There was the gold nameplate on the facade of the headquarters directly across from his bench on Commonwealth Avenue, another on the door of the Grief Release Therapeutic Center on Beacon Street. And the business offices of Grief Release, Inc., were located a block away, in a red brick mansion on Arlington Street.

Grief Release, Inc. When it dawned on him, Jay Becker must have laughed his ass off.

Two days later, after reporting to Trevor Stone and Hamlyn and Kohl that he’d found enough evidence to suggest Desiree Stone had visited Grief Release, Inc., and that there was enough that was fishy about the organization to warrant it, Jay went undercover.

He entered the offices of Grief Release and asked to speak with a counselor. He then told the counselor how he’d been a UN relief worker in Rwanda and then Bosnia (a cover friends of Adam Kohl in the UN would back up) and that he was suffering a complete collapse of moral, psychological, and emotional strength.

That night he attended an “intensive seminar” for acute sufferers of grief. Jay told Everett Hamlyn in a tape-recorded conversation during the early hours of February 27 that Grief Release categorized its clients as suffering from six levels of grief: Level One (Malaise); Level Two (Desolate); Level Three (Serious, with Hostility or Emotional Estrangements); Level Four (Severe); Level Five (Acute); and Level Six (Watershed).

Jay explained that “watershed” meant a client had reached the point at which he would either implode or find his state of grace and acceptance.

To ascertain whether a Level Five was in danger of reaching Level Six, Grief Release encouraged Level Fives to enroll in a Release Retreat. As luck would have it, Jay said, the next Release Retreat left Boston for Nantucket the next day, February 28.

After a phone call to Trevor Stone, Hamlyn and Kohl authorized an expenditure for two thousand dollars and Jay left for the Release Retreat.

“She’s been here,” Jay told Everett Hamlyn during their phone call. “Desiree. She’s been in the Grief Release headquarters on Comm. Ave.”

“How do you know?”

“There’s a bulletin board in the function room. All sorts of Polaroids on it—you know, Thanksgiving party, aren’t-we-all-perfectly-fucking-sane-now party, shit like that. She’s in one of them, at the back of a group of people. I’ve got her, Everett. I can feel it.”

“Be careful, Jay,” Everett Hamlyn said.

And Jay was. On the first day of March, he returned from Nantucket unharmed. He called Trevor Stone and told him he’d just arrived back in Boston and would be dropping by the house in Marblehead in an hour with an update.

“You’ve found her?” Trevor said.

“She’s alive.”

“You’re sure.”

“I told you, Mr. Stone,” Jay said with some of his old cockiness, “no one disappears from Jay Becker. No one.”

“Where are you? I’ll send a car.”