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

I think now about Cousin Patricia and the horror of what she went through. “You mentioned Ry Strauss hurting you.”

She swallows. “What about it?”

“You changed your entire identity. You pretty much went off the grid.”

“Yet you found me.”

I try to look modest. Then I ask, “Were you afraid Ry would try to find you?”

“Not just Ry.”

“Who?”

She shakes me off, and I can see she is starting to close down.

“There is a chance,” I say, “that Ry Strauss was involved in something more sinister than stolen art.”

“How much more sinister?”

I see no reason to sugarcoat it. “Abducting, raping, and eventually murdering young women.”

Her face loses all color.

“Perhaps with a partner,” I add. Then I ask, “Do you think Ry could have been involved in something like that?”

“No,” she says softly. “And I really think you should leave now.”

CHAPTER 9

Back on the plane, I start reading through the FBI file. I call it a file, but in fact it is a three-inches-thick binder with photocopied pages. I take out my Montblanc and jot down the names of the Jane Street Six:

Ry Strauss

Arlo Sugarman

Lake Davies (Jane Dorchester)

Billy Rowan

Edie Parker

Lionel Underwood.

I stare at the names for a moment. When I do, when I think of these six and the fact that only one (now two, if you include Ry Strauss) has been seen or heard from in forty years, it becomes apparent that PT is probably right about their fate.

Odds are strong that at least some of them, if not all, are dead.

Then again, perhaps not. Hadn’t Ry Strauss managed to survive all these years before he was brutally murdered? If Strauss could hide in the center of the largest city in the country, why couldn’t the others stay underground?

Oddly enough, I am not buying my own rationale.

One could stay hidden. Two perhaps. But four?

Unlikely.

I start with the timeline and write down the following question:

Who has been seen since the night of the Molotov cocktails?

Day One, Two, and Three post-attack there were no credible sightings of any of the Jane Street Six. Pretty remarkable when you think of the manhunt. On Day Four, there was finally a break. The FBI received an anonymous tip that Arlo Sugarman was holed up in a brownstone in the Bronx. Alas, we know how that turned out—Special Agent Patrick O’Malley ends up being shot and killed on the stoop. I jot this incident down next to Sugarman’s name because it is his first known sighting. The second sighting, according to what I just learned from Lake Davies, places Arlo Sugarman in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as a student at Oral Roberts University in 1975. I mark that down too.

That’s it on Sugarman. No third sighting.

I move on to Billy Rowan. According to the FBI file, Rowan was spotted only once since the attack—two weeks later—by Vanessa Hogan, the mother of one of the victims, Frederick Hogan, a seventeen-year-old from Great Neck, New York. Vanessa Hogan, a devoutly religious woman, had gone on television almost immediately after her son’s death to say she had forgiven those who harmed young Frederick.

“God must have wanted my Frederick for a higher purpose,” she said at the press conference.

I hate this sort of justification. I hate it even more when it’s reversed, if you will—when a survivor of a tragedy claims something to the effect that “God spared me because I’m special to Him,” the subtle implication being that God didn’t give a damn about those who perished. In this case, however, Vanessa Hogan was a young widow who had just lost her only child, so perhaps I should cut her some slack.

I digress.

According to the FBI report, two weeks after Vanessa Hogan’s press conference, when the intensity of the search had waned just enough, Billy Rowan, who had also been raised in a devoutly religious home, knocked on Hogan’s back door at approximately nine p.m. Vanessa Hogan was home alone in her kitchen at the time. Billy Rowan had purportedly seen her on TV and wanted to apologize in person before he went fully underground.

Okay, fine. I note this next to Rowan’s name. First and only sighting.

I move on to the rest. Edie Parker, no sightings. Lionel Underwood, no sightings. And of course, when I was handed the file: Ry Strauss, no sightings.

I tap my lip with my Montblanc and mull it over. Let’s suppose that they had all successfully stayed underground for all these years. Do I really believe that they never, not once, reached out to family members?

I do not.

I scan through the file and jot down the names of close relatives I could potentially question. Ry Strauss had a quasi-famous brother, Saul, a progressive attorney who represents the downtrodden. He’s a television talking head, but then again who isn’t nowadays? Did Ry never contact his brother Saul, even though they lived in the same city for perhaps forty years? It’s worth an ask. Saul Strauss, I know, has been on Hester Crimstein’s news program, ridiculously named Crimstein on Crime. Perhaps Hester could offer an introduction.

The Strauss parents are deceased. In fact, of the Jane Street Six’s potential twelve parents, only two are still alive—Billy Rowan’s father, Edie Parker’s mother. I write their names down. Next I go through surviving siblings besides Saul Strauss. That adds another nine people, though two of those belong to Lake Davies, so I won’t need them. I add those names to my list. If I have more time or help, I might spread my family tree out—uncles, aunts, cousins—but I doubt that I will.

There are a lot of names here. I will need help.

My thoughts naturally gravitate to Myron.

He is down in Florida, taking care of his parents and helping his wife settle into a new job. I don’t want to take him away from that. Those who know us well would note that I always came through when Myron would engage in similar quixotic quests and ask for my help—that in fact, after all the times I marched into battle for him without