I needed someone to talk to, someone whom I could trust implicitly. Nick? No. The lawyer we’d hired, Thurston Carver? No. And then the answer came, and it was so simple I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner: Lucas Reeves! He had been in on the investigation since the beginning. He had interviewed Nick and Barbara and Bruce and the Kramers. I called his office. It was only 8:30, but he was already there. He told me to come over as soon as I could make it. He said that he and his staff were working on nothing but finding Leesey’s abductor.
“Even if it’s Mack?” I said.
“Of course, even if it’s Mack, but I absolutely do not believe the answer lies with him.”
I showered, then turned on the television and watched as I dressed. The police had released to the media the fact that another call had been received from Leesey. “The contents have not been revealed, but a police source confirmed that there is a high probability that she is now dead,” the CNN anchor said.
As I pulled on jeans and a long-sleeve cotton sweater, I thought that at least, by not releasing the exact contents of the conversation, Mack’s name had been kept out of it.
I like jewelry, and I always wear earrings and something around my neck. Today I chose a thin gold chain with a pearl that Daddy had given to me, and then I fished in the drawer for the earrings that Mack had presented to me on my sixteenth birthday. They were a gold sunburst design with a tiny diamond in the center. I felt close to both Daddy and Mack as I fastened them.
It was about a mile from Sutton Place to Reeves’s office, but I decided to walk. After so much time in the car in the last few days, I needed the exercise. The question was how I could avoid the media.
I did it by going down to the garage and waiting for a few minutes until a resident of the building came along. Then I begged a ride. He was a distinguished-looking older man. I had never met him. “Could I just hide on the floor of your backseat until we’re a couple of blocks away?” I pleaded.
He looked at me sympathetically. “Ms. MacKenzie, I certainly understand why you want to get away without the media, but I’m afraid I’m not the one who should help you. I’m a federal judge.”
I almost laughed in disbelief. But then the judge signaled to someone who had just gotten off the elevator. “Hi, David,” he said. “This young lady needs help, and I know you’ll provide it.” Feeling my cheeks burn with embarrassment, I thanked them both.
David whoever-he-was dropped me off at Park and Fifty-seventh. I walked the rest of the way, my thoughts as scattered as the scraps of paper that the breeze was picking up and depositing near the curb. The month of May was almost over. O Mary, we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May. We used to sing that every May at the Academy of the Sacred Heart, and one year, when I was about seven, I got to crown the statue of the Virgin.
Fast-forward to the scene today-me kneeling on the floor of the car to avoid microphones and cameras!
When I got to Lucas Reeves’s office, the sight of that small, strong-featured man with the resonant voice helped me to focus again. He pumped my hand vigorously, as if he understood I needed human contact. “Come inside, Carolyn,” he said. “I’ve got quite a setup in here.” He led me into a large conference room. The walls were covered with pictures in which faces had been enlarged. Some of them were inside shots, others had obviously been taken outside. “These start when the first young woman disappeared ten years ago,” Reeves explained. “We’ve culled them from newspaper pictures, television clips, security cameras. They were taken in and around the clubs where the four young women disappeared. I have invited the detective squad of the District Attorney’s office to come here and inspect them to see if, just maybe, one face will trigger a connection that has been missed so far. Why don’t you look at them?”
I walked around the room, stopping when I saw the faces of Mack and Nick and some of their friends at that first club. They looked so young, I thought. Then I walked around all four walls, from one collage to the next, and then to the next, my eyes searching and searching. At one point, I stopped. That looks like-, I thought, then almost laughed out loud. How stupid. I couldn’t even see the man’s face, just his eyes and forehead.
“Anything?” Lucas asked.
“No. Just the obvious ones of Mack and Nick in that first club.”
“All right. Let’s go into my office.”
We settled in there. The ritual coffee was delivered, and then I told Lucas Reeves what I had learned in Martha’s Vineyard. He listened, his expression becoming increasingly grave. “So it now seems that Mack had a very good reason for disappearing. A woman he did not love was bearing his child. He did not want to marry her. He did not want to go to law school. So rather than risk the certain disappointment your parents, especially your father, would have felt, he ran away. The root cause of a vast majority of crimes is one of two factors, love or money. In Mack’s case, the primary motive for his disappearance would be his lack of love for Barbara.”
Reeves leaned back in his chair. “People have run away for less. If-and I repeat, if-Mack was involved in the death of that first young woman, that also might explain the theft of the tapes from his former teacher. When she was interviewed, she could give no explanation for his disappearance, except to say that he would have made an exceptionally fine actor. But perhaps he confided too much to her, and felt he had to retrieve his tapes somehow. I have studied the records. Her death was caused not so much by the blow to her head that rendered her unconscious, but by the fall itself onto the sidewalk. That was what caused the bleeding in the brain that took her life.”
He stood up and walked to the window. “Carolyn, there are questions here that we have not yet answered. Even if your brother is part of it, I don’t think he is all of it.” He paused, then added: “When I called Captain Ahearn, he did not divulge the full contents of the message Leesey left, but he did say she spoke about Mack.”
“Detective Barrott told me what she said.” My throat closed as I quoted Leesey’s agonizing words, and then I repeated what I had shouted at Barrott.
“And you are correct. She may have been forced to use his name.”
“I keep coming back to the fact that Bruce Galbraith hates Mack,” I said. “Think how much he must have hated him when Mack was involved with Barbara. Suppose Mack did just take off.” I started to speculate. “Suppose Bruce is still afraid he’ll show up someday, and Barbara will go running to him. She claims she hates Mack, but I wonder if that’s true. Mack was such a special human being. He always said that Bruce had zero personality. When I saw Bruce last week, he was openly hostile, so it was obviously not a normal social exchange. But he’s a plain-looking guy, and while he may be hugely successful, I bet that on a day-to-day basis, he’s still the same dull and boring person. Nick said they called him ‘the Lone Stranger,’ and he was in the club the night the first girl disappeared.” I watched Reeves as he considered all of this.
“I wonder how thoroughly Mr. Galbraith was investigated ten years ago,” Reeves said. “I’ll look into it.”
I got up. “I won’t keep you any longer, Lucas,” I said. “But I’m glad to have you in my corner.” I corrected myself, “In Mack’s corner, too.”
“Yes, I am.” He walked with me through the reception area to the door. “Carolyn, if I may be personal, you are living under a strain that would break the most hardy of men. Is there a place you could get away to, to be by yourself, or with a close friend?” He looked at me with concern.
“I’m thinking about it,” I said. “But first I’m going to visit my mother, whether she wants to see me or not. As you know, she’s in that private sanitarium in Connecticut, where Elliott brought her.”
“I do know.” At the door, Reeves took my hand again. “Carolyn, the entire detective squad from the District Attorney’s office will be in and out all afternoon. Maybe one of them will spot a face in that sea of faces that will open a door for us.”
I walked home. This time I did not try to sneak into the apartment building. The doors of media vans that had been keeping vigil sprang open, and reporters came rushing up to me as I approached our building.
“Carolyn…what do you think?”
“Ms. MacKenzie, would you broadcast an appeal to your brother to turn himself in?”
I turned to face the microphones. “I will broadcast an appeal to one and all to presume my brother innocent of any and all crimes. Remember, there is not one shred of proof against him. Everything is based on innuendo and supposition. And let me remind all of you that there are libel laws and serious penalties for violating them.”
I hurried inside, not giving them a chance to respond. I went up to the apartment and began to return the phone calls I had been ignoring. The first was to Nick. His relief at hearing my voice seemed so spontaneous that I tucked it away in a corner of my mind as something to think about later.
“Carolyn, don’t do this to me. I’ve been a wreck. I even called Captain Ahearn to see if they were holding you
