Lisa Unger - Smoke

“And what do they get from their members in return?”

“The members of The New Day turn over everything to the church when they join. It’s not that they give it to The New Day, though. My understanding is that The New Day creates an account for the member and manages all his or her money and assets. They get an allowance or a dividend from their invested money to meet living expenses. Supposedly, the member can cash out that account and leave whenever he or she wants.”

She nodded thoughtfully and he wondered if she was thinking what he had when he heard that. He’d thought about Lily Samuels cashing out all of her accounts while someone waited for her in a black SUV.

“What if you want to join The New Day and you don’t have any money?” said Lydia.

“I don’t know,” he said. He only had limited information.

After he and Jesamyn met with the other detectives working on the Rosario Mendez case, and Jesamyn had left for the evening, Matt had called a friend of his, a guy he went to high school with out in Queens who was now an agent with the FBI. Special Agent John Starks was part of a unit whose task it was to track and observe the activities of domestic groups, such as the Michigan Militia or the Branch Davidians, with political or religious agendas that might pose a threat to homeland security. To Matt’s surprise, his friend, Starkey to everyone from the neighborhood, knew a lot about The New Day.

“Basically, when you sign up, it’s like going to rehab,” Starkey had told him. “They separate you from your life and your family. You can have no other club affiliations, like not even a gym membership. And you have to quit your job. Apparently, there’s a period they call ‘cleansing’ which can last from six months to a year. After this time, you’re allowed to return to your life if you want, while remaining a member of The New Day the way you would belong to any church. Or you can go to work for the church.”

Lydia had pulled a notepad from her pocket and was scribbling notes.

“I’m just taking some notes,” she said when she saw him watching her. Then, “How did the FBI learn about The New Day?”

“They’ve been investigated by federal agencies three times in the last twenty-five years.”

“What for?” she asked. Her phone beeped in her jacket and he waited while she fished it out, glanced at the screen, and returned it to her pocket. She smiled briefly, thoughtfully, and turned back to Matt. He continued.

“They started calling attention to themselves when they bought up a whole bunch of property in this small town in Florida. It was this kind of sleepy beach town with lots of undeveloped land and struggling businesses. They bought up some historic buildings and started renovating, really giving the area a face-lift. They brought a bunch of members in and helped them buy small businesses. But people were suspicious of them and wanted to know what they were doing there. The FBI investigated but they weren’t doing anything illegal and nothing came of it. That was back in 1980. They continued to grow their presence in that community and now they own more than fifty percent of the commercial property.”

The waitress brought Matt’s pastitso , a kind of meat, cheese, and noodle dish that resembled lasagna. Lydia, who claimed she wasn’t hungry, had ordered baklava . The serving of the sweet pastry dish was bigger than Lydia’s head and she dug right in, apparently unconcerned with caloric content. He liked that about her, too.

“In 2000,” he went on, “a man named George Benchly claimed that he had ‘escaped’ The New Day. He said that at a very low point in his life, he had been laid off from his job at a dot com and his wife had left him, he had attended an open meeting, having heard about the organization from a friend. He turned over his assets and signed on for a cleansing. They told him that he could leave at any point. But when, about three weeks into it, he decided it wasn’t for him, they wouldn’t let him go. He managed to escape and went to the authorities. When confronted, a New Day official claimed that it was their policy to ‘discourage’ people from leaving a cleansing, much in the way someone who wanted to leave a drug or alcohol treatment center would be discouraged. They returned Mr. Benchly’s assets to his control, claiming that he had a serious substance abuse problem and needed help. Three weeks later, Mr. Benchly was found dead in a motel room. He’d shot himself in the head. Tox reports showed crack cocaine. The thing was, prior to his joining The New Day, Mr. Benchly had never had a substance abuse problem at all, at least not according to his ex-wife, former employers, and friends.

“This incident caused the FBI to investigate The New Day again. But again, they found nothing illegal in their activities.”

“But they were taking people’s money and holding them against their will.”

“Well, no. Those people were willingly signing over their assets to be managed by accountants who were also New Day members. And in the contract people sign when they are accepted for a cleansing, it states clearly that they will be ‘discouraged’ from leaving before the cleansing is complete.”

“You have to wonder,” said Lydia, taking a sip from her coffee. “Where do you have to be in your life to turn over your autonomy like that? Your assets, your freedom.”

She shuddered slightly as if she couldn’t imagine anything worse.

“Maybe you just have to be really desperate,” said Matt, finishing off his food and thinking about another order. “Or clinically depressed or hopeless, vulnerable to anyone who promises to make you feel better.”

Lydia looked at him then and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She had a very still face, beautiful in the way that precious metals were beautiful, cool, and distant. The gray of her eyes was impenetrable; there was no way to know what was going on behind them unless she told you.

“Did you sense that Lily was that kind of person?” she asked.

“No,” he said without hesitation. “I didn’t.”

“But her brother might have been.”

“Did Tim Samuels tell you that?”

“Yeah. He said Mickey had been depressed on and off most of his life.”

Matt was starting to see where she might be going with this. Lily’s mother had told him early on in the investigation that where Mickey went, Lily followed. She was hysterical at the time and he thought she was communicating her fear that Lily had also killed herself and that it was a corpse for which they were searching. He told Lydia what he was thinking and she just nodded as if it didn’t surprise her.

When she didn’t say anything, he went on with what Starkey had told him.

“The most recent investigation was back in 2002,” he said, “conducted by the ATF. Another New Day escapee, Rusty Klautz, claimed that they were stockpiling weapons. Supposedly there’s a farm called New Day Produce out in Florida near the Gulf Coast. They grow organic fruit and vegetables, raise free range chickens, hormone- and antibiotic-free dairy, make fresh juices and then sell it all at farmers’ markets in the area. The escapee claimed that this farm, nearly a hundred acres in the middle of nowhere, is actually a front. He said that there were weapons everywhere, buried in bunkers beneath the ground, hidden in barns. But aerial photographs showed nothing suspect. There was no intelligence to confirm that the types of weapons Klautz claimed were there had been bought or sold here. And Klautz had a history of being a conspiracy theorist, even had a newsletter back in the seventies. He was a Vietnam vet with a history of mental illness.”

“Let me guess,” said Lydia.

“Wrapped his Harley around a tree,” said Matt.