David Jackson - The Helper

Doyle studies the photograph again. It’s not the sharpest of snaps. The woman could be forty-three, but she could also be somewhere around thirty.

‘You get anything else from Repp?’

‘Several more sightings. The last one in Chicago.’

Doyle sighs. It’s all so neat, so convenient.

‘Mrs Sachs, when people disappear like this, just dropping off the edge of the world, it’s not on a whim. They have reasons. Big reasons. They’re throwing away a life, usually because they’re so sick of it they need to start a new one. Was it like that for Patricia? Did things get so bad?’

Mrs Sachs shifts in her chair. She’s uncomfortable, and Doyle knows it’s not because of the seat. This is deep, personal shit he’s asking her now, but it has to be put out there.

‘Patricia made a big mistake. The man she married was a bum, a parasite. He was also a control freak. She didn’t talk to me about it much, but I knew Joe made her life miserable. One time, I saw a bottle of anti-depressants in her bag. I think. . I think he even beat her sometimes. If she wanted out, then who could blame her? So what Mr Repp was suggesting, about her running away from it all, it didn’t seem so crazy.’

‘Did you speak with her husband about the disappearance?’

‘Not in any depth. Joe doesn’t do depth. Far as he’s concerned, Patricia is dead. He got a lot of money from it, and he’s happy with that. It tells you everything about him you need to know.’

Doyle hesitates before voicing his next words. Dashing the hopes of desperate mothers is not his favorite pastime.

‘Okay, let’s suppose that Patricia did survive somehow, that nobody she knew saw her leave the WTC, and that she then decided to use it as the ideal opportunity to change her life forever. She would then have to go into hiding. She couldn’t go home, couldn’t pack a bag, couldn’t go anywhere she might be recognized, couldn’t take any money from an ATM. She would have to go it alone, using only what she had on her. That’s a tough stunt to pull off.’

Mrs Sachs nods all through this, as if to say, Yes, yes, don’t you think I haven’t already considered all this?

‘But not impossible,’ she says. ‘People disappear all the time, don’t they? They fake their deaths and just go. They leave everything behind them.’

Doyle hears the touch of agony in her last sentence, and he knows he has to reach out for it.

‘I think that’s why you came to see me today, isn’t it, Mrs Sachs? If Patricia is still alive, if she has run away from her past life, then she has run away from you too. She has left you behind, left you with all the hurt of believing your daughter has suffered a tragic death. Do you really think she could do that to you, to her own mother?’

Mrs Sachs raises her face and catches some of that spring sunshine herself. It glints off the wetness in her eyes.

‘I’m not very well, you know, Detective. I have diabetes and high blood pressure and an enlarged heart. I don’t know how much longer I have to live. I have few friends and no family, unless Patricia is alive. When Mr Repp came to see me I was overjoyed. I was filled with hope. But you know what? You’re right. The pain of believing that Patricia could abandon me in this way, without a word or a message of some kind — well, that’s come to hurt even more than believing she died on that awful day, along with all those other poor souls. So now I need the pain to end. If she’s alive, then maybe she can tell me why she did this. If not, well. . Either way, I need to know the truth. It’s all I have left.’

Doyle taps the photograph a few times. ‘I’ll look into it,’ he says. ‘You mind if I keep this for a while?’

When she shakes her head, he reaches for the envelope. Before he can withdraw his hand, Mrs Sachs takes hold of it.

‘Thank you.’ Then she gets up from her chair and shuffles away.

Doyle looks with sadness at the retreating form. And even when she has disappeared from view, he continues to stare for several minutes.

He jumps when he hears the booming voice.

‘We got a homicide. And it’s messy.’

For the briefest of moments Doyle experiences a surge of excitement. This city isn’t the murder hot-spot it once was. In fact it’s become pretty tame lately. A homicide landing on one’s desk these days is almost a cause for celebration for an NYPD detective.

So when he looks up and finds the square-jawed face of Lieutenant Cesario pointed decidedly in the direction of the only other two detectives in the room, his disappointment is almost enough to make him cram his gold shield into his mouth and swallow it.

He knows he shouldn’t be surprised. It has been like this for months. Ever since the events of last Christmas. Cops died then. Other people died too, but the cops are what matter most to the members of this squad. They lost colleagues, friends, partners. Doyle himself lost his partner. He went through hell that Christmas. It almost seemed worth it when he came out of it to a hero’s welcome. But of course it didn’t last. Questions started to get asked about his involvement in the case. Even the cops who had at first applauded Doyle started to wonder about his integrity, especially when there were certain officers who had never been slow to spread poison about him. All the media attention he was getting didn’t help matters either. For some, this was pure jealousy: they had worked their asses off for twenty years and still never seen their faces on Fox News.

In his logical moments, Doyle realizes he can’t blame the other cops. Not really. He tries putting himself in their shoes. He tries picturing a cop who is a relative newcomer to a precinct, who arrived with a prior history involving the death of a female partner, and who has now just been at the epicenter of a series of events that has taken out several more cops. Whatever that officer does to redeem himself, whatever explanations he provides, he will always be remembered as the man associated with members of service losing their lives. Death taints in that way.

I wouldn’t work with me if I were them, he thinks.

He hopes it will all blow away eventually. With that in mind, he has tried to stay below the radar. His superiors haven’t argued with that. The new lieutenant hasn’t really known what to make of Doyle, and so the man has played safe. All the low-key cases have come Doyle’s way. Cases nobody else can be bothered to spend any time on. Cases like that of Mrs Sachs.

So, for now, he puts aside his hopes and turns his attention to his current DD5 report, trying to remember how to spell ‘pseudonym’ and then giving up and changing it to ‘alias’, trying to ignore the voice of Cesario as he summarizes what little he knows, trying to block his mind to the detectives behind him tugging on their coats and moving toward the door, trying to convince himself that it will be a crap case that he wouldn’t want anyway.

Out of the corner of his eye he sees the legs of Cesario as they turn and propel him back toward his office. But then they stop. Cesario’s shiny shoes twist around to point at Doyle.

Doyle’s gaze moves up from the shoes. Over the sharp gray suit. Onto the dazzling teeth set into a tanned face beneath a fringe of perfectly sculpted gloss-black hair.

He wonders what the man’s flaws are. Nobody is that perfect. He looks too much like a movie star playing the part of a cop. Maybe if I yell ‘Cut!’ Doyle thinks, he’ll relax into his normal self. He’ll start calling everyone darling before mincing off to adjust his make-up.

And who the hell has a tan this time of year, anyway?

‘Go after them,’ Cesario says.

Well now you’re just being too nice, Doyle thinks. You can’t even do me the courtesy of allowing me to hate you. What kind of spiteful behavior is that?