Half-Past Dawn

by Richard Doetsch

  The back roads of Byram Hills were vacant in the early-morning hours of the day before Fourth of July weekend, people having headed off either to work or on vacation.

  “You truly have no idea what’s going on, do you?” the man asked, his eyes focused out the window.

  Jack looked back over the seat. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  The man remained silent.

  “Don’t bother,” Frank said to Jack. “We’ll get our answers.”

  Two minutes on, they stopped at a red light on a vacant, tree-lined street. As they silently waited for the light to change, time seeming to drag out forever.

  Without warning, the man rolled onto his back in the rear seat and kicked out the window; he dove from the vehicle, hit the ground hard, and was up and running. Jack and Frank leaped from the car and raced after him.

  The man sprinted down the road, his feet pounding the pavement, his arms awkwardly swinging from his bound wrists. A noise grew as they ran on, soft, growing louder until they were running across the overpass of a major highway. He was fast, running for his life, but Jack was running for his wife, his children, and couldn’t let his only connection to them get away. His legs drove him faster and he was suddenly upon the man. He tackled him to the hot blacktop, road-rashing their skin. Frank caught up and violently lifted the man, throwing him against the guardrail of the overpass.

  “Do that again, and I’ll throw your ass off this bridge.” Frank drew his gun for emphasis, grabbed the man by his right arm, and held on tight. The man finally relaxed, closing his eyes in defeat.

  Jack got to his feet, catching his breath. “You sure your friend is going to be able to hold this guy?”

  “Yeah. Ben’s not just a good friend, he’s a military friend, tough. He doesn’t suffer fools like this.”

  Without warning, the man opened his eyes, tore away from Frank, and leaped over the guardrail, falling feet-first to the rush-hour traffic below.

  Jack realized that escape wasn’t his intention. He knew exactly what he was doing and where he was going, he timed it perfectly.

  The fifteen-ton tractor-trailer never even locked up its brakes. The driver didn’t see the man falling into the path of his seventy-mile-an-hour truck until it was too late.

  CHAPTER 6

  FRIDAY, 7:05 A.M.

  Rider’s bridge was awash in emergency vehicles, while scores of people had gathered, lining the bridge rail, watching the search unfold. News trucks lay in wait at the bridge entrance, their cameras fixed on the arrival of an enormous crane. Two ropes were tied to and disappeared off the bridge edge, stretching down into the roiling waters below. A team of scuba divers held tight to the ropes, fighting the rushing current before slipping beneath the surface to continue their search.

  A limousine arrived on the bridge, and all eyes turned. News cameras swarmed it. And what little noise was in the air fell away. All waited and watched. After three minutes, Sam Norris exited the rear of the car, accompanied by FBI director Lance Warren. The two tall men had always exuded power and leadership, but today they exuded only sorrow and pain.

  They stared at the small numbered evidence markers along the roadway, the black skid marks that led to the missing guardrail. Without a word, they walked to the bridge edge, as everyone gave Mia’s father and Director Warren a wide, respectful birth. As Norris watched the activity below, he clenched his jaw, holding back his emotions. He knew what he would see. He knew it had been best to leave Pat at home; she was already inconsolable with grief.

  Warren laid his hand on Norris’s shoulder. He had called him with the news, sparing his friend from learning about it from a newspaper or a cheery reporter on TV.

  A man arrived at Warren’s side. Warren walked away with him so that Norris wouldn’t overhear.

  “They found the vehicle.”

  “But no bodies?” Warren asked.

  “No, sir.” The man was young, efficient, and direct. “The dive team says with the heavy current, the search grid is large, it could take twelve or more hours.”

  “What do we know on the bullet?”

  “We don’t know yet. Everyone is working on possible scenarios.”

  “How do we know they were in the car?”

  “At least one airbag is deployed, the driver’s side. They don’t blow unless someone is in the seat.”

  “Anyone think this was a hit? Because it’s looking that way, and if that’s the case… These were real good people, Sheldon.”

  “I know, sir,” Sheldon said, nodding.

  “If they were in the car, what are the chances they survived?”

  Sheldon looked at Warren and shook his head.

  Warren looked over at Norris, whose eyes were fixed on the dive team in the river. “Double our efforts.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Sheldon, Mia and I discussed an evidence case that had gone missing, a bureaucratic screw-up. Let’s be sure it was the bureaucracy and not something worse. Find out what cases she was working on. Hook up with Keeler’s office, find out what was going on with him. Call Deputy Director Tierney. I want him to handle this personally. If this was murder, I want the bastards found.”

  Warren walked back over to Norris and looked out at the raging river. In unspoken understanding, the two men turned as if leaving a funeral. All eyes followed them. The press remained silent, microphones held down at their sides in respect. Warren held the door for his friend and got in behind him, and they drove away.

  CHAPTER 7

  FRIDAY, 7:15 A.M.

  If that guy preferred jumping off a bridge into a tractor-trailer, if that was the only alternative in his mind…” Frank said, but he never finished stating what Jack was already aware of.

  “I know,” Jack said, more to himself than to Frank. They were back at his house, trying to regroup. With the death of the man on the bridge, they were thankful no one had seen them.

  As much as the man’s suicide scared Jack, his fear for his children was far worse. He had lost the only link to them, the only link to Mia.

  Standing in the foyer, he looked at the cell phone he had smashed in anger, wondering if he had destroyed a crucial piece of evidence that would have led him to her. He leaned down and picked up the blue bear. He remembered giving it to Hope last October. He had been working late on a racketeering case for weeks, spending most of his weekends in the office. He had missed them terribly but knew they missed him even more. When the trial finally ended in victory, he had stopped at the toy store and grabbed the blue and brown bears. After arriving home after ten to find Mia sound asleep, he crept into the girls’ room and sat in a desk chair watching over them. He had missed them as if he hadn’t seen them in months. Knowing that the next day would only bring more routine-school, work, dinner, bedtime-he had leaned over Hope and kissed her cheek, then quickly turned and kissed Sara.

  The two girls had awoken, sleep dripping from their eyes until they saw their dad. They had leaped into his arms, holding tight so he couldn’t escape.

  “Daddy,” Sara had said, “it’s the middle of the night.”

  And Jack had held out the bears. They had snatched them up, hugging them close, but soon returned to hugging their father.

  “Thank you,” Hope had said.

  “I just want you to know I love you.”

  “Is that what the bear’s for?”

  Jack had nodded.

  With a warm smile, he had picked them up, carried them downstairs, pulled out a box of Oreos, and poured three glasses of milk. They had headed into the den, cuddled up under a blanket, and watched Willy Wonka until four in the morning, when they all finally fell asleep. Needless to say, Mia hadn’t been happy when she found them at 6:15 but soon forgave them, allowing them to sleep, everybody taking the day off and spending it together.

  And now, as Jack stared at the bear, the wellspring of his subconcious reopened, flooding his mind with images, thoughts, and sounds. But it was last night, early this mornin
g… all of the pain, all of his emotions from twelve hours ago, building up. His life shattered, the rage and anger and fury filling him as Mia was torn away into the night; the wound in his shoulder once again sharp with pain; he was keenly aware of the cut above his eye. He felt the pounding of the rain on his face, his body soaked through and bloodied.

  Then he finally burst through it, all of the pain gone, his mind clear, as if he had to travel through hell to venture into the recesses of his mind.

  • • •

  Five days ago. Sunday’s drive out to his parents’ house was suddenly as clear as if it was five minutes ago. They had dropped the girls off for the week. He and Mia needed alone time, time to talk, to reconnect, time for Jack to explain some things that were happening in his life and career.

  Jack could still hear Mia’s voice as she calmed the girls, standing in his parents’ driveway, wiping the tears from Hope’s and Sara’s eyes as they cried about leaving behind their pillows, their stuffed animals, and how much they would miss them.

  “Honey.” crouching down, she took each of them into her embrace, “both of you, give me your hands.”

  The two girls held out their right hands, which Mia gently grasped. She warmly kissed their palms and then closed their small fingers around the kiss so it wouldn’t escape.

  “Do you know what that is?”

  The girls shook their heads in unison.

  “That’s a kissing hand. Whenever you miss me, need me, or are scared, you place it against your cheek.” Mia placed her palm against her cheek in demonstration; both the girls followed her lead. “Do you feel it?”

  The girls smiled and nodded.

  “I do,” Hope said.

  “You both hold on to those.” She pulled them close and whispered in their ears, “They last forever.”

  With the girls now smiling and their eyes focused on the beach, Jack and Mia handed them and their bags to his mom and were back on the road. They loved their children more than life but realized that they had sacrificed so much of themselves to the point of forgetting about each other.

  All of their money went into their house, their government salaries not affording them the luxury of vacations. And so they embraced those moments of slowing down, turning their lives around, modifying their day to make it a vacation of the mind.

  Their conversation on the way home had nothing to do with play dates, juice boxes, or Fineas and Ferb. It was about each other, catching up on things missed as a result of work and children.

  After walking through the door of their home, they reveled in the silence. It was like the peace of walking into a hotel after a long journey, dropping the bags onto the floor, and collapsing on the bed. They read the paper, walked around in their underwear without care, talked for hours, and fell silent for long spells, taking pleasure from simply being in each other’s company. There were things Jack wanted to talk about, things about life and the future, but in the recaptured feeling when one first falls in love, Jack decided that things could wait, that some secrets could hold for a few more days.

  Mia made garlic mashed potatoes and green beans while Jack seared the steak. They made love on the sofa like teenagers whose parents were out for the evening, watched movies, and lost themselves in the moment. At eight o’clock, they piled a sea of pillows and comforters on the floor of the sunroom and fell sound asleep in each other’s arms.

  Besides the night before, it was the last full memory of the week he could form. He looked again at the blue bear, leaned down and picked up the brown one. He knew where he would take them.

  Frank drove them up the Merritt Parkway, heading north, the glare of the early-morning sun filling his Jeep.

  Jack dialed his cell phone. His mom had always been an early riser, so he felt no guilt about calling so early. He needed to hear that the girls were OK, needed to know they were safe. The phone rang.

  He had given his mom a cell phone, taught her how to use it, insisted that she always carry it in case of emergency, but he knew she had tucked it into the back of a drawer where the battery died and had forgotten all about it.

  The phone rang again. And again. Four times now. No answer. He cursed her for not having an answering machine, for not keeping up with the times.

  On the sixth ring, Jack began to panic, and Frank hit the accelerator.

  CHAPTER 8

  FRIDAY, 7:45 A.M.

  Jack burst through the side door of his childhood home, raced through the small New England foyer, and charged up the stairs. He tore open the door at the end of the hall and peered into the dark room.

  The curtains were drawn; daylight had yet to arrive in his old bedroom. His eyes struggled to focus as he stepped in, careful not to trip on the scattered toys. And as his eyes finally adjusted, he sighed in relief. Hope and Sara lay sound asleep in his old queen-sized bed, their small bodies lost amid the sheets and pillows. He smiled to see Hope’s right palm resting on her cheek, her kissing hand protecting her as her mother had promised.

  Jack headed back downstairs to search for his mother. Assuming that she was walking her dog, he stepped outside and took a breath of fresh sea air.

  The white clapboard house sat on a two-acre parcel of land surrounded on three sides by a forty-acre preserve; on the fourth side, behind sea-grass-covered dunes, was the Atlantic Ocean. The roar of the early-morning waves rolling over the sandy hills instilled a temporary peace in Jack, one that he always felt at his childhood home.

  With momentary relief, he stood on the dunes, staring out at the ocean, absorbing the serenity, hoping that it would help him focus and fill the holes that dotted his memory, where he knew that the answer to finding Mia lay.

  His gaze was drawn to Trudeau Island, the spit of land two miles off the Connecticut shore, the private enclave where Marguerite Trudeau used to throw her lavish parties back in the ’30s for the New York high-society crowd. Jack and his friends spent too many summer nights to count riding Doug Reiberg’s boat out, beaching it on the southern shore, and throwing makeshift keg parties on the beach with bonfires, music, and girls.

  The southern section of the island had become a potter’s field, donated by the Trudeaus in the 1940s to the city of New York for the unclaimed bodies of John and Jane Does, for orphaned children who died alone, for prisoners whose sentences of banishment from society would be extended into eternity. It was said that the hundred-acre southern section had been filled up by the ’50s and so they began doubling up the graves, burying the dead upon the dead. By the ’60s, the city had turned to cremation, and by the ’80s, the potter’s field was nothing more than a graveyard overgrown with trees, shrubbery, and weeds, erasing the memory of the forgotten.

  It made for great stories around the beach bonfires, tales that grew more outlandish as the beer consumption increased, stories that would send the girls into the arms of their boyfriends. And while Jack never believed in ghosts, it always disturbed him that so many died alone, forgotten, with no one to speak of their lives.

  The cries of the distant gulls startled him out of his thoughts, and he turned to see his mother emerge from the paths of the nature preserve. Theo, her golden Lab, fought to break free of his leash, howling with excitement at the sight of Jack. As her ninety-eight-pound body fought to hold him back, Jack’s mom nearly collapsed when she saw her son. Jack raced to her, and she clasped him as she did when he was child and stayed out past dark.

  “The news said…” She gasped, her small body trembling.

  “I know.”

  “I tried to call…” Heidi Keeler said as she brushed her gray hair from her face. “Where’s Mia?”

  Jack looked into his mother’s fragile blue eyes, seeing the fear in his answer. “I don’t know.”

  Morning sun poured through the large picture window of the great room as Heidi Keeler busied herself cooking the way she always did when she was stressed. Eggs and bacon sizzled on the stove, English muffins toasted under the broiler, and the smell of fresh coffee filled t
he air.

  With the blue and brown bears tucked under his arm, Jack raced around the great room, determined and without pause, reaching behind the media console to disconnect the TV and unplug the radio.

  “You didn’t need to bring those bears. We have so many toys here-”

  “No television, no radio today, Mom. Keep the girls out at the beach and away from phones.”

  “OK,” his mom said. “Is your friend going to come into the house, or should I bring his breakfast out to the car?”

  “He’s on the phone. We can’t stay long.”

  “Then I’ll pack something up for him,” Heidi said as she pulled out the tin foil.

  “Where’s your computer?”

  “In the study on the-”

  But Jack was already out of the room and in the adjacent study. It was paneled in a bleached oak; driftwood and shells were scattered on the shelves between the books on yachting, golf, fishing, and finance. He found his mother’s computer on the desk, lit with a screensaver of Hope and Sara, and turned to the all-in-one printer-scanner on the side table. He quickly rolled up his sleeve, lifted the scanner cover, and laid his tattooed left arm on the glass. After closing the lid, he hit scan and watched as the bright light poured through the machine. Within a few seconds, the scan of his arm filled the computer screen, looking like some Maori appendage that one might see in a Smithsonian magazine article.

  “What did you do to yourself?”

  Jack turned to see his mom alternately staring at the computer and his arm. “Long story.”

  “What’s going on, Jack?”

  He took a seat at the computer and opened his mother’s e-mail. He attached a copy of the tattoo image to a document and hit send. “I have no idea and not much time. You don’t know any language experts, do you?”