Last Seen Alive
Author: Joanna Schaffhausen

1

Reed’s mistake was to stop for a cup of coffee. Or rather, his error was in the routine, stopping as he did at the same coffeehouse every morning on his way to work, a habit he counseled others against when they asked how to stay safe in a world full of human predators. Vary your patterns. Be vigilant.

Reed heeded neither as he performed his morning shuffle in a long line of caffeine-hungry patrons. Outside, a fierce wind swirled snow through the air like a conductor on the stage, bowing and weaving with the symphony. Winter blasted in with a crescendo every time someone new entered the front door. Through the windows, the bare trees looked like X-rays of their summer selves, skeletons clattering in the breeze.

Reed felt like a skeleton himself. The dead followed him around, their eyes on him as he waited to place his order. Eight ghosts had trailed him for years, sometimes whispering, sometimes howling as loud as the wind outside, reminding him always of his unfinished business. These lost young women never showed up in the movies or books or glossy magazine articles written about Francis Michael Coben. They had no happy ending, or indeed, any ending at all. They remained in limbo as possible victims of the infamous serial killer, not included in his body count. Only Coben himself knew the truth, and for nearly two decades now, he’d remained as silent as their graves.

“Weed! Grande coffee here for Weed,” hollered the barista, forcing Reed to step up to the counter to retrieve his poorly named caffeine order.

“That’s me,” he said, and her amused glance raked once over his serious dark suit.

“Enjoy,” she replied as she handed over the hot paper cup. “Weed.”

Reed ignored the dig and threaded his way through the crowd to the milk and sugar station. He fumbled a yellow packet and bit back a curse as white crystals sprayed everywhere. “They do that on purpose, you know,” said a voice at his arm. He looked up from his cleaning to see a well-manicured woman about his own age, dressed to stand out in a cherry-red pantsuit and stacked heels.

“Pardon me?”

“They write your name down wrong for their own amusement. The cretins over there.” She jerked her blond bob in the direction of the coffee bar. “They get off calling Manny ‘Fanny’ or whatever juvenile epithet their air-brains can generate in the time it takes to pour a venti latte. Honestly, my fourth-grade nephew has better put-downs.”

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” He did, but he didn’t remember how. His brain scrambled as his mouth tried to buy time. A fellow parent from Tula’s school? A lawyer he’d seen in court once?

Her laugh carried over the din as she turned her own cup around so he could read the scrawl. Kate. “I’m Kate Hunter, and you, Agent Markham, have been dodging my calls.” She wagged a red-tipped finger at him as though he were a naughty schoolboy, and her identity clicked into place.

“You’re that TV woman.”

She laughed again. “I’ve been called worse. You’ve seen the show, then?”

“In passing.” His ex-wife, Sarit, had detested this woman but sometimes flipped on her show, On the Hunt, to hate-watch it. Kate Hunter yelled her outrage nightly into the camera, demanding justice for the victims. “You talk up famous cases,” he said to her.

“Honey, they’re not famous till I get there.”

Reed recalled looking up from his book one night to ask Sarit, Are all the victims on this show female?

Yes, and also young, Sarit had answered. And always white.

“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am, but I’m late for a meeting.” His boss and the FBI director planned to huddle today to determine what to do about Coben’s offer.

“The meeting isn’t until ten,” Kate said, checking her Rolex. “We have time.”

“You presume to know my schedule?”

“I’m attending the meeting.” She flashed him a smile and pointed at him. “Which you would know if you’d taken my calls. Shall we sit? I snagged a table in the back.”

He noticed then that people were looking at them—at Kate, really—with accompanying whispers and stares. He’d gotten used to the looks and murmurs when he was with Ellery, adapted to the constant “titterati” as she called them, but it had been months now since he’d seen her and he’d receded into anonymity. “I don’t give interviews anymore,” he said. He hadn’t done any press since he’d reconnected with Ellery a few years ago and seen what the media hunger did to her, how the public appetite for Coben’s story left her without one moment of peace. On the hunt, all right. Survivors like Ellery got stuck in the crosshairs.

“You’re not the one I want to interview,” she said, and nodded her head again in the direction of the table. “Come sit.”

Not him. Someone else. There was only one other person it could be. “Not Ellery.” He hadn’t said her name in public in months, and the words came out sharp. “You leave her out of this.”

Kate considered this as she sipped her coffee. “Agent Markham,” she said in a reasonable voice, “I’m not the one who invited her to the party. Coben did.”

Reed followed her to the table she’d selected and watched as she took her seat and scanned her phone for messages. She texted a reply while he lowered himself into the chair opposite her. “What is it you want, Ms. Hunter?”

She looked up and smiled. “The same thing you do—justice for those poor girls Coben cut up and killed. He’s indicated he’s willing to talk, right?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.” Coben had mailed Reed a bunch of dark hair and suggested it belonged to Tracy Trajan, one of Coben’s suspected victims. Tracy’s body had never been found, and her hands were not among those recovered at the farm where Coben was captured, leading to questions about whether she had been one of his targets. “Also, Francis Coben is a narcissistic sociopath. You can’t believe a word he says.”

“The FBI director believes it. That’s the point of the meeting today.”

Reed opened his mouth to reply but she waved him off.

“Save it. I happen to agree with you. Coben’s got an eye-popping resumé, but he’s not as special as he thinks he is. He’s a weak man who kills women to feel better about himself. I’ve run across a bunch of these guys, men who buried their wives in a hole somewhere so they could carry on with a younger, prettier version. Every single one of them cries about how they’re the real victim. ‘It’s not my fault, Judge.’ ‘She ran around on me, Your Honor.’ ‘She drank or used drugs or was a shitty mom.’ ‘She hit me first.’” She leaned across the table toward him, her blue eyes intense with fury. “‘She made me do it.’”

She banged the table, causing Reed to flinch.

“The only thing that makes Coben special is his body count,” she said, easing backward. “He knows it, too. Why do you think he’s refused to give up the other girls? It’s the only power he’s got left.”

Reed let out a slow breath, reassessing her. Her insight was dead on the money so far. “Then you see the quandary,” he replied. “He’s been locked up for seventeen years now. Life on death row in Terre Haute is torturous in its isolation and tedium. Coben’s decided to cook up a little excitement for himself. So he whips out his pipe and plays the one tune he knows will bring us all to the dance. I’ll give up the missing girls, he says. The problem is, if he follows through, his power is gone, and he knows it.”

“He’s never admitted to the murders, right? He was convicted on the strength of the evidence found at the farm, on the DNA analysis from the bodies. He never said he killed them. Getting him on record, getting him to talk about what he did and why he did it, that could help us understand where he came from and how to stop others like him in the future.”

“You think we haven’t tried?” He’d visited Coben a dozen times in those early years under the rubric of trying to understand him. Coben had requested Reed by name, and back then, his ego puffed, Reed had been happy to oblige. The biggest, baddest criminal since Ted Bundy knew his name and demanded his presence. Reed’s boss back then took note, too, as did the publishers. Reed soon had a promotion and million-dollar book deal. For all his training and his fancy education, Reed had been slow to notice that any power he’d received in this exchange came from a sociopathic murderer. When they met, Coben had only wanted to discuss his art, his legacy, and Ellery, as though she, too, belonged to him. Reed left these winding conversations exhausted, frustrated, and diminished. He’d long ago stopped going. But there was enough ego left in him to wonder if Coben’s recent letter was another mindfuck, an invitation to renew their special pas de deux. After all, the envelope had Reed’s name on it.

Inside, though, the letter had contained the dark hair, the titillating reference to Tracy, and an offer of information. The price was in the name Coben did not use. Bring me what I need, he wrote. Reed didn’t require explanation. Coben hungered for the one thing they’d kept from him as much as possible: any mention or glimpse of Abigail Ellery Hathaway.

“Listen,” Reed said to Kate, “Francis Coben is happy to talk nonsense for as long as you’ll listen, but we never get anything useful. As you say, he’s never fully admitted to one murder, let alone the sixteen we’ve pinned on him. You could send me in there to talk to him a hundred times, but he’ll never give up the bodies.”

“Ah, but that’s where I come in.” She wrapped both hands around her coffee. “I can give him what he wants. A bigger audience.”

The full meaning of her words dawned on him. She wasn’t planning the usual rehash of Coben’s story with some cheesy reenactment. “You want to put him on television.”

“You look so shocked, Agent Markham. It’s not like the public doesn’t know the details. You wrote a book, as I recall. And then there were movies about it?”

“They were a mistake.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Oh, a mistake. Then you must have returned the advances and royalties from the projects, right?”

Reed felt his ears grow hot. “That isn’t the point.”

“Sure, it isn’t,” she said dryly. “Here’s my pitch, okay? For real. This project has been in the works for a year now. The producer, Ben Lerner, has a blank check from Marquee Productions to make this event happen. They plan to stream it to a hundred million eyeballs, but money is not Ben’s motive. He’s like you and me, a crusader. Maybe you’ve read about him? His kid brother was murdered years ago and they never caught the guy who did it, so Ben understands what those poor families are going through. He wants to bring those girls home, and he plans to beat this asshole at his own game. Coben wants the spotlight? Okay, bring it on. Shine the lights on him so bright he has nowhere to go. Make him melt down.”

“The authorities at the prison will never go for it.”

“They’ve already agreed.”

Reed sat up ramrod straight. “You’re not seriously bringing a man who murdered two dozen women into a TV studio?”

She looked offended. “Of course not. All filming with Coben would take place within the concrete walls at Terre Haute. He’ll wear shackles and there will be guards standing by. It will be totally safe.”

He shook his head at her as she calmly sipped her coffee. “You don’t need me, then.”

“Oh, but we do.” She widened her blue eyes. “You know him better than anyone. You’re the ultimate consultant. Ben said we had to have you.”

“Then why isn’t Ben here making his case?”

Her lips curved in a half smile. “We’ve researched you enough to know you might be more receptive to a woman’s touch.” She reached across and put her hand on his forearm. Reed glanced down at her perfect manicure before yanking his arm away. She sniffed and leaned back in her seat, her tone becoming businesslike once more. “Of course, we’d love to have you on camera.”

“No way.”

“And we’d love to have you bring Ellery along.”

“Double fucking no way.” He saw it now. They didn’t give a crap about his opinion. He was being used, as always, to get to the bigger players in this drama: Coben and Ellery. He was merely the conduit, the go-between, the link that made the magic happen.

“You don’t think she’d want to help find those girls? That she’d want to show Coben how she’s thrived since her abduction?”

“Thrived?” Ellery had lived for years with her closets nailed shut. She bore scars on her body that attracted the stares of strangers every time she wore short sleeves. The press, the public, they never stopped hounding her to tell the story one more time. “I think Ellery has earned the right to be left alone. She doesn’t owe anyone a damn thing.”

“Not even Tracy Trajan? What about Cathy Tyler or Alicia Arnold?” She named more of the suspected victims. “What about their families who have been waiting twenty years or more for an answer? Alicia’s sister still has wrapped Christmas presents from the year Alicia disappeared. That was 1998, Agent Markham.”

“I know when it was,” he shot back, more harshly than intended. These were his private wounds she slashed at, the names he’d carried all these years. “I was there in the living room with the Christmas tree. This was my case, my business. It doesn’t concern you and it definitely doesn’t concern Ellery.”

“Ellery’s a cop now, right? I’d say she made it her business.”

“Leave her out of this. Leave me out of it, too.” He stood up and started for the door. He felt like Superman trying to halt a runaway train. If he could get to his boss Helen, maybe he could make her see reason. Just because Hollywood liked to make movies about serial killers didn’t mean they should tangle with the real thing.

Kate grabbed her designer tote and scrambled after him as he pushed out into the frigid air. The snow, only a few inches deep, swirled like frosting at his feet. “Don’t you want answers?” she shouted over the wind. “You can help bring Tracy Trajan back to her family. You can be the hero again.”

He whirled on her. “You don’t get it. You have no idea what kind of man you’re dealing with. Francis Coben is not your garden-variety wife beater. He’s a killing machine who started plucking young women off the streets at will when he was barely out of his teens. His IQ is one hundred and fifty. He’s talented at appearing normal for long stretches of time. He laughs, pretends to cry, minds his manners, and speaks like the educated man he is. It’s an act. Or at least only part of the show. There’s a second Francis Coben who lies hidden underneath, a monster who needs to feed, and he hasn’t been let out to play in seventeen years now. You want to throw him a party. Make him a star. You want my expert opinion? Well, here it is. You’re out of your ever-loving mind. You cannot call up the devil and ask him to dance.”

The air fogged with his breath. Ice crystals caught on her thick eyelashes, and she blinked them away, thoroughly unchastened. He turned on his heel, disgusted, and stalked toward his car. “An impassioned speech,” she called after him. “Maybe you’d like to give it to Maxine Frazier’s mother.”

Reed halted with his back to her. The cold seemed to whoosh down his spine. “What did you say?” he asked as he turned around again.

“Maxine Frazier. She deserves the truth, don’t you think? And a proper burial.”

“Maxine Frazier isn’t on the list of Coben’s victims.”

“Sure, she is.”

“She’s not,” he insisted, bearing down on her. “Who do you think would know?”

She dug out her cell phone and swiped around on it. “I think he would,” she said, turning the phone for Reed to see.

Snowflakes dotted the screen and turned to water, making the image appear as though it was crying. Reed saw a list of handwritten names in familiar dark printing. Eight names he recognized, and at the bottom sat the new one, Maxine Frazier. He’d received enough mail from Coben over the years to recognize the man’s handwriting. Either Coben wrote the list or it was an excellent fake. “Where did you get this list?” He had to stop himself from shaking Kate. “Tell me where.”

“From him. Coben wrote it.”

Heaven help him. He’d comforted himself for years that at least there were no more. Sixteen known dead, with eight outstanding potential victims. One survivor. Coben’s damage had been limited. Contained.

“That meeting’s coming up soon,” she said. “Are you going to be there or not?”

Had Coben offered other names to the producers? What the hell else had they not been telling him? He had no hope of putting this case to bed if he didn’t have all the facts. The truth kept shifting and slipping away from him. Be the hero again, she’d said to him. She didn’t understand that he never was, not for Ellery. Not for any of them. Snow swept into Reed’s collar and started a freezing trickle down his back. A cold day in hell, he thought. Aloud, he said, “I’ll be there.”

Copyright © 2021 by Joanna Schaffhausen