Where Are You Now?

33

O n Tuesday morning, Captain Larry Ahearn and Detective Bob Gaylor, both relatively fresh from six hours’ sleep, were back in the tech room of the District Attorney’s office, reviewing security tapes from the three other nightclubs in which young women had last been seen before they disappeared.

The cases of all three young women, Emily Valley, Rosemarie Cummings, and Virginia Trent, had been reopened. The grainy photos from Emily Valley ’s case, now ten years old, had been sharpened and brightened by the latest in cutting-edge technology. In the crowd of students who had entered the club, named The Scene, it was possible to identify clearly Mack MacKenzie and Nick DeMarco.

“When we started looking for Emily Valley, all those Columbia kids came forward in a group after we contacted the ones who signed with credit cards,” Ahearn commented, thinking aloud. “It was only a month or so after we talked to all of them that the MacKenzie boy disappeared. Looking back, maybe we should have treated that disappearance as suspicious and tied it to the Valley case.”

“He doesn’t show up in any security videos of the clubs where the other missing girls were hanging out. Of course, it was three years later that the Cummings girl vanished, and the Trent girl was four years ago. In all that time, he could have changed his appearance a lot. He was heavy into dramatics in prep school and in college,” Gaylor pointed out.

“I’d have sworn that DeMarco is our guy, but the missing tapes from the drama teacher’s apartment and the reference to Mother’s Day throw it back into Mack MacKenzie’s court,” Ahearn said, frustration in his tone and on his face. “How has he managed to hide for ten years? What is he living on? How can he be moving between Brooklyn and Manhattan carrying her cell phone without somebody spotting him? Every cop in New York has an age-enhanced picture of him. And where did he keep Leesey from the time she disappeared till the time she made that call Saturday? And if she’s still alive, where is he keeping her now?”

“And what is he doing to her?” Roy Barrott asked bitterly.

Neither of his associates had heard him come into the tech room. They both looked up, startled.

“You’re supposed to be home getting some sleep,” Ahearn said.

Barrott shook his head. “I did. I got as much as I need anyway. Listen, I just stopped at the tech room. They finished enhancing the two pictures that Leesey’s roommate, Kate, took of her, including the one we used on the poster. She took these two pictures less than a minute after she snapped pictures of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and their kids. We can now see the faces of the people in the background.”

“And what did you find?” Ahearn asked.

“Look at this picture. See if you recognize the guy on the left.”

“It’s DeMarco!” Ahearn said, then repeated it as if he could not believe what he was seeing. “DeMarco!”

“Exactly,” Barrott confirmed. “DeMarco never told us he had been in Greenwich Village a week before Leesey disappeared and was across the street when Kate took her picture. He also told us that when he isn’t using his SUV, he drives a Mercedes convertible. There wasn’t any mention of his chauffeur-driven Mercedes sedan.”

Ahearn stood up. “I think it’s time we invite this guy back for some more questioning and squeeze him real hard,” he said. “It would have been easy for him to have his chauffeur get Leesey out of his loft apartment in the middle of the night and hide her somewhere. Our guys keep coming up with new stuff on him. DeMarco’s bought a lot of property, with not much money down. He’s on thin ice, financially. If he loses the liquor license from that fancy new Woodshed place, he could end up back in Queens running a pasta joint.” Ahearn looked at Bob Gaylor. “Bring him in.”

“Ten to one he’ll have a lawyer with him,” Barrott snapped. “I’m surprised he took a chance on coming in alone last week.”