Stay Close by Harlan Coben Page B

not as hard as you might think. Back in those days, Rudy didn’t have even her real name. Broome had eventually found it. Maygin Reilly. But that was where it ended. She had gotten a new ID, and while she was something of a person of interest, it hardly warranted a nationwide APB or its own episode of
Most Wanted
.
     
    The other change was that she looked wealthier and more—for a lack of a better term—normal. You could dress a stripper down, but you could always see the stripper. Same with the gambler, the drinker, heck, the cop. Cassie looked like a classic suburban mom.A fun one maybe. The one who gave as good as she got, who flirted when the mood struck, who leaned a little too close when she had a few drinks at the block party. But a suburban mom just the same.
     
    She sat next to him and turned and met his eye.
     
    “Good to see you again, Detective.”
     
    “Same, I guess. I’ve been looking for you, Cassie.”
     
    “So I gathered.”
     
    “Seventeen years.”
     
    “Almost like Valjean and Javert,” she said.
     
    “Like in
Les
Misérables
.”
     
    “You’ve read Hugo?”
     
    “Nah,” Broome said, “my ex dragged me to the musical.”
     
    “I don’t know where Stewart Green is,” she said.
     
    Cool, Broome thought. She was skipping the preliminaries. “You realize, of course, that you vanished at the same time he did?”
     
    “Yes.”
     
    “When you both vanished, you two were seeing each other, right?”
     
    “No.”
     
    Broome spread his arms. “That’s what I was told.”
     
    She gave him a half-smile, and Broome saw the sexy girl from years ago emerge. “How long have you lived in Atlantic City, Detective?”
     
    He nodded, knowing where she was going with this. “Forty years.”
     
    “You know the life. I wasn’t a prostitute. I was working the clubs, and I had fun doing it. So, yes, for a while Stewart Green was part of that fun. A small part. But he eventually destroyed it.”
     
    “The fun?”
     
    “Everything,” she said. Her mouth tightened. “Stewart Green was a psychopath. He stalked me. He beat me. He threatened to kill me.”
     
    “Why?”
     
    “What part of the word ‘psychopath’ confused you?”
     
    “So you’re a psychiatrist now, Cassie?”
     
    She gave him the half-smile again. “You don’t need to be a psychiatrist to know a psychopath,” she began, “any more than you need to be a cop to know a killer.”
     
    “Touché,” Broome said. “But if Stewart Green was that crazy, well, he managed to fool a lot of people.”
     
    “We are all different things to different people.”
     
    Broome frowned. “That’s a tad trite, don’t you think?”
     
    “It is.” She thought about it. “I once heard this guy give a friend some advice about dating a girl who appeared really normal but, well, underneath it all, she was tightly wound. You know the type?”
     
    “I do.”
     
    “So the guy warned his buddy, ‘You don’t want to open that big ol’ can of crazy.’”
     
    Broome liked that. “And that’s what you did with Stewart?”
     
    “Like I said, he seemed pretty cool at first. But he became obsessed. Some men do, I guess. I’d always managed to joke my way out of it. But not with him. Look, I read all the articles after he vanished about what a great family guy he was, the loving wife he nursed through cancer, the young kids. And working where I was, I had seen it all. I didn’t judge the married men who came in to blow off a little steam or look for… whatever. Three-quarters of the guys in the club were married. I don’t even think they’re hypocrites—a man can love his wife and still want some side action, can’t he?”
     
    Broome shrugged. “I guess he can.”
     
    “But Stewart Green wasn’t like that. He was violent. He was crazy. I just didn’t know how much.”
     
    Broome crossed his legs. What she was telling him about the beating and violence—it sounded a lot like Tawny’s description of