Read Online The Woods by Harlan Coben - Free Book Online Page A

was, this nearly perfect creature who saw something in me. How? How could I be so awful and worthless if a creature this magnificent loved me?
    Jane was my rock. And then she got sick. My rock crumbled. And so did I.
    I found the photographs from that long-ago summer. There were none of Lucy. I had wisely thrown them all away years ago. Lucy and I had our songs too – Cat Stevens, James Taylor, stuff that was syrupy enough to be gag worthy. I have trouble listening to them. Still. To this day. I make sure that they are nowhere near my iPod. If they come on the radio, I switch stations at a dizzying speed.
    I sifted through a stack of pictures from that summer. Most of them were of my sister. I pushed through them until I found one that was taken three days before she died. Doug Billingham was in the picture, her boyfriend. A rich kid. Mom had approved, of course. The camp was an odd social mix of privileged and poor. Inside that camp, the upper and lower classes mingled on about as level a playing field as you could find. That was how the hippie who ran the camp, Lucys fun-loving hippie dad, Ira, wanted it.
    Margot Green, another rich kid, was smack in the middle. She always was. She had been the camp hottie and knew it. She was blond and busty and worked it constantly. She always dated older guys, until Gil anyway, and to the mere mortals around her, Margots life was like something on TV, a melodrama we all watched with fascination. I looked at her now and pictured her throat slit. I closed my eyes for a second.
    Gil Perez was in the photograph too. And that was why I was here.
    I pointed my desk light and took a closer look.
    Upstairs, I'd remembered something. I am right-handed, but when I fun-punched Gil on the arm, I used my left hand. I did this to avoid touching that awful scar. True, it was healed up, but I was afraid to go near it. Like it might tear open anew and start spewing blood. So I used my left hand and hit his right arm. I squinted and moved closer.
    I could see the bottom of the scar peaking out beneath the T-shirt. The room began to spin. Mrs. Perez had said that her sons scar was on his right arm. But then I would have punched him with my right hand, ergo, hitting his left shoulder. But I hadn't done that. I had punched him with my left hand- on his right shoulder.
    Now I had the proof. Gil Perez's scar was on his left arm. Mrs. Perez had lied. And now I had to wonder why.

Chapter 7
    ARRIVED IN MY OFFICE EARLY THE NEXT MORNING. In half an hour, I would have Chamique Johnson, the victim, on the stand. I was going over my notes. When the clock struck nine, I had enough. So I called Detective York.
    "Mrs. Perez lied," I said.
    He listened to my explanation.
    "Lied," York repeated when I finished. "Don't you think that's a little strong?"
    "What would you call it?"
    "Maybe she just made a mistake?"
    "A mistake about which one of her son's arms was scarred?"
    "Sure, why not. She knew it wasn't him already. Natural."
    I wasn't buying it. "Have you got anything new on the case?"
    "We think Santiago was living in New Jersey."
    "You have an address?"
    "Nope. But we have a girlfriend. Or at least we think she's a girlfriend. A friend anyway."
    "How did you find her?"
    "That empty cell phone. She called it looking for him."
    "So who is he really? Manolo Santiago, I mean?"
    "Don't know."
    "The girlfriend won't tell you?"
    "The girlfriend only knew him as Santiago. Oh, something else important."
    "What?"
    "His body was moved. I mean, we were sure of that in the first place. But now we have it confirmed. And our ME says, based on the bleeding out and some other nonsense I don't quite understand or care to, Santiago was probably dead an hour before he got dumped. There are some carpet fibers, stuff like that. Preliminary shows that they're from a car."
    "So Santiago was murdered, stuck in a trunk, and then dumped in Washington Heights?"
    "That's our working theory."
    "Do you have a make on the car?"
    "Not yet. But our