Andrew Kaufman - The Lion, the Lamb, the Hunted - A Psychological Thriller

Since losing Samantha, I’ve resigned myself to singledom and all that it entails. My sink is always piled with dirty dishes, my floor a virtual bed of filthy socks and underwear. I relish in bachelorhood, pound my chest fitfully, then burp into an empty beer glass, telling myself that this is The Life, that being free and single is a blessing.

Then I ask myself who the hell I’m kidding. Being lonely sucks—everyone knows that, me included.

I glanced at my answering machine on the kitchen counter. An unblinking zero stared back, mocking me, calling me a loser. What followed was a feeling of unqualified emptiness. I consoled myself by pretending it was okay, that that’s what cell phones are for. Then I chased the thought away.

After fixing a sandwich, I dragged my suitcase into the bedroom and started unpacking. The book immediately caught my attention; it was inside a plastic bag along with the other items I’d taken from the house.

I spilled everything onto the bed and only then realized that many of these things weren’t mine. They were my mother’s.

I cringed: an old change purse I remembered her having, a letter opener I recognized, too, along with an ugly scarf I always hated. Good Lord, I’d just purged the woman from my life. The last thing I needed were reminders of her. I tossed them into the trash.

Next up, a bundle of photos. Pictures of mother—I pitched them too—then one of me at age five, standing in front of Warren’s 1968 Corvette. I was pretty sure his purpose for taking it was more to show off the car than to capture me. I remembered feeling incidental.

Flipped to the next one of me at age seven, a dorky school photo: gold ribbed turtleneck pullover, Hair by Pillow, and a bucktooth. I laughed. If there had been a poster child for awkward, I was it, hands-down.

Looking through the others, I couldn’t help but notice the unifying theme: as the years moved on, my smile seemed to fade. By sixteen, I was practically scowling at the camera—angry, dark, sullen.

I was getting sicker, and it showed.

The joy was gone, too. No surprise there. I’d made my full tour of duty through hell by then and had the battle scars to prove it.

I stuffed the photos away in a sock drawer, then brought my attention back to the other items, most of which I vaguely recognized: a red plastic squirt gun, a few comic books, an old pack of gum with only two sticks remaining. Why she had saved any of these was beyond me. She’d tossed plenty of things far more valuable after I’d left for college without once bothering to ask if I wanted them.

But there was something I definitely did not recognize.

A gold chain and pendant. Upon closer inspection, I realized it was a Saint Christopher medal, and while the length was short enough to belong to a woman, I knew I’d never seen my mother wearing it. Turning it over confirmed it: the initials were NAK. I tried to think whether we knew anyone with a name that matched but came up with nothing.

I placed it on the bed, stared at it, then looked back at the pile and discovered something else: an old, yellowed envelope addressed to my mother, postmarked July 3, 1976, from Stover, Illinois. The letter inside was written on stationary from the Greensmith Hotel:

C-

I won’t have access to a telephone for the next few days. Most of the lines are down due to the damage here. About your call during my stay in Chicago. Stop worrying. Trust me, that’s one body they’ll never find. Everything is taken care of.

-W

I swallowed hard. No name from the sender, but there didn’t need to be. I recognized the handwriting: Warren’s.

Chapter Five

The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up.

It was as if I’d accidentally stumbled across a conversation between two strangers. Evil ones.

What the hell do I have here?

And where was this body hidden that no one would ever find?

The necklace. I laid it across my palm and studied it. Where did it come from? Was I misunderstanding? Overreacting?

But they were talking about a damned body, for Christ’s sake .

Whose body? I had initials on a necklace, a date, and a location. I also had Sully. It might not have been connected…or it might be. He could help me find out.

I found the phone and dialed his number.

Jack Sullenfeld was my best friend in college and probably the smartest guy I know. He works as an Intel analyst for the F.B.I., and he’s my go-to guy when I’m on the hunt for sensitive data, information normally unavailable to the public.

Sully answered on the second ring. “Well, if it isn’t—”

“I need your help,” I interrupted, mindlessly rolling the necklace between my fingers.

“You sound funny.”

“I’m under a little stress.”

He paused, then spoke his words slowly, “Okay. What do you have?”

“Need you to look at missing persons or murder cases around 1976. Possible victim’s initials: NAK. The location might be in or near Stover, Illinois.”

“Male or female?”

“Don’t know. Maybe female. Just whatever you can find, okay?”

He paused a beat. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying my best for a more casual tone. “Just working some leads on a story and feeling the pressure.”

I hung up the phone and decided to do some searching myself. Fired up my Mac and logged onto Infoquest, the magazine’s subscription newspaper archiving service. Warren was a congressman back then. If he was in Stover, chances were the press might have been there, too. A search for Stover, Illinois, Warren Strademeyer, 1976 netted me a direct hit with a story from The Black Lake Courier, dated July 5, 1976. Apparently, Warren was in Stover studying emergency response systems after a tornado leveled the town. The story showed a photo of him walking through the rubble and talking to authorities. That would explain why the phone lines were down. Did another search, this time for murder, Stover, Illinois, missing, body, St. Christopher Medal, 1976. Came up with a string of stories from the Stover Journal, but one in particular caught my interest: a nineteen-year-old woman named Jackie Newberry, reported missing two weeks before the tornado hit. Last seen walking to the community college but never arrived there. A search of the neighborhood and outlying area proved futile. Authorities suspected foul play.

But her initials didn’t match those on the St. Christopher medal and no mention of a necklace.

I toyed with the idea that maybe the necklace had nothing to do with this, but if that were true, where did it come from? Again, nobody I knew with those initials. A dead end, and I was dead tired. It was after midnight. I’d been up for hours, was suffering from jetlag, and quickly losing steam. Exhausted, frustrated, and troubled, I decided to call it a night, hoping some rest might help bring new answers.

I fell asleep with a pad and pen on my chest after writing defiance fifty-seven times.

Chapter Six

I sometimes felt like a ghost walking through that house, my needs so often going ignored that it was as if they barely existed. As if I barely existed. And the saddest part, the most tragic, was that I bought into the neglect. I thought it was normal, that all mothers put their own needs before those of their children. I had no way of knowing otherwise. Ours was a world ruled by contradictions and inconsistencies, painted only in shades of gray. I wouldn’t have known black or white if I’d seen them.