Текст книги "Six Years"

Автор книги: Harlan Coben

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“I’m in the middle of teaching classes—”

“We will find coverage.”

“And I have a responsibility to my students. I can’t just abandon them.”

“Perhaps,” he said, with an edge in his voice, “you should have thought of that before you got drunk.”

“Getting drunk isn’t a crime.”

“No, but your actions afterward . . .” His voice trailed off, and a smile came to his lips. “Funny,” he said.

“What?”

“I heard about your run-in with Professor Trainor years ago. How can you not see the parallel?”

I said nothing.

“There is an old Greek saying,” he went on. “The humpback never sees the hump on his own back.”

I nodded. “Deep.”

“You’re making jokes, Jacob, but do you really think you’re blameless here?”

I wasn’t sure what to think. “I didn’t say I was blameless.”

“Just a hypocrite?” He sighed a little too deeply. “I don’t like doing this to you, Jacob.”

“I hear a but.”

“You know the but. Are the police investigating your claim?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer so I went with the truth. “I don’t know.”

“Then maybe it’s best that you take a leave of absence until this is resolved.”

I was about to protest, but then I pulled up. He was right. Forget all the political mumbo jumbo or legal claims here. The truth was, I was indeed putting students in harm’s way. My actions had, in fact, already gotten one student seriously injured. I could make all the excuses I wanted to, but if I had kept my promise to Natalie, Barry would not be lying in a hospital bed with facial fractures.

Could I take the risk of letting it happen again?

Lest I forgot, Bob was still out there. He might want vengeance for Otto or, at the very least, to finish the job or silence the witness. By staying, wouldn’t I be endangering the welfare of my students?

President Tripp started sorting the papers on his desk, a clear sign we were done here. “Pack your things,” he said. “I’d like you off campus within the hour.”

Chapter 16

By noon the next day, I was back in Palmetto Bluff.

I knocked on the door of a home located on a quiet cul-de-sac. Delia Sanderson—Todd Sanderson’s, uh, widow, I guess—opened it with a sad smile. She was what some might call a handsome woman in a sinewy, farmhand kind of way. She had strong facial features and big hands.

“Thank you so much for making the trip, Professor.”

“Please,” I said, feeling a small ping of guilt, “call me Jake.”

She stepped aside and invited me inside. The house was nice, done up in that modern faux-Victorian style that seemed to be the rage of these spanking new developments. The property backed onto a golf course. The atmosphere was both green and serene.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you coming all this way.”

Another ping. “Please,” I said, “it’s an honor.”

“Still. For the college to send a professor all this way . . .”

“It’s not a big deal, really.” I tried to smile. “It’s nice to get away too.”

“Well, I’m grateful,” Delia Sanderson said. “Our children aren’t home right now. I made them go back to school. You need to grieve but you need to do something, you know what I mean?”

“I do,” I said.

I hadn’t been specific when I made the call yesterday. I just told her that I was a professor at Todd’s alma mater and that I hoped to stop by the house to talk about her late husband and offer condolences. Did I hint that I was sort of coming on behalf of the college? Let us say I didn’t discourage that thinking.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

I’ve found that people have a tendency to relax more when they are doing simple tasks and feeling as though they are making their guests feel comfortable. I said yes.

We were standing in the foyer. The formal rooms, where you’d normally take guests, were on the right. The lived-in rooms—den and kitchen—were on the left. I followed her into the kitchen, figuring that the more casual setting might also make her more apt to open up.

There were no signs of the recent break-in, but what exactly did I think I’d find? Blood on the floor? Overturned furniture? Open drawers? Yellow police tape?

The sleek kitchen was expansive with great flow into an even more expansive “media” room. An enormous television hung on the wall. The couch was littered with remotes and Xbox controllers. Yes, I know Xbox. I have one. I love to play Madden. Sue me.

She headed toward one of those coffeemakers that use individual pods. I took a seat on a stool at the kitchen’s granite island. She showed me a surprisingly large display of coffee-pod options.

“Which would you like?” she asked.

“You tell me,” I said.

“Are you a strong-coffee guy? I bet you are.”

“You’d win that bet.”

She opened the machine’s mouth and put in a pod called Jet Fuel. The machine seemed to eat the pod and piss out the coffee. Appetizing imagery, I know. “Do you take it black?” she asked.

“Not that much a strong-coffee guy,” I said, asking for a little milk and sweetener.

She handed me the cup. “You don’t look like a college professor.”

I get that a lot.

“My tweed jacket is at the cleaner.” Then: “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

I took a sip of the coffee. Why was I here exactly? I needed to figure out if Delia Sanderson’s Todd was Natalie’s Todd. If he was the same man, well, how was that possible? What did his death mean? And what secrets was this woman in front of me maybe keeping?

I had no idea, of course, but I was willing to take some chances now. That meant that I might have to push her. I didn’t relish that—prodding a woman who was so clearly grieving. Whatever else I thought might be going on here—and really I didn’t have a clue—Delia Sanderson was in obvious pain. You could see the pull in her face, the subtle slump in the shoulders, the shatter in the eyes.

“I don’t know how to ask this delicately . . . ,” I began.

I stopped, hoping she’d take the bait. She did. “But you want to know how he died?”

“If I’m prying . . .”

“It’s okay.”

“The papers say it happened during a break-in.”

Her face lost color. She spun back toward the coffeemaker. She fiddled with a pod, picked one up, dropped it, chose another.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “We don’t need to go into this.”

“It wasn’t a break-in.”

I stayed quiet.

“I mean, they didn’t steal anything. Isn’t that unusual? If it was a break-in, wouldn’t you take something? But they just . . .”

She slammed down the mouth of the coffeemaker.

I said, “They?”

“What?”

“You said ‘they.’ There was more than one burglar?”

She still had her back to me. “I don’t know. The police won’t speculate. I just don’t see how one guy could have done . . .” Her head dropped. I thought that maybe I saw her knees buckle. I started to rise and move toward her, but really, who the hell was I? I stopped and quietly slid back onto the stool.

“We were supposed to be safe here,” Delia Sanderson said. “A gated community. It was supposed to keep the bad out.”

The development was huge, acres upon acres of cultivated remoteness. There was a gate of sorts, a little hut at the development’s entrance, a steel arm that had to be lifted to drive through, a rent-a-cop who nodded and pushed a button. None of that could keep the bad out, not if the bad was determined. The gate was possibly a deterrent for easygoing trouble. It maybe added an extra layer of hassle so that trouble chose to find an easier mark. But true protection? No. The gate was more for show.

“Why do you think there was more than one?” I asked.

“I guess . . . I guess I don’t see how one man could cause that much damage.”

“What do you mean?”

She shook her head. Using one finger, she wiped one eye, then the other. She turned around and faced me. “Let’s talk about something else.”

I wanted to push it, but I knew that wouldn’t play here. I was a college professor visiting from her late husband’s alma mater. Plus, well, I was still a human being. It was time to back up and try another route.

I stood as gently as I knew how and moved toward the refrigerator. There were dozens of family photographs done up in a magnetic collage. The photographs were wonderfully unspectacular, almost too expected: fishing trip, Disney visit, dance recitals, beach-Christmas photograph, school holiday concerts, graduations. The refrigerator missed none of life’s little yard markers. I leaned in and studied Todd’s face in as many of them as I could.

Was he the same man?

In every image on the refrigerator, he was clean-shaven. The man I had met had that fashionably annoying stubble. You could grow that in a few days, of course, but I found it odd. So again, I wondered: Was this the man I saw marry Natalie?

I could feel Delia’s eyes on my back.

“I met your husband once,” I said.

“Oh?”

I turned toward her. “Six years ago.”

She picked up her coffee—evidently she took it black—and sat at another stool. “Where?”

I kept my eyes on her as I said, “In Vermont.”

There was no big jolt or anything like that, but her face did scrunch up a bit. “Vermont?”

“Yes. In a town called Kraftboro.”

“You’re sure it was Todd?”

“It was in late August,” I explained. “I was staying at a retreat.”

Now she looked openly confused. “I don’t recall Todd ever going to Vermont.”

“Six years ago,” I said again. “In August.”

“Yes, I heard you say that the first time.” There was a hint of impatience in her tone now.

I pointed back toward the refrigerator. “He didn’t look exactly like this though.”

“I’m not following you.”

“His hair was longer,” I said, “and he had stubble.”

“Todd?”

“Yes.”

She considered that and a small smile found her lips. “I get it now.”

“Get what?”

“Why you came all this way.”

This I was anxious to hear.

“I couldn’t figure it out. Todd hadn’t been an active member of the alumni or anything like that. It wasn’t as though the college would have much more than a passing interest in him. Now all this talk about a man from Vermont . . .” She stopped and shrugged. “You mistook my husband for another man. For this Todd you met in Vermont.”

“No, I’m pretty certain it was—”

“Todd has never been to Vermont. I’m sure of that. And every August for the past eight years, he traveled to Africa to perform surgery on the needy. He also shaved every day. I mean, even on a lazy Sunday. Todd never went a day without shaving.”

I took another look at the photographs on the refrigerator. Could that be? Could it be that simple? I had the wrong man. I had considered that possibility before but now, finally, I was sort of believing it.

In a sense, that didn’t change much anymore. There was still the e-mail from Natalie. There was still Otto and Bob and all that happened. But now, maybe, I could put this connection to rest.

Delia was openly studying me now. “What’s going on? Why are you really here?”

I reached into my pocket and plucked out the photograph of Natalie. Strangely enough, I have only one. She didn’t like photographs, but I had snapped this one while she was asleep. I don’t know why. Or maybe I do. I handed it to Delia Sanderson and waited for a reaction.

“Strange,” she said.

“What?”

“Her eyes are closed.” She looked up at me. “Did you take this picture?”

“Yes.”

“While she was sleeping?”

“Yes. Do you know her?”

“No.” She stared down at the photograph. “She means something to you, doesn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“So who is she?”

The front door opened. “Mom?”

She put down the photograph and started toward the voice. “Eric? Is everything okay? You’re home early.”

I followed her down the corridor. I recognized her son from his eulogy at the funeral. He looked past his mother, his gaze boring into me. “Who’s this?” he asked. His tone was surprisingly hostile, as though he suspected that I’d come here to hit on his mom or something.

“This is Professor Fisher from Lanford,” she said. “He came to ask about your father.”

“Ask what?”

“Just paying my respects,” I said, shaking the young man’s hand. “I’m very sorry for your loss. The entire college is.”

He shook my hand and said nothing. We all stood in that front foyer like three awkward strangers who hadn’t yet been introduced at a cocktail party. Eric broke the deadlock. “I couldn’t find my cleats,” he said.

“You left them in the car.”

“Oh, right. I’ll just grab them and head back.”

He rushed back out the door. We both watched him, perhaps with the same thoughts about his fatherless future looming in front of us. There was nothing more to learn here. It was time for me to let this family be.

“I better be going,” I said. “Thank you for your time.”

“You’re welcome.”

As I turned toward the door, my line of vision swung past the living room.

My heart stopped.

“Professor Fisher?”

My hand was on the doorknob. Seconds passed. I don’t know how many. I didn’t turn the knob, didn’t move, didn’t even breathe. I just stared into the living room, across the Oriental rug, to a spot above the fireplace.

Delia Sanderson again: “Professor?”

Her voice was very far away.

I finally let go of the knob and moved into the living room, across the Oriental carpet, and stared up above the fireplace. Delia Sanderson followed me.

“Are you okay?”

No, I wasn’t okay. And I hadn’t been wrong. If I had questions before, they all ended now. No coincidence, no mistake, no doubt: Todd Sanderson was the man I saw marry Natalie six years ago.

I felt rather than saw Delia Sanderson standing next to me. “It moves me,” she said. “I can stand here for hours and find something new.”

I understood. There was the soft morning glow hitting the side, the pinkness that comes with the new day, the dark windows as though the cottage had once been warm but was now abandoned.

It was Natalie’s painting.

“Do you like it?” Delia Sanderson asked me.

“Yes,” I said. “I like it very much.”

Chapter 17

I sat on the couch. Delia Sanderson didn’t offer me coffee this time. She poured two fingers’ worth of Macallan. It was early and as we’ve already learned I am not much of a drinker, but I gratefully accepted it with a shaking hand.

“Do you want to tell me what this is about?” Delia Sanderson asked.

I wasn’t sure how to explain this without sounding insane, so I started with a question. “How did you get that painting?”

“Todd bought it.”

“When?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Please,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Could you just tell me when and where he bought it?”

She looked up, thinking about it. “The where I don’t remember. But the when . . . it was our anniversary. Five, maybe six years ago.”

“It was six,” I said.

“Again with six,” she said. “I don’t understand any of this.”

I saw no reason to lie—and worse, I saw no way to say this in a way that would soften the blow. “I showed you a photograph of a sleeping woman, remember?”

“It was only two minutes ago.”

“Right. She painted that picture.”

Delia frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Her name is Natalie Avery. That was her in the photograph.”

“That . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t understand. I thought you taught political science.”

“I do.”

“So are you some kind of art historian? Is that woman a Lanford alum too?”

“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.

“What did you really learn about Natalie?” I asked.

“I told you.”

“Right, nothing, zippo, zilch. So why did you want to see me?”

The portobello sandwich came for her, the turkey BLT on rye for me. “I took the liberty of ordering for you,” she said.

I didn’t touch the sandwich.

“What’s going on, Shanta?”

“That’s what I want to know. How did you meet Natalie?”

“What difference does that make?”

“Humor me.”

Once again she was asking all the questions, and I was giving all the answers. I told her how we met at the retreats in Vermont six years ago.

“What did she tell you about her father?”

“Just that he was dead.”

Shanta kept her eyes on mine. “Nothing else?”

“Like what?”

“Like, I don’t know”—she took a deep sip and shrugged theatrically—“that he used to be a professor here.”

My eyes widened. “Her father?”

“Yep.”

“Her father was a professor at Lanford?”

“No, at Judie’s Restaurant,” Shanta said with an eye roll. “Of course at Lanford.”

I was still trying to clear my head. “When?”

“He started about thirty years ago. He taught here for seven years. In the political science department.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Yes, that’s why I called you here. Because I’m such a top-notch kidder.”

I did the math. Natalie would have been very young when her father started teaching here—and still a kid when he left. Maybe she didn’t remember being here. Maybe that was why she didn’t say anything. But wouldn’t Natalie have at least known about it? Wouldn’t she have said, “Hey, my father taught here too. Same department as you.”

I thought about how she came to campus with those sunglasses and hat on, how she wanted to see so much of it, how she had grown pensive during the walks on the commons.

“Why wouldn’t she tell me?” I asked out loud.

“I don’t know.”

“Was he fired? Where did they go afterward?”

She shrugged. “A better question might be, why did Natalie’s mom start using her maiden name?”

“What?”

“Her father’s name was Aaron Kleiner. Natalie’s mother’s maiden name was Avery. She changed it back. And she changed Natalie and Julie’s name to her maiden name too.”

“Wait, when did her father die?”

“So Natalie never told you?”

“I just got the impression it was a long time ago. Maybe that’s it. Maybe he died and that’s why they left campus.”

Shanta smiled. “I don’t think so, Jake.”

“Why?”

“Because here’s where it gets really interesting. Here’s where Daddy is just like his little girl.”

I said nothing.

“There is no report he ever died.”

I swallowed. “So where is he?”

“Like father, like daughter, Jake.”

“What the hell does that mean?” But maybe I already knew.

“I looked into where Professor Aaron Kleiner is now,” Shanta said. “Guess what I found?”

I waited.

“That’s right—zippo, nada, zilch, nothing. Since he left Lanford a quarter century ago, there has been absolutely no sign of Professor Aaron Kleiner.”