Two days later, Jay noted, one of the clients Price had been entertaining reported him to actual SEC investigators and he was arrested at his office on Federal Street. Reading between the lines of the rest of the data Jay gathered on Price, you could tell he thought Price was too dumb, too transparently slick, and too obsessed with finance to ever dupe or form a connection with Desiree.

Outside of that minor success, however, Jay was getting nowhere, and five days into his reports his frustration began to show. Desiree’s few close friends had lost contact with her after her mother’s death. She and her father had rarely spoken, nor had she confided in Lurch or the Weeble. With the exception of the macing of Daniel Mahew, she’d been remarkably unobtrusive during her trips downtown. If she hadn’t been so beautiful, Jay noted once, she probably wouldn’t have been noticed at all.

Since her disappearance, she’d used none of her credit cards, written no checks; her trust fund, various stocks, and certificates of deposit remained untouched. A check of her private phone line records revealed that she had made no calls between July and the date of her disappearance.

“No phone calls,” Jay had underlined in red in his report of February 20.

Jay was not the type to underline, ever, and I could tell that he had moved beyond the point of frustration and injury to his professional pride and toward the point of obsession. “It’s as if,” he wrote on February 22 “this beautiful woman never existed.”

Noting the unprofessional nature of this entry, Trevor Stone had contacted Everett Hamlyn and on the morning of the twenty-third, Jay Becker was called to an emergency meeting with Hamlyn, Adam Kohl, and Trevor Stone at Trevor’s home. Trevor included a transcript with Jay’s reports:

HAMLYN: We need to discuss the nature of this report.

BECKER: I was tired.

KOHL: Modifiers such as “beautiful”? In a document you know will circulate throughout the firm? Where is your head, Mr. Becker?

BECKER: Again, I was tired. Mr. Stone, I apologize.

STONE: I’m concerned that you’re losing your professional distance, Mr. Becker.

HAMLYN: With all due respect, Mr. Stone, it is my opinion that my operative has already lost his distance.

KOHL: Without question.

BECKER: You’re pulling me off the case?

HAMLYN: If Mr. Stone agrees with our recommendation.

BECKER: Mr. Stone?

STONE: Convince me why I shouldn’t, Mr. Becker. This is my daughter’s life we’re talking about.