Thursday, December 31, 1981, ~ 8:30 pm
Although he’d been back to work after his psychosis for some time, Orrin had been unable to regain his focus. The network project was expanding exponentially, there were even PR events booked over the past few months - - the idea was to familiarize the public with the infrastructure so that backlash to the ever-expanding utility work wasn’t too much of an obstacle.
But all he could manage to focus on was finding Sarah. The note from Joseph Lamb’s office held the best clue. Obviously Bodak and Sarah had been visiting that place for romantic getaways . . . this “Hudson Lake.” Strange, ever since he considered it the night at the precinct, the notes, the reference to Hudson Lake . . . he hadn’t noticed it before. Indeed, he remembered it being called something different. Striking because of his personal connection to the man of the same name last spring . . . it seems it should have jumped out at him immediately . . . not been, well, misremembered.
In any event, he had found it on a New England Road atlas, the location of this “Hudson Lake.” Another irony . . . he’d recently been there . . . well, not exactly, but it wasn’t far off Route 1, just north of Boston on the way to Salem, near the Lynn Wood Reservation . . . just several miles east of Saugus and the location of the bus accident he was on last spring.
Meanwhile, Lamb . . . obviously Lamb had been stalking her. Why else would Lamb even have this information? Tracking her, fixating on her, obsessing over her, it disgusted him to even think about, how sick did Lamb have to be to take this delusional preternatural compulsion to the level of keeping a file on her? Obviously, Lamb didn’t even really know Sarah, he was, most likely, a dangerous pervert and, Orrin resolutely concluded, should obviously be committed.
Meanwhile, Orrin had checked the personnel records . . . Lamb had been out of work for almost two months; missing ever since his office was broken into last November. He paced anxiously around his own dark office, it was almost 8:30 pm . . . That sick son of a bitch Lamb had likely seduced Sarah into going up to the Hudson Lakehouse! The more he thought about it, the more it made sense. In fact, he began to think, Sarah might not even know that Bodak was dead . . . both Maloy and that P.I., Rosenbaum, had been looking into her as a missing person determining she’d disappeared about the time Bodak was found . . . but nothing concluded Sarah knew Bodak was dead . . . could Lamb have lured her there? For that matter . . . could Lamb have killed Bodak!?
Just at that moment Jeffries stepped into Orrin’s dark office and interrupted his spiraling thoughts, his arm still bandaged from the bomb two months ago. “Aren’t you coming downstairs to have some champagne? Stankey’s down there, you should go.”
Orrin barely acknowledged him . . . he could hear Jeffries rambling on about nonsense, Stankey, his career, some local radio personality (an Alan Berg) being downstairs for one of the PR events and something about the owner of 98 Front Street going public and that if that box wasn’t found the entire company would be ruined (something that should concern him personally) but, none of it really mattered. The only thing that mattered was getting to Sarah so that they could finally be together - - they were always meant to be together.
He decided; there was no time to lose, Lamb could be seducing Sarah up at the lake-house at that very moment for all he knew. He’d go tomorrow. New Year’s Day.
550 Madison Street in New York, The Night of New Year’s Eve 1981 - Orrin’s In The Office
