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

Portuguese. She said the police would lock me away forever. She told me to run and hide somewhere, that she would call 911 and say she found my father dead. Blame it on intruders. I just reacted. I grabbed my suitcase—well, your suitcase—and I packed it and I ran.”

“I’m guessing,” I say, “that you ran to Ry Strauss?”

“I knew he lived at the Beresford. I was the only one he trusted with that, I think. I don’t know. But when I got there, Ry was in bad shape. Mentally, I mean. He was hoarding. He hadn’t shaved or even showered. The place was disgusting. I woke up the second night, and Ry had a knife against my throat. He thought some guy named Staunch had sent me.”

“You left.”

“In a hurry. I didn’t think twice about the suitcase.”

I can’t help but note that in both cases—the murder of my uncle and the theft of my family’s paintings—the investigators’ first instincts had been correct. With the art heist, they suspected some involvement on the part of Ian Cornwell. That was correct. In the case of Uncle Aldrich’s murder, one of the first theories was that Cousin Patricia had shot her own father, packed a suitcase, and then she’d run away.

That too had been correct.

“This is going to sound crazy,” she says, her voice barely a whisper, “but I was with my dad when he bought that shed at a hardware store. We drove up not far from the site, and he dropped it off.” She looks at me, and I feel the temperature in the room drop ten degrees. “I was in the car, Win. Think about that. I look back now, and I wonder if one of the girls was tied up in the trunk. How messed up is that?”

“Very,” I say.

“I don’t know what was on your negatives, but there were some outdoor shots, so I had some idea of where the shed might be. When I was ten or eleven, Dad used to take me camping up there.”

“How long did it take you to find it?”

“The shed? Nearly a month. That’s how well he hid it. I must have walked by it ten times.”

“Did you ever actually stay in the shed?”

“Just that last night. Before I faked my escape.”

“I see,” I say, because I don’t. Something isn’t adding up. “And you came up with this plan?”

Patricia’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

“You’re eighteen years old. You shot and killed your own father. It was clearly traumatic. So traumatic, in fact, you still keep his photographs on the wall.” I point behind her. “You made your father a big part of your story. Aldrich was, you claim, what inspired your good works.”

“That’s not a lie,” she counters. “What I did…my dad…it haunted me. He was my father. He loved me, and I loved him. That’s the truth.” She moves close to me. “Win, I committed patricide. It shaped everything else in my life.”

“Which brings me back to my point.”

“Which is?”

“You, a confused eighteen-year-old girl, came up with the idea of pretending to be a victim. Because if that’s true, kudos. It was brilliant. I bought it completely. I never for a moment questioned it. You were able to bring closure to those girls’ families. You were able to ‘expose,’ if you will, the Hut of Horrors, but not your own father. You gained attention and used it to launch the Abeona Shelter. To do good. To try to make up for what your father had done. I’m amazed you thought of it on your own.”

We stare at one another.

“But I’m guessing,” I say, “that you didn’t think of it on your own, did you?”

She says nothing.

“You were on the run. Your one ally, Ry Strauss, is crazy. You couldn’t call your mother. You probably didn’t count on the police suspecting her too—but now they had eyes on her.” I steeple my fingers. “I’m putting myself in your place—trapped, alone, young, confused. Who would I call for help?”

Her weight shifts from one foot to the other. She doesn’t say it, so I do.

“Grandmama.”

Three reasons why this made sense to me. One, she loved Cousin Patricia. Two, she had the resources to hide her. Three, Grandmama would do anything to protect the family from the scandal this revelation would bring forth.

Cousin Patricia nods. “Grandmama.”

Before you judge, it isn’t just a Lockwood thing. Families protect their own. That’s what we do. And not just families. In a sense, we all circle the wagons, don’t we? We use the excuse about the “greater good.” Churches cover up their clergy’s crimes and hide them in new locations. Charitable organizations and ruthless businesses are all adept in the art of covering up indiscretions, at self-protection, at rationalizing with some configuration of the ends justifying the means.

Why would it surprise anyone that a family would do the same?

From the time he was young, my uncle Aldrich committed bad acts and never paid a price. He never got help, though to be fair, you can’t really help someone like that.

You can only put them down.

“So what next, Win?”

How did I put it before? There is no bond like blood, but there is no compound as volatile either. I think about that common blood coursing through both of us. Do I have some of what Uncle Aldrich had? Is that what makes me prone to violence? Does Patricia? Is it genetic? Did Uncle Aldrich just have a damaged chromosome or chemical imbalance or could some kind of major therapy have helped?

I don’t know and I don’t much care.

I have all the answers now. I’m just not sure what to do with them.

CHAPTER 36

Life is lived in the grays.

That is a problem for most people. It is so much easier to see the world in black and white. Someone is all good or all bad. I try sometimes to glance online, at Twitter or social media—at the outrage real, imagined, and faux. Extremism and outrage are simple, relentless, attention-seeking.