Richard Doetsch - Half-Past Dawn

Jack’s head began to throb. He looked around the room, feeling as if he needed to hold on to something.

Ryan stood up and motioned for Emily to walk with him to the corner of the room. They became lost in a conversation of whispers and soft tones. Ryan passed her each of the four files, one by one. Jack’s hearing had grown more acute, but he couldn’t make out their words as they nodded to each other before walking back his way.

“Jack,” Ryan said in a calm, reassuring voice, “Emily is a psychiatrist, the best in her field. I respect her opinion as much as her experience.”

“Jack.” Emily spoke softly. “You are going to be moved to a special hospital where we can better care for your state of mind. You can undergo radiation treatment which may alleviate the tumor’s impact on your brain function, but until that time, you are a danger to yourself and anyone around you.”

“What?” Jack exploded. “Ryan, don’t do this! Please! Mia is out there… you’ve got to get me out of here. Don’t do it for me. Do it for her.”

“I know. My heart is breaking for you, Jack. I can’t even imagine

…” Ryan took a slow, measured breath, trying desperately to calm himself. The last five minutes since he’d walked back into the room were leading up to this moment. He had waited too long already but still had trouble finding the way to broach it. “Forgive me for not telling you when I came back into the room, but we needed to judge your state of mind.”

“Forgive you for what?”

“They found her, Jack,” Ryan said almost in a whisper.

Jack closed his eyes, a sense of relief filling him, washing away his fear. He truly didn’t care what they did to him, as long as she was safe. He no longer cared about dawn or whether he lived or died. Love was such a simple thing, a thing that if truly felt and experienced compelled one to give everything he had to the one he loved. He let his anger slip away. None of it mattered, as long as Mia was safe to get home to their girls, to hold and protect them forever.

But when Jack opened his eyes, he saw a tear on Ryan’s cheek, Ryan, the one who was not known for emotion, the one whose wife had called heartless on more than one occasion.

“Jack, I don’t know how to tell you this, but Mia’s dead.”

Frank had spent the last hour chasing down every friend, contact, and enemy he had in the New York City Police Department to find where Jack had been taken. He had lost Jack once he exited his car with the Suburban in pursuit. They had both disappeared up 48th Street.

Frank thought of taking up the chase on foot, but Jack was long gone, and he knew he would have no chance of finding him. He quickly set to work changing his front left tire, which the men in the Suburban had shot out, finishing in pit-stop time of two minutes. He was thankful for his intense workouts and large forearms as he muscled through the process but admitted that he felt his age as he climbed back into the car with an ache in his back and a sore shoulder. He had quickly started up the car and headed up 48th Street, where Jack had disappeared. He imagined that he sought refuge within the sea of tourists who prowled Broadway on a Friday night, a far better place to hide than in some isolated hole in the wall.

He raced west toward Seventh Avenue and couldn’t believe his eyes as he saw Jack carried out of on office building by three cops. Unconscious, his weight taxing the young police officers, he was stuffed into the back of a police cruiser and sped out of there. Frank took up pursuit and was quickly foiled by the slow-moving traffic out of Times Square, but the cop car managed to bob, weave, and vanish to who knows where. He flipped on his scanner, but there was no mention of the goings-on on West 48th Street. Frank knew that Jack was under VIP care, radio silence on whatever had happened, allowing the officers and the department to sort through what to do with the arrest of the city’s DA.

Frank had called in favors, had called in chits, had called upon captains and rookies, but no one had heard even a rumor about Jack being arrested. There was fractional chatter about an occurrence at the Tombs, but that was being handled by the FBI, where Frank knew he wouldn’t be afforded even a pleasantry. He had called out to Riker’s Island but knew that they would never take Jack there, into the heart of the enemy, whose population would flay the skin from Jack’s body before he was even placed in a cell. He called the central jail at the Tombs, but no one had been brought in during the last hour even anonymously. Frank headed downtown and circled back to the entrance to the Tombs, where he found the FBI poring over the lobby, dusting for prints, noting and cataloguing the bullet slugs and the scars they’d left in the marble walls and floors. Frank couldn’t believe what he saw and was amazed that Jack had made it out of there alive. He had searched for Larry Knoll but was told Larry was being debriefed by the FBI at a different location. The wall of silence on the matter was impenetrable.

He had been so furious with Jack for leaving him, for slipping into the Tombs. He had no idea what prompted Jack’s singular drive to get downstairs without him or any real idea of what had happened. He had only glimpsed the mythical box that Jack had spoken of, as he clung tightly to it while they raced up the FDR. And he did not get even a glimpse of its contents, let alone a mention of what was inside.

Frank was loved and respected by the NYPD, both top brass and lowly rookies, but he wasn’t about to get any information from his former colleagues; no one knew a thing. He had been a cop for twenty-five years. Even though he’d retired, he still considered himself one and would until they day he died. He thought back on his career and similar situations-the arrests of movies stars, the senator from Arkansas found unconscious at the Four Seasons with his battered wife next to him, and the incident twenty years ago involving the former mayor’s son, the underage girl, needles, and guns. He thought about each situation and the embarrassment it created, not just for the individual but for law enforcement, the country, and the city administration, all of whom sought legal, PR, and practical advice before informing the media and the world of a respected and loved VIP going off the rails. And the pieces fell into place…

Frank knew where Jack was.

Jack lay on the riverbank, his body broken and wet, the sound of the rushing river heavy in his ear, his body and mind enveloped by the darkness of night. Moonlight danced off the muddy shore, the wet leaves of the surrounding woods. And there was a presence beside him. The man who had emerged from the woods, cloaked in the shadows of night, knelt behind his head, just beyond the periphery of his vision.

An incredible pain coursed through Jack’s body, his head pounded, his face was dotted with multiple stings, his chest throbbed on the left side, and his torso felt as if a vise was closing around it.

And a voice rose, a quiet chanting, a prayer uttered in the soft whispers of a foreign tongue. But somehow, despite the fact that he spoke no language beyond English, Jack understood the words that poured from the man’s mouth.

“In between life and death, between the deepest dark of night and the first rays of dawn, in that moment where we begin to drift up from sleep to wakefulness, is where anything is possible, Jack.”

The man reached over and drew Jack’s naked arm to him. Under the rays of moonlight, the man withdrew a quill from his pocket, a bottle of ink from the other. He dipped the quill in the dark brown ink and began to write. His hand was that of an artist, his focus and demeanor those that of a wise man.