Lisa Unger - Smoke

Your boy’s in trouble,” said Dax.

Lydia was lying on one of the queen beds in the hotel room they’d taken to wait for nightfall. The place was a dump. Lydia had scanned the faux wood nightstands with their worn surfaces and nicked edges, initials carved on their sides, water-stained ceiling, and gritty stained bedspreads the most hideous shade of mauve. Then she closed her eyes. Outside, through glass doors that led to a small porch, the Gulf waters lapped the shore and the salt air almost covered the smell, some combination of cigarettes, stale booze, and puke. Jeffrey tapped away on his laptop on the rickety table by the window.

“What?” said Lydia, not opening her eyes. Dax turned up the volume on the set.

“Detective Mateo Stenopolis was released on bail today. Charged with the beating death of prostitute Katrina Aliti, Stenopolis left the courthouse after his family posted bond. The lawyers for the prosecution were outraged by the decision.”

Lydia sat up quickly, shimmied to the end of the bed. The newscast continued.

“Obviously, special consideration was given to this man because he was a cop,” a polished-looking young woman in a gray suit with dark hair pulled back severely from her face complained into the camera. “Anyone else charged with a crime of this viciousness would be held without bail until trial.

“The prosecution claims,” the newscaster went on, “that they have overwhelming physical evidence as well as eyewitness testimony against Stenopolis and that their case against him is nothing less than airtight.”

“No way,” said Lydia. “Absolutely no way.”

Dax turned down the volume on the set.

Jeff had come to sit beside her on the bed. “I was wondering why we hadn’t heard from him after that message you left,” he said.

“I thought he was just pissed at us because of The New Day break-in. Maybe trying to distance himself,” said Lydia, standing up and walking over toward the glass doors.

They were all quiet for a second. “There’s no way he is capable of something like that,” Lydia said finally with an emphatic shake of her head.

“So what are you thinking?”

“He said that lawyer for The New Day threatened him,” she said.

“So you think that he was set up for this?” asked Jeffrey. He sounded skeptical.

She looked at him. “It’s easier to believe that than it is to believe he killed someone with his fists. He’s a good man, a good cop. Do you know what kind of sociopath you have to be to do something like that? You have to be in a narcissistic rage, utterly without empathy.”

“Lots of seemingly normal men are walking around with a terrible misogyny in their hearts, secretly believing themselves to be superior to women, hating them for the power of their sexuality,” said Dax. He leaned back in the chair that groaned beneath his weight and gave her a smile, proud of himself.

Lydia looked at him; he had a point. He was a complete clod most of the time but every once in a while he came out with something pretty insightful. It always amazed her.

“Trust me, it’s not as secret as they think,” she said. “Any intelligent woman can spot a misogynist a mile away. It’s in the way he looks at you, the tone in his voice. I got the sense of Stenopolis as very respectful, even when he was gruff.”

Dax lifted his shoulders. “But you don’t know.”

“Overwhelming physical evidence and eyewitness testimony,” said Jeffrey, repeating what they’d just heard on the screen.

“Can we find out what that means exactly?” asked Lydia.

“I’ll call Striker and see what information he can gather,” he said, reaching for the cell phone by the bed.

Lydia fished her own phone out of her bag and scrolled through the call log until she found Matt’s cell phone number. His voicemail picked up before the first ring completed; he had his phone off. She hung up without leaving a message. She wasn’t sure what to say. Chances are he wasn’t thinking about Lily Samuels at the moment. She thought about Matt Stenopolis, how he’d looked on the street that day when she suggested he might think about a move to the private sector. Like he couldn’t imagine himself as anything but a cop. She felt a strong twist of empathy and concern for him, even as she wondered if he was capable of murder-or if The New Day was doing this to get him off of Lily’s trail.

She walked over to Jeffrey’s laptop while he talked to Striker on the phone. She saw the satellite image of the New Day Farms that Craig had been able to obtain for them.

Lydia always called Craig “The Brain” behind his back. He stood a full head taller than Jeffrey but looked as thin as one of Jeffrey’s thighs. Clad forever in hugely baggy jeans, a white tee-shirt under a flannel shirt, and a pair of Doc Martens, his pockets were always full of electronic devices… cell phone, pager, Palm Pilot, all manner of thin black beeping, ringing toys. A pair of round wire spectacles, nearly hidden by a shock of bleached blond hair, framed his blue-green eyes. Craig called himself a cybernavigator, though his title at Jeffrey’s firm was Information Specialist. More or less plugged into the Internet twenty-four-seven, more or less legally, Craig could gather almost any piece of information needed at any time of the day or night.

The image just looked like a bunch of trees seen from above to Lydia but Jeffrey had been on the phone with Craig for nearly an hour talking about various elements of the image, Dax looking over his shoulder, chiming in. It annoyed her that they all seemed to be seeing something there that evaded her, like one of those stupid computergenerated images that revealed itself only after you stared at it for an hour. She opened another window and looked at the survey of the property. It showed three structures built on the fifteen-acre property. She looked back at the satellite image. Dax and Jeff claimed to be able to see at least six structures. She couldn’t even see one through all the tree cover.

“Look for the unnatural lines,” said Jeff, coming up beside her. “Nature doesn’t like straight lines.”

“Oh, there,” she said after a moment, touching a finger to the screen where a hard edge showed through the tree cover. He nodded.

An anxiousness washed over her. As she traced the line of the building, the LCD screen turned black beneath the pressure of her finger.

“She’s in there,” she said. It was part declaration, part question. But something inside her told her they were close to Lily.

“If she is, we’re going to bring her home.”

She looked up at him. He had this way of sounding so confident she couldn’t think of doubting him.

Jeff’s phone rang then. He answered and sat on the bed. Lydia turned back to the screen. Another window revealed blueprints of one of the buildings at the New Day Farms. As far as Lydia was concerned, she might as well have been looking at hieroglyphics. Anything like that… maps, blueprints, forms… just shut her down mentally.

“Notice anything weird about this building?” whispered Dax who’d come to stand beside her.

She shook her head.

“No windows,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing good.”

“Interesting,” said Jeffrey, dropping the phone into the pocket of his shirt.

“What?”

“That was Chiam Bechim, the jeweler I saw. Someone tried to move some of those stolen stones. Apparently whoever was behind it paid the team in gems. Someone got anxious for his money and tried to sell a couple of small canary diamonds. Bechim’s people were notified.”

“Who are ‘Bechim’s people’?” asked Lydia.

Jeffrey looked at her and raised his eyebrows. “He didn’t say.”