idea what this meant, if it was good or bad, but you rarely get called down to the principal’s office for nothing, and when your mom had decided to run off and your dad was coming unglued, your mind imagines all kinds of horrifying scenarios.

Thomas still couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong with his parents, but he knew that it was bad. Big-time bad. He also knew that Dad hadn’t told him the full truth yet. Parents always think it’s best to “protect” you, even though by “protect,” they mean “lie.” They think they’re helping by shielding you, but in the end, it makes it worse. It’s like Santa Claus. When Thomas had first realized that Santa Claus wasn’t real, he didn’t think, “I’m growing up” or “That stuff is for babies” or any of that. His first thought was more basic: “My parents lied to me. My mom and dad looked me in the eye, and for years and years, they lied to me.”

What’s that supposed to do for long-term trust?

Thomas had hated the whole idea of Santa Claus anyway. What was the point? Why do you tell kids that some weird fat guy who lives at the North Pole watches them all the time? Sorry, that’s just creepy. Even as a child, Thomas remembered sitting on a mall Santa’s lap and he smelled a little like piss and Thomas thought, “This guy is the one who brings me toys?” And why tell kids that anyway? Wouldn’t it be nicer to think your parents, who worked hard, gave you those presents instead of some creepy stranger?

Whatever was going on now, Thomas just wished that his dad would come clean. It couldn’t be worse than what Thomas and Ryan had been imagining. He and his brother weren’t stupid. Thomas could see that his dad had been tense even before Mom ran off. He had no idea why, but since Mom got back from that teachers’ conference, something had been really wrong. Their house
was like a living thing, like one of those delicate ecosystems in science, and now something foreign was throwing off everything.

When Thomas opened the office door, that lady police officer, Johanna, was standing with the principal, Mr. Gorman. Mr. Gorman said, “Thomas, do you know this woman?”

He nodded. “She’s a friend of my dad’s. She’s also a police officer.”

“Yes, she showed me her ID. But I can’t leave you alone with her.”

Johanna said, “That’s okay,” and stepped toward him. “Thomas, do you have any idea where your father is?”

“At work, I guess.”

“He didn’t show today. I tried his cell phone. It’s going straight to voice mail.”

That little pang of panic in his chest started to grow. “It only does that if someone switches the phone off,” Thomas said. “Dad never switches it off.”

Johanna Griffin came closer. He could see the look of concern in her eyes. It scared him, and yet this was what he wanted, right? Honesty instead of protection? “Thomas, your dad told me about the tracker your mom put on his phone.”

“It won’t work if the phone is dead.”

“But it shows where he last was when the phone was turned off, right?”

Thomas got it now. “Right.”

“Do you need a computer to access—?”

He shook his head, reaching into his pocket. “I can look it up on my phone. Just give me two minutes.”