The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted: A Psychological Thriller

Year at Bella, her favorite restaurant. She’d been looking forward to it for weeks, bought a new dress, got her hair done.

Then that afternoon, I got a break on a story I’d been working. Unfortunately, the news hardly ever waits for a convenient moment to happen.

A woman on her morning jog along Half Moon Bay came across a body—or rather, what was left of one. What she actually saw first was a Manolo Blahnik pump sticking up between two boulders. It belonged to Sherrie Jensen, wife of Concord cop Rick Jensen. She’d been missing for almost two weeks. Authorities suspected he’d killed her but had nothing to prove it, and this was their big break. Mine too.

I got the call at noon and arrived on scene within a half-hour; of course, so did every other major news outlet. This was a big story, and everyone wanted a piece of it, so we camped out, knowing it was going to be a long day.

Which stretched out into a longer evening. I’d figured it would take some time to extricate the body; I just hadn’t expected it to take that long. But it did. I phoned Samantha all afternoon with updates. Each time I could hear the disappointment in her voice rising to more detectable levels. She knew what was coming; I did, too.

I called her at 11:00 p.m. to tell her we were still waiting on a body.

And she promptly hung up on me.

Finally, the very moment the ball dropped, as if on cue, the rest of Sherrie Jensen’s body came up for air. I’d waited twelve hours for a rib cage with some flesh attached to it.

Happy New Year.

I rushed home covered in sweat and grime but still determined to salvage my relationship with Samantha.

No such luck. She was gone, and taped to my laptop, a note:

Hope she was worth it. Goodbye.

Jenson went to Death Row, and I took several press awards, along with an abrupt and unceremonious leap into bachelorhood.

It takes a certain kind of person to put up with a journalist, but I’m not even sure if one actually exists. Most people I know in the business are either born-again-single or stuck in dysfunctional relationships. It’s a double- edged sword, I suppose. We love our work, and we long for love, but neither seems conducive to the other.

Since losing Samantha, I’ve resigned myself to singledom and all that it entails. My sink is always piled with dirty dishes, my floor a virtual bed of filthy socks and underwear. I relish in bachelorhood, pound my chest fitfully, then burp into an empty beer glass, telling myself that this is The Life, that being free and single is a blessing.

Then I ask myself who the hell I’m kidding. Being lonely sucks—everyone knows that, me included.

I glanced at my answering machine on the kitchen counter. An unblinking zero stared back, mocking me, calling me a loser. What followed was a feeling of unqualified emptiness. I consoled myself by pretending it was okay, that that’s what cell phones are for. Then I chased the thought away.

After fixing a sandwich, I dragged my suitcase into the bedroom and started unpacking. The book immediately caught my attention; it was inside a plastic bag along with the other items I’d taken from the house.

I spilled everything onto the bed and only then realized that many of these things weren’t mine. They were my mother’s.

I cringed: an old change purse I remembered her having, a letter opener I recognized, too, along with an ugly scarf I always hated. Good Lord, I’d just purged the woman from my life. The last thing I needed were reminders of her. I tossed them into the trash.

Next up, a bundle of photos. Pictures of mother—I pitched them too—then one of me at age five, standing in front of Warren’s 1968 Corvette. I was pretty sure his purpose for taking it was more to show off the car than to capture me. I remembered feeling incidental.

Flipped to the next one of me at age seven, a dorky school photo: gold ribbed turtleneck pullover, Hair by Pillow, and a bucktooth. I laughed. If there had been a poster child for awkward, I was it, hands-down.

Looking through the others, I couldn’t help but notice the unifying theme: as the years moved on, my smile seemed to fade. By sixteen, I was practically scowling at the camera—angry, dark, sullen.

I was getting sicker, and it showed.

The joy was gone, too. No surprise there. I’d made my full tour of duty through hell by then and had the battle scars to prove it.

I stuffed the photos away in a sock drawer, then brought my attention back to the other items, most of which I vaguely recognized: a red plastic squirt gun, a few comic books, an old pack of gum with only two sticks remaining. Why she had saved any of these was beyond me. She’d tossed plenty of things far more valuable after I’d left for college without once bothering to ask if I wanted them.

But there was something I definitely did not recognize.

A gold chain and pendant. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a Saint Christopher medal, and while the length was short enough to belong to a woman, I knew I’d never seen my mother wearing it. Turning it over confirmed it: the initials were NAK. I tried to think whether we knew anyone with a name that matched but came up with nothing.

I placed it on the bed, stared at it, then looked back at the pile and discovered something else: an old, yellowed envelope addressed to my mother, postmarked July 3, 1976, from Stover, Illinois. The letter inside was written on stationary from the Greensmith Hotel:

C-

I won’t have access to a telephone for the next few days. Most of the lines are down due to the damage here. About your call during my stay in Chicago. Stop worrying. Trust me, that’s one body they’ll never find. Everything is taken care of.

-W

I swallowed hard. No name from the sender, but there didn’t need to be. I recognized the handwriting: Warren’s.

Chapter Five

The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up.

It was as if I’d accidentally stumbled across a conversation between two strangers. Evil ones.

What the hell do I have here?

And where was this body hidden that no one would ever find?

The necklace. I laid it across my palm and studied it. Where did it come from? Was I misunderstanding? Overreacting?

But they were talking about a damned body, for Christ’s sake.

Whose body? I had initials on a necklace, a date, and a location. I also had Sully. It might not have been connected…or it might be. He could help me find out.

I found the phone and dialed his number.

Jack Sullenfeld was my best friend in college and probably the smartest guy I know. He works as an Intel analyst for the F.B.I., and he’s my go-to guy when I’m on the hunt for sensitive data, information normally unavailable to the public.

Sully answered on the second ring. “Well, if it isn’t—”

“I need your help,” I interrupted, mindlessly rolling the necklace between my fingers.

“You sound funny.”

“I’m under a little stress.”

He paused, then spoke his words slowly, “Okay. What do you have?”

“Need you to look at missing persons or murder cases around 1976. Possible victim’s initials: NAK. The location might be in or near Stover, Illinois.”