The Perfect Husband - Lisa Gardner [132]
Tess just smiled. “That’s what Difford used to say.”
“YES, I UNDERSTAND the doctor is dead. We just need some way of verifying this death certificate. Yes, ma’am, twenty years is a long time ago. Do you have copies in the hospital files? Or maybe a nurse or someone else in attendance at the time still works at the hospital. Yeah, I’ll hold.” Detective Epstein rolled his eyes. He hated this kind of grunt work.
Jim Beckett’s foster parents had been dead less than ten years, so verifying their death certificates hadn’t been tough. They’d gotten lucky with his birth father—a police officer who’d arrived at the traffic accident twenty years ago was still on the force. He confirmed James Beckett had been DOA, a victim of a four-car pileup.
Verifying the death certificate for Mary Beckett was more difficult. The doctor who’d signed the original certificate was dead and the hospital bureaucrats had bigger matters than hunting down records on someone who’d died twenty years earlier.
The person came back on the line. Detective Epstein stopped twirling his pencil.
“Archives? What do you mean by archives? In a separate storage facility. Well, sure I understand the volume of records you must have. Is there a system? Can you send some exhausted intern to search? Well, ma’am, I’d send an officer, but you’re not really going to let us paw through your records unattended, are you? That’s what I thought. So what time is good for you? Yeah, an hour it is.”
He hung up the phone and rubbed his eyes. Technically his shift had ended two hours ago. It was about to extend for several hours more.
Night was falling soon. The first night with Tess Williams in her old house, and Team A was feeling the pressure. If they could find Jim or Samantha Beckett ahead of time, they’d save everyone a lot of trouble. There were twelve of them working now. Epstein had taken over confirming the last death certificate. Four officers were hunting down the numbers Shelly Zane had forwarded calls to over the last two years. Eight officers still reviewed the hotline logs, following up leads, chasing down ghosts. Shit, this case was killing them all.
Epstein had known Difford. He’d respected the lieutenant very much. Once they’d gone to a Red Sox game together. Difford had been one of the few locals who’d remained loyal to the Red Sox even in the rotten years—the long, long periods of them.
Epstein picked up his jacket. “Andrews, you available?”
“Only if I have to be.”
“You have to be. Grab your coat. We have an appointment.”
“Where to?”
“A storage facility. We have a haystack to search for a needle.”
“Jesus, Epstein. You sure know how to show a guy a good time.”
MARION SAT IN the middle of the floor in the office she’d borrowed. She was surrounded by a sea of maps, all wearing different shades of pastels. She had New England maps, Massachusetts maps, Berkshire County maps, and Williamstown maps. They frolicked around her, holding the secret to long life.
She’d been staring at them all day, and now her vision was blurred. She was also having difficulty concentrating.
For no good reason she remembered being seven years old and ducking with J.T. behind a sofa cushion as Melhelia, their maid, launched another sock grenade over the defensive perimeter of decorative pillows.
J.T. was laughing. Merry Berry was giggling. It defied the imagination.
She shook her head. She blinked her eyes three times, then popped them open and focused on the maps. She didn’t want to think of herself or long-ago days. She didn’t want to think of the shadow that hovered behind the laughing Merry Berry, the dark shadow that tinged the edges of all her memories, even the good ones.
She wanted to think of Beckett. She wanted to crawl behind his eyes.
“We have more in common than you can imagine,” she muttered. “Ice. It’s all about ice.”
No empathy, no compassion. Just the cool practicality and efficient ruthlessness of immoral genius. No restraints, no boundaries. If you could think of it, you could do it.
She stared at the maps harder, willing the dispassion