Mean Streak(20)

“Thank you for calling me,” he said. “We leave our cards with people but rarely expect to hear back from anybody. Especially not after so much time.”

“Four years, if I’m not mistaken.”

It had been four years since the mass shooting in Westboro, Virginia. He’d interviewed this young woman two months after that dreadful day but hadn’t spoken to her again until her unexpected call last night.

“Have a seat,” she said. “Can I get you anything?”

“No thanks.”

He sat down on the sofa indicated. The room was awash with sunlight coming in through the bay window that overlooked the street. It was a tree-lined, strictly residential block, situated between two of the busy boulevards of New York’s Upper West Side.

“Nice building,” he said. Apartments like this, which seemed to encompass the entire second floor of the brownstone, came with a hefty price tag.

As though reading his mind, she said, “My husband inherited it from his grandmother. She’d lived here for over forty years. We had to update it, of course. New baths, new kitchen. Best of all, it had a spare room for the nursery.”

“First child?”

“Yes. It’s a girl.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you. We’re excited.”

They exchanged the smile of polite strangers who had something important but uncomfortable to discuss. She launched the conversation. “Did you watch the video I e-mailed you?”

“No fewer than a dozen times. But I’d like to watch it with you to verify that I’m looking at the right woman.”

She went over to a cabinet that housed a stack of audiovisual components. She turned on the necessary ones, and a recording began playing on the flat screen TV mounted on the wall above the fireplace. She stood just to the side of it, remote control in hand. The call letters of a TV station were superimposed at the bottom of the picture.

“I’ve got it cued, so it will be coming up…there.” She paused the video and pointed out to him a woman, a face in a crowd. It had been a national news story, broadcast last evening. Protestors in Olympia, Washington, had marched on the state capitol building over the repeal of a gun law. The woman in question carried a picket sign.

“That’s who I thought you meant,” he said. “She looks somewhat like Rebecca Watson, but…I’m not a hundred percent.” Jack walked over to the TV to take a closer look. He studied the face, which was in the midst of dozens. “You picked her out of this?”

“The instant I saw her.”

He regarded her doubtfully.

“I knew Rebecca well. I moved to the city straight out of college, wet behind the ears. She took a chance on me. People don’t forget their first employer. We’d worked together at Macy’s for almost five years before the incident in Westboro, and not just as casual acquaintances. I was her right-hand assistant.

“We spent hours of each workday together. I was single then. She was recently divorced. Sometimes we’d go to her place after the regular business day and continue working, then share a bottle of wine. We were friends.”

She was repeating what she had told him four years earlier, when Rebecca Watson had gone missing and he’d questioned Eleanor about her friend’s sudden disappearance. The young woman had been upset and concerned. And truthful. He would stake his career on her veracity. But she’d had nothing useful to tell him then. He’d left her his card and asked that if she ever saw or heard from Rebecca Watson again to please contact him immediately.

Last night, she had. But he wouldn’t allow himself to get too excited over this development. Yet. For four years he’d followed leads that had looked promising. All had met with nothing but dead ends.

“She’s changed,” he remarked. Four years ago, he’d also spent time with Rebecca Watson, but they’d never split a bottle of wine. Their exchanges had been contentious. He’d questioned her at length. For hours. Days. She had told him from the very start that she would never give up her brother’s whereabouts to him, and she hadn’t.

“Her hair is different,” Eleanor Gaskin conceded. “But that’s easily changed.”

“She wore glasses then.”

“Large, horn-rimmed ones.” She smiled. “She thought they made her look more businesslike and gave her an advantage when driving a hard bargain. And, believe me, she could drive a bargain.”

“I believe you,” he said, remembering Rebecca Watson’s stubborn silence on the subject of her brother. Jack had never worn her down, and that failure still rankled. “I know we covered this territory back then, but maybe I missed something. Would you mind refreshing me?”

They returned to their seats and, with a gesture, Eleanor invited him to ask away.

“Did Rebecca talk to you about him, Mrs. Gaskin?”

“Her brother, you mean.”

Jack nodded.

“She talked about him a lot. Their parents had died, so there were just the two of them. I was almost as worried as she that he would be wounded or killed in Afghanistan. I didn’t think she could bear losing him. They were that devoted.

“When he got home, Rebecca was relieved, overjoyed. They had some really good times together. He doted on Sarah, sort of stepped in as a father figure. She adored her uncle. Then…” She looked at him ruefully and raised her shoulder.