The Stranger
Page 73

He had to handle it this way.
He drove over to Beth Lutheran Church. He parked by the gymnasium exit and waited. He thought that he understood what had happened now, but something was still niggling at the base of his brain. Something still didn’t feel right—hadn’t felt right from the beginning.
He took out his phone, brought up Corinne’s text, and read it once again:
MAYBE WE NEED SOME TIME APART. YOU TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS. DON’T TRY TO CONTACT ME. IT WILL BE OKAY.
He was about to read it again when Bob “Gaston” Baime came sauntering out. He said good night to the other guys with high fives and knuckle pounds. He wore shorts that were too short. A towel was draped around his neck. Adam waited patiently until Bob was close to his car. Then Adam got out and said, “Hey, Bob.”
Bob turned toward him. “Hey, Adam. Whoa, you startled me there. What’s—?”
Adam punched him hard in the mouth, knocking the big man onto the driver’s seat. Bob’s eyes went wide with shock. Adam came up to his door and stuck the gun in his face.
“Don’t move.”
Bob’s hand was on his mouth, stemming the flow of blood. Adam opened the car door behind him and slid him into the backseat. He pressed the gun against Bob’s neck.
“What the hell are you doing, Adam?”
“Tell me where my wife is.”
“What?”
Adam pushed the muzzle of the gun into the back of his neck. “Just give me a reason.”
“I don’t know where your wife is.”
“CBW Inc., Bob.”
Silence.
“You hired them, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what—”
Adam struck him in the bony part of the shoulder with the butt of the gun.
“Ow!”
“Tell me about CBW.”
“Goddamn it, that hurt. That hurt a lot.”
“CBW is your cousin Daz’s investigation firm. You hired him to dig up dirt on Corinne.”
Bob closed his eyes and moaned.
“Didn’t you?”
Adam hit him again with the gun.
“Tell me the truth or I swear I’ll shoot you dead.”
Bob lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Adam.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I didn’t mean it. It was just . . . I needed something, you know?”
Adam pressed the gun against his neck. “Needed what?”
“Something on Corinne.”
“Why?”
The big man went quiet.
“Why did you need something on my wife?”
“Go ahead, Adam.”
“What?”
Bob turned and faced him. “Pull the trigger. I want you to. I got nothing anymore. I can’t find work. Our house is in foreclosure. Melanie is going to leave me. Go ahead. Please. I bought a good insurance policy from Cal. The boys will be better off.”
And then the niggling started up again.
The boys . . .
Adam froze and thought about Corinne’s text.
The boys . . .
“Do it, Adam. Pull the trigger.”
Adam shook his head. “Why did you hurt my wife?”
“Because she was trying to hurt me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The stolen money, Adam.”
“What about it?”
“Corinne. She was going to pin it on me. And if she did, what chance would I have against her? I mean, come on. Corinne is this nice schoolteacher. Everyone loves her. And me, I’m the one out of a job with the house in foreclosure. Who would believe me over her?”
“So you figured, what, get her before she got you?”
“I had to fight back. So I told Daz. I asked him to look into her, that’s all. He didn’t find anything. Of course not, right? Corinne’s Little Miss Perfect. So Daz says to me that he’d put her name out there with some of his”—he made quote marks in the air—“‘unorthodox sources.’ He ended up getting a hit with some weird group. But they had their own rules. They have to reveal the dirt themselves.”
“Did you steal the money, Bob?”
“No. But who’d believe me? And then Tripp confided in me what Corinne was doing—that she was trying to pin the whole thing on me.”
And then the niggling in Adam’s brain stopped.
The boys . . .
Adam’s throat went dry. “Tripp?”
“Yeah.”
“Tripp said Corinne was trying to pin it on you?”
“Right. He said we needed something, that’s all.”
Tripp Evans. Who had five kids. Three boys. Two girls.
The kids . . .
The boys . . .
He thought about that text one more time:
MAYBE WE NEED SOME TIME APART. YOU TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS.
Corinne never referred to Thomas and Ryan as “the kids.”
She always said “the boys.”
Chapter 55
The agony in Adam’s head had grown monstrous, grotesque.
Every step sent a fresh lightning bolt through his head. The EMT had given him a few pills to hold him over. He was tempted to take them, grogginess be damned.
But he had to hold on.
Just as he had two days before, he drove past MetLife Stadium and pulled into the low-rent office space. That awful Jersey swamp smell smacked him in the face again. The snapped-together rubberized flooring squeaked under his feet. He knocked on the same ground-level office door.
And again when Tripp opened the door, he said, “Adam?”
And again Adam said, “Why did my wife call you that morning?”
“What? Jesus, you look awful. What happened?”
“Why did Corinne call you?”
“I told you already.” Tripp stepped back. “Come in and sit down. Is that blood on your shirt?”
Adam entered the office. He hadn’t gotten inside before. Tripp had tried his best to keep him out. Little wonder. The office was a dump. One room. The carpet was worn. The wallpaper was peeling. The computer was dated.
Living in a town like Cedarfield cost big bucks. How had Adam not seen the truth before?
“I know, Tripp.”
“Know what?” He studied Adam’s face. “You need to see a doctor.”
“You stole the lacrosse money, not Corinne.”
“Jesus, you got blood all over you.”
“Everything was the opposite of what you told me. You asked Corinne for time, not the other way around. And you used that time to set her up. I don’t know how exactly. You altered the books, I guess. Hid the stolen money, whatever. You turned everyone else on the board against her. You even told Bob that she was going to pin it on him.”