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

“I do, yes.”

“Then you’ll get this. William used to joke that he and I were on the ‘back nine’ of life—now he says the two of us are walking up the fairway on the eighteenth hole. See, we still call Edie and Billy ‘our children.’ But his Billy would have just turned sixty-five years old. My Edie would be sixty-four.”

She shakes her head in disbelief.

Normally I would find all of this tedious and beside the point, but in truth, this is why I am here. I don’t suspect that I will get any useful information from Mr. Rowan or Mrs. Parker. That’s not really the point. What I want to do is cause a stir and see what happens. Let me explain.

If Edie Parker and Billy Rowan have been alive this whole time, chances are they would have reached out to their families at some point. Perhaps not the first year or two when the heat was on them. But it has now been over forty-five years since the Jane Street Six went on the run. If “her” Edie and “his” Billy were alive, it is reasonable to assume that at some point they would have been in touch.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that Mrs. Parker (let’s leave the silent Mr. Rowan out of this for now) would tell me. Just the opposite. She would do all in her power to persuade me that she has not seen her daughter in all these years, even if she had. So—is Mrs. Parker telling me the truth or is she playing me?

That’s what I am trying to discern.

“How did you first hear about the”—what is the tactful word to use here?—“incident involving the Jane Street Six?”

“Do you mind if we don’t call them that?”

“Sorry?”

“The Jane Street Six,” Mrs. Parker says. “It makes them sound, well, like the Manson Family.”

“Yes, of course.” So much for my attempt at tact. “How did you hear about the incident?”

“A bunch of FBI agents crashed into my house. You’d have thought they were looking for Al Capone the way they busted in. Scared me and Barney half to death.”

I know this already. I’ve looked at the file. Again I’m not trying to gather information. I’m trying to gauge truthfulness and perhaps, as you’ll see in a bit, cause a reaction.

I try to make my voice properly solemn. “And you never saw your daughter again?”

She nods once. No words. Not much emotion. Just a nod.

“And you never spoke to her either?”

“I spoke to her,” she says.

I wait.

“That night. An hour before the FBI came.”

“What did she say?”

“Edie was crying.” She looks over at Mr. Rowan. He still doesn’t move, but his eyes start to water. “She said something went terribly wrong.”

“Did she say what?”

Mrs. Parker shakes her head.

“What else did she say?”

“That she and Billy would have to go away, maybe for a long time, maybe forever.”

A single tear runs down Mr. Rowan’s face. I glance at their hands. They are gripping one another’s so tightly, their skin is transforming from parchment to white.

“And then?”

“That’s it, Mr. Lockwood.”

“Edie hung up?”

“Edie hung up.”

“And?”

“And I never heard from her again. And William, he never heard from Billy.”

“What do you think happened to them?” I ask.

“We are the parents. We are the worst to ask.”

“I’m asking anyway.”

“We thought they were dead.” Mrs. Parker bites down on her lip for a moment. “I think that’s why William and me got together. After our spouses died, of course. We would never before that. But it was like our relationship was an echo of our children’s, like a tiny sliver of their love lived on and brought the two of us together.” Then Mrs. Parker echoed my very thoughts: “If my Edie and his Billy were alive all this time, they’d have found a way to let us know. That’s what we used to believe anyway.”

“You don’t believe that now?”

She shakes her head. “Now we don’t know what to believe, Mr. Lockwood. Because we also thought Ry Strauss was dead this whole time. So now, well, that’s why you’re here.”

With her free hand, Mrs. Parker reaches out for mine. I want to pull away—gut impulse, sorry—but I make myself stay still. Now her left hand holds my hand, her right hand holds Mr. Rowan’s. We probably stay that way for a second, maybe two or three, but it feels much longer.

“Now William and I have hope again,” she says, choked up. “If Ry Strauss survived all these years, maybe our children did too. Maybe Edie and Billy ran off somewhere and got married. Maybe they have children and even grandchildren of their own, and maybe, just maybe, we can all be reunited before, well, before William and me finish that eighteenth hole.”

I am not sure what to say.

“Mr. Lockwood,” she continues, “do you think Edie and Billy are alive?”

I choose my lie carefully. “I don’t know. But if they are, I will find them.”

She looks into my eyes. “I believe you.”

I wait.

“Will you contact us when you learn the truth?” Mrs. Parker asks. “Either way. We’ve been waiting a long time for closure. Do you know what that’s like?”

“I don’t,” I admit.

“Promise us you’ll tell us when you learn the truth. No matter how awful. Promise us both.”

And so I do.

CHAPTER 26

I sit in the passenger seat of a parked tow truck driven by a man named Gino. I know his name because the name is sewn in red cursive on his work shirt.

“So now what?” Gino asks me.

I am watching Elena Randolph, the woman who purportedly dated Arlo Sugarman at Oral Roberts University, through her storefront window at the CityGate Plaza in Rochester, New York. The other strip mall tenants include a psychic, a tax service, a Dollar Palace (cue my shudder), and a Subway (cue my double shudder). According to the flashing neon sign, Elena Randolph’s beauty parlor or hair salon or whatever terminology they now use for such establishments is called Shear