by MJ Rose
The learning disability had been embarrassing in grade school, made reading tougher for him than for most kids, and kept him from excelling at spelling bees, but otherwise he hardly ever thought about it. However, it had made him listen harder and be more observant. He noticed sights and heard nuances other people missed. Even other detectives missed. Even the best ones.
“Well, this is one sorry mess,” Jordain said as he snapped the phone shut.
“What?”
“Looks like a missing-persons case just erupted into a murder investigation, with a dash of fetish thrown in for good measure.”
“Who called it in?”
“That might just be the best part.”
Jordain took the last piece of sushi from his plate, dipped it in the soy sauce, spread the wasabi on it, looked at it and finally put it back down in the middle of his plate. He laid the chopsticks beside the fish. “Betsy Young.”
“The crime reporter at the Times?”
“We know and love any other Betsy Young?”
“What does she have?”
“Death-scene photos of the victim. Came in her mail this morning.”
“And the fetish?”
“Little twist that’s a new one for me. The photos came with a lock of the victim’s hair. And there’s one other thing.” Jordain took a long drink of his green tea, which by now was cold.
“Which was?”
“The body has the number 1 written on the soles of his feet.”
“Number 1?”
Jordain nodded. “Yeah, and you know what I’m worried about?”
“You bet. If there’s a number 1, there’s bound to be a number 2.”
Six
“You can ask her anything you want, but this is our story,” Harry Hastings said. “I want that to be clear. We want to keep our lead and ensure exclusivity. So in exchange for cooperating with you, we want first dibs on anything you find.” He pulled a cigarette from the crumpled pack. Even though the Times was a smoke-free workplace, sometimes he broke the rules. No one had ever complained. Especially not when they were in his office.
“Is that clear?” he asked the two detectives.
Jordain eyed the stocky man. Even though they were ostensibly on the same side, the Times editor was on the offensive. Jordain wouldn’t respond. He’d leave that to Perez. They were in good-cop/bad-cop mode.
“Crystal,” Perez said with a little more attitude than he felt.
The two detectives were seated at the round table in the middle of the managing editor’s office. Opposite them, Betsy Young drank from a can of diet soda. So far she hadn’t said a word. Her boss was done laying out the ground rules, which neither detective had any intention of adhering to.
“Why you?” Jordain asked Betsy. He’d worked with her twice before, and while he never expected a reporter to make his job easier, Betsy had been so desperate to get her story that she’d come close to compromising both cases.
“I don’t know what you mean, Detective,” she said. Although she was technically answering Jordain, she was looking at Perez.
Jordain knew exactly what the reporter was doing but ignored it. He didn’t care what kind of game she was going to play. He and Perez would handle her, but inwardly he sighed—why couldn’t it ever be easy?
“Why, of all the reporters at the Times…why, of all the reporters in the city at any paper, do you think you are the one whose name was on that envelope?” Perez asked, taking over.
She smiled wryly. “Why not me? I’ve covered some of the most important crime stories in the city.”
Jordain cut in. “Do you know, or have you ever known, Philip Maur? Had any dealing with his firm? Anyone at his firm? Did you write the story about him being missing?”
He was watching her eyes, but again she was avoiding his and looking instead at the photograph. Behind his desk, Hastings bristled but didn’t say whatever he was thinking. Jordain knew that the managing editor had been around long enough to know that, while not pleasant, this line of questioning was par for the course. The police had to find out if the reporter was in any way involved.
“Betsy, please. The more you resist the less time you get to work on the story. Do you have any connection to Maur?”
“No,” she said curtly.
After a half-dozen more questions that led nowhere, Jordain looked at Hastings. “We’re going to need to see the story before you run it.”
“We’re not going to run our stories by you, Detective.”
“I think that you’re going to have to. We need to keep some details out of the paper. Leverage, you understand. Why don’t you just make this easy? We have a murder to solve, Hastings. You don’t really want to hinder our investigation, do you?”
Hastings weighed this. He hated to give in but was also anxious to get Betsy back to work. She had a story to file. “Why don’t we decide here and now what you want us to keep out of the story.”
Betsy was gripping a pencil so tightly that her knuckles were white. “I really don’t like the idea of withholding any part of this story, Harry.”
“Neither do I. Let’s hear them out, though. Detective, what do you want us to keep out of the story?”
Jordain and Perez examined the photographs.
“You can run this one,” Jordain pushed the shot of the cadaver’s foot forward. “But not these.”
His gaze moved to the plastic bag with the hair clippings.
“And let’s keep out any mention of the hair—” Perez started.
“No.” It was out of Betsy’s mouth before the detective had even finished his sentence. “No. The photos make sense—besides, we can’t run the nude shots. But the hair is too important. Why did the killer send the cuttings? What does it mean? Is it symbolic of something? It’s disturbing and perverse.”
Jordain stood up. Perez followed his lead, and they gathered up all the materials, putting each item into an evidence bag. When the two of them were done, Jordain directed his comments to Hastings.
“I don’t want this to be a battle. I’m asking you not to force me to throw the department’s weight around.”
Hastings lit a cigarette, inhaled and blew out the smoke. “We don’t want that, either, Detective.”
“Fine. I’m glad to hear it. So I won’t be reading anything in the paper about this lock of hair?”
“No. You won’t. And, in exchange, we expect to hear any information that you have before any other papers.”
Jordain frowned at him. He wasn’t going to bargain. And he wasn’t going to give in. He didn’t have to offer the paper anything and he was tired of the adversarial attitude. He’d encountered it in New Orleans and now here. “I am not going to make promises. We’ll do our best to keep you informed. That’s as far as I’ll go. There are fingerprints all over the photos.” He looked at Betsy. “Are your fingerprints on file?”
She nodded and tried to stare him down. It didn’t work.
He and Perez were done. They started for the door, but Perez stopped and looked back at Hastings. “Because of the number 1 on the victim’s feet, there’s a strong possibility there is going to be a second victim. We’re going to send someone over to talk to your mail room guys about how to sort through the mail for the next week or so. And you, too, Betsy.”
Jordain and Perez walked out of the newsroom without talking. They were quiet on the elevator. You never know who’s listening. You keep silent until you are alone, out of earshot. Especially when you’re in the offices of the New York Times.
“Let’s do a background check on Ms. Young,” Jordain said once they were back on the street. “This might be nothing, but I want to make sure it’s nothing.”
Perez agreed. “Assuming it is, why would someone want the newspaper to have this before the police?”
“To make sure it’s in the papers in all its glory. To prevent us from keeping any of it out of the public eye. To take control. To keep control. Take your pick.”
“What’s your pic
k?” Perez asked.
“All of the above,” Jordain said.
Seven
I was sitting in the makeup room of the Today show on that Friday morning in early October, nursing a cup of strong black coffee while a young woman stroked my face with a wet sponge, adding a warm tone to my pale skin. It was seven-thirty and I still had to have my hair done. I wasn’t due on the set for another forty minutes, but that wasn’t why I was nervous.
Even though I knew the topic we’d be discussing, I didn’t know exactly what the questions were going to be. Whatever I wanted to impart to the public about when to see a sex therapist and why, I’d have to do it in less than five minutes.
I drank more of the coffee and stared into the mirror, watching the makeup artist work her magic on my face.
No matter how well you understand how fear works, how adrenaline flows into your bloodstream and how it makes you feel, it’s still unnerving to know you are going to be on national television, and that your face and voice and words are going to be seen and heard by more than eight million people.
I would have rather been almost anywhere else, but I was there for one of those eight million people: a thirteenyear-old girl who was sitting glued to a TV screen at her father’s apartment, waiting to see her mother on television.
Daily, Dulcie had been asking me about nervous reactions. While the debut of the Broadway production was months away, there was a preview in a few weeks, in Boston. We talked about stage fright often, from the chemicals your body releases when you are in a situation that gives you the jitters to dry mouth, and various remedies like slow, steady breathing. Dulcie needed me to show her that, with no training and no desire to be onstage, I could do it. “If you can when you don’t even want to, then I can do it, too. After all, Mom, I’m the one with the passion for an audience.”
The makeup artist told me to close my eyes, and I felt a brush follow the line of my eyelid.
My mother had gone through this every day. It was part of what had seduced her. Acting. Accolades. Attention. Applause. Starting when she was sixteen, she co-starred in a popular TV series. The Lost Girls was a drama about two orphaned teenagers who were taken in by a married couple—both professors at an Ivy League school in Boston.
The girls always got into terrible trouble until one of them—either my mother or her co-star, Debi Carey— would solve the problem and save the day. Meanwhile, the charming but clueless elderly couple never guessed how close the girls had come to danger, and sometimes death.
When the show went off the air after three years, my mother’s career stumbled. She turned first to marriage and motherhood, and when neither satisfied the ache from missing the limelight and she failed to land another substantial role, she turned to drugs and alcohol and affairs to fill the emptiness.
My mother died of an overdose when I was only eight. Her star had lit up early and then burnt out too fast: her greatest legacy being the damage she did to her loved ones.
Where are you going? When are you coming back? I used to ask her when she went out smelling of roses, lemon and lavender, dressed up in her high heels and short skirts. She was so beautiful, no matter how sad and sick she was. She was one of the lost girls even if she was a woman with a child.
A lost girl.
Not the first one I had tried to save.
Not the last one I would fail.
Now I was faced with her granddaughter’s stage lust. History was not going to repeat itself. I was going to keep Dulcie grounded even if her star lifted off and shot her out into the stratosphere.
The makeup artist added a final stroke of blush, brushed on more mascara and finished up with an apricot-colored lipstick. I was soothed by the sensations of the sable and the soft powders. Another woman combed out my hair and sprayed it in place.
In the mirror I saw a small woman, coiffed and made up, who only resembled me. A doppelgänger, more sophisticated and embellished than I ever was.
Done, I was escorted to the greenroom, where a halfdozen people milled around, nibbling on the elaborate array of fruits, cheeses and breakfast bakery goods. I refilled my coffee.
The producer came in to get the next guest—a willowy novelist named Lisa Tucker—and checked on the rest of us, asking if we needed anything.
I watched the show on the monitor for a few minutes, and when the screen went to commercials I picked up the newspaper that the novelist had left on her seat. Unfolding it, I scanned the front page.
There was a photo of a politician who’d made a speech at the UN, another photo of a sports figure who’d broken a world record, and a shot of the destruction left behind after a freak storm had hit New Jersey. But it was a small shot of the soles of a man’s feet, with the number 1 written on them, that drew my eye. The headline read: Financier Assumed Dead.
Even before I started to read the story, three words popped from among all the black-and-white type. A name in the last paragraph of the article. The name of a man. Detective Noah Jordain.
I sighed and read past the headline.
Philip Maur, 41, the youngest chairman in the history of Grimly and Maur,the prestigious Wall Street investment firm, is assumed to be dead after a series of photographs of his body were delivered to the offices of this paper yesterday morning.
Maur’s wife, Cyn Maur, said that her husband had been missing for five days. “He went to work on Friday morning and told me that he’d be home late because he was going to be attending a dinner meeting.”
Maur was in his office all day Friday and left at 6:00 p.m. His secretary said he did not tell her where he was going and had not asked her to make any reservations for him that evening, which was not unusual.
Cyn Maur contacted the police on Saturday morning after not hearing from her husband all night. She’d tried his cell phone repeatedly but he had not answered, which she said was not like him. “He’s a very responsible father and husband. He’s never out of reach for more than an hour or two. Our daughter has juvenile diabetes and Philip is devoted to her. He’d never just go away without telling me. He’s never stayed out all night before. I knew something was wrong.”
A missing-persons report was filed at eight-thirty Saturday morning. There was still no information as to Maur’s whereabouts on Tuesday morning, when the photographs were received by the New YorkTimes. The photograph shown above and two others, which are now in police custody, were not accompanied by a note. There was no information alluding to the whereabouts of Maur’s body.
“I don’t have any comment at this time except to ask anyone who might have seen Philip Maur on Friday evening, or at any time since then, to contact our office,”said Detective Noah Jordain of the city’s Special Victims Unit.
The fact that Jordain is heading the investigation implies that there is a sexual component to the murder. The graphic photographs this paper received reinforce that suggestion.
The police have requested that we not print all of the photographs, due to the ongoing investigation.
My pulse was racing. My hands felt clammy and I cleared my throat. Seeing Jordain’s name on the page had done that to me. I tried to slow down my heartbeat by concentrating, but the name had been like an electrical shock.
I hadn’t known I was still that susceptible. It was silly. But it was the truth.
It had been four months since I’d seen him. Four months since I’d stood him up and then called him—when I’d known he wouldn’t be home—and left a message on his answering machine, apologizing and explaining that it was just too soon after my divorce for me to think about dating anyone.
That had been a lie.
It had not been too soon.
I was scared of the detective and what I felt when I was with him.
Noah Jordain had walked into my office one afternoon and my heart had skipped a beat. His searching blue eyes had looked right into my dark brown ones and he’d dared me to look away. A police trick, I’d thought. Did he even know he was doing it? I dared him to look away fi
rst. A therapist’s trick. He didn’t. We were evenly matched. He held out his hand and I shook it, aware of it being large, pleasantly dry, but not too rough. I could tell he had enormous strength in his fingers but that he was aware of it and was being careful. And then the impact of him hit me. Like a blast of steam. For a minute nothing mattered and I lost my bearings. This had not happened to me with anyone I’d ever met, and it shook me to my core. I know better than to attribute instant attraction to anything but past psychological association—someone who looks like someone else whom you liked a lot—or a hormonal, pheromone, chemical reaction between two mammals.
It hadn’t been that simple for us.
Faster than seemed possible, better than any shrink could have, he’d psyched me out and gotten under my skin. And that scared me. I don’t like things I can’t put a name to, or explain by some science or therapeutic logic. We might have been good together but, more likely, I think we would have destroyed each other. Neither of us was willing to keep from going too deep into the other’s psyche. It all happened too fast and…I ran.
After that I’d promptly forgotten about him.
So seeing his name that morning in the greenroom, I was surprised at my reaction. Obviously, he’d made a stronger impression than I’d thought.
Bullshit.
I’d known exactly how strong an impression he’d made. That was why I’d run. He was overpowering. Sure of himself. A little arrogant, but kind. Caring. And. And. And. Sexually powerful. Jordain made me think about getting naked, about skin on skin, about lips locking. I looked at him and remembered his lips on mine, on my breasts, pulling on my nipples, nuzzling between my legs. I leaned into him, smelled him, and couldn’t think of anything but putting my hands under his shirt, undressing him and doing whatever he wanted me to do. I wanted to surrender to that power. To let it take me over and see where it would lead. I had never thought about those things before I’d slept with him.