“Looks the way it always did,” I said with little confidence. “Nothing unusual.”
“Sit down on the couch and lie on the bed. I gather you now remember that you’ve been there before.” I deserved that for having been dumb enough to let it go so far before giving up details of the relationship. I did as I was told and had a sense that something was out of place as I sat on the edge of the bed. I looked around, got up, circled, and sat again. This time on the right side. The guest spot. I felt guilty for having the sarcastic thought, but hey, that’s real life. Why shouldn’t Alice assign me the side of the bed that made HER comfortable? We are all creatures of habit. Then I understood. “Got it.” I bounced off the bed and crossed over to the chest of drawers on Alice’s side. “The picture is missing. Alice loves that picture of her nieces. It’s gone.”
“Good going, Wendell. Do you remember the frame? Was it one of those little silver traveling frames that folds closed?”
I knew where he was heading, but I answered anyway. “No, it was pretty big, like eight by ten, I think. Modern. Silver.”
“Right. So we can rule out your Dr. Sheppard being snatched. Packing the picture means she planned to go . . . and maybe permanently. She may have left in a hurry, but it was thought out.”
“What about all the stuff in the closets?”
“Disposable. Replaceable. She’s gone, and so is everything that matters to her.” That didn’t make me feel good.
Deuce wasn’t about to let go. We picked the apartment apart piece by piece. Nothing was off limits, and he questioned me about everything. It was amazing how little I knew. I did know the names of the beautiful young girls in the picture. Victoria and Elizabeth, not very imaginative for a British family, but I’d be damned if I had any idea of their surname. Never asked. Her parents. What about her parents? Well, I knew they were called Sheppard, Madeline and Edward, and they lived between London and someplace in the southwest. In Devon, or nearby. An old country house where the photo of the girls had been taken, or at least that was what Alice told me. Her sister, Clementine, was three years Alice’s junior, which would make her thirty-seven, or -eight. I knew all about Alice’s professional credentials. Medical school, residencies, fellowships, interests and aspirations—those things were common ground and easy points of reference that doctors shared. I spilled it all for Secondi, who bent his head into his notepad and took it down using a gray ballpoint pen with the gold logo of a midtown hotel. He rarely looked up from his notes. Detectives and reporters are the last professionals to rely on handwritten notes, and I had never known one to spring for a decent pen. I doubt it was for fear of losing them. Shitty pens are a point of honor with these guys. Deuce Secondi is a well-groomed, well-dressed behemoth, and the scrawny, throwaway pen looked ridiculous in his mitt. The only thing that seemed to bother him was losing my attention, but we had run out of things to say.
“Let’s call it quits over here. I’ll have the boys seal the place and you can head off to job two.”
“Not so fast. How about the information you didn’t want to talk about on the phone?”
Secondi thought for a moment before answering or, at least, he hesitated.
“Yeah, well, I started reaching out last night. I wanted my requests for information sitting on desktops when the London guys opened their computers. That way there was a chance of hearing something by our morning, and I did the airports, Homeland-ICE, and FBI before I fell asleep.” He went back to his pad and flipped a few pages back. He was glancing from neatly numbered notes in different-colored ink. I wanted to crane my neck over to get a better look but figured that was pushing it a bit. He didn’t read his notes aloud but kept glancing back at them as he decided what to share and what to omit. “Alice Sheppard left the country on the 10:40 BA flight to Heathrow, where she deplaned and passed customs. She was not flagged at either end, and the only note of her passage was routine passport clearance.”
“No surprises there.”
“None. Funny thing is there is no trace of her after passing through customs.”
I didn’t find that peculiar. In a free society one is easily lost in the crowd, and I made the point to Secondi.
“Wendell, it’s not like we were looking for her to show up at Piccadilly Circus. None of the three Alice Sheppards in London are our girl. No hotel check-in, no telephone listing, and no National Identity Card.”
“I thought the National Identity Cards were finished.”
“They are. A few billion pounds down the crapper. Too much Big Brother for the Brits, but I thought it was a great idea. Anyway, no National Identity Card had ever been issued to your particular Alice Sheppard. As far as we can tell, her passport was first issued four years ago and has been used primarily for travel between the U.S. and the UK. Other than that, she doesn’t exist.”
“Give me a break. Check the hospitals and medical schools. She didn’t simply appear. Check her references at Westchester Polyclinic. They didn’t give her a job on her own say-so. And in case you’re interested, she is good at what she does. She had to learn it someplace.” I was getting annoyed at the stupid idea of Alice Sheppard falling through the cracks. “Come on, Deuce, Alice is real and you guys ought to be able to locate her. In this post-9/11 world we’re supposed to know where everybody is.”
“Right. According to your friends at the ACLU we have to protect the rights of the criminals. God forbid people should be forced to identify themselves.”
I was about to rebut his position, but this wasn’t the time. Right now I was for a national biometric ID card, GPS chips, CCTV on every corner, and anything else that would give us a clue to the story of Alice Sheppard.
Secondi continued, “No doubt we will trace her down sometime today. But, as for this moment, she has vanished.”
16
On my way to work the next morning I called Deuce from the car. He was not a happy camper. The search for Alice was a bust. Nothing checked out. No one in her past had any idea who she was. The National Health had no data on her as physician or patient. Nothing on her UK driver’s license checked out. Addresses, contacts, and official documents were all real but, apparently, Alice Sheppard was not.
Two other things thickened the brew. Telefónica O2 provided scans of Tahm Tahani’s cell phone records, which turned up two calls to Alice’s cell number and one from it, all on the day he vanished, or, very possibly, was killed. And to my surprise, there was a call to my phone as well. It was a ten-second connection, probably indicating a missed call. I remembered no message, nor had I ever spoken to him. The calls to and from Alice were all several minutes in length. Real conversations.
The full-court press was on. Within hours the network was buzzing. Sources were pressured, and a few civil rights may have been compromised in the effort. A confidential informant tip to Homeland Security initiated an antiterror raid of a Muslim Cultural Center on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. It turned up a quantity of uncut heroin neatly packaged in two 300 cc breast implants, and no one to tie them to. Several individuals involved in the center had known ties to radical groups.. It was a hotbed of former associates of the late, lamented, American-born Yemeni terrorist Imam Anwar al-Awlaki. In the end, none were turned up. Electronic surveillance had tracked contacts from the Gulf of Aden to Atlantic Avenue, but now that connection was blown.
The cost of confirming the Middle East connection was high, but that was expected. Damned if I knew the significance of the news, but it must have been important. Rodriguez was on my case again. I don’t believe he saw any role for me, but he used the excuse to assert his authority and try to trip me up. He was waiting, uninvited, when I arrived at my office. I was annoyed with Mrs. Black for allowing him into my private anteroom, but at least my office door was locked, or the creep would have been lifting hairs from my comb. I must have snapped at Mrs. Black because she shrugged her shoulders, turned away, and said, “The man was sitting there when I came in. What did you expect me to do?” She turned and left m
e with Rodriguez. He followed me into my office and took the visitor’s chair without being asked. Listening to him talk trash deepened my foul mood. I didn’t need any more aggravation, and I lost my temper.
“Rodriguez, arrest me or get the fuck out. Is that clear enough?” I had been sitting on the edge of my desk. I pushed forward, walked past him to the door, opened it, and said, “Now.” When he didn’t move, I grabbed his left elbow to help him out. Rodriguez spun away, then slammed his left forearm into my chest. As I was falling back, he caught me with a right that was just beyond his reach. It skimmed my left cheek as I snapped my face away. His body slipped forward and I landed a good right and a left to the side of his rib cage and his kidney. He went down on the desk, knocking over the chair and clearing the desktop, and I was on him. It wasn’t ten seconds before the room was filled with cops, who pulled us apart. Rodriguez was cursing mad, shouting that I was under arrest. No one paid him any mind, and I just wanted to beat the shit out of the little bastard. As it was, he would be pissing blood for a few days.
While my stock went up with the doctors, desk jockeys, and malingerers, Mrs. Black refused to speak to me. Rodriguez was hustled away, and I slowly put my office back together. I wondered about the protocol for the episode. Who was assaulting a police officer? Doubtless, there was a reg. But having gotten the best of the situation, I was cool with it. What Rodriguez did was his business . . . and, I guess, mine.
I wasn’t sure how much of the new information Rodriguez was aware of. He was fixed on the heroin-filled implants, but I assumed he knew about the telephone calls. Deuce had been true to his word and kept me in the loop. But Rodriguez was part of the de facto task force, so he had to be in on everything. Whatever. It didn’t change the fact that I had no idea what the hell was happening around me.
I straightened my necktie, slipped into my white lab coat, and went out to the waiting area, which was anything but normal-looking. Officers on sick call were standing in small groups, chatting and laughing. Few were seated. No one looked or acted sick. The adrenaline rush had pumped everybody up, myself included, and we were ready for anything.
“Here’s the doc,” a female officer said when she caught her first glimpse of me.
“Go get him, doc,” another laughed. I smiled broadly and it seemed as though we all started to laugh at once.
“Thanks, everybody. Remember me when IA comes around. Innocent. Self-defense.” I raised my hand and waved to the room full of happy people. “Now let’s see how sick you are.”
It didn’t take long for me to calm down and lose myself in the work. I admit having been unusually lenient and sympathetic in the moment, and a lot of people got a long weekend who would ordinarily have been back on the job. When I finished the morning session, I made a mea culpa overture to Mrs. Black, and invited her to lunch. She brewed some hot tea while I went out and picked up two tuna fish sandwiches from the coffee shop. It would have been easier to call for delivery, but I wanted to show that I was making an effort. Ten minutes later I set napkins and the food on the coffee table in front of my sofa, and dragged a side chair over to face the sofa. Mrs. Black chose the sofa, and it didn’t take long for peace to reign. The conversation centered on the bizarre events of the week behind us, and the coming weekend, a few hours away. The weather had warmed up again, and she and her husband were heading north to an inn in Columbia County to catch the last few days of leaf-peeping. I had no plans. My mother was in Los Angeles, visiting my sister and her kids. I was happy not to be a part of that. Not that I don’t love them both. I do. Under the best of circumstances, Mother is difficult. To say that she is headstrong and opinionated is to gently whitewash her personality. She also has exquisite timing and says or does something outrageously endearing just as the level of frustration is about to boil over. My sister, Helen, is a saint. With infinite patience she manages her oaf of a husband, Mother, and two wonderful teenage sons, and she has enough left over to give good advice and guidance to her difficult clients. At least one would like to assume so. Entertainment law has to be an oxymoron.
In a previous life, Alice and I had planned to drive out to Montauk for the weekend. With all that had gone on, I hadn’t remembered to cancel the reservation. The money was spent and maybe the change of scenery would clear my head. October was always mild at the beach. The ocean was still warm, and the onshore breeze warmed the land nicely. The crowds had scattered when the social season ended at Labor Day. Streets were strollable, the beaches were empty, and restaurant owners welcomed the business. The rich folks were already working on their winter vacations, renters were out of season, and tourists had nothing to gawk at. All in all, it was the best time to enjoy one of the most physically beautiful parts of the world. Maybe the only time.
My plan was to spend Friday night in the city, trying to track down some traces of Alice. I had to free-associate and follow the smoke. It wasn’t something that lent itself to sharing. I called ahead to SushiAnn, where they knew me well enough to have my credit card on file. I was good to go with ten pieces of my favorite sushi, neatly wrapped with pickled ginger and freshly grated wasabi and sitting on the counter waiting for my arrival on East Fifty-first Street. Fifteen minutes later I dropped the container on the kitchen counter and was out and about with Tonto. Following a dog with a plastic bag strikes me as the ultimate indignity. How one gets accustomed to handling dog shit before dinner is a phenomenon of its own. But we do it. As a bow to gentility, I washed my hands thoroughly and finished with a blast of industrial-strength germ-killer. Tonto and I were both hungry, and I had the impression that he was eyeing the plastic box with the fish smell.
“Don’t even think about it.” Tonto knows my tough-guy tone, and he backed off and sat by his bowl. I know he was trying to say, “Okay, so feed me.” So I did. Then I set the sushi on the dining table and got comfortable.
I have the odd habit of sipping whiskey when I eat at home. I can’t drink anything near a whole bottle of wine, so I hate to crack a good bottle and waste it, and the whiskey buffers the food from the drinking water. The sensation of cold water solidifying a mouthful of fat makes my tongue crawl. Absent alcohol, even a Diet Coke will do.
The sushi was terrific, but I needed something sweet to finish off the meal. Elegant man about town that I am, I grabbed a Snickers bar from the freezer and nearly lost my premolars. I had another bite, and tossed it. Then I kicked off my shoes and headed for the computer. My plan was to Google the hell out of Alice Sheppard and her fictional résumé.
I started with a list of names Alice had mentioned. There was no particular order, and I sat in front of the screen and let it flow. Based simply on its comic potential, the first name that popped into my mind was Sir Peregrine Freely. Don’t ask. Whenever Alice uttered even the very first syllable, Sir . . . I knew what was coming and broke down laughing. Alice seemed to find that somewhat juvenile behavior quite charming. I doubt Sir Peregrine would share that view. Freely was the dean of British reconstructive surgeons, having inherited the mantle from the legendary Sir Harold Gillies and Sir Archibald McIndoe, the two men who had, in that order, invented reconstructive surgery, treating disfigured survivors of both world wars. Freely was easy to track through his numerous scientific papers. I uploaded a Word template with the NYPD logo from the Office of the Police Surgeon. It was as official as we got. No one knew what the hell a police surgeon was, and the title carried more weight than it deserved. Hey, you use what you’ve got.
Dear Sir Peregrine,
The NYPD Office of the Police Surgeon is seeking information regarding Alice Sheppard, MD. Dr. Sheppard is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon. We have been led to believe that Dr. Sheppard served a fellowship in reconstructive surgery on your service at Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, during the years 2006 and 2007. Any information you provide will be treated confidentially. Thank you for your help in this matter.
Sincerely yours,
Wendell Black,
Police Surgeon
NYPD
I had barely admired my handiwork when the incoming mail signal lit. It was a reply from Freely.
Dear Police Surgeon Black,
I have no knowledge of the woman called Alice Sheppard. She has not been trained by me nor, to my knowledge, been employed at this institution during the period in question, or, for that matter, in the last decade. Feel free to call me at the above telephone number if further assistance is required.
Yours truly,
Sir Peregrine Freely, CBE
Professor and Surgeon in Chief
The reply was quite definite, and since I was certain Freely was awake, I dialed the number he had provided.
“Good morning, Police Surgeon Black, I presume.”
“Correct, Sir Peregrine. I hope I am not disturbing you. I understand the hour is late in the UK, but as we have been communicating in the ether, I took the liberty.”
“Indeed. Please do tell me about your young lady, and why the authorities are interested in her.” Not an unreasonable request, as I was seeking information from him and had no jurisdiction in the matter.
“Dr. Sheppard is employed as a plastic surgeon at Westchester Polyclinic alleging that her training was with you.”
“Is that what police surgeons do? Background checks?”
“Ha. No, sir. The actual fact is not so mundane. In this case Dr. Sheppard has gone missing and another doctor, a British plastic surgeon, has been murdered.”
Wendell Black, MD Page 7