Also by Heather Dune Macadam
Rena’s Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz
by Rena Kornreich Gelissen and Heather Dune Macadam
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
©2002 Heather Dune Macadam
Cover design by Jason Farrell
Inside design and layout by Sohrab Habibion
Cover graphic by Zen master Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769)
For permission to use copyrighted or protected material, we thank the following literary executors and publishers for some of the chapter headings and koans used in this text: The Zen Koan by Isshu Miura and Ruth Fuller Sasaki (Harcourt Brace, 1965), The Little Zen Companion by David Schiller (Workman Publishing, 1994).
Author photo by Karen Abato
eISBN: 978-1-617750-97-7
ISBN: 1-888451-39-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2002106362
All rights reserved
First printing
Akashic Books
PO Box 1456
New York, NY 10009
[email protected]
www.akashicbooks.com
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my unbinding gratitude, appreciation, and multitudinous other forms of thanks to: Karen Abato, for her unwavering faith in me; Kaylie Jones, whose critical eye, constant encouragement, confidence, and devotion to this project made it possible; Rena Gelissen, for giving me my first book; Det. Laurel Tobias, for giving me my character, and Det. Gary Ferrucci, for being a character!; the detectives and officers in both the Nassau and Suffolk County police departments, for being available for questions and tours, and for being so willing to share stories and information with me; the Telbergs, for a home and extended family in Sag Harbor; Peter Matthiessen, for reminding me that fiction means making things up; everyone at the zendo; Jules Feiffer, for teaching me to write humor and truth; Joy Harris and Stephanie Abou, for believing in this story before anyone else would; The Basher; Joanne Pankow, for reading more drafts than anyone should have to; Goddess Green, for being a goddess; Southampton College Writing Program and, of course, the loftmates: Jane, Rebecca, Eric, Seth, Kwame, and all the others who lived with us, crashed on our floors, or came to our parties. For those who had to die in this fictive, but live on in real life—Suzi, Eileen, Godwyn, Katiti—I’m sorry, but I hope you understand that writing demands we “murder our darlings.” For those who have already gone beyond and were reincarnated in these pages—Sam Todd (wherever you are, I hope you are jumping over parking meters and laughing at mortality), Hans, Edilio, and Boo—I miss you and cherish your memories.
For Karen, my Laughing Buddha
Table of Contents
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT PAGE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I was twenty-three the night Sam Todd disappeared from our New Year’s Eve party in Chinatown, and I have been writing endings to the mystery of his disappearance ever since. I suppose this story is an attempt to put that past to rest. I got the idea during Soka Gokkai—an all-night meditation for Buddha’s birthday—and was so enthralled with it that I left the zendo hours before dawn to begin writing.
The question of Sam Todd had been haunting me for years; it finally seemed that the only way to exorcise the past was to make it fiction. As a part of my research I went into the New York Times archives at the NYU Library and pulled up the old articles about Sam, the loft, our party. I copied them, made notes on them, remembered things about that time in my life. On my way out of the library I headed along West Fourth Street toward the East Village and the now-trendy area called NoHo. A bitter wind blasted off the East River and darkness descended as it does around those old factory buildings—quick and dense. I looked up and down Lafayette Street, still able to hear Sam’s name echoing down the alleyways, our voices forever calling him home.
Until that moment I thought I had left New York City because I was burned out, my career as a professional dancer over. Standing there on Lafayette, a few blocks from my old loft—a few doors down from the homeless shelter where we had scouted for Sam, night after ruthless night—I realized that I left New York because Sam Todd left me on the dance floor to get a breath of fresh air and never returned.
Ever.
The Weeping Buddha is my worst nightmare made manifest in fiction. It is the result of imagination being left alone too long with an unanswerable riddle—a Zen koan, if you will: What really happened to Sam Todd?
PROLOGUE
Sound rudely pierced the air. It was one of the two beepers lying side by side on the nightstand interrupting them. Detective Lochwood Brennen stopped what he was doing and rolled over on his side. “It’s yours,” he said. “Mine’s on quiver.”
“So am I.” Detective Devon Halsey sighed. “What is it about making love and beepers?” She reached for the contraption, checked the number, and turned it off. “It’s Beka.”
“Can’t she leave us be just once on New Year’s Eve?” Drawing his finger along the soft area of her waist up to her shoulders, he tried to coax her back into his arms.
“Sorry.” She looked at the clock—they only had an hour before their shift. Her thick hair fell across the pillows of their hotel bed as she melted into his hands, seriously considering not returning the call for the first time in her life. “I’ve decided to make up with her.”
Devon stretched her head down toward the pillow, shutting her eyes so he could better massage the tension from the right side of her neck. Her mind was far away. Once more she and Beka Imamura were in sync and had come to the same realization on the same day: Life was too short to hold a grudge. Beka’s New Year’s Eve phone call had been a part of Devon’s festivities for years. Calling Devon was the closest Beka got to a champagne toast, because she had refused to celebrate New Year’s Eve since 1984.
Loch dug his thumbs deeper into the knots between her shoulder blades. “Think she’ll ever celebrate New Yea
r’s like the rest of us?”
“By working overtime?” The irony of his question had not escaped her.
His mouth was busy massaging her shoulders now. “I thought working would be fun.” He bit her neck, first teasingly then more earnestly.
“This is fun.” She stifled a moan. He was dangerously close to her most erogenous zone. “But you don’t really enjoy yourself unless we’re arresting somebody, do you?”
“I’ve got my cuffs.” He kissed her ear, allowing his breath to linger so it sent shivers along her neck, down her spine, and under the covers. He tugged on her earlobe with his teeth.
That was it.
He pushed her back down to the bed as she grabbed her beeper, changed the setting to vibrate, and tossed it next to his. An hour later their beepers went off simultaneously—this time it was Headquarters.
CHAPTER ONE
If you take up one koan and investigate it unceasingly, your mind will die and you will will be destroyed. It is as though a vast, empty abyss lay before you, with no place to set your hands and feet …
—MASTER HAKUIN EKAKU
The crime scene had already been roped off with DO NOT CROSS POLICE LINE tape flapping in the bitter New Year’s wind as lead Homicide Detective Lochwood Brennen and his partner, Detective Gary DeBritzi, watched the Crime Scene van pull part of the way up the drive and stop. Lochwood could see her through the window of the van talking with her partner. She didn’t look too upset, but then Devon knew how to hide her feelings.
“I’m going to go talk to Halsey,” Brennen told his partner, and started across the whitening lawn. His feet crunched through the thin layer of ice now hidden beneath the new fallen snow. The sleet had begun before midnight, about the time he and Devon clocked in—late—but now the big flakes floating to the ground were forming deeper drifts.
Usually he felt an electric charge when they arrived on a crime scene; the challenge of deciphering the unknown fed his craving for excitement and problem-solving. Tonight he felt only the dismal reality of knowing how the friend of a victim—victims—feels. There was no one to soften the blow, no one to assure him that they hadn’t suffered needlessly—that was his job. And one look at the scene told him just how much they had endured. He kicked the turf under his shoe. He’d done it again, thought of the victims as they. Hell, he didn’t even know if they both were victims.
It was part of his job to make it easier for civilians who had lost a loved one. He knew what to say in those cases, but Devon Halsey was a cop and his girlfriend. He always called her Halsey on the job, but that did not seem appropriate now. He wasn’t sure what befit the situation in which they suddenly found themselves. He stopped halfway to the Crime Scene van to watch Devon and her partner, Frank Landal, begin to unload their equipment. Frank looked older than usual. Maybe it was the way the snow blended with his silver hair; maybe it was the time of night. Frank hated working third shift. Devon caught Loch’s eye, then dropped her gaze to the ground.
He wished there were some way to help her. Codependent. That was the term people liked to toss around nowadays—it used to mean compassion. Somehow, her hair was shimmering in the dark; he wanted to touch it—bury his nose into it—and hold her as close as he had two hours ago. His chest ached as she wrapped a hair cap around her head and slipped into her white Tyvek suit. The jaunty self-assurance she normally brought to a crime scene was gone—she looked pale and stern, as if the simple act of zipping up was taking severe concentration. He wanted to wrap his hands around her waist and tell her it was going to be all right. Such a useless and meaningless phrase, yet that’s what he wanted to say because he didn’t know how to change the fact that Beka Imamura and her husband were both dead. He opened his mouth but she shook her head, looking beyond him and up at the house where her best friend had lived until a few hours ago.
Devon felt her stomach drop and a sudden wave of nausea wash over her as she looked at Beka’s house—a house she had helped Beka decorate the year Beka moved into her husband’s Hamptons estate.
A group of police officers and detectives milled around the perimeter of the house as she and Frank made their way up the drive. It was always like this outside a murder scene; everyone showed up but no one could do a thing until Homicide did a walk-through and Crime Scene finished recording the vicinity—everyone was waiting for them. As they walked past the local cops, she scanned the crowd for any brass.
“The lieutenant isn’t here yet,” Frank whispered to her. “That means we may still have a scene.”
She felt a small smile crease its way along her lips; Frank always had a way of getting her to lighten up.
Dressed in disposable paper Tyvek suits and their Suffolk County Crime Scene winter coats, she and Frank signed the roster and ducked under the yellow tape.
“Landal, how you doing?” Lochwood stepped over to them. Frank nodded his answer. “Halsey, are you sure you’re up for this?
“I have to call my dog-sitter.” Devon punched in the numbers of Aileen’s cellphone. It was late to be calling, but Devon wanted her to know that Boo would need a walk in the morning. She ignored Lochwood’s protective eyes as she left a message on the voice-mail. “I won’t be home until tomorrow afternoon—something’s come up.” Devon did not say anything more about where she was, or why. It was not the sort of thing one left on a message: Our friend is dead and so is her husband. She hung up the phone wishing suddenly that she had a nice cushy job in a boring office where the only backstabbing was figurative, not literal.
“If you run into trouble …” Lochwood looked like he was going to try and comfort her in front of everyone.
“I’ll tell you, Brennen.” She knew she sounded irritable, but couldn’t help herself.
“What she can’t handle, I can,” Frank told him.
“Okay, then. I’m our lead on this one. You know the drill. We’ve got two bodies, one in the house and one up the hill.” Devon looked up the hill, straining to see who had died outside but unable to ask.
Sergeant Houck came up from behind them. “Detective Landal. Halsey.” He shook hands with the two Crime Scene detectives. “Brennen tells me you knew both of the victims. You have my condolences.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And I don’t mean to be unfeeling,” he continued, “but I need to know before you start, can you finish the job?”
“Yes sir.”
“We could always call in another team.”
“Frank’s my partner and this is our job.” Her voice sounded grave. She’d meant to sound less troubled; she didn’t want the sergeant to think she was weak. She shifted the yellow clapboards and a stack of six-inch-high orange traffic cones in her right hand while cradling the Nikon in her left.
“All right, I’m going to call Headquarters to see if I can get some of our lab guys on overtime. It’s a holiday though, so don’t count on it. If you flag something we need a rush on, let Brennen know ASAP. The more reason I have for overtime the better chance we have of getting it.” He pulled his cellphone out and started to walk away, then stopped. “Oh, and your lieutenant is tied up for the night.” He winked at them and turned away.
They started back toward the house. “I still have her number on my beeper,” she whispered to Loch.
“I tried to call you, but you were already on your way here.” He paused. “I wish I’d been the one to tell you.”
She inhaled so sharply the air hurt her lungs. Her eyes teared in the wind. “Did you find her phone?”
“No.”
“Has anybody tried calling her?” He shook his head. She pulled her cellphone out of her pocket and dialed Beka’s number. The night was silent of any ringing.
“Good try.”
“I want to be here,” she said, more to convince herself than Lochwood. “Make sure Houck knows that. If there is something out of place, I’ll know it quicker than any of you.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Devon cast her gaze up at th
e house. “The last time we were here was last August.”
“Last time you spoke to her, too.”
She knew he wanted to take her hand, but couldn’t. “It was a stupid fight. Stupid.”
“Can I do anything?” He meant it sincerely, however it sounded.
She shook her head. She didn’t want his assurances, just his silent support, and to be left alone while she did her part of the job. If he gave her any more than that, she’d lose it.
Detective DeBritzi met them on the front steps leading into the house. “He’s inside. She’s up there,” he said. They all looked up a small incline where police tape flickered in the wind. She could just make out the outline of Beka’s body and shuddered as an arctic blast of wind sank its teeth into the flesh of her neck.
Frank hoisted his video camera up onto his shoulders. “Let’s go, then. If it gets rough in there you take a break, Devon. I’ll work the area around her. You don’t have to go up there, okay?”
She nodded, reminding herself that she had spent two months working Ground Zero. This was not—nothing could be—worse than that. She knew how to detach from a scene and observe everything without any emotion. She just wanted to do her job, and do it well. She knew if she could keep her mind focused on her job, she’d be fine.
She followed Frank into the house to begin their assessment. He would record the physical pattern of events while she reconstructed each incident the physical evidence revealed: prints, bloodstains, trace evidence. Deciphering all the road maps of the crime—that’s what the Crime Scene Unit did. She swallowed and reminded herself that it didn’t matter how well she knew the house; her job was to follow the trail. If she slipped up and thought about whose blood she was following, she would never be able to finish processing the scene, and that was more important than grieving her loss—she could do that later. She turned her feelings off like a faucet and thought only about the evidence around her.
“It looks as if it started in the living room,” Loch said, “but shoot it how you see it. He’s back in their bedroom.”
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