Sacred (4 page)

“Yeah.”

She lifted one of the photos and her face softened. “God, she is gorgeous. But it makes sense, her finding comfort in another survivor of loss.” She looked over at me. “You know?”

I held her eyes, searched them for a clear glimpse of the battery and hurt that lay somewhere behind them, the fear of caring enough to be battered again. But all I saw were the remnants of recognition and empathy that had appeared when she looked at Desiree’s photograph, the same remnants she’d borne after looking into the eyes of Desiree’s father.

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

“But someone could prey on that,” she said, looking back into Desiree’s face again.

“How so?”

“If you wanted to reach a person who was near catatonic with grief, but didn’t necessarily want to reach them for benevolent motives, how would you go about it?”

“If I was cynically manipulative?”

“Yes.”

“I’d form a bond based on shared loss.”

“By pretending to have suffered severe loss yourself, perhaps?”

I nodded. “That’d be just the tack to take.”

“I think we definitely need to find out more about Sean Price.” Her eyes glistened with burgeoning excitement.

“What’s in Jay’s reports about him?”

“Well, let’s see. Nothing we don’t know already.” She began to riffle the pages, then stopped suddenly, looked up at me, her face beaming.

“What?” I said, feeling a smile growing on my face, her excitement infectious.

“It’s cool,” she said.

“What?”

She lifted a page, motioned at the mess of paper on the table. “This. All this. We’re back in the chase, Patrick.”

“Yeah, it is.” And until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it—untangling the tangles, sniffing for the scent, taking the first step toward demystifying what had previously been unknowable and unapproachable.

But I felt my grin fade for a moment, because it was this very excitement, this addiction to uncovering things that sometimes would be better left covered, which had brought me face-to-face with the howling pestilence and moral rot of Gerry Glynn’s psyche.

This same addiction had put a bullet in Angie’s body, given me scars on my face and nerve damage to one hand, and left me holding Angie’s ex-husband Phil in my arms while he died, gasping and afraid.

“You’re going to be okay,” I’d told him.

“I know,” he said. And died.

And that’s what all this searching and uncovering and chasing could lead to again—the icy knowledge that we probably weren’t okay, any of us. Our hearts and minds were covered because they were fragile, but they were also covered because what often festered in them was bleaker and more depraved than others could bear to look upon.

“Hey,” Angie said, still smiling, but less certainly, “what’s wrong?”

I’ve always loved her smile.

“Nothing,” I said. “You’re right. This is cool.”

“Damn straight,” she said and we high-fived across the table. “We’re back in business. Criminals beware.”

“They’re shaking in their boots,” I assured her.

HAMLYN
&
KOHL WORLDWIDE INVESTIGATIONS

THE JOHN HANCOCK TOWER
, 33
RD FLOOR

150
CLARENDON STREET

BOSTON, MA
02116

Operative’s Report

TO: Mr. Trevor Stone

FR: Mr. Jay Becker, Investigator

RE: The disappearance of Ms. Desiree Stone

February 16, 1997

First day of investigation into the disappearance of Desiree Stone, last seen leaving her residence, 1468 Oak Bluff Drive, Marblehead, at 11 a.m., EST, February 12.

This investigator interviewed Mr. Pietro Leone, cashier of a parking garage at 500 Boylston Street, Boston, which led to the discovery of Ms. Stone’s white 1995 Saab Turbo on Level P2 of said garage. Ticket stub found in the glove compartment of car revealed it had arrived at garage at exactly 11:51 a.m., February 12. Search of the car and the
premises nearest to it yielded no suggestion of foul play. Doors were locked, alarm was engaged.

Contacted Julian Archerson (Mr. Stone’s valet), who agreed to pick up Ms. Stone’s car from the premises using her spare set of keys and bring it back to the above-mentioned residence for further investigation. This investigator paid Mr. Leone five and a half days’ parking fee of $124.00 (USD) and left garage. [See receipt attached to enclosed daily expenditure sheet.]

This investigator proceeded to canvass the Emerald Necklace park system from the Boston Common, through the Public Garden, Commonwealth Avenue Mall, and ending in The Fens at Avenue Louis Pasteur. By showing park patrons several photographs of Ms. Stone, this investigator found three individuals who claimed to have seen her at some time during the previous six months:

Note that the last of these sightings occurred in early November. Ms. Stone claimed to have met a man she identified as Sean Price in early November as well.

Computer search of statewide NYNEX telephone listings for Sean or S. Price yielded 124 matches. State DMV listings for Sean Price reduced the number to 19 matches within the target age (25-35). Since Ms. Stone’s sole physical description of Sean Price mentioned only his general age and race (Caucasian), the number was further reduced to 6 matches upon cross-referencing for ethnicity.

This investigator will begin contacting and interviewing the six remaining Sean Prices tomorrow.

Respectfully,

Jay Becker
Investigator

cc: Mr. Hamlyn, Mr. Kohl, Mr. keegan, Ms. Tarnover.

Angie looked up from the reports and rubbed her eyes. We sat side by side, reading the pages together.

“Christ,” she said, “he is one thorough guy.”

“He’s Jay,” I said. “A model for all of us.”

She nudged me. “Say it—he’s your hero.”

“Hero?” I said. “He’s my God. Jay Becker could find Hoffa without breaking a sweat.”

She patted his report pages. “Yet he seems to be having trouble finding either Desiree Stone or Sean Price.”

“Have faith,” I said and turned a page.

Jay’s rundown of the six Sean Prices had taken three days and yielded a big goose egg. One was a recent parolee who’d been in prison until late December of 1995. Another was a paraplegic and shut-in. A third was a research chemist for Genzyme Corporation who’d been consulting on a project at UCLA throughout the autumn. Sean Edward Price of Charlestown was a marginally employed roofer and full-time racist. When Jay asked him if he’d recently been to either the Public Garden or the Boston Common, he responded, “With the fruits and the liberals and the fucking mud races asking for handouts so’s they can buy themselves some crack? They should throw a fence around the whole downtown and nuke it from space, pal.”

Sean Robert Price of Braintree was a chubby, bald salesman for a textile company who took one look at Desiree Stone’s photograph and said, “If a woman who looked like that glanced in my direction I’d have a cardiac on the spot.” Since he covered the South Shore and the upper Cape in his job, it would have been impossible for him to make trips into Boston without being noticed. His attendance record, his boss assured Jay, was flawless.

Sean Armstrong Price of Dover was an investment consultant for Shearson Lehman. He ducked Jay for three days and Jay’s daily reports began to show an inkling of excitement until he finally caught up with Price while Price entertained clients at Grill 23. Jay pulled a chair up to the table and asked Price why he’d been avoiding him. On the spot, Price (who mistook Jay for an SEC investigator) admitted to a fraudulent scheme in which he advised clients to buy blocks of stock in floundering companies that Price himself had already invested in through a dummy corporation. This, Jay discovered, had been going on for years, and during October and early November, Sean Armstrong Price had made several trips—to the Cayman Islands, Lower Antilles, and Zurich to bury money he never should have had.

Two days later, Jay noted, one of the clients Price had been entertaining reported him to actual SEC investigators and he was arrested at his office on Federal Street. Reading between the lines of the rest of the data Jay gathered on Price, you could tell he thought Price was too dumb, too transparently slick, and too obsessed with finance to ever dupe or form a connection with Desiree.

Outside of that minor success, however, Jay was getting nowhere, and five days into his reports his frustra
tion began to show. Desiree’s few close friends had lost contact with her after her mother’s death. She and her father had rarely spoken, nor had she confided in Lurch or the Weeble. With the exception of the macing of Daniel Mahew, she’d been remarkably unobtrusive during her trips downtown. If she hadn’t been so beautiful, Jay noted once, she probably wouldn’t have been noticed at all.

Since her disappearance, she’d used none of her credit cards, written no checks; her trust fund, various stocks, and certificates of deposit remained untouched. A check of her private phone line records revealed that she had made no calls between July and the date of her disappearance.

“No phone calls,”
Jay had underlined in red in his report of February 20.

Jay was not the type to underline, ever, and I could tell that he had moved beyond the point of frustration and injury to his professional pride and toward the point of obsession. “It’s as if,” he wrote on February 22 “this beautiful woman never existed.”

Noting the unprofessional nature of this entry, Trevor Stone had contacted Everett Hamlyn and on the morning of the twenty-third, Jay Becker was called to an emergency meeting with Hamlyn, Adam Kohl, and Trevor Stone at Trevor’s home. Trevor included a transcript with Jay’s reports:

HAMLYN:
We need to discuss the nature of this report.

BECKER:
I was tired.

KOHL:
Modifiers such as “beautiful”? In a document you know will circulate throughout the firm? Where is your head, Mr. Becker?

BECKER:
Again, I was tired. Mr. Stone, I apologize.

STONE:
I’m concerned that you’re losing your professional distance, Mr. Becker.

HAMLYN:
With all due respect, Mr. Stone, it is my opinion that my operative has already lost his distance.

KOHL:
Without question.

BECKER:
You’re pulling me off the case?

HAMLYN:
If Mr. Stone agrees with our recommendation.

BECKER:
Mr. Stone?

STONE:
Convince me why I shouldn’t, Mr. Becker. This is my daughter’s life we’re talking about.

BECKER:
Mr. Stone, I admit I’ve become frustrated by the lack of any physical evidence to either your daughter’s disappearance or this Sean Price she claimed to have met. And that frustration has caused some disorientation. And, yes, what you’ve told me about your daughter, what I’ve heard from witnesses, and undoubtedly her physical beauty has helped to create a sentimental attachment to her which is not conducive to a professionally detached investigation. All true. But I’m close. I’ll find her.

STONE:
When?

BECKER:
Soon. Very soon.

HAMLYN:
Mr. Stone, I urge you to allow us to employ another operative on this case as chief investigator.

STONE:
I’ll give you three days, Mr. Becker.

KOHL:
Mr. Stone!

STONE:
Three days to come up with tangible proof of my daughter’s whereabouts.

BECKER:
Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you very much.

“This is bad,” I said.

“What?” Angie lit a cigarette.

“Never mind everything else in the transcript, look at
Jay’s last line. He’s being obsequious, almost sycophantic.”

“He’s thanking Stone for saving his job.”

I shook my head. “That’s not Jay. Jay’s too proud. You get a single ‘thanks’ out of the guy, you probably just saved him from a burning car. He’s not a ‘thank you’ type of guy. He’s way too cocky. And the Jay I know would have been ripshit they even considered taking him off the case.”

“But he’s losing it here. I mean, look at his last few entries before they called that meeting.”

I stood up, paced back and forth along the dining room table. “Jay can find anyone.”

“So you’ve said.”

“But in a week on this case, he’d found nothing. No Desiree. No Sean Price.”

“Maybe he was looking in the wrong places.”

I leaned over the table, worked the kinks out of my neck, and looked down at Desiree Stone. In one photo, she was sitting on a porch swing in Marblehead, laughing, her bright green eyes staring directly into the lens. Her rich honey hair was in tangles and she wore a raggedy sweater and torn jeans, her feet bare, dazzling white teeth exposed.

Her eyes drew you in, no question, but it was more than that that kept you fixated on her. She had what I’m sure a Hollywood casting director would call “presence.” Frozen in time, she still radiated an aura of health, of vigor, of effortless sensuality, an odd mixture of vulnerability and poise, of appetite and innocence.

“You’re right,” I said.

“How’s that?” Angie said.

“She is gorgeous.”

“No kidding. I’d kill to look that good in an old
sweater and torn jeans. Christ, her hair looks like she hadn’t brushed it in a week and she’s still perfect.”

I grimaced at her. “You give her a good run in the beautiful department, Ange.”

“Oh, please.” She stubbed out her cigarette, joined me over the photo. “I’m pretty. Okay. Some men might even say beautiful.”

“Or gorgeous. Or knockout, drop-dead, volup—”

“Right,” she said. “Fine. Some men. I’ll give you that. Some men. But not all men. Plenty would say I’m not their type, I’m too Italian-looking, too petite, too whatever or not enough of whatever else.”

“For the sake of debate,” I said, “okay. I’ll go along with you.”

“But this one,” she said and tapped Desiree’s forehead with her index finger, “there’s not a straight man alive who wouldn’t find her attractive.”

“She is something,” I said.

“Something?” she said. “Patrick, she’s flawless.”

Two days after the emergency meeting in Trevor Stone’s house, Jay Becker did something that would have proven he’d gone off the deep end if it hadn’t proven instead to be a stroke of genius.

He became Desiree Stone.

He stopped shaving, allowed his hair and appearance to become disheveled, and stopped eating. Dressed in an expensive, but rumpled suit, he retraced Desiree’s steps around the Emerald Necklace. This time, however, he didn’t do it as an investigator; he did it as she had.

He sat on the same bench in the Commonwealth Avenue mall, on the same stretch of grass in the Common, under the same tree in the Public Garden. As he noted in his reports, he initially hoped that someone—maybe
Sean Price—would contact him, act on a perception that Jay was vulnerable, laid waste by loss. But when that didn’t happen, he instead tried to adopt what he assumed was Desiree’s mind-set in the weeks before she disappeared. He soaked in the sights she’d seen, heard the sounds she’d heard, waited and prayed, as she probably had, for contact, for an end to grief, for a human connection found and forged in loss.