WIN, Coben, Harlan [ebook and pdf reader .txt] 📗

suitcase when I was fourteen,” I begin. “It was a Christmas present. She made one up for all the males in the Lockwood family. Only the males. She gave the females a small makeup bag instead.”

“Sexist,” PT says.

“We thought so too,” I say.

“We?”

I ignore him. “I also detested the bag, the whole idea of leather monogrammed luggage, really. What’s the point? I didn’t want it, so a female relative and I traded pieces. I took the makeup bag with her initials on it. She took my suitcase. Oddly enough, I still use the makeup bag as my travel toiletry bag. Like an inside joke.”

“Wow,” PT says.

“What?”

“You’re dancing, Win.”

“Pardon?”

“I’ve never heard you overexplain like this. I assume it’s because you don’t want to tell me who the female relative was?”

He is correct, but there is no point in stalling. “My cousin Patricia.”

He looks confused for a moment. Then he sees it. “Wait. Patricia Lockwood?”

“Yes.”

“Dear Lord.”

“Indeed.”

He tries to take this in. “So how did her suitcase end up in that closet at the Beresford?”

The FBI would have figured out about the suitcase eventually. It’s in their files. That is one of the three reasons I decided to come clean. Reason One: I trust PT as much as you can trust someone in this situation. Reason Two: If I gave PT this information, he would probably share what he knows with me. And Reason Three: The FBI will sooner or later put it together without my help and then, alas, Cousin Patricia and I will appear as though we had something to hide.

“Win?”

“After the two men murdered my uncle,” I begin, “they made Patricia pack a suitcase.”

My words take a few seconds to register. When they do, PT’s eyes go wide. “You mean…good Lord, are you talking about the Hut of Horrors?”

“Yes.”

He rubs his face. “I remember…that’s right. After they murdered your uncle, they made her take some clothes. To distract or something, right?”

I say nothing.

“So what did they do with the suitcase?”

“Patricia doesn’t know.”

“She never saw the suitcase?”

“Never.” I clear my throat and speak dispassionately. From my tone of voice, I might have been talking about office equipment or bathroom tile. “Patricia was blindfolded and gagged. Her hands were bound behind her back. They threw her and the suitcase in the trunk and drove off. When they stopped, they made her walk through the woods. She doesn’t know how long, but she thinks for at least a full day. They never spoke to her. Not the whole time they walked. When they got to the shed, they locked her inside. She finally took off the blindfold. It was dark. Another day passed. Perhaps two. She isn’t sure. Someone left granola bars and water. Eventually, one of the men came back. He used a box cutter to slice off her clothes. He raped her. Then he took her clothes, threw down a few more granola bars, and locked her up again.”

PT just shakes his head.

“He did this,” I continue, “for five months.”

“Your cousin,” he says. “She wasn’t the first victim.”

“That’s correct.”

“I forget how many others.”

“We know of nine others. There may have been more.”

His jowls hang slacker now. “The Hut of Horrors,” he says again.

“Yes.”

“And they never caught the perpetrator.”

I don’t know whether he is asking or merely stating what we both know. Either way, his words hang in the air between us for too long.

“Or perpetrators plural,” PT adds. “That was the odd part, right? Two men kidnap her. But only one keeps her captive, is that right?”

I correct him. “Only one raped her. That is her belief, yes.”

In the distance, I can hear the whir of a plane taking off.

“So most likely…” PT begins, but then his voice sputters. He looks up at the cabin ceiling, and I think I see something watery in his eyes. “Most likely,” he tries again, “the hoarder was one of those two men.”

“Most likely,” I say.

PT closes his eyes. He rubs his face again, this time with both hands.

“Does what I’ve told you clarify things?” I ask.

He rubs his face some more.

“PT?”

“No, Win, it doesn’t clarify a goddamn thing.”

“But you know who the hoarder is, right?”

“Yes. It’s why I’m back. It’s the case I could never let go.”

“You aren’t talking about the Hut of Horrors, are you?”

“I’m not,” PT says. He leans forward. “But I’ve been searching for that hoarder for nearly fifty years.”

CHAPTER 6

PT rubs his jaw. “What I’m about to tell you is strictly confidential.”

This statement bothers me because PT knows giving me a warning like this is both superfluous and insulting.

“Okay,” I say.

“You can’t tell anyone.”

“Well, yes,” I reply, and I can hear the irritation in my voice, “that’s strongly implied with the use of the phrase ‘strictly confidential.’”

“Anyone,” he repeats. Then he adds, “Not even Myron.”

“No,” I say.

“No what?”

“I tell Myron everything.”

He stares at me a moment. Normally, PT displays all the emotional range of a file cabinet. Ask ‘Siri, show me unflappable,’ and a photograph of PT pops up on your screen. Today, though, on this Gulfstream G700, the agitation comes off him in waves.

I sit back, cross my legs, and gesture with both hands for him to bring it on. PT reaches into the briefcase by his side. He pulls out a manila folder and hands it to me. He glances out the window as I open the envelope and pull out the photograph.

“You recognize it, I assume.”

I do. You would too. It is one of those iconic photographs that define the anti-war, flower-power, feminist-civil-rights counterculture sixties or perhaps (I can’t remember exactly) the very early 1970s. Along with other defining images of the era—the Chicago Seven trial, Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the dead body of Jeffrey Miller at Kent State, the Merry Pranksters atop their psychedelic bus, a female demonstrator offering a flower to a National Guardsman, the packed crowd at Woodstock, the Black student sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter—this notorious shot of six New York City college students had been plastered across the front