Lisa Unger: Smoke

He was quiet a second, then he went on.

“Lily Samuels went up to Riverdale on October 15th. She was in touch with her friends for the first week. Then nothing. Her cell phone voicemail, which we accessed with the help of her mobile service provider, was full of worried messages from her friends. One of those messages was from you. Do you remember what she said on her message to you?”

“I can do better than that, Detective. I’m sure I saved it because I didn’t hear back from her. I tend to save email messages and phone messages until I connect with the person involved, otherwise I just forget.”

“There are messages on there from 1995,” said Jeffrey with a small smile. He considered her system of keeping track of messages somewhat disorganized. Ever since he’d read Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui , he’d been nearly impossible to live with on such matters. She ignored him as she grabbed the cordless phone. She entered her codes and after she skipped about twelve messages, she put the phone on its speaker setting.

“This message was left on October 22nd at 7:04 P.M.,” said the electronic voice.

Then, “Ms. Strong, it’s Lily Samuels.” She released a heavy sigh. “I really need your help. I am out of my league. Big-time. I-I just really need to talk to you. Can you call me back? As soon as possible? Thanks. Bye.”

Lydia felt a twist of guilt in her stomach. Listening to the message now she heard the fear, the anxiety in Lily’s voice. When she’d heard it the first time, Lily had just seemed really stressed to her. It had taken Lydia until the next day to return the call because she’d been stressed out herself, wrestling with her own work.

“I’ve never heard her voice before,” said Detective Stenopolis, an expression on his face that Lydia couldn’t read. “She sounds so young.”

“She is young,” said Lydia. “Twenty-five or twenty-six, I think.”

“Twenty-six,” he said. “Under what circumstances did she generally contact you? Did you talk often? Would you say you were friends?”

“It was really more of mentoring relationship. She was a student of mine when I taught a journalism class at NYU. She was special, really talented. At the end of the class, I encouraged her to keep in touch if she needed anything. She’d call for advice on stories, references, stuff like that.”

“So when you got the call you thought she was probably calling about work?”

“Yes. That was generally what we talked about. Sometimes we chatted about personal things briefly but mainly not.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“I think we had drinks about a year and a half ago. She wanted to thank me for getting her in for her interview at the Post .”

Detective Stenopolis was scribbling notes as she spoke and continued writing for a minute after she’d gone silent.

She remembered that Lily was radiant that night with excitement. The interview had gone well and she felt like she was on her way to fulfilling the only dream she’d ever had, to be a journalist. She was dating someone new-a banker, if Lydia remembered right-and Lily seemed smitten with him. At the time, things in Lydia’s life had been pretty hairy, so her time with Lily had seemed like a little oasis of cocktails and girl talk in a sea of madness.

“Who reported her missing?” asked Lydia. Curiosity was tapping her on the shoulder.

“Her mother. When Lily missed her mother’s fiftieth birthday everyone knew there was something wrong. Apparently, it was not unlike Lily to be incommunicado for a week or so when she was working on something. But she was a loving daughter and a good friend. No matter how busy she was, she wouldn’t miss her mother’s birthday, especially knowing what a hard time it would be for her on the heels of Mickey’s death.”

“Her mother must be a wreck,” said Lydia. What a nightmare it must be to lose a child to suicide and then for the other to go missing. It was hard to imagine.

“She’s heavily medicated right now. Major valium just to get through the day, the husband says.”

“Lily’s father?” asked Lydia, reaching for something Lily had told her about her family.

“Her stepfather. Raised both kids from the time Lily was two and Mickey was four.”

“What happened to their father?” asked Lydia.

Detective Stenopolis paused for a second, seemed to consider whether he should say. “Suicide,” he said, finally. “Shot himself in a car, drunk on JD. Just like his son Mickey.”

Lydia felt her heart thump. It was strange to be having this conversation after just hearing about her father’s own death. It seemed surreal and Lydia felt a familiar nervousness, a slight anxiety.

“That’s pretty odd,” said Jeffrey, narrowing his eyes.

The detective rubbed his hands together as if he were warming them, seemed to consider it for a moment, whether it was odd or not. Then, “Depression runs in families often. I’m not sure how uncommon it is. Suicide. I don’t know… maybe it’s easier to do it if you know someone who has.”

Lydia wouldn’t have thought of it that way but it made an odd kind of sense to her. As if the idea of suicide was a contagion; the more closely exposed to it you were, the easier it was to catch.

“So you said you’ve been working on the case for two weeks?” said Lydia.

The detective nodded. “Today is the fourteenth day. I think she’s been missing since October 23rd, though, because no one who called her on or after that day heard back from her. Which means that the thirty-six hours where it would be most likely for us to find her passed before we ever knew she was gone.”

Lydia looked down at the floor. If I’d called her back on the 22nd, could I have helped her? Lydia thought. It wasn’t a healthy way to think but that was the way her mind worked. There was little point in considering the answer.

“So what have you got so far?” asked Jeffrey.

Detective Stenopolis gave him a look. “Thanks so much for your time,” he said, politely. “Ms. Strong, would you mind if I sent a tech over to record that message from your voicemail?”

“We can take care of that, if you want, Detective,” said Jeffrey. “One of the communication techs from my firm can do it tomorrow and we’ll email you the digital file.”

“That would be great,” he said, rising and handing Jeffrey his card. “It could take a week to get someone from the department over here on such a low priority.”

“Low priority?” said Lydia with a frown. “I’d think something like this would be big news. A pretty young reporter goes missing while trying to prove her brother didn’t kill himself. In fact, I’m surprised I haven’t heard anything about this earlier in the media.”

Lydia was usually a news junkie, but admittedly she had been a bit of a hermit in the last few weeks while she struggled to finish her manuscript. She had tried to keep outside input at a bare minimum.

“The Post did a piece. And there’s been some coverage in Riverdale. But there’s absolutely no evidence of foul play. She had clothes and a good deal of cash with her; we know that. Her car is gone. She easily could have just taken off.”

“But you don’t think she did.”

“No. I don’t.”

“What do you think happened?” Lydia said, knowing she was pushing.

“All due respect, Ms. Strong, but I’m not going to discuss this with you.”

She nodded to indicate she understood. They’d been fortunate with access in the past because of Jeffrey’s connections to the FBI and the NYPD. But cops generally didn’t like writers or private investigators. Since she was a true crime writer and a partner in Jeffrey’s private detective firm, Mark, Striker and Strong, she was a little of both.