Now You See Her - Michael Ledwidge [27]
Boston Globe, September 22, 1988
Boston Globe, October 29, 1988
You’re not safe. I can help. Call me.
I’d felt disoriented and tense ever since he’d given me the card. What did the Boston Globe have to do with me? And why had I been approached by an FBI agent? Was he watching Peter? Had he been doing surveillance when I spotted him the first time at the Hemingway Home wedding? Of who? Elena? Me? Was he trying to recruit me or something?
I didn’t have answers, but I had kept the card hidden.
I took a breath and typed “Peter Fournier” along with “Boston Globe” into the search engine and hit Enter.
The screen blinked. I began to cough as two links popped up.
Both were from the Boston Globe. The dates matched those on the card.
I quickly clicked on the first one before I could think of a reason not to. The screen blacked out for a second, and a little hourglass icon appeared. I was about to get up to ask Alice what was wrong when an image appeared.
Boston Globe
September 22, 1988
ROOKIE COP’S WIFE KILLED IN ROBBERY
Chapter 32
September 22, 1988
ROOKIE COP’S WIFE KILLED IN ROBBERY
Amanda Fournier, wife of Boston Police Department rookie Peter Fournier, was killed in a holdup of a Boston delicatessen on Thursday. Around noon, witnesses say, a masked man entered the establishment, brandishing a shotgun and demanding money. The assailant grabbed for Mrs. Fournier’s purse, and during the struggle the gun discharged, killing the twenty-year-old instantly. The suspect fled in a blue Chevy pickup truck. The Fourniers, police sources said, were planning to start a family.
I swallowed involuntarily, my hand shaking. I felt like throwing up, like I’d been kicked in the stomach.
Coffee shot out of the lid of my cup, scalding my jittery hand, but I couldn’t feel it.
The date seemed to make sense. It was Peter. I could feel it in the marrow of my pregnant bones.
He’d had a wife? A wife who’d been killed?! Why didn’t he tell me that he was a widower? I wondered. He did tell me I was the first girl that he’d ever dated for more than a month. He’d also told me he was from New York, not Boston. Which I’d accepted at face value despite the suspicious fact that he was a die-hard Red Sox fan.
“No!” I actually said out loud to the screen.
I wiped sweat from my face with my wrist. When I turned, Alice was looking at me funny from her desk.
“Everything OK in there?” she said.
“Fine,” I lied again as I looked back at the screen.
So what? I thought angrily. What did this prove? It was just a coincidence. Someone named Peter Fournier was a cop in Boston. There were lots of Peter Fourniers in the world. It was just a coincidence.
What was I doing here anyway? I wondered. Wasting my time was what. Driving myself crazy was what.
I stood and grabbed my barely touched coffee. I needed to get out of this cramped concrete box and go for a jog on the beach or a long swim. Maybe in the afternoon, I’d head down to one of the wharves in Old Town and buy some freshly caught wahoo in case Peter and Morley came back empty.
Maybe he was doing something he shouldn’t be doing, but we could deal with that. Checking up on him like I was Nancy Drew was too out there. Screw Björn and his cryptic bullshit. My trip to Crazyland was over. I needed to go where I belonged. Home. Now.
As I stood, I couldn’t help but remember the second link on the screen.
I clicked on the back arrow and stared at the Enter button as if it meant “Self-destruct.” Then I put my coffee back down and clicked.
“Come on already,” I said, nervously flicking the coffee’s plastic lid with my thumb as I waited for the screen to change.
There was a hum, and then my stomach dropped as the black screen turned to white. The first thing that appeared as I began to scroll down to the article was a smudgy photograph.
I stopped scrolling, my whole hand trembling on the mouse.
It was Peter.
He was a few years younger, and he was wearing a Boston PD uniform.
As I looked into Peter’s eyes, it felt like my throat was slowly