Four

by Dustin Stevens

  The young woman turned and hung up the phone. “Mr. Richards is in a meeting, but should be out shortly. His secretary said as long as it’s brief, there is no problem seeing you.”

  “Brief?” Meeks asked, surprise and disgust intermingled in his voice.

  The woman opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and shook her head as if to relay the decision wasn’t hers to make.

  “You gentlemen can take those elevators up to the eighth floor. Mr. Richards’s office is on the right.”

  They thanked her and took the elevator up to eight, the entirety of which was sectioned into three offices.

  One for each of the tri-owners.

  Two of the offices stood dark and silent. The third, belonging to Richards, was well lit with two young secretaries sitting at a large desk just outside.

  Both were not yet thirty years in age, with perfect smiles and short skirts.

  The corner of Beckett’s mouth twisted up in a smirk as he approached, flashing his badge. The two both rose on cue and the one closest to him said, “Mr. Richards has asked that you please go on in and make yourself comfortable. He should be with you in just a moment.”

  At her shoulder, the second said, “Can we offer you anything in the meantime? Coffee, soda, water? Complimentary Gillette merchandise?”

  “No, thank you, that won’t be necessary,” Beckett said.

  “Well if you need anything, I am Janice and this is Kristine, please don’t hesitate to let us know,” the first said and motioned for them to head on into the office.

  Together they went to the office, standing in the doorway for a moment to take in their surroundings.

  Solid black marble flooring stretched from wall to wall. A bank of windows made up the rear of the space, each with black shades pulled shut. A glass top table stood in the middle of the room with two designer black chairs on either side. An upright desk of matching black rose behind them, a laptop and little else on it.

  Even with the lights on, the place oozed a cold and ruthless efficiency.

  Both Beckett and Meeks opted against the tiny and uncomfortable looking chairs, preferring to pace around the room. There were no books and just a couple of pictures on the bookcases, the place void of any signs that a man worked and spent a great deal of time there.

  Beckett removed the tablet from his blazer and flipped through his notes as they walked. He tried connecting dots and figuring out ways that everything added up, but there was still something missing.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sudden appearance of Bill Richards, seeming to appear from thin air. Beckett and Meeks hadn’t heard him greet his secretaries on the way in and hadn’t heard any footsteps on the marble.

  It wasn’t until he cleared his throat that they even knew he was there.

  “So what can I do for you gentlemen?” he asked as way of a greeting.

  Out of habit, Beckett flashed his badge. “Mr. Richards, we’re sorry to show up like this. We appreciate you seeing us on short notice.”

  Richards strode to his upright desk and hit a few keystrokes on the laptop. It made a small mechanical noise in response and Richards said, “Mr. Beckett, we are both very busy men. Why don’t you just say why you’re here?”

  The answer only confirmed what Beckett knew just by looking at the man. His black hair was too dark and too thick to be natural for a man pushing sixty and his skin was drawn tight from a lifetime of cosmetic surgery.

  The suit he was wearing no doubt cost more than Beckett’s truck.

  “Alright. We have record that you met with Congressman Wilbanks prior to his death. What isn’t on record is what you two met to discuss.”

  “I would hardly call seven days beforehand prior to his death.”

  “Mr. Richards, anything before Sunday evening is considered prior to his death,” Beckett responded, steel rising in his voice. “Can you tell me what you two met about?”

  Richards continued messing with the laptop and said, “I am afraid that’s a matter between me and Mr. Wilbanks.”

  “We’re here representing Mr. Wilbanks.”

  Richards made a small tutting noise and said, “I am afraid that’s not good enough.”

  Beckett could feel the color rising up his face. He stepped over to the desk and placed his hand on the back of Richards’s computer and forced it shut, glaring at him.

  “Perhaps I was not clear. We’re here with the Boston police department. We have proof that you met with Wilbanks shortly before his death. Now we have extended you the courtesy of coming here to be as small an intrusion as possible, but we can easily remedy that and all go downtown to discuss this.”

  Richards stood back and crossed his arms, contempt obvious in his gaze. “Are you aware of how much money this company donates every year to the Boston police? Do you know how many high ranking public officials I am on a first name basis with in this city?”

  Beckett matched the gaze. “Are you aware of the hit your company stock will take if a large scandal involving one of its owners being connected with the murder of a Congressman comes out? Do you know what the boys at county lock-up will do to a man like you?”

  “Mr. Beckett, my lawyer can be here in three minutes. Any more of this and I will be calling him.”

  “Mr. Richards, nobody’s here to accuse you of anything. You go lawyering up, we’re going to assume you have something to hide and treat you like a suspect. You just answer the questions and we’re gone in ten minutes.”

  Richards cast an angry glance around the room and said, “You have five. Go.”

  “What did you and Wilbanks discuss in this little meeting of yours?”

  Richards paused again as if to weigh his words. “Mr. Wilbanks and I met over lunch to discuss his pushing forth a new initiative.”

  “What kind of new initiative?”

  “One to eliminate drug trafficking here in Boston.”

  Beckett made a face and shook his head. “Eliminate drug trafficking here in Boston?”

  Richards remained with his arms crossed over his chest, but said nothing.

  “And just how were you two planning to do this?”

  “The bill would push for funds to be allocated to the research and development of new ways to track drugs in the area. It also would call for much stiffer punishment for criminals with drug offenses and a much higher priority for drug related crimes with area law enforcement.”

  Beckett scribbled everything down in his notepad. “Everything that goes through Wilbanks office is chronicled and catalogued with his Chief of Staff. She didn’t have one word about this. Why?”

  “This was the first time he and I had met on the matter. We decided it was to be done with the utmost of delicacy.”

  “And by delicacy you mean, not one mention of your name anywhere?”

  Richards held his arms out to his side and said, “I am a very important man with a lot to lose.”

  Beckett considered the statement. “So why do it at all?”

  “I have the financial backing to make something like this happen. I provided Wilbanks the assurance to go after this without having to ever worry again about funding campaigns or getting votes.”

  “Mr. Richards, I mean, what’s in it for you personally? Man like you doesn’t one day wake up and decide to fight drugs in Boston.”

  Richards backed away to the windows and raised the blind on the one closest to him. Grey daylight from outside spilled into the room as he stood and looked down on the factory he owned below.

  Beckett had no doubt the arrangement was not lost on Richards.

  “Do the names Dr. Ambrosia Brockler, Anne Pickard, Liz Gerkin mean anything to you?”

  Beckett noticed Richards visibly flinch at the last name he listed. He waited, and when no response came pressed on.

  “Mr. Richards, how do you know Liz Gerkin?”

  Another minute passed and Beckett began to ask again, but Richards cut him off, his voice was flat and empty. “You know, this was all
supposed to be his.

  “When he was a kid I’d bring him up here and we’d sit in my desk chair together and watch people come and go from the factory below. He’d laugh and yell down at them, tell them to get back to work.”

  He swiveled at the waist to glance at them, any trace of malice gone from his eyes.

  “My son, Michael, met Sarah Elizabeth Gerkin as a grad student at Harvard. She was from somewhere nearby, a poor family. Her father had left when she was very young and her mom died while she was in undergrad.

  “I thought she was only sniffing around for money and tried my hardest to keep them apart. I forbade him from seeing her, even dangled his inheritance over his head to try and enforce it, but it wouldn’t take. He chose her over me and we never spoke again.

  “Eight years ago they were married in Hawaii. I wasn’t invited and only found out about it because he called and told his mother.

  “Afterwards they both took positions doing research at the McLean clinic in Belmont. They lived in a small apartment there for three years until he received a promotion and they decided to build their first home together.”

  He paused for a moment and glanced to make sure they were listening before returning his gaze to the scene below. “Their lease ran out two weeks before the house was to be completed, so they moved into a cheap hotel in Waltham to bide their time.

  “My son, the former track star, was obsessive about getting in his miles every day. In high school, he didn’t miss a single day for over two years.

  “Late one evening he went for a run through Waltham and stumbled upon what police believed to be a drug deal gone awry. The bullet that hit him wasn’t his to take, but it killed him just the same.”

  By the end his voice was no more than a whisper, a bit of a crack apparent.

  “What happened to Gerkin thereafter?” Beckett asked.

  Richards sighed and shook his head. “She disappeared. The last anybody seen of her she was Sarah Beth Richards, so the fact that you’re here now asking about Liz Gerkin means she changed her name. Probably didn’t want to be found.”

  “And you mean to tell me that in all this time you never used your considerable resources to track her down? Your own daughter-in-law? The heir to your place here?”

  Richards turned and shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t want to know that she was alright and living her life while my son lay in the ground. I didn’t need a reminder that she’s what came between us. That because of her he was staying in some shitbox hotel in Waltham instead of here running the company with me.”

  The words hung heavy, weighing on all three men in the room.

  “Did you have anything to do with the death of Liz Gerkin?”

  Richards ran his gaze the length of Beckett and said, “No, I didn’t, but I’d be lying if I said I was sad she’s dead.”

  Beckett matched the gaze and nodded. “I would expect you’re not. Just one last question, and then we’ll be out of here. God willing, our paths will never cross again.

  “If this all happened five years ago, why were you just last week meeting with Wilbanks to push forth an initiative?”

  Richards ran his tongue over his lips and said, “My son and I were estranged. His mother died just after he was married and from then on I didn’t hear another word from or about him.”

  “So after all that time you finally went looking for your son?”

  Whatever feeling Richards had, be it anger or sadness or even guilt seemed to evaporate from him. “Last Sunday my son found me.”

  Beckett made a face to relay his confusion, but said nothing.

  “I’d suggest finding yourself a copy of last Sunday’s Globe Mr. Beckett. I think you’ll find it an interesting read.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Dear Michael: The Story Behind the Heart Wrenching Letters

  Gripping a City

  By Anne Pickard, Globe Staff Writer

  Every week they arrived on Tuesday, the same handwritten envelopes addressed to the Letters to the Editor Department at the Boston Globe. For over six months they were ignored, tossed aside or cast away and never thought of again. It’s highly unlikely they were ever even opened.

  That all changed in August when Esmerelda Pickwood became the new Editor at the Globe. Ms. Pickwood brought with her a promise that every letter sent to her would be read, and read them she did. Every Tuesday she’d receive the handwritten envelopes and every Tuesday she’d sit in her office and sob at the heartfelt words the envelopes contained.

  After the fourth one, Esmerelda decided it was time others heard this story. She began running the letter every Wednesday. The first week there was a trickle of responses. The second there was a handful more. By Columbus Day, we were receiving hundreds of letters per week wanting to know the story behind what we called The Dear Michael Letters.

  We call them that because every letter begins with the simple salutation, Dear Michael. Every letter is signed by a woman named Sarah Beth, but nobody seemed to know who she was or where she came from.

  Last week I received a call from a psychologist that had worked with Sarah Beth and told me where I might be able to find her. Careful not to violate the doctor-patient code, he didn’t offer me a single detail about her story but what he gave me was even more valuable.

  Her address.

  I ran the address through every reverse directory on the internet looking for a phone number, but there simply wasn’t one to be had. So, nearly eight months after the first Dear Michael letter ran, I went to find the face behind the name Sarah Beth.

  For those of you that have been writing and telling us that the letters were nothing more than the musings of an aspiring writer trying to get some attention, you couldn’t be further from the truth. She is a very real woman dealing with a very real hurt.

  The story I am about to outline for you is equal parts Sarah Beth and equal parts research. I wanted to believe every word she said and write it down for you all to read, but since the incident her mind has melded the worlds of fantasy and reality. In some places so much so that what she believes and what really happened are light years apart.

  This is the story of Sarah Beth and her beloved Michael.

  Sarah Beth Gerkin met Michael Richards as a psychology PhD student at Harvard, in every way a match that came right out of a story book. She was a poor girl whose father had left before she ever knew him and mother died while she was in college. He came from one of the most affluent families in the Northeast, a family both knew would disapprove of them together.

  A product of instantaneous attraction, Sarah Beth and Michael latched on to one another and refused to let go. They watched his ties with his family fall by the wayside, watched better jobs pass them both by, watched the years scatter as they remained by each other’s side.

  After earning their PhD’s, the two married and spent two years conducting clinical psychology research together, publishing a ground breaking piece on the affect of faded fame in athletes. It was the kind of piece most researchers wait a lifetime for and it earned them both permanent positions and a nice bump in salary.

  With that salary came a new found financial independence and together they set out to build a home just outside of Waltham. They timed the construction so that the home would be ready once their apartment lease came up, but unexpected delays forced the couple to take up residence in a hotel for a couple of weeks.

  It would be the last home they ever knew together.

  Tragedy struck when three days before they were to move into their new place, Michael’s life was taken. Home from work late one night and unable to sleep, he went for a run. Unfamiliar with the area he entered into a region widely known for drug activity and ended up on the receiving end of a stray bullet. Whether that bullet was a case of mistaken identity or of simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, nobody will ever know.

  The loss sent Sarah Beth into a spiral. She blamed herself for their having been in the hotel and many times tri
ed to take her own life. Unable to stay near the city she bounced around New England, living from hotel room to hotel room and actively trying to ruin her own life.

  Finally, at a Value Deluxe Hotel in upstate New York, a front desk worker noticed the self-inflicted cuts on her arms and called the police. They came and took her to a psychiatric home where over time she began to heal. It was there that she began writing the letters.

  Michael’s life was taken on a Sunday, and every Sunday since she has written a letter. Many of the letters were filtered by the home she was staying in (which has requested not to be mentioned by name) never to be seen again, but once she left there she mailed them herself, and they began appearing here.

  Almost five years have passed since Michael’s falling, but in talking with Sarah Beth I get the feeling she still believes he is alive and will be coming home to her. She still speaks of him freely and uses the terms ‘we’ and ‘us’ often.

  She has since changed her name to Liz Gerkin, an abbreviated form of her maiden name. She says she did this because Michael was the only one that truly knew her as Sarah Beth Richards and she couldn’t stand the thought of somebody else trying to think of her the way Michael did.

  The rest of us may never know her as Sarah Beth Richards the way he did, but from reading her letters we know her pain better than Michael ever will.

  Beckett held the left button on the mouse and slid it further down the page to make sure he had read everything, then closed the browser. He leaned back in his chair, rubbed his temples and said, “Holy shit.”

  Meeks sat with a laptop across his lap and responded, “Damn right.”

  In less than five minutes, a simple search through the Globe archives, to find the link bringing together Wilbanks, Gerkin, and Pickard.