Drop Shot, Page 25

  "I knew more than that," Deanna interjected. "It'd been almost an hour since the murder. The radio already said who the victim was. Not just a rich white boy, but the son of a United States senator."

  "And," Myron continued, "you knew Errol had a long record. You knew it was his fault. You knew he was going away for good this time. Errol's life was over, and he had no one to blame but himself. But Curtis was innocent. Curtis was a good boy. He'd done everything right, and now because of the stupidity of his cousin, his life was about to be flushed away."

  Deanna looked up. "But that was all true," she insisted, sparking up just a bit. "Can't deny any of that, can you? Can you?"

  "No," Myron said. "I guess I can't. What you did next probably didn't take much thought. You'd heard the police fire two bullets. You saw only one in Errol. Most important, Curtis didn't have a record. His mug shot wasn't on file. His description wasn't on file." He stopped. Her eyes were clear and on him. "Whose gun was it, Deanna?"

  "Errol's."

  "He had it with him?"

  She nodded.

  "So you took the gun. You pressed it against Errol's cheek. And you fired."

  She nodded again.

  "You blew his face right off," Myron continued. "I wondered about that too. Why would someone shoot him up close in the face? Why not in the back of the head or the heart? The answer is, you didn't want anyone to see his face. You wanted him to be an unrecognizable lump. Then you put on your big act. You cradled him in your arms and cried while the police and the senator's hoods came crashing in. It was so simple really. I asked the medical examiner how they identified Curtis's body. She scoffed at such a ridiculous question. The usual way, she told me. The next of kin. You, Deanna. The mother. What else did they need? Why question that? The cops were thrilled you didn't want to make a big deal over it, so they didn't look too closely. And just to cement your plan, you were smart enough to have the body cremated immediately. Even if someone wanted to go back and check, the evidence was ashes.

  "As for Curtis, his escape was easy. A nationwide manhunt began for Errol Swade, a six-foot four-inch man who looked nothing like your son. No one was looking for Curtis Yeller. He was dead."

  "It wasn't quite that easy," Deanna said. "Curtis and I were careful. Powerful men were in this. The police scared me, sure, but not as much as those men who worked for the senator. And then the papers all made that Cross boy out to be a hero. Curtis knew the truth. If the senator ever got a hold of my boy..." She shrugged away the obvious.

  Myron nodded. He'd thought the same thing too. Dead men tell no tales. "So Curtis spent the next five years underground?" he asked.

  "I guess you could call it that," Deanna said. "He roamed around, scraped by on whatever he could. I sent him money when I had some, but I told him to never come back to Philadelphia. We'd arrange times to talk on public phones and stuff. He grew up on his own. He lived on the streets, but he was well-spoken enough to get some decent jobs. He worked for three years at a tennis club near Boston. He played all the time, even hustled a few games. I saved up enough for him to get a little plastic surgery done. Just some little touches, you know, in case he ran into someone he knew. Like you said, he got a lot bigger. He grew an inch and put on thirty pounds. He also wore those sunglasses, though I always thought that was going a little too far. No one's gonna recognize him, I thought. Not anymore. It'd been too long. Worst thing happen, someone might think he resembles a dead boy they used to know. I mean, five years passed. We thought he was safe."

  "That's why you started getting money recently," Myron said. "It wasn't a pay-off. The money came from Duane's turning pro. He bought you this house."

  She nodded.

  "And when I saw you two at the hotel that night, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that you were lovers. But it was actually a son visiting his mother. The embrace I saw when he left your room--it wasn't the embrace of lovers, but a mother hugging her son good-bye. In fact Duane hadn't slept around at all. That was an act on his part. Wanda was right all along. He loved her. He never cheated on her. Not with you. And not with Valerie Simpson."

  She nodded again. "He loves that girl. He and Wanda are good together."

  "Everything was going just fine until Valerie spotted Duane in my office," Myron continued. "His sunglasses were off. She saw him up close, and like I said before, you don't forget the face of the man you think killed your fiance. She recognized him. She stole his card from my Rolodex and called. What happened next, Deanna? Did she threaten to expose him?"

  "There's some stuff we left out," Deanna said. "I just want to be clear, okay?"

  Myron nodded.

  "Curtis didn't know I was going to kill Errol that night," she said. "I just told him to hide in the basement. There was a closed-off tunnel down there. I knew he'd be safe for a while. I told Errol to stay with me, I'd fix his ribs. When Curtis was out of the room, I shot Errol."

  "Did Curtis ever learn the truth?"

  "He figured it out later. But he didn't know then. He had nothing to do with it."

  "So what about Valerie? Was she going to talk?"

  "Yes."

  Their eyes met.

  "So you killed her," Myron said.

  For a few moments Deanna said nothing. She stared down at her hands, as though looking for something. "She wouldn't listen to reason," she said softly. "Duane told me that Valerie called him. He tried to convince her she had the wrong man, but she wouldn't hear it. So I met up with her at the hotel. I tried to persuade her too. I told her he'd done nothing wrong, but she just kept talking this nonsense about not hiding things anymore--how she'd buried too many things and it had to all come out." Deanna Yeller closed her eyes and shook her head. "The girl left me no choice. I watched her hotel. I saw her rush out. I saw her rush to the matches, and I knew she was scared and I knew she was going to say something and I knew I couldn't wait anymore, that I had to stop her now or..." She sat still. Then she moved her hands off the table and folded them on her lap. "I had no choice."

  Myron remained quiet.

  "I did the only thing I could," she said. "It was her life or my son's life."

  "So for the second time you chose your son."

  "Yes. And if you turn me in, it'll all be for nothing. The truth will come out, and they'll kill my boy. You know they will."

  "I'll protect him," Myron said.

  "No, that's my job."

  Tires squealed in the driveway. Myron rose and looked out the window. It was Duane. He threw the car in park and leaped out.

  "Keep him out," Deanna said, suddenly out of her chair. "Please."

  "What?"

  She ran to the door and threw the dead bolt. "I don't want him to see."

  "See what?"

  But now Myron did see. She turned toward him. She had a gun in her hand. "I've already killed twice to save him. What's a third?"

  Myron looked for a safe place to dive, but for the second time in this case he'd been careless. He was out in the open. It would be impossible to miss. "Killing me won't make it go away," he said.

  "I know," she replied.

  There was a pounding at the door. Duane shouted, "Open up! Don't say anything to him!" More pounding.

  Deanna's eyes welled with tears. "Don't tell anyone, Myron. No need to say anything anymore. The guilty will have all been punished."

  She placed the barrel of the gun against her head.

  "Don't," Myron whispered.

  From outside the door, Duane shouted, "Mama! Open up, Mama!"

  She turned toward the voice. Myron tried to reach her in time, but he had no chance. She pulled the trigger and made one final sacrifice for her son.

  48

  Time passed. Myron had to persuade Duane to leave his mother alone. It was what she would have wanted, Myron reminded him. When they were both far enough away, Myron placed an anonymous call to the Cherry Hill police. "I think I heard a gunshot," he said. He gave the address and hung up.

  They met u
p at a stop along the New Jersey Turnpike. Duane was no longer crying.

  "Are you going to tell?" Duane asked.

  "No," Myron said.

  "Not even Valerie's mother?"

  "I don't owe her anything."

  Silence. Then Duane started tearing again.

  "Did the truth set you free, Myron?"

  He ignored the question. "Tell Wanda," Myron said. "If you really love her, tell her everything. It's the only chance you have."

  "You can't be my agent anymore," Duane said.

  "I know," Myron said.

  "There was no other way for her. She had to protect me."

  "There was another way."

  "What? If it was your kid, what would you have done?"

  Myron didn't have the answer. He only knew that killing Valerie Simpson was not it. "Are you going to play tomorrow?"

  "Yes," he said. He climbed back in his car. "And I'm going to win."

  Myron did not doubt it.

  It was late when he got back to New York. He parked the car at the Kinney lot and headed past the ugly intestinal sculpture and into the building. The security guard greeted him. It was Saturday night. Practically no one was there. But even on street level Myron had seen the light on.

  He took the elevator to the fourteenth floor. The customary hubbub of activity at Lock-Horne Securities was absent. The floor was dark. Most of the computers had been turned off and covered with plastic, though a few were left on, the bizarre screen savers dancing streaks of lights across the desk. Myron walked toward the light in the corner office. Win was sitting at his desk, reading a book in Korean. He looked up when Myron entered.

  "So tell me," Win said.

  Myron did. The whole story.

  "Ironic," Win said when he'd finished.

  "What?"

  "We kept wondering how a mother could care so little for her son when in reality the problem was just the opposite. She cared too much."

  Myron nodded.

  Silence.

  Then Win said, "You know?"

  "Yes."

  "How?"

  "Dr. Abramson," Myron said. "Your visiting Valerie enough for her to know your name. It got me thinking."

  Win nodded. "I was going to tell you."

  "You didn't have to kill him," Myron said.

  "You're a child sometimes," Win said. "I did what had to be done."

  "You didn't have to kill him."

  "Frank Ache would have killed us," Win said. "The only reason he chose to back off was because Pavel Menansi was dead--ergo the profit was gone. By eliminating Pavel, I took away his motive. Our options were clear: we could have taken on the mob and eventually gotten killed, or we could exterminate a vermin. In the end, sacrificing scum saved our lives."

  "What else did you do to Ache?" Myron asked.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Frank didn't show up in the woods just to call off a hit. Something had scared him. He told me to mention our meeting to you."

  "Oh," Win said, "that." He stood and grabbed his putter. He dropped a few golf balls on the floor. "I sent him a little package."

  "What package?"

  "One containing Aaron's right testicle. That, added together with Pavel's death, was enough to convince him that it would be in all of our interests to drop the matter."

  Myron shook his head. "What separates you from Deanna Yeller?"

  "Just one thing," Win said. He lined up a putt and sank it. "I don't fault her for what she did the night Alexander Cross was murdered. It was practical. It made sense. She didn't trust the justice system. She didn't trust a United States senator. In both cases, she was undoubtedly right. And what did she sacrifice? Her lowlife nephew who would have spent his life behind bars anyway. No, in that case we were the same."

  He lined up over the next putt and checked the lie. "Where we differ, however, is that she killed an innocent person the second time around. I did not."

  "You're drawing a pretty thin line," Myron said.

  "The world is made up of thin lines, my friend. I was there. I visited Valerie every week in the institution. Did you know that?"

  Myron shook his head. He was probably closer to Win than anyone, and he hadn't known that. He hadn't even known he knew Valerie Simpson.

  Win took another putt. "From the first moment I saw her in that godforsaken place I wanted to know what changed her. I wanted to know what monstrosity had deadened the spirit that had soared so. You were the one who figured it out. Pavel Menansi did that to her, just as he would have done it to Janet Koffman if I hadn't stopped him." Win looked over at Myron. "You already know this, but I'll say it just the same: the fact that killing Pavel helped us with Frank Ache was just a bonus. I would have killed him anyway. I really didn't need any justification."

  "There were other ways to make him pay," Myron said.

  "How?" Win scoffed. "By arresting him? No one would press charges. And even if all was revealed as per your plan, what would happen to him? He'd probably write a book and go on Oprah. He'd tell the world how he'd been abused as a child or some such nonsense. He'd be an even bigger celebrity." Win took another putt. Another make. "We're not the same, you and I. We both know that. But it's okay."

  "It's not okay."

  "Yes, it is. If we were the same it wouldn't work. We'd both be dead by now. Or insane. We balance each other. It's why you're my best friend. It's why I love you."

  Silence.

  "Don't do it again," Myron said.

  Win did not reply. He lined up another putt.

  "Did you hear me?"

  "It's time to move on," Win said. "This incident is in the past. You know better than to try to control the future."

  More silence. Win sank another putt.

  "Jessica is waiting," Win said. "She told me to remind you about her new oils."

  Myron turned and left then. He felt unclean and unsure. But he knew Win was right: it was over. It would just take a bit of time for things to feel normal again. He would recover.

  And, Myron thought as he headed into the elevator, what better way to start the healing process than with Jessica's oils?

  About the Author

  HARLAN COBEN is the winner of the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony awards. His critically acclaimed novels have been published in thirty-seven languages around the world and have been number one bestsellers in more than half a dozen countries. In addition to the Myron Bolitar series (Deal Breaker, Drop Shot, Fade Away, Back Spin, One False Move, The Final Detail, Darkest Fear, and Promise Me), he is also the author of Tell No One, Gone for Good, No Second Chance, Just One Look, The Innocent, and The Woods. His website is www.harlancoben.com.

  Books by Harlan Coben

  DEAL BREAKER

  DROP SHOT

  FADE AWAY

  BACK SPIN

  ONE FALSE MOVE

  THE FINAL DETAIL

  DARKEST FEAR

  TELL NO ONE

  GONE FOR GOOD

  NO SECOND CHANCE

  JUST ONE LOOK

  THE INNOCENT

  PROMISE ME

  THE WOODS

  DROP SHOT

  A Dell Book

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Dell mass market edition published March 1996

  Delacorte Press hardcover edition / September 2007

  Dell mass market reissue / November 2008

  Published by

  Bantam Dell A Division of Random House, Inc.

  New York, New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright (c) 1996 by Harlan Coben

  * * *

  Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  * * *

  www.bantamdell.com

  eISBN:
978-0-44033812-3

  v3.0