THE APARTMENT opened up onto a lush vista of Central Park that stretched away to the north. There was a big balcony with a stone railing where bronze hawks sat watch, a leftover from before urban renewal had destroyed most of the building’s original charm. The space was a combination of chrome, leather, and plastic that had all the earmarks of a collection rather than being merely well decorated. Hemingway saw that most of the paintings were by the top black American artists, something not usually collected by whites.
Wendy Matheson was tall and graceful, with a fat-free body and natural beauty that resembled Hemingway’s in some lateral way. Besides wealth and photogenic DNA, she did not appear mean, jealous, or hypocritical but it was obvious that Mrs. Matheson had always been very happy that life was about her.
Until now.
Mr. Matheson had been boarding a flight at LaGuardia when the school called. The NYPD offered to pick him up but he insisted on making his own way back. Until then, it was Hemingway, an uncomfortable-looking Phelps, and Mrs. Matheson.
Mrs. Matheson did not say much; she answered in monosyllables and had the same distant expression of Mrs. Rochester, but none of the slurred speech.
As they talked, Hemingway’s hand was on her stomach again—something she found herself doing too frequently now. Sitting there, staring down a woman whose son had just been taken, the gesture felt disrespectful, blasphemous.
They ran through the usual questions, from the basic to the invasive. With two boys down, Trevor Deacon dead, and the Grant boy’s driver squirted all over the interior of the Lincoln, there wouldn’t be a happy ending to the Nigel Matheson story unless they asked the tough questions.
They were at the point in the interview where they focused on lists and routine. The people Nigel Matheson spent time with and the places he went. They didn’t bother asking about a life insurance policy.
They sacrificed poise and tact for truth and results. And it was obvious that Mrs. Matheson wasn’t used to being hammered like this. Hers was a world of afternoons at Bergdorf’s and weekends on the ocean. The only time she bothered to look at a cop was if she was pulled over and even then she probably didn’t pay much attention; to people like this, the police were something to be dealt with, not listened to.
After a few moments of listing Nigel’s friends, she stopped in mid-sentence. At first Hemingway thought she had remembered something, an important detail or a significant event. She looked up and said, “He was special.” Her eyes went from Hemingway to Phelps then back to Hemingway again. Then she reached over and picked up a leather-bound book from the coffee table. “He wrote a play.” And she began to sob.
Hemingway did something that was out of character but she couldn’t stop herself. She went over to the sofa, sat down beside Mrs. Matheson, and put her arm around the woman.
“I’m sorry about this. I know that right now you can’t believe me, but I know what you’re going through. This isn’t fair or right or anything else that makes sense. But now—I mean right now—we need you to be focused. Can you do that?”
Mrs. Matheson turned, buried her face in Hemingway’s collar, and let out a scream so primal and rooted in anguish that it jolted Phelps in his seat.
Then she pushed herself up, wiped her nose in a handkerchief, and gave a single solid nod. “Okay.”
Hemingway kept her arm around the woman. She felt the skin beneath the blouse, the muscle beneath the skin, the piston of her heart below that. Her whole body vibrated as if the molecules were on the verge of dispersing. “You want a coffee? Detective Phelps makes a great cup of coffee.”
Mrs. Matheson seemed to actually consider the offer, then gave a soft, almost childlike nod. Her housekeeper materialized out of what appeared to be thin air, asked the detectives if they wanted some coffee as well, then disappeared.
“Look, Mrs. Matheson, we need—”
The front door kicked open, blowing Hemingway’s question off the road.
Mr. Matheson barreled in, eyes red, tie in his fist. He ran to his wife, picked her up off the sofa and drew her into a hug. Over her shoulder he said, “I’m Andrew Matheson. What happened to my son?” He was tall, black, with close-cropped hair and the no-nonsense air of a man used to getting things done on a schedule.
“I’m Detective Alex Hemingway and this is my partner, Jon Phelps. Your stepson is missing, Mr. Matheson.”
Andrew Matheson’s face went brittle. “He’s not my stepson, he’s my son, detective.”
Hemingway felt the saliva hit the back of her mouth in a surge of adrenaline. “Are you Nigel’s biological father?” she asked.
“Of course not. Does it matter?”
Hemingway looked over his shoulder, at the family photograph on the console beside the Bang & Olufsen stereo. She focused on the boy between his parents.
Same as the others: brown hair, brown eyes.
White.
Dr. Grant said that after all the trouble they had gone through to conceive, this was going to destroy his wife.
Tyler Rochester’s mother said that it had been hard to get pregnant. Twice.
Phelps said they could have been brothers.
All of a sudden she had it. “Mr. and Mrs. Matheson, I need you to tell me where you went for fertility treatment.”