Lisa Unger - Smoke

“I can’t believe we’re going back there,” she said, after a minute.

“Me neither.”

They’d just sat down at the table when the phone rang. Lydia leapt up to grab it.

“Hello?”

The line was staticky, the cellular signal weak and slipping in and out. She thought she heard Dax say her name and the low wail of sirens in the background. Jeffrey got up from the table and picked up the extension in the living room.

“Dax?” she said, glancing at the caller ID and seeing that the number was unavailable.

“-gunshot-and then we-too late.” That was all she got. She had no idea what he was saying but she was fairly certain it was bad news.

“Dax, I’m not getting you. The signal is bad.”

“Lydia, can you hear me?”

“Okay, I got you. What’s happening?”

More static. She was about to hang up and try to call him back but then his voice came over the line as clear as a gong.

“Tim Samuels killed himself,” he said. “He’s dead.”

When Internal Affairs came to his doorstep, Matt Stenopolis was still in his boxers, eating a glazed chocolate donut and drinking a cup of coffee. He heard the Caprice pull into the driveway and pulled himself away from the Pokémon cartoon he was watching. He drew back the curtains and stood at the picture window, watching as two men, one paunchy and balding, one young with a bodybuilder’s physique, both of them wearing bad suits and cheap ties and matching wool coats, emerged from the car. There was an aura of cheesy self-importance about them and he recognized them immediately as IAD.

He didn’t bother to put on pants before he answered the door.

“Gentlemen,” said Matt through the screen door. The cold air of the morning was biting, made more brutal by the sharp wind that blew. He noticed the dead trees and the empty street, the streetlamp that still hadn’t dimmed for the day.

“Detective Stenopolis,” said the older man. He had thick lines and soft purple bags under his eyes, his moustache needed a trim, the wool coat he wore over his suit needed a good lint brush. But there was something steely about him, something really tough. A lead toe under a worn old boot.

“What can I do for you this morning?” Matt had an idea that this was about Jorge Alonzo, the Latin King he’d been rough with when he’d disrespected Jesamyn. Those punks all had lawyers; they were always screaming police brutality. Murderers, drug dealers, rapists every last one of them, but God forbid their civil rights were violated.

“Can we come in?”

Matt hesitated. IAD officers were like vampires: once you invited them in, they were hard to get rid of. He noticed then that they’d left the engine running and the backseat of the car stood open. White clouds of exhaust plumed around the vehicle in the frigid air.

“I was just being polite, Detective,” said the older officer when Matt didn’t answer right away. “Don’t make this worse than it’s going to be. Okay, buddy?”

That’s when he felt his stomach clench. He saw his mother and father come out of their house next door, their coats on over their pajamas. They shuffled over the icy sidewalk, his father holding on tightly to his mother so that she wouldn’t slip. The echo of a door shutting in the morning air told him that his brother had been called and was on his way up the street. He wanted to yell at them, tell them to go back into the house, but he didn’t.

“Mateo,” his mother called, looking at him worriedly. “What’s wrong?”

Her short red hair hadn’t been brushed and it stuck up amusingly in several places; his father’s glasses fogged in the cold.

“Nothing, Ma,” he said, holding the screen door open for the officers. He was starting to feel a flutter in his belly, a tingling in his hands.

“Ma’am, sir, I’m going to have to ask you to stand back,” said the younger officer as he walked over to Matt’s parents.

In the distance, he heard sirens sound and as they drew closer and closer Matt realized that they were for him.

“Look,” he said to the older officer. “What’s going on here?”

“Mateo Stenopolis,” he said, removing two pairs of cuffs from his pockets. They were linked together because Matt was too big to have his arms cuffed behind him with just one set. They’d done it before they arrived. If he had known they were going to take him out in cuffs without letting him get dressed, he would have taken the time to do so before allowing them into his home.

“You’re not going to let me put on my clothes?” said Matt, turning his back and putting his hands behind his back like he’d asked a thousand perps to do a thousand times.

“You are under arrest for the rape and murder of Katrina Silvana Aliti. You have the right to remain silent…”

But Matt didn’t hear anything else as two squad cars pulled up, sirens screaming. His mother was crying, emitting a kind of low, despairing moan, standing between his father and brother, who looked on in shock.

“Don’t worry, bro. We’re going to call a lawyer and meet you down there,” his brother said calmly. “Don’t worry, Mateo.”

But it sounded like he was talking behind a piece of thick glass. All Matt could think, as they let him put on his sneakers that lay by the door and led him down the icy path to the waiting squad car, was that he’d never known her last name before this morning. He’d never asked Katrina her last name.

Jesamyn was in a kind of haze as she dropped Benjamin off at school, still tired from the all-nighter they’d pulled the day before yesterday. She kissed him on the forehead.

“See ya,” he said, sliding from the car.

“See ya, little man. I love you.” But he was already gone. She watched as he ran toward the wide double doors without a second glance back at her. She didn’t have time to feel wistful about it as her cell phone started singing. She saw Dylan’s number on the ID. She sighed and considered not answering. But they’d both made a promise to each other long ago to always take each other’s calls out of respect for their mutual love for Benjamin. No matter what passed between them they were each a parent to the same child; that meant something.

“What do you want?” she answered.

“Yeah, look, I know you don’t want to talk to me right now. But I’m down here at 1 Police Plaza, answering more questions about my shooting. There’s something you need to know.”

“Spare me the drama and spit it out.” She was so sick of him, she could barely stand the sound of his voice.

“They just brought Mount in.”

“What? You’ve gotta be kidding me.” She immediately remembered the incident with Jorge Alonzo. That little shit, she thought.

“In cuffs, still in his boxers.”

“What?” she said again. That didn’t sound right.

“They arrested him. Word is, Jez, they took him in for murdering a prostitute.”

She sighed with relief. “Man, you will sink to any level to get an emotional response out of me. You’re not just selfish; you’re sick.”

She took the phone away from her ear and was about to end the call, but she heard him raise his voice. She put the phone back to her ear.

“Listen to me, Jez,” he was saying. “Please. This is not a joke. I am absolutely serious.”

She felt her heart start to race. “Oh my God,” she said.

Two days ago, the night of the raid on The New Day, once they’d identified Carla as Jessica Rawlins, it hadn’t taken long for them to contact her parents in Tennessee. It gave them a reason to put a warrant out for the arrest of Trevor Rhames and to send squad cars to Jude Templar’s home and office. They could question him now on the whereabouts of his client and charge him with aiding and abetting if he didn’t cooperate. But Templar was gone. Not to be found at his office, his home, or at the city courthouses, and by late that night, he still hadn’t turned up. Other than finding Jessica Rawlins, very little came from the search of The New Day. They were no closer to finding Lily, and Trevor Rhames and anything that might have incriminated him in Lily’s disappearance were gone from the premises before they arrived. And none of the people they interviewed, including Jessica Rawlins, had anything bad to say about The New Day; they all claimed never to have seen Lily. It was a big goose egg. They had nothing. And Kepler was angrier than Jesamyn had ever seen him. Matt left after Kepler ripped him a new one and for the first time since she’d known him, he didn’t go into the precinct on their day off the next day. She hadn’t seen or talked to her partner in almost forty-eight hours.