Lisa Unger - Smoke

“That’s preposterous,” Templar said with a disdainful laugh. “Detective, I’d like your shield number.”

“Mr. Templar, I’m not a rookie,” he said slowly. “Please do not try to intimidate me.”

Jude Templar was a well-known New York lawyer, famed for his associations with the dregs of high society. Basketball player accused of rape? Rock star with a gun shooting up a downtown club? Supermodel caught with crack? Jude Templar was your man. As long as you were rich, he could get you off. Question was, what was he doing representing Trevor Rhames?

Matt had been standing on the walkway leading up to the church, Templar three steps above him on the stoop. Matt walked up the stairs and towered over the lawyer.

“Now who’s using intimidation tactics?” he asked, taking a step back to look up at Matt.

“Mr. Templar, I don’t need to use intimidation tactics. I have a legal right to be here and if you get in my way, I’ll be arresting you for interfering with an investigation.”

Templar turned a steely gaze on Matt, then stepped away from the door he’d been blocking with his body. Matt walked inside and found an empty foyer.

“I’d like to speak with Trevor Rhames,” he said.

“I am afraid that’s not possible. My client is out of town.”

“Since when?”

Templar looked at his watch, a platinum job blinding Matt with diamonds. “Since about an hour ago. After the break-in, which the police seemed to care very little about, he felt that his personal security was in jeopardy.”

“Where did he go?”

“My client is a citizen of the United States. He is entitled to go where he wishes and he is entitled to his privacy. In other words, Detective, it’s none of your goddamned business.”

“Interesting choice of words,” said Matt. He could find out where Rhames was later. He heard a car pull up, a door slam, and the quick, important stride of his partner on the walkway.

“Oh, lookie here,” she said as she entered. Jesamyn had had run-ins with Templar in the past. Ugly ones. She hated his guts.

“Detective Breslow,” he said with a solemn nod.

“Hey, Templar. Why are pharmaceutical companies using lawyers now instead of rats in their laboratories?”

He gave her a look.

“Because some people actually like rats.”

Jude Templar rolled his eyes. He pulled his face into a mask of disdain and annoyance and kept it that way as he sat in a chair behind the reception desk and made himself comfortable. He held out his hand and Matt handed him the warrant to search the premises. He glanced at it and put it down on the desk, gave Matt a small nod.

“Let’s do this,” said Matt. He motioned for the uniformed officers and the two other detectives who had driven up with Jesamyn to enter the building.

Templar pulled a pack of Dunhill cigarettes from the pocket of his jeans, extracted one and lit it with a lighter.

“That’ll kill you,” said Matt.

“Not fast enough,” said Jesamyn sweetly.

“Well, we all seem hell-bent on behavior that’s going to hurt us tonight, don’t we?” said Templar.

An hour later, his smile had widened as the search turned up nothing. The computers had been wiped clean. File cabinets had been emptied. There was no garbage in the wastebaskets or in the Dumpsters outside. The security nerve center Jeffrey Mark had described seemed to consist of only a few outdoor cameras broadcasting on four of the twenty monitors. The other monitors seemed not to be in operation. The computer that controlled them had no operating system. When it was turned on, there was just a black screen with a thin cursor blinking on the upper left-hand side, waiting for a prompt no one on the premises knew how to give.

Matt called in for some computer experts but he wasn’t all that interested in The New Day. He was interested in finding Lily. And he didn’t think what they had found on those systems would bring them any closer to her. But he could be wrong. He hoped he was.

Templar identified the building across the breezeway as a dormitory for church members and employees, where members could choose to live with a small stipend in exchange for work on behalf of The New Day but were certainly not forced to live. Only about 20 percent of the rooms were occupied. The rest of the rooms were clean and empty, beds and desks awaiting tenants.

Most of the members on the premises were young, in their twenties and thirties. Some were disturbed from their sleep, others were playing cards in a rec center. None of them seemed under duress. Jesamyn and one of the other detectives set about rounding them up in a single room and one by one taking them into another space to ask questions. Who were they? How did they come to be living there? Where were the rest of the New Day members? Had anyone seen Lily Samuels?

“What exactly did you expect to find here, Detective?” said Templar with flat eyes and a mirthless smile. Matt had returned to the foyer, frustration and disappointment lodged in his throat like a chicken bone.

He turned on Templar quickly. “We have computer experts on their way. They have ways of retrieving deleted data.”

It sounded weak and desperate even to his own ears.

“This is an organization that helps people, Detective. You’ll find no evidence to the contrary.”

Matt was just barely holding onto his temper. He looked the lawyer over and figured he could lift the little ferret off the ground by the collar of his shirt, shake him until all the money fell out of his pockets.

“Really,” he said instead. “Helps people by keeping them in five-point restraints, hooked up to feeding tubes and stealing all their money.”

Templar’s smile turned to granite. “Is that what Randall Holmes told you, Detective Stenopolis?”

Matt didn’t say anything.

“It wasn’t his tip that led you to come here in the middle of the night, was it?”

Matt took a long, slow breath. “Listen to me,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “You tell Trevor Rhames that I want Lily Samuels back or I’m going to tear the roof off of The New Day. I’ll use every resource I have at my disposal.”

Templar rose from his seat and leaned on the desk in front of him.

“I wouldn’t advise you to start issuing threats to Trevor Rhames. It’s not healthy.”

“I know that I didn’t just hear you threaten a New York City police officer,” said Jesamyn, coming up behind them. “I know you’re not that stupid. Are you, Templar?”

He gave her a cold, assessing look and Jesamyn squared off, stuck her chin out at him in a dare.

“The New Day has no knowledge of Lily Samuels or her whereabouts,” he said. “You have no evidence otherwise. So, you’ll desist from harassing my client.”

“That’s not exactly true. Because we have an eyewitness who places Lily at this church just days before she was reported missing.”

“An old man in a nursing home with poor eyesight and documented dementia.” Matt glanced at the cellular phone sitting on the desk where Templar had been sitting. The boy had been busy.

“We have a photograph of Lily running from a van bearing the emblem of The New Day on Halloween night.”

Jude Templar blinked at that but said nothing.

“We have reports of a black SUV waiting for Lily as she withdrew all of her money from Chase Manhattan bank and we’ve linked its license plate to the owner. I think it will only be a matter of time before we can connect her to The New Day.”

Another reptilian blink from the lawyer.

“I’m also aware of the allegations leveled against Rhames and The New Day since its inception in 1977.”

“Allegations which were never substantiated,” Templar said, looking at his cuticles.