Lisa Unger - Smoke

She was in the middle of her nightmare fantasy when she saw a face she recognized and her heart leapt… a girl with long dark hair, a round sweet face, and deep set eyes. She’d told them her name was Carla; she was twenty pounds thinner now, at least, her hair shaved tight to her head. But it was the eyes that gave her away, mournful, thickly lashed. Jessica Rawlins of Gatlinburg, Tennessee, had been missing since January of that year. She’d told them that her “New Day dawned on January 30th” when they asked her date of birth. According to the FBI, she’d been born on May 10th, 1982. She’d left her college campus one evening, no one knew why. Friends said she’d been depressed since the death of her father not quite a year earlier, that she’d been drinking too much. But no one feared her to be suicidal; she never talked about walking away from her life. When she didn’t return to her dorm that January night, her roommate called the police. There was a $75,000 reward for information leading to her return home. Jesamyn felt happy for a second; today was going to be a good day for Jessica Rawlin’s family. A very good day.

Tim Samuels looked as if he had aged ten years since the last time they saw him. Their visit this time was a surprise; though it was well past noon he clearly hadn’t showered or combed his hair. It was apparently a look he’d been cultivating for days by the smell of him. His face was a mask of stubble and deep lines. He wasn’t happy to see them. No one was ever happy to see them the second time.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” he said when he came to the door.

“Can we talk, Mr. Samuels?” asked Lydia.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “That depends.”

“On?”

“On what you have to say,” he said nastily.

Gone was the hospitable, helpful, and concerned father. Tim Samuels looked like a man on the edge, someone who’d abandoned the petty civilities that help people to get along with others. He had an aura of unstable belligerence. This was Lydia’s cue to step back and let Jeffrey do the talking. She didn’t deal well with unpleasant people; they tended to make her behave unpleasantly, which never helped matters.

“Mr. Samuels,” said Jeffrey quietly. “We know you visited The New Day building sometime in the past week. We need to ask you about that visit because when last we spoke you told us that you’d never heard of that organization.”

He stared at them blankly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Are you sure, Mr. Samuels? Because so far we haven’t gone to the police with this information. But we will.”

“You can go to the police with whatever you want. I’ve never heard of The New Day,” he said, and slammed the door so hard, the small glass panes along the top rattled.

“There’s a videotape, Mr. Samuels,” Jeffrey said loudly to the door. “It shows you entering a building in Riverdale owned and occupied by New Day members.”

This was a lie but it seemed to have the desired effect. Samuels opened the door a crack.

“Do yourselves a favor and get out of here right now,” he whispered desperately. “Don’t make me talk to you about this. I guarantee you’ll both be sorry.”

“We’re already in pretty deep,” said Jeffrey. “We broke into the building last night, created some chaos, rescued one of their members. If these people have Lily, Mr. Samuels, she’s in big, big trouble. Please. Talk to us.”

Samuels closed his eyes and when he opened them again, two tears trailed down his face.

“Oh, God,” he said. “What have I done?”

Before paying Tim Samuels another visit, Lydia and Jeffrey had returned James to his parents. Lydia had called the number on the website and asked to speak to Mr. Rainer.

“Mr. Rainer,” she said when he came on the line. “My name is Lydia Strong. Do you know who I am?”

“Uh, yes,” he said. “I do. You’re the true crime writer.” She heard the mingling of hope and dread in his German-accented English. It was a tone she recognized in the families of victims. They knew her involvement would generate publicity that might well bring justice or answers. But they also knew that tentatively healing wounds would be reopened, that reignited hopes might be shattered once again.

“I want you to know that in the commission of an investigation we’ve found your son, James Rainer.”

She heard him make a sharp inhale and a long slow exhale. “Please,” he said. “This is not a joke?”

She heard a woman’s voice in the background.

“No,” she said quickly. “We have reason to believe that your son joined an organization called The New Day to help himself with some of his problems.”

“The New Day,” Mr. Rainer repeated as if in a daze. The woman’s voice in the background grew louder, more urgent.

“We infiltrated this group in the search for another missing person, a young woman. We encountered your son and removed him against his will from the premises.”

“Against his will?”

“Yes, Mr. Rainer.”

It took a while to make him understand what had happened to his son and that the road home was going to be more difficult than just arranging a place to meet. She tried to explain that he called himself Charley now and that he might not acknowledge them until he’d gotten some help, to undo the things that had been done to him at The New Day. But she wasn’t quite sure he understood her. He just seemed dazed and a little confused as he shared the news with his wife, who started to weep.

“I’ve arranged to have him accepted to a psychiatric facility in New York City,” she said when Mr. Rainer returned to the phone. “It’s the best possible place for him right now.”

“I-I can’t afford that. I’m sorry. We’ll have to help James here at home.”

She’d already anticipated that.

“I’ve taken care of the expense, Mr. Rainer,” said Lydia. “And I just want you to do one thing for me. When he’s well, if we haven’t found Lily Samuels, I’d just like to talk to him again.”

She heard him sigh on the other end. “I can’t,” he said, his voice growing strained with tears, “express my gratitude.”

Lydia had made a late-night call to Irma Fox, a child psychiatrist she had met through Ford McKirdy, a retired homicide detective whom she and Jeff had worked with on the Julian Ross case last year. Irma was unlucky enough to be the only shrink in Lydia’s Palm Pilot and Lydia recalled her having mentioned doing cult deprogramming work with adolescents and young adults in their late teens. On hearing the situation, Irma was very quick to accommodate Lydia, calling back immediately to say that a bed could be arranged for James Rainer that night at a facility on the Upper West Side. The cost was exorbitant. But Lydia figured it was the least they could do, since Jeffrey had practically killed the kid and Dax had pumped him so full of Xanax to calm him that James was nearly catatonic.

Tim Samuels wasn’t looking much better than James had when they dropped him off, beaten and drugged and about to undergo the worst few weeks of his life.

“This is what they do,” said Samuels in his living room. The beautifully appointed space was a mess. The couch was being used as a bed. Half-empty glasses and cups with congealed liquid, dirty plates crusted with dried food, and empty fast-food containers occupied most available spaces. The shades had been drawn against the view and the room had an unpleasant odor.

“Who?”

“The New Day. They ruin. What they can’t possess, they destroy.”

He put his head in his hands and started to weep. It sounded a little forced and pathetic to Lydia, but then she didn’t have a lot of patience for sobbing men.