Missing Rebecca

By John Worsley Simpson

Death and deception. After a whirlwind romance, Liam and Rebecca marry, knowing almost nothing of each other's backgrounds. Only months later, on an afternoon shopping trip to a mall in the Buffalo, New York, suburb of Cheektowaga, Rebecca vanishes, seemingly abducted. Or did she make herself disappear? Was the marriage a sham? Was Liam a dupe? This is a novel of high crimes and dark shadows, involving the immensely profitable drug industry in which exclusive access to the market for a medication can mean billions of dollars, and holding on to that exclusivity might lead to lies, deceit, corruption, payoffs, and even murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781483509792

John Worsley Simpson

John Worsley Simpson was a journalist--reporter and editor--for many years with major-market newspapers in Canada and the U.K. and with Bloomberg News. He has several published novels, including Undercut, which was runner-up to Kathy Reichs' Deja Dead as best first novel for 1997 in the Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Awards. Other traditionally published novels include Counterpoint, Shadowmen and A Debt of Death. Another novel, Death Never Says Goodbye, was published through Amazon and Create Space. He is married and lives in Barrie, Ontario, Canada with his wife, Colleen, and dog Measha.

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9781483509792

CHAPTER ONE

MARCH 27

She has black hair: jet black, shiny black, raven black—cropped short, the man said anxiously.

The security guard at the Bennett Mall in the Buffalo, New York, suburb of Cheektowaga looked up ever so slowly from the clipboard on which he was entering the bureaucratic details of his shift, none of which had anything to do with this man’s claim that his wife had been—what did this jerk just say? Kidnapped? Jesus. Give me a break. Whatever it was, this guy, who was about forty, the security guy figured, was threatening to delay the end of his shift, and Beavis—the guard’s name according to the badge on his ample chest—had arranged to meet his buddies at the Buffalo Brewpub for wings and suds, and, who knows, maybe even chicks. Beavis, who looked a lot like the late John Candy, puffed out his lips, scratched his ample belly, and continued to make entries on the clipboard.

Are you even listening to me? the man said with growing exasperation. My wife— He had to pause for breath. He sighed. He leaned forward. He slowed his speech. "Look, my wife was supposed to meet me in an hour, one hour. You get that? You understand what I’m saying? Okay, that was, like, five hours ago. She’s not senile or anything, for god’s sake. She’s just an ordinary young woman. She’s not an idiot or deranged or anything; she’s not—will you listen? Are you listening? The fact that she didn’t show up—hey, will you listen to me, you jerk." The man grabbed the clipboard from Beavis’s hands and shoved it down on the desk.

Hey, hey, that’s enough of that, buddy, Beavis said, sharply pulling himself upright. You’re not going to get anywhere with that kind of attitude.

The man sighed deeply and shook his head. Finally, he raised his hands in a sign of surrender.

All right, you’re right, okay, I’m sorry. I give up. Look, you have to take this in, all right? Please. You—just—don’t—seem—to—be—listening, he said, pronouncing each word separately, deliberately. Just, please listen to what I am talking about, okay? I don’t know what to do. Okay, listen: all you have to do is tell me whether anybody was taken away by ambulance—or something like that, any kind of incident—

Beavis strained to reach across his broad girth without rising from his chair to grab another clipboard hanging from a hook over his right shoulder. He flipped a couple of pages, shaking his head, which made his double chin jiggle from side to side.

No, there’s nothing here. Nobody was hurt—or anything. Wait a minute, have I got the right sheet? What date is it?

March 27.

Oh yeah, this is the right one. Nothing here. Couple of shoplifter calls. Kids loitering at the southwest entrance. That’s all. Nothing else. At least, nothing like you’re talking about.

Shit. All right, thanks. I don’t know what to do.

Well, listen, hey, if I hear anything—Have you got a card or something? And meanwhile, maybe you should—well maybe not, I don’t know.

Maybe not what?

Well, I was going to say that maybe you should call the cops—but—well, you know. Maybe you should—I mean, have you called home, or anything like that? Maybe she just got, you know, pissed off at you, or something, and went home.

I’ve called home, I’ve called her cellphone. No answer.

Beavis leaned back, putting his hands behind his head.

"Well, I don’t know. I guess maybe you should call the cops. I don’t know."|

*****

The cop at the desk was uninterested.

Look, Mr.—

Peters.

Mr. Peters, like I said, fill out the form.

This is ridiculous. My wife has—she must have been abducted, for god’s sake. She wouldn’t just disappear. Something happened to her.

In the middle of the Bennett Mall in the middle of a beautiful, brilliant, sunshiny, although a little chilly, Cheektowaga, New York, Saturday afternoon, on—what’s the date? March 27. I don’t think so, Mr. Peters. I do not think so.

"Okay, you don’t think so. So what do you think happened to her, Sgt.—?"

Grippano.

So, what do you think happened, Sgt. Grippano?

The cop had been making entries in a computer log as he spoke to Peters. Grippano had steel-gray hair and a leathery face with a permanent aspect of boredom, as if he’d seen it all so many times before he couldn’t be bothered with any more of it. He took his hand off the mouse and looked over half glasses at this man who, he figured, was in his early forties, well built, good looking, slightly graying and dressed in expensive, timeless-classic clothes—a casual-cut navy suit over a slate-gray, button-down oxford-cloth that led down to Brooks Brothers wingtips—a man who had too much money, a man who couldn’t accept the fact that anyone would leave him, a man who was wasting his time, distracting him from making the final entries in the log for the day, the end of his shift approaching. He took a deep breath.

Mr. Peters, I don’t know you; I don’t know your wife. What I do know is this: I know that women leave their husbands all the time in the strangest of places, in the oddest of circumstances, without warning, right out of the blue. I know that people have arguments and, hell, that they split up. I know that in the middle of a Saturday afternoon, even a nice sunny one like today, a wife can decide that it’s time to go, that maybe she has a secret boyfriend, and they had arranged to meet in a certain mall in Cheektowaga, and I know that by now him and her may be half way to Florida, or Las Vegas, or Des Moines, Iowa, or Salt Lake fucking City for that matter. Sorry, pardon my French. You’re not Mormon, are you?

No.

Good. Now listen, what I do know is that the officers in this department are stretched to the breaking point, Mr. Peters, so stretched that they are not going to start looking for an adult who didn’t vanish from a street at midnight, in a case where there’s no evidence of foul play, where there’s—Look, Mr. Peters, just fill out the—freaking form, will you—please. If she’s still missing after 48 hours, we’ll put out a bulletin, and we’ll send an officer to talk to you and get more details. But in the meantime, please, please—the form.

Peters clenched his fists. His face was flushed. He spoke through clenched teeth: Jesus Christ. Will you—damn it, listen, for god’s sake. My wife did not walk out on me. We haven’t been married long. She and I get along really well, and, I mean—

"Okay, okay, stop. You may be right, Mr. Peters. I don’t know. I really don’t. I do know this, like I said, I do know that I don’t know you, okay? So you could be lying through your gritted nicely capped teeth. All right? For god’s sake, man, you could be delusional, for all I know."

Peters looked down for a moment and then quickly looked up. Jesus Christ, he said, and stopped, took a deep breath. Yeah, I could be. Who knows, right? And you—you could be a total, complete— He stopped short when Grippano lurched threateningly toward him, raising a hand like a traffic cop’s stop signal.

Don’t—don’t say it, Mr. Peters. Just don’t say it—don’t say it, please.

Before Liam Peters could respond, a tall, broad-shouldered, fiftyish man came up the inner steps of the station, striding with the certainty and confidence possessed only by a person in charge of all before him. The man wore an unbuttoned long, navy-blue overcoat with epaulets on the shoulders over a severely tailored, slightly old-fashioned suit that perfectly displayed his solid, lanky frame. He directed a synthetic smile at Peters, dropped it when he looked at the sergeant.

That car out front, that Maserati. Who owns that? he asked.

I don’t know, Captain. A what? A Maserati? Is it illegally parked?

It might be; I didn’t notice, but it’s not that—

It’s my car, Peters said.

The captain turned slowly to face him, and smiled.

Your car?

Yes.

That’s quite a car. Wow. I think I’ve seen it around town, but never close up.

Liam shrugged. It’s a Maserati Granturismo S. Excuse me, he said, "I think he called you captain. Does that mean you’re in charge?

Fred Harley, a 24-year veteran of the Buffalo and Cheektowaga police departments, nodded slowly, proud to acknowledge that, yes, indeed, he was in charge.

Well, Peters said, your sergeant here seems to think that my wife would just vanish into thin air like—I don’t know what, a ghost? No word, no nothing. I’ve been trying to tell him that we’re not some kind of— He paused, took a breath. Look, captain, my wife and I have not been married long. We’re in love, we’re—we’re totally compatible. There’s no way she would run out on me. That idea is crazy, okay. But this guy thinks that we’re like some drunken slum scrappers, or something.

Okay, let’s sort this out. The captain stepped forward to the rail that separated the foyer from many of the honest public’s first encounter with Cheektowaga’s finest. Grippano, what’s this about?

Grippano sighed. Captain, this guy said he went with his wife to the Bennett Mall this afternoon. She was supposed to meet him in an hour, and she didn’t show up.

She’s been gone for six hours, nearly seven, Peters put in.

Now, he wants us to put out an all-points bulletin, organize a bush-beating search, call out the cavalry, the FBI, the CIA, whatever. I told him that we couldn’t start thinking of foul play until at least 48 hours, but—

All, right, all right. Look—Mr.?

Peters, Liam Peters.

The sergeant here will initiate an alert immediately. I’m sure there’s some kind of mix-up. These things happen sometimes even between the most loving husbands and wives, but we’ll pursue the matter right away. You’ve given all the pertinent information to Sgt. Grippano?

No. He gave me this form to fill out.

He what? The captain turned to Grippano. What’s this?

Well—he. I always think it’s better if they fill out the form themselves—you know, spelling and everything.

And you think that the complainant is going to put in all the details that you, a trained police officer, would ask for? And what if you can’t read his writing?

Captain, we’re really busy here—

Harley ignored Grippano and turned to Peters.

Sgt. Grippano will take the details from you, Mr. Peters. We’ll put out an alert on your wife immediately. I’m sure we’ll have you back together in a couple of hours. He turned and glowered at Grippano before swiping a pass-card through a reader and hurrying through a door without waiting for a response from either Peters or Grippano.

The sergeant shook his head and reached across the desk toward Peters, looking at the clipboard holding the missing-person report and flicking a finger, indicating that he wanted it. Peters handed it to him, and Grippano flipped it over, picked up a pen and said, Name?

Peters, Liam Peters.

What’s that? Liam? How do you spell that, ‘L-e-e-h-a-m?

No, L-i-a-m, Liam.

The sergeant tilted his head and nodded, the corner of his lip lifted, his shoulders raised, as if to say See what I mean? This proved he had been right in asking Peters to fill out the form.

Liam—what’s that, Greek?

Irish.

Oh, yeah? Peters’s not an Irish name, though, is it?

No. My mother was Irish. My father’s forebears were English.

Okay. Um—occupation?

My occupation?

See, that’s what I mean. Every time I ask a question, you ask a question.

CHAPTER TWO

JANUARY 15

Peters had met Rebecca Hancock a little more than two months earlier at a medical conference at the Hilton in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Peters was there because he owned Medic-Right, a medical-equipment supply company he had inherited from his pharmacist father, Sergeant-Major Orval Peters USMC and RPh. It was one of the few things he’d got from his father that had any value as far as he was concerned. He had inherited other things from the old man that he wasn’t even aware of, personality traits he would have denied he had, a certain coldness that he concealed even from himself by an apparently callow, eternally boyish innocence, an innocence that he seemed to manifest even after six years as a Navy SEAL.

Apart from the income it brought him, Medic-Right wasn’t something Liam had the slightest interest in, but because it was so successful he was able to let the managers run it while he made an occasional token appearance. He spent most of his time reading, playing the piano, golfing, traveling, drinking fine wines—enjoying life, the good life. Now, he had decided that even the thin ties that linked him to the business were too much of a bother, so he was looking for a buyer for the company. He had also been getting warnings from his accountant lately that, despite the success of the business, his personal spending had become insupportable from the firm’s receipts.

Peters was sitting at the outdoor bar by the pool when Rebecca spotted him. He was talking with a man. They shook hands, and the man walked away. Rebecca caught up with him.

I’m sorry, she said, cutting in front of the man.

Can I help you? he said.

This is a bit embarrassing. That guy you were talking with at the bar?

What about him?

He’s very good looking, and—well, do you know, is he married?

God, is that the way it’s done down here? I’d expect that kind of question from one of the Golden Girls. You’re a bit young and attractive to be desperate, aren’t you?

I said it was embarrassing. It’s just— She affected a girlish shrug. Rebecca was a chameleon. She could change in an instant to suit the environment. If she had ever in her life been completely sincere, it was an accident.

As far as I know, Liam Peters is not married, and, you may be pleased to know, is not-at least, I’m reasonably certain-gay, either, and I don’t think he has a girlfriend. So, the coast appears to be completely clear. And lucky Liam, the man said, nodding and walking away, looking Rebecca up and down appreciatively.

Peters, in fact, despite his potential for putting on the macho and attracting women who are impressed by that sort of thing, had always been a bit of a romantic washout. He was shy with women, and his adult sexual experiences had been mainly with escorts and in rub-and-tug joints. He had picked up a woman a couple of times in his life, but only with the assistance of a smooth-talking friend and copious amounts of alcohol. Neither component was required with Rebecca. Armed with the knowledge of his availability, she came at him like a heat-seeking missile, practically running to take the stool beside his. She began the conversation and quickly, skillfully, drew Peters’ life story from him in about fifteen minutes. He didn’t stand a chance against Rebecca’s charm and polished wiles. From the moment he stammered slightly when Rebecca asked him his name—almost as if he’d forgotten it—he was on his way down. Liam was—like her—single, both of them having remained in that state for almost the same length of time—he was forty-three; she forty. He was handsome, if a little too polished, somewhat contrived; she was gorgeous, dark hair, cut short, dancing, sparkling silver-blue eyes after she took off a pair of oversized sunglasses. She had wide, blood-red lips that she moistened frequently with a flicking tongue.

So, Liam said. Why are you here? He’d gained enough control that he wasn’t stammering any more, but his voice was tight and strained, betraying the fact that he was far from being in complete control. Rebecca, on the other hand—smiling broadly at every one of Liam’s utterances, as they increasingly revealed his weakness—was in total charge of things.

Me? she said, touching her breastbone, I’m in sales.

Oh. What kind of sales?

Medical—medical sales, pharmaceuticals.

Of course, the conference. What company are you with?

At the question, Rebecca seemed momentarily distracted, looking around at a group at a nearby table. Liam’s heart sank. He thought she’d just realized how boring he was and had lost interest, and then she turned back.

I’m sorry, what did you say?

I said what company—what drug company are you with?

Pfizer.

Oh, that’s what you were looking at? The table with the guys with the Pfizer badges. Colleagues of yours?

No, actually, they’re—I’m from a different district. I don’t recognize them. I don’t like drug salespeople anyway, so I’m glad they don’t recognize me.

What’s the matter with drug salespeople?

I just don’t like salespeople. I think they’re all interested in one thing—besides getting me into bed— Peters actually blushed a little. —and that’s selling stuff, anything, any kind of stuff, and it doesn’t matter whether it works or it’s going to kill you: they’ll sell it without batting an eye.

Peters smiled quizzically. But surely you’re one of them.

She shrugged.

I have to make a living. I kind’ve fell into it by accident, or default, or something. I was a—I was a teacher, and I—well, I got laid off, I guess that’s the term. Downsized, or something. I think the English call it being made redundant. The school closed. I had bills. And then a friend of mine told me about this job at—you know, at Pfizer, and I ended up there. I’ve been with them a couple of years now, but actually I’m looking to get out. In fact, I’m ready to quit. Anyway, tell me more about yourself. Can we get out of here?

*****

Within half an hour of Rebecca’s accosting Liam, she had him in bed in his suite. They spent most of the rest of the week in that room—in the bed, on the floor, on the sofa, on the kitchen table, with breaks for dinner and drinks and the occasional stroll, hand in hand, but only on the beach at sunset. Rebecca always had an excuse for not leaving the room during the day. Liam, whose scant experience in such matters made him the ultimate emotional pushover, by the morning of the second day thought he might have fallen madly in love. Rebecca not only lavished passion on him, but also tenderness and words of admiration. She seemed to be well-read and was clearly intelligent, and, finding the subjects that most interested Liam, she displayed an equal interest in them, spending time on Liam’s laptop researching them, and she listened intently to his views on anything and everything, always supporting them and never, ever disagreeing.

Does this sound stupid? Am I being stupid? Liam asked on the afternoon of that second day, as he came away from the door of the suite with the room-service hamburgers they’d ordered for lunch.

Does what sound stupid? You haven’t said anything, Rebecca said, opening one of the burgers and seeing that the toppings were those that Liam ordered, switching plates.

I’m going to—don’t rush me, Liam said, taking a deep breath.

Eat your burger before it gets cold. These are good.

Yeah—I’ll eat the burger in a minute, Liam said, shaking his head. I want to finish what I started to say.

Okay, Liam. I’m listening.

I think—Am I — am I crazy?—

I don’t know whether you’re crazy, Liam. If you’d finish what you start to say, I might be able to tell you.

I think I’ve fallen in love with you, Rebecca.

Rebecca stopped biting on the hamburger. The hand holding it froze, the burger still in her mouth. Her eyes widened. She put the burger down on the plate. She opened her mouth to speak, and her hand began to move side to side as if she was about to wave away Liam’s expression of love dismissively, and then the hand stopped moving. She started to speak and then hesitated and seemed to be thinking.

Well? Is that crazy—am I crazy? What? Liam asked again.

Rebecca looked hard at him. She seemed almost to be trying to look inside him, to read him like a route map or a set of directions or one of a choice of doorways.

Well? Liam said again, with some trepidation. What do you think?

Rebecca began to nod slowly. "You know something, Liam. I don’t think you are crazy. As unbelievable as it seems, I think we’ve both fallen for each other. It is crazy in a way, but what the hell, the world is filled with crazy things. This, at least, is—well, it’s kind of great, really," she said, and she picked up the burger and took a big bite, and grinned, a little mustard showing at the corner of her mouth. Liam wiped it away and kissed her.

And so, in the annals of lightning romance, the speed of the burgeoning