Vanished in the Dunes (15 page)

Stern nods and raises a hand in reply. He tries to act like he's a local by remembering how the men he knew growing up in a small town in the Berkshire foothills would greet each other and strangers alike. Friendly, but not too much so. It seems to work. The man smiles back, enters his truck, and drives off.

Stern waits ten minutes to see if the man plans to return. A heavy cloud cover sits over the area and a chill seeps through his sweater. He feels he should have worn something warmer, but the first few steps down the slope convince him that he will soon have enough exercise to heat his limbs. In seconds he is back at the gnarled bent pine. He randomly starts to dig. The sandy soil is soft from recent rains and the ground carves with ease under the shovel's blade. He digs a wide swath around the tree creating a perimeter encompassing the area he remembers where Posner walked. None of the trenches are more than a foot deep. He works for fifteen minutes, stops, and then begins a new search area at a spot some ten feet farther down toward the shore.

After nearly an hour all he can show for his effort is sweat. He begins to fill in the trenches, but doesn't take the time to smooth out the soil, or brush pine needles back across the surface. In his haste he fails to notice a two-inch square of silver plastic torn from some bag that became mixed in with the soil.

Peter Wisdom looks across the backyard lawn of his sister-in-law's house, smiles, and raises a half-empty can of Bud in the direction of his wife, Karen. She smiles back. Karen stands out among the other women plucking bits of sliced vegetables or chips from the platters on the picnic table. She is short, but her smile is never ending.

He stands near his brother-in-law, Rollo, who tends to the steaks and burgers on two adjacent grills. It's a family Sunday afternoon picnic. Rollo lets his staff set up the restaurant today, but he'll go over later when it starts to get busy. Wisdom's son, Kevin, kicks a soccer ball around with his two cousins and a neighbor. It is a sweet, early fall afternoon with far more sun than chill. He wonders if sweet is the right word, but decides it'll do.

His family's been in East Hampton long enough to be considered locals. It started with a summer vacation cottage his father bought in the area called the Springs when he got out of the army and began working as a New York City firefighter. That's when they lived in Queens. Wisdom was the youngest of two boys and one girl. He remembers that they spent most summers at the cottage, and then year-round weekends after his father expanded and insulated the house. His sister still lived in Queens as did his brother who became a city cop as soon as he was old enough to take the test.

Peter Wisdom was going to be different. He went to Hofstra and studied English lit and marketing, but when it came to working at it after graduation, his interest in business cooled. That's when his
father suggested he take the Suffolk County Police exam and move into the East Hampton house where his parents were by then living full time when they weren't spending the winters in Florida.

He took the exam, passed everything, and did particularly well on the physical part; the sit-ups, pull-ups, and mile-and-a-half run. He didn't need to wait too long after that until East Hampton town asked County for a list of those with local addresses who passed the exam. He was near the top of the list and began within a few months. Nearly fifteen years later he was one of the more experienced detectives on Bennett's squad. He married a local girl who teaches English at the East Hampton Middle School and they bought their own starter house in Sag Harbor. Not a bad way to live, he tells himself with thanks every morning. Not bad at all.

He puts down his beer and leans against the wall at the back of the patio. It's a nice crowd, not too big, maybe twenty people or so. Friends and relatives. They try to get together a few times every year either before or just after the high season. People talk about family, their jobs, or the aggravation of summer visitors, but they rarely ask him about his work. He understands. People he's close to know enough not to ask him to remember stuff he'd rather not talk about most of the time.

He looks again at Karen. She's in animated discussion with one of Rollo's neighbors.

She's very beautiful and for the millionth time he wonders why she picked him. She could have had any guy. And if he's so lucky, then he wonders why he was so attracted to Brigid. Or even weirder why he was attracted to the picture of Heidi when he knew she was very probably dead.

He tries not to think what he might have done if Brigid had really come on to him instead of just playing a role. He tries not to think of the guilt he might have created, and even now, knowing that she was playing a game to prove a point, he feels guilty for even having these
thoughts. And he hadn't even done anything. He shakes his head imperceptibly and reaches for the beer. He takes a sip then puts it back down. Too warm.

He leans back against the building and looks up at the top of trees on the edge of the property. He muses that while sex maybe a very strong drive, the actual act can never take too long. But guilt can last forever. He shudders. With him it would. Happy he's never been unfaithful or even close.

Oh, there was the time shortly after their marriage when he answered a call about a possible prowler. He hadn't been on the force very long and was working the eleven to seven Montauk shift one night when a late call came in about a prowler.

“Better get over there just to be sure,” said his dispatcher's voice, with a film of lilt atop his normal crankiness.

It was a small cottage at the top of Tuthill Road up past the lobster store, but in January everything was flat-out quiet. Even the sound of his cruiser seemed to splinter the night. She answered the unlocked door, a fortyish woman with long straight black hair and an oversized nose on an otherwise average face. The only unordinary thing about her was a barely closed bathrobe.

“The noise came from in there,” she said, and pointed to a room behind her.

He moved ahead and found himself in a small bedroom. He moved to the window and checked that it was locked. It was.

“No problem here.”

When he turned she had one foot up and resting on the still-made bed, but her robe had become a bit undone. He had a clear view of her upper thigh and a dark patch beyond. Above her waist he had an even better glimpse of one rather large breast and an erect pink nipple. He took a deep breath, moved back through the front door, and didn't turn around till he was halfway down the porch steps.

“Best keep that door locked,” was all he said, barely looking at her.

Even before he got into the cruiser, he felt his heart hammering away and the sweat on the back of his shirt. He reported in that everything was quiet. When dispatch answered, “You've done a real quick check,” amid background laughter. He knew he'd been had. Seems they set up all the rookies with this one nympho. But he laughed about it with them later and there'd never been anything close since then. And that was twelve years ago.

He'd been innocent then and he's innocent now, but a seed of guilt still runs through his brain about the way his body reacted back there at Brigid's house. He knows it's stupid and if he told Karen, she'd probably laugh at him, but he still decides it's better not to tell her. What's the point? Someone once told him about a
Playboy
magazine article years ago where Jimmy Carter admitted that he'd lusted after other women in his heart, but never did anything. If a born-again guy like Carter can own up, then why is he so bothered? He wants the whole issue to go away. Maybe it will by next week when he has Brigid meet everyone involved. Then she'll go back to Europe and the idea will crawl away. He remembers something else. No one's gotten back to him about setting up a meeting with the good doctor Stern. He pulls a notepad from his pocket and jots down a reminder to call Bennett, who's acting as liaison with NYPD.

He moves to the large tub of cold drink cans floating in icy water and chooses a Diet Coke. Just then Karen appears with two paper plates overflowing with steak, corn, and salad.

She gestures to one of the tables where he sees Kevin already busy biting into a burger between yapping with his cousins about whatever. A nice normal American weekend afternoon, he thinks and smiles at the simplicity of it all. In this little setting, they're a million miles away from a missing, likely murdered, woman. It never ceases
to amaze him how his work and its emphasis on the unexpected negative aspect of human nature runs so close and yet so far from ordinary behavior. Today's optician could turn out to be tomorrow's axe murderer. At least that's the kind of issue they talked about at length in the criminal psychology course he'd once taken.

“You were deep in thought over there. Anything you want to share?” asks Karen.

“Just that I love you,” he says, meaning every word.

The next day he gets a call from Bennett.

“They can't find Dr. Stern.”

Bennett's voice seems hoarse, almost fragile. Wisdom hopes he hasn't started smoking again.

“What's that supposed to mean? Did they try the hospital?”

“That's something else. Seems he's been suspended. His performance had dropped off the charts in the past few months, and they must have felt he'd become a risk to patients. They certainly weren't looking for a bunch of lawsuits down the road. Anyway, he hasn't been in the hospital for well over a month.”

“Friends? Colleagues at the hospital? Family?”

“Nothing there either. He was a classic loner. Some of the other residents didn't even know he was gone, but maybe they work such crazy hours that it's not the kind of thing you notice right away.”

“Think someone scared him off?”

“Don't see how unless the sister got in touch with him and told him to beat it.”

“That's not possible. She doesn't even know who he is.”

“You sure about that?”

“Hell, Brigid hated Heidi's guts.”

“I asked if you were sure.”

Wisdom pauses a second before he affirms.

“Okay then. We'll have to start looking and assume it's just coincidence. When were you going to spring the fake Heidi?”

“This week, I hope. I've already lined up a meeting with Posner. Welbrook's just about off the radar screen for now, so after Stern he's the only one left, but all my money's still on Stern.”

“That's what I thought. Any chance of postponing until we're sure everyone's lined up?”

“Guess so. Don't think Brigid's going back for another two or three weeks.”

“Then let her know we might have to delay. In the meantime we'll try to see if we can check into his background a bit more. He used to live upstate. That's where he said he went on the day she disappeared. Remember. That's when the mileage clocked the same as to East Hampton.”

Dr. Henry Stern isn't lost, in hiding, or even trying to run away. He is at that moment sitting and watching Posner's house from the same spot he's used before. He uses a worn but serviceable pair of binoculars. He follows Posner as the man moves about on the second floor of his house. Posner seems nervous and anxious. Good. He will keep up whatever he's doing as the man is losing it. At this thought Stern begins to laugh. At first it sounds more like a cackle in a barnyard, but later it comes out more like someone out-of-control, almost alien.

After he finds out the full truth about Heidi, he plans to kill Posner. He's never taken a life before, although there are those who might believe otherwise. He was seventeen and an all-around everything in school. Sports were easy. Ditto school. The only problem he ever had was with girls. He was afraid to ask anyone out and even more fearful he'd be rejected. It all came together during the summer before his senior year. He'd been trying to work up the courage to ask out Rosalie Sanchez for months after she transferred in, but never had the guts to try. Then on a late August night a few weeks before school would restart he saw her at the drive-in, whose parking lot was where everyone in the town under the age of twenty joined up on warm summer nights.

She was hanging with some guys he didn't know very well and holding a paper bag with a beer can she greedily sipped at. She was pretty and dark and very well built. He worked up enough nerve and offered to buy her a soda or a hot dog. At first she looked at him with
level serious eyes, then just laughed and told him the only hot dog she wanted was the one between his legs. Before he could react she moved right up to him till they were eye to eye, zipped him open, and fished out his cock. He was anything but ready and she took hold of his stumpy limp dick in a soft hand with bright red polish on her nails and held it for barely a second before she dropped it.

“Too small,” she said. “Think I'll throw it back.”

And with that everyone laughed. Not just she, but also the guys she was with, and then everyone else who either saw or heard what had happened. There were also many who were happy to laugh at him, either for the pure humor in it, or in many cases for the opportunity to take down the big little man on campus; the students he'd outscored on exams, and the athletes he'd bested in team tryouts were all there reveling in his tormented humiliation.

He stood and watched her slide alone into a used and much dented canary-yellow Chevy convertible with a broken muffler and a tailpipe that was tied to the undercarriage with wire, yet still managed to graze the ground with a shower of sparks when the car moved. He watched her drive away to the baffled thumps of hot air raging through the torn metal gaps beneath the car while she saluted him with a crimson-tipped middle finger while all he could do was shout.

“You bitch. I'll kill you for this. You hear me? I'll kill you.”

And then she was gone, and he fled moments afterward, oblivious to the night or the road, ostensively going home, but actually wandering to try and rid the foul reek of shame. He lost track of time until he moved across the Beaver Flats Bridge and saw the rear end of a yellow car tilted in a twenty degree angle to the nearly dry creek bed it had fallen into. He stopped the car and saw the tire marks where the Chevy couldn't hold the approach curve and tore through the modest wooden railing before dropping forty feet into three feet of mud and water.