Run Away - Harlan Coben Page 0,21
killed?”
“Murdered, yes.”
“And where is Paige?”
“No one seems to know.”
Laszlo the dog started pawing Simon’s leg. They both looked down and into the dog’s soulful eyes.
“Let’s take her for a walk,” Simon said.
Five minutes later, they crossed Central Park West at Sixty-Seventh Street, Laszlo pulling hard on the leash. On their left, in plain view yet somehow slightly hidden, was a tiny playground bursting with color. A lifetime ago, and yet not that long ago, they used to bring Paige, then Sam, then Anya here to play. They’d sit on a bench, able to watch the entire playground without so much as turning their heads, feeling safe and secure in the midst of this enormous park in this enormous city, less than a block from their home.
They headed past the Tavern on the Green, the famed restaurant, and turned right to head south. A group of schoolchildren in matching yellow T-shirts—easy to spot on field trips—filed past them. Simon waited until they were out of earshot.
“The murder,” Simon said. “It was gruesome.”
Ingrid wore a long thin coat. She dug her hands into her pockets. “Go on.”
“Aaron was mutilated.”
“How?”
“Do you really need the details?” he asked.
Ingrid almost smiled. “Strange.”
“What?”
“You’re the one who can barely stomach the violence in R-rated movies,” she said.
“And you’re the physician who never so much as blinks at the sight of blood,” he finished for her. “But maybe I understand better now.”
“How’s that?”
“What Hester told me—it didn’t gross me out. Maybe because it’s real. So you just react. Like you with a patient in the ER. On the screen I have the luxury of looking away. In real life…”
His voice just faded away.
“You’re stalling,” Ingrid said.
“Which is dumb, I know. According to Hester’s source, the killer slit Aaron’s throat, though she said that’s a tame way of putting it. The knife went deep into his neck. Almost took off his head. They sliced off three fingers. They also cut off…”
“Pre- or post-mortem?” Ingrid asked in her physician tone.
“What?”
“The amputations. Was he still alive for them?”
“I don’t know,” Simon said. “Does it matter?”
“It might.”
“I’m not following.”
Laszlo stopped and did the butt-sniff greeting with a passing collie.
“If Aaron was still alive when they cut him up,” Ingrid said, “someone may have been trying to get information out of him.”
“What kind of information?”
“I don’t know. But now no one can find our daughter.”
“You think…?”
“I don’t think anything,” Ingrid said.
They both stopped. Their eyes met and for a brief moment, despite all the people walking by, despite the horror of what they were going through, Simon fell back into her eyes and she fell into his. He loved her. She loved him. Simple but there you have it. You both have careers and you raise kids and there are victories and defeats and you just sort of coast along, living your life, the days long, the years short, and then every once in a while, you remember to pull up and look at your partner, your life partner, really look at the one who travels down the lonely road right by your side, and you realize how much you are in this together.
“To the police,” Ingrid said, “Paige is just a worthless junkie. They won’t look for her, and if they do, it will be to arrest her as an accessory or worse.”
Simon nodded. “So it’s up to us.”
“Yes. Where was Aaron murdered?”
“In their apartment in Mott Haven.”
“You know that address?”
He nodded. Hester had given it to him.
“We can start there,” Ingrid said.
* * *
The Uber driver drove up to two concrete barriers, set up on the street like something you’d see in a war zone. “Can’t go no further.” The driver—named Achmed—turned around and frowned at Simon. “You sure this is it?”
“It is.”
Achmed looked dubious. “If you’re looking to make a buy, I know a safer place—”
“We’re fine, thanks,” Ingrid said.
“I don’t mean no offense.”
“None taken,” Simon said.
“You’re, uh, not going to give me a one-star rating because of this, are you?”
“You’re pure five stars, my man,” Simon said, opening the passenger door.
“We’d give you six if we could,” Ingrid added.
They slipped out of the Toyota. Simon wore gray sweats and sneakers. Ingrid was in jeans and a sweater. They both wore baseball caps, hers with the classic New York Yankees NY overlap, his with a golf club logo, a giveaway at a charity outing. Everything discreet, casual, trying to blend in, which wasn’t happening.
The four-level walk-up of decrepit brick wasn’t so much falling apart as flaking away, fraying at