Strangled - Brian McGrory [21]
The envelope still had some heft to it, so I reached tentatively inside and felt a small rectangular placard. I had the sense of holding someone’s death warrant — or perhaps death certificate. I pulled it out slowly and saw a woman’s smiling visage on a Massachusetts driver’s license. She had dark hair parted in the middle that framed a slender face with a long jaw. Her eyes were big and blue, her mouth large in that Carly Simon kind of way. She looked like someone who knew what she wanted in this world and wasn’t afraid to spend time and capital to get it. Her name was Lauren S. Hutchens, and if she wasn’t dead already, she was probably about to be.
The license listed an address in Lexington, a wealthy suburb about a dozen miles northwest of Boston. I ran back to the phone, dialed information, and asked for a Lauren Hutchens in Lexington.
I went through that whole computerized rigmarole that usually means there is nobody by that name, and then a woman got on the line and told me I was out of luck.
“Any Hutchenses in Lexington,” I asked, trying not to sound breathless, though I was of the mind that time had suddenly become crucial.
“I have one, a Walter Hutchens on Dome Road,” she said.
I told her I’d take it, and dialed it as quickly as my fingers would allow.
Come about the fifth ring, the sleepy voice of a woman said, “Hello.” It was then I realized how early in the morning this was. Didn’t matter. I asked for Lauren. The woman hesitated and said, “She doesn’t live here.”
“Any idea how I might get in contact with her?” I asked.
“This is her mother. She moved into Boston last year. Can I help you with something?”
My heart sank. The truth was not a viable option, not the whole truth, anyway. I said, “This is Jack Flynn, a reporter for the Boston Record. I’m trying to speak with Lauren about a story I’m writing.”
A long silence, long to me anyway. I wondered if she was about to tell me that her daughter was dead, the victim of a murderer who hadn’t yet been caught. Instead she said, still sleepy, “She moved into town a year ago.”
“Do you have her number?” I asked, trying to sound neither pushy nor panicked.
“I can call her and pass along your information.”
Everyone’s suspicious of the news media these days.
I gave her my cell phone and work numbers and asked if she could call sooner rather than later. And with that, I hung up.
I dialed information again, this time asking for a Lauren Hutchens in Boston. There was an L. Hutchens on Park Drive, and I called that number but got no answer. When it kicked over to a recorded greeting, the woman’s voice, strong and resonant, sounded like it would go with the picture that I held in my hand. I asked her to call me and gave her my numbers. I had something more than a feeling that she’d never have the chance.
7
Peter Martin and Vinny Mongillo were already sitting in Martin’s corner office as I made my way through the darkened, empty newsroom, the Phantom Fiend’s envelope in my hand, a little bit of dread in my heart — and maybe a tinge of embarrassment and a bit of excitement over the story that was beginning to unfold.
The two of them were sitting at a small, square conference table when I walked in, Mongillo taking the last bite of a Krispy Kreme doughnut that he had pulled from a half-empty box that sat between them. Truth be told, Mongillo had lost about seventy-five pounds in the prior year and was continuing to lose weight the way Frank Sinatra shed wives, until Krispy Kreme opened its first store in Boston proper. The board of directors of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Inc., must set aside ten minutes at their annual