Piece of My Heart (Under Suspicion #7) - Mary Higgins Clark Page 0,50

three months ago.”

“Oh no. Samantha, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know—”

“It was a car accident. She was on her way to Boston to visit her aunt, and it was pouring rain. She ran off the side of the road into a ravine. No one saw it happen, but the police think she took a curve too fast and lost control. All I know is that I lost my best friend, and the only other person who understood how much that bar meant to my dad.”

As Laurie left, she looked up at the sign on the facade above the storefront and wondered how long Samantha would wait to rename it again. A hair salon called Finn’s would be a nice tribute indeed.

Sunday, July 19

Day Five

Chapter 31

On the television screen in the living room of Laurie’s Upper East Side apartment, the chief of the LAPD was dressing down a city politician for using a homicide case as campaign fodder. Laurie glanced over at her father, sitting in his favorite lounge chair next to the sofa. These were usually the types of scenes in a police procedural that could send him on a rant about the lack of realism. Instead, she saw him nodding along.

On her other side, Timmy was similarly enrapt from his spot on the couch. The three of them were catching up on the newest season of Bosch. Timmy had had a nightmare last night, as he had every night since Johnny was missing. She was trying to find ways to take his mind from his worries. A detective show might not be the typical ten-year-old’s comfort fare, but Timmy was not a typical child. This was his favorite program, and they only watched it together as a family. She hoped that watching justice in a fictional setting might somehow comfort him at a subconscious level.

Leo had dark circles under his eyes, and she knew she had a matching set. They both knew the gruesome statistics. More than 90 percent of abducted children survived and were eventually found, but with each passing day, the odds worsened. More than a third were recovered in the first twenty-four hours, another third within the next forty-eight. Those who were missing for more than a week were more likely to be dead than alive. It had been five days of volunteer searches, chasing down reported sightings of fair-haired boys, and the Coast Guard’s search of the ocean with boats and helicopters, and Johnny was still missing.

Perhaps the roughest moment since Johnny’s disappearance had come this morning, when Marcy and Andrew made the painful decision to return to Washington, D.C., with Johnny’s sisters. The mysterious vanishing of their son had become the hottest chatter on the east end of Long Island. Over margaritas and rosé wine, vacationers would speculate that the boy had drowned, or been killed by a predator, or been taken hostage because of some imagined wrongdoing of his parents. He had become a topic of conversation rather than a real person.

And every time Marcy and Andrew left their hotel room, they had to protect their daughters from the relentless gossip and the glare of the public eye. Finally, a family friend who was a therapist pleaded with them to go home and stay in touch with law enforcement from there. Laurie couldn’t imagine how gut-wrenching it must have been to drive away without Johnny.

So, for now, for just a little while, their favorite television show was a way to escape. The scene on the screen hit its climax just as her cell phone buzzed on the coffee table in front of her. The area code was 518, Upstate New York. She hit the pause button.

“Mo-oooom.” Timmy was not happy about the interruption.

“I’m sorry,” she called out as she ran to the kitchen. “I have to get this.”

She wasn’t surprised when Leo trailed behind her, listening to her side of the conversation expectantly.

“Absolutely, Warden… I understand.… We will definitely abide by all of those conditions. Thank you again for accommodating us. I know these are unusual circumstances.”

Arranging for media access to a prisoner was always tricky, but what Laurie had sought for Darren Gunther was probably unprecedented. This was going to be an in-custody interview of a convicted murderer, in the presence of his lawyer, conducted by a television show produced by the daughter of the detective in charge of the original investigation. She had needed the consent of not only Gunther and his lawyer, Tracy Mahoney, but also the NYPD, the District