Daddy's Gone a Hunting

29

Lawrence Gordon, chairman and CEO of Gordon Global Investments, whose college-aged daughter, Jamie, was murdered two years ago, had directed Lou, his chauffeur, to pick him up at his Park Avenue office at three fifteen on Friday afternoon, but it was more than an hour later before he was able to get away.

The breaking news had been that three major companies were planning to make public their fourth-quarter projections and all had fallen seriously short of their expectations. This revelation had sent the stock market into a sudden plunge.

Lawrence had stayed glued to his desk to monitor the developments. By late afternoon, the market had stabilized.

With a sigh of relief, Lawrence Gordon finally got into his car and commented to Lou, “At least we’re a shade ahead of the five o’clock rush.”

“Mr. Gordon, the five o’clock rush starts at four o’clock, but you’ll be home in plenty of time before the rest of the family arrives,” Lou replied.

Bedford, in the heart of Westchester County, was an hour’s drive away. Lawrence often used that time to read reports or catch up on the news. But today he reclined the seat, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

Sixty-seven years old, he had once been six feet two but was now just below six feet tall. His thinning head of pure white hair, his patrician features, and the aura of authority he emitted to those around him were the reasons that he was inevitably described as “distinguished” in the many articles that had been written about him.

Tonight Lawrence and his wife, Veronica, were marking their forty-fifth wedding anniversary. Until two years ago they had celebrated it by going to Paris or London or to their villa in Tortola.

That was, until their daughter, Jamie, disappeared. The familiar knifelike pain bolted through Lawrence’s body as he thought of his youngest child, his only daughter. He and Veronica had believed their family to be complete with their three sons, Lawrence Jr., Edward, and Robert. Then, when Rob was ten, Jamie was born. He and Veronica were both forty-three years old but were delighted and thrilled to welcome their daughter.

Lawrence remembered how enchanted he had been the first time he held the newborn Jamie in his arms, with her beautiful little face and wide brown eyes. Then she had wrapped her fingers around his thumb and he had felt a moment of exquisite happiness. He had thought of his Pilgrim ancestors and the fact that they believed there was a “tortience” between a father and a baby daughter, a special unbreakable bond of love.

Jamie, the golden child. She could easily have been spoiled rotten by all of us but she never let that happen, Lawrence remembered sadly. Even as a child she had a social conscience. By the time she was in high school she was volunteering at a food pantry and helping to organize clothing drives. While at Barnard College she had spent two summers with Habitat, one in South America and one in Africa.

She had been a senior at Barnard when, for her sociology class, she had decided to write a paper about street people. She had explained to them that this would involve talking to the homeless who were literally living on the streets.

Lawrence and Veronica had tried to talk her out of the project, but Jamie was always headstrong. She did promise to be very careful, joking that she certainly didn’t want to put herself in danger. “I’ve got good radar about people and, trust me, I have no intention of getting myself into a situation I can’t handle,” she had assured them. But three weeks after she started the project, nearly two years ago, Jamie had disappeared. A month later, a coast guard vessel had fished her body out of the East River. There was a black-and-blue mark on her jaw, her hands and feet were tied together, and she had been strangled.

There was absolutely no clue as to where she had been or who had been her murderer. Because she had been caught on security cameras talking to street people in lower Manhattan the day before she vanished, the case was in the jurisdiction of the Manhattan district attorney’s office. John Cruse, the detective in charge of the investigation, called Lawrence regularly. “I promise that this case stays open and active until we track down the animal who did this to your daughter,” Cruse said.

Lawrence shook his head. He didn’t want to think about Jamie right now, about the fresh clean smell of the sun-streaked brown hair that tumbled past her shoulders. “If you keep washing it every day, it’ll start to fall out,” he would tease her. Even when she was in college she loved to curl up on the couch next to him to watch the evening news when she came home for a weekend.

As the car made its slow journey across Manhattan to the West Side Highway, Lawrence tried to concentrate on the gift he was giving Veronica for their anniversary. He was endowing a $2 million chair in sociology at Barnard in Jamie’s name. He knew that that would please Veronica. She missed Jamie so terribly. We both do, he thought.

When they turned north on the West Side Highway, he glanced at the Hudson River. On this gloomy day it seemed to be a shifting shade of dirty gray. Lawrence quickly looked away from it. No matter whether he drove past the Hudson River or the East River, he could envision Jamie’s body bobbing in it, her long hair tangled with muck.

Shaking his head to dispel the horrifying image, he leaned forward and turned on the radio.

It was five thirty when Lou pushed the button that opened the gates to their property. Lawrence was already unbuckling his seat belt before they were halfway down the long driveway. His sons and daughters-in-law were expected at six, and he wanted a chance to change into something more comfortable.

When he got out of the car, Lou already had the front door of the luxurious brick mansion open for him. Lawrence was about to hurry up the curving stairs in the imposing foyer when he glanced into the living room. Veronica was sitting there in a fireside chair, already dressed for the evening in a colorful silk blouse and long black skirt.

If Lawrence was considered distinguished, Veronica was described by the media as the “lovely and elegant Veronica Gordon,” but that was usually accompanied by a list of the charities with which she had been tirelessly involved. In the last year, the articles would include the Foundation for the Homeless, which she and Lawrence had also established in Jamie’s memory.

She always tried to keep up a brave front, but on so many nights he woke up to hear her trying to stifle sobs in her pillow. There was nothing he could do except wrap his arms around her and say, “It’s okay to let it out, Ronnie. It’s worse if you try to hold it in.”

But now, as he entered the living room, she hurried over to meet him. He could see that her eyes were bright. “Lawrence, you won’t believe this. You won’t believe it.”

Before he could ask her a question, she rushed on: “I know you’ll think it’s crazy but I heard about a psychic who is absolutely amazing.”

“Ronnie, you didn’t go to see her!” Lawrence exclaimed incredulously.

“I knew you’d think I was crazy. That’s why I didn’t tell you that I had made an appointment with her. She was seeing people at Lee’s house this afternoon. Lawrence, do you know what she told me?”

Lawrence waited. Whatever it was, if it gave Veronica comfort it was all right with him.

“Lawrence, she told me that I had suffered a tragedy, a terrible tragedy, that I had lost a daughter named Jamie. She said that Jamie is in heaven, that she was not supposed to live a long life, and that all the good that we are doing in her memory makes her very happy. But she is distressed when she sees how grief-stricken we are and tells us to please try to be happy for her sake.”

Lee probably put this psychic up to this, bless her, Lawrence thought.

“And she said that the new baby will be a girl and Jamie is so happy that they’re going to name it after her.”

Their youngest son, Rob, and his wife were expecting their third child around Christmas. They already had two little boys and had decided not to find out what this one would be. If it was a girl they were planning to call her Jamie.

Lee knew that, too, Lawrence thought.

Veronica’s expression changed. “Lawrence, you know how hard it is for us not to see Jamie’s killer arrested before the same thing happens to another girl.”

“And it is also hard because I haven’t yet sat in a courtroom to see that monster sentenced to rot in prison for the rest of his life,” Lawrence snapped.

“It’s going to happen. The psychic said that very, very soon something belonging to Jamie will be found and it will help lead the police to her murderer.”

Lawrence stared at his wife. Lee certainly didn’t tell the psychic to say that, he thought. Good God, was the psychic for real? Is it possible that this is going to happen?

A few days later, he received his answer.