Smoke

by Lisa Unger

  “I guess.”

  Jeffrey whipped up some egg-white omelets with scallions and smoked salmon while Lydia brooded at the counter with a cup of coffee. She didn’t cook, never had really. But she was a master with the “one-button” machines, as Jeffrey called them. Coffeemaker, mini-food processor, toaster… she could make espresso, chop garlic, and toast up a piece of sourdough bread like nobody’s business.

  She sat on one of the stools by the counter and turned her back to the box that sat on the floor between the love seat and the fireplace hearth. As long as she had Lily Samuels to think about, she didn’t have to think about Arthur Tavernier and his legacy or his letters. In fact, it would be selfish to worry about her issues when Lily Samuels could be somewhere fighting for her life.

  “We should go tonight,” she said, starting to feel the buzz of anxiety. She stood and turned toward the staircase.

  “First we eat, then we rest a bit,” he said sensibly. “Then we’ll go.”

  He was always the one that made sure they took care of themselves, even when there was chaos all around them, even when the buzz could keep her running on empty for days.

  “The worst mistakes are made when you’re hungry or when you’re tired,” was his famous philosophy. “When we can, we need to avoid making decisions during those times.”

  “I can’t believe we’re going back there,” she said, after a minute.

  “Me neither.”

  They’d just sat down at the table when the phone rang. Lydia leapt up to grab it.

  “Hello?”

  The line was staticky, the cellular signal weak and slipping in and out. She thought she heard Dax say her name and the low wail of sirens in the background. Jeffrey got up from the table and picked up the extension in the living room.

  “Dax?” she said, glancing at the caller ID and seeing that the number was unavailable.

  “-gunshot-and then we-too late.” That was all she got. She had no idea what he was saying but she was fairly certain it was bad news.

  “Dax, I’m not getting you. The signal is bad.”

  “Lydia, can you hear me?”

  “Okay, I got you. What’s happening?”

  More static. She was about to hang up and try to call him back but then his voice came over the line as clear as a gong.

  “Tim Samuels killed himself,” he said. “He’s dead.”

  Part Two The Burning

  When the house has burned

  And all that’s left is ash and smoke

  You can stand rooted in regret

  Or forge ahead

  But you can’t go home again.

  – ANONYMOUS

  Seventeen

  When Internal Affairs came to his doorstep, Matt Stenopolis was still in his boxers, eating a glazed chocolate donut and drinking a cup of coffee. He heard the Caprice pull into the driveway and pulled himself away from the Pokémon cartoon he was watching. He drew back the curtains and stood at the picture window, watching as two men, one paunchy and balding, one young with a bodybuilder’s physique, both of them wearing bad suits and cheap ties and matching wool coats, emerged from the car. There was an aura of cheesy self-importance about them and he recognized them immediately as IAD.

  He didn’t bother to put on pants before he answered the door.

  “Gentlemen,” said Matt through the screen door. The cold air of the morning was biting, made more brutal by the sharp wind that blew. He noticed the dead trees and the empty street, the streetlamp that still hadn’t dimmed for the day.

  “Detective Stenopolis,” said the older man. He had thick lines and soft purple bags under his eyes, his moustache needed a trim, the wool coat he wore over his suit needed a good lint brush. But there was something steely about him, something really tough. A lead toe under a worn old boot.

  “What can I do for you this morning?” Matt had an idea that this was about Jorge Alonzo, the Latin King he’d been rough with when he’d disrespected Jesamyn. Those punks all had lawyers; they were always screaming police brutality. Murderers, drug dealers, rapists every last one of them, but God forbid their civil rights were violated.

  “Can we come in?”

  Matt hesitated. IAD officers were like vampires: once you invited them in, they were hard to get rid of. He noticed then that they’d left the engine running and the backseat of the car stood open. White clouds of exhaust plumed around the vehicle in the frigid air.

  “I was just being polite, Detective,” said the older officer when Matt didn’t answer right away. “Don’t make this worse than it’s going to be. Okay, buddy?”

  That’s when he felt his stomach clench. He saw his mother and father come out of their house next door, their coats on over their pajamas. They shuffled over the icy sidewalk, his father holding on tightly to his mother so that she wouldn’t slip. The echo of a door shutting in the morning air told him that his brother had been called and was on his way up the street. He wanted to yell at them, tell them to go back into the house, but he didn’t.

  “Mateo,” his mother called, looking at him worriedly. “What’s wrong?”

  Her short red hair hadn’t been brushed and it stuck up amusingly in several places; his father’s glasses fogged in the cold.

  “Nothing, Ma,” he said, holding the screen door open for the officers. He was starting to feel a flutter in his belly, a tingling in his hands.

  “Ma’am, sir, I’m going to have to ask you to stand back,” said the younger officer as he walked over to Matt’s parents.

  In the distance, he heard sirens sound and as they drew closer and closer Matt realized that they were for him.

  “Look,” he said to the older officer. “What’s going on here?”

  “Mateo Stenopolis,” he said, removing two pairs of cuffs from his pockets. They were linked together because Matt was too big to have his arms cuffed behind him with just one set. They’d done it before they arrived. If he had known they were going to take him out in cuffs without letting him get dressed, he would have taken the time to do so before allowing them into his home.

  “You’re not going to let me put on my clothes?” said Matt, turning his back and putting his hands behind his back like he’d asked a thousand perps to do a thousand times.

  “You are under arrest for the rape and murder of Katrina Silvana Aliti. You have the right to remain silent…”

  But Matt didn’t hear anything else as two squad cars pulled up, sirens screaming. His mother was crying, emitting a kind of low, despairing moan, standing between his father and brother, who looked on in shock.

  “Don’t worry, bro. We’re going to call a lawyer and meet you down there,” his brother said calmly. “Don’t worry, Mateo.”

  But it sounded like he was talking behind a piece of thick glass. All Matt could think, as they let him put on his sneakers that lay by the door and led him down the icy path to the waiting squad car, was that he’d never known her last name before this morning. He’d never asked Katrina her last name.

  Jesamyn was in a kind of haze as she dropped Benjamin off at school, still tired from the all-nighter they’d pulled the day before yesterday. She kissed him on the forehead.

  “See ya,” he said, sliding from the car.

  “See ya, little man. I love you.” But he was already gone. She watched as he ran toward the wide double doors without a second glance back at her. She didn’t have time to feel wistful about it as her cell phone started singing. She saw Dylan’s number on the ID. She sighed and considered not answering. But they’d both made a promise to each other long ago to always take each other’s calls out of respect for their mutual love for Benjamin. No matter what passed between them they were each a parent to the same child; that meant something.

  “What do you want?” she answered.

  “Yeah, look, I know you don’t want to talk to me right now. But I’m down here at 1 Police Plaza, answering more questions about my shooting. There’s something you need to know.”

  “
Spare me the drama and spit it out.” She was so sick of him, she could barely stand the sound of his voice.

  “They just brought Mount in.”

  “What? You’ve gotta be kidding me.” She immediately remembered the incident with Jorge Alonzo. That little shit, she thought.

  “In cuffs, still in his boxers.”

  “What?” she said again. That didn’t sound right.

  “They arrested him. Word is, Jez, they took him in for murdering a prostitute.”

  She sighed with relief. “Man, you will sink to any level to get an emotional response out of me. You’re not just selfish; you’re sick.”

  She took the phone away from her ear and was about to end the call, but she heard him raise his voice. She put the phone back to her ear.

  “Listen to me, Jez,” he was saying. “Please. This is not a joke. I am absolutely serious.”

  She felt her heart start to race. “Oh my God,” she said.

  Two days ago, the night of the raid on The New Day, once they’d identified Carla as Jessica Rawlins, it hadn’t taken long for them to contact her parents in Tennessee. It gave them a reason to put a warrant out for the arrest of Trevor Rhames and to send squad cars to Jude Templar’s home and office. They could question him now on the whereabouts of his client and charge him with aiding and abetting if he didn’t cooperate. But Templar was gone. Not to be found at his office, his home, or at the city courthouses, and by late that night, he still hadn’t turned up. Other than finding Jessica Rawlins, very little came from the search of The New Day. They were no closer to finding Lily, and Trevor Rhames and anything that might have incriminated him in Lily’s disappearance were gone from the premises before they arrived. And none of the people they interviewed, including Jessica Rawlins, had anything bad to say about The New Day; they all claimed never to have seen Lily. It was a big goose egg. They had nothing. And Kepler was angrier than Jesamyn had ever seen him. Matt left after Kepler ripped him a new one and for the first time since she’d known him, he didn’t go into the precinct on their day off the next day. She hadn’t seen or talked to her partner in almost forty-eight hours.

  “Jesamyn, are you listening to me?” asked Dylan, still on the other line.

  “What?”

  “I said, what do you know about this?”

  “Know about it? I don’t know anything about it. It’s complete bullshit. Matt Stenopolis is the most upright guy I have ever known. Honest, reliable, mature,” she said, turning the knife a little and hoping he was picking up on it.

  “But he’s got a temper,” said Dylan.

  She paused a second.

  “Yeah, he’s got a temper but only when people act like assholes. Anyway, what are you saying? You think he did this?”

  He didn’t say anything but she could hear him breathing on the line. Then, “Jez, I hear they have pictures of him entering and leaving her apartment. Fingerprint evidence at the scene, blood in his car. I mean, they’re not going to bring a cop in like that, humiliate him in front of his family, unless they’re real sure they’re dealing with someone capable of what they say he did to that pro.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That girl was beaten to death. Someone beat her to death with his fists. Someone big.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight and when she opened them, her vision had a white ring around it “You know him, Dylan. I know him. It’s not possible. It’s just not.”

  He sighed. “I hope you’re right.”

  “I’m coming down there,” she said. “I’ll be there in an hour.”

  “They’re not going to let you see him,” he was saying as she ended the call. She started the engine of the Explorer and pulled out of the school drive.

  A ghost of a thought was starting to form in her mind. She tried to push it down, but it wouldn’t go.

  Eighteen

  It was a rage killing. A rage killing that was followed by deep remorse. They knew that by the way Katrina Silvana Aliti had been beaten with big heavy fists, beaten until she died. She was a tiny woman, not five-three, not even a hundred and ten pounds. She never had a chance against a man that size, was likely unconscious after the first blow to her head.

  When she was dead, the killer must have come back to himself. Realized fully what he had done. Then he covered her face and body with the pink flowered sheet from her bed. The man that the killer found her with had run, not even bothering to retrieve his clothes. He had wrapped himself in a blanket he found on the couch and fled. His dick was still hard and would stay that way for hours, since he’d taken a double hit of Viagra in anticipation of his evening with Katrina.

  The big man had allowed the john to leave, barely even registering his presence. From the street outside where he called the police from a pay phone, the john said he heard the giant wailing like an injured moose. He hid himself in a doorway as the man ran from the building, climbed into an SUV, and sped off.

  “I’ve never seen anyone that tall outside a basketball court,” he told the police when they arrived. “He came through that door like it was made out of cardboard. She called him ‘Mateo.’ ”

  The surveillance camera from the livery cab company outside captured Detective Mateo Stenopolis arriving at Katrina’s apartment around midnight and leaving less than a half an hour later.

  “He doesn’t look upset,” said Jesamyn after watching the tape for the fifth time. “He’s not upset. He’s not running.”

  “That’s because he’s a stone-cold killer, Detective Breslow.”

  “Bullshit. I don’t care what kind of evidence you have. You’ll never convince me of that.”

  “We have an eyewitness account, a videotape, blood evidence in his vehicle.”

  “What about his DNA at the scene? If he beat her to death, his DNA should be all over her body. His knuckles should be broken and bloodied. Or bruised.”

  “Evidence suggests that he wore gloves.”

  “Hair, then. Fibers.”

  “It’ll take weeks for that to come back.”

  The interrogation room was too cold. She found herself wondering if they knew that she hated the cold, that it made her feel vulnerable somehow and small, that it opened a strange place of sadness within her that she couldn’t explain. She folded her arms across her chest, tucked her hands under her arms.

  “Just two days ago, we had a civilian complaint from a Jorge Alonzo. Alonzo claims that Stenopolis menaced and brutalized him, damaged his property.”

  Jesamyn looked at the old cop, pushed a disdainful breath out of her mouth. “Give me a break.”

  “Is it true?”

  She remembered how mad Mount had gotten, how she’d turned her back so she wouldn’t see him put his hands on the guy.

  “The kid was a punk, he had an attitude, he made some shitty comment about me and Detective Stenopolis raised his voice.”

  Detective Ray Bloom looked at her with wise, moist eyes. She could see that he’d been handsome about a hundred years ago. She could see that he was smart and kind and a good cop. But she hated him anyway.

  “He didn’t put his hands on Alonzo?”

  “No,” she said. The lie stuck in her throat and she reached for the coffee they’d placed in front of her. It was bitter and cold.

  “He didn’t put his hands on Alonzo,” repeated Detective Bloom. He knew she was lying, that it pained her, and he wanted to force her to say it again.

  But Jesamyn didn’t say anything, just turned her eyes on Bloom.

  “I heard you didn’t even let him put on his clothes,” she said quietly. “How do you people live with yourselves?”

  His partner pushed himself away from the wall behind her where he’d been standing for a while and moved into her field of vision. He was a big guy, with a bodybuilder’s physique. Square jaw in square head on square shoulders, very little neck, heavy brow. He didn’t look very smart. Did he think he was intimidating her? Even the biggest of them fell and cried like little girls with a solid k
ick to the kneecap; hit hard and directly in just the right place it shattered like a china saucer beneath the wheels of a car.

  “Let’s try to stay focused, Detective Breslow,” said Bloom. “Did you know he was seeing a prostitute?”

  “No,” she said. “If it’s true, I didn’t know that. You still haven’t convinced me it’s true.”

  “I don’t have to convince you of anything, Detective,” he said quietly.

  She nodded. She’d been in with them for nearly two hours and she was getting tired. Dylan had been right. When she showed up at 1 PP, they wouldn’t let her see Matt. He was being processed and it would be twelve hours at least before she could even talk to him. She’d spent a few minutes with Mount’s family, his mother, father, and younger brother Theo. His mom had been crying and started again when Jesamyn approached them.

  She’d embraced each of them and told them that it was all going to be fine, though she wasn’t sure of that at all. It was just a misunderstanding. A mistake, she assured them. Theo looked the least freaked out of the three of them, so she took him aside.

  “What you need to do,” she told him, “is get in touch with Mateo’s PBA rep. Call the desk sergeant at the Ninth Precinct, he’ll know who it is and how to get in touch. They’ll know what to do and they’ll help you find a lawyer.”

  He put a hand on her arm. “Just tell me the truth. It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  She hesitated a second. Then, “Yes, Theo. It’s very bad. Get him a very good lawyer. The best you can afford.”

  Theo nodded, looking stunned. She could relate. She felt pretty stunned herself. That’s when Detective Bloom approached her.

  “You saved me a trip, Detective,” he’d said, coming up behind her. “I have some questions about your partner.”

  They’d led her to an interrogation room, showed her the videotape. Once. Twice. Three times. As often as she asked them to rewind it and play it again.

  “If he was seeing her regularly, that video could have been taken anytime,” she said suddenly.