The Boy from the Woods

Book 1: Wilde

by Harlan Coben

Genres: Private Investigators; Military Thrillers

Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.

From the best-selling author and creator of the hit Netflix drama The Stranger.

Thirty years ago, a child was found in the New Jersey backwoods.

He had been living a feral existence, with no memory of how he got there or even who he is. Everyone just calls him Wilde.

Now a former soldier and security expert, he lives off the grid, shunned by the community—until they need him.

A child has gone missing. With her family suspecting she’s just playing a disappearing game, nobody seems concerned except for criminal attorney Hester Crimstein. She contacts Wilde, asking him to use his unique skills to find the girl.

But even he can find no trace of her. One day passes, then a second, then a third.

On the fourth, a human finger shows up in the mail.

And now Wilde knows this is no game. It’s a race against time to save the girl’s life—and expose the town’s dark trove of secrets....

Release date: March 17, 2020

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 384

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

 

April 23, 2020

How does she survive?

How does she manage to get through this torment every single day?

Day after day. Week after week. Year after year.

She sits in the school assembly hall, her eyes fixed, unseeing, unblinking. Her face is stone, a mask. She doesn’t look left or right. She doesn’t move at all.

She just stares straight ahead.

She is surrounded by classmates, including Matthew, but she doesn’t look at any of them. She doesn’t talk to any of them either, though that doesn’t stop them from talking to her. The boys—Ryan, Crash (yes, that’s his real name), Trevor, Carter—keep calling her names, harshly whispering awful things, jeering at her, laughing with scorn. They throw things at her. Paper clips. Rubber bands. Flick snot from their noses. They put small pieces of paper in their mouths, wad the paper into wet balls, propel them in various ways at her.

When the paper sticks to her hair, they laugh some more.

The girl—her name is Naomi—doesn’t move. She doesn’t try to pull the wads of paper out of her hair. She just stares straight ahead. Her eyes are dry. Matthew could remember a time, two or three years ago, when her eyes would moisten during these ceaseless, unrelenting, daily taunts.

But not anymore.

Matthew watches. He does nothing.

The teachers, numb to this by now, barely notice. One wearily calls out, “Okay, Crash, that’s enough,” but neither Crash nor any of the others give the warning the slightest heed.

Meanwhile Naomi just takes it.

Matthew should do something to stop the bullying. But he doesn’t. Not anymore. He tried once.

It did not end well.

Matthew tries to remember when it all started to go wrong for Naomi. She had been a happy kid in elementary school. Always smiling, that’s what he remembered. Yeah, her clothes were hand-me-downs and she didn’t wash her hair enough. Some of the girls made mild fun of her for that. But it had been okay until that day she got violently ill and threw up in Mrs. Walsh’s class, fourth grade, just projectile vomit ricocheting off the classroom linoleum, the wet brown chips splashing on Kim Rogers and Taylor Russell, the smell so bad, so rancid, that Mrs. Walsh had to clear the classroom, all the kids, Matthew one of them, and send them all out to the kickball field holding their noses and making pee-uw sounds.

And after that, nothing had been the same for Naomi.

Matthew always wondered about that. Had she not felt well that morning? Did her father—her mom was already out of the picture by then—make her go to school? If Naomi had just stayed home that day, would it all have gone differently for her? Was her throwing-up her sliding door moment, or was it inevitable that she would end up traveling down this rough, dark, torturous path?

Another spitball sticks in her hair. More name-calling. More cruel jeers.

Naomi sits there and waits for it to end.

End for now, at least. For today maybe. She has to know that it won’t end for good. Not today. Not tomorrow. The torment never stops for very long. It is her constant companion.

How does she survive?

Some days, like today, Matthew really pays attention and wants to do something.

Most days, he doesn’t. The bullying still happens on those days, of course, but it is so frequent, so customary, it becomes background noise. Matthew had learned an awful truth: You grow immune to cruelty. It becomes the norm. You accept it. You move on.

Has Naomi just accepted it too? Has she grown immune to it?

Matthew doesn’t know. But she’s there, every day, sitting in the last row in class, the first row at assembly, at a corner table all alone in the cafeteria.

Until one day—a week after this assembly—she’s not there.

One day, Naomi vanishes.

And Matthew needs to know why.

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

The hipster pundit said, “This guy should be in prison, no questions asked.”

On live television, Hester Crimstein was about to counterpunch when she spotted what looked like her grandson in her peripheral vision. It was hard to see through the studio lights, but it sure as hell looked like Matthew.

“Whoa, strong words,” said the show’s host, a once-cute prepster whose main debate technique was to freeze a baffled expression on his face, as though his guests were idiots no matter how much sense they made. “Any response, Hester?”

Matthew’s appearance—it had to be him—had thrown her.

“Hester?”

Not a good time to let the mind wander, she reminded herself. Focus.

“You’re gross,” Hester said.

“Pardon?”

“You heard me.” She aimed her notorious withering gaze at Hipster Pundit. “Gross.”

Why is Matthew here?

Her grandson had never come to her work unannounced before—not to her office, not to a courtroom, and not to the studio.

“Care to elaborate?” Prepster Host asked.

“Sure,” Hester said. The fiery glare stayed on Hipster Pundit. “You hate America.”

“What?”

“Seriously,” Hester continued, throwing her hands up in the air, “why should we have a court system at all? Who needs it? We have public opinion, don’t we? No trial, no jury, no judge—let the Twitter mob decide.”

Hipster Pundit sat up a little straighter. “That’s not what I said.”

“It’s exactly what you said.”

“There’s evidence, Hester. A very clear video.”

“Ooo, a video.” She wiggled her fingers as though she were talking about a ghost. “So again: No need for a judge or jury. Let’s just have you, as benevolent leader of the Twitter mob—”

“I’m not—”

“Hush, I’m talking. Oh, I’m sorry, I forget your name. I keep calling you Hipster Pundit in my head, so can I just call you Chad?” He opened his mouth, but Hester pushed on. “Great. Tell me, Chad, what’s a fitting punishment for my client, do you think? I mean, since you’re going to pronounce guilt or innocence, why not also do the sentencing for us?”

“My name”—he pushed his hipster glasses up his nose—“is Rick. And we all saw the video. Your client punched a man in the face.”

“Thanks for that analysis. You know what would be helpful, Chad?”

“It’s Rick.”

“Rick, Chad, whatever. What would be helpful, super helpful really, would be if you and your mob just made all the decisions for us. Think of the time we’d save. We just post a video on social media and declare guilt or innocence from the replies. Thumbs-up or thumbs-down. There’d be no need for witnesses or testimony or evidence. Just Judge Rick Chad here.”

Hipster Pundit’s face was turning red. “We all saw what your rich client did to that poor man.”

Prepster Host stepped in: “Before we continue, let’s show the video again for those just tuning in.”

Hester was about to protest, but they’d already shown the video countless times, would show it countless more times, and her voicing any opposition would be both ineffective and only make her client, a well-to-do financial consultant named Simon Greene, appear even more guilty.

More important, Hester could use the few seconds with the camera off her to check on Matthew.

The viral video—four million views and counting—had been recorded on a tourist’s iPhone in Central Park. On the screen, Hester’s client Simon Greene, wearing a perfectly tailored suit with a perfectly Windsored Hermès tie, cocked his fist and smashed it into the face of a threadbare, disheveled young man who, Hester knew, was a drug addict named Aaron Corval.

Blood gushed from Corval’s nose.

The image was irresistibly Dickensian—Mr. Rich Privileged Guy, completely unprovoked, sucker-punches Poor Street Urchin.

Hester quickly craned her neck toward Matthew and tried, through the haze of the studio spotlights, to meet his eye. She was a frequent legal expert on cable news, and two nights a week, “famed defense attorney” Hester Crimstein had her own segment on this very network called Crimstein on Crime, though her name was not pronounced Crime-Rhymes-with-Prime-Stine, but rather Krim-Rhymes-with-Prim-Steen, but the alliteration was still considered “television friendly” and the title looked good on the bottom scroll, so the network ran with it.

Her grandson stood in the shadows. Hester could see that Matthew was wringing his hands, just like his father used to do, and she felt a pang so deep in her chest that for a moment she couldn’t breathe. She considered quickly crossing the room and asking Matthew why he was here, but the punch video was already over and Hipster Rick Chad was foaming at the mouth.

“See?” Spittle flew out of his mouth and found a home in his beard. “It’s clear as day. Your rich client attacked a homeless man for no reason.”

“You don’t know what went on before that tape rolled.”

“It makes no difference.”

“Sure it does. That’s why we have a system of justice, so that vigilantes like you don’t irresponsibly call for mob violence against an innocent man.”

“Whoa, no one said anything about mob violence.”

“Sure you did. Own it already. You want my client, a father of three with no record, in prison right now. No trial, nothing. Come on, Rick Chad, let your inner fascist out.” Hester banged the desk, startling Prepster Host, and began to chant: “Lock him up, lock him up.”

“Cut that out!”

“Lock him up!”

The chant was getting to him, his face turning scarlet. “That’s not what I meant at all. You’re intentionally exaggerating.”

“Lock him up!”

“Stop that. No one is saying that.”

Hester had something of a gift for mimicry. She often used it in the courtroom to subtly if not immaturely undermine a prosecutor. Doing her best impression of Rick Chad, she repeated his earlier words verbatim: “This guy should be in prison, no questions asked.”

“That will be up to a court of law,” Hipster Rick Chad said, “but maybe if a man acts like this, if he punches people in the face in broad daylight, he deserves to be canceled and lose his job.”

“Why? Because you and Deplorable-Dental-Hygienist and Nail-Da-Ladies-69 on Twitter say so? You don’t know the situation. You don’t even know if the tape is real.”

Prepster Host arched an eyebrow over that one. “Are you saying the video is fake?”

“Could be, sure. Look, I had another client. Someone photoshopped her smiling face next to a dead giraffe and said she was the hunter who killed it. An ex-husband did that for revenge. Can you imagine the hate and bullying she received?”

The story wasn’t true—Hester had made it up—but it could be true, and sometimes that was enough.

“Where is your client Simon Greene right now?” Hipster Rick Chad asked.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“He’s home, right? Out on bail?”

“He’s an innocent man, a fine man, a caring man—”

“And a rich man.”

“Now you want to get rid of our bail system?”

“A rich white man.”

“Listen, Rick Chad, I know you’re all ‘woke’ and stuff, what with the cool beard and the hipster beanie—is that a Kangol?—but your use of race and your easy answers are as bad as the other side’s use of race and easy answers.”

“Wow, deflecting using ‘both sides.’”

“No, sonny, that’s not both sides, so listen up. What you don’t see is, you and those you hate? You are quickly becoming one and the same.”

“Reverse this around,” Rick Chad said. “If Simon Greene was poor and black and Aaron Corval was rich and white—”

“They’re both white. Don’t make this about race.”

“It’s always about race, but fine. If the guy in rags hit the rich white man in a suit, he wouldn’t have Hester Crimstein defending him. He’d be in jail right now.”

Hmm, Hester thought. She had to admit Rick Chad had a pretty good point there.

Prepster Host said, “Hester?”

Time was running out in the segment, so Hester threw up her hands and said, “If Rick Chad is arguing I’m a great attorney, who am I to disagree?”

That drew laughs.

“And that’s all the time we have for now. Coming up next, the latest controversy surrounding upstart presidential candidate Rusty Eggers. Is Rusty pragmatic or cruel? Is he really the most dangerous man in America? Stay with us.”

Hester pulled out the earpiece and unclipped the microphone. They were already headed to commercial break when she rose and crossed the room toward Matthew. He was so tall now, again like his father, and another pang struck hard.

Hester said, “Your mother…?”

“She’s fine,” Matthew said. “Everyone is okay.”

Hester couldn’t help it. She threw her arms around the probably embarrassed teen, wrapping him in a bear hug, though she was barely five two and he had almost a foot on her. More and more she saw the echoes of the father in the son. Matthew hadn’t looked much like David when he was little, when his father was still alive, but now he did—the posture, the walk, the hand wringing, the crinkle of the forehead—and it all broke her heart anew. It shouldn’t, of course. It should, in fact, offer some measure of comfort for Hester, seeing her dead son’s echo in his boy, like some small part of David survived the crash and still lives on. But instead, these ghostly glimmers rip at her, tear the wounds wide open, even after all these years, and Hester wondered whether the pain was worth it, whether it was better to feel this pain than feel nothing. The question was a rhetorical one, of course. She had no choice and would want it no other way—feeling nothing or someday being “over it” would be the worst betrayal of all.

So she held her grandson and squeezed her eyes shut. The teen patted her back, almost as though he were humoring her.

“Nana?”

That was what he called her. Nana. “You’re really okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Matthew’s skin was browner than his father’s. His mother, Laila, was black, which made Matthew black too or a person of color or biracial or whatever. Age was no excuse, but Hester, who was in her seventies but told everyone she stopped counting at sixty-nine—go ahead, make a joke, she’d heard them all—found it hard to keep track of the evolving terminology.

“Where’s your mother?” Hester asked.

“At work, I guess.”

“What’s the matter?” Hester asked.

“There’s this girl in school,” Matthew said.

“What about her?”

“She’s missing, Nana. I want you to help.”

 

CHAPTER THREE

Her name is Naomi Pine,” Matthew said.

They were in the backseat of Hester’s Cadillac Escalade. Matthew had taken the hour-long train ride in from Westville, changing at the Frank Lautenberg Station in Secaucus, but Hester figured that it would be easier and smarter to drive him back to Westville. She hadn’t been out to visit in a month, much too long, and so she could both help her distraught grandson with his problem and spend some time with him and his mom, killing the allegorical two birds with one stone, which was a really violent and weird image when you stopped and thought about it. You throw a stone and kill two birds—and this is a good thing?

Look at me, throwing a stone at a beautiful bird. Why? Why would a person do such a thing? I don’t know. I guess I’m a psychopath, and whoa—I hit two birds somehow! Yay! Two dead birds!

“Nana?”

“This Naomi,” Hester said, pushing the silly inner rant away. “She’s your friend?”

Matthew shrugged as only a teenager can. “I’ve known her since we were, like, six.”

Not a direct answer, but she’d allow it.

“How long has she been missing?”

“For, like, a week.”

Like, six. Like, a week. It drove Hester crazy—the “likes,” the “you-knows”—but now was hardly the time.

“Did you try to call her?”

“I don’t know her phone number.”

“Are the police looking for her?”

Teenage shrug.

“Did you talk to her parents?”

“She lives with her dad.”

“Did you speak to her dad?”

He made a face as though that was the most ridiculous thing imaginable.

“So how do you know she’s not sick? Or away on vacation or something?”

No reply.

“What makes you think she’s missing?”

Matthew just stared out the window. Tim, Hester’s longtime driver, veered the Escalade off Route 17 and into the heart of Westville, New Jersey, less than thirty miles from Manhattan. The Ramapo Mountains, which are actually part of the Appalachians in every way, rose into view. The memories, as they have a habit of doing, swarmed in and stung.

Someone once told Hester that memories hurt, the good ones most of all. As she got older, Hester realized just how true that was.

Hester and her late husband, Ira—gone now seven years—had raised three boys in the “mountain suburb” (that’s what they called it) of Westville, New Jersey. Their oldest son, Jeffrey, was now a DDS in Los Angeles and on his fourth wife, a real estate agent named Sandy. Sandy was the first of Jeffrey’s wives who hadn’t been an inappropriately younger dental hygienist in his office. Progress, Hester hoped. Their middle son, Eric, like his father before him, worked in the nebulous world of finance—Hester could never understand what either man, her husband or son, actually did, something with moving piles of money from A to B to facilitate C. Eric and his wife, Stacey, had three boys, aged two years apart, just as Hester and Ira had done. The family had recently moved down to Raleigh, North Carolina, which seemed all the rage nowadays.

Their youngest son—and truth be told, Hester’s favorite—had been Matthew’s father, David.

Hester asked Matthew, “What time will your mom be home?”

His mother, Laila, like grandmother Hester, worked at a major law firm, though she specialized in family law. She’d started her career as Hester’s associate during summers while attending Columbia Law School. That was how Laila had first met Hester’s son.

Laila and David had fallen in love pretty much right away. They’d gotten married. They had a son named Matthew.

“I don’t know,” Matthew said. “Want me to text her?”

“Sure.”

“Nana?”

“What, hon?”

“Don’t tell Mom about this.”

“About…?”

“About Naomi.”

“Why not?”

“Just don’t, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Promise?”

“Stop it,” Hester said with a little snap that he needed her to say this. Then, more gently: “I promise. Of course, I promise.”

Matthew fiddled with his phone as Tim made the familiar right turn, then left, then two more rights. They were on a storybook cul-de-sac called Downing Lane now. Up ahead was the grand log-cabin-style home Hester and Ira had built forty-two years ago. It was the home where she and Ira raised Jeffrey, Eric, and David, and then, fifteen years ago, with their sons grown, Hester and Ira decided that it was time to leave Westville. They’d loved their home in the foothills of the Ramapo Mountains, Ira more than Hester because, God help her, Ira was an outdoorsman who loved hiking and fishing and all those things that men named Ira Crimstein were not supposed to like. But it had been their time to move on. Towns like Westville are meant for raising children. You get married, you move out from the city, you have a few babies, you go to their soccer games and dance recitals, you get overly emotional at their graduations and commencements, they go to college, they visit and sleep in late, and then they stop doing even that and you’re alone and really, like any life cycle, it’s time to put this behind you, sell the house to another young couple who move out from the city to have a few babies, and start anew.

There was nothing for you in towns like Westville when you got older—and there was nothing wrong with that.

So Hester and Ira did indeed move on. They found an apartment on Riverside Drive on the Upper West Side of Manhattan facing the Hudson River. They loved it. For almost thirty years they had commuted on that same train Matthew had taken today, changing in Hoboken back in those days, and now, in their advancing years, to be able to wake up and walk or quickly subway to work was heaven.

Hester and Ira relished living in New York City.

As for the old mountain home on Downing Lane, they ended up selling it to their son David and his wonderful wife, Laila, who’d just had their first child—Matthew. Hester thought that it might be odd for David, living in the same house he’d grown up in, but he claimed that it would be the perfect place to start and raise a family of his own. He and Laila did an entire renovation, putting their own stamp on the house, making the interior almost unrecognizable to Hester and Ira during their visits out here.

Matthew was still staring down at his phone. She touched his knee. He looked up.

“Did you do something?” she asked.

“What?”

“With Naomi.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t do anything. That’s the problem.”

Tim pulled to a stop in her old driveway at her old house. The memories didn’t bother swarming anymore—they just full-on assaulted. Tim put the car in park and turned to look at her. Tim had been with her for nearly two decades, since he’d first immigrated from the Balkans. So he knew. He met her eye. She gave him the slightest of nods to let him know that she’d be okay.

Matthew had already thanked Tim and gotten out. Hester reached for the door handle, but Tim stopped her with a throat clear. Hester rolled her eyes and waited while Tim, a big slab of a man, rolled his way out of his seat into a standing position and opened the door for her. It was a completely unnecessary gesture, but Tim felt insulted when Hester opened the door on her own, and really, she fought enough battles every day, thank you very much.

“Not sure how long we’ll be,” she said to Tim.

His accent remained thick. “I’ll be here.”

Matthew had opened the front door of the house and left it ajar. Hester shared one more look with Tim before walking up the cobblestone path—the same one she and Ira installed themselves over a weekend thirty-three years ago—and heading inside the home. She closed the door behind her.

“Matthew?”

“In the kitchen.”

She moved to the back of the house. The door of the huge Sub-Zero refrigerator—that hadn’t been there in her day—was open, and again she flashed back to Matthew’s father at that age, to all her boys during their high school years: Jeffrey, Eric, and David, always with their heads in the refrigerator. There were never enough groceries in the house. They ate like trash compactors with feet. If she bought food, it was gone the next day.

“You hungry, Nana?”

“No, I’m good.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Tell me what’s going on, Matthew.”

His head came into view. “Do you mind if I just make a little snack first?”

“I’ll take you out to dinner, if you want.”

“I got too much homework.”

“Suit yourself.”

Hester wandered into the den with the TV. She smelled burnt wood. Someone had recently used the fireplace. That was strange. Or maybe it wasn’t. She checked out the coffee table.

It was neat. Too neat, she thought.

Magazines stacked. Coasters stacked. Everything in its proper place.

Hester frowned.

With Matthew busy eating his sandwich, she tiptoed up to the second level. This was none of her business, of course. David had been dead for ten years. Laila deserved to be happy. Hester meant no harm, but she also couldn’t help herself.

She entered the master bedroom.

David, she knew, had slept on the far side of the bed, Laila by the door. The king-sized bed was made. Immaculately.

Too neat, she thought again.

A lump formed in her throat. She crossed the room and checked the bathroom. Immaculate too. Still not able to stop herself, she checked the pillow on David’s side.

David’s side? Your son has been gone for ten years, Hester. Leave it be.

It took a few seconds, but eventually she located a light-brown hair on the pillow.

A long light-brown hair.

Leave it be, Hester.

The bedroom window looked onto the backyard and the mountain beyond. The lawn blurred into the slope and then faded away into a few trees, then more trees, then a full-blown thick forest. Her boys had played there, of course. Ira had helped them build a tree house and forts and Lord knew what. They made sticks into guns and knives. They played hide-and-seek.

One day, when David was six years old and supposedly alone, Hester had overheard him talking to someone in those woods. When she asked him about it, little David tensed up and said, “I was just playing with me.”

“But I heard you talking to someone.”

“Oh,” her young son had said, “that was my invisible friend.”

It had been, as far as Hester knew, the only lie David had ever told her.

From downstairs, Hester heard the front door open.

Matthew’s voice: “Hey, Mom.”

“Where’s your grandmother?”

“Right here,” he said. “Uh, Nana?”

“Coming!”

Feeling both panicked and like a total idiot, Hester quickly slipped out of the bedroom and into the hallway bathroom. She closed the door, flushed the toilet, and even ran the water to make it look good. Then she headed toward the stairs. Laila was at the bottom, staring up at her.

“Hey,” Hester said.

“Hey.”

Laila was gorgeous. There was no way around it. She dazzled in the fitted gray business suit that hugged where it should, which in her case was everywhere. Her blouse was a vibrant white, especially against the darkness of her skin.

“You okay?” Laila asked.

“Oh, sure.”

Hester made it the rest of the way down the stairs. The two women hugged briefly.

“So what brings you out, Hester?”

Matthew came into the room. “Nana was helping me with a school report.”

“Really? On what?”

“The law,” he said.

Laila made a face. “And you couldn’t ask me?”

“And, uh, also being on TV,” Matthew added clumsily. Not a good liar, Hester thought. Again, like his dad. “Uh, like, no offense, Mom, being a famous lawyer.”

“That a fact?”

Laila turned to Hester. Hester shrugged.

“Okay then,” Laila said.

Hester flashed back to David’s funeral. Laila had stood there, holding little Matthew’s hand. Her eyes were dry. She didn’t cry. Not once that day. Not once in front of Hester or anyone else. Later that night, Hester and Ira took Matthew out for a ham. . .