Smoke (4 page)

“Okay,” said Kepler, Friday morning. “That’s it. She took off.”

“No,” said Jesamyn. “Not necessarily. What if someone forced her to withdraw that money?”

Kepler sighed, looked back and forth between them.

“Did you get the security tape from the branch where she withdrew the funds?” he asked.

“We’re still waiting for it,” said Matt.

“Well, what the fuck is taking so long?”

Matt looked down at the floor. “They promised by Monday.”

As soon as he’d seen the withdrawal he’d asked the bank contact for the security video from the branch. They’d been promising it for two days.

“Get that tape,” said Kepler. “If she’s on it and it doesn’t look as if she’s under duress, we’re going to close the case. I need you two on other things.”

They’d left his office. Jesamyn had her head down; he could see
her jaw working the way it did when she was angry or frustrated. He was a little of both. Over the last two weeks they’d gotten to know Lily through her friends and family, through spending time in her West Village apartment. She was not the type of girl to close her bank accounts and take off for parts unknown. Something had happened to her; they were both sure of that. And sure if they couldn’t figure it out, they’d be failing someone who needed help. Big-time.

He drove up toward the Ninth Precinct, which was just a few blocks away. It was freezing, blustery outside but an oven in the Caprice. He could feel beads of sweat popping up on his brow. Breslow always had to have the heater going full blast; she was always too cold. He let her have her way because in the summer, she let him keep the AC on full blast since he was always too hot because of his size. All summer, she kept a fleece pullover in the car. But in the winter, for whatever reason, she couldn’t stand to be cold. It made her cranky.

“What did the message say?” asked Jesamyn as they rolled up First Avenue toward the station house on Fifth Street.

“She said that she needed some advice, that she was out of her league ‘big-time.’ ”

“What kind of advice?”

“Lydia Strong said Lily was her student at one point and that they talked now and then about stories she was working on. Strong was like her mentor.”

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“What?”

“Don’t talk about her in the past tense. Not yet.”

“Sorry,” he said.

Jesamyn always, without fail, got personally wrapped up in their cases. It made her an incredibly determined and highly effective investigator but it was emotionally draining for her. He’d warned her about it, about the burnout that would eventually take her over. Like he was one to talk.

“But she’s also a private investigator, right?”

“Strong? I think she’s more like a consultant than an actual PI. But I don’t know. Why?”

“Maybe that’s why Lily called her. You know, she’s out there trying
to prove that Mickey didn’t kill himself. She wasn’t working on a story. What she was doing was really more like an investigation. Maybe she called Lydia Strong for advice on that. Maybe that’s what she meant when she said she was out of her league.”

“Maybe,” said Matt, not sure where she was going.

They pulled into a spot in front of the precinct. The midnight guys were on their way out. Matt sometimes wished he were still in uniform. It wasn’t easy but there was something simple about patrolling the streets, answering calls. The midnight shift. That was the real job. Especially in a place like the Ninth, affectionately referred to as the Ninth Street Shithouse, because of its reputation as a place you were sent if you were a discipline case or a fuck-up. Its borders were Broadway to Avenue D, Houston to Fourteenth Street. They called it a “B” house because it was a healthy mix between the haves and the have-nots. The projects in Alphabet City were hot enough to keep you busy, but there were a lot of nice, law-abiding New Yorkers, too, living in the gentrified buildings around Tompkins Square, cool lofts on First and Second, the NYU dorms on Ninth and Eleventh. It was a good balance, not too crazy, not too slow. Not like the South Bronx, which was an “A” house where every night was like downtown Baghdad. Or Midtown North, a “C” house, which was basically Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood; you could go months without a decent collar.

“Man,” said Jesamyn, waving to a good-looking young Latino guy getting into his squad car. “I am so glad I’m not in uniform anymore. I was freezing my ass off for years out there.”

“Yeah, but at least patrol, you leave it behind at the end of your shift. Investigations come home with you, get into bed and keep you up all night busting your chops.”

Jesamyn looked at her watch. “Shit,” she said. “I have to pick up the rug rat from my mother’s place.”

“It’s late. Why don’t you let him sleep there?” She did that some nights when they’d made a collar and had a mountain of paperwork to file.

She shook her head, her neat blonde bob shimmering prettily in the light from the streetlamp coming in through the windshield. “No. I need him home with me at night. And I like to get him off to school
in the morning when I can, have breakfast together. It’s important, you know.”

He nodded. He knew it was hard on her, being a single mother. But he admired her and envied her a little for it. In a way, it couldn’t be all bad to be needed so much by someone. And Benjamin was a sweet, cute little kid. With a button nose, deep, warm brown eyes, and a pouty little mouth, he looked just like his mom. And he wasn’t much shorter.

“Meet you back here at nine? We’ll head over to the bank offices. See about that security video,” he said.

She looked at him. “I’m not sure what to hope for, you know. If she’s on it and looks okay, we have to drop the case, but maybe she
did
take off. If not, then—” She stopped. She didn’t have to finish; he was thinking the same thing.

T
he gentleman his mother had raised compelled Matt to watch as Jesamyn climbed into her Ford Explorer and took off up Fifth Street tooting her horn good-night. It used to make her mad, like he was implying that she couldn’t take care of herself. And it
was
silly since if it came down to it, she’d probably wind up protecting him as he tripped over his own big clumsy feet. But he didn’t think she minded anymore; they understood each other better after working together for two years.

“How’s it going, Mount?” called the desk sergeant as Matt entered the precinct through the heavy wood doors.

The other cops at the Ninth called him Mount, short for Mount Stenopolis. Very creative bunch of guys. Real geniuses.

“Pretty good. How ’bout you, Sarge? Case of the clap clearing up?”

“Under control,” he said with a smile. “Hear your mother’s still on meds, though.”

He smiled, even as he felt his chest constrict with anger. You don’t insult a Greek guy’s mother. His big secret was that he was sensitive about his mother. That he was sensitive in general. Matt could banter with the best of them, but he knew it got to him in a way it didn’t get to the other guys. He did a good job of hiding it, though.

“You’re killin’ me,” he said.

He lumbered up the three flights to his office, taking two steps at
a time with ease. At his desk, he checked for messages on his voicemail, found none, and pulled out Lily’s file. He looked up at the picture he had pinned to the corkboard over the desk in his cube. Whoever had taken the picture had captured her essence. There was a sweetness to her, but also a kind of wisdom in her black eyes. Her smile was warm, her heart-shaped face open and friendly. A storm cloud of jet-black curls framed her face. He felt an ache looking at her, knowing that the clock was ticking.

Maybe, if he was honest with himself, that was why he’d finally gone to see Lydia Strong. Maybe part of him was hoping that she’d take an interest, so if tomorrow turned out to be the last day they’d be able to devote any real time to Lily, someone else would pick up the trail. If there was a trail to pick up.

Somewhere on another floor a phone rang and rang. He could hear Marilyn Manson music coming from the gym on the floor above him and the heavy clink of someone doing reps. There was an unpleasant smell in the air like someone had burned popcorn in the microwave oven again. He looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight.

He’d spend a couple of hours going over the file again, see if they missed anything. Then he’d grab a few hours on one of the bunks, shower and change here in the morning. He always kept a clean set of clothes in his locker because he spent a lot of nights at the precinct. After all, it wasn’t like he had anyone to go home to.

Three

T
he day dawned bright and cold but Lydia barely noticed as she surfed the web looking for information on Lily and Mickey Samuels. She’d been up half the night thinking about it, keeping Jeffrey awake with her nervous energy. Around four, she gave up on the idea that she might go back to sleep, headed to her office, and booted her computer. She logged onto LexisNexis and plugged in the name Mickey Samuels and came back with nothing. She tried “Michael Samuels” and got three listings. Scrolling through them, she discovered that only one of them related to Lily’s brother.

The
Riverdale Press
ran a brief piece on Mickey’s suicide, which basically confirmed the details Matt Stenopolis had given her the night before, without adding much more.

Local Café Owner Ends Life

The body of Michael James Samuels, 28, was discovered yesterday by a local resident as he arrived to work at the Walmart on Broadway. Police have ruled the death a suicide, Samuels having died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Jessup Irving, 65, noticed a car parked at the far reaches of the empty lot and went to investigate.

“I saw someone sitting there so still. It just seemed odd to me, early as it was. Not yet seven.”

As he approached the car, he made a gruesome discovery.

“I just started praying,” said Irving. “Then I took my cell phone and called 911.”

The discovery of gunshot residue on Samuels’ right hand and powder burns at his temple confirmed what police had surmised at the scene, that the death was a suicide. Police say there is no evidence of foul play. Friends reported that Samuels had lately been depressed and acting erratically due to a recent breakup and the fact that business was slow at his recently opened coffee shop and performance space called No Doze. Neither Samuels’ family nor ex-girlfriend could be reached for comment.

“It just goes to show that guns and alcohol don’t mix well,” said Irving, commenting on the discovery of a half-consumed bottle of whiskey in Samuels’ car.

“Words to live by,” said Lydia out loud as she read, lingering on the photograph of Mickey Samuels. He was a good-looking guy with high cheekbones, bright blue eyes, and an expansive smile he had in common with his sister. There was that same brightness to him, the same wide-open, happily expectant look to his face that she had always liked about Lily. It was hard to imagine him sitting alone in a dark car with a gun and a bottle of JD, thinking that the barrel looked brighter than the rest of his life. Lydia made a note on a pad of paper by her keyboard:
Girlfriend?

She tried searches on Google and Yahoo as well, but came up with nothing. She wasn’t
that
surprised. People had strange attitudes about suicide and it wasn’t covered much in the media, unless the deceased was a celebrity or the case could be tied into a larger story on, for example, the failure of a controversial anti-depressant or something like that. Otherwise people seemed to want to avoid the topic. Maybe because there was so much guilt and anger involved for the people left behind, such a sense of disconnect from the loved one who’d chosen death instead of life with them.

There was a larger piece on Lily in the
Post
. It talked some about her education, her career, her grief over her brother’s death. The article reported that she had packed a bag on October 15th after taking a week off from work and headed up to Riverdale. Local residents reported her asking questions of residents and business owners, spending time in
her brother’s apartment, at his coffeehouse that had been closed since his death. And like Detective Stenopolis had said, no one had seen her after October 22nd. Residents of Riverdale who had contact with her just assumed she had given up and gone home. It was October 30th, her mother’s birthday, before anyone reported her missing. The article ended with a mention of a ten-thousand-dollar reward offered by the family for any information leading to Lily.

There was a sidebar about missing persons statistics in the United States. Apparently, in California alone in 2003, more than thirty thousand people had disappeared from their lives voluntarily. Meaning that they packed some things, cashed out their accounts, and without a word to anyone in their lives, just left. Five hundred eighty-five disappeared under suspicious circumstances with significant evidence of a stranger abduction. And 247 were missing, the circumstances of their disappearance totally unknown. Nationally, in 2001 more than eight hundred thousand adults and children were counted as missing by the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. Nearly a million people gone by accident, foul play, or design. Just gone.

There was also a single-page website someone had set up, probably the parents, with a picture of Lily and the word MISSING emblazoned across the top and a number to call. There was the offer of a $10,000 reward. The paragraph gave a brief description of Lily, mentioning how she was last seen by her family three days after her brother’s funeral. She left their house, supposedly to go back to her life and her job. She returned to the city, only to pack a bag and ask for some time off work. No one who loved her had seen her since that day.

Lydia leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath. She reached for her coffee cup and drank from it even though it was stone cold now. The milky gray light of morning was coming in through the tall windows and she could hear the street noise starting to rise as the city woke up for business. She liked it here in her little cocoon surrounded by floor-to-ceiling shelves of books, her leather couches and warm chenille throws. She
liked
the writing life; it was safe.