Three Harlan Coben Novels Read Online Free PDF Page B

a picture window that offered up a wonderful view of a parking lot.
    Dr. Skylar stared intently at Loren Muse. Loren didn’t like it. She waited a moment. Skylar kept staring.
    Loren said, “Problem?”
    Edna Skylar smiled. “Sorry, bad habit.”
    “What’s that?”
    “I look at faces.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “It’s not important. Well, maybe it is. That’s how I got into this predicament.”
    Loren wanted to get to it. “You told my boss that you have information on Katie Rochester?”
    “How is Ed?”
    “He’s good.”
    She smiled warmly. “He’s a nice man.”
    “Yeah,” Loren said, “a prince.”
    “I’ve known him a long time.”
    “He told me.”
    “That’s why I called Ed. We had a long talk about the case.”
    “Right,” Loren said. “And that’s why he sent me here.”
    Edna Skylar looked off, out the window. Loren tried to guess her age. Mid-sixties probably, but she wore it well. Dr. Skylar was a handsome woman, short gray hair, high cheekbones, knew how to sport a beige suit without coming across as too butch or overly feminine.
    “Dr. Skylar?”
    “Could you tell me something about the case?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Katie Rochester. Is she officially listed as missing?”
    “I’m not sure how that’s relevant.”
    Edna Skylar’s eyes moved slowly back to Loren Muse. “Do you think she met up with foul play—”
    “I can’t really discuss that.”
    “—or do you think she ran away? When I talked to Ed, he seemed pretty sure she was a runaway. She took money out of an ATM in midtown, he said. Her father is rather unsavory.”
    “Prosecutor Steinberg told you all that?”
    “He did.”
    “So why are you asking me?”
    “I know his take,” she said. “I want yours.”
    Loren was about to protest some more, but Edna Skylar was again staring with too much intensity. She scanned Skylar’s desk for family photographs. There were none. She wondered what to make of that and decided nothing. Skylar was waiting.
    “She’s eighteen years old,” Loren tried, treading carefully.
    “I know that.”
    “That makes her an adult.”
    “I know that too. And what about the father? Do you think he abused her?”
    Loren wondered how to play this. The truth was, she didn’t like thefather, hadn’t from the get-go. RICO said that Dominick Rochester was mobbed up and maybe that was part of it. But there was something to reading a person’s grief. On the one hand, everyone reacts differently. It was true that you really couldn’t tell guilt based on someone’s reaction. Some killers cried tears that’d put Pacino to shame. Others were beyond robotic. Same with the innocent. It was like this: You’re with a group of people, a grenade is thrown in the middle of the crowd, you never know who is going to dive on it and who is going to dive for cover.
    That said, Katie Rochester’s father . . . there was something off about his grief. It was too fluid. It was like he was trying on different personas, seeing which one would look best for the public. And the mother. She had the whole shattered-eye thing going on, but had that come from devastation or resignation? It was hard to tell.
    “We have no evidence of that,” Loren said in the most noncommittal tone she could muster.
    Edna Skylar did not react.
    “These questions,” Loren went on. “They’re a bit bizarre.”
    “That’s because I’m still not sure what to do.”
    “About?”
    “If a crime has been committed, I want to help. But . . .”
    “But?”
    “I saw her.”
    Loren Muse waited a beat, hoping she’d say more. She didn’t. “You saw Katie Rochester?”
    “Yes.”
    “When?”
    “It’ll be three weeks on Saturday?”
    “And you’re just telling us now?”
    Edna Skylar was looking out at the parking lot again. The sun was setting, the rays slicing in through the venetian blinds. She looked older in that light.
    “Dr. Skylar?”
    “She asked me not to say anything.” Her gaze was still on the