Smoke (11 page)

“He wanted to give me this,” she said holding up the manila folder.

“What is it?”

“Apparently, the woman who greeted Lily at the bank the day she closed her accounts noticed a black SUV waiting outside for her. She said that Lily seemed concerned about it, kept looking behind her at the vehicle. The woman got a partial plate. These are the results of the search he did.”

“Anything interesting?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, opening the folder and settling in. She flipped through the pages, reading the listings of the twenty-eight drivers who owned black SUVs.

“It’s a pretty straight and narrow crew,” said Lydia after a second, her eyes still on the file. “No criminal records, no DUIs, no warrants. A couple of parking tickets—” She stopped talking abruptly and held up one of the driver’s license photos Detective Stenopolis had printed.

“What is it?”

The woman in the photo had short-cropped black hair and a full face. It was a black-and-white photograph so Lydia couldn’t determine the color of her eyes, but they looked dark. Something about the expression on her face jolted Lydia. She got up quickly and went over to her bag and sifted out the photograph she’d taken from Lily’s apartment.

She sat back down and held the photograph up next to the printout and compared the two.

“It’s the same person,” said Jeffrey, staring over her shoulder.

“Are you sure?” she said. The printout was poor quality and the light in the office was low.

“Yeah, look at the cheekbones, the shape of her eyes. She was younger and heavier when the driver’s license photo was taken, but look at the nose. It’s definitely the same woman.”

Lydia examined the features of her face and saw that he was right. The license photo was taken nearly two years earlier. Either she’d altered her appearance since then for some purpose or she was just one of those people who constantly wanted a new look.

“Jasmine said that Lily and Mickey knew her as Mariah.”

“Well, the DMV knows her as Michele LaForge.”

“This address is in Riverdale,” she said, turning her eyes to him.

He looked at her a minute, and she waited for him to say something. She saw a kind of resignation in his eyes and she knew what he was thinking. After a year of relative peace following a period of terrible fear and chaos, their quiet life was about to get a shake-up again. They both knew it was inevitable; it was what they did. It was how they lived. And small, or maybe not so small, parts of each of them wouldn’t have
it any other way. He put a hand to her face and kissed her lightly on the mouth.

“We’ll go up there in the morning,” he said.

“Jeffrey, what if—,” she said, letting the sentence trail. There was a parade of what ifs in her mind; their march would keep her up all night.
What if Lily’s somewhere against her will, afraid, hurt? What if Mariah knows something? What if there’s crucial information at that address that could lead them to Lily? What if tomorrow morning is too late?

He nodded solemnly. She didn’t have to tell him what she was thinking.

“Call Dax,” he said. “I’ll get our coats. It’s not like we’re going to get any sleep anyway.”

She watched him leave the office and then picked up the phone.

I
t’s late,” he answered, but she could hear the television in the background. He sounded cranky.

“Sorry to interrupt your late-night television viewing,” she said. “But I think we’re going to come by and get you. There’s something in your neighborhood we want to check out.”

She heard him turn off the set and sit up. “Oh, yeah,” he said, sounding happier, his Australian accent drawing out his syllables.

Dax had had kind of a tough year, recovering from two severed Achilles’ tendons, an injury he sustained while trying to help Lydia and Jeffrey. She knew that since then, he hadn’t been working as much as usual. Although exactly
who
Dax worked for when he wasn’t working for Mark, Striker and Strong was apparently a confidential matter. Lydia had gone to every possible length to find out, from snooping to begging. But he was like the sphinx, stony and inscrutably silent about his life.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“We’ll be up there in an hour; we’ll explain it all then.”

“Sweet,” he said and hung up.

Six

B
enjamin was in bed, safe between his
Lord of the Rings
sheets. This was her favorite time, when they were both under the same roof. They’d ordered in from the diner across the street and watched
Monsters, Inc
. for the one hundred and fiftieth time. What was it about kids? Why did they want to watch the same things over and over? It must be a comfort thing.

With him sound asleep, she opened a bottle of chardonnay and curled up on the couch, listening to her child breathe on the baby monitor, which she still kept in his room though he was way too old for it. It relaxed her, the sound of him and the glass of wine. The television was on but the sound was down, and she zoned out on the images from the ten o’clock news. She pushed away any thoughts about Lily Samuels and Rosario Mendez; she’d done all she could for them today and thinking about them all night wasn’t going to help anyone. She’d almost succeeded when something on the screen caught her attention.

The words “Bizarre Halloween ‘Shooting’ ” popped red in the corner of the screen and Jesamyn reached quickly for the remote, turned the volume up.

“—when a young woman was shot three times in the back during the parade,” said a plastic-looking male newscaster. “Onlookers thought it was part of the show or a prank of some kind when a white van came to a stop on a side street off the parade route, pursuing a young woman running toward Main Street. When two men emerged from the van chasing her and shots were fired, the crowd dispersed in a panic. Spectators saw the two men lift the lifeless body, place it back in the van, and drive away. In the melee, no one was able to identify a license-plate number.

“Was it a Halloween prank? Police still don’t know. There was no blood found at the scene, leading police to believe that the shooting could have been staged. They are asking if anyone has any photographs or videotape of the evening, to please call the crime stoppers tip line.” He gave the number and the newscast went on to another story.

Jesamyn was about to pick up the phone to call Mount to tell him about the story, even though it probably didn’t mean anything. It could have easily been a prank, although a very sick prank. They could call the Riverdale precinct tomorrow and see what they had and get a description of the girl, at the very least.

But before she could dial, she heard a key in her front door. She got to her feet quickly and moved toward the front hall, cursing herself for not putting the dead bolt on yet. She
had
to get that key back from him. The chain kept the door from opening all the way.

“We both know that chain is useless. I could easily ram my way in there if I wanted to,” he said with a smile. She leaned against the wall and looked at him. He pressed his face up against the opening between the door and the jamb. Those ice blue eyes had caused her to betray herself too many times. He’d shaved his black hair down to the skull as he sometimes did when he wanted to look tough, and he had about two days of stubble on his face.

“But then I’d be within my legal rights to kill you,” she said pleasantly. He reached his hand through the door and playfully grabbed for her tee-shirt. She moved just out of his reach.

“The father of your child. I don’t think so.”

“He’s young. He’ll get over it.”

He gave her the smile. The smile that said, “I’m so sexy, so lovable, and you can’t resist me no matter what I’ve done.”

“Come on, Jez. I haven’t seen the kid in three days. I know he’s sleeping; I just want to poke my head in.”

She stared at him. Over the years, the effect that his smile once had on her had greatly diminished. But she’d just be lying to herself if she said it didn’t still ignite something within her. She considered her visceral sexual attraction to him a mutinous physical impulse to be quashed at all costs.

“I’ll let you in,” she said. “But I want that key before you leave.
Otherwise, I’m changing the locks. I also want your word that you won’t come again without calling.”

“What about when I pick up Ben and bring him home from school?” he said.

“I’ll give the key to Ben. He’s old enough now.”

His smile faded a little bit and she thought she saw genuine sadness in his eyes. But with Dylan it was impossible to tell the difference between sincere feeling and calculated manipulation.

“Okay,” he said, softly. “Okay.”

She unlatched the door and he gave her a quick, hard embrace and a kiss on the cheek. “You’re the best,” he told her. “You really are.”

She followed him through the apartment and stood in the doorway and watched him watch Ben. She didn’t trust him not to wake Ben up. And once he was awake and knew that his dad was here, forget it. They’d all be up all night. But Dylan was good; he was quiet as he sat in the small wooden chair beside Ben’s bed. A night-light that looked like an aquarium rotated, casting the shadows of fish in a dim blue light on the walls. For a second she remembered what it was like when they all lived here together, when they were a family. There had been plenty of quiet, happy times that looked just like this moment.

Dylan turned to her and pointed at the baby monitor beside Ben’s bed, gave her a disapproving shake of his head. She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows in a dare:
What are you going to do about it?
She didn’t stalk out of the room, which was her impulse. He was antagonizing her to get her to leave so that he could “accidentally” wake up Ben. She knew most of his techniques and had developed countertechniques to block them.

After another moment, he rose and walked past her and out of the room. She closed the door behind her. In the kitchen, she noticed that he looked tired. He’d taken off his leather jacket and hung it over one of the chairs. He reached into the refrigerator and grabbed a Corona.

“Make yourself at home,” she said, sitting down at the table.

“It used to
be
my home,” he said without heat.

It was an invitation to rumble. But she didn’t have it in her tonight. Besides arguing was a kind of intimacy for them, like if they could make each other mad it meant they still cared. She didn’t want
to give him the satisfaction. In the light the refrigerator cast on him, she could see that he looked tense and strained. She hadn’t noticed at the door.

“What’s up, Dylan? What’s going on?”

She
did
care about him. He had been her husband for four years. He was the father of her child. And in the three years since their divorce, they’d been slowly and haltingly approaching friendship. They’d both done a lot of growing up.

He took the opener from the drawer by the sink and popped the top off his bottle.

“I killed someone last night,” he said, his jaw tensing. He closed the refrigerator and they were in semi-darkness with only the light from the living room shining.

“Our buyer got made and we had to go in fast. I killed a sixteen-year-old kid. He turned a MAC M10 on us, I guess thinking he’d shoot his way out; he could have killed us all.”

“I didn’t hear about it,” she said, standing and moving toward him. She could see the weight of it on him.

“It was a good shooting,” he said, taking a long draw on the beer and leaning against the counter. She moved near him and put a hand on his arm.

“I’m being investigated, of course,” he said with a slow shrug. “But I know I had no choice. Still … when I fired, I only saw that gun. When he was down, all I could see was this skinny kid lying there, bleeding out. He didn’t even have any hair on his face.”

She didn’t say anything, just waited for him to go on.

“He knew he was going to die,” said Dylan quietly. “He was scared.”

He stared at the kitchen wall as if it were all playing out for him there. His face was expressionless and pale but she could see the hand that held his beer shaking just slightly. In her years on the job, Jesamyn had only drawn her weapon twice and never fired it in the line of duty. Dylan worked buy-and-bust up in the South Bronx. It was one of the riskiest possible details. A cop goes undercover to buy drugs from dealers and once the purchase is made, a team moves in and makes the collar. Two cops had died last year in his precinct. But if you did your time, it was two years to a gold shield, something Dylan wanted badly.
He envied Jesamyn’s quick rise to detective and it was one of the things that had contributed to the end of their marriage.

“I just thought about Ben and you all night last night,” he said, lowering his eyes to her face. “While I was in the station, waiting for my PBA rep—I just had a lot of time to think. I watched the life
drain
from someone. It just left him so easily and when he was dead, there was like this shuddering and he was just gone. There was no mistaking it, you know, that life had left.”

He rubbed his eyes like he was trying to wipe the memory from them. Jesamyn stayed silent; she was stunned. She’d never heard him talk the way he was talking or look the way he looked. So sad and lost.

“I looked around and there were all these drugs on the table. And this gun in his hand. He had all this jewelry on and these expensive sneakers and leather coat. And it all just seemed so pointless. Like I’d taken this life because of all this
stuff
.”

He didn’t say anything else but searched her face like he was looking for something he needed there. She moved into him, wrapped her arms around him. He put the beer down and held onto her as tightly as he ever had in their years together. She felt the magnetic draw of their sexual chemistry and the pull of his connection to her heart.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking up at him. “Are you okay?”

“I will be. I just needed to see him, you know? And you. I needed to remember what was real.”