on the top half of the door.
“So what do you think?” Wisdom asks after they reassume their seats.
Bennett pulls his chair closer to Wisdom despite the fact that they’re alone.
“I think we just found someone who had a real reason to make our friend Heidi disappear. Lucky for her she wasn’t in town back in early May. But we’ll check that out just to be sure. By the way. Posner and Stern are both Jewish, aren’t they?”
Wisdom nods then leaves to find and update Chief Ferris while Bennett returns to his routine, which includes updating NYPD, whose interest had fallen from curiosity to nonexistent in the past few months. As far as he can tell, he’s the only one in law enforcement who has the slightest interest in finding out about what happened to Heidi Kashani. There is Bennett, of course, but his interest at this point seems more academic than anything else. Maybe he thinks it’s all just a waste of everyone’s time. And the chief? Well, his top priority is not to discover a body hidden away somewhere in tourist season. Soon after the issue was first raised, Wisdom and Chief Ferris briefed two town councilmen and the supervisor about the case and left the elected officials with the assurances that, “If something bad happened to the young woman, it couldn’t have been in our town.”
Wisdom is for all intent and purposes on his own. So be it, he thinks.
CHAPTER 7
Ten days have gone by since the first meeting with Brigid. Summer is now almost officially over and nothing about the missing New York female doctor has surfaced to disturb the Town Board. Then out of nowhere, Brigid calls to advise Wisdom she’s rented a house in Montauk for the next two months.
“It’s on the Old Montauk Highway and looks out over the ocean. I’ve never lived in such a place before.”
Wisdom tells her he hopes she’ll find some peace and comfort and was about to hang up when she says she has an idea she needs to speak to him about. She says it’s important.
He reluctantly agrees to meet with her later that afternoon, but not before repeating to her what Bennett said at their initial meeting,
“You realize that this is still a local investigation. So far there’s no basis for calling in the County on suspicion of a major crime. And as far as NYPD, the New York City Police, well, they’re just happy she didn’t disappear in the city.”
“Yes, I know all this,” she says almost too quickly, “But I am living here for now and I want to do something. I need to talk to someone, certainly not the FBI or the New York City Police. It’s far easier to talk to someone I’ve already met who’s also out here. Can’t I just do that?”
At five thirty that afternoon Wisdom pulls his unmarked blue Ford Crown Vic into an empty driveway that descends slightly from Old Montauk Highway. The driveway curves around to behind the house where he assumes she parks, but he stops and parks just feetfrom the front door. He sighs with a controlled weariness and glances again through the case file that rests on the empty passenger seat. He stares one last time at the photo of Heidi. He has gotten to know her face well over the past several months, but until meeting her sister he never really began to have a sense of the person.
The house is low and wrapped with horizontal slices of worn cedar planks that glisten with flashes of silver in the late afternoon sun. From the driveway with the curtains open he looks through the large picture window that exposes a stark interior. He sees an even larger picture window at the back of the room that guards a rear deck cantilevered out from the cliff it had been built into. Specks of white foam fly out from above the ocean beyond. From experience he knows that there is likely another floor downstairs that isn’t visible from the outside. All in all, quite a house.
He walks from the car to the front door. As he waits for a reply to his knock, he hears the rhythm of rolling surf some
“So what do you think?” Wisdom asks after they reassume their seats.
Bennett pulls his chair closer to Wisdom despite the fact that they’re alone.
“I think we just found someone who had a real reason to make our friend Heidi disappear. Lucky for her she wasn’t in town back in early May. But we’ll check that out just to be sure. By the way. Posner and Stern are both Jewish, aren’t they?”
Wisdom nods then leaves to find and update Chief Ferris while Bennett returns to his routine, which includes updating NYPD, whose interest had fallen from curiosity to nonexistent in the past few months. As far as he can tell, he’s the only one in law enforcement who has the slightest interest in finding out about what happened to Heidi Kashani. There is Bennett, of course, but his interest at this point seems more academic than anything else. Maybe he thinks it’s all just a waste of everyone’s time. And the chief? Well, his top priority is not to discover a body hidden away somewhere in tourist season. Soon after the issue was first raised, Wisdom and Chief Ferris briefed two town councilmen and the supervisor about the case and left the elected officials with the assurances that, “If something bad happened to the young woman, it couldn’t have been in our town.”
Wisdom is for all intent and purposes on his own. So be it, he thinks.
CHAPTER 7
Ten days have gone by since the first meeting with Brigid. Summer is now almost officially over and nothing about the missing New York female doctor has surfaced to disturb the Town Board. Then out of nowhere, Brigid calls to advise Wisdom she’s rented a house in Montauk for the next two months.
“It’s on the Old Montauk Highway and looks out over the ocean. I’ve never lived in such a place before.”
Wisdom tells her he hopes she’ll find some peace and comfort and was about to hang up when she says she has an idea she needs to speak to him about. She says it’s important.
He reluctantly agrees to meet with her later that afternoon, but not before repeating to her what Bennett said at their initial meeting,
“You realize that this is still a local investigation. So far there’s no basis for calling in the County on suspicion of a major crime. And as far as NYPD, the New York City Police, well, they’re just happy she didn’t disappear in the city.”
“Yes, I know all this,” she says almost too quickly, “But I am living here for now and I want to do something. I need to talk to someone, certainly not the FBI or the New York City Police. It’s far easier to talk to someone I’ve already met who’s also out here. Can’t I just do that?”
At five thirty that afternoon Wisdom pulls his unmarked blue Ford Crown Vic into an empty driveway that descends slightly from Old Montauk Highway. The driveway curves around to behind the house where he assumes she parks, but he stops and parks just feetfrom the front door. He sighs with a controlled weariness and glances again through the case file that rests on the empty passenger seat. He stares one last time at the photo of Heidi. He has gotten to know her face well over the past several months, but until meeting her sister he never really began to have a sense of the person.
The house is low and wrapped with horizontal slices of worn cedar planks that glisten with flashes of silver in the late afternoon sun. From the driveway with the curtains open he looks through the large picture window that exposes a stark interior. He sees an even larger picture window at the back of the room that guards a rear deck cantilevered out from the cliff it had been built into. Specks of white foam fly out from above the ocean beyond. From experience he knows that there is likely another floor downstairs that isn’t visible from the outside. All in all, quite a house.
He walks from the car to the front door. As he waits for a reply to his knock, he hears the rhythm of rolling surf some
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