Andrew Gross - The Dark Tide

The medical team from upstate had finally arrived. Hauck went back down the hill. He picked up the victim’s cell phone. He’d check the recently dialed numbers. It wouldn’t surprise him if the number that had called in would be traced to the same guy.

Things like this often worked that way.

Hauck knelt over Abel Raymond’s body a last time, taking a good look at the kid’s face. I’m gonna find out for you, son, he vowed. His thoughts flashed back to the bombing. There were a lot of people in town who weren’t going to be coming home tonight. This would only be one. But this one he could do something about.

This one-Hauck stared at the locks of long red hair, the ache of a long-untended wound rising up inside him-this one had a face.

As he was about to get up, Hauck checked the victim’s pockets a final time. In the guy’s trousers, he found some change, a gas receipt. Then he reached into the chest pocket under the embroidered patch that bore his initials. AJ.

He poked his finger around and brought out a yellow scrap of paper, a standard Post-it note. It had a name written on it with a number, a local phone exchange.

It could’ve been the person AJ Raymond was on his way to meet. Or it could’ve been in there for weeks. Hauck dropped it in the evidence bag with the other things he had pulled, one more link to check out.

Charles Friedman.

I never heard from my husband again. I never knew what happened.

The fires raged underground in Grand Central for most of the day. There’d been a powerful accelerant used in the blast. Four blasts. One in each of the first two cars of the 7:51 out of Greenwich, exploding just as it came to a stop. The others in trash baskets along the platform packed with a hundred pounds of hexagen, enough to bring a good-sized building down. A splinter cell, they said. Over Iraq. Can you imagine? Charlie hated the war in Iraq. They found names, pictures of the station, traces of chemicals where the bombs were made. The fire that burned there for most of two days had reached close to twenty-three hundred degrees.

We waited. We waited all day that first day to hear something. Anything. Charlie’s voice. A message from one of the hospitals that he was there. It seemed like we called the whole world: the NYPD, the hotline that had been set up. Our local congressman, whom Charlie knew.

We never did.

One hundred and eleven people died. That included three of the bombers, who, they suspected, were in the first two cars. Where Charlie always sat. Many of them couldn’t even be identified. No distinguishable remains. They just went to work one morning and disappeared from the earth. That was Charlie. My husband of eighteen years. He just yelled good-bye over the hum of the hair dryer and went to take in the car.

And disappeared.

What they did find was the handle of the leather briefcase the kids had given him last year-the charred top piece still attached, blown clear from the blast site, the gold-embossed monogram, CMF, which made it final for the first time and brought our tears.

Charles Michael Friedman.

Those first days I was sure he was going to crawl out of that mess. Charlie could pull himself out of anything. He could fall off the damn roof trying to fix the satellite and he’d land on his feet. You could just count on him so much.

But he didn’t. There was never a call, or a piece of his clothing, even a handful of ashes.

And I’ll never know.

I’ll never know if he died from the initial explosion or in the flames. If he was conscious or if he felt pain. If he had a final thought of us. If he called out our names.

Part of me wanted one last chance to take him by the shoulders and scream, “How could you let yourself die in there, Charlie?” How?

Now I guess I have to accept that he’s gone. That he won’t be coming back. Though it’s so effing hard…

That he’ll never get to drive Samantha to college that first time. Or watch Alex score a goal. Or see the people they become. Things that would have made him so proud.

We were going to grow old together. Sail off to that Caribbean cove. Now he’s gone, in a flash.

Eighteen years of our lives.

Eighteen years…

And I don’t even get to kiss him good-bye.

A few days later-Friday, Saturday, Karen had lost track-a police detective came by the house.

Not from the city. People from the police in New York and the FBI had been by a few times trying to trace Charlie’s movements that day. This one was local. He called ahead and asked if he could talk with Karen for just a few moments on a matter unrelated to the bombing. She said sure. Anything that helped take her mind off things for a few moments was a godsend to her now.

She was in the kitchen arranging flowers that had come in from one of the outfits that Charlie cleared through when he stopped by.

Karen knew she looked a mess. She wasn’t exactly keeping up appearances right now. Her dad, Sid, who was up from Atlanta and who was being very protective of her, brought him in.

“I’m Lieutenant Hauck,” he said. He was nicely dressed, for a cop, in a tweed sport jacket and slacks and a tasteful tie. “I saw you at the meeting in town Monday night. I’ll only take a few moments of your time. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” Karen nodded and pushed her hair back as they sat down in the sunroom, trying to shift the mood with an appreciative smile.

“My daughter’s not feeling so well,” her father cut in, “so maybe, whatever it is you have to go over…”

“Dad, I’m fine.” She smiled. She rolled her eyes affectionately, then caught the lieutenant’s gaze. “It’s okay. Let me talk to the policeman.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m out here. If you need me…” He went back into the TV room and shut the door.

“He doesn’t know what to do,” Karen said with a deep sigh. “No one does. It’s tough for everyone right now.”

“Thank you for seeing me,” the detective said. “I won’t take long.” He sat across from her and took something out of his pocket. “I don’t know if you heard, but there was another incident in town on Monday. A hit-and-run accident, down on the Post Road. A young man was killed.”

“No, I didn’t,” Karen said, surprised.

“His name was Raymond. Abel John Raymond.” The lieutenant handed her a photo of a smiling, well-built young man with red dreadlocks, standing next to a surfboard on the beach. “AJ, he was called. He worked in a custom-car shop here in town. He was crossing West Street when he was run over at a high speed by an SUV making a right turn. Whoever it was didn’t even bother to stop. The guy dragged him about fifty feet, then took off.”

“That’s horrible,” Karen said, staring at the face again, feeling a stab of sorrow. Whatever had happened to her, it was still a small town. It could have been anybody. Anybody’s son. The same day she’d lost Charlie.

She looked back at him. “What does this have to do with me?”

“Any chance you’ve seen this person before?”

Karen looked again. A handsome face, full of life. The long red locks would’ve made it hard to forget. “I don’t think so. No.”

“You never heard the name Abel Raymond or maybe AJ Raymond?”

Karen stared again at the photo once again and shook her head. “I don’t think so, Lieutenant. Why?”

The detective seemed disappointed. He reached back into his jacket again, this time removing a yellow slip of paper, a wrinkled Post-it note contained in a plastic bag. “We found this in the victim’s work uniform, at the crime scene.”

As Karen looked, she felt her insides tighten and her eyes grow wide.