Lisa Unger: Smoke

“What do we need to do?” Jeffrey asked her now. “You know-to observe this?”

She closed her eyes. “I don’t know. I’ll get back to you.”

It was after ten when the phone rang. Jeff was still reading and Lydia was half asleep, her head still in his lap. She’d managed to push thoughts of her father away enough to doze but not enough to actually fall asleep; a kind of low-grade sadness and uneasiness had taken hold of her. She hopped up to get the phone.

“Who’d call so late?” asked Jeff, not looking up from his book on New York State gun law. He had his glasses on, which Lydia thought made him look sexy and intellectual. He thought they just made him look old but he couldn’t read without them so he endured.

“Must be more good news,” said Lydia. She was thinking to herself that it was probably Dax, king of trampling boundaries.

The caller ID read “unavailable.”

“Hello?”

“This is Detective Matt Stenopolis, NYPD Missing Persons Unit. I need to speak to Lydia Strong.”

His voice sounded youngish but there was a gravity and deep timbre to it that told Lydia he took himself seriously and expected others to do the same.

“This is.”

“Ms. Strong, you left a message for Lily Samuels about two weeks ago indicating that you were returning a call she made to you.” She could hear street noise on the other end of the phone.

“That’s right,” she said, concern and curiosity aroused.

He cleared his throat. “Ms. Samuels has been missing now for over two weeks and I’m wondering if we can talk.”

“Sure,” she said. “Of course.”

“I’m calling from my car. I know it’s late but would it be inconvenient if I came by?”

“Um, no,” she said glancing at the clock. “Come on by.”

She gave him the address and hung up the phone.

“Who was that?” said Jeffrey, putting down his book and looking at her.

“A detective. Lily Samuels is missing,” she said leaning against the counter.

“Who?”

“Remember that journalism class I taught at NYU as a visiting professor a couple of years ago? She was one of my students. She started at the Post last year on the crime desk.”

Lydia had felt a special affinity for Lily from the day she had walked into the large, over-warm classroom and sat in the front row. There was an earnestness, an honesty to her that Lydia could see in her deep brown eyes. And she had a belly full of fire. Lydia could always recognize it, that love of the hunt, that drive for the heart of a story. Lily’s talent had set her apart from the rest of the class; the kindness and compassion in her interview style and in her writing put her head and shoulders above most of the professional writers Lydia knew. In the past two years, Lydia had given her advice on pursuing stories she was working on for her degree, and eventually a reference that got her a foot in the door at the Post .

It wasn’t long before the buzzer rang. She checked the video monitor. A very tall, well-dressed, youngish man in a leather coat lifted his shield to the video monitor. Lydia pressed the button that allowed entry to the elevator bank downstairs. She watched as he stepped out of view and into the elevator that would lift directly into the apartment.

It was the little things like this which reminded her that she was free; she didn’t have to feel the cold fingers of fear tugging at her every time the buzzer rang late, didn’t have to wonder if the person she saw at the door was a threat. It was like a grip had been released from her heart. Jed McIntyre, the man who murdered her mother and then last year came for her after his erroneous release from a maximum-security mental hospital, was dead. Unlike incarceration, death was a securely permanent condition. And Lydia found she could breathe again.

As she waited by the elevator door, she heard Jeffrey in the kitchen making coffee.

“How long has she been missing?” he called from the kitchen.

“Two weeks,” said Lydia grimly. In a missing persons investigation it was the first thirty-six hours that were critical. After that time period had passed, the odds of anyone being found alive decreased exponentially. For Lily, that window had closed.

“And the guy is still working into the night,” said Jeffrey. “Must have its hooks in him.”

Lydia nodded to herself. They both knew what that was like.

Detective Matt Stenopolis was, simply put, gigantic. He ducked his head slightly as he stepped from the elevator and Lydia’s hand disappeared into his when he took it in greeting. He had pale white skin, a chaos of blue-black hair and a dark shadow of stubble to match. He smelled like snow and cigarettes.

He’s bigger than Dax, thought Lydia, as he and Jeffrey introduced themselves. It was a different kind of big, though. Dax was big by design. The detective was big by genetics. His shoulders, wide as a refrigerator, slouched the way the shoulders of all extremely tall people seem to, as if protecting themselves against the jeers and taunts that have been hurled at them all their lives.

“Thanks for letting me stop by so late, Ms. Strong.”

“No problem. Lily’s a friend,” she said. “Anything I can do.”

He followed her into the living room and she encouraged him to have a seat on the couch. When he sat on it, the large sofa looked as if it had been made for Barbie Dolls. She thought she heard it groan in protest.

“Coffee?” she asked.

“Please,” he answered gratefully.

“Three weeks ago today,” began the detective, as Lydia handed him a cup of coffee, “Lily Samuels’ brother Mickey committed suicide in his car in an Office Depot parking lot in Riverdale.”

“Oh, no,” said Lydia. She remembered thinking that Lily had sounded strained and worried in her message. But she hadn’t mentioned Mickey’s suicide. Not that anyone would leave that kind of news on someone’s voicemail.

The detective nodded slowly, took a sip of his coffee, and continued.

“The police ruled it a suicide right away. The guy was alone in his car with all the doors locked. He had a half-finished bottle of Jack Daniels between his legs. There was gunshot residue on his right hand. He left a note for his sister. He put his gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

They were all silent for a second, as if out of respect.

“What did the note say?” asked Lydia.

“It said: ‘Dear Lily, I’m so sorry to leave you all alone here. But I just can’t do it anymore. You’re the strong one. It’s too much for me.’ ”

He said it like he’d played the note over and over in his mind and the words had ceased to have meaning for him. But Lydia could hear the crushing sadness in them.

“Lily was totally devastated, of course. And apparently she refused to believe he would kill himself. I mean, she wasn’t just doubtful. She was positive that he couldn’t have done it.”

“That’s pretty common with family members of a suicide,” said Jeffrey.

“An initial phase of denial is common. But, according to friends she was certain , and after the funeral she set out to prove it. She took a week off from her job and went up to Riverdale.” Detective Stenopolis took a sip of his coffee.

“I remember her telling me that she and her brother were close, more like best friends than siblings,” said Lydia. “She didn’t have any indication that he was depressed or in some kind of trouble?”

“Apparently not. Friends got the sense that there had been some kind of conflict between them. But she never said what specifically, just that he was ‘acting like a jerk.’ He had moved from the city up to Riverdale about six months ago, apparently wanting to open some kind of café and performance space, leaving a mega-money job in banking. Sounded to me like he was burned out.”