Read Stay Close for Free Online

found?”
     
    “Right.”
     
    Sarah swallowed. “So maybe it’s not the day. Maybe it’s February and March.”
     
    “I don’t think so. Or at least, I didn’t. See, the other two men—Peter Berman and Gregg Wagman—could have disappeared a lot earlier. One was a drifter, the other a truck driver. Both men were single with not much family. If guys like that aren’t home in twenty-fourhours, well, who’d notice? You did, of course. But if a guy is single or divorced or travels a lot…”
     
    “It could be days or weeks before it’s reported,” Sarah finished for him.
     
    “Or even longer.”
     
    “So these two men might have vanished on February eighteenth too.”
     
    “It’s not that simple,” Broome said.
     
    “Why not?”
     
    “Because the more I look at it, the pattern gets even tougher to nail down. Wagman, for example, was from Buffalo—he’s not local. No one knows where or when he vanished, but I was able to trace his movements enough to know that he could have gone through Atlantic City sometime in February.”
     
    Sarah considered that. “You’ve mentioned five men, including Stewart, in the past seventeen years. Any others?”
     
    “Yes and no. Altogether, I’ve found nine men who sort of very loosely could fit the pattern. But there are cases where the theory takes a bit of a hit.”
     
    “For example?”
     
    “Two years ago, a man named Clyde Horner, who lived with his mother, was reported missing on February seventh.”
     
    “So it’s not February eighteenth.”
     
    “Probably not.”
     
    “Maybe it’s the month of February.”
     
    “Maybe. This is the problem with theories and patterns. They take time. I’m still gathering evidence.”
     
    Her eyes filled with tears. She blinked them away. “I don’t get it. How did no one see this—with this many people missing?”
     
    “See what?” Broome said. “Hell, I don’t even see it that clearly yet. Men go missing all the time. Most run away. Most of these guys go broke or have nothing or got creditors on their ass—so they start new lives. They move across the country. Sometimes they change their names. Sometimes they don’t. Many of these men… well, no one is looking for them. No one wants to find them. One wife I spoke to begged me not to find her husband. She had three kids with the guy. She thinks he ran off with some—as she put it—‘hootchy whore,’ and it was the best thing that ever happened to her family.”
     
    They were silent for a few moments.
     
    “What about before?” Sarah asked.
     
    Broome knew what she meant, but he still said, “Before?”
     
    “Before Stewart. Did anybody disappear before my husband?”
     
    He ran his hand through his hair and raised his head. Their eyes locked. “Not that I could find,” Broome said. “If this is a pattern, then it started with Stewart.”
     

4
     
    T HE KNOCKS WOKE R AY.
    He pried open one eye and immediately regretted it. The light worked like daggers. He grabbed hold of his head on either side because he feared that his skull would actually split in two from whatever was hammering on it from the inside.
     
    “Open up, Ray.”
     
    It was Fester.
     
    “Ray?”
     
    More knocks. Each one landed inside Ray’s temple like a two-by-four. He swung his legs out of bed and, head reeling, managed to work his way to a sitting position. Next to his right foot was an empty bottle of Jack. Ugh. He had passed out—no, alas, he had once again “blacked out”—on the couch without bothering to pull out the bed beneath it. No blanket. No pillow. His neck was probably aching too, but it was hard to find it through the pulsating pain.
     
    “Ray?”
     
    “Sec,” he said, because, really, he couldn’t get more sounds to come out.
     
    This felt like a hangover raised to the tenth power. For a second, maybe two, Ray didn’t remember what had happened the nightbefore, what had caused this massive influx of discomfort. Instead he