Smoke

by Lisa Unger

  “She could still be in there,” said Lydia. “There could be an innocent girl in there.”

  Her desperation was making her loud but Agent Hunt didn’t say anything; he just looked at her like he was trying to figure out what her angle might be.

  “A lot of the people in there could be innocent. Brainwashed, trapped. Do you understand?” she said when he remained silent.

  He shook his head, wrote something in his little notebook. She took a deep breath, tried to chill out a little, trying to quell the combination of anger and anxiety doing battle in her chest.

  “Okay,” she said, trying to sound calmer. “If he wasn’t a federal agent the way you seem to be implying, then how did you know we were in there? Why did you come in after us?”

  “We’ve had the compound under surveillance for about six months, gathering evidence in preparation for a raid scheduled next month,” he said. “We heard gunfire and explosions, then a fire broke out. We had to move in tonight or never.”

  “How convenient. So you’re claiming that the gunfire, explosions, and fire all started before you ever stepped foot onto the farm.”

  “You’re saying different?” he asked, and something in his voice sounded cold as steel to her. He suddenly didn’t seem so young.

  She paused, looked at the ceiling above her.

  “I fell down a hole, lost consciousness, and woke up in a concrete cell,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes. “I don’t know what happened.”

  “So you say,” he said, returning her gaze.

  Uh-oh, Lydia thought. Time to shut up.

  “Lawyer,” she said quietly. The kid gave her a look.

  “Give me a break,” he said, like she was asking him to fetch her a cup of coffee.

  She pressed her mouth into a thin, tight line and crossed her arms in front of her chest, causing herself a surprisingly sharp pain in her ribs. She shook her head to indicate that she wouldn’t be saying another word.

  He held her eyes for a moment and was too young to hide his exasperation. He got up suddenly and marched away from her, exited the rear of the van and locked the doors behind him.

  She leaned back in her chair and suddenly wished she had a better knowledge of the Patriot Act. How long could they hold them without evidence and without charge? She started to wonder if maybe “stubborn smart-ass” wasn’t the best tack to take. She wondered what Dax and Jeffrey had said and how much trouble they were all in. What she needed to do, she figured, was to call Striker and have him send down one of the firm’s lawyers. Or maybe more than one. Three lawyers. They were going to need three.

  These were the things on her mind when the chrome handles on the rear door of the van started to turn and one of them opened, letting in a swath of humid air. Lydia sat up in her seat and was about to start getting loud about wanting to call her lawyer, when she saw a face she didn’t expect step into view. All the words she had been planning to say deserted her, died between her throat and her mouth.

  “Hi,” said a painfully thin young girl with her hair shorn close to her head.

  Something came alive in Lydia, something that was hope and elation, anger and confusion in one ugly tumble.

  “Lily,” she breathed. Her lost girl found.

  Twenty-Six

  Jesamyn climbed into the cold interior of her Ford Explorer, gunned the engine, and blasted the heat. She had three stitches on the side of her face, right beneath her eye. She turned down the rearview mirror so that she could take a look at them; she kind of liked them. Like the bruises she often got in kung fu, big purple and brown flowers of blood beneath her skin, she saw this as a badge of honor, the mark of a battle fought and survived. She was glad Dylan had agreed to leave and go to her mom’s to help her get Ben ready for school in a few hours. Her mother hated Dylan with the passion only a mother can muster for the person who hurt her child. But she was able to stay civil for Benjamin’s sake.

  She felt fatigue tugging at the lids on her eyes as she backed the Explorer out of Matt’s driveway. Matt’s parents and Theo had come out in the commotion and she had had to tell them that Matt was on the run. Detective Bloom had found the files Matt had left on the kitchen table, and Matt’s mother had wept inconsolably. Now she saw the living-room light glowing in the row house next to Mount’s. She wanted more than anything to bring him back to that place, safe and sound, proven innocent.

  She hoped Bloom wasn’t just paying her lip service about talking to the suspect. But she suspected he was just trying to get her to shut up. She was going there anyway; she’d make a huge scene if she had to. She was about to merge onto the highway when she saw the darkness in the backseat shift. Her heart thumped as she pulled onto the shoulder suddenly with a screeching of her tires, ripped her gun from its holster and thrust it behind her, slamming the vehicle into park with her free hand.

  “Hands where I can see them,” she yelled, motivated by her own fear rather than a desire to intimidate.

  “Take it easy,” said the darkness. “I’m sorry. I fell asleep or I would have said something before you started driving.”

  Her fear drained away and she sank back into her seat, the adrenaline rush leaving her shaking at her core. “Jesus Christ,” she sighed, leaning her head back against the upholstery. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Mount.

  “You are a major, major fuck-up, you know that?” she said, turning to look at him. “What were you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking, I guess. I was acting. I saw her. I saw Lily.”

  “What? Where?” she said. He looked exhausted, pale with blue canyons of fatigue under his eyes, dark stubble on his jaw. There was something in his eyes that didn’t thrill her. For a second she wondered, has he lost it?

  “On my street, in front of my house. I went out after her but she was gone.”

  “Were you dreaming?”

  “No. I saw a woman. I’m sure of that. I’m not sure it was Lily. But I was certain of one thing when I saw her: that someone was fucking with me and if I didn’t do something about it, I was going to spend the rest of my life in jail.”

  “So you went to see Clifford Stern?” she said, guessing, because that’s what she would have done.

  “I didn’t know where else to go. They cleared out the church in the Bronx. Jude Templar was gone. I knew Stern was lying. There was no other reason for him to lie or to be a part of that set-up unless he had a connection to The New Day. I figured I could scare him into telling me the truth.”

  He leaned back in the seat, put his feet up, and rested his head against the glass.

  “They knew,” he said. “That’s the scariest thing. They knew enough about me to know that I’d show up there, trying to get the guy to come clean. They sent that girl, whoever she was, to make that call, and knew it would cause me to act. Don’t you think that’s frightening?”

  Jesamyn watched her friend and partner. He met her eyes for a second and then closed them, fell silent. She was about to say something when he went on.

  “They were waiting there for me. I came in through the back. The door was unlocked, that should have been my first clue. Stern was in a La-Z-Boy, half asleep in front of the game.

  “I walked right through his dining room and stood twenty feet away from him before he turned to look at me. He smiled. ‘Man, you are predictable,’ he said. But he looked stoned, I mean high as a kite. It was more like he was talking to someone he thought was a figment of his imagination than me, standing by his recliner with a gun in my hand. But there was something crazy in his eyes; I think now it was a warning. I moved in close to him until I was standing right over him. He smiled again.

  “There was this deafening sound and his chest kind of exploded and splattered all over me. He died immediately with that crazy, stoned expression still on his face. He never even knew what hit him. There were two shots and they came from behind me, so I spun around and found a man as big as I am, a little
taller even, slightly wider. He held a thirty-eight identical to my own in a gloved hand. I drew on him when I heard something behind me. I turned and there was another one.”

  “Another what?”

  “Another guy all in leather, bald, big. Like it was a uniform, some kind of look they were cultivating.

  “He fired on me and I ran. I knew what they were trying to do. They wanted it to look like I broke into his house and that Stern and I shot each other. Case closed. They’re rid of me and they don’t have to worry about Stern either. Nice and neat.”

  “We arrested one of them,” she said. “One of those men you saw.”

  “Just now?”

  “Yeah, I came to your place to get your porn,” she said with a smile. “And he came in after me.”

  “You took him to the mat?”

  “You bet your ass.”

  “You’re a tough bitch, Detective Breslow.”

  She smiled. “If I’d known he was such a bad shot, I wouldn’t have been so scared.”

  “Bad shot?”

  “Yeah, he fired at you and missed. You’re like the proverbial side of the barn.”

  He coughed a little. “Who said he missed?”

  “Oh, shit,” she said, leaning over the seat. “You’re shot?”

  He nodded. “I was coming home to die like a wounded old grizzly,” he said with a smile. “But it was too crowded at my place. I thought I’d do it in the back of your car.”

  “How bad is it?” she said, unzipping his jacket and seeing that the tee-shirt beneath was red with his blood.

  “Not that bad, I don’t think. I think it went straight through.”

  She looked at him more closely; he was fading, his lids lowering over eyes that seemed to be having trouble focusing. There was so much blood, she couldn’t see where the wound was. She saw that the waistband of his jeans was black with his blood. She quashed the rise of panic down hard. No time for that.

  “Mateo Stenopolis,” she said loudly, pulling on his legs to get him to slide all the way down. She didn’t want him falling over during the mad dash she was about to make for the nearest hospital. “You stay with me.”

  He looked at her and nodded weakly.

  “Don’t make me pull out the kung fu,” she said when he said nothing. He raised his hands in a gesture of mock surrender, then winced at the movement.

  “Jez,” he said, as she turned and threw the car into drive, roared onto the highway. “Just be careful.”

  “Careful of what?” she said, pushing her foot heavily on the gas. “You worried about my driving?”

  “The other one. You only got one of those guys. I think they travel in pairs.”

  She thought of her vacant-eyed leather-clad assailant and wasn’t thrilled that he had a partner. Then she saw a pair of headlights behind her, square and bearing down quickly.

  “Mount,” she said.

  He didn’t answer and she looked up in her rearview mirror, saw only darkness in the backseat and the hot, high beams of the white van on her tail.

  Lily felt like she could crumble to dust in Lydia’s arms, she was so fragile. She clung to Lydia like she was a buoy in the violent water of Lily’s life.

  “Lily, my God,” she said. Agent Hunt stood behind them.

  “This is the girl you were looking for?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. He nodded his acknowledgment and may have even smiled a little.

  “She came wandering out of the New Day Farms about an hour before you. She’s been talking about an Agent Grimm, too. For someone who doesn’t exist, he sure does get around.”

  Lily was shivering in her arms and Lydia held onto her tight as the girl began to sob.

  “Please,” she said, appealing to the youthful humanity she saw in him. “Let me take her back to our hotel. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, just let me get her comfortable and safe.”

  An hour later, Lydia, Jeffrey, and Lily were back in the hotel room with an escort waiting outside their door and Agent Hunt sitting at the table. Dax had not been released and no one would discuss his situation with either of them; Lydia was concerned… for a lot of reasons. She wasn’t sure how he had found them and led them out, or what would happen to him now. But she knew he could take care of himself; she’d worry about him after they’d talked to Lily, made sure she was safe from The New Day and returned her to her mother where she belonged.

  “I did what you taught me to do. Only it worked a little too well,” she said with a slight laugh. She sat across from Agent Hunt, accepting a bottle of water from the minibar but nothing more.

  Everything about her was changed. Where she’d been bright and exuberant, she was quiet and careful. Lily had always been the kind of girl who got excited by things, spoke quickly, moved her hands wildly, laughed easily. This girl was pale and thin as a slip of paper, speaking through lips that were cracked with dehydration, eyes that were dull and filled with grief. Her cloud of silky black curls that had always bounced around her face was gone; only the slightest stubble of her hair remained. She kept bringing a shaking hand up to it, feeling its texture. Lydia wanted to take her home so that she could be tucked in to bed and fed soup until she was feeling better. It was painful to watch her.

  “So after your brother’s funeral you went up to Riverdale,” Lydia said. “To try to get into his head.”

  She nodded. Swallowing the water seemed to cause her pain and Lydia remembered what Jeffrey had told her about the tubes he’d seen in the throats of New Day guests.

  “I had the keys to his apartment. It didn’t take me long to figure out what he had been trying to do.”

  “Did you know about the problems your stepfather was having with The New Day?” asked Jeffrey. Lydia glanced at him, realizing that Lily probably didn’t know Tim Samuels was dead. She figured that this wasn’t the right time and they weren’t the right people to tell her.

  She shook her head. “No. I knew he and my mother were having problems. I suspected an affair, some asinine midlife crisis. But I didn’t know anything about The New Day.”

  “Until?”

  “Until after my brother’s alleged suicide.”

  Lydia noticed Lily’s use of the word alleged, as if she still didn’t believe her brother had killed himself.

  “So Mickey went there to try to help your stepfather?”

  She shook her head slowly, like she still couldn’t believe it. “That’s the way it looked to me; like he’d gone up there for the express purpose of infiltrating The New Day, maybe hoping to expose them or find evidence that could get them to release their grip on Tim.”

  “What did you find in your brother’s apartment that made you think that?” asked Jeffrey. His tone was kind and warm, but there was a slight wrinkle in his brow that Lydia recognized as the expression of his natural skepticism. She was with him; something felt off.

  “When we were kids, Mickey lived in his imagination, you know? He had a rough time of it after our father’s death. I was too young, really, to feel the impact the way he did. It altered him.” She paused, and turned the bottle of water on the table, inspected it with intensity, as if the movie of her childhood were playing out on the sweating plastic. “It was like he was always looking for something to fill the empty space our father left.”

  The words hit Lydia hard, reminded her of her own childhood after her mother died. Her lonely hours filled with books and the stories she wrote. Even before her mother died her mind had worked that way; but afterward she practically disappeared into the mysteries she was forever trying to solve.

  “He was different from other kids. He wore this loneliness, this sadness like a cape that somehow set him apart from everyone else, made him seem freakish and strange. So he was a target for bullies, he was awkward and never seemed to fit in anywhere. So he wrote. Notebook after notebook. Journals, poetry, short stories. He exorcised all his demons there. He cut the fabric on the bottom of his box spring and slipped them up inside there.”
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  “That’s where you found his journals in Riverdale?”

  She nodded. “It was his current obsession, The New Day. But it was always something. He was always pouring himself heart and soul into something, trying to lose himself, trying to find himself. I’m not sure which.”

  “And you always followed,” said Lydia, remembering the conversation when she’d told her as much.

  “All my life I felt like I was chasing him up this path, and he was always just about to turn that one corner after which I’d never be able to find him again.”

  Rivers of tears fell from both her eyes and met at her chin, dripped onto the ATF sweatshirt Agent Hunt had given her. Lydia wanted to comfort her but wasn’t sure how; she kept her distance.

  “Your brother and your stepdad didn’t always get along. Did it seem weird to you that Mickey would shift off his life to help him?” said Jeffrey.

  “They didn’t always get along, that’s true. But Tim raised us both, you know. They had a relationship, even if it wasn’t always an easy one.” She sighed and rolled her head from side to side as if to release tension residing there. “But you’re right. I don’t really know why he did it. My suspicion is that he just thought he was helping Tim. That there was something about the message of The New Day that resonated with him and he was just using Tim’s problems as an excuse.”

  She put an elbow on the table and leaned her head on her hand. Lydia noticed how frail and small her arms looked.

  “So much made sense to me after I found his journals. He’d been so strange since the move, so distant, so wrapped up in Mariah. I just thought he was getting himself into another obsessive relationship that was going to end in disaster. Reading his journals I could see clearly how he lost his perspective, his advantage. He went in thinking he had the upper hand and they went to work on him.”