The Last Good Night (25 page)

Harraday shook his head sympathetically but didn't answer.

“Do you have a description?” David asked.

“Not much to go on. As I said, he was wearing a mask, and a heavy jacket. Dora seems to think he was about five-nine or ten, slight. And we can't be sure, but from her description, we think it was probably a .38 handgun.”

The words, the faces were unreal to me, distorted and grotesque. I rose suddenly and ran for the door. David caught up with me as I fumbled with the lock. “Where are you going?”

“I have to find her.”

He put his hand on mine. “Laura.”

I struggled against him, pounding his chest with my open palms. “Let me go. I have to find her. She needs me. Don't you understand? She's going to wonder where I am. She's going to think I forgot her.”

“I know, I know.” He clutched me so hard and tight I could not fight back and finally my arms were still. I collapsed against him.

“She needs me,” I repeated.

“We'll find her,” David whispered. “We'll find her,” he said again. His litany, his prayer. “We have to.”

He led me back to the couch.

Harraday waited patiently while we tried to figure out how to breathe, how to be.

Finally he leaned forward, his hands hovering midair as if they would touch us, console us, if they could. Both hands fell to his knees. “Please believe me, we are doing everything in our power to find your daughter. Everything,” he said.

David nodded.

I did not move, did not speak. I was numb. Beyond numb. There are no words.

“It would help if you could answer some questions. All right?” Harraday asked.

“Of course,” David answered. “Anything.”

“I have people scouring the neighborhood,” Harraday assured us as he got out a tiny spiral notepad. “As I said, we don't have much of a physical description, but I have men circling the park looking for other witnesses, and going door to door. You never know what someone might have seen. I have my men handing out ‘Get Out of Jail Free' cards to the drug dealers if they'll talk.
Someone must have seen something.” He paused and looked directly at me. “But we've got a special situation here,” he said carefully.

“What do you mean, special?” David asked.

“Your wife is a celebrity,” Carelli said. He uttered the word delicately, as if it was not quite proper for mixed company.

Harraday glanced at Carelli and then turned back to me. “That always makes it more, well, complicated,” he said. He was in his midforties with the beginnings of jowls and chapped lips caked with tiny white flaps of skin. “Do you have any idea who might do this?”

“No,” I answered.

He looked at David.

“No.”

“Have you gotten any threatening phone calls or messages recently?” he asked.

I blanched. “Oh God. There have been…” I looked at David and then away. All six of the detectives were watching me, waiting. “There has been someone…”

“Sean McGuirre,” David interrupted.

“Who's he?” Carelli asked.

“A nutcase. He was following Laura last year. He broke into our house. Left notes. He was sent away. They were supposed to let us know when he got out, but…” David stood up. “I'm calling Hank Baldwin.”

“Who's Baldwin?”

“Head of security at the network.”

We listened while David called Baldwin and explained the situation.

“He's coming right down,” David said as he hung up.

“Good. Did you save any of McGuirre's notes?”

“No. The police took them to use as evidence. I don't know what happened to them after that.”

“We'll look into it. Is there anyone else you can think of?”
Harraday asked. “Anything out of the ordinary? Anything you can tell us?”

“What about Shana and Jay?” David asked me.

“Who are they?” Carelli asked.

“She's someone my wife sees. A teenager. Didn't her parole officer call last week?”

“Yes, but…”

Harraday's eyes lit just a fraction as he turned to me for an explanation. “Who's Shana?”

“Shana Joseph. She's my little sister. Well, not really my little sister. You know, part of a program.”

“What was she in jail for?” Carelli asked.

“Breaking and entering. But it was over a year ago and she was just an accomplice. She's not like that.”

“And Jay?” Harraday asked as he scribbled notes.

“Her boyfriend. I don't know his last name.”

“What's this about her parole officer calling?” Carelli asked.

“She disappeared,” David said.

“She'd never do anything to hurt Sophie,” I interjected.

“Do you have the parole officer's name?”

“Yes, someplace.” I dug in my purse, my eyes blinded by tears. “Where did I put it?” My fingers worked maniacally, but they were clumsy, unattached to my body or my brain. “Here.” I finally found where I had written Mike Compton's number down.

Harraday glanced at the slip and then handed it to McElvey.

“Anything else you can tell us about them?” Carelli asked. “Do you have an address for her?”

“One-o-four Stanton Street. I went there last week.” I tried to swallow but there was no saliva in my mouth. “There were all these, I don't know, pictures of me.”

“What kind of pictures?”

“From newspapers, the studio. They went back years. It was weird.”

“Did she ever threaten you in any way?”

“No. She's had some trouble but she's basically a good kid.”

Harraday and Carelli were both writing away in their little pads while everyone looked on. “All right, McElvey,” Harraday said. “Get on it. Call her parole officer. He'll have her social security number, a list of her friends. Get men out to the neighborhood. And check out her apartment. I want a report on this personal photo department she seems to be running. Now.”

McElvey grabbed his coat and left.

“Before we go any further,” Harraday said as the front door closed, “I'd like your permission to call TARU—”

“TARU?” David interrupted.

“Technical Assistance Response Unit. If you agree, they'll set up a wiretap on your phone. If this is a blackmail case, the schmuck could call anytime.”

“Of course,” David said.

Harraday motioned to Flanders. “Get them here as soon as possible.”

Flanders phoned it in. “They're on their way,” he said.

“Good.”

I turned to Harraday. A single strand of hair had fallen across his forehead and he brushed it away self-consciously. “What did the man look like?” I asked.

“I told you, Dora couldn't see him. He had a mask. Unfortunately, there's no point in even sending her to Central Photo to look at mug shots.”

Everything was falling.

Someone brought me a glass of cold water, though I don't remember asking for it and when I took it in my hand, I didn't know what to do with it. I no longer knew what it was for, what anything was for.

“He'd never do it,” I muttered.

“Who?” Carelli asked.

“There's someone. It's crazy. He'd never do anything to hurt her.” I was talking to myself really, only to myself.

“What the hell are you talking about?” David asked.

I paused.

“Miss Barrett,” Harraday said, “if you know anything that you think could help us, anything at all…” He spoke so softly I had to lean closer to hear him.

“Jack.”

“Jack who?” Carelli asked.

I looked up at his face, impassive, illegible, and then I turned back to Harraday. “There's someone. Someone I used to know. Jack Pierce. I hadn't seen him in many years.” My voice was flat, dead. It felt like betrayal, another betrayal. And it didn't feel like anything at all. All I cared about was Sophie.

“But you have recently?”

“Yes.”

He waited for me to go on, they all waited.

“What the hell is all this about, Laura?” David demanded.

I looked at him, and then away.

“Can you tell me the circumstances?” Harraday asked more gently.

“He came to New York.”

“To see you?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know him?”

“I knew him in Florida, when I was young,” I said quietly.

“When, exactly?”

“Twenty-one years ago.”

“Have you been in touch with him since then?”

“No.”

“I see. And he just reappeared?”

“Yes.”

“What did he want?” Harraday asked.

“I don't know. To see me. Just to see me.”

“And you did? See him?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“I don't believe this,” David muttered. He stood and began pacing, his teeth clenched.

“Where is he now?” Harraday asked me.

“I don't know. He was staying at the Hotel Angelica on Twenty-seventh Street, but he's gone now.”

“Was there any reason for him to be angry with you?”

I didn't look at David. “Maybe.”

Harraday leaned forward and took a breath before speaking again. “Why might he be angry with you?”

I looked into his eyes for a moment, they were a soft brown, helpful, composed. And then I shook my head. “We were…friends. And then we weren't.”

“And he would have preferred it otherwise?”

“Yes.”

David stopped pacing. “Why didn't you tell me about this?”

“I thought I could handle it.”

“That's great, that's fucking great.” He started pacing again. I looked back at Harraday.

“Did he ask for money?”

“No.”

“Did he ask about your daughter?”

“Not really. Just the way you do, I mean. Talk about your life.”

“Do you have a picture of him?” Carelli asked.

I bit my lip, nodded. “Yes, but it's very old.”

“I'd like to see it anyway,” Harraday said.

“All right.” I felt David's eyes on me as I disappeared into the den, where I opened the bottom drawer of my antique desk and pulled out a lacquered paisley box from the rear. I dug out a small black-and-white photo from beneath a stack of papers inside it. It had been with me, in the papers in the box, locked up through years of cheap apartments and hurried moves, through marriage and now this.

I came back out and handed it to Harraday.

It was Jack, Jack on the spoil island the summer I left. Jack
laughing into the camera, his chest out with adolescent sexual pride, his bones sharp but not yet brittle, his eyes teasing and trusting and gay.

Harraday rested it on his lap. “We'll also need a current photo of Sophie.”

David reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He opened it up and slid out a picture of Sophie I had taken last weekend, standing above her as she lay on the rug between my legs. She was wearing just an undershirt and diaper, her tongue curled out as she raised her face to the camera, smiling up at me as I snapped away. Afterward, she had turned over and begun to suck on my big toe. A sob escaped from somewhere deep within as I watched him hand it over.

Harraday was saying something to David but I could not make out the words.

“Laura? Laura?”

I forced myself to focus on David.

“They need to know how much Sophie weighs,” he said.

“Nineteen and a half pounds,” I replied automatically, remembering our visit to the doctor. “And she's twenty-six and a half inches long.”

I sank back inside the thick blanket that was covering me now. David and Harraday were talking again, something about birthmarks, anything that could distinguish her, anything they should know?

“She sneezes in the sun,” I interrupted.

“Excuse me?”

“Whenever her face gets in the sun, she sneezes. She always has. I took her out when she was just two days old and she sneezed as soon as those first rays got on her face.”

Harraday nodded.

“She sneezes in the sun,” I repeated.

I did not bother to wipe the tears away. One fell on my thigh.

We all just sat there.

The doorbell rang again and Dougherty got it.

Hank Baldwin hurried in. “McGuirre's out,” he announced grimly.

“What do you mean, he's out?” David demanded. “We had an agreement. They were going to give us advance warning.”

“Well, they didn't,” Baldwin said.

“Where is he?”

“We don't know yet. But we'll find him, don't you worry.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” David said. “What's wrong with you people? My daughter is missing. Do you hear me? My daughter is missing.”

“Calm down,” Baldwin said.

“Don't tell me to calm down,” David replied harshly.

He continued to glare at Baldwin while he gave the detectives the background information on McGuirre.

When Baldwin was done, Harraday turned to Johns. “All right, this one's yours. Get to his relatives. Get to his goddamned cell mate. Get to his lawyer. You know the drill. There'll be men waiting for you back at the precinct.” He turned back to me. “Where were we? Oh yes, you were telling us about Jack Pierce. Go on.”

 

W
HEN TWO OFFICERS
from TARU arrived fifteen minutes later with their cases of electronic equipment, David showed them where the main phone lines were and they got to work. As soon as they were done, one of them turned to us and explained how the tap worked. “This is a voice-activated recorder,” he said. “It will go off whenever someone calls. We'll be here to listen in, but in case someone's not, don't worry. It will all be on tape. Now legally, as soon as you realize it's a friend on the line, or anyone who has nothing to do with the case, you have to turn off the recorder. Do you understand?”

We both nodded.

When they had gone, Carelli, who had been pumping his olive hands impatiently, stepped forward. “This Pierce guy. You got any idea where he went?”