Текст книги "The Stranger"

Автор книги: Harlan Coben

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

Chapter 56

SIX MONTHS LATER

The lacrosse game took place in the optimistically dubbed SuperDome, an air-inflated sports facility made from some sort of pliable material. Thomas was playing in an indoor league for the winter season. Ryan had come along too. He half watched his brother, half played catch in the corner with a couple of other kids. Ryan also kept looking over at his father. He did that a lot now, looked for his father, as though Adam might suddenly vanish into thin air. Adam got it, of course. He tried to reassure him, but what could he really say?

He didn’t want to lie to the boys. But he wanted them to feel happy and safe.

Every parent has to deal with that balance. That hadn’t changed with Corinne’s death, but maybe you learn that happiness based on untruths is, at best, fleeting.

Adam watched as Johanna Griffin pushed through the glass door. She came across the back of the goal and stood alongside him facing the field.

“Thomas is number eleven, right?”

“Right,” Adam said.

“How’s he been playing?”

“Great. The coach of Bowdoin wants him to commit.”

“Wow. Good school. He going to do it?”

Adam shrugged. “It’s a six-hour drive. Before all this, yeah. But now . . .”

“He wants to stay closer to home.”

“Right. Of course, we can move too. There’s nothing left for us in this town.”

“Why are you staying?”

“I don’t know. The boys lost enough already. They grew up here. They have their school, their friends.” On the field, Thomas scooped up a loose ball and started down the field. “Their mom is here too. In that house. In this town.”

Johanna nodded.

Adam turned to her. “It’s so great to see you.”

“Same.”

“When did you get in?”

“A few hours ago,” Johanna said. “They’re sentencing Kuntz tomorrow.”

“You already know he’s getting life.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But I want to see it happen. And I also wanted to make sure that you were officially exonerated.”

“I was. I got word last week.”

“I know. But I still wanted to see it for myself.”

Adam nodded. Johanna looked over toward where Bob Baime and other parents sat.

“You always stand alone on the sidelines?”

“I do now,” Adam said. “But I don’t take it personally. You know how I told you that whole thing about living the dream?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m living proof that the dream is flimsy stuff. They all know it’s flimsy, of course, but no one wants to hang around a constant reminder.”

They watched the game some more.

“They have nothing new on Chris Taylor,” she said. “He’s still on the run. But in the end, he’s not exactly Public Enemy Number One. All he did was blackmail some people who don’t want to press charges because their secrets will be revealed. I doubt he’d get more than probation, even if he was caught. Would you be okay with that?”

Adam shrugged. “I go round and round with it.”

“How so?”

“If he’d let Corinne keep her secret, this may have never happened. So I ask myself: Did the stranger kill my wife? Or did her own decision about faking the pregnancy? Or did I, by not realizing how insecure I’d made her? You can drive yourself crazy with that kind of thinking. You can go back and look at the ripples forever. But in the end, there is only one person to blame. And that person is dead. I killed him.”

Thomas passed the ball and ran to the area behind the goal known in lacrosse jargon as X. According to the medical examiner’s report, the first bullet had been enough. It had pierced Tripp Evans’s heart, killing him instantly. Adam could still feel the gun in his hand. He could still feel the retort when he pulled the trigger. He could still see Tripp Evans’s body collapse and hear the long echoes of the gunshots in the quiet forest.

For a few seconds after the shooting, Adam had done nothing. He had sat there, numb. He hadn’t thought about the repercussions. He had just wanted to stay with his wife. He had lowered his head back to his Corinne. He had kissed her cheek and closed his eyes and let himself cry.

Then a moment later, he heard Johanna say, “Adam, we need to move fast.”

She had been following him. She slowly pried the gun from Adam’s hand and placed it in Tripp Evans’s. She looped her finger over his and fired off three shots, so that there would be gun residue on Tripp’s hand. She picked up Tripp’s other hand and used it to scratch Adam, making sure that DNA got beneath his fingernails. Adam just followed her orders in a daze. They came up with a story of self-defense. It wasn’t perfect. There were holes and plenty of skepticism, but in the end, the physical evidence, along with Johanna’s own testimony of overhearing Tripp Evans’s confession, made it impossible to get an indictment.

Adam was free.

Still, you live with what you’ve done. He had killed a man. You don’t get a free pass on something like that. It haunted him at night, robbed him of sleep. He understood that he had had no choice. As long as Tripp Evans was alive, he was a threat to Adam’s family. And something primitive in him even took satisfaction in what he’d done, in avenging his wife, in protecting his boys.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

“Sure.”

“Do you sleep okay?”

Johanna Griffin smiled. “No, not really.”

“I’m sorry.”

She shrugged. “I may not sleep well, but I would sleep a lot worse if you spent the rest of your life in prison. I made a choice when I saw you in the woods. I think I made the choice that lets me sleep best.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it.”

There was something else that had always bothered Adam, but he never spoke about it. Tripp Evans in the end—did he really think his plan would work? Did he really think Adam would simply let him get away with killing his wife? Did he really think it was wise to threaten his family like that when Adam was kneeling beside his dead wife with a gun in his hand?

After his death, Tripp’s family had been on the receiving end of a huge death-benefit payout. The Evans family stayed in town. They got support. Everyone in Cedarfield, even those who believed Tripp was a murderer, rallied around Becky and the kids.

Had Tripp known that would happen?

Had Tripp, in the end, wanted Adam to kill him?

The game was tied with a minute left.

Johanna Griffin said, “Funny, though.”

“What?”

“It was all about secrets. That was the whole thing with Chris Taylor and his group. They wanted to rid the world of secrets. And now you and I have been forced to keep the biggest secret of all.”

They both stood and watched the time ticking down. With thirty seconds to go, Thomas scored a goal to break the tie. The crowd erupted. Adam didn’t leap for joy. But he did smile. He turned toward Ryan. Ryan was smiling too. So, he bet, under the helmet, was Thomas.

“Maybe that’s what I really came for,” Johanna said.

“What’s that?”

“To see you all smile.”

Adam nodded. “Maybe.”

“Are you a religious man, Adam?”

“Not really.”

“Doesn’t matter. You don’t have to believe that she actually sees her boys smile.” Johanna kissed his cheek and started to walk away. “You just have to believe that she’d want to.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to acknowledge the following in no particular order because he can’t remember exactly who helped with what: Anthony Dellapelle, Tom Gorman, Kristi Szudlo, Joe and Nancy Scanlon, Ben Sevier, Brian Tart, Christine Ball, Jamie Knapp, Diane Discepolo, Lisa Erbach Vance, and Rita Wilson. As always, any mistakes are theirs. Hey, they’re the experts. Why should I take all the heat?

I’d also like to give a quick shout-out to John Bonner, Freddie Friednash, Leonard Gilman, Andy Gribbel, Johanna Griffin, Rick Gusherowski, Heather and Charles Howell III, Kristin Hoy, John Kuntz, Norbert Pendergast, Sally Perryman, and Paul Williams, JP. These people (or their loved ones) made generous contributions to charities of my choosing in return for having their names appear in this novel. If you’d like to participate in the future, visit HarlanCoben.com or e-mail [email protected] for details.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

HARLAN COBEN is the internationally bestselling author of more than twenty previous novels, including the #1 New York Times bestsellers Missing You, Six Years, Stay Close, Live Wire, Caught, Long Lost, and Hold Tight as well as the Myron Bolitar series and, more recently, a series aimed at young adults, featuring Myron’s nephew, Mickey Bolitar. The winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony Awards, he lives in New Jersey.

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