Vanished in the Dunes

by Allan Retzky

  “And this is only for Jewish kids?”

  “No. It’s open to anyone in the community, which helps us get government funding, but I’d say about sixty percent of the kids we treat are Jewish.”

  “Do you know why Heidi wanted to work there? I mean it’s a pretty long trip once a week and she’s not even Jewish.”

  “I know. On the first day she walked in she told us right from the start that she was Muslim, but that she wanted to work especially with Jewish kids. And everyone she counseled loved her. She was a very caring person. I can’t believe she’s disappeared just like that. There’s this one young girl about fifteen. Her father was in the diamond business and was convicted of setting up a phony robbery to collect on insurance. It destroyed the whole family and this young girl went off on her own deep end. Started with drugs, moved out of her mother’s apartment here in Boro Park, and drifted into prostitution. She was picked up for loitering and the precinct captain sent her over here rather than have her charged. She was here for less than a week with her mother’s permission when Heidi arrived. Within a day she began to follow Heidi around like a puppy dog. She’s back in school now and wants to study medicine like Heidi, but seems to be relapsing of late according to her mother. Without Heidi I’m not sure if she’ll ever get back to what counts as normal. She idolized Heidi for her empathy, since she always made time for the kids, but also for her looks. Heidi’s very attractive, but I guess you’ve seen pictures of her.”

  Her voice fades as she finishes. Then silence. Dead air. Wisdom grunts a “yes” into the mouthpiece to break into the stillness.

  “Do you think she’ll turn up?”

  The weakness in her speech continues and sounds to Wisdom as if she’s entered a period of resignation. Until then he’d almost forgotten he was talking to a rabbi and a woman no less.

  “Honestly, we can’t be too hopeful at this point. Too much time has gone by without anything to go on.”

  “I remember she had family in Europe. What do they think?”

  “They have nothing to add,” Wisdom notes, even as his mind wanders ahead and wonders how or even whether he’ll approach Brigid and tell her about this side of Heidi. A side he was sure she’d never seen based on what she’d told him.

  “Was Heidi particularly friendly with anyone at the center?”

  “I’m afraid not, except for me, and even there we kept it very professional. I mean she never spoke about her social life, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Did she meet any men there? I mean like relatives of the youngsters you treat.”

  “Not really. There were some other professionals around but nothing more than idle chitchat from what I could see and hear. Oh, once some doctor from Mt. Sinai met her here. I think his name was Henry something. I only saw him the one time, but he seemed as awestruck with her as some of the young kids, yet in an obviously romantic way. He seemed to get all steamed up when he was waiting for her in the lounge and she came out of the counseling wing talking to our resident senior social worker.”

  “What do you mean steamed up?”

  “It wasn’t anything he said, but I could see in his eyes. The jealousy, I mean. I think he might have smacked her right there if they were alone, but nothing happened. At least while they were here in the lobby.”

  Wisdom draws a breath and thanks her for her time. Then he remembers.

  “It was Wilkie Collins.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The author of The Woman in White was an English writer named William Wilkie Collins. He also wrote The Moonstone. Some of the earliest mysteries ever written.”

  “I’m impressed,” she said, the voice now much stronger than a few moments earlier. “I’m not used to policemen who read so extensively.”

  “And I’m not used to female rabbis,” answered Wisdom.

  “Well, I don’t have a long beard, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  Wisdom laughs, says he never imagined her with a beard, and then asks her how she managed to find such a profession.

  “That part wasn’t hard. My father is still a rabbi in Cleveland. And pretty modern. At first I had a hard time finding a pulpit, but then I came around to thinking that social work was more important. It’s that simple.”

  Wisdom has nothing more to say although a part of him wants to stay on the phone and hear more about the Heidi no one else seems to have known. The few seconds of silence that follows tells him that there isn’t anymore. He thanks her again, repeats his number in case she remembers anything else, and promises to call whenever they find out something.

  It is only later, when he’s home after changing into worn jeans and an old sweater, that the full impact of what she’s told him sinks in. Seems that Heidi wasn’t always the calculating predator of a person he thought she was. And it pisses him off even more that he’ll likely never get to know the real person.

  And then there’s Henry who just keeps popping up like a garden weed. He also realizes he’s thinking of Heidi in the past tense, notwithstanding what the rabbi said. “She’s dead,” he announces to an empty kitchen. “So let’s see what our suspects think when she turns up at their doorstep. Especially Henry.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Henry Stern’s life is falling apart, yet he seems to sleepwalk through the metamorphosis.

  Memories of Heidi crowd out everything else that ever seemed to matter. His interest in medicine and in particular his residency in radiology evaporates. Three months after Heidi’s disappearance, he is summoned to the office of the chief resident in radiology and given a warning to improve both his attendance and concentration levels. Despite this caution, he’s unable to lessen the rate of his descent into melancholia. In one increasingly rare coherent moment, he confides to a colleague that if Heidi were there she would be able to treat his symptoms. But Heidi is not there and her absence is driving him over the edge.

  He takes to sleeping in her apartment for which he still pays rent. He showers where she once did, and massages her shampoo into his hair until the recollection of her scent chokes him with memories of lust. He scrubs his teeth with her brush as he tries to suck the taste of her mouth back into his, but after the first month the essence of her presence has vanished as she did, leaving only a tasteless peppermint film on the stiffening bristles.

  Her closet is barely filled as she has always disregarded the value of much clothing, but the pink-and-white dress that she wears for him on special occasions is missing. He knows she wore it on the day she disappeared from what the people on the bus reported. He knows how sensual she looks in that dress, and on more than one morning he lays half awake there in her bed and believes that she is in the other room wearing that particular dress, waiting for him to ask her to come back to bed. He begins to touch himself at first gently, then with more urgency and calls out to her. He actually calls out to her to join him, but as sleep slips further away, the reality of her absence seizes him more firmly, his partial erection vanishes and he can only sink a sobbing head into her pillow.

  His performance at work further deteriorates and by the end of August he is put on an involuntary medical leave, but he is, in effect, suspended with the unlikely prospect of ever regaining his position. With nowhere to go, he wanders aimlessly through Manhattan streets. He takes up smoking again and begins to drink, but then just as suddenly stops the alcohol, preferring to ingest the Percocets he has accumulated from the hospital for his own use. There’s also the Seroquel. He’s taken it on and off for fifteen years after a shrink in New York said it would cure some of the hallucinations he used to have. There are times when he stops cold turkey, and then just as suddenly takes it up again. The day after he saw Heidi and some intern together he felt he was going completely nuts and started up again. Then a week later when he failed to satisfy her on that last night they spent together he knew it was due to the Seroquel. Now he’s been off it for months, and he knows when he’s off it he sees things no one else does. He also knows he’s
stayed off it because he’s been hoping to find Heidi alive and anxious to get into bed with her again. But he feels he’s losing control and needs to regain command of the search, so he decides to ease his way back on the meds. He can always stop later.

  The dreams begin in earnest a few weeks after Labor Day. Slivers of such images have appeared and vanished over the past four months, but they are always so fleeting that he wakes with little recall except for the vaguest presence of Heidi. This is different. The dreams are full blown, exact in every detail and sound, and unlike any vision he’s ever experienced.

  The theme recurs. He is walking along an empty beach. To his right the ocean pants and growls as it pounds the sand. To his left the beach dissolves into clusters of scrub grass, which sporadically intersperses with jagged cliffs whose bases are partly eroded as if great chunks were bitten from a large cheese. The sun drops into the dunes behind him as he walks to the east. The air becomes cooler. The muted shriek of shore birds and the surf are the only sounds. Isolation welcomes him like a friend. He is almost at peace when he hears a plaintive cry. At first he doesn’t recognize it, but then as the voice becomes stronger and more assertive, he knows it’s Heidi’s.

  The voice comes from somewhere high and to his left. When he looks, all he sees at first is a gentle slope that rises from the beach. Beach grass and underbrush give way to sand pines and clusters of cedar. He strides up the slope with increasing urgency until it barely begins to level off amidst a thick stand of trees. He stops and listens for the sounds, which have become less frequent, then turns through a wide arc until he sees the shadow of a man carrying a body. The man is walking away from him so he cannot see the face, but the body he carries is clothed in pink and white. He knows it must be Heidi’s. He bursts into a run, but actually falls behind the man no matter how hard he tries to keep up. He looks down and sees the sandy soil suck at his feet and pull him back as if he’s mired in quicksand. In the end he’s immobilized. He calls out to wait, but the man keeps walking until he disappears from view, and all Henry can do is drop to his knees and scream, a sound that always wakes him and is no longer part of the dream.

  After the third night with the same tortured images, he concludes that Heidi was taken by one of the men out near the beach. He knows it’s either Welbrook or Posner and this deduction makes the decision to stalk both men until he finds her whereabouts that much easier.

  He arranges for a neighbor to pick up his mail, reserves a room at the motel in East Hampton he’s used before, packs a bag, and rents a car at the neighborhood Avis. He feels better once he’s on the road. As the city falls away behind him, he looks ahead at the still-crowded expressway, knowing that in less than two hours he will be that much closer to Heidi, and with the conviction that after everything’s over, he’ll be the one to save her from her abductor. His dream convinces him that she’s still alive, hidden somewhere out there near the beach, and waiting for him to find her. And he will. He promises himself. That’s all he has to do.

  He arrives just as the sun sets and avoids the motel so he can drive to the nearest beach. He wants to breathe in the same air that she does before darkness encases him. He has no plans to visit with the police. He knows that he’s still on their suspect list. They have made that plain in the past, harping on the coincidence of the car rental mileage, yet they have nothing more and have left him alone for several months now. He also knows, even if they may not be convinced, that he is innocent of any crime, save obsessive infatuation. He also knows that when he finds her he will dispatch the guilty party. In his minicooler in the backseat are two needles with enough insulin to inject his prey with convulsions, coma, and a certain heart attack. He will dispense justice if no one else will. He eats a quiet dinner at a small Italian restaurant in East Hampton and falls asleep early. His mind is clear and tomorrow he will begin to plan howbest to stalk his quarries.

  In some way it reminds him of hunting. He first went out with his father when he was a few days past his tenth birthday. He never knew his mother, who had died after a fall when he was barely three. So it was his father and a succession of housekeepers who raised him. The housekeepers who came and went like the seasons and who could never satisfy his father’s standards in much the same way as he couldn’t. There were many times when he wished he could also have been fired and sent away, but that was never to be. He had to succeed just as his father had succeeded. It was an early fall day just like today except that then he was in the Berkshires, and this is the beach. He remembered his first kill. He chased a white-tailed rabbit into a tree hollow.

  “Don’t waste time waitin’ for him to get out,” barked his father who had moved in behind him. “Shoot him right now.”

  And he did. It was easy until he pulled the bloody pulp out of the tree and threw up right there, his breakfast and bile spilling out and over the dead white tail.

  “Now skin him, and when you’re done with that, bring him back to the house, and we’ll have the cook make us a stew for supper.”

  He did it all because he had to, but never hunted again and for all he knew maybe even became a doctor because of what had happened that day. But this was different. Whoever had taken Heidi had ruined his life and hers. The one who did it deserved to die, but a shotgun shell would be too quick. That’s why he’s brought the needles.

  The needles each hold large doses of insulin. He had written the prescriptions himself. No problem there. He was still licensed as a doctor in New York state. More than once he pictures what will happen. He will force Posner or Welbrook to confess what happened to Heidi. Then he’ll jab the man with the needle. No alcohol cloth to clean the skin. No bother to even roll up a sleeve. Just a simple large dose of insulin. So large the man’s blood sugar will drop far below even common hypoglycemic conditions.

  Posner or Welbrook will go into insulin shock. The skin will become cool and clammy. The skin color will pale. He might thrash about, but I’ll be there to restrain him if he does. The speech will start to slur and convulsions will soon follow. Then a coma followed by a stoppage of breathing or heart failure. Just enough time to make him suffer without it being torture.

  If there were emergency medical personnel around, they might recognize the symptoms and force-feed him pure sugar or orange juice, but that won’t be an option. Everything will happen when we’re alone. Just the two of us.

  Stern decides to follow Welbrook the morning after he arrives. He drives to the modern house in Amagansett and is pleased to see the man’s twenty-year-old shiny Mercedes parked in front. He lingers for a moment then drives on down to the end of the street and parks out of sight behind an empty construction dumpster. He turns off the engine and waits. After a moment he dials Welbrook’s home number from his cell phone. Welbrook’s voice picks up after two rings and Stern cuts off. The man is home. That’s all Stern needs to know.

  The front passenger seat holds a pair of binoculars, a brown package with a cheese sandwich, an apple, two bottles of water, and a package of cigarettes. The insulin needles rest in a small cooler on the floor of the backseat. He’s prepared to wait, but after only an hour he sees Welbrook emerge wearing dark pants and a soft-looking tan jacket that looks like suede. The unique engine hum of a diesel signals Welbrook’s on the move as his car rolls gently down the block in the other direction. Stern follows him at some distance. At this time of year he can see Welbrook’s car with ease from thirty yards away.

  Welbrook drives into East Hampton and parks near the Ralph Lauren store. The high season is over and Stern has no problem finding a parking spot some four spaces behind.

  His eyes follow Welbrook into Ralph Lauren. From outside the front window he watches his quarry buy three shirts that are on sale at over one hundred dollars each and have them gift wrapped.

  He trails the man into a few other stores, but these visits are brief. After wandering for another fifteen minutes, Welbrook heads back to where he parked his car and enters the Starbuck’s a few doors down. Stern
watches him order a coffee, take a seat at a window table, and wait. Stern stands across the street in front of the movie theatre, leans against a parked car and periodically watches the image in the window sip from a cup. The wait isn’t long. A man closer to Stern’s age joins Welbrook, who stands to greet his guest.

  The man has short cut dark hair and wears jeans with a sports jacket. They lean into each other as they meet and the convergence ends with a full kiss on the mouth right there in the nearly filled coffee shop. Welbrook hands the man the gift-wrapped package and they hug before sitting down.

  The suddenness of it all momentarily paralyzes Stern. One of his two suspects has just openly announced he’s gay and thereby removed himself from serious consideration in less than two minutes. And all of this happens after Stern has spent months agonizing over whether the admittedly attractive-looking Welbrook has ever fucked Heidi and is still hiding her away somewhere out here in some deserted dune cottage. He smokes a cigarette and then another before he reenters his car and heads to the motel where he can regroup and plan his move with Posner.

  He decides to shadow Posner with more caution. Welbrook’s unintentional revelation has increased the odds to infinite levels that Posner is the man he’s after. He intends to follow Posner to the extent necessary to determine his behavior patterns and then confront him. Yes. He will challenge Posner to tell him where Heidi is hidden. And when he finds her, that’s when he’ll kill Posner. And then it’ll just be Heidi and him. Just like before.

  Posner seems less gregarious than Welbrook, as he seems to stick closer to home. Stern has chosen a spot for observation on the corner farthest from the house. His small blue rental car is barely visible from Posner’s home, but not without some effort. Stern sits as he had with Welbrook, with enough food and water for a long day of waiting. This is what much of police work must entail, he thinks. Waiting and then waiting some more.