The Dark Tide Free for a Limited Time (9 page)

That night Hauck couldn’t sleep. It was a little after twelve. He climbed out of bed. Letterman was on the TV, but he hadn’t been watching. He went to the window and stared out at the sound. A stubborn chill knifed through the air. His mind was racing.

How?

How was it possible someone had died on the tracks and yet hours later his card had been used to pay for a ride to the Fairfield Diner? To the very spot where the Raymond kid was killed.

Someone had called him right before he left to cross the street.
Something like Marty…

Mardy.

How did Charles and AJ Raymond fit together.
How?

He was missing something.

He threw on a sweatshirt and some jeans and slipped on some old moccasins. Outside, the air was sharp and chilly. He hopped into his Bronco. The block was dark.

He drove.

They had kept the protection on for four days now. He’d had a car in front of the house, another that followed the kids to school. Nothing had happened. Not surprising. Maybe whoever was bothering her had backed off? The temperature had already been turned up pretty high.

Hauck pulled off the highway at Exit 5. Old Greenwich. As if by some inner GPS.

He headed onto Sound Beach and into town. Main Street was totally dark and deserted. He turned right on Shore toward the water. Another right onto Sea Wall.

Hauck pulled up twenty yards down from her house. The rookie, Stasio, was on duty tonight. Hauck spotted the patrol car, lights out, parked across from the house.

He went up and rapped on the window. The young officer rolled it down, surprised. “Lieutenant.”

“You look tired, Stasio. You married, son?”

“Yessir,” the rookie answered. “Two years.”

“Go home. Grab some sleep,” Hauck said. “I’ll take over here.”

“You? I’m fine, Lieutenant,” the kid protested.

“It’s okay. Go on home.” Hauck winked at him. “I appreciate your doing the job.”

It took a final remonstration, but Stasio, outranked, finally gave in.

Alone, Hauck balled his fists inside his sweatshirt against the cold.

Across the street the house was completely dark, other than a dim light upstairs shining through a curtain. He looked at his watch. He had meeting with Chief Fitzpatrick at 9:00
A.M.
A replacement shift wouldn’t be on until 6:00. He inhaled the crisp, damp air from off the sound.

You’re crazy, Ty.

He went back to his Bronco and opened the door. As he was
about to climb in, he noticed that the drapes had parted upstairs. Someone looked out. For a moment, in the darkness, their gazes met.

Hauck thought he made out the faint outline of a smile.

It’s Ty,
he mouthed, looking up. He had wanted to tell her that every time she called him “Lieutenant.”

It’s
Ty.

And about your husband. What you’re feeling, what you’re going through now
…I know.

I damn well know.

He waved, a wink of recognition he wasn’t sure she could even read. Then he pulled himself inside the Bronco, shutting the door. When he looked back up, the drapes had closed.

But that was okay.

He knew she felt safe, knowing he was there. Somehow he did, too.

He hunkered down in the seat and turned the radio on.

It’s Ty.
He chuckled.
That was all I wanted to say.

April

And then it was a year.

A year without her husband. A year spent bringing up her kids by herself. A year of sleeping in her bed alone. An anniversary Karen dreaded.

Time heals, right?
That’s what everyone always says. And at first, Karen wouldn’t allow herself to believe it. Everything reminded her of Charlie. Everything she picked up around the house. Every time she went out with friends. TV. Songs. The pain was still too raw.

But day by day, month into month, the pain seemed to lessen each morning. You just got used to it. Almost against your will.

Life just went on.

Sam went to Acapulco with her senior classmates and had a blast. Alex scored a game-winning goal in lacrosse, his stick raised high in the air. It was nice to see life in their faces again. Karen had to do something. She decided to get her real-estate license. She even dated, once or twice. A couple of divorced, well-heeled Greenwich financial types. Not exactly her type. One
wanted to fly her to Paris for the weekend. On his jet. After meeting him the kids rolled their eyes and went “yick,” too old, giving her a big thumbs-down.

It was still too soon, too creepy. It just didn’t seem right.

The best news was that the whole situation with Archer gradually just died down. Maybe there was too much heat. Maybe whoever was trying to extort money from them got cold feet and gave up. Gradually things relaxed. The protection came off, their fears subsided. It was as if the whole frightening episode just went away.

Or at least that’s what Karen always prayed, every night as she turned off the lights.

April 8 there was a TV documentary airing on the bombing, the night before the one-year anniversary. Shot by some camera crew that had been embedded with one of the fire teams that had responded, along with footage from handheld cameras by people who just happened to be in Grand Central at the time, or on the street.

Even still, Karen had never watched anything about that day.

She couldn’t. It wasn’t an event to her—it was the day her husband was killed. And it perpetually seemed to be around: On the news.
Law & Order
episodes. Even ball games.

So they all talked it over—as a family. They made plans to be together the following night, by themselves, to recognize the real anniversary of Charlie’s death. The night before was just a distraction. Sam and Alex didn’t want to see it, so they hung out with friends. Paula and Rick had invited Karen out. But she said no.

She wasn’t even sure why.

Maybe because she wanted to show she was strong enough. Not to have to hide. Charlie had gone through it. He’d gone through it for
real.

So could she.

Maybe there was just the slightest urge to be part of it. She
was going to have to deal with it sometime. It might as well be now.

Whatever it was, Karen made herself a salad that night. Read through a couple of magazines that had piled up, did a little work on some competitive real-estate listings on the computer. With a glass of wine. All the while it was like she had some anxious inner eye fixed to the clock.

You can do this, Karen.
Not to hide.

As it approached nine, Karen switched off the computer. She flicked the TV remote to NBC.

As the program came on, Karen felt anxious. She steeled herself.
Charlie went through this,
she told herself.
So can you.

One of the news anchors introduced it. The show began by tracing the 7:51 train to Grand Central, docudrama style, starting with its departure out of the Stamford station. People reading the papers, doing crossword puzzles, talking about the Knicks game the night before.

Karen felt her heart start to pound.

She could almost see Charlie in the lead car, immersed in the
Journal.
Then the camera switched to two Middle Eastern types with knapsacks, one stowing a suitcase on the luggage rack. Karen brought Tobey up into her arms and squeezed him close. Her stomach felt hollow. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

Then on the screen, the timeline suddenly read 8:41. The time of the explosion. Karen looked away.
Oh, God…

A security camera on the tracks in Grand Central captured the moment. A shudder, then a flash of blinding light. The lights on the train went out. Camera phones in cars farther back recorded it. A tremor. Darkness. People screaming.

Concrete collapsing from a hundred pounds of hexagen and accelerant—the fire raging near two thousand degrees, smoke billowing into the main concourse of the station and onto the street. Aerial shots from traffic helicopters circling. The same pictures Karen saw that terrible morning, all hurtling back.
Panicked people stumbling out of the station, coughing. The deadly plume of black smoke billowing into the sky.

No, this was a mistake.
Karen clenched her fists and shook her head. She squeezed Tobey, tears flooding her eyes.
It’s wrong.
She couldn’t watch this. Her mind flashed to Charlie down there. What he must have been going through. Karen sat, frozen, thrust back to the horror of that first day. It was almost unbearable. People were dying. Her husband was down there dying….

No. I’m sorry, honey, I can’t do this.

She reached for the remote and went to turn it off.

That was when the footage shifted up to the street level. One of the remote entrances on Forty-eighth and Madison. Handheld cameras: people staggering onto the street, shell-shocked, gagging, blackened with char and ash, collapsing onto the pavement. Some were weeping, some just glassy-eyed, grateful to be alive.

Horrible.
She couldn’t watch.

She went to flick it off just as something caught her eye.

She blinked.

It was only an instant—the briefest moment flashing by. Her eyes playing tricks on her. A cruel one.
It couldn’t be….

Karen hit the reverse button on the remote with her thumb, waiting a few seconds for it to rewind. Then she pressed the play arrow again, moving a little closer to the screen. The people staggering out of the station…

Every cell in her body froze.

Frantically, Karen rewound it again, her heart slamming to a complete stop. When she got back to the spot a third time, she took a breath and pressed pause.

Oh, my God…

Her eyes stretched wide, as if her lids were stapled open. A paralyzing tightness squeezed her chest. Karen stood up, her mouth like sandpaper, drawing closer to the screen.
This cannot be….

It was a face.

A face that her mind was screaming to her couldn’t be real.

Outside
the station. Amid the chaos.
After
the explosion. Averted from the camera.

Charlie’s face.

Karen’s stomach started to crawl up her throat.

No one might have ever noticed it, no one but her. And if she had so much as blinked, turned away for just an instant, it would have been gone.

But it was real. Captured there. No matter how much she might want to deny it!

Charlie’s face.

Karen was staring at her husband.

The morning was clear and bright, the suburban New Jersey road practically deserted of traffic, except for about thirty bikers cruising in unison in their colorful jerseys.

Coasting near the front of the pack, Jonathan Lauer cast a quick glance behind, searching out the bright green jersey of his friend Gary Eddings, a bond trader at Merrill. He caught a glimpse of him, boxed in.
The perfect chance!
Crouching into a tuck, Jonathan began to pump his legs and weave a path through the maze of lead riders of the peloton. When a path opened up in front of him, he broke free.

Lauer,
the imaginary announcer exclaimed in his head,
a bold, confident move!

While for the most part they were just a bunch of thirty-something dads sweating off a few carbs on a Sunday morning, privately he and Gary had this game. More than a game, a challenge. They always pushed each other to the limit. Raced each other in the final straightaway. Waited for the other to
make the first move. The winner got to brag for a week and wear the pretend yellow jersey. The loser bought the beers.

Calves pistoning, leaning over the handlebar of his brand-new carbon-fiber LeMond, Jonathan built a margin of about twenty yards, then coasted freely into the curve.

The finish line, the bend after the intersection with 287, was a half mile ahead.

Looking back, Jonathan caught a glimpse of Gary trying to free himself from the pack. His blood started to pump, accelerating as the country road turned into a perfect straightaway in the last half mile. He’d moved at the right time!

Pedaling fiercely now, Jonathan’s thighs were burning. He wasn’t thinking about the new job he had started just a few weeks before—on the energy desk at Man Securities, one of the real biggies—a chance to earn some real numbers after the mess at Harbor.

Nor was he thinking about the deposition he had to make that week. With that auditor from the Bank of Scotland and the lawyer from Parker, Kegg forcing him to testify against his former company after taking the attractive payout deal that had been offered him when the firm shut down.

No, all that was in Jonathan’s mind that morning was racing to that imaginary line ahead of his friend. Gary had maneuvered out of the pack and had made up some distance. The intersection was just a hundred yards ahead. Jonathan went at it, his quads aching and his lungs on fire. He snuck a final peek back. Gary had pulled up. Game over. The rest of the pack was barely in sight. No way he could catch him now.

Jonathan coasted underneath the 287 overpass and cruised around the bend, raising his arms with a triumphant whoop.

He’d dusted him!

A short time later, Jonathan was pedaling home through the residential streets in Upper Montclair.

The traffic was light. His mind drifted to some complex en
ergy index play someone had described at work. He was relishing his win and how he could tell his eight-year-old son, Stevie, how his old dad had smoked everyone today.

As he neared his neighborhood, the streets turned a little winding and hilly. He coasted down the straightaway on Westerly, then turned up, Mountain View, the final hill. He huffed, thinking how he’d promised he’d take Stevie to buy some soccer shoes. His house was just a quarter mile away.

That was when he spotted the car. More like a large black façade, a Navigator or an Escalade or something with a shiny chrome grille.

It was heading right for his path.

For a second, Jonathan Lauer was annoyed.
Hit the brakes, dude
. It was a residential street. There was plenty of distance between them. No one else was around. It flashed through his head that maybe he had taken the turn a little wide.

But Jonathan Lauer didn’t hear the sound of brakes.

He heard something else.

Something crazy, his annoyance twisting into something else. Something horrifying, as the SUV’s grille came closer and closer.

He heard acceleration.