Three Harlan Coben Novels (58 page)

“Online,” he said. “You know, one of those Web sites for foreign brides. Cherry Orchid, it’s called. They used to call it mail order. I don’t think they do that anymore. Anyway, you go to the site. You look at these pictures of women from all over—Eastern Europe, Russia, the Philippines, wherever. They list measurements, a little bio, likes and dislikes, that kinda thing. You see one that strikes your fancy, you can buy her address. They got package deals too, if you want to write to more than one.”

Rachel and I gave each other a quick glance. “How long ago was this?”

“Seven years ago. We started sending each other e-mails and stuff. Kat was living on a farm in Serbia. Her parents had nothing. She used to walk four miles to get computer access. I wanted to call too, you know, talk on the phone. But they didn’t even have one. She had to call me. Then one day, she says she’s coming over. To meet me.”

Verne put his hands up, as if to silence an interruption. “Now see, this is where the girls usually hit you up for some money, you know, dollars to buy a plane ticket and stuff. So I was ready for that. But Kat didn’t. She came over on her own. I drove up to New York City. We met. We were married three weeks later. Verne Junior came in a year. Perry three years after that.”

He took a deep sip of his beer. I did the same. The coldness felt wonderful sliding down my throat.

“Look, I know what you’re thinking,” Verne said. “But it ain’t like that. Kat and me, we’re real happy. I was married before to a grade-A American ball-buster. All she did was whine and complain. I wasn’t making enough money for her. She wanted to stay at home and do nothing. Ask her to do a load of laundry, she’d go all ballistic on me with that feminazi crap. Always tearing me down, telling me I’m a loser. With Kat, it ain’t like that. Do I like the fact that she makes a nice house and home? Sure, okay, that’s important to me. If I’m working outside and it’s hot, Kat’ll fetch me a beer without giving me a
Ms
. magazine lecture. Is there anything wrong with that?”

Neither of us replied.

“Look, I want you to think about it, okay? Why are any two people
attracted to each other? Looks maybe? Money? Because you have an important job? We all join up because we want to get something out of it. Give and take, am I right? I wanted a loving wife who’d help me raise children and take care of a home. I wanted a partner too, someone, I don’t know, who’d just be nice to me. I get that. Kat, she wanted out of a terrible life. I mean, they were so poor, dirt was a luxury. She and me, we got it good here. In January, we took the kids and went down to Disney World. We like hiking and canoeing. Verne Junior and Perry, they’re good kids. Hey, maybe I’m simple. Hell, I’m
definitely
simple. I like my guns, my hunting and fishing—and most of all, my family.”

Verne lowered his head. His mullet hair dropped like a curtain blocking his face. He started ripping the label off the beer. “Some places—probably most, I don’t know—marriages are arranged. That’s the way it’s always been. The parents decide. They force them. Well, no one forced Kat and me. She could walk away anytime. Me too. But it’s been seven years now. I’m happy. So is she.”

Then he shrugged his shoulders. “At least, I thought she was.”

We drank in silence.

“Verne?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“You’re an interesting man.”

He laughed, but I could see the fear. He took a swig of beer to hide it. He’d carved out a life for himself. A nice life. It’s funny. I am not a very good judge of people. My initial impressions are usually wrong. I see this gun-toting redneck with his hair and his bumper stickers and his monster-truck-rally ’tude. I hear he has a mail-order bride from Serbia. How can you not judge? But the more I listened to him, the more I liked him. I must be at least as alien to him. I’d crept up on his house with a gun. Yet as soon as I had started telling my story, Verne had acted. He knew that we were telling the truth.

We heard the car pull up. Verne moved to the window and looked out. There was a small, sad smile on his face. His family was pulling into the drive. He cherished them. Intruders had come to his home with guns, and he had done what he could to protect it. And now, maybe, in my attempt to bring my family together, I might tear apart his.

“Look! Daddy’s home!”

That had to be Katarina. The accent was unmistakably foreign, something in the Balkan–East European–Russian family. I am not linguist
enough to know which. I heard the happy squeals of little children. Verne’s smile widened a bit. He stepped out onto the porch. Rachel and I stayed where we were. We could hear running feet on the steps. The greeting lasted a minute or two. I stared at my hands. I heard Verne say something about presents in the truck. The kids sprinted for them.

The door opened. Verne entered with his arm around his wife.

“Marc, Rachel, this here’s my wife, Kat.”

She was lovely. She wore her long hair straight down. Her yellow sundress left her shoulders exposed. Her skin was pure white, her eyes blue ice. She had that certain bearing so that I could have told, even if I hadn’t known, that she was foreign. Or maybe I was projecting. I tried to guess her age. She could pass for mid-twenties, but the age lines around the eyes told me I was probably a decade off.

“Hi,” I said.

We both stood and shook her hand. It was dainty, but there was steel in the grip. Katarina held on to the hostess smile, but it wasn’t easy. Her eyes stayed on Rachel, on the wounds. The sight, I guess, was rather shocking. I was almost getting used to it.

Still smiling, Katarina turned to Verne as if to ask a question. He said, “I’m trying to help them out.”

“Help them?” she repeated.

The children had located the presents and were hooting and hollering. Verne and Katarina didn’t seem to hear. They were looking at each other. He held her hand. “That man over there”—he gestured with his chin toward me—“somebody murdered his wife and took away his little girl.”

She put a hand to her mouth.

“They’re here trying to find his daughter.”

Katarina did not move. Verne turned to Rachel and nodded a go-ahead.

“Mrs. Dayton,” Rachel began, “did you make a phone call last night?”

Katarina’s head jerked as though she’d just been startled. She looked at me first, as if I were some kind of circus oddity. Then she turned her attention to Rachel. “I don’t understand.”

“We have a phone record,” Rachel said. “Last night at midnight, someone placed a call from this house to a certain cell phone. We assume it was you.”

“No, that’s not possible.” Katarina’s eyes started shifting as if seeking out an escape route. Verne still held her hand. He tried to meet her gaze, but she kept avoiding it. “Oh wait,” she said. “Maybe I know.”

We waited.

“Last night, when I was sleeping, the phone rang.” She tried the smile again, but it was having trouble staying anchored. “I don’t know what time it was. Very late. I thought maybe it was you, Verne.” She looked at him and now the smile held. He smiled back. “But when I answered it, there was no one there. So I remembered something I saw on the television. Star, six, nine. You hit those numbers and it dials the number. So I did that. A man answered. It wasn’t Verne, so I hung up.”

She looked at us expectantly. Rachel and I exchanged a glance. Verne was still smiling, but I saw his shoulders drop. He let go of her hand and half collapsed onto the couch.

Katarina started toward the kitchen. “You need another beer, Verne?”

“No, darling, I don’t. I want you to sit here next to me.”

She was hesitant but she listened. She sat with her spine still ramrod. Verne, too, sat up tall and again took her hand.

“I want you to listen to me, okay?”

She nodded. The children were wailing with delight outside. Corny to say, but there are few sounds like the unimpeded laughter of children. Katarina looked at Verne with an intensity that almost made me turn away.

“You know how much we love our boys, right?”

She nodded.

“Imagine if someone took them away from us. Imagine if that happened more than a year ago. Think about it. Imagine if someone stole, say, Perry and for more than a year, we didn’t know where he was.” He pointed to me. “That man over there. He doesn’t know what happened to his little girl.”

Her eyes were brimming with tears.

“We have to help him, Kat. Whatever you know. Whatever you done. I don’t care. If there are secrets, you tell them now. We wipe the slate clean. I can forgive just about anything. But I don’t think I can forgive if you don’t help that man and his little girl.”

She lowered her head and said nothing.

Rachel ratcheted up a notch. “If you’re trying to protect the man you
called, don’t bother. He’s dead. Someone shot him a few hours after you called.”

Katarina’s head stayed down. I rose and started pacing. From outside, there was another squeal of laughter. I walked over to the window and looked out. Verne Junior—the boy looked to be about six—shouted, “Ready or not, here I come!” It wouldn’t be too hard to find him. I couldn’t see Perry, but the hiding child’s laughter was clearly coming from behind the Camaro. Verne Junior pretended to look elsewhere but not for very long. He sneaked up on the Camaro and yelled, “Boo!”

Perry popped out still laughing and ran. When I saw the boy’s face, I felt my world, already teetering, take another hit. See, I recognized Perry.

He was the little boy I’d seen in the car last night.

Tickner parked in
front of the Seidman house. They hadn’t put up the yellow crime-scene tape yet, but he counted six squad cars and two news vans. He wondered if it’d be a good idea to approach, what with the cameras rolling. Pistillo, his boss’s boss, had made it pretty clear where he stood. In the end, Tickner figured that it was safe enough to stay. If he was caught on camera, he could always opt for the truth: He had come to let the locals know that he was off the case.

Tickner found Regan in the backyard with the body. “Who is he?”

“No ID,” Regan said. “We’ll send in the prints, see what we come up with.”

They both looked down.

“He matches that sketch Seidman gave us last year,” Tickner said.

“Yup.”

“So what does that mean?”

Regan shrugged.

“What have you learned so far?”

“Neighbors heard shots first. That was followed by screeching tires. They saw a BMW Mini driving across the grass. More shots. They spotted Seidman. One neighbor said he might have seen a woman with him.”

“Probably Rachel Mills,” Tickner said. He looked up in the morning sky. “So what does it mean?”

“Maybe the victim worked for Rachel. She silenced him.”

“In front of Seidman?”

Regan shrugged. “The BMW Mini struck a chord though. I remembered that Seidman’s partner had one. Zia Leroux.”

“That would be who helped him get out of the hospital.”

“We have an APB on the car.”

“I’m sure they switched vehicles.”

“Yeah, probably.” Then Regan stopped. “Uh-oh.”

“What?”

He pointed at Tickner’s face. “You’re not wearing your sunglasses.”

Tickner smiled. “Bad omen?”

“The way this case is going? Maybe it’s a good one.”

“I came to tell you I’m off the case. Not just me. The bureau. If you can prove the girl is still alive—”

“—which we both know she ain’t—”

“—or that she was transported across state lines, I can probably get back in. But this case is no longer a priority.”

“Back to terrorism, Lloyd?”

Tickner nodded. He looked back up in the sky. It felt weird without the sunglasses.

“What did your boss want, anyway?”

“To tell me what I just told you.”

“Uh-huh. Anything else?”

Tickner shrugged. “The shooting of Federal Agent Jerry Camp was accidental.”

“Your big boss called you into his office before six in the morning to tell you that?”

“Yep.”

“Yowza.”

“Not only that, he investigated the case personally. He and the victim were friends.”

Regan shook his head. “Does this mean Rachel Mills has powerful friends?”

“Not at all. If you can nail her for the Seidman murder or kidnapping, go to it.”

“Just don’t involve the death of Jerry Camp.”

“There you go.”

Someone called out. They looked over. A gun had been found in the neighbor’s yard. A quick sniff told them that it had been fired recently.

“Convenient,” Regan added.

“Yup.”

“Any thoughts?”

“Nope.” Tickner turned to him. “It’s your case, Bob. Always was. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Tickner walked away.

“Hey, Lloyd?” Regan called out.

Tickner stopped. The gun had been bagged. Regan stared at it, then at the body by his feet.

“We still don’t know what’s going on here, do we?”

Tickner continued toward his car. “Not a clue,” he said.

Katarina had her hands in her lap. “Is he really dead?”

“Yes,” Rachel said.

Verne stood, fuming, his arms folded over his chest. He had been that way since I told him that Perry had been the child I saw in the Honda Accord.

“His name is Pavel. He was my brother.”

We waited for her to say more.

“He was not a good man. I always knew that. He could be cruel. Kosovo makes you that way. But kidnapping a small child?” She shook her head.

“What happened?” Rachel asked.

But her eyes were on her husband. “Verne?”

He would not look at her.

“I lied to you, Verne. I lied to you about so much.”

He tucked his hair behind his ears and blinked. I saw him wet his lip with his tongue. But he would still not look at her.

“I didn’t come from a farm,” she said. “My father died when I was three. My mother took any job she could. But we couldn’t get by. We were too poor. We’d steal rinds out of the garbage. Pavel, he stayed on the streets, begging and stealing. I started working in sex clubs when I was fourteen. You can’t imagine what it was like, but there is no way out of that life in Kosovo. I wanted to kill myself, I can’t tell you how many times.”

She raised her head toward her husband, but Verne still wouldn’t meet her gaze. “Look at me,” she said to him. When he didn’t she leaned forward, “Verne?’

“This ain’t about us,” he said. “Just tell them what they need to know.”

Katarina put her hands in her lap. “After a while, when you live like that, you don’t think about escape. You don’t think about pretty things or happiness or any of that. You become like an animal. You just hunt and survive. And I don’t even know why you do that. But one day, Pavel came to me. He told me he knew a way out.”

Katarina stopped. Rachel moved closer to her. I let her handle this. She had experience with interrogation and at the risk of sounding sexist, I thought that Katarina would have an easier time being drawn out by a fellow female.

“What was the way out?” Rachel asked.

“My brother said he could get us some money—and to America—if I could get pregnant.”

I thought—check that: I hoped—I’d heard wrong. Verne whipped his head toward her. This time Katarina was ready. She looked at him steadily.

“I don’t understand,” Verne said.

“I’m worth something as a prostitute. But a baby is worth more. If I get pregnant, someone can get us to America. They will pay us money.”

The room went silent. I could still hear the children outside, but the sound suddenly seemed far away, a distant echo. I was the one who spoke next, reaching through the numb. “They pay you,” I said, hearing the horror and disbelief in my own voice, “for the baby?”

“Yes.”

Verne said, “Sweet Jesus.”

“You can’t understand.”

“Oh, I understand,” Verne said. “Did you go through with it?”

“Yes.”

Verne turned away as if he’d been slapped. His hand reached up and took hold of the curtain. He stared out at his own children.

“In my country, if you have a baby, they put it in a horrible orphanage. American parents, they want so much to adopt. But it’s hard. It takes a long time. More than a year sometimes. Meanwhile, the baby lives in squalor. The parents, they must pay government officials. The system is so corrupt.”

“I see,” Verne said. “You were doing it for the good of mankind?”

“No, I did it for me. For me only, okay?”

Verne winced. Rachel put her hand on Katarina’s knee. “So you flew over here?”

“Yes. Pavel and I.”

“Then what?”

“We stayed at a motel. I would visit a woman with white hair. She would check on me, make sure I was eating okay. She gave me money to buy food and supplies.”

Rachel nodded, encouraging. “Where did you have the baby?”

“I don’t know. A van with no windows came. The woman with white hair, she was there. She delivered the baby. I remember hearing it cry. Then they took it away. I don’t even know if it was a boy or a girl. They drove us back to the motel. The woman with the white hair, she gave us our money.”

Katarina shrugged.

It felt as if my circulation had stopped. I tried to think this through, get past the horror. I looked at Rachel and started to ask how, but she shook her head. Now was not the time to make deductions. Now was the time to gather information.

“I loved it here,” Katarina said after some time had passed. “You think you have a wonderful country. But you really have no idea. I wanted so much to stay. But the money started running low. I looked for ways. I met a woman who told me about the Web site. You put your name and men write you. They wouldn’t want a whore, she told me. So I made up a biography with a farm. When men asked, I gave them an e-mail address. I met Verne three months later.”

Verne’s face fell even farther. “You mean the whole time we were writing . . . ?”

“I was in America, yes.”

He shook his head. “Was anything you told me the truth?”

“Everything that mattered.”

Verne made a scoffing sound.

“What about Pavel?” Rachel asked, trying to get us back on topic. “Where did he go?”

“I don’t know. He went back home sometimes, I know. He would recruit other girls to bring over. For the finder’s fee. Time to time, he would contact me. If he needed a few dollars, I’d give it to him. It was really no big deal. Until yesterday.”

Katarina looked up at Verne. “The children, they will be hungry.”

“They can wait.”

“What happened yesterday?” Rachel asked.

“Pavel called late in the afternoon. He says he needs to see me right away. I don’t like that. I ask him what he wants. He says he’ll tell me when he gets here, not to worry. I don’t know what to say.”

“How about no?” Verne snapped.

“I couldn’t say no.”

“Why not?”

She didn’t answer.

“Oh, I see. You were afraid he’d tell me the truth. Isn’t that it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

“Yes, I was terrified he’d tell you the truth.” Again she looked up at her husband. “And I prayed he would.”

Rachel tried to get us back on course. “What happened when your brother got here?”

She started welling up.

“Katarina?”

“He said he needed to take Perry with him.”

Verne’s eyes widened.

Katarina’s chest started hitching, as if it was hard to get air. “I said to him no. I said I wouldn’t let him touch my children. He threatened me. He said he’d tell Verne everything. I said I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let him take Perry. Then he punched me in the stomach. I fell down. He promised me he’d bring Perry back in a few hours. He promised me no one would get hurt unless I said something. If I called Verne or the police, he’d kill Perry.”

Verne’s hand were balled into tight fists. His face was scarlet.

“I tried to stop him. I tried to stand up, but Pavel pushed me back down. And then”—her voice caught—“then he drove away. With Perry. The next six hours were the longest of my life.” She sneaked a guilty glance in my direction. I knew what she was thinking. She had experienced this terror for six hours. I’d been living with it for a year and half.

“I didn’t know what to do. My brother is a bad man. I know that. But I couldn’t believe he’d ever hurt my children. He was their uncle.”

I thought about Stacy then, my sister, my words of sibling defense echoing in hers.

“For hours, I stayed by the window. I couldn’t stand it. Finally, at midnight, I called his cell phone. He told me he was on his way back.
Perry was fine, he said. Nothing had happened. He tried to sound light, but there was something in his voice. I asked him where he was. He told me he was on Route Eighty near Paterson. I couldn’t just sit in the house and wait. I told him I’d meet him halfway. I packed Verne Junior and we went. When we got to the gas station by the Sparta exit. . . .” She looked at Verne. “He was fine. Perry. I felt such relief, you can’t imagine.”

Verne was tugging on his bottom lip with his thumb and index finger. He looked away again.

“Before I left, Pavel grabbed my arm hard. He pulled me close to him. I could see how scared he was. He said no matter what, never tell anybody about what happened. That if they found out about me—if they knew he had a sister—they would kill us all.”

“Who is they?” Rachel asked.

“I don’t know. Whoever he was working for. The people who bought the babies, I think. He said they were crazy.”

“What did you do then?”

Katarina opened her mouth, closed it, tried again. “I went to the supermarket,” she said with a sound that might have even been a laugh. “I bought the kids juice boxes. I let them drink while we shopped. I just wanted to do something normal. To, I don’t know, to put it all behind me.”

Katarina looked up at Verne then. I followed her gaze. I again studied this man with the long hair and the bad teeth. After a moment, he turned to her.

“It’s all right,” Verne said in the gentlest voice I’d ever heard. “You were scared. You’ve been scared your whole life.”

Katarina started sobbing.

“I don’t want you to be scared anymore, okay?”

He moved toward her. He took her in his arms. She settled enough to say, “He said they’d come after us. The whole family.”

“Then I’ll protect us,” Verne said simply. He looked at me over her shoulder. “They took my kid. They threatened my family. You hear what I’m saying?”

I nodded.

“I’m in this now. I’m with you till it’s over.”

Rachel sat back. I saw her grimace. Her eyes closed. I didn’t know
how much longer she could go. I moved toward her. She held up her palm. “Katarina, we need you to help us here. Where was your brother staying?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think. Do you have any of his possessions, something that can lead us to who he worked for?”

She let go of her husband. Verne stroked her hair with a blend of tenderness and strength I envied. I turned to Rachel. I wondered if I had the courage to do the same.

“Pavel just arrived from Kosovo,” Katarina said. “And he would not come here empty handed.”

Rachel nodded. “You think he brought a pregnant woman with him?”

“He always did before.”

“Do you know where she’s staying?”

“The women always stay at the same place—the same place I stayed. It’s in Union City.” Katarina looked up. “You’ll want this woman to help you, right?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll have to go with you. She most likely won’t speak English.”

I looked at Verne. He nodded. “I’ll watch the kids.”

No one moved for several moments. We needed to gather our strength, adjust as if we’d entered a no-gravity zone. I used the time to step outside and call Zia. She answered on the first ring and started right in.