David Jackson - The Helper

‘They never found her. Not a trace. Not a hair, not a fingernail, nothing. But still they offered me money. She was insured with Hadlow-Jones themselves, and they offered me a lot of money. You think I needed money? My husband, God rest his soul, was a very successful man. I told them if they wanted to give me something useful, they could give me proof that my daughter was dead. I’m still waiting for them to get back to me.’

‘You’re not alone, Mrs Sachs. There are many, many victims who still haven’t been identified. In a lot of cases it’s simply that the technology isn’t advanced enough yet. Maybe one day soon you’ll get the closure you need. I hope so.’

She looks at him for a moment, and he wonders if that’s all she came to hear. A splinter of hope to take back to her empty townhouse.

She reaches for the leather purse on her lap and unsnaps the silver clasp, then reaches in and slips out a buff-colored envelope. She passes it across the desk to Doyle.

He opens the envelope and slides out a grainy black-and-white photograph. It shows a city street scene. Crowds of people hurtling along a sidewalk. One woman in particular stands out because she is not looking where she is going. Instead, her head is twisted toward the camera and she is smiling. The woman is smartly dressed but not attractive. Her smile seems forced somehow.

‘Your daughter?’ Doyle asks. He wonders why she didn’t bring a better photograph than this. When Mrs Sachs doesn’t answer he says, ‘When was this taken?’

‘Last month,’ she answers.

Doyle stares at her, but finds no trace of mischief hidden in her lined features. ‘Last month? So she’s alive?’

‘Yes.’ A pause. ‘I don’t know. I think so. I mean, it looks like Patricia. But it’s so hard to tell. The photo, it’s so grainy. I. . I don’t know what to think anymore.’

‘Please, don’t get upset. Can I ask who took the picture?’

‘A man by the name of Travis Repp. Well, actually, somebody who works for Mr Repp.’

‘And Mr Repp is?’

‘A private detective.’

‘What made you go to him? Someone recommend him to you?’

‘Actually, he contacted me. He just called me on the telephone one day, about two years ago. He told me he’d done a lot of work on the 9/11 victims. Mainly on behalf of relatives, insurance companies, the firms that were in the Towers, like that. He said he wanted to talk with me about my daughter. About Patricia. I told him there was nothing to discuss. She was gone. She was killed on that day. I had no reason to talk with him about it. And then he said maybe there was a reason. He said he had learned something about Patricia. Something curious , was the word he used.’

‘Did he say what it was?’

‘Not at first. He suggested a meeting. He even said he would come over to my house to discuss it.’

‘And did you have the meeting?’

‘Of course. Why would I not? Look, Detective Doyle, I know what you’re thinking. I may be old, but I’m not senile. He is a real private detective with a real office. It’s on Thirty-third Street. Close to Third Avenue. I’ve been there myself on several occasions.’

‘So what did he tell you?’

‘The first thing he said was that he didn’t usually approach people out of the blue like this. He said that if I wanted nothing more to do with him after our meeting, then that was fine by him. He just felt it was his duty to tell me what he’d learned.’

‘Which was?’

‘That there was a chance my Patricia was still alive.’

‘Uh-huh. And did he explain how he reached this conclusion?’

‘He said it was luck more than anything. Back in 2001 he was asked to investigate a list of people from the Towers. You know, the missing ones. Patricia was one of the people on his list. He didn’t find her. Not alive, not dead. And nobody else who could say she was alive or dead. ’Course, he wasn’t the only one looking. None of the experts could find anything either. But because Patricia had been seen at work that day, they said she must have perished. Officially, she was declared deceased, and that was that.’

She goes silent for a moment, seemingly gathering her thoughts.

‘Two years ago, Mr Repp took on another client. A totally unrelated case. But this client also worked in insurance. Anyhow, they got talking, and the topic of 9/11 cropped up. The client told Mr Repp that he knew a lot of people who died that day, and he mentioned a few firms. One of the firms he mentioned was Hadlow-Jones. So when he said this, Mr Repp dug out his old list and started reading out the names. And then he got to Patricia.’

‘He recognized her name?’

She nods. ‘He wanted to know what the list was. So Mr Repp told him it was the employees of Hadlow-Jones who lost their lives. And this client, you know what he said? He said, “Not if Patricia Sachs is on there, it isn’t. When I saw her a couple weeks after the attack, she couldn’t have been any healthier.” ’

Doyle stops her with a raised finger. ‘Wait a minute. This guy saw Patricia after 9/11?’

‘Yes, after. At the Port Authority Bus Terminal. She was getting aboard a Greyhound.’

Doyle sees a gleam somewhere behind the dim surface of her eyes. He tries to imagine how overwhelmed Mrs Sachs must have felt when confronted with the possibility that her daughter was still on this earth. With a rope like that dangling before her, she would have been willing to be led anywhere.

‘What else did Repp tell you?’

‘Not much. Not at that meeting, anyhow. He simply gave me his card and said that if I wanted him to look into it further, he would be only too happy to help.’

‘For a fee, of course.’

‘Yes. For a fee. But money is not the issue here. Not if my daughter is still out there somewhere. Alive.’

Doyle would like to differ over the money issue. In his opinion, financial considerations are probably very much at the center of what’s going on here. But, for now, he keeps it to himself.

‘So you hired Repp?’

She shoots him a sharp look intended to remind him of her mental acuity. ‘Not immediately. I told him I wanted to speak with the man who said he saw Patricia.’

‘Did Repp set that up?’

‘Yes, he did. The man’s name is Pinter. He used to work for Invar Insurance. I have his business card somewhere. The meeting we had didn’t take long. He didn’t know Patricia very well, but he’d met her on a few occasions, and he was pretty sure it was her he saw at the Bus Terminal. He said he even called her name, and she glanced his way, but then she jumped on the bus like she was afraid of something.’

‘Did Pinter seem genuine enough?’

‘Absolutely he seemed genuine. Even if he was mistaken about seeing Patricia, I think he truly believed it was her.’

‘Did he explain why he hadn’t spoken up about this before?’

‘You think I didn’t ask him that? I asked him. He said he didn’t even know that Patricia was supposed to be dead. He hadn’t worked with the Hadlow-Jones people in a long time, and so the first time he heard Patricia’s name again was when Mr Repp mentioned her.’

‘So then you hired Repp?’

‘I did. You wanna call me a fool, then call me a fool. I don’t care. I would give everything I own in the world to see my Patricia again.’

Doyle rests his index finger on the photograph. ‘And he came up with this?’

‘Amongst other things, yes.’

‘Did he say where the picture was taken?’

‘Boston.’

‘Boston? Is there any reason why your daughter would go there?’

‘None that I know of.’

‘Mrs Sachs, how old is your daughter?’

‘I’m eighty-three now. I didn’t have Patricia until late in life. I was forty at the time.’