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drinking problem. This dean tells me a different story. Says she was supposed to repeat a class on Monday but called in sick and hasn’t been heard from since.”
    “When did the husband last see her?”
    “On Sunday.”
    “That’s five days. He waits five days to report her missing? What’s his name?”
    “Durst. Robert Durst. Says his father is some big real estate guy.”
    “Shit, he is. You know who his father is? Seymour Durst.”
    “He said that, said his father’s name was Seymour.”
    “Did he also tell you that his family owns half of Manhattan?” said Regan, walking away from Struk to attend to the teen, who was taken downstairs to the holding pen.
    As Regan left the room, and with the police radio squawking in the background, Struk decided he would call Larry Cohen, a suggestion made by Dr. Cook.
    Cohen was a medical student at Einstein whom Cook knew to be friendly with Kathie.
    When he picked up the phone and learned he was talking to a New York City detective, Cohen seemed disturbed, not with Struk but because he hadn’t spoken to or seen Kathie in over a week.
    Cohen was also perturbed when he learned that it had been her husband who reported her missing.
    “Why is that bothering you?” said Struk.
    “Because he was beating her. He scared the hell out of her.”
    “He was hitting her?”
    “Yeah, a lot, from what I could tell.”
    “You ever see any marks on her?”
    “No, but she’d call me late at night, sometimes crying, telling me she was slapped or punched. She was pretty scared of him.”
    “Did she ever say she was planning to leave him?”
    “She was talking about divorce. But she’s scheduled to graduate this summer, so I told her to sit tight, finish school, then take care of her marriage.”
    Struk wanted to ask Cohen if he was involved with Kathie. Cohen wasn’t married, and Struk was old school. In his world, men and women didn’t confide in each other unless they were sleeping together. The words were there, rolled on the end of his tongue, ready to spit out.
    But he didn’t ask the question. He hung up and circled Cohen’s name on his pad, then wrote “boyfriend?”
    Before breaking for dinner, Struk decided to make two more calls—to Ann McCormack, Kathie’s mother, and the New York State Police.
    Ann McCormack was a widow, she said, her husband passing from cancer in 1966. Kathie was the youngest of five children; having moved into Manhattan when she was only nineteen, renting an apartment in a building owned by the Durst Organization.
    She met Robert Durst one morning while paying her rent. They’d had but two dates when she decided to move with him to Vermont, where he was going to run a health-food store.
    Ann said at the time she wasn’t pleased with her daughter’s decision, reminding her that Catholics marry, they don’t cohabitate.
    She told Struk she wasn’t fond of her son-in-law. He rarely socialized with Kathie’s family and, despite his wealth, lived on the cheap. He drove old cars, wore old clothes, and hovered over Kathie’s spending, watching every penny.
    “That’s why she’s in medical school,” said Ann. “She needs her own career. She needs her own money.”
    Ann hadn’t spoken to her daughter in a week or so, but said she had been in good spirits.
    “Did your daughter have any problems with her marriage?” said Struk.
    “We all have problems with our marriages sometime or another,” said Ann.
    “Yes, we do,” said Struk, who thanked Ann for her time and said he’d be in touch.
    He then made his second call, to the New York State Police, and spoke to a Sergeant William Kidney.
    Kidney knew all about Kathie Durst, thanks to her friend Gilberte Najamy, who had called Thursday night insisting on filing a missing-persons report.
    “I told her we could only take a report from a family member, but this woman wouldn’t take no for an answer. So I sent two troopers to the South Salem home Friday morning.”
    Kidney said Robert Durst