The Delilah Complex

Nine

On Tuesday afternoon at 4:00 p.m., Betsy Young rushed out of the lobby of the New York Times. She had an interview uptown and didn’t want to be late. A strong wind was blowing leaves off the trees, littering the sidewalk, and it was raining. Other people pulled their jacket collars up and opened umbrellas. Even though Betsy was in too much of a hurry to notice the weather or the leaves, she saw the blue sedan that idled outside the office.

But she didn’t have time to do more than run into the street and hail a cab. Jumping in, she gave the driver the address of an apartment building on Park Avenue and slammed the door shut.

As the taxi peeled away from the curb, Betsy pulled a sheaf of papers out of her tote bag: research she’d pulled off the net about Philip Maur’s wife and her family. Before she looked at it again, she turned and looked out the window, and saw that the blue sedan had pulled out behind her cab.

Was she being followed?

Well, it was possible. The police could be watching her. After all, she was the one who had gotten the photographs. The only one. But she’d worry about that later. Now she had to focus on the exclusive interview ahead of her.

Earlier that morning, she’d taken a chance and called Maur’s wife, who was also the daughter of a high-powered New York politician. Cyn Maur had been so confused and distracted that Betsy wondered if she actually understood she’d agreed to an interview. If she had, then Betsy wanted to know why. Even though her job depended on people talking to her, she was always astonished when anyone opened the doors to his or her private hell.

Betsy could not imagine showing her own scars and shame to the public.

Number 1235 Park Avenue wasn’t the Maurs’ apartment. It was the home of Cyn’s parents. And that was why Officer Tana Butler didn’t recognize the address when the reporter’s taxi stopped there.

Betsy walked into the marble lobby, gave her name to the doorman, and told him who she was there to see. The doorman called upstairs and announced the visitor. He listened, then hung up.

“Apartment 15E, Miss Young. First elevator on the right.”

Betsy walked into the interior lobby. As soon as she was out of sight, Officer Butler got out of the blue sedan and walked into the building. Flashing her badge, she asked the doorman who the woman ahead of her had asked to see. She opened her notebook and wrote down the name of Cyn Maur’s parents.

Then she went back outside, got into the unmarked car and waited.

Upstairs, Cyn sat on the pale yellow couch in the living room and waited for Betsy’s questions as if she were facing an executioner.

“Is this your first interview?” Betsy asked, trying to get the nervous woman to talk about how uncomfortable she was.

“I didn’t want to do it, but it has been more than a week and the police still don’t have a single idea of where my husband’s body is. Not one lead on who killed him or why. And I have to know. I’m desperate to know.”

“So you thought you’d talk to the press?”

Cyn nodded. Her mouth twisted into what Betsy thought was an ugly grimace. “You’re vipers. You’ll investigate ruthlessly. You’re not hindered by the law. I don’t care who finds my husband’s body or his killer-the police or the press-as long as someone does. I am tired of crying from not knowing.”

Even now, facing the reporter, the tears came.

“It’s horrible. No matter where I look, I see the photographs the police showed me, those frozen images of my husband’s body. I’ve even tried to pretend that he wasn’t my husband. That the shots were of some other man. I even yelled at the detectives, told them that they had the wrong person. I pushed them, trying to get them to leave. But they knew what I was doing. So they waited and let me cry until, finally, I told them that, yes, it was Phil.

“He looked so cold in the pictures,” she said, her heart splintering into pieces all over again. “I need to be able to close my eyes at night and go to sleep and wake up in the morning and pour orange juice for my children, and make them waffles. But I can’t concentrate on anything. My husband was tied up and brutalized. He’d been photographed from the most lewd angles possible. Why? The pallor of his skin haunts me. His slack face and helpless hands obsess me.

“Phil had never been helpless in his life,” she said, not sure if she was answering a question or not.

Betsy smiled sympathetically and leaned forward, her pen poised on a page of her notebook. “So, he was a strong man? Do you mean emotionally? Or physically?”

Cyn Maur heard something in the reporter’s voice. Was it doubt? Confusion? Cynicism?

If she had slept even a little last night she might have picked up the subtleties in the reporter’s tone. A warning bell might have alerted her that Betsy knew something that she shouldn’t have.