Sacred

by Dennis Lehane

  In Massachusetts, aspiring private investigators must perform twenty-five hundred hours of investigatory work with a licensed private investigator before getting their licenses themselves. Jay only had to do one thousand hours because of his FBI experience, and he did his with Everett Hamlyn. Angie did hers with me. I did mine with Jay Becker.

  It was a recruiting technique of Hamlyn and Kohl to pick an aspiring private eye who they believed showed promise and provide that hungry wannabe with a seasoned investigator to show him the ropes, get him his twenty-five hundred hours, and, of course, open his eyes to the gilded world of Hamlyn and Kohl. Every one I know who got his license this way then went to work for Hamlyn and Kohl. Well, everyone except me.

  Which didn’t sit well with Everett Hamlyn, Adam Kohl, or their attorneys. There were grumblings for a while there that usually reached me on cotton-bond stationery bearing the letterhead of Hamlyn and Kohl’s attorneys, or occasionally on the stationery of Hamlyn and Kohl themselves. But I’d never signed anything or given them even a verbal indication that I planned to join their firm, and when my own attorney, Cheswick Hartman, noted this on his stationery (which was a very attractive mauve linen bond), the grumbling ceased appearing in my mailbox. And somehow I built an agency whose success exceeded even my own expectations by working for a clientele that could rarely afford Hamlyn and Kohl.

  But recently, shell-shocked I suppose by our exposure to the raging psychosis of Evandro Arujo, Gerry Glynn, and Alec Hardiman—an exposure that cost Angie’s ex-husband, Phil, his life—we’d closed the agency. We hadn’t been doing much of note since, unless you count talking in circles, watching old movies, and drinking too much as doing something.

  I’m not sure how long it would have lasted—maybe another month, maybe until our livers divorced us by citing cruel and unusual punishment—but then Angie looked at Trevor Stone with a kinship she’d shown toward no one in three months and actually smiled without affectation, and I knew we’d take his case, even if he was so impolite as to kidnap and drug us. And the fifty grand, let’s admit it, went a long way toward helping us overlook Trevor’s initial bad form.

  Find Desiree Stone.

  Simple objective. How simple the execution of that objective would be remained to be seen. To find her, I was pretty sure we’d have to find Jay Becker or at least follow his tracks. Jay, my mentor, and the man who’d given me my professional maxim:

  “No one,” he told me once near the end of my apprenticeship, “and I mean, no one, can stay hidden if the right person is looking for him.”

  “What about the Nazis who escaped to South America after the war? No one found Josef Mengele until he’d died peacefully and free.”

  And Jay gave me a look I’d become accustomed to during our three months together. It was what I called his “G-man look,” the look of a man who’d done his time in the darkest corridors of government, a man who knew where bodies were buried and which papers had been shredded and why, who understood the machinations of true power better than most of us ever would.

  “You don’t think people knew where Mengele was? Are you kidding me?” He leaned over our table in the Bay Tower Room, tucked his tie against his waist even though our plates and table crumbs had been cleared, impeccable as always. “Patrick, let me assure you of something, Mengele had three huge advantages over most people who try to disappear.”

  “And they were?”

  “One,” he said and his index finger rose, “Mengele had money. Millions initially. But millionaires can be found. So, two”—his middle finger joined the index—“he had information—on other Nazis, on fortunes buried under Berlin, on all sorts of medical discoveries he’d made using Jews as guinea pigs—and this information went to several different governments, including our own, who were supposedly looking for him.”

  He raised his eyebrows and sat back smiling.

  “And the third reason?”

  “Ah, yes. Reason number three, and the most important—Josef Mengele never had me looking for him. Because nobody can hide from Jay Becker. And now that I’ve trained you, D’Artagnan, my young Gascon, nobody can hide from Patrick Kenzie, either.”

  “Thank you, Athos.”

  He made a flourish with his hand and tipped his head.

  Jay Becker. No one alive ever had more style.

  Jay, I thought as the subway car broke from the tunnel into the waxy green light of Downtown Crossing, I hope you were right. Because here I come. Hide-and-seek, ready or not.

  Back at my apartment, I stashed the twenty grand in the space behind the kitchen baseboard where I stow my backup guns. Angie and I dusted off the dining room table and spread out what we’d accumulated since this morning. Four photographs of Desiree Stone were fanned out in the center, followed by the daily progress reports Trevor had received from Jay until he disappeared thirteen days ago.

  “Why did you wait so long to contact another investigator?” I’d asked Trevor Stone.

  “Adam Kohl assured me he’d put another man on it, but I think he was stalling. A week later, they dropped me as a client. I spent five days looking into every private investigator in the city who had an honest reputation, and eventually settled on the two of you.”

  In the dining room, I considered calling Hamlyn and Kohl, asking Everett Hamlyn for his side of the story, but I had the feeling they’d stonewall me. You drop a client of Trevor Stone’s stature, you’re not going to be advertising it or gossiping about it to a fellow competitor in the trade.

  Angie slid Jay’s reports in front of her and I looked through the notes we’d each taken in Trevor’s study.

  “In the month after her mother died,” Trevor told us after we came in off the lawn, “Desiree suffered two separate traumas, either of which would have devastated a girl on their own. First, I was diagnosed with terminal cancer and then a boy she’d dated in college died.”

  “How?” Angie said.

  “He drowned. Accidentally. But Desiree, you see, had been, well, insulated most of her life by her mother and me. Her entire existence up until her mother’s death had been charmed, untouched by even minor tragedy. She always considered herself strong. Probably because she was headstrong and stubborn like me and she confused that with the kind of mettle one develops under extreme opposition. So, you understand, she was never tested. And then with her mother dead and her father lying in intensive care, I could see that she was determined to bear up. And I think she would have. But then came the cancer revelation followed almost immediately by the death of a former suitor. Boom. Boom. Boom.”

  According to Trevor, Desiree began to disintegrate under the weight of the three tragedies. She became an insomniac, suffered drastic weight loss, and rarely spoke as much as a full sentence on any given day.

  Her father urged her to seek counseling, but she broke each of the four appointments he made for her. Instead, as Lurch, the Weeble, and a few friends informed him, she was sighted spending most of her days downtown. She’d drive the white Saab Turbo her parents had given her as a graduation present to a garage on Boylston Street and spend her days walking the downtown and Back Bay greens of the Emerald Necklace, the seven-mile park system that surrounds the city. She once walked as far as a stretch of the Fens behind the Museum of Fine Arts, but usually, Lurch informed Trevor, she preferred the leafy mall that cuts through the center of Commonwealth Avenue and the Public Garden that abuts it.

  It was in the Garden, she told Trevor, that she met a man who, she claimed, finally provided some of the solace and grace she’d been searching for throughout the late summer and early autumn. The man, seven or eight years older than her, was named Sean Price, and he too had been rocked by tragedy. His wife and five-year-old daughter, he told Desiree, had died the previous year when a faulty air conditioning unit in their Concord home had leaked carbon monoxide into the house while Sean was out of town on business.

  Sean Price found them the next night, Desiree told Trevor, when he returned home from his trip. />
  “That’s a long time,” I said, looking up from my notes.

  Angie raised her head from Jay Becker’s reports. “What’s that?”

  “In my notes, I have it that Desiree told Trevor that Sean Price discovered his wife and child almost twenty-four hours after they died.”

  She reached across the table, took her own notes from where they lay by my elbow, leafed through them. “Yup. That’s what Trevor said.”

  “Seems a long time,” I said. “A young woman—a businessman’s wife and probably upscale if they were living in Concord—she and her five-year-old daughter aren’t seen for twenty-four hours and nobody notices?”

  “Neighbors are less and less friendly and less and less interested in their fellow neighbors these days.”

  I frowned. “But, okay, maybe in the inner city or the lower-middle-class burbs. But this happened in Concord. Land of Victorians and carriage houses and the Old North Bridge. Main Street, lily-white, upper-class America. Sean Price’s child is five years old. She doesn’t have day care? Or kindergarten or dance classes or something? His wife doesn’t go to aerobics or have a job or a lunch date with another upper-middle-class young wife?”

  “It bugs you.”

  “A bit. It doesn’t feel right.”

  She leaned back in her chair. “We in the trade call that feeling a ‘hunch.’”

  I bent over my notes, pen in hand. “How do you spell that? With an ‘h,’ right?”

  “No, a ‘p’ for pinhead.” She tapped her pen against her notes, smiled at me. “Check out Sean Price,” she said as she scribbled the same words on the upper margin of her notes. “And death by carbon monoxide poisoning in Concord circa 1995 through ’96.”

  “And the dead boyfriend. What was his name?”

  She flipped a page. “Anthony Lisardo.”

  “Right.”

  She grimaced at the photos of Desiree. “A lot of people dying around this girl.”

  “Yeah.”

  She lifted one of the photos and her face softened. “God, she is gorgeous. But it makes sense, her finding comfort in another survivor of loss.” She looked over at me. “You know?”

  I held her eyes, searched them for a clear glimpse of the battery and hurt that lay somewhere behind them, the fear of caring enough to be battered again. But all I saw were the remnants of recognition and empathy that had appeared when she looked at Desiree’s photograph, the same remnants she’d borne after looking into the eyes of Desiree’s father.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

  “But someone could prey on that,” she said, looking back into Desiree’s face again.

  “How so?”

  “If you wanted to reach a person who was near catatonic with grief, but didn’t necessarily want to reach them for benevolent motives, how would you go about it?”

  “If I was cynically manipulative?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d form a bond based on shared loss.”

  “By pretending to have suffered severe loss yourself, perhaps?”

  I nodded. “That’d be just the tack to take.”

  “I think we definitely need to find out more about Sean Price.” Her eyes glistened with burgeoning excitement.

  “What’s in Jay’s reports about him?”

  “Well, let’s see. Nothing we don’t know already.” She began to riffle the pages, then stopped suddenly, looked up at me, her face beaming.

  “What?” I said, feeling a smile growing on my face, her excitement infectious.

  “It’s cool,” she said.

  “What?”

  She lifted a page, motioned at the mess of paper on the table. “This. All this. We’re back in the chase, Patrick.”

  “Yeah, it is.” And until that moment I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it—untangling the tangles, sniffing for the scent, taking the first step toward demystifying what had previously been unknowable and unapproachable.

  But I felt my grin fade for a moment, because it was this very excitement, this addiction to uncovering things that sometimes would be better left covered, which had brought me face-to-face with the howling pestilence and moral rot of Gerry Glynn’s psyche.

  This same addiction had put a bullet in Angie’s body, given me scars on my face and nerve damage to one hand, and left me holding Angie’s ex-husband Phil in my arms while he died, gasping and afraid.

  “You’re going to be okay,” I’d told him.

  “I know,” he said. And died.

  And that’s what all this searching and uncovering and chasing could lead to again—the icy knowledge that we probably weren’t okay, any of us. Our hearts and minds were covered because they were fragile, but they were also covered because what often festered in them was bleaker and more depraved than others could bear to look upon.

  “Hey,” Angie said, still smiling, but less certainly, “what’s wrong?”

  I’ve always loved her smile.

  “Nothing,” I said. “You’re right. This is cool.”

  “Damn straight,” she said and we high-fived across the table. “We’re back in business. Criminals beware.”

  “They’re shaking in their boots,” I assured her.

  4

  HAMLYN & KOHL WORLDWIDE INVESTIGATIONS

  THE JOHN HANCOCK TOWER, 33RD FLOOR

  150 CLARENDON STREET

  BOSTON, MA 02116

  Operative’s Report

  TO: Mr. Trevor Stone

  FR: Mr. Jay Becker, Investigator

  RE: The disappearance of Ms. Desiree Stone

  February 16, 1997

  First day of investigation into the disappearance of Desiree Stone, last seen leaving her residence, 1468 Oak Bluff Drive, Marblehead, at 11 a.m., EST, February 12.

  This investigator interviewed Mr. Pietro Leone, cashier of a parking garage at 500 Boylston Street, Boston, which led to the discovery of Ms. Stone’s white 1995 Saab Turbo on Level P2 of said garage. Ticket stub found in the glove compartment of car revealed it had arrived at garage at exactly 11:51 a.m., February 12. Search of the car and the premises nearest to it yielded no suggestion of foul play. Doors were locked, alarm was engaged.

  Contacted Julian Archerson (Mr. Stone’s valet), who agreed to pick up Ms. Stone’s car from the premises using her spare set of keys and bring it back to the above-mentioned residence for further investigation. This investigator paid Mr. Leone five and a half days’ parking fee of $124.00 (USD) and left garage. [See receipt attached to enclosed daily expenditure sheet.]

  This investigator proceeded to canvass the Emerald Necklace park system from the Boston Common, through the Public Garden, Commonwealth Avenue Mall, and ending in The Fens at Avenue Louis Pasteur. By showing park patrons several photographs of Ms. Stone, this investigator found three individuals who claimed to have seen her at some time during the previous six months:

  1. Daniel Mahew, 23, Student, Berklee College of Music. Sighted Ms. Stone on at least four occasions seated on a bench in Comm. Ave. Mall between Massachusetts Avenue and Charlesgate East. Dates are approximate, but sightings occurred during third week of August, second week of September, second week of October, first week of November. Mr. Mahew’s interest in Ms. Stone was of the romantic nature, but met distinct lack of interest from Ms. Stone. When Mr. Mahew attempted to engage her in conversation, Ms. Stone walked away on two occasions, ignored him on a third, and ended their fourth encounter, according to Mr. Mahew, by spraying his eyes with either Mace or pepper spray.

  Mr. Mahew stated that on each occasion Ms. Stone was unequivocally alone.

  2. Agnes Pascher, 44, Transient. Ms. Pascher’s testimony is questionable as this investigator noted physical evidence of both alcohol and drug (heroin) abuse about her person. Ms. Pascher claims to have seen Ms. Stone on two occasions—both in September (approximate)—in the Boston Common. Ms. Stone, according to Ms. Pascher, sat on the grass by the entrance at the corner of Beacon and Charles Streets, feeding squirrels with handfuls of sunflower see
ds. Ms. Pascher, who had no contact with Ms. Stone, called her the “squirrel girl.”

  3. Herbert Costanza, 34, Sanitation Engineer, Boston Parks & Recreation Department. Mr. Costanza on numerous occasions from mid-August through early November observed Ms. Stone, whom he dubbed “the sad, pretty girl,” sitting under a tree in the northwest corner of the Public Garden. His contact with her was limited to “polite hellos,” which she rarely responded to. Mr. Costanza believed Ms. Stone to be a poet, though he never witnessed her writing anything.

  Note that the last of these sightings occurred in early November. Ms. Stone claimed to have met a man she identified as Sean Price in early November as well.

  Computer search of statewide NYNEX telephone listings for Sean or S. Price yielded 124 matches. State DMV listings for Sean Price reduced the number to 19 matches within the target age (25-35). Since Ms. Stone’s sole physical description of Sean Price mentioned only his general age and race (Caucasian), the number was further reduced to 6 matches upon cross-referencing for ethnicity.

  This investigator will begin contacting and interviewing the six remaining Sean Prices tomorrow.

  Respectfully,

  Jay Becker

  Investigator

  cc: Mr. Hamlyn, Mr. Kohl, Mr. keegan, Ms. Tarnover.

  Angie looked up from the reports and rubbed her eyes. We sat side by side, reading the pages together.

  “Christ,” she said, “he is one thorough guy.”

  “He’s Jay,” I said. “A model for all of us.”

  She nudged me. “Say it—he’s your hero.”

  “Hero?” I said. “He’s my God. Jay Becker could find Hoffa without breaking a sweat.”

  She patted his report pages. “Yet he seems to be having trouble finding either Desiree Stone or Sean Price.”

  “Have faith,” I said and turned a page.

  Jay’s rundown of the six Sean Prices had taken three days and yielded a big goose egg. One was a recent parolee who’d been in prison until late December of 1995. Another was a paraplegic and shut-in. A third was a research chemist for Genzyme Corporation who’d been consulting on a project at UCLA throughout the autumn. Sean Edward Price of Charlestown was a marginally employed roofer and full-time racist. When Jay asked him if he’d recently been to either the Public Garden or the Boston Common, he responded, “With the fruits and the liberals and the fucking mud races asking for handouts so’s they can buy themselves some crack? They should throw a fence around the whole downtown and nuke it from space, pal.”