‘Huh?’
‘How did you eat? Where did you sleep?’
‘Mostly slep in whatever I was driving. And I stole.’ He hung his head. ‘From ladies’ purses, mostly. Sometimes they didn’t see me, but when they did … I can run fast.’ The tears began to come. He had cried quite a bit on what the cop called his southward safari, mostly at night, but those tears had brought no real relief. These did. Merl didn’t know why and didn’t care.
‘Three months, four cars,’ the cop said, and tick-tick-tick went Merl’s youth ministry card. ‘What were you running from, kiddo?’
‘My stepfather. And if you send me back to that sonofabitch, I’ll run away again, first chance I get.’
‘Uh-huh, uh-huh, I get the picture. And how old are you really, Merl?’
‘Twelve, but I’ll be thirteen next month.’
‘Twelve. I will be dipped in shit and spun backwards. You come with me, Merl. Let’s see what we’re gonna do with you.’
At the cop shop on Harrison Avenue, while waiting for someone from social services to show up, Merl Cassidy was photographed, deloused, and fingerprinted. The prints went out on the wire. This was just a matter of routine.
11
When Ralph got to Flint City’s much smaller cop shop, meaning to call Deborah Grant before picking up a cruiser for the run to Cap City, Bill Samuels was waiting for him. He looked sick. Even the Alfalfa cowlick was drooping.
‘What’s wrong?’ Ralph asked. Meaning what else?
‘Alec Pelley texted me. With a link.’
He unbuckled his briefcase, brought out his iPad (the big one, of course, the Pro), and powered it up. He tapped a couple of times, then passed it to Ralph. The text from Pelley read, Are you sure you want to pursue a case against T. Maitland? Check this first. The link was beneath. Ralph tapped it.
What came up was a website for Channel 81: CAP CITY’S PUBLIC ACCESS RESCOURCE! Beneath it was a block of videos showing City Council meetings, a bridge re-opening, a tutorial called YOUR LIBRARY AND HOW TO USE IT, and one called NEW ADDITIONS TO THE CAP CITY ZOO. Ralph looked at Samuels questioningly.
‘Scroll down.’
Ralph did, and found one titled HARLAN COBEN SPEAKS TO TRI-STATE ENGLISH TEACHERS. The PLAY icon was superimposed over a bespectacled woman with hair so arduously sprayed it looked as if you could bounce a baseball off it without hurting the skull beneath. She was at a podium. Behind her was the Sheraton Hotels logo. Ralph brought the video up to full screen.
‘Hello, everybody! Welcome! I’m Josephine McDermott, this year’s president of the Tri-State Teachers of English. I’m so happy to be here, and to officially welcome you to our yearly meeting of the minds. Plus, of course, a few adult beverages.’ This brought a murmur of polite laughter. ‘Our attendance this year is particularly good, and while I’d like to think my charming presence has something to do with it’ – more polite laughter – ‘I think it probably has more to do with today’s amazing guest speaker …’
‘Maitland was right about one thing,’ Samuels said. ‘The fucking introduction goes on and on. She runs down just about every book the guy ever wrote. Go to nine minutes and thirty seconds. That’s where she winds it up.’
Ralph slid his finger along the counter at the bottom of the vid, now sure of what he was going to see. He didn’t want to see it, and yet he did. The fascination was undeniable.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to today’s guest speaker, Mr Harlan Coben!’
From the wings strode a bald gentleman so tall that when he bent to shake hands with Ms McDermott, he looked like a guy greeting a child in a grown-up’s dress. Channel 81 had deemed this event interesting enough to spring for two cameras, and the picture now switched to the audience, which was giving Coben a standing O. And there, at a table near the front, were three men and a woman. Ralph felt his stomach take the express elevator down. He tapped the video, pausing it.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘It’s him. Terry Maitland with Roundhill, Quade, and Grant.’
‘Based on the evidence we have in hand, I don’t see how it can be, but it sure as hell looks like him.’
‘Bill …’ For a moment Ralph couldn’t go on. He was utterly flabbergasted. ‘Bill, the guy coached my son. It doesn’t just look like him, it is him.’
‘Coben speaks for about forty minutes. It’s mostly just him at the podium, but every now and then there are shots of the audience, laughing at some of the witty stuff he says – he’s a witty guy, I’ll give him that – or just listening attentively. Maitland – if it is Maitland – is in most of those shots. But the nail in the coffin is right around minute fifty-six. Go there.’
Ralph went to minute fifty-four, just to be safe. By then Coben was taking questions from the audience. ‘I never use profanity in my books for profanity’s sake,’ he was saying, ‘but under certain circumstances, it seems absolutely appropriate. A man who hits his thumb with a hammer doesn’t say, “Oh, pickles.”’ Laughter from the audience. ‘I have time for one or two more. How about you, sir?’
The picture switched from Coben to the next questioner. It was Terry Maitland, in a big fat close-up, and Ralph’s last hope that they were dealing with a double, as Jeannie had suggested, evaporated. ‘Do you always know who did it when you sit down to write, Mr Coben, or is it sometimes a surprise even to you?’
The picture switched back to Coben, who smiled and said, ‘That’s a very good question.’
Before he could give a very good answer, Ralph backed up to Terry, standing to ask his question. He stared at the image for twenty seconds, then handed the iPad back to the district attorney.
‘Poof,’ Samuels said. ‘There goes our case.’
‘DNA’s still pending,’ Ralph said … or rather, heard himself say. He felt divorced from his own body. He supposed it was how boxers felt just before the ref stopped the fight. ‘And I still need to talk to Deborah Grant. After that I’m going up to Cap City to do some old-school detective work. Get off my ass and knock on doors, like the man said. Talk to people at the hotel, and at the Firepit, where they went to dinner.’ Then, thinking of Jeannie: ‘I want to look into the possibility of forensic evidence, as well.’
‘Do you know how unlikely that is in a big city hotel, the best part of a week after the day in question?’
‘I do.’
‘As for the restaurant, it probably won’t even be open.’ Samuels sounded like a kid who’s just been pushed down on the sidewalk by a bigger kid and scraped his knee. Ralph was coming to realize he didn’t like this guy very much. He came across more and more as a quitter.
‘If it’s near the hotel, chances are they’ll be open for brunch.’
Samuels shook his head, still peering at the frozen image of Terry Maitland. ‘Even if we get a DNA match … which I’m starting to doubt … you’ve been in this job long enough to know that juries rarely convict based on DNA and fingerprints. The OJ trial is an excellent case in point.’
‘The eye-wits—’
‘Gold will demolish them on cross. Stanhope? Old and half-blind. “Isn’t it true you gave up your driver’s license three years ago, Mrs Stanhope?” June Morris? A kid who saw a bloody man from across the street. Scowcroft was drinking, and so was his buddy. Claude Bolton’s got a drug jacket. The best you’ve got is Willow Rainwater, and I’ve got news for you, buddy, in this state people still don’t care much for Indians. Don’t much trust them.’
‘But we’re in too deep to back out,’ Ralph said.