“We’ve never met,” said Lydia, holding her hand out to Jesamyn. She took it and gave Lydia a smile. “But these are for you, Detective Breslow.”
“Thank you,” she said. “They’re gorgeous.”
“This is my husband, Jeffrey Mark,” she said. Jesamyn nodded and took his hand.
“Good to meet you both. Thanks for bringing Lily Samuels home.”
Matt thought he detected a note of sadness in her voice but when he looked at Jez’s face, she was smiling. Maybe he was the one who was sad it hadn’t been them to help Lily.
“You both look like you’re on the mend,” said Jeffrey, moving into the room and leaning against the windowsill.
“We’re getting there,” said Matt. “I’ve been dying to hear what happened that night in Florida.”
Lydia told them about their visit from Grimm and their fall down the hole. She told him how Dax blasted them out and the ATF tried to hold them as scapegoats, then changed their minds and let them return home with Lily. She told him about their last visit with Tim Samuels and then about his suicide, and how a former employee from his company, Body Armor, was linked to the jewel robbery on the service road at JFK.
“So did you figure it out? What deal he made and with who?”
“The beneficiary on his policy was his wife, just as it should have been. Now she and Lily are left with nothing. The only one he screwed with his suicide was his family.”
“Seems like he had a lot of practice at that,” said Matt.
“And Rhames?” said Jesamyn.
“He disappeared that night. With his resources and connections… he’s going to be hard to find.”
“Is anybody looking?”
Lydia looked away and Matt could tell that there was more to say but that she wouldn’t say it to him.
“So how is she?” asked Matt, trying and failing to seem casual. He was nursing a fantasy that she would come to see him, but that hadn’t happened.
“Lily? Tough enough to write that article,” said Lydia, nodding toward the newspaper in Jesamyn’s hand. “But I think it’s a long road back to normal.”
His eyes traveled over to some pink roses that sat on the dresser across from his bed. “She sent those, thanking us for searching for her and not giving up.”
“She’s a good kid, stronger than I would have guessed. She’ll be okay,” said Lydia. She went on, saying how Lily and her mom were living together in Lily’s apartment for the time being, trying to move forward together, but Matt stopped listening. He was watching Jesamyn who suddenly had gone pale; she had a dazed expression on her face, her head cocked to one side.
“Jez?”
“Oh, shit,” she said. She held the paper in her hand and was looking at it closely. “This picture.”
She handed the paper to Lydia. She saw the picture of Mickey and Michele LaForge that she’d taken from Lily’s apartment early in the investigation. It was the only recent picture they had of the woman who remained at large, so Lydia had returned it to Lily for her article.
“What?” said Mount.
“The second van, the shooter that got me in the shoulder. There was a couple… a gorgeous woman with long blonde hair and a young guy. He shot me.” She let her sentence trail off, shook her head, and they all looked at her. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve only had this really vague memory of that night. And this picture-it’s shaken something loose.”
Lydia felt her heart thump. “That man is Mickey Samuels,” said Lydia. “He’s dead, Detective Breslow.”
Jesamyn nodded slowly. “I know,” she said, rubbing her eyes. “But I’d almost swear to it. These are the people in the second van.”
“Is it possible?” said Matt.
Jeffrey and Lydia exchanged a look, both afraid that it was entirely possible… and that they’d been wrong about everything all along.
Where are we going?” asked Jeff, gripping the dashboard as Lydia quickly wove the Kompressor through the thick street traffic. She saw him pump his right leg, instinctively reaching for the breaks. He didn’t like the way she drove. He said she was an “offensive” driver rather than a “defensive” driver. But Lydia believed that, even in driving, sometimes the best defense is a good offense.
“To Riverdale. To talk to Dax.”
“Why? What does he have to do with this?”
She glanced at him and then put her eyes back on the road. “Think about it.”
He stared ahead for a moment and then lifted his hands. “You lost me.”
“Something Lily said in the motel. When I asked her what secrets her stepfather could be keeping that were bad enough to sacrifice his children. Something her mother would go along with.”
“She said she didn’t know. She said something possibly to do with Body Armor or with his military career before he met her mother.”
She nodded but didn’t say anything.
“You think Dax might know something about that?” he said.
She cut across two lanes, leaving an angry cabby leaning on his horn. “Remember what Grimm said about Sandline?”
“What about it?”
“How you don’t get fired from a company like that; you get eliminated.”
“So?”
“Okay, so what if Samuels worked for Sandline, too? What if he and Rhames knew each other from way back then? And what if that’s the reason he couldn’t say anything to help himself. All the mistakes he supposedly made, like his wife and Lily said, this dark past. He was willing to sacrifice Lily and Mickey. Maybe he didn’t reveal it because he couldn’t, not because he just didn’t want to.”
“Out of some kind of loyalty to Sandline?”
“Or fear of what they would do to him.”
“But his life was already in shambles. The New Day killed his stepson-or so he believed-took his daughter, his wife had left him. He stood to lose all his money. What else could they take from him?”
“His life; until he took it himself.”
Jeffrey tapped his finger on the door handle, was silent for a moment. “Maybe Dax was right after all; suicide as the ultimate act of control.”
“Or surrender.”
“Okay, say any of this is true. What does Dax have to do with it?”
“I just think he knows more than he’s saying.”
Jeffrey shook his head. “If he knew something that would help us, he would have told us.”
“Not if he thought he was endangering us by doing so.”
More silence. Then, “Where does Mickey fall into this?” asked Jeffrey.
“If Detective Breslow truly did see him that night and he’s still alive, then we have to assume that he’s in partnership with The New Day and not a victim,” said Lydia.
Jeffrey shook his head. “Since Florida we’ve been thinking that he infiltrated The New Day to help Tim Samuels and either they fucked him up so badly that he killed himself, or he got too close and they took care of the job for him.”
“But maybe Mickey was working with them,” said Lydia, thinking aloud.
“But why? And how would they even have come in contact with one another?”
“Maybe Rhames sought him out. You know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“Did Mickey really consider Tim Samuels his enemy?”
“I guess it depends on what those dark secrets are, on what Trevor Rhames may have told Mickey about his stepfather’s past.”
When they got to Dax’s house, the windows were dark and the gate was locked. Lydia rolled down the car window and pressed the buzzer near the gate but the box was silent. She stared at it worriedly, as if doing so would cause him to answer. But it didn’t work. She felt a rise of dread in her chest.
“He’s not here,” she said pointlessly. She turned anxious eyes on him.
He released a breath. “Oh no,” he said raising his hand. “You don’t want to break in.”
She looked at him.
“Bad idea,” he said. “Very bad idea.”
She had to agree with him. She took her cell phone from the center console and dialed Dax’s number. The voicemail picked up before the first ring.