Smoke (46 page)

Marion Strong straddled a motorcycle, a young woman flirting with whomever held the camera, her hands on the grips, her eyes half-lidded. Sexy, mischievous, the light her father had mentioned blasting out of her like klieg.

There were others like this; her father had been right. The woman in the photographs was nothing like the woman Lydia knew. She was dancing, she was laughing with abandon, she was sexy and flirting with the man she loved. The woman Lydia had known had been exacting and sometimes cold, never cruel, always loving, but uncompromising and strict. Surely, she’d never been young the way the woman in the photographs was young, she’d never known that kind of joy or abandon.

Tavernier held a dark-haired child with storm-cloud eyes. The little girl had her tiny arms wrapped around his neck, her head against his face. They both showed wide smiles for the camera. He was movie-star handsome with beautiful pronounced cheekbones and a strong ridge of a nose. In his eyes she saw a great capacity for humor.

She was glad to know her mother had been happy once and sad to never have witnessed it firsthand; she was glad that her mother had loved her father but sorry Marion had never shared the happy times with her. She flipped the page.

The later photos in the album showed Lydia from a distance: Lydia outside the church at her first communion, looking sweet and gazing up at her mother from beneath a veil; Lydia’s high-school graduation, where she stood on the stage, looking too thin and not smiling at all. He’d been there for all those things, standing apart in the crowd, taking pictures for an album. The thought made her tired, sad, and a little
angry that he’d always been within reach. That’s when the frustrated feeling of regret came and settled in her bones.

Lydia flipped through a few more pages and then shut the cover. She gazed at the pile of letters on the table. It was too much, the pain in her chest, the ache in her head. Too much lost that could never be found. She placed the book on the table and turned to her husband. She put her hands on his face, and he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into him. She put her lips to his and breathed him in.

“You can finish tomorrow,” he said softly. He bent and lifted the album from her lap and stacked it on top of the others.

“I love you,” she whispered. He didn’t answer; he didn’t have to. He stood and pulled her to her feet. They walked upstairs to their bedroom and made love until the present drowned out the past and until Lydia remembered that she was not a lost girl, but a woman found and claimed by herself.

Thirty

H
e looked older and very tired in the dim blue light of the room. And she’d never seen him look so sad. He sat uncomfortably on a vinyl chair with metal arms, slouching, his chin resting on the knuckles of one hand and he stared out a window that looked out only into blackness that she could tell. She could see orange light coming in from under the doorjamb and she felt terrible pain in her arm, her head, her throat. She was aware then of a low beeping, distant voices, a peal of laughter somewhere outside.

Okay, she thought to herself, what’s going on? She searched the room for something to orient herself but the only thing she recognized was her ex-husband and even he looked changed.

“What’s wrong?” she managed. “What’s happening?”

He jumped at the sound of her voice and looked at her, first with stunned disbelief and then with joy. He started to cry then, dropped from the chair beside her and knelt beside her bed, putting his lips to her hand.

“Jesamyn. Thank God.” He just kept saying it over and over. She wanted to reach with her other hand to comfort him but it hurt too much. She’d never seen him cry, not like that. Never heard him sob. What could make him cry like that?

“Where’s Ben?” she asked, suddenly feeling a deep dread.

“He’s fine, honey. He’s with your mom downstairs.”

“Downstairs?”

He looked at her, seemed to be searching for words. But he didn’t have to. It all came rushing back … the man in leather, the car chase, the showdown on the shoulder of the road. She had him. She had him
down, she remembered. How did she wind up shot? She couldn’t remember. She started to cry then. The act of it was painful.

“Dylan,” she said after a moment when she’d struck up the courage. “Please tell me he’s okay. Please.”

“Mount?” he asked quietly.

She nodded.

“Jez.”

“Please.”

“He’s alive,” he said solemnly. “Barely, but he’s alive.”

She let relief wash over her and felt her sadness and fear start to fade a little. He’d make it; he didn’t have a choice. He was her partner and she needed him. She’d tell him so as soon as she could. Then the darkness came and washed over her again.

L
ily Samuels awoke with a start in her own bed, in her own apartment, and practically wept with relief at the sight of her Ikea furniture. The images from her nightmares still lingered, the white room, the restraints, the feeding tube, the sound of gunshots, the raging fire. But they weren’t nightmares; they were memories. She wondered if this was how soldiers who’d survived combat felt when they woke up after their first night home from war. She wondered if they felt as cored out and empty, the fear and anger still raging in their blood.

The sun streamed in the tall windows and she could hear her mother moving about in the kitchen. She could hear the
Today
show on the television. Outside the song of New York City, the horns and sirens, the buzz of a million footfalls and voices. Normal sounds. But they seemed strange. She wondered if normal would ever seem normal again. Right now, it just felt like a veneer over the dark truth of her life.

She pushed herself upright on the bed, flipped the covers back. She looked at skinny arms and knobby knees she didn’t recognize. She’d always considered herself to be a little fat; she’d dieted and exercised all her life like everyone else trying to get skinny, trying to fit the image the media plunged down her throat every day. Now she just wanted herself back, her healthy pink skin, her too-round bottom. She didn’t want to be gray and sticklike, bony and strained-looking like the girl in the
bathroom mirror last night. She couldn’t wait to start eating real food again. In fact, did she smell bacon?

But there was another, much stronger urge than hunger. She looked around the room for her black case and remembered that she’d lost her computer somewhere along the line. And the notes she’d taken had to be abandoned when she fled the burning New Day compound. No matter; she remembered everything. Everything. Her fingers were itching, and her adrenaline was racing. Lydia Strong had always called this “the buzz.” That tingle in your chest, that racing urge to get the words down, to get them out before they burst through your skin.

She slid off her bed and went over to the faux leather chair at her desk. She pulled a notebook and a pen from the drawer. And then she started to write.

Thirty-One

T
he headline read:
NIGHT FALLS ON THE NEW DAY
.

Hokey but effective, thought Matt. Gotta love the
Post;
they knew how to write headlines. It blared out at him from Jesamyn’s hands as she read the article out loud from her wheelchair. They made quite a pair, him still in his hospital bed, the healing wound in his abdomen that nearly killed him still making it impossible to sit nearly a week after he’d taken the bullet. The shot that tore up his shoulder making it impossible for him to lift his right arm to hold the paper.

Jesamyn looked smaller than ever and was being wheeled around in a wheelchair until her bullet wound that had shattered her right thigh bone was healed enough to start rehab. Her shoulder and left calf were healing fine. Her memory of that night was still sketchy. She’d killed the shooter, who remained unidentified. The second van had not yet been found. But the important thing was that they’d both be okay, a hundred percent eventually. They both had a long road ahead of them, but neither of them was complaining. It definitely beat the alternative.

“I think your kid probably weighs more than you right now.”

She peered over the paper at him. “You’re pretty ballsy for someone who’s totally defenseless.”

“What are you gonna do—roll over me with your wheelchair?”

“Are you going to let me finish this?”

He nodded.

“Officials from The New Day have officially distanced themselves from what they refer to as the Rhames Division of their church. Officials claim that he joined as a member in 1998 and moved up the ranks of the organization until he was eventually awarded his own Initiation Center
in Riverdale and control of one of their businesses, the New Day Farms in Central Florida. At a certain point, The New Day asserts, Rhames broke contact and affiliation from the organization and that they have been on the verge of initiating legal action to stop him from using their name. The techniques of brainwashing and the usurping of member funds are neither employed nor condoned by The New Day, claimed one official. Likewise, they deny any involvement in what appears to be the framing of NYPD Detective Mateo Stenopolis in the beating death of Katrina Aliti and the shooting of witness Clifford Stern.

“In spite of their disassociation from Rhames, an official federal investigation has been opened into The New Day. Charges could include kidnapping, extortion, coercion, and fraud. And past complaints from former New Day members, including some that ended in the complainant’s mysterious deaths, will be reexamined.”

“So what does that mean?” asked Matt.

“It means that Trevor Rhames takes the fall in the public eye and for The New Day, it’s probably business as usual. A couple of well-placed contributions and I bet that investigation goes away.”

“We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen,” said Lydia Strong, walking into the room with an armful of pink and white tulips in one hand and a large white take-out bag in the other. Jeffrey Mark was behind her.

“Hey,” said Matt. “The nurse’s station told me that you’ve been calling to check up on me.” He tried to rise a bit on instinct and received a nasty reminder from his middle that it wasn’t an option.

“I don’t know what they’re feeding you in here,” she said. “But I brought you some take-out from the Greek place where we ate together.”

He could smell it from where he lay. “You rock. I don’t know if they’ll let me eat it … but just the smell is making me feel better.”

“We’ve never met,” said Lydia, holding her hand out to Jesamyn. She took it and gave Lydia a smile. “But these are for you, Detective Breslow.”

“Thank you,” she said. “They’re gorgeous.”

“This is my husband, Jeffrey Mark,” she said. Jesamyn nodded and took his hand.

“Good to meet you both. Thanks for bringing Lily Samuels home.”

Matt thought he detected a note of sadness in her voice but when
he looked at Jez’s face, she was smiling. Maybe he was the one who was sad it hadn’t been them to help Lily.

“You both look like you’re on the mend,” said Jeffrey, moving into the room and leaning against the windowsill.

“We’re getting there,” said Matt. “I’ve been dying to hear what happened that night in Florida.”

Lydia told them about their visit from Grimm and their fall down the hole. She told him how Dax blasted them out and the ATF tried to hold them as scapegoats, then changed their minds and let them return home with Lily. She told him about their last visit with Tim Samuels and then about his suicide, and how a former employee from his company, Body Armor, was linked to the jewel robbery on the service road at JFK.

“So did you figure it out? What deal he made and with who?”

“The beneficiary on his policy was his wife, just as it should have been. Now she and Lily are left with nothing. The only one he screwed with his suicide was his family.”

“Seems like he had a lot of practice at that,” said Matt.

“And Rhames?” said Jesamyn.

“He disappeared that night. With his resources and connections … he’s going to be hard to find.”

“Is anybody looking?”

Lydia looked away and Matt could tell that there was more to say but that she wouldn’t say it to him.

“So how is she?” asked Matt, trying and failing to seem casual. He was nursing a fantasy that she would come to see him, but that hadn’t happened.

“Lily? Tough enough to write that article,” said Lydia, nodding toward the newspaper in Jesamyn’s hand. “But I think it’s a long road back to normal.”

His eyes traveled over to some pink roses that sat on the dresser across from his bed. “She sent those, thanking us for searching for her and not giving up.”

“She’s a good kid, stronger than I would have guessed. She’ll be okay,” said Lydia. She went on, saying how Lily and her mom were living together in Lily’s apartment for the time being, trying to move
forward together, but Matt stopped listening. He was watching Jesamyn who suddenly had gone pale; she had a dazed expression on her face, her head cocked to one side.

“Jez?”

“Oh, shit,” she said. She held the paper in her hand and was looking at it closely. “This picture.”

She handed the paper to Lydia. She saw the picture of Mickey and Michele LaForge that she’d taken from Lily’s apartment early in the investigation. It was the only recent picture they had of the woman who remained at large, so Lydia had returned it to Lily for her article.

“What?” said Mount.

“The second van, the shooter that got me in the shoulder. There was a couple … a gorgeous woman with long blonde hair and a young guy. He shot me.” She let her sentence trail off, shook her head, and they all looked at her. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve only had this really vague memory of that night. And this picture—it’s shaken something loose.”

Lydia felt her heart thump. “That man is Mickey Samuels,” said Lydia. “He’s dead, Detective Breslow.”

Jesamyn nodded slowly. “I know,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “But I’d almost swear to it. These are the people in the second van.”

“Is it possible?” said Matt.