The Dark Tide

by Andrew Gross

  “The company,” Hauck said, “the one that was doing this down there, had a connection to Harbor.”

  The color drained from Karen’s face. “To Charlie?”

  Hauck nodded. “Dolphin Petroleum. You know the name?”

  She shook her head.

  “It may have been part of a group of investments he owned.”

  Karen hesitated. “What do you mean, investments?”

  “Offshore.”

  Karen put a hand to her mouth and looked at him. It only echoed what Saul had said. “You think Charles was involved? In this hit-and-run?”

  “I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, Karen.”

  “Please don’t protect me, Ty. You’re thinking he was involved?”

  “I don’t know.” He exhaled. He held back the fact that Charles had been up there that day. “There are still a lot more leads I have to run down.”

  “Leads?” Karen sat back. Her eyes had a strange, confused look to them. She pressed her palms together in front of her lips and nodded. “I found something, too, Ty.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s scaring me a little—like you are now.”

  She described how she’d been going through some of Charles’s old things, as he’d asked, his old files, had spoken to his old secretary and travel agent but been unable to find anything.

  Until she came across a name.

  “The guy had called me a couple of times, just after Charles died. Someone who worked for him.” She described how Jonathan Lauer had tried to contact her, the cryptic messages he’d left. Some things you ought to know…“I just couldn’t deal with it back then. It was too much. I mentioned them to Saul. He said it was just personnel stuff and he’d take care of it.”

  Hauck nodded. “Okay…”

  “But then I thought of it in light of all that’s come up, and it began to gnaw at me. So I went out to see him while you were gone. To New Jersey. To see him. I didn’t know where he worked now, and all I had was this address from when he worked for Charles, with a private number. I just took a chance. His wife answered the door.” Karen’s eyes turned glassy. “She told me the most horrible thing.”

  “What?”

  “He’s dead. He was killed. In a cycling accident, a few months back. What made it all a little creepy was that he’d been scheduled to give a deposition in some matter related to Harbor later in the week.”

  “What kind of matter?”

  “I don’t know. But it wasn’t just that. It was the way he was killed. Coupled with the way your Raymond kid was killed, who had Charlie’s name on him.”

  Hauck put down his glass, his antennae for these sorts of things beginning to buzz.

  “A car hit him,” Karen said. “Just like your guy. It was a hit-and-run.”

  A group of office people seated next to them suddenly grew louder. Karen leaned forward, her knees pressed together, her face a little blank.

  “You did good,” Hauck said, showing he was pleased. “Real good.”

  Some of the color returned to her cheeks.

  “You hungry?” Hauck asked, taking a chance.

  Karen shrugged, casting a quick glance at her watch. “Alex has a ride home with a neighbor. I guess I have a little time.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  On the way home, Hauck rang up Freddy Muñoz.

  “LT!” his detective exclaimed in surprise. “Long time no hear. How’s vacation?”

  “I’m not on vacation, Freddy. Listen, I need a favor. I need you to get a copy of the file on an unsolved homicide in New Jersey. Upper Montclair. The victim’s name is Lauer. L-A-U-E-R, like Matt. First name Jonathan. There may be a parallel investigation by the Jersey State Police.”

  Muñoz was writing it down. “Lauer. And what do I say is the reason we need it, LT?”

  “Similar pattern to a case we’ve been looking at up here.”

  “And which case is that, Lieutenant?”

  “It’s an unsolved hit-and-run.”

  Muñoz paused. In the background there was the sound of young kids shouting, maybe the Yankees game on TV. “Jesus, Ty, this becoming an MO with you now?”

  “Have someone drop it off at my home tomorrow. If I was active, I’d do it myself. And Freddy…” Hauck heard the sound of Freddy’s son, Will, cheering. “This stays just between us, okay?”

  “Yeah, LT,” the detective answered. “Sure.”

  NEW LEADS, HAUCK was thinking.

  One definitely ran through Charlie Friedman’s trustee, Lennick. Karen trusted him. Almost like a member of the family. He would have known about Lauer. Did he know about Dolphin and Falcon, too?

  Did Charlie ever mention he was managing any accounts offshore?

  The other ran through New Jersey, this second hit-and-run. Hauck had never been one to have much faith in coincidences.

  As he drove, his thoughts kept straying back to Karen. Off the top of his head, he came up with ten good, solid reasons he should stop now, before things went any further between them.

  Starting with the fact that her husband was alive. And how Hauck had made a pledge to find him. And how he didn’t want to cause her any more needless hurt by holding things back than she had already been through.

  And how she was rich. Used to different things. Traveled in a totally different league.

  Jesus, Ty, you’re not exactly playing the strongest hand here.

  Still, he couldn’t deny that he felt something with her. The electricity when their hands brushed once or twice at dinner. The same sensation coursing through his veins right now.

  He pulled his Bronco off the exit of 95 back in Stamford. It occurred to him why he couldn’t tell her. Why he was holding back the whole truth. That Charles had returned to Greenwich after the bombing. That he had a hand in killing that boy. Maybe the other one, too.

  Why he didn’t want to bring the police into the matter. Get other people involved.

  Because Hauck realized that for the last four years he’d been essentially rootless, alone. And Karen Friedman was the one thing he felt connected to right now.

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  There was a knock on the door the following afternoon, and Hauck went over to answer.

  Freddy Muñoz was there.

  He handed Hauck one of those large, string-bound interoffice envelopes. “Hope I’m not bothering you. Thought I’d bring it up to you myself, Lieutenant, if that’s okay?”

  Hauck had just come back from a run. He was sweaty. He was in a gray Colby College T-shirt and gym shorts. He had spent most of the morning working on the computer.

  “You’re not bothering me.”

  “Place looks nice.” The detective nodded approvingly. “Needs a bit of a woman’s touch, don’t you think? Maybe make a little sense of that kitchen over there?”

  Hauck glanced at the dishes piled in the sink, a few open containers of takeout on the counter. “Care to volunteer?”

  “Can’t.” Muñoz snapped his fingers, feigning disappointment. “Working tonight, Lieutenant. But I thought I’d just hang around a minute while you took a look through that, if that’s okay?”

  Buoyed, Hauck opened the envelope’s flap and slid the contents on the coffee table, while Muñoz threw himself into a cushy living-room chair.

  The first thing he came upon was the incident report. The report of the accident by the lead officer on the scene. From the Essex County PD. Details on the deceased. His name, Lauer. Address: 3135 Mountain View. DOB. Description: white male, approximately thirty, wearing a yellow biking uniform, severe body trauma and bleeding. Eyewitness described a red SUV, make undetermined, speeding away. New Jersey plates, number undetermined. Time: 10:07 A.M. Date. Eyewitness report attached.

  It all seemed to have a familiar feel.

  Hauck glanced through the photos. Photostats of them. The victim. In his biking jersey. Hit head-on. Severe blunt trauma to the face and torso. There was a shot of the bike, which had basically been man
gled. A couple of views in either direction. Up, down the hill. The vehicle was clearly heading down.

  Tire marks only after the point of impact.

  Just like AJ Raymond.

  Next Hauck leafed through the medical examiner’s report. Severe blunt-force trauma, crushed pelvis and fractured vertebrae, head trauma. Massive internal bleeding. Dead on impact, the medical examiner presumed.

  Hauck paged through the detectives’ case reports. They had mapped out the same course of action Hauck had up in Connecticut. Did a canvass of the area, notified the state police, checked with the body shops, tried to trace back the tread marks for a tire brand. Interviewed the victim’s wife, his employer. “No motive found” to assume it might not have been an accident.

  Still no suspects.

  Muñoz had gotten up and gone over to a canvas Hauck was working on by the window. He lifted it off the easel. “This is pretty good, Lieutenant!”

  “Thanks, Freddy.”

  “May get to see you at the Bruce Museum yet. And I don’t mean waiting in line.”

  “Feel free to help yourself to any you like,” Hauck muttered, flipping through the pages. “One day they’ll be worth millions.”

  It was frustrating—just like his. The Jersey folks had never found any solid leads.

  It just came down to a coincidence, a coincidence Hauck didn’t believe, one that didn’t lead anywhere.

  “Strike you as reasonable, Freddy?” Hauck asked. “Two separate 509s? Two different states. Each with a connection to Charles Friedman.”

  “Keep at it, Lieutenant,” Muñoz said, flopping back over the arm of the heavy chair.

  All that was left was the detail of the eyewitness depositions. Deposition. There was only one.

  As Hauck opened it up, he froze. He felt his jaw drop open, his eyeballs pulled like magnets to the name on the deposition’s front page.

  “See what I’m seeing?” Freddy Muñoz sat up. He swung his legs off the chair.

  “Yeah.” Hauck nodded and took a breath. “I sure do.”

  The lone eyewitness to Jonathan Lauer’s murder had been a retired New Jersey policeman.

  His name was Phil Dietz.

  The same eyewitness as at AJ Raymond’s hit-and-run.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  He had slipped up. Hauck read over his testimony once, twice, then again.

  He had slipped up big-time!

  Immediately Hauck recalled how Pappy Raymond had described the guy who’d met him outside the bar and put the pressure on him. Stocky, mustached. In the same moment, it became clear to Hauck just who had taken those pictures of AJ Raymond’s body in the street.

  Dietz.

  His heart slammed to a stop.

  Hauck thought back to his own case. Dietz had described himself as being in the security business. He’d said he’d run down to the crash site after the accident. That he never got a good look at the car, a white SUV, out-of-state plates, as it sped away up the road.

  Good look, my ass.

  He’d been planted there.

  That’s why they’d never been able to locate any white SUV with Massachusetts or New Hampshire plates. That’s why the New Jersey police couldn’t find a similar vehicle there.

  They didn’t exist! It had all been set up.

  It was a thousand-to-one shot anyone would have ever connected the two incidents, if Karen hadn’t seen her husband’s face in that documentary.

  Hauck grinned. Dietz was at both sites. Two states apart, separated by over a year.

  Of course, that meant Charles Friedman was connected, too.

  Hauck looked back up at Muñoz, a feeling that he was finally getting somewhere buzzing in his veins. “Anyone else know about this, Freddy?”

  “You said keep it between us, Lieutenant.” The detective shrugged. “So that’s what I did.”

  He looked back up at Freddy. “Let’s keep it that way.”

  Muñoz nodded.

  “I want to go over the Raymond file again. You get me a copy up here today.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hauck stared at the image of the gregarious, mustached face—an ex-cop—now morphed into the calculating countenance of a professional killer.

  The two cases hadn’t merged, they had basically crashed together. Head-on. And this time there were other people to see. His blood was racing.

  You screwed up, he said to Dietz. Big-time, you son of a bitch!

  THE FIRST THING Hauck did was forward a photo of Dietz’s face to Pappy, who a day later confirmed that that had been the same man who’d been in Pensacola. That alone was probably enough to arrest Dietz right now for conspiracy to murder AJ Raymond, and maybe Jonathan Lauer, too.

  But it didn’t take things through to Charles Friedman.

  Coincidence didn’t prove anything. With a good lawyer, it could be argued that being at both crash sites was just that. He’d given his word to Karen to find out about her husband. Charles had been in Greenwich. Lauer worked for him. They both led to Dolphin. Dietz was in it, too. Hauck wasn’t liking at all where this was leading. Tying Charles to Dietz would be a start. Right now he was afraid that if he blew the lid off everything, who knew where any of it would lead?

  You should go back to Fitzpatrick, a voice in him said. Swear out a warrant. Let the feds figure this out. He had taken oaths. His whole life he’d always upheld them. Karen had uncovered a conspiracy.

  But something held him back.

  What if Charles was innocent? What if he couldn’t tie Charles and Dietz together? What if he hurt her, Karen, her whole family, after vowing to help her, trying to make his case, not hers? Bring him in. Put the pressure on Dietz. He would roll.

  Or was it her? Was it what he felt himself falling into, these cases colliding together. Wanting to protect her just a little longer until he knew for sure. What stirred so fiercely in his blood. What he lay awake thinking of at night. Conflicted. As a cop, knowing his feelings were leading him astray.

  He called her later that day, staring at Dietz’s file. “I’m heading down to New Jersey for a day. We may have found something.”

  Karen sounded excited. “What?”

  “I looked through the file on Jonathan Lauer’s hit-and-run. The only eyewitness there, a man named Dietz—he was one of the two witnesses to AJ Raymond’s death, too.”

  Karen gasped. In the following pause, Hauck knew she was putting together just what this meant.

  “They were set up, Karen. This guy, Dietz, he was at both accidents. Except they weren’t accidents, Karen. They were homicides. To cover something up. You did good. No one would ever have put any of this together if you hadn’t gone to visit Lauer.”

  She didn’t reply. There was only silence. The silence of her trying to decide what this meant. In regard to Charles. For her kids. For her.

  “What the hell am I supposed to think, Ty?”

  “Listen, Karen, before we jump…”

  “Look, I’m sorry,” Karen said. “I’m sorry about these people. It’s terrible. I know this is what you were always thinking. But I can’t help thinking that there’s something going on here, and it’s starting to scare me, Ty. What does all this mean about Charles?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m going to find out.”

  “Find out how, Ty? What are you going to do?”

  There was a lot he had withheld from her. That Charles had a connection to Falcon. To Pappy Raymond. That he was sure Charles was complicit in AJ Raymond’s death—and maybe Jonathan Lauer’s, too. But how could he tell her any of that now?

  “I’m going to go down there,” he said, “to Dietz’s home. Tomorrow.”

  “You’re going down there? What for?”

  “See what the hell I can find. Try and figure out what our next step is.”

  “Our next step? You arrest him, Ty. You know he set those poor people up. He’s responsible for their deaths!”

  “You wanted to know how this connected to your husband, Karen! Isn�
��t that why you came to me? You wanted to know what he’s done.”

  “This man’s a murderer, Ty. Two people are dead.”

  “I know that two people are dead, Karen! That’s one thing you don’t have to remind me of.”

  “What are you saying, Ty?”

  The silence was frosty between them for a second. Suddenly Hauck felt sure that by admitting he was not going down to bring Dietz in he was somehow giving away everything that was in his heart: the feelings he carried for her, the braids of red hair that had pushed him here, the echo of a distant pain.

  Finally Karen swallowed. “You’re not telling me everything, are you, Ty? Charles is tied to this, isn’t he? Deeper than you’re letting on?”

  “Yes.”

  “My husband…” Karen let out a dark chuckle. “He always bet against the trends. A contrarian, he called himself. A fancy name for someone who always thinks he’s smarter than everybody else. You better be careful down there, Ty, whatever you’re planning.”

  “I’m a cop, Karen,” Hauck said. “This is what cops do.”

  “No, Ty, cops arrest people when they’re implicated in a crime. I don’t know what you’re going to do down there, but what I do know is that some of it is about me. And that’s scaring me, Ty. You just make sure you do the right thing, okay?”

  Hauck flipped open the file and stared at Dietz’s face. “Okay.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Something strange crept through Karen’s thoughts that night. After she hung up from Ty.

  About what he’d found.

  It lifted her at first. The connections between the accidents. That she’d actually helped him.

  Then she didn’t know what she felt. An uneasiness that two people linked to her husband had been killed to cover something up—and the suspicion, a suspicion Ty wasn’t clearing up for her, that Charlie was involved.

  Jonathan Lauer worked for him. The fellow who was run over in Greenwich the day he disappeared had had Charlie’s name in his pocket. The safe-deposit box with all that cash and the passport. The tanker that had a connection to Charlie’s firm. Dolphin Oil…