Andrew Gross - The Dark Tide

“That is your husband’s name, isn’t it? Charles Friedman. And his cell number?”

Karen looked up, completely mystified, and nodded. “Yes. It is.”

“And you’re sure you never heard your husband mention his name? Raymond? He did tinting and custom painting at a car shop in town.”

“Tinting?” Karen shook her head and smiled with her eyes. “Unless he was gearing up for some kind of midlife crisis he didn’t tell me about.”

Hauck smiled back at her. But Karen could see he was disappointed.

“I wish I could help you, Lieutenant. Are you thinking this was intentional, this hit-and-run?”

“Just being thorough.” He took back the photo and the slip of paper with Charlie’s name. He was handsome, Karen thought. In a rugged sort of way. Serious blue eyes. But something caring in them. It must have been hard for him to come here today. It was clear he wanted to do right by this boy.

She shrugged. “It’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Charlie’s name on that paper. In that boy’s pocket. The same day…you having to come here like this.”

“A bad one”-he nodded, forcing a tight smile-“yes. I’ll be out of your way.” They both stood up. “If you think of anything, you’ll let me know. I’ll leave a card.”

“Of course.” Karen took it and stared at it: CHIEF OF DETECTIVES. VIOLENT CRIMES. GREENWICH POLICE DEPARTMENT.

“I’m very sorry about your husband,” the lieutenant repeated.

His eyes seemed to drift to a photo she kept on the shelf. She and Charlie, dressed up formal. At her cousin Meredith’s wedding. Karen always loved the way the two of them looked in that picture.

She smiled wistfully. “Eighteen years together, I don’t even get to kiss him good-bye.”

For a second they just stood there, she wishing she hadn’t said that, he shifting on the balls of his feet, seemingly contemplating something and a little strained. Then he said, “On 9/11, I was working in the city at the NYPD’s Office of Information. It was my job to try and track down people who were missing. You know, presumed to be inside the buildings, lost. It was tough. I saw a lot of families”-he wet his lips-“in this same situation. I guess all I’m trying to say is, I have a rough idea of what you’re going through…”

Karen felt a sting at the back of her eyes. She looked up and tried to smile, not knowing what else to say.

“You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do.” He took a step to the door. “I still keep a few friends down there.”

“I appreciate that, Lieutenant.” She walked him through the kitchen to the back door in order to avoid the crowd in front. “It’s awful. I wish you luck with finding this guy. I wish I could be more help.”

“You have your own things to be thinking about,” he said, opening the door.

Karen looked at him. A tone of hopefulness rose in her voice. “So did anyone ever turn up? When you were looking?”

“Two.” He shrugged. “One at St. Vincent ’s Hospital. She had been struck by debris. The other, he never even made it in to work that morning. He witnessed what happened and just couldn’t go home for a few days.”

“Not the best odds.” Karen smiled, looking at him as if she knew what he must be thinking. “It would just be good, you know, to have something…”

“My best to you and your family, Mrs. Friedman.” The lieutenant opened the door. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

OUTSIDE, HAUCK STOOD a moment on the walkway.

He had hoped the name and number in AJ Raymond’s pocket would prove more promising. It was pretty much all he had left.

A check of the phone records where the victim worked hadn’t panned out at all. The call that he’d received-Marty something, the manager had said-was designated a private caller. From a cell phone. Totally untraceable now.

Nor had the girlfriend’s ex. The guy turned out to be a low-life, maybe a wife beater, but his alibi checked. He’d been at a conference at his kid’s school at the time of the accident, and anyway he drove a navy Toyota Corolla, not an SUV. Hauck had double-checked.

Now all he was left with were the conflicting reports from the two eyewitnesses and his APB on the white SUVs.

Next to nothing.

It burned in him. Like AJ Raymond’s red hair.

Someone out there was getting away with murder. He just couldn’t prove it.

Karen Friedman was attractive, nice. He wished he could help in some way. It hurt a little, seeing the strain and uncertainty in her eyes. Knowing exactly what she would be going through. What she was going to face.

The heaviness in his heart, he knew it wasn’t tied quite as closely to 9/11 victims as he’d said. But to something deeper, something never very far away.

Norah. She’d be eight now, right?

The thought of her came back to him with a stab, as it always did. A child in a powder blue sweatshirt and braces, playing with her sister on the pavement. A Tugboat Annie toy.

He could still hear the trill of her sweet voice. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…

He could still see her red, braided hair.

A car door slammed at the curb, rocketing him back. Hauck looked up and saw a nicely dressed couple holding flowers walking up to Karen Friedman’s front door.

Something caught his eye.

One of the garage doors had been opened in the time since he’d arrived. A housekeeper was lugging out a bag of trash.

There was a copper-colored Mustang parked in one of the bays-’65 or ’66, he guessed. A convertible. A red heart decal on the rear fender and a white racing stripe running down the side.

The license plate read CHRLYS BABY.

Hauck went over and knelt, running his hand along the smooth chrome trim.

Son of a bitch…

That’s what AJ Raymond did! He restored old cars. For a second it almost made Hauck laugh out loud. He wasn’t sure how it made him feel, disappointed or relieved, the last of his leads slipping away.

Still, he decided, heading back across the driveway to his car, at least he now knew what the guy was doing with Charles Friedman’s number.

Pensacola, Florida

The huge gray tanker emerged from the mist and cut its engines at the mouth of the harbor.

The shadows of heavy industry: steel-gray trestles, the refinery tanks, the gigantic hydraulic pumps awaiting gas and oil, all lay quiet in the vessel’s approach.

A single launch motored out to meet it.

At the helm the pilot, who was called Pappy, fixed on the waiting ship. As assistant harbormaster, Pensacola Port Authority, his job was to guide the football-field-size craft through the sandy limestone shoals around Singleton Point and then through the busy lanes of the inner harbor, which bustled with commercial traffic as the day wore on. He’d been bringing home large ships like this since he was twenty-two, a job-more like a rite, handed down from his own father, who had done it himself since he was twenty-two. For close to thirty years, Pappy had done this so many times he could pretty much guide home a ship in his sleep, which in the darkened calm before the dawn this morning-if it were a normal morning and this just another tanker-would be exactly what he was about to do.

She’s tall there, Pappy noted, focused on the ship’s hull.

Too tall. The draft line was plainly visible. He stared at the logo on the tanker’s bow.

He’d seen these ships before.

Normally the real skill lay in gauging what the large tanker was drawing and navigating it through the sandbars at the outer rim of the harbor. Then simply follow the lanes, which by 10:00 A.M. could be livelier than the loop into downtown, and make the wide, sweeping arc into Pier 12, which was where the Persephone, according to its papers carrying a full load of Venezuelan crude, was slotted to put in.