The Stranger

“Did you guys order these from Guantánamo?”

The nurse smiled at him and took Robby’s vital signs—temperature, heart rate, blood pressure. They did that every four hours, awake or asleep. His little boy was so used to it, he barely stirred. A little boy should never get used to something like that. Never.

Kuntz sat by his son’s bedside and let the familiar horror of helplessness wash over him. The nurse saw the distress on his face. They all did, but they were wise enough not to patronize or soothe with comforting lies. She merely said, “I’ll be back in a bit.” He appreciated that.

Kuntz checked his texts. There were several urgent ones from Larry. Kuntz had expected as much. He waited for Barb to arrive. He kissed her on the forehead and said, “Gotta go for a bit. Business.”

Barb nodded, not asking or needing details.

Kuntz grabbed a taxi and headed to the apartment on Park Avenue. Larry Powers’s pretty wife, Laurie, answered the door. Kuntz never understood cheating on your wife. Your wife was the woman you loved more than anything in the world, your only true companion, a part of you. You either love her with all your heart or you don’t—and if you don’t, it was time to move along, little doggie.

Laurie Powers always had a ready smile. She wore a pearl strand necklace and a simple black dress that looked expensive—or maybe it was Laurie who looked expensive. Laurie Powers had come from old-world money, and even if she wore a muumuu, you’d probably be able to see that.

“He’s expecting you,” she said. “He’s in the study.”

“Thanks.”

“John?”

Kuntz turned toward her.

“Is something wrong?”

“I don’t think so, Mrs. Powers.”

“Laurie.”

“Okay,” he said. “And how about you, Laurie?”

“What about me?”

“Are you okay?”

She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I’m fine. But Larry . . . he hasn’t been himself. I know it’s your job to protect him.”

“And I will. Don’t give it another thought, Laurie.”

“Thank you, John.”

Here is one of life’s little shortcuts: If someone is meeting you in their “study,” they have money. Normal people have a home office or a family room or maybe a man cave. Rich people have studies. This one was particularly opulent, loaded up with leather-bound books and wooden globes and Oriental rugs. It looked like someplace Bruce Wayne would hang out before heading down to the Batcave.

Larry Powers sat in a burgundy leather wing chair. He held a glass filled with what looked like cognac. He’d been crying.

“John?”

Kuntz came over and took the glass from his hand. He checked the bottle and saw that too much of it was gone. “You can’t be drinking like this.”

“Where have you been?”

“I’ve been taking care of our problem.”

The problem was both devastating and simple. Because of the somewhat religious connection to their product, the bank issuing the IPO had insisted on moral clauses, including one involving adultery. In short, if it got out that Larry Powers frequented a sugar babies website and had, in fact, used it to secure the sexual services of college students, bye-bye, IPO. Bye-bye, seventeen million dollars. Bye-bye, best health care for Robby. Bye-bye, trip to the Bahamas with Barb.

Bye-bye to it all.

“I got an e-mail from Kimberly,” Larry said.

He started crying again.

“What did it say?”

“Her mother was murdered.”

“She told you that?”

“Of course, she told me. Jesus, John, I know you—”

“Quiet.”

The tone in his voice stopped Larry like a slap across the face.

“Just listen to me.”

“It didn’t have to be this way, John. We could have started again. There might have been other opportunities. We would have been okay.”

Kuntz just stared at him. Right, sure. Other opportunities. Easy for him to say. Larry’s father had been a bond trader, made nice cash his whole life, sent his kid to an Ivy League school. Laurie came from huge money. Neither of them had a friggin’ clue.

“We could have—”

“Stop talking, Larry.”

He did so.

“What exactly did Kimberly say to you?”

“Not say. It was by e-mail. I told you. We never talk on the phone. And it’s not my real e-mail. It’s via my sugar babies account.”

“Okay, good. What did her e-mail say?”

“That her mother had been killed. She thought it was some kind of breaking and entering.”

“Probably was,” Kuntz said.

Silence.

Then Larry sat up and said, “Kimberly isn’t a threat. She doesn’t even know my name.”

Kuntz had already gone through the pros and cons of silencing Heidi’s daughter, Kimberly, but in the end, he decided it would be more dangerous to kill her. Right now, the police would have absolutely no need to connect Heidi Dann’s murder to Ingrid Prisby’s. They were separated by more than four hundred miles. He had even used two different guns. But if suddenly something also happened to Heidi’s daughter, that would draw too much attention.

Larry claimed that he did not use his real name with Kimberly. The site did a fairly good job of keeping the men’s identities a secret. Sure, Kimberly might recognize him if his picture ended up in the paper, but they’d already decided to now make Larry the shy CEO and let the president do all the press when the IPO officially came out. And if she did make trouble later on, well, Kuntz would figure a way to handle it then.

Larry stood and started doing a drunk-stagger pace. “How did these people know about me?” he whined. “The site is anonymous.”

“You had to pay for the services, right?”

“Yes, sure, with a credit card.”

“Someone has to run the card, Larry. That’s how they knew.”

“And someone told Kimberly’s mom about this?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think, Larry?”

“Blackmail?”

“Bingo.”

“So let’s just pay them.”

Kuntz had considered that, but one, they hadn’t yet approached them for anything, and two, it left too many loose ends. Blackmailers, especially ones who had a certain brand of fanaticism, were not reliable or trustworthy. He hadn’t known enough about the threat when he first arrived in Ohio. What he did know was that Heidi Dann had been devastated by the news that her daughter had taken up something akin to prostitution. She knew the aliases of the johns, but luckily, she hadn’t discussed that with her daughter. After some persuasion, Heidi had told Kuntz about the young couple approaching her outside Red Lobster. Kuntz had flashed his credentials at some kid who worked in the restaurant’s security office, gotten the video of the young couple talking to Heidi, written down the license plate.