WIN by Coben, Harlan (best book reader txt) 📕

it. My mind wants to jump to conclusions, but I resist the temptation. Again, that would be Myron’s forte—spontaneous, disorganized, sloppy, brilliant. He can keep dozens of ideas in his head. I cannot. I slow myself. I need to have backing documentation. I need to see it visually, on the page, before it makes sense. I need a timetable and a map.

Still, as the hours pass, the pieces start coming together.

I hear footsteps behind me. I look up as Cousin Patricia steps into the room. “Nigel said you’d be down here.”

“And so I am.”

“Shouldn’t you be resting?”

“No.”

“You’re okay then?”

“Yes, fine, can we move on now?”

“Sheesh, I was just being polite.”

“Which you know I detest,” I say. Then I ask, “Do you know how old your mother is?”

Patricia makes a face. “Come again?”

“When your parents came back from Brazil, the family didn’t believe that Aline was, as he claimed, twenty. Nigel’s father hired a detective firm in Fortaleza. Their best guess is that she was fourteen or fifteen.”

Patricia just stands there.

“Did you know?” I ask.

“Yes.”

I don’t know whether that surprises me or not.

“It was the seventies, Win.”

The same defense as my father. Interesting to hear it from his niece. “I’m not interested in judging your father. I don’t care right now about the legality or ethics or morality.”

“What are you interested in?”

“Getting the answers.”

“What answers?”

“Who stole the paintings. Who killed your father. Who killed Ry Strauss. Who harmed you and the other girls.”

“Why?”

It is an interesting question. My first thought is about PT and his five decades of guilt over his dead partner. “I promised a friend.”

Patricia’s face displays skepticism. In truth, I don’t blame her for that. My answer sounds hollow in my own ears. I try again.

“It’s a wrong that needs to be righted,” I say.

“And you think the answers will do that?”

“Will do what?”

“Right the wrong?”

It’s a fair point. “We will find out, won’t we?”

Cousin Patricia tucks her hair behind an ear and starts toward me. “Show me what you have.”

*  *  *

Perhaps I should warn Cousin Patricia that she will not like what I have to say.

Alas, no.

I would rather get her unguarded, unfiltered reaction. So I dive straight into the breakdown.

“Your father matriculated to Haverford College in September of 1971.”

She arches an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“What?”

“You’re using the word ‘matriculated’ in casual conversation?”

I have to smile. “My most heartfelt apologies,” I say. “Do you know your father originally attended Haverford?”

“I do. Like your father and their father and their father before them for however far we go back. So what? My father didn’t want to go, but he didn’t feel as though he had a choice. That’s why he transferred.”

“No.”

“No what?”

“That’s not why he transferred.”

I produce the honor code report as well as the covering letter signed by the Dean’s Disciplinary Panel. “These are dated January 16, 1972—the beginning of your father’s second semester of his freshman year.”

We are seated at the square table in the center of the room. Her purse is on the floor. Patricia reaches down and pulls out a pair of reading glasses. I wait for her to skim through the report.

“It’s pretty vague,” she says.

“Intentionally,” I say. “Apparently your father took inappropriate photographs of the underage daughter of his biology professor named Gary Roberts.” I hand her a canceled check. “On January 22, Professor Roberts deposited this check, made out from one of our shell companies, to his bank account.”

She reads it. “Ten grand?”

I say nothing.

“Pretty cheap.”

“It was the early seventies.”

“Still.”

“And I’m not sure he had a choice. Scandals like this never saw the light of day. If it did, Professor Roberts was probably convinced that his young daughter would be the one blamed and made worse for wear.”

Patricia reads the letter again. “Do you have a photograph of her?”

“Of the daughter?”

“Yes.”

“No. Why?”

“Dad liked young women,” she says. “Girls even.”

“Yes.”

“But there is a difference between a physically mature fifteen-year-old and, say, a seven-year-old.”

I stay silent. Patricia has asked me no question, so I see no reason to speak.

“I mean,” she continues, “sorry to sound anti-me-too and I’m not defending him, but have you seen photographs of my mother at their wedding?”

“I have.”

“She’s…my mother was curvy.”

I wait.

“She was built, right? What I’m saying is, I don’t think my father was a pedophiliac or anything.”

“You prefer ephebophilia,” I say.

“I’m not sure what that is.”

“Mid-to-late adolescents,” I say.

“Maybe.”

“Patricia?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s not get bogged down in definitions right now. It will only cloud the issue. He’s dead. I see no reason to pursue his punishment at this moment.”

She nods, sits back, and lets loose a deep breath. “Go on then.”

I look down at my notes. “There isn’t much mention of your father for the next few months in any of the diaries I’ve located so far, but my grandfather kept all of his scorecards from his rounds of golf.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“He saved scorecards?”

“He did.”

“So I assume my father’s name is on some?”

“Yes. He played quite a bit starting in April. With my father, our grandfather, family members. I’m sure he played with his friends too, but of course, I wouldn’t have those cards.”

“What was his handicap?”

“Pardon?”

“I’m trying to lighten the mood, Win. What does that prove?”

“That he was in Philadelphia throughout the summer. Or at least, he golfed here. Then according to the calendar, a Lockwood staff member drove Aldrich to Lipton Hall, his residence housing on Washington Square, on September 3, 1972.”

“Where he started at NYU.”

“Yes.”

“So then what?”

“For the most part, it seems everything is calm for a while. I need to go through the files more thoroughly, but as of now, nothing major pops out until your father arrives in São Paolo on April 14, 1973.”

I show her the relevant stamp from Brazil in his old passport.

“Wait. Grandmama kept his old passport?”

“All of our old passports, yes.”

Patricia shakes her head in disbelief. She turns to the photograph in the front and stares down at the image of her father. The passport was issued in 1971, when her father was nineteen years old. Her head tilts to the side as