Lisa Unger - Smoke

Lydia just nodded, looked down at her empty coffee cup.

Matt shrugged, slaked down his last bit of coffee. “The FBI keeps tabs on them now, supposedly. The New Day is definitely on their radar.”

“Did they ever go in to see if Klautz’s claims were true? Are they currently under surveillance?”

“Starkey wouldn’t say. But that would be my guess. At least they’re monitoring chatter. Three allegations in thirty years are not really that many. Hell, the Catholic church probably has more allegations against them than that.”

“It’s enough to interest the Feds.”

“The Feds are paranoid about stuff like this these days for obvious reasons.” He nodded in the general direction of the altered skyline. “Any organizing group with a political or religious agenda is interesting to them.”

Lydia leaned back in her chair and looked beyond him out the window. She let out a long sigh. “So what’s the hierarchy like?”

“Since the late nineties, the head of The New Day is a guy named Trevor Rhames. Starkey says they know amazingly little about him and what they do know, he wouldn’t tell me. As for the rest of the structure of the organization, again, he wouldn’t say.”

“What about a member list? Names of people who belong to The New Day.”

Matt shook his head. “If the FBI has one, they’re not sharing. At least not with me.”

“Well,” she said with a sigh. She leaned away from the table and cracked the tension out of her neck. “We’ve had trainees working on those transcripts and the list of vehicles. So far they haven’t found anything that warrants following up. Other than, of course, the link to Mickey’s girlfriend, which led us to The New Day. So from here-” she said and then stopped herself. “Maybe you don’t want to know.”

He looked at her and felt the full weight of his conflict. Of course he wanted to know, wanted to be a part of finding Lily Samuels. But he couldn’t do that without risking his job. He stayed silent, looked down at the check, took his wallet from his jacket. Lydia snagged the bill from him.

“It’s on me, Detective,” she said. “Please.”

She took some cash from her bag and placed it with the check under the sugar container.

“She’s clean,” he said, wanting to offer something. “Michele LaForge. Other than those parking tickets, she has no criminal record. None of the other drivers have criminal records either. I’ve been following up after hours. If I had the time, I’d be visiting each of those people. You know, just to see. You never know.”

That was the real bones of detective work, slowly looking at every possibility. Quietly visiting, observing, asking careful questions, sometimes the same question over and over. The old dogs, the guys that had fifteen, twenty years on them said they used to be able to do their jobs like that. Today, it was all political, high tech. Get the DNA, the fingerprint, run it through the system, find your man. Clear the case; bring the crime stats down so the mayor looks good. Fast was key. Careful was not so important. In the Missing Persons Division, the first thirty-six hours was the panic, the rush when all resources were available to you. After that, they figured you were looking for a corpse. The bosses started to get impatient for you to clear or move on. But Lily never got her thirty-six hours; they were long past before anyone realized she was gone. He felt that crush in his chest again.

They were out on the street before either of them spoke again.

“Thank you, Detective,” she said. “I know this isn’t easy or comfortable for you.”

He nodded. “I want you to find her. I’ll check my ego and break a few rules to help you to do that,” he said.

She looked at him thoughtfully.

“You know my husband left the FBI because he felt like the politics and policies, the rules and procedures put the Bureau before the victims. He left so that he could be a better investigator.”

Matt nodded. He knew what she was getting at. But he was a cop; it was the only thing he had ever wanted to be.

“Anyway, all I’m saying is call me if you decide the same thing about the NYPD. There’s something to be said for the private sector.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said with a smile as she slid into her Mercedes. He stood and watched her as she pulled into traffic and sped off with a gunning of the engine.

At the first traffic light, Lydia checked her cell phone. She’d had the ringer off in the restaurant but it had still signaled her when messages came in; she’d felt it vibrating in her pocket. Jeff had called and Dax, too, within a minute of each other. While she’d still been with the detective, she’d received a text message from Jeffrey. “With DS?” it read. “Mt @ D’s 2100. 5683U. J.” His shorthand translated to: “Are you with Detective Stenopolis? Meet me at Dax’s at 9 p.m. Love you, Jeff.”

The glowing red light from the dashboard clock read 7:08. She had some time. There was a stop she wanted to make before meeting the boys.

She turned on the radio and flipped through stations, finally settling on some old-school house music. It lifted the pall that was settling over her a little, bringing to mind heaving dance floors and disco lights. Then she remembered the last time she’d been in a place like that and watched a young girl die there. She turned off the radio and drove in silence.

There was a personality profile for people who joined cults. That’s what The New Day sounded like to Lydia-a cult. Lily didn’t fit that profile. But maybe Mickey did. Tim Samuels claimed that his stepson struggled with depression all his life. She well knew that the death of a parent was traumatic enough to leave scars that last a lifetime. But the suicide of a parent must be even more devastating. It might have left him with a lifelong terror of abandonment or a deep sense of unworthiness that would account for what she remembered Lily saying and what Jasmine had confirmed: that Mickey was a seeker. He might have been vulnerable to a place like The New Day. Of course, Lily had had the same experiences but she was younger and she had accepted Tim Samuels as her father. She didn’t remember Simon Graves and so maybe avoided his terrible legacy.

In her class at NYU, Lydia had taught that the art of investigation was much like the art of method acting. The investigator had to develop an empathy for the person for whom she was looking, reach inside for the true heart and mind of the subject to find their motivations. Otherwise the search would be hollow, superficial, and ultimately unsuccessful, unless they got lucky. She didn’t mention, and she probably should have, how terribly dangerous this could be. How it could lead an investigator to become personally involved with his or her subject. How it could lead to burnout, at best. Or at worst the kind of haunting Lydia experienced. The lost girls were always with her, always waiting to be found.

She wondered about Lily, grieving, feeling alone, convinced that her brother had not killed himself and being the only one who felt that way. She was vulnerable to begin with; she began her investigation with a tremendous love and empathy for her subject. If she’d followed Lydia’s investigative techniques and philosophies, she could have easily been sucked into the same black hole that took Mickey.

She pressed a button on the dash. “Call Jeffrey,” she said to the voice-activated phone in her car.

“Where have you been?” he said when he answered.

She told him about Detective Stenopolis and all he had shared about The New Day, then told him her thoughts about Lily.

“I was wondering how long it would be before you found a way to blame yourself for this,” said Jeffrey.