Tia stood there and waited for something to come to her. Kids don’t do what their parents say-they do what they see their parents do. So who was to blame here? Tia was not sure.
“That’s all we did,” Jill said. “We just sent out a couple of e-mails. That’s all.”
And that was true.
“It’s going to be okay,” Tia said, echoing the words her husband had repeated to her son in that interrogation room.
She kneeled down and took her daughter in her arms. Whatever had been holding back Jill’s tears gave way. She leaned against her mother and cried. Tia stroked her hair and made comforting sounds and let the sobs come.
You do what you can, Tia reminded herself. You love them the best you can.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said once more.
This time, she almost believed it.
ON a cold Saturday morning-the very day that Essex County Prosecutor Paul Copeland was to be married for the second time-Cope found himself standing in front of a U-Store-It unit on Route 15.
Loren Muse stood next to him. “You don’t have to be here.”
“The wedding isn’t for six hours,” Cope said.
“But Lucy-”
“Lucy understands.”
Cope glanced over his shoulder where Neil Cordova waited in the car. Pietra had broken her silence a few hours ago. After all her stone-walling, Cope had come up with the simple idea of letting Neil Cordova talk to her. Two minutes in, with her boyfriend dead and a deal firmly in place with her lawyer, Pietra broke down and told them where they would find the body of Reba Cordova.
“I want to be here,” Cope said.
Muse followed his gaze. “You shouldn’t have let him come either.”
“I promised.”
Cope and Neil Cordova had talked a lot since Reba had vanished. In a few minutes, if Pietra was telling the truth, they would now have something horrible in common-dead wives. Weirdly enough, when they looked into the background of the killer, he too shared this hor- rific attribute.
As if reading his thoughts, Muse asked, “Do you leave any room for the chance that Pietra is lying?”
“Very little. You?”
“Same,” Muse said. “So Nash killed these two women to help his brother-in-law. To find and destroy this tape of Lewiston ’s infidelity.”
“So it seems. But Nash had priors. I bet if we go back, we’ll find a lot of bad in his past. I think this was probably an excuse for him to wreak damage more than anything else. But I don’t know or care about the psychology. You can’t prosecute psychology.”
“He tortured them.”
“Yes. In theory to see who else knew about the tape.”
“Like Reba Cordova.”
“Right.”
Muse shook her head. “What about the brother-in-law, the school-teacher?”
“ Lewiston? What about him?”
“Are you going to prosecute him?”
Cope shrugged. “He claims that he told Nash as a confidante and that he didn’t know that he’d go so crazy.”
“Do you buy that?”
“Pietra backs it, but I don’t have enough evidence one way or the other yet.” He looked at her. “That’s where my detectives come in.”
The storage unit supervisor found the key and put it in the lock. The door was opened and the detectives poured in.
“All that,” Muse said, “and Marianne Gillespie never sent the tape.”
“Seems not. She just threatened to. We checked it out. Guy Novak claims that Marianne told him about the tape. She wanted to let it slide-thought just the threat was punishment enough. Guy didn’t. So he sent the tape to Lewiston ’s wife.”
Muse frowned.
“What?” Cope asked.
“Nothing. You going to prosecute Guy?”
“For what? He sent out an e-mail. That’s not against the law.”
Two of the officers walked out of the storage unit slowly. Too slowly. Cope knew what it meant. One of the officers met Cope’s eyes and nodded.
Muse said, “Damn.”
Cope turned and walked toward Neil Cordova. Cordova watched him. Cope kept his eyes up and tried not to teeter. Neil started shaking his head as he saw Cope move closer. He shook his head harder now, as if the very act could deny the reality. Cope kept his pace steady. Neil had braced for this, knew it was coming, but that never cushioned blows like these. You have no choice. You can no longer divert or fight it. You simply have to let it crush you.
So when Cope got to him, Neil Cordova stopped shaking his head and collapsed against Cope’s chest. He started sobbing Reba’s name over and over, saying it wasn’t true, couldn’t be true, begging some higher power to return his beloved to him. Cope held him up. Minutes passed. Hard to say how many. Cope stood there and held the man and said nothing.
An hour later Cope drove himself home. He took a shower and put on his tuxedo and stood with his groomsmen. Cara, his seven-year-old daughter, got “awws” as she walked down the aisle. The governor himself presided over the nuptials. They had a big party with a band and all the trimmings. Muse was there as a bridesmaid, all dressed up and looking elegant and beautiful. She congratulated him with a kiss on the cheek. Cope thanked her. That was the extent of their wedding conversation.
The evening was a colorful whirlwind, but at some point, Cope got two minutes to sit alone. He loosened his bow tie and undid the top button of his tux shirt. He had gone through the cycle today, starting with death and ending with something as joyous as the joining of two. Most people could probably find something profound in that. Cope didn’t. He sat there and listened to the band wreak havoc on some up-tempo number by Justin Timberlake and watched his guests try to dance to it. For a moment, he let himself drift into the dark. He thought about Neil Cordova, about the crushing blow, about what he and his little girls were going through right now.
“Daddy?”
He turned. It was Cara. His daughter grabbed his hand and looked at him, all seven years of her. And she knew.
“Will you dance with me?” Cara asked.
“I thought you hated to dance.”
“I love this song. Please?”
He rose and walked to the dance floor. The song repeated its silly refrain about bringing sexy back. Cope started to move. Cara grabbed his new bride away from some well-wishers and dragged her onto the dance floor too. Lucy and Cara and Cope, the new family, danced. The music seemed to grow louder. Their friends and family started clapping encouragement. Cope danced hard and horribly. The two women in his life smothered laughs.
When he heard that sound, Paul Copeland danced even harder, flapping his arms, twisting his hips, sweating now, spinning himself until there was nothing left in the world but those two beautiful faces and the wondrous sound of their laughter.
Author’s Note
THE technology used in this book is all real. Not only that, but all the software and equipment described are readily available to the general public for purchase. The product names have been changed, but really, who is that going to stop?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Winner of the Edgar Award, the Shamus Award and the Anthony Award, Harlan Coben is the #1 bestselling author of fourteen previous novels, including The Woods, Promise Me, The Innocent, Just One Look, No Second Chance, Gone for GoodandTell No One, as well as the popular Myron Bolitar novels. His books are published around the world in more than thirty-seven languages. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and four children.
