Where Are You Now? Read Free Page A

the hands of a mugger as she was on her daily run early one morning near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
    Aaron had been twenty-eight then, newly married, comfortably secure in his upward climb at Wallace and Madison Investment Bankers. Now he was the father of two sons, Eli and Gabriel, and a small daughter, Danielle, who bore a heartbreaking resemblance to her late grandmother. Aaron never visited the cemetery without once again experiencing anger and frustration at the fact that his mother’s murderer was still walking the streets, a free man.
    She had been struck in the back of the head with a heavy object. Her cell phone was on the ground beside her. Had she sensed danger and taken it out of her pocket to try to dial 911? That possibility was the only one that made sense.
    She had to have been attempting to call. The records the police obtained showed she had neither made nor received a call at that time.
    The cops thought it was a random mugging. Her watch, the only jewelry that she ever wore at that time of day, was missing, as was her house key. “Why take her house key if whoever killed her didn’t know who she was and where she lived?” he had asked the cops. They hadn’t had an answer to that one.
    Her apartment had its own street-level entrance around the corner from the doorman-monitored main entrance of the building, but as the detectives who worked on the case pointed out, there was nothing missing from it. Her wallet, containing several hundred dollars, was in her pocketbook. Her jewelry box, open on the dresser, held the few pieces of valuable jewelry he knew her to own.
    The intermittent rain began to fall again as Aaron knelt down and touched the grass over his mother’s grave. His knees sank into the muddy ground as he placed the stone, and whispered, “Mom, I so wish you had lived to see the kids. The boys are finishing the first grade and kindergarten. Danielle is a little actress already. I can just see her in a dozen years auditioning for one of the plays you’d be directing at Columbia.”
    He smiled, thinking of what his mother’s response would be. “Aaron, you’re a dreamer. Do your math. By the time Danielle is in college, I’d have been seventy-five years old.”
    â€œYou’d still be teaching and directing and you’d still be full of spunk,” he said aloud.

4

    O n Monday morning, carrying the note Mack had dropped in the collection basket, I set off for the District Attorney’s office in lower Manhattan. It was beautiful out, sunny and warm with a balmy breeze, the kind of weather that would have been appropriate for Mother’s Day instead of the cold, wet day that had spoiled any hope of outdoor gatherings.
    Mom and Uncle Dev and I had gone out to dinner Sunday night. Obviously the note that Uncle Dev handed us sent Mom and me into a tailspin. Mom’s initial reaction was to be thrilled that Mack might be so near. She has always been convinced that he is far away in Colorado or California. Then she became fearful that my threat to find him had put him in some kind of jeopardy.
    At first I simply didn’t know what to think about it, but now I had a growing suspicion that Mack might be head over heels in trouble and trying to keep us away from it.
    The lobby at 1 Hogan Place was crowded, and the security was as tight as it gets. Even though I had plenty of identification, without a specific appointment to seesomeone, I could not get past the guard. As the people on line behind me began to get restless, I tried to explain that my brother was missing, and we might finally have something to indicate where we could begin looking for him.
    â€œMa’am, you’ll have to place a phone call to Missing Persons and make an appointment,” the guard insisted. “Now, please, there are other people who need to get upstairs to their jobs.”
    Frustrated, I walked outside the building and pulled out my cell