Vanished in the Dunes

sunlight.

“Hello,” he calls out into the silence. He waits. It’s probably no more than thirty seconds, yet seems longer, until he hears a rustle of movement to the side. He turns to the right barely in time to catch a flash of a minidress with pink-and-white polka dots.

“What do you think?” she says and spins onto a short pirouette.

Wisdom draws in his breath. She is no longer Brigid, but has transformed herself into Heidi. He feels he’s seeing a ghost. She has used the photo in the police files to copy her sister’s look. The dress is tight and cut low over her breasts. He hasn’t a clue how she managed to get so similar a dress in such a short a time. She wears hoop earrings and a hint of color seems to swell her lips. There is barely a touch of other makeup. She stands scarcely five feet away and he realizes this is what Heidi’s boyfriend, the doctor, and obviously others have seen; a voluptuous woman with a dark riveting stare that has the capacity to instantly arouse.

That’s the moment when he remembers the name of the old film he’d thought about over the past weeks. It was called Laura. The protagonist is a cop investigating the murder of a woman whose face had been obliterated by a shotgun blast. The cop sits in the dead woman’s apartment trying to make sense of her death while a portrait of the slain woman, which hangs in the room, becomes a visible companion. The woman is beautiful and the cop can’t help but stare wistfully at the waste her death has brought, while he imagines what it might have been like to know her. Then the door opens and the woman appears, still alive and even more attractive than the painted image. Another woman had been killed by accident and the cop is suddenly confronted with the live object of his fantasies.

This is how Wisdom feels. He is looking at Brigid, but seeing Heidi. Seeing her as all the others may have seen her, and in a moment as clear as fall air, he’s pretty sure he knows why she’s asked him here and what this is all about.

Two days later Chief Ferris can only promise Wisdom a short meeting, but it turns out he miscalculates. The New York Times is doing one of its endless annual pieces on life in the Hamptons, or as one reporter had asked the previous year, “Other than DWIs, do you get any serious crimes here after Labor Day?” But this interview will have to wait. That morning’s half-finished cappuccino cup rests on the corner of the gray steel desk dangerously close to Wisdom’s loafers. He checks his watch, swings his legs off the desk, and grunts silently at the minor effort. He gathers the Heidi file in one hand, snatches the cappuccino in the other, and moves quickly down the corridor toward the chief’s office.

Wisdom takes nearly ten minutes to tell his story and then does it again when they are joined by the town attorney, and then for a third time when Sergeant Bennett arrives. They discuss whether it’s still too early to call in County’s major-crimes people. In the end, they compromise on the plan to have Bennett call his counterpart at County and fill him in on where they stand as of as now. Then they go round and round regarding the strategy Wisdom has presented and its pitfalls, particularly entrapment.

“It’s all her idea. Brigid’s,” he explains. “But I think it’s worth trying. She feels that since she looks so much like her sister, if she appears suddenly in front of any possible suspects, it might trigger a shock that could produce some worthwhile reaction. We have nothing to lose if we’re careful about the entrapment issue and we could have a wire available to avoid a problem.”

“Shock and awe,” mumbles Bennett. His voice fills a momentary lull before the town attorney infuriates Wisdom when he asks him to review the plan still again.

Wisdom dutifully repeats his earlier narration of his visit to Brigid’s rented house in Montauk. He describes how she looked much like her missing sister whose photo has previously been shared with all participants. But this time the review of the meeting with Brigid produces an unusual, more personal effect. His thoughts wander even as he speaks about her plan. It is as if his brain separates the area that controls his mechanically delivered speech that deals with a strategy from another, more distant part of his mind that replays a more private memory about her effect on him on that afternoon.

She leads him into the whitewashed living space and waits until he sits on the light beige leather sofa. The wide planked floors are bleached and coated with a clear dull finish. The walls are bare, except for one abstract oil composed of slashes of black, gray, and the ubiquitous white. A heavy glass ashtray rests on a white painted rattan coffee table that fronts the sofa.

“Would you like something to drink? Some wine?” she asks. “I’m having a nice Chardonnay from here on Long Island. From a vineyard called Wolffer Estate. Do you know it?”

“Yes, it’s got a good reputation, and thanks, but I’ll pass for now.”

As he speaks, she reaches down to an end table and lifts a half-filled glass to her mouth. After she sips he sees a wet film spread across her lips. He feels a flush rising in his face.

“I imagine that I don’t need your permission to smoke in my own house, but do you mind?”

“No,” he says although something actually makes him want to smoke himself even though he hasn’t had an urge for several years.

He watches her draw a cigarette from a packet of Gauloises and light the end with a blue flame. She sits next to him with one arm on the back edge of the sofa barely inches from his shoulder while she holds the cigarette in her free hand. He notices that she wears no jewelry and that her nails are clipped short and without polish. She crosses one leg over the other so that the already short skirt rides up her thigh.

It is all so obvious and he tells her so then adds, “So what’s this all about? Why the show?”

She smiles. A good smile. He hadn’t seen her smile before. She uncrosses her legs, sits up straight and smoothes her skirt.

“I look like her. We both know I do. You’ve seen her photo. When we were still in our teens we used to dress up when our parents were out. We’d try on sexy things and compete with each other. And this is how she might have looked and acted. I know. I’ve seen her do it before. I mean attracting men. What do you think? Is this an attractive look?”

She was playing him. They both know it and he smiles back at her, but there is something else going on, at least for Wisdom. It is all about sexuality. Her sexuality. He can’t help himself. His eyes are riveted on her face and body. He imagines the full lips under his. His mind peels away the top of her dress and sees her breasts, heavy with brown nipples, then lifts away the thong underwear and finds a mass of dark moist curls spread across the vee between her legs. All this passes in the seconds she takes to flick an ash from the end of her cigarette. It is in his mind, even more so after hearing firsthand about Heidi. So this is the look that drove her boyfriend and others crazy with lust. Maybe the same look that tipped the balance of safety against her. He barely notices when Brigid excuses herself and disappears into another room, but he’s thankful. If he had to stand the bulge in his pants would have been all too obvious.

She comes back a few minutes later looking as she had the day they’d first met at the department. She’s exchanged the dress for a white blouse buttoned to the edge of her neck, dark pants, a green cardigan sweater, and simple black flats. The transformation back is complete. She is once again the nice-looking thirty-something career woman from Europe who works for the UN. There is no hint of the overt sexuality he’d witnessed minutes before.

“You’ve changed.” He knows the words are unnecessary, but he really wants to ask why.

“I had to. I felt too much like her. I felt almost—dirty.”

Wisdom doesn’t answer and feels embarrassed at his earlier thoughts. They spend the next twenty minutes going over her ideas and his reservations, and in the end he promises to see if he can sell the idea. He leaves the house as the last fingers of sunlight stretch across the driveway. He starts to drive away and finds himself laboring under a growing cloud of guilt about why he wishes she hadn’t changed out of the pink-and-white dress.

The police and attorneys agree it isn’t entrapment if she doesn’t say anything more than a hello. It’s agreed that safety requires Wisdom accompany her to meetings with Posner and Welbrook even though NYPD’s investigation has confirmed Wisdom’s view that that Welbrook’s openly gay and would likely have had no obvious interest in being involved with Heidi. Still, he was a long shot possibility and at some point should be confronted, but not at first. That honor will belong to Posner and Stern. They will need to separately talk to NYPD about the doctor boyfriend, but Bennett is confident the city cops will go along. The plan is to try for meetings within the next week. Wisdom will call to set up appointments. The whole meeting lasts just over an hour. Wisdom goes back to his office and pulls out phone numbers for Welbrook and Posner. Then he stares at the phone and considers what he might say.