Detective Frank Sturgess scratched his thick gray hair as he studied the report in his hand. He shook his head several times as he read it through. When he was finished, he added it to the mountain of papers strewn across his desktop and fished around until he found a small black cassette.
* * *
Using a pay phone in the library, Patricia Summers telephoned the restaurant to tell them she would not be coming back to work, and made an appointment at a beauty salon near her apartment. Her hair had grown out well since her return to Chicago in December, and she was ready to try something different.
Her third call was to a financial services company on LaSalle Street, confirming her four o’clock meeting with Mr. Arnold Nash. Arnold Nash, a handsome and smooth-talking investment advisor, had become the constant companion of Pat’s former wife. Her appointment was made in the name of Patricia Exman.
Bundling herself up against the sub-zero wind chill, she returned to State Street and headed north towards Talbot’s, which was having one of its blow-out clearances. Soon she would be buying her clothes with the employee discount at Marshall Field’s, but she needed something new for tonight.
She tried on several outfits before selecting a black cocktail dress with a knee-length pleated skirt, drastically marked down. After a few other stops for shoes, lingerie and a little clutch purse, she splurged on a taxi to the salon. Entering with a wind-blown, overgrown shag in her natural brunette, she emerged two hours later a stunning blonde.
* * *
Detective Sturgess had his answer as soon as he resumed listening to the tape.
“September 12, 2001. The subject has been anesthetized and is recovering without complications from a bilateral orchidectomy. I have preserved the scrotum for use as the labia in the patient’s vagina, and I am proceeding with the amputation of the penis and relocation of the urethra at this time. All vital signs are stable.”
Sturgess switched off the machine and reached for the phone. “I need the missing person reports for September 12th.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“What’s so funny.”
“We only had about three thousand missing persons that day, Frank. Where you been?”
“Jesus, you’re right, what was I thinking. You do have the list, thought, right?”
“Sure, Frank, I’ll drop by with one.”
Sturgess realized that he had been so absorbed by the bizarre world of Dr. Vendetta Frankenwiener, he had completely forgotten about the World Trade Center disaster the day before she dictated that entry. What were the chances that one of the persons reported missing that day had in fact wound up in her clutches?
He put on the earphones again and resumed listening. To his surprise, the next entry began as follows:
“October 1, 2001. The patient is beginning to come around. Good morning, Patricia.”
“Where am I?”
“New York.”
“What happened to my voice?”
“Your larynx has been shortened.”
“What? Who are you?”
“I am Dr. Frankenwiener. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh, my God. Oh, no.”
“Don’t try to get up. You are very weak.”
“Fuck off. Let me go.”
“Patricia, you have been unconscious for almost three weeks. If you tried to stand up without my help, you would fall down. In a minute, we will get up and try to go for a short walk.”
“Three weeks?”
“Yes. And so much has been accomplished! Your new vagina is healing wonderfully, and the estrogen therapy is going to round out your breasts to beautiful C cups. Your Adam’s apple is gone, you have already noticed your voice, and I even bobbed your nose.”
“Oh, Christ!”
“The estrogen is going to do wonders for your skin, and just yesterday I finished the last of the electrolysis treatments on your face. There is still a little swelling, and your hair is still too short, although it is growing out nicely. In another month, we could enter you in a beauty pageant!”
A stream of obscenities, in the new high-pitched voice of the doctor’s patient, filled Sturgess’s ears until the recorder was switched off. Sturgess continued to run the tape, hoping for more, but it ran silently until the spool ended with a metallic click.
* * *
Pat Summers shaved her legs in her tub, a huge improvement over the grungy bathroom in the hotel room she had been forced to live in after her escape from New York. She patted her smooth skin dry with a new over-sized towel, and after putting on her bra and panties, she stopped to survey her body in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Below her new blonde hairdo, which she had carefully kept dry during her soak in the tub, was a pretty woman’s face, the upturned nose the only change from Patrick Summer’s boyish features.
Her breasts were firm, her ass and hips had rounded out from months of female hormones, and her legs were terrific. When she had been a man, she had fantasized about having a body like this, never really wanting it to happen Now that it was hers, although she hated what had been done to her, she perversely wanted to take her new body for a test drive. To learn if she was capable of loving again, man or woman.
She shimmied into a black camisole and half slip, and dropped her new dress over her shoulders, being careful not to muss her hair. Since she had become a woman, she had learned to put her stockings on after she was dressed, to minimize the risk of running them. After she stepped into her new 3” heels, and applied a final coat of lipstick to her pouting mouth, she stood in front of the full length mirror and stepped back to survey herself. God, she was beautiful.
* * *
Detective Sturgess ran an alpha search on the list of missing persons from September 11, 2001, and then ran it again on a first name basis. There were seventeen Patricks, Patrices, and miscellaneous Pats. After eliminating the firemen, police officers and rescue workers, the list was down to nine. Of these, four had since been identified or turned up. That left five possible suspects.
Sturgess looked at the files for each, trying to imagine them as the person on the tape. Two he ruled out immediately: one weighed over three hundred pounds, and one was Bolivian. Another was sixty-one years old, and Sturgess eliminated him also. That left two possible suspects: Patrick Summers, from Chicago, and Patrick Moynihan, from Morristown, New Jersey. As Sturgess flipped through Moynihan’s file, he read of a cell phone call made by him the morning of September 11th from his office in the North Tower. A bond trader, Moynihan had been trapped above the point of impact, and there was no way he could have escaped. That left Patrick Summers.
* * *
“Mr. Nash, your four o’clock appointment is here.”
Arnold Nash looked up from his Wall Street Journal and scanned his calendar. Patricia Exman. Nash had never met her, and he wasn’t even sure how she had gotten his name and number. Referred by a happy client, he supposed. He straightened his tie in the mirror on the back of his office door, and put on his expensive suit jacket.
He opened his door to come face to face with one of the most striking women he had ever seen. She appeared to be about thirty, and Nash found himself speechless as she reached out with a firm hand and introduced herself. His secretary gave him a knowing smile as he invited his guest to sit down in one of the plush chairs in front of his desk.
“Can I offer you anything to drink?”
“Coffee would be nice.”
“How about a cappuccino or espresso?”
“Cappuccino would be wonderful,” she smiled, as she crossed her elegant legs and sat back in her chair. Nash buzzed his secretary and asked her for two cappuccinos.
“Have you lived in Chicago a long time?”
“No,” she answered. “I came here two years ago after I got married. My husband was from Chicago.”
Nash’s secretary returned with the cappuccinos, and after she left them alone, Nash began to probe. “You said was. Are you still married?”
“No, I left him after eighteen months. The divorce was finalized last week.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. I came home early one afternoon to find him parading around the bedroom in my panties and stockings.”
“Good Lord!”
She shrugged. “I hope I didn’t shock you, but I thought, if you’re going to be handling my money, we should have no secrets.”
* * *
Sturgess put down Patrick Summers' missing persons file and walked over to the window. Thirty-two years old, he was a financial analyst for a Chicago investment bank. Married with one daughter. Never been in trouble with the law. An upstanding citizen, who had happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time: Summers had flown to New York on September 10, 2001 and checked into the hotel at the World Trade Center. He had been scheduled to meet with New York associates the next day, but after the collapse of the World Trade Center and the evacuation of the financial district, he had never been heard from again.
Sturgess returned to his desk and called Summers’ former employers. No, the head of human resources told him, nobody at the office had talked to Summers after he checked in with his secretary on the afternoon of September 10th. The executor of his estate had petitioned for and obtained a death certificate, and the insurance benefits had been distributed to his widow.
“How much money did she receive?” Sturgess asked.
“Well, of course we have no way of knowing what was in his estate, but his company insurance alone was over two million dollars.” There was another $400,000 in his 401k, which would be distributed through probate.
Sturgess thanked her and hung up. The next call would be more difficult.
* * *
“How much would you like to invest with us?” Nash asked.
Pat had been waiting for this. “In return for keeping quiet, I got a very good settlement. Twelve million dollars.”
“So, you’re rich as well as beautiful. You must be a very popular woman.”
“I haven’t been with a man in over a year,” she sighed. “I’ve even taken up smoking, and right now, I’m dying for a cigarette.” Pat had deliberately scheduled her appointment with Nash at the end of the day, and it was time to set the trap.
“Unfortunately, we are a non-smoking office. Look, it’s almost five o’clock. Can I take you somewhere for a drink? We can continue to talk afterwards.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
Anne Summers turned down the evening news and picked up the telephone in the kitchen, where she was preparing a special dinner for her expected guest. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Patrick Summers?”
“Yes, this is Anne Summers.”
“Mrs. Summers, I am sorry to disturb you. My name is Frank Sturgess. I am a detective with the New York Police Department. Is this a bad time?”
“Well, I’m in the middle of fixing dinner right now. But I can talk to you.”
“Thanks, I’ll try to be brief. Mrs. Summers, I know that your husband was reported missing on September 11th of last year, and we still have an open file on him. Just for the record, have you had any contact from him?”
“No.”
“Some of the families of missing persons have been victimized by criminals claiming the identity of people lost in the World Trade Center, you know, to use their credit cards and such. Has there been any unusual activity in that regard?”
“No, all of our accounts were joint accounts, and there hasn’t been anything like that.”
“Has anybody contacted you on behalf of your husband?”
“No. Detective, the last time I talked to the authorities in New York, they told me to assume that my husband was dead.”
Sturgess was ready for this. “Frankly, up until this morning, I would have said the same to you. However, on the same day that your husband disappeared, a man named Pat was abducted in Greenwich Village. Did your husband know a doctor named Vendetta Frankenwiener?”
“Not that I know of. You said abducted. Has he been found?”
“No, but we have reason to believe that this person may still be alive, using a different identity.”
“Is there any chance he could be my husband?”
Sturgess pulled back. The woman’s answers were obviously genuine. If his suspect were indeed Patrick Summers, he had chosen a life of lonely exile, rather than subject his family to what had been done to him.
“No, ma’am, I don’t think so. Let me give you my number anyway, so you can call me if anyone tries to use his name or your accounts. Just as a precaution.”
After he hung up, Sturgess gathered up the file and tossed it onto a corner of his cluttered desk. Maybe Patrick Summers was alive somewhere. If he were ever found, there wasn’t a jury in the country that would convict him for murdering the hideous Dr. Frankenwiener.
What would something like that do to a person, Sturgess wondered. If you survived what Patrick Summers had gone through, what would you be capable of?
* * *
“Two dry martinis,” Nash told the waiter at the exclusive restaurant. He had suggested as an alternative to drinks an early dinner, and she had accepted readily. They sat side by side in a plush leather banquet in a dark corner of the restaurant, and she touched his hand as he lit her cigarette.
“You’re a very beautiful woman.”
“Do you date all your clients?”
“No,” he lied easily. “In fact, this is the first time it’s ever happened.”
The waiter returned with their martinis, and he offered a toast as she studied her menu. “To you, and your new life.” Buddy, if you only knew, Pat thought to herself as they touched glasses. As she sipped her martini, Pat felt his hand touch her knee. Deftly, she lowered her hand to his, and slid it a few inches up her silky thigh. She noticed with detachment that having a handsome man’s hand up her skirt did nothing for her. No matter. Back to business.
“Are you seeing anyone,” she asked him.
“No, I’ve been so busy with my work, I haven’t been out in ages.” Smooth, Pat had to admit to herself, since she had been shadowing him for two months, as he squired Anne Summers around Chicago.
The waiter returned, and it occurred to Pat that she was about to have her first gourmet meal in five months. Resisting the temptation to order an enormous steak, as Patrick would have done, she selected whitefish with a potato soufflé, and asparagus vinaigrette as a starter. The waiter produced a wine list, and she sat back and watched Nash order an expensive chardonnay. This was going to be fun.
She steered the conversation to her imaginary money. “Where do you think I should invest?”
“Tech stocks continue to offer the best opportunity for long range growth, and that’s what I would recommend to a beautiful young woman with her whole life ahead of her.”
“Aren’t they awfully risky?” In her prior life as an investment banker, Pat had correctly anticipated the bubble, and she wanted to find out what Nash was doing with Anne Summers’ insurance money.
“We anticipate significant increases this year and for the foreseeable future.”
God, what an airhead, Pat thought to herself as the waiter produced her asparagus and his heart of lettuce drenched in blue cheese dressing. With a pang of envy, she cut a dainty forkful of asparagus as she watched him dive in. His cell phone rang, and he turned away from her as he spoke into it. Was it Anne, calling to ask why he hadn’t called? Or was she expecting him tonight? Pat strained to listen.
“I’m sorry, something came up at the office. No, I won’t be able to make it tonight. Sorry. Call you tomorrow. Bye,” he whispered.
“Have I taken you away from something important?”
He touched her knee again, this time sliding it up her thigh without invitation. “No, Pat, I’m all yours.”
Pat excused herself to visit the ladies room between courses, feeling the sudden need to get away from him for a few minutes. Nash was not only an idiot, he was a cad, taking advantage of Anne Summers and risking their daughter's financial security. Pat would have to act tonight, she decided.
A gorgeous brunette entered the ladies room, and Pat caught herself staring at the girl as she lifted her skirt and fussed with her slip and stockings. She felt a tingle between her legs, and suddenly it dawned on Pat that she might be a lesbian. She smiled at herself in the mirror as she freshened her lipstick. A custom engineered, limited edition, lipstick lesbian.
She returned to the table just as their entrees were being served. She steered the conversation to little things while they ate. Where did Nash live? An apartment in Streeterville. Did he have any roommates? He lived alone. Would she like to see his apartment? Pat blushed, with genuine embarrassment, and said yes.
After dessert (berries for her, fudge cake for him) and coffee, he drove her to his apartment in his BMW, and she took his arm as they walked from the garage into the lobby of his smart highrise. They were alone together in the elevator, and they rode silently to his floor. She followed him to his apartment, and after he opened the door, she paused nervously before entering.
“Maybe we’re rushing this,” she said.
“I’ll just show you my view, and then I’ll take you home, if you don’t want to stay,” he said. The view was spectacular, and she stood at his floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lights of Chicago as he put on soft music and loosened his tie. He came up behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders. She turned around and reached up to kiss him, draping her arms languidly around his neck. Then, as he started to tongue her, Pat brought her knee up into his groin with terrific force.
Nash collapsed onto the floor in agony, gasping for breath as he started to throw up his steak dinner. Pat picked up a brass table lamp, and swung it down hard onto the back of his head. He struggled to get to his feet, and she hit him again with the lamp, knocking him back down. A third blow, and he lay motionless on the floor.
After feeling for a pulse, Pat removed her scarf and wiped her fingerprints off the lamp. She used it to close the door behind herself. She was not observed leaving his apartment, although the doorman later remembered seeing an attractive blonde come into the lobby with Nash, and leave alone a few minutes later.
* * *
POLICE SEARCH FOR SLAYER OF CHICAGO MAN
CHICAGO: Police are searching for a mysterious woman last seen on the arm of a Chicago man before he was murdered in his luxurious apartment. Arnold Nash, 34, was found dead on the floor of his lakefront residence, the victim of massive head trauma and a ruptured testicle. According to a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, Nash met earlier in the day with Patricia Exman, a Chicago woman who came to him for financial advice. They had dinner together at a restaurant on Rush Street before they were seen entering Nash’s apartment. The woman is described as about thirty, with blonde hair and extremely attractive. Here whereabouts are currently unknown.
Frank Sturgess put down his Daily News and looked out the window of his commuter train. Surely it was just a coincidence, he told himself, although there was something about that name…Patricia Exman. It would be interesting to find out if Arnold Nash had any connection to Patrick Summers. If one had the inclination.
* * *
Pat Summers, her hair cut and rinsed back into a mousy brown shag, pulled long wool socks over her stockings and laced up a pair of sneakers. She dropped her heels into her shoulder bag, and set off for her bus stop.
As she made her way in the cold winter air, she stopped at a newsstand to read the headlines. She had to run to her stop in order to catch her bus. Taking a seat on the way to her new job, she felt better about herself than she had in quite some time.
* * *
Using a pay phone in the library, Patricia Summers telephoned the restaurant to tell them she would not be coming back to work, and made an appointment at a beauty salon near her apartment. Her hair had grown out well since her return to Chicago in December, and she was ready to try something different.
Her third call was to a financial services company on LaSalle Street, confirming her four o’clock meeting with Mr. Arnold Nash. Arnold Nash, a handsome and smooth-talking investment advisor, had become the constant companion of Pat’s former wife. Her appointment was made in the name of Patricia Exman.
Bundling herself up against the sub-zero wind chill, she returned to State Street and headed north towards Talbot’s, which was having one of its blow-out clearances. Soon she would be buying her clothes with the employee discount at Marshall Field’s, but she needed something new for tonight.
She tried on several outfits before selecting a black cocktail dress with a knee-length pleated skirt, drastically marked down. After a few other stops for shoes, lingerie and a little clutch purse, she splurged on a taxi to the salon. Entering with a wind-blown, overgrown shag in her natural brunette, she emerged two hours later a stunning blonde.
* * *
Detective Sturgess had his answer as soon as he resumed listening to the tape.
“September 12, 2001. The subject has been anesthetized and is recovering without complications from a bilateral orchidectomy. I have preserved the scrotum for use as the labia in the patient’s vagina, and I am proceeding with the amputation of the penis and relocation of the urethra at this time. All vital signs are stable.”
Sturgess switched off the machine and reached for the phone. “I need the missing person reports for September 12th.”
“You gotta be kidding.”
“What’s so funny.”
“We only had about three thousand missing persons that day, Frank. Where you been?”
“Jesus, you’re right, what was I thinking. You do have the list, thought, right?”
“Sure, Frank, I’ll drop by with one.”
Sturgess realized that he had been so absorbed by the bizarre world of Dr. Vendetta Frankenwiener, he had completely forgotten about the World Trade Center disaster the day before she dictated that entry. What were the chances that one of the persons reported missing that day had in fact wound up in her clutches?
He put on the earphones again and resumed listening. To his surprise, the next entry began as follows:
“October 1, 2001. The patient is beginning to come around. Good morning, Patricia.”
“Where am I?”
“New York.”
“What happened to my voice?”
“Your larynx has been shortened.”
“What? Who are you?”
“I am Dr. Frankenwiener. Don’t you remember?”
“Oh, my God. Oh, no.”
“Don’t try to get up. You are very weak.”
“Fuck off. Let me go.”
“Patricia, you have been unconscious for almost three weeks. If you tried to stand up without my help, you would fall down. In a minute, we will get up and try to go for a short walk.”
“Three weeks?”
“Yes. And so much has been accomplished! Your new vagina is healing wonderfully, and the estrogen therapy is going to round out your breasts to beautiful C cups. Your Adam’s apple is gone, you have already noticed your voice, and I even bobbed your nose.”
“Oh, Christ!”
“The estrogen is going to do wonders for your skin, and just yesterday I finished the last of the electrolysis treatments on your face. There is still a little swelling, and your hair is still too short, although it is growing out nicely. In another month, we could enter you in a beauty pageant!”
A stream of obscenities, in the new high-pitched voice of the doctor’s patient, filled Sturgess’s ears until the recorder was switched off. Sturgess continued to run the tape, hoping for more, but it ran silently until the spool ended with a metallic click.
* * *
Pat Summers shaved her legs in her tub, a huge improvement over the grungy bathroom in the hotel room she had been forced to live in after her escape from New York. She patted her smooth skin dry with a new over-sized towel, and after putting on her bra and panties, she stopped to survey her body in the full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Below her new blonde hairdo, which she had carefully kept dry during her soak in the tub, was a pretty woman’s face, the upturned nose the only change from Patrick Summer’s boyish features.
Her breasts were firm, her ass and hips had rounded out from months of female hormones, and her legs were terrific. When she had been a man, she had fantasized about having a body like this, never really wanting it to happen Now that it was hers, although she hated what had been done to her, she perversely wanted to take her new body for a test drive. To learn if she was capable of loving again, man or woman.
She shimmied into a black camisole and half slip, and dropped her new dress over her shoulders, being careful not to muss her hair. Since she had become a woman, she had learned to put her stockings on after she was dressed, to minimize the risk of running them. After she stepped into her new 3” heels, and applied a final coat of lipstick to her pouting mouth, she stood in front of the full length mirror and stepped back to survey herself. God, she was beautiful.
* * *
Detective Sturgess ran an alpha search on the list of missing persons from September 11, 2001, and then ran it again on a first name basis. There were seventeen Patricks, Patrices, and miscellaneous Pats. After eliminating the firemen, police officers and rescue workers, the list was down to nine. Of these, four had since been identified or turned up. That left five possible suspects.
Sturgess looked at the files for each, trying to imagine them as the person on the tape. Two he ruled out immediately: one weighed over three hundred pounds, and one was Bolivian. Another was sixty-one years old, and Sturgess eliminated him also. That left two possible suspects: Patrick Summers, from Chicago, and Patrick Moynihan, from Morristown, New Jersey. As Sturgess flipped through Moynihan’s file, he read of a cell phone call made by him the morning of September 11th from his office in the North Tower. A bond trader, Moynihan had been trapped above the point of impact, and there was no way he could have escaped. That left Patrick Summers.
* * *
“Mr. Nash, your four o’clock appointment is here.”
Arnold Nash looked up from his Wall Street Journal and scanned his calendar. Patricia Exman. Nash had never met her, and he wasn’t even sure how she had gotten his name and number. Referred by a happy client, he supposed. He straightened his tie in the mirror on the back of his office door, and put on his expensive suit jacket.
He opened his door to come face to face with one of the most striking women he had ever seen. She appeared to be about thirty, and Nash found himself speechless as she reached out with a firm hand and introduced herself. His secretary gave him a knowing smile as he invited his guest to sit down in one of the plush chairs in front of his desk.
“Can I offer you anything to drink?”
“Coffee would be nice.”
“How about a cappuccino or espresso?”
“Cappuccino would be wonderful,” she smiled, as she crossed her elegant legs and sat back in her chair. Nash buzzed his secretary and asked her for two cappuccinos.
“Have you lived in Chicago a long time?”
“No,” she answered. “I came here two years ago after I got married. My husband was from Chicago.”
Nash’s secretary returned with the cappuccinos, and after she left them alone, Nash began to probe. “You said was. Are you still married?”
“No, I left him after eighteen months. The divorce was finalized last week.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Don’t be. I came home early one afternoon to find him parading around the bedroom in my panties and stockings.”
“Good Lord!”
She shrugged. “I hope I didn’t shock you, but I thought, if you’re going to be handling my money, we should have no secrets.”
* * *
Sturgess put down Patrick Summers' missing persons file and walked over to the window. Thirty-two years old, he was a financial analyst for a Chicago investment bank. Married with one daughter. Never been in trouble with the law. An upstanding citizen, who had happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time: Summers had flown to New York on September 10, 2001 and checked into the hotel at the World Trade Center. He had been scheduled to meet with New York associates the next day, but after the collapse of the World Trade Center and the evacuation of the financial district, he had never been heard from again.
Sturgess returned to his desk and called Summers’ former employers. No, the head of human resources told him, nobody at the office had talked to Summers after he checked in with his secretary on the afternoon of September 10th. The executor of his estate had petitioned for and obtained a death certificate, and the insurance benefits had been distributed to his widow.
“How much money did she receive?” Sturgess asked.
“Well, of course we have no way of knowing what was in his estate, but his company insurance alone was over two million dollars.” There was another $400,000 in his 401k, which would be distributed through probate.
Sturgess thanked her and hung up. The next call would be more difficult.
* * *
“How much would you like to invest with us?” Nash asked.
Pat had been waiting for this. “In return for keeping quiet, I got a very good settlement. Twelve million dollars.”
“So, you’re rich as well as beautiful. You must be a very popular woman.”
“I haven’t been with a man in over a year,” she sighed. “I’ve even taken up smoking, and right now, I’m dying for a cigarette.” Pat had deliberately scheduled her appointment with Nash at the end of the day, and it was time to set the trap.
“Unfortunately, we are a non-smoking office. Look, it’s almost five o’clock. Can I take you somewhere for a drink? We can continue to talk afterwards.”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
Anne Summers turned down the evening news and picked up the telephone in the kitchen, where she was preparing a special dinner for her expected guest. “Hello?”
“Mrs. Patrick Summers?”
“Yes, this is Anne Summers.”
“Mrs. Summers, I am sorry to disturb you. My name is Frank Sturgess. I am a detective with the New York Police Department. Is this a bad time?”
“Well, I’m in the middle of fixing dinner right now. But I can talk to you.”
“Thanks, I’ll try to be brief. Mrs. Summers, I know that your husband was reported missing on September 11th of last year, and we still have an open file on him. Just for the record, have you had any contact from him?”
“No.”
“Some of the families of missing persons have been victimized by criminals claiming the identity of people lost in the World Trade Center, you know, to use their credit cards and such. Has there been any unusual activity in that regard?”
“No, all of our accounts were joint accounts, and there hasn’t been anything like that.”
“Has anybody contacted you on behalf of your husband?”
“No. Detective, the last time I talked to the authorities in New York, they told me to assume that my husband was dead.”
Sturgess was ready for this. “Frankly, up until this morning, I would have said the same to you. However, on the same day that your husband disappeared, a man named Pat was abducted in Greenwich Village. Did your husband know a doctor named Vendetta Frankenwiener?”
“Not that I know of. You said abducted. Has he been found?”
“No, but we have reason to believe that this person may still be alive, using a different identity.”
“Is there any chance he could be my husband?”
Sturgess pulled back. The woman’s answers were obviously genuine. If his suspect were indeed Patrick Summers, he had chosen a life of lonely exile, rather than subject his family to what had been done to him.
“No, ma’am, I don’t think so. Let me give you my number anyway, so you can call me if anyone tries to use his name or your accounts. Just as a precaution.”
After he hung up, Sturgess gathered up the file and tossed it onto a corner of his cluttered desk. Maybe Patrick Summers was alive somewhere. If he were ever found, there wasn’t a jury in the country that would convict him for murdering the hideous Dr. Frankenwiener.
What would something like that do to a person, Sturgess wondered. If you survived what Patrick Summers had gone through, what would you be capable of?
* * *
“Two dry martinis,” Nash told the waiter at the exclusive restaurant. He had suggested as an alternative to drinks an early dinner, and she had accepted readily. They sat side by side in a plush leather banquet in a dark corner of the restaurant, and she touched his hand as he lit her cigarette.
“You’re a very beautiful woman.”
“Do you date all your clients?”
“No,” he lied easily. “In fact, this is the first time it’s ever happened.”
The waiter returned with their martinis, and he offered a toast as she studied her menu. “To you, and your new life.” Buddy, if you only knew, Pat thought to herself as they touched glasses. As she sipped her martini, Pat felt his hand touch her knee. Deftly, she lowered her hand to his, and slid it a few inches up her silky thigh. She noticed with detachment that having a handsome man’s hand up her skirt did nothing for her. No matter. Back to business.
“Are you seeing anyone,” she asked him.
“No, I’ve been so busy with my work, I haven’t been out in ages.” Smooth, Pat had to admit to herself, since she had been shadowing him for two months, as he squired Anne Summers around Chicago.
The waiter returned, and it occurred to Pat that she was about to have her first gourmet meal in five months. Resisting the temptation to order an enormous steak, as Patrick would have done, she selected whitefish with a potato soufflé, and asparagus vinaigrette as a starter. The waiter produced a wine list, and she sat back and watched Nash order an expensive chardonnay. This was going to be fun.
She steered the conversation to her imaginary money. “Where do you think I should invest?”
“Tech stocks continue to offer the best opportunity for long range growth, and that’s what I would recommend to a beautiful young woman with her whole life ahead of her.”
“Aren’t they awfully risky?” In her prior life as an investment banker, Pat had correctly anticipated the bubble, and she wanted to find out what Nash was doing with Anne Summers’ insurance money.
“We anticipate significant increases this year and for the foreseeable future.”
God, what an airhead, Pat thought to herself as the waiter produced her asparagus and his heart of lettuce drenched in blue cheese dressing. With a pang of envy, she cut a dainty forkful of asparagus as she watched him dive in. His cell phone rang, and he turned away from her as he spoke into it. Was it Anne, calling to ask why he hadn’t called? Or was she expecting him tonight? Pat strained to listen.
“I’m sorry, something came up at the office. No, I won’t be able to make it tonight. Sorry. Call you tomorrow. Bye,” he whispered.
“Have I taken you away from something important?”
He touched her knee again, this time sliding it up her thigh without invitation. “No, Pat, I’m all yours.”
Pat excused herself to visit the ladies room between courses, feeling the sudden need to get away from him for a few minutes. Nash was not only an idiot, he was a cad, taking advantage of Anne Summers and risking their daughter's financial security. Pat would have to act tonight, she decided.
A gorgeous brunette entered the ladies room, and Pat caught herself staring at the girl as she lifted her skirt and fussed with her slip and stockings. She felt a tingle between her legs, and suddenly it dawned on Pat that she might be a lesbian. She smiled at herself in the mirror as she freshened her lipstick. A custom engineered, limited edition, lipstick lesbian.
She returned to the table just as their entrees were being served. She steered the conversation to little things while they ate. Where did Nash live? An apartment in Streeterville. Did he have any roommates? He lived alone. Would she like to see his apartment? Pat blushed, with genuine embarrassment, and said yes.
After dessert (berries for her, fudge cake for him) and coffee, he drove her to his apartment in his BMW, and she took his arm as they walked from the garage into the lobby of his smart highrise. They were alone together in the elevator, and they rode silently to his floor. She followed him to his apartment, and after he opened the door, she paused nervously before entering.
“Maybe we’re rushing this,” she said.
“I’ll just show you my view, and then I’ll take you home, if you don’t want to stay,” he said. The view was spectacular, and she stood at his floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lights of Chicago as he put on soft music and loosened his tie. He came up behind her, and put his hands on her shoulders. She turned around and reached up to kiss him, draping her arms languidly around his neck. Then, as he started to tongue her, Pat brought her knee up into his groin with terrific force.
Nash collapsed onto the floor in agony, gasping for breath as he started to throw up his steak dinner. Pat picked up a brass table lamp, and swung it down hard onto the back of his head. He struggled to get to his feet, and she hit him again with the lamp, knocking him back down. A third blow, and he lay motionless on the floor.
After feeling for a pulse, Pat removed her scarf and wiped her fingerprints off the lamp. She used it to close the door behind herself. She was not observed leaving his apartment, although the doorman later remembered seeing an attractive blonde come into the lobby with Nash, and leave alone a few minutes later.
* * *
POLICE SEARCH FOR SLAYER OF CHICAGO MAN
CHICAGO: Police are searching for a mysterious woman last seen on the arm of a Chicago man before he was murdered in his luxurious apartment. Arnold Nash, 34, was found dead on the floor of his lakefront residence, the victim of massive head trauma and a ruptured testicle. According to a spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, Nash met earlier in the day with Patricia Exman, a Chicago woman who came to him for financial advice. They had dinner together at a restaurant on Rush Street before they were seen entering Nash’s apartment. The woman is described as about thirty, with blonde hair and extremely attractive. Here whereabouts are currently unknown.
Frank Sturgess put down his Daily News and looked out the window of his commuter train. Surely it was just a coincidence, he told himself, although there was something about that name…Patricia Exman. It would be interesting to find out if Arnold Nash had any connection to Patrick Summers. If one had the inclination.
* * *
Pat Summers, her hair cut and rinsed back into a mousy brown shag, pulled long wool socks over her stockings and laced up a pair of sneakers. She dropped her heels into her shoulder bag, and set off for her bus stop.
As she made her way in the cold winter air, she stopped at a newsstand to read the headlines. She had to run to her stop in order to catch her bus. Taking a seat on the way to her new job, she felt better about herself than she had in quite some time.
