Half-Past Dawn (15 page)

“Hey, Charlie.” Frank nodded.

“This is god-awful.” Charlie’s usually perfect tie was askew, his hair mussed, making him look like someone at the end of a forty-eight hour shift. But Charlie had just arrived. “Their poor kids, both parents, how do you tell a kid their mother and father aren’t coming back?”

Frank nodded, wishing he could wipe away the pain with the simple truth, but that was out of the question for the moment.

Charlie glanced at Frank’s ID and buzzed the door. Frank pulled open the steel security door as the release buzzer screamed in his ear and headed straight into Charlie’s small office.

“Police tape?” Frank said. “What the hell?”

“Feds are here, looking for an evidence case they say belongs to them.”

“And that would be down here because …”

“They say Jack Keeler hid it down here for his wife.”

“Did he?” Frank wasn’t sure how much Charlie was involved.

“They’re not going to find anything,” Charlie said in unspoken understanding. “They come down here thinking they’re smarter, that we’re just a bunch of cops out of a Keystone movie.”

“The feds are always so charming.”

“Yes, we are.”

Frank turned to see a tall man, thin and wiry, standing ramrod-straight in the doorway, his head seeming a little large for his body, what little hair he possessed buzz-cut short. The exhaustion in his eyes left no doubt that the man hadn’t slept in days; the dark circles and humorless expression were not what anyone was accustomed to seeing in Gene Tierney. The FBI’s assistant director in charge of the New York field office was known for his sense of humor, a dark, dry wit honed over a twenty-five-year career, which Frank had come across on several occasions. Frank would never consider Tierney to be a friend, but he respected him, which was something he could only say about one other FBI agent, and nobody knew where she was right now.

“Since when are you back on the force?” Tierney quickly said.

“What the hell’s going on?” Frank asked.

Tierney stood there, troubled, mulling over Frank’s question. “We’re looking for an evidence box that Mia Keeler had, and it seems to have disappeared.”

“And why would it be here?”

“Mia’s smart. We believe she asked her husband to hide it down here.”

“So you think Mia was hiding evidence and Jack was committing political suicide?”

“No, I didn’t say that. But as with everything, there’s more to the story that none of us knows.”

“Do you know what’s in the case?”

“Evidence from a murder investigation.”

“And you think Jack and Mia are somehow involved?”

“Nobody is accusing them of wrongdoing. I’ve known Mia since she was a senior in high school, and her father forever. If she did something like this, she did it for a reason.”

“So all this to figure out that reason, you just come in and take over?”

Tierney took a moment, running his hands through his bristly hair. “We got the mayor, the governor, and we have a warrant, which I haven’t needed to wave around, because everyone is trying to work together on this. We’re not saying Jack or Mia did anything wrong, but something got them killed. And we need that evidence case.”

“So what’s taking so long? You’ve got a whole team down here, and you can’t find it?”

“Nothing is in the system,” Charlie cut in.

“He’s smart. He didn’t log it in, which means either someone was helping him”—Tierney paused as he looked from Charlie to Frank—“Or he tucked it into some other case file.”

“The DA’s office has thousands of active cases. Are you telling me you’re going to go through every evidence file?”

“Welcome to my hell,” Tierney said as he took a step into the evidence room. Frank followed him into the enormous storage space. Frank had been in there too many times to count.

“Do you mind if I take a walk around?”

“Yes, I do,” Tierney said, a tired tone of suspicion in his voice. “Until you tell me why someone who was so anxious to retire and get away from all of this is back.”

Frank stared at him a moment. “You and I both know it was no accident; otherwise,
you
wouldn’t be down here.”

“It’s no coincidence that we’re both here right now. I know what I’m looking for. Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for?”

Frank’s mind was scrambling. He was never one for lies, always spitting out the truth before his mind could hold it in check.

“I heard you guys were here, something that’s never happened before. Like you said, no coincidence.”

“We’ve spent the entire morning looking at every ongoing case that Keeler was working on.”

“And nothing is missing.”

“Nothing’s missing.”

“You really give a shit if I look around?”

“Actually, I do, unless you’ve got something to offer, something that might point us in a direction?”

Frank nodded, looking down the corridor at the rows upon rows of enormous shelves of evidence. A group of white-shirt analysts sat at four makeshift tables, computers and boxes before them. They checked each and every case, pulling out files, guns, bags of drugs, whatever the box might hold, logging the information on their clipboards and computers. Two young agents wandered around, each one no more than thirty, eyes alive, their pistols visible on their belts.

Frank turned his eyes back down the central aisle, all the way to the end, all the way down to row Y, where he knew the case was hidden away. Second shelf from the top, seven feet up, Jack had said, a white bar code sticker on the top.

“No offense, Frank,” Tierney said.

“It’s OK, I understand.” He did understand, but he was seething nevertheless. Mia’s evidence case just slipped further away. “What the heck happens to any cop looking to log evidence in?”

“We have no problem with anything coming in,” Tierney said. “We’re not going to interrupt the process of law, but this place is under lockdown. Nothing goes out until Monday, and that’s after being thoroughly inspected.

“Your suspicions only further confirm ours. Someone is after this case, and I think we’ve seen how far they’re willing to go to get it. So, I’m keeping a team here until we get to the bottom of this. You guys may have great security, but a few extra guns never hurt. If that box is down here, it’s not leaving with anyone but me.”

J
ACK SAT IN
Frank’s Jeep. Joy had nodded off beside him, the ordeal of his death and resurrection exhausting her. Jack stared at the rear entrance to the Tombs, feeling impotent, completely and utterly helpless, trapped within a car while Frank did what he should be doing: retrieving Mia’s evidence case. Yet all the while, Jack suspected that the real answer to everything—how he got back to his house, who helped him, who wrote the tattoo on his arm—lay somewhere in his own mind.

As he looked out at the city of New York, at its skyscrapers, its bustling sidewalks, the traffic-filled streets, he knew the search was not out there. The search was within, and all of his efforts should go to cracking open his memory. It was like some cruel puzzle, images, flittering impressions of the night before remaining just out of focus, like waking from a dream that he could no longer remember. While the tattoo was a mystery and the box that they had hidden away held some answers, Jack knew that if he could just recover his memory from after the crash, he would have his solution to find her.

He wondered if his memory loss was from the cancer, the small tumor in his brain manifesting itself in blackouts. Of all places to
hit, of all times to attack—Jack thought the twist of fate was beyond cruel. A man known for his mind, for his memory of everything back to his earliest youth, was now rendered a mnemonic cripple. His greatest asset and skill was in solving problems, seeing solutions where others only saw frustration. And now, in his most desperate hour, he was like a novitiate without a guide, no map, no clue to what direction he should take.

It had been nearly fifteen minutes since Frank had ventured inside the Tombs. There was no word, no call on his cell phone, and the silence only confirmed the worst. Mia’s evidence case was deposited two days ago in the one place they both thought secure. She had been insistent on hiding it away from the world, on keeping it out of reach of the people around her, all the while being terrified of its contents—which she never explained. But now that he thought on it, maybe she had. Maybe she had told him everything, what was going on, what scared her, what was in the box, and he just didn’t remember. Jack wanted to scream.

Trying to calm his mind, he once again looked around the bustling streets of downtown Manhattan, and his focus was drawn to a blue Crown Victoria, the standard cop-issue, law-enforcement vehicle, that had come to a stop across the street. There were several of them parked in the reserved NYPD spaces, among the cop cars and prisoner-transport vans, but this one in particular drew his attention for a single reason. The man inside was staring at Frank’s car.

Jack felt it in his gut, deep in his belly. He remained low in the passenger seat, comfortable in his anonymity behind the smoked windows, watching as the man’s eyes alternated between the Jeep and the side door to the Tombs.

A heavy rumble shook the street, the subway that wound its way beneath the city reminding him that much of life was hidden beneath the surface. The man stepped out of his car. He stood just under six feet, his muscled arms stretching the sleeves of his short-sleeved shirt. His blond hair fluttered on the summer breeze, and all at once, Jack realized whom he was looking at.

Joy stirred beside him, opened her eyes, and looked at him staring intently out the window. She followed his gaze to the man across the street.

“Who’s that?” Joy said, her voice hesitant, as if not really wanting the answer.

Jack didn’t break his stare, the moment dragging on to almost the point of forgetting the question. His voice was low and steady as he answered her, although his tone was filled with vengeance. “That’s the man who killed me.”

F
RANK STEPPED INTO
the elevator with far more questions than answers. Whatever Mia had stumbled upon was worse than he had imagined. The effort mobilized to recover the case was being overseen by Tierney personally, and the assistant director only took on-site charge of an investigation when the matter had far-reaching implications.

The elevator ride back up into the world seemed to take forever, which suited Frank fine. His mind was churning with scenarios, thoughts, and ideas. He had no intention of leaving the Tombs without the case, no matter how many feds were down there.

As the doors to the lobby opened, Frank pulled out his cell phone, quickly dialing as he continued out into the rear hallway to get cell service.

I
N THE CAR
, Jack sat glaring at the man who shot him at point-blank range, who helped send him hurtling off Rider’s Bridge. Rage clouded Jack’s mind; thoughts of unquenchable revenge were all he could think of. He wanted to leap from the car and kill the man with his bare hands. But his thoughts were interrupted by the ring of his cell phone. He saw Frank’s number and quickly answered it.

“Got it?”

“No,” Frank said, pain in his voice.

“What?”

“It’s a nightmare down there. Seems the whole world is looking for your box. The feds took the place over.”

“Dammit.” Jack slowly exhaled, trying to balance his nerves and focus as his only link to Mia slipped away. “We need that case—”

Jack stopped talking as the rumble of the street momentarily distracted him, but this time it wasn’t the subway. He glanced in the rearview mirror to see a sanitation truck make its way down the road, two workers clinging to the white garbage truck’s side, leaping off, grabbing and dumping waste cans that had been left for pickup. There was a line of cars behind the slow-moving vehicle, windows down, drivers cursing, laying on horns, which, as anyone who lived in a city knew, only made the truck move slower.

Jack turned his attention back to the man across the street.

“Jack?” Frank’s tone was filled with concern.

“Jack,” Joy echoed Frank. She could see the look on her boss’s face and knew it all too well.

But Jack was lost in thought, staring at the blond man who now leaned on the Crown Victoria until he finally tilted the phone toward his mouth. “I’ve got to go—”

“Go?” Frank’s voice grew loud with anger. “Go where?”

“There’s someone I need to talk to—”

“Don’t you dare get out of that car—”

Jack slammed the phone shut, stuck it back into his pocket, and watched the sanitation truck crawl up the street toward him. It finally came to a stop in the middle of the road, clogging traffic while obscuring his view of the Crown Victoria and the man who stood beside it.

“Jack,” Joy said, “don’t even think about it—”

Suddenly, on instinct and against reason, Jack leaped out of the car. Using the large white sanitation truck as cover, he stayed low and circled back around the Crown Victoria.

Just as Jack rounded the back of the truck, coming out behind the blue car, the blond man noticed his approach. The man’s eyes grew wide with shock. He reached for his cell phone, quickly dialing, but before he could lift the phone to his ear, Jack was upon him, knocking the phone away, thrusting him against the car.

“Where’s my wife?” Jack said through gritted teeth, his body like a coiled spring ready to release.

“I watched you die …” the man said in disbelief. He reached for his gun, but Jack snatched it from him, tucking it into the small of his back.

“Where is she?” Jack wrapped his hands around the man’s throat. “I’ll snap your neck.”

While the element of surprise gave Jack the advantage, it was only temporary. The man quickly recovered his wits and, with lightning motion, swept his arms up, freeing himself from the stranglehold. His hand clenched into a fist and in a continuous arc struck Jack in the side of the jaw, stunning and knocking him backward.

The man took off, racing up the street. Without breaking stride, he grabbed his phone from where it lay in the gutter and kept running, dialing on the fly. Jack quickly recovered, regained his footing, and took off in pursuit. He couldn’t afford the world knowing he was alive, not yet. He ran for everything he was worth, knowing that if the call went through, Mia’s already meager life expectancy could drop down to minutes. He pressed on, pushing his legs to the limit.