A dismal January rain slashed at the windows while Reed watched from inside as Sarit unpacked Tula from the back of her Prius and hustled her up the steps to Reed’s condo. He had the oven on to preheat, ostensibly because he intended to bake cookies with his daughter. The truth was he was cold. His most recent case had taken him to Aberdeen, South Dakota, which lay frozen under a foot of snow. That’s where he’d found the missing young farmer, too, with a bullet in his head and a revolver in his hand.
“Daddy!” Tula gave him a wet hug around the waist and he returned it with a squeeze. The only time he felt real emotion these days was when he was with her.
“My sweet,” he said. “I have everything ready for chocolate chip cookies.”
“Yummy,” she proclaimed as she bounded into the house and raced to her room to inspect that it was untouched since her last visit. To his surprise, Sarit lingered in the entryway, her boots dripping on the slate tile.
“I thought you would like to know,” she said stiffly. “I won’t be going to Houston. The job at the Chronicle fell through, so Randy and I are going to have to do long distance for a while. You’ll have to give me some tips.”
“I wish I could.” He looked away. “Ellery and I broke up.” He’d spent the past few months not saying the words, hoping she would change her mind. She hadn’t.
“What? What happened?”
Francis Coben grabbed her off the streets and nearly killed her, Reed thought but did not say. He’d hoped he could be strong enough to outweigh the Coben legacy. He’d spent years looking at the story and seeing himself as the key figure, the hero. Hadn’t the movies always turned on his dramatic rescue? Only now did he understand. His role was incidental; Coben was the reason the movies got made in the first place. As long as the fascination with his murders remained at a fever pitch among the general public, it didn’t matter how many inches of concrete held Coben in his cell. He was everywhere all at once. Even, it seemed, between Reed and the woman he loved. “Long distance is hard,” he said to Sarit. “I wish you luck with it.”
“Thanks,” she said glumly. She looked past him to the kitchen. “Cookies are a good way to drown your sorrows.”
“Would you like to help make them?” he asked, surprising himself.
Sarit appeared downright flummoxed. “Me?”
“Sure.” He shrugged. “Tula would love it.”
“Well, if you don’t mind…”
He held out his hand for her coat. “We can’t eat them all ourselves.”
Tula jumped in delight when she discovered her mother was staying to bake cookies, and her chatter helped fill the chasm left between her parents. Reed took the first sheet of finished cookies out of the oven just as the mail came through the slot at the front door. “I’ll be right back,” he said, wiping his hands and going to pick it up.
Junk, the water bill, and a white envelope with a postmark in Boston. Ellery. He tried not to look too eager as he tore it open. He eschewed social media and so did she, so he’d been reduced to hoping her name would show up in the Boston papers. She and Dorie had solved a drive-by shooting a few weeks ago that made some headlines because it took the life of two teenage boys. He’d found news footage from the scene and glimpsed the familiar shape of her in the background. No quotes, no comments. Ellery didn’t like the cameras.
A piece of plain white paper fell into his hands, along with a small clump of dark hair, and he realized instantly the handwriting wasn’t Ellery’s. It was Coben’s.
Agent Markham—
It’s been so long since you’ve been to see me that I’ve wondered if you’d forgotten about me. I decided I’d write you this letter to renew our acquaintance. It’s quite dull here and I’ve had the opportunity to do some thinking. It occurs to me that we could collaborate on a new project. Wouldn’t that be exciting? Mind you, I could have approached any number of law enforcement officials with this prospect, but I feel like you are the one who truly understands me.
You remember Tracy Trajan? Sweet girl, if a bit thick around the ankles. Lovely hands. I know her parents have been looking for her for almost twenty years now and I thought maybe you and I could help put their minds at ease. We could work together to find that girl. They keep my contacts here limited, but I do have a network that feeds me information. I believe I have a tidbit that could be useful in bringing poor Tracy home. I’d be happy to share it with you if you would be so kind as to bring me what I need.
Please let me know soon if you’ll proceed. Tracy’s parents shouldn’t have to wait another day.
Yours,
FMC
Reed looked down in horror at the hair in his hands. Tracy Trajan had nearly jet-black hair, the same hue as the strands included in the letter. “I’ll be right back,” he called to Sarit and Tula. “I just need to make a phone call.”
He went to his office and shut the door, his hand shaking so hard he could barely dial the number. His boss did not seem pleased to be bothered on a Saturday. “What is it?” she asked.
“It’s Francis Coben. He sent me a letter at my house.” How he got the address, how he was able to mail the thing from Boston when he was supposed to be locked up on death row in Indiana, was a terrifying mystery at this point.
Helen Fielding didn’t have to have the urgency spelled out for her. “What does he want?”
“He wants to tell us what happened to Tracy Trajan.” She’d been abducted from her neighborhood in the suburbs of Chicago in the late 1990s, around the time that Coben was active. They’d questioned him multiple times about her disappearance, but he’d always insisted he didn’t know anything about her. None of the remains unearthed from Coben’s farmhouse had belonged to Tracy.
“Finally,” Helen replied. She, too, knew Coben and his hunger for the spotlight. “What’s the catch? Does he want a national TV interview or something?”
“No, it’s worse than that.” Reed looked down at the letter, the one with a familiar zip code on the postmark. Bring me what I need, Coben had written, and Reed knew that meant only one thing. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. “He wants Ellery.”