The Dark Tide Free for a Limited Time (5 page)

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.

“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.”

O
UTSIDE,
H
AUCK 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 morn
ing—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.

But not this morning.

Pappy’s launch approached the large tanker from the port side. As he neared, he focused on the logo of a leaping dolphin on the
Persephone
’s hull.

Dolphin Oil.

He scratched a weathered hand across his beard and scanned over his entry papers from Maritime Control: 2.3 million barrels of crude aboard. The ship had made the trip up from Trinidad in barely fourteen hours.
Fast,
Pappy noted, especially for an outdated 1970 ULCC-class piece of junk like this, weighed down with a full load.

They always made it up here fast.

Dolphin Oil.

The first time he’d just been curious. It had come in from Jakarta. He had wondered, how could a ship loaded with slime be riding quite that high? The second time, just a few weeks back, he’d actually snuck below after it docked—inside the belly of the ship, making his way past the distracted crew, and checked out the forward tanks.

Empty. Came as no surprise. At least not to him.

Clean as a newborn’s ass.

He’d brought this up to the harbormaster, not once but twice. But he just patted Pappy on the back like he was some old fool and asked him what his plans were when he retired. This time, though, no glorified paper pusher was going to slip this under a stack of forms. Pappy knew people. People who worked in the right places. People who’d be interested in this kind of thing. This time, when he brought the ship in, he’d prove it.

2.3 million barrels…

2.3 million barrels, my ass.

Pappy sounded the horn and pulled the launch along the ship’s bow. His mate, Al, took over the wheel. A retractable gangway was lowered from the main deck. He prepared to board.

That’s when his cell phone vibrated. He grabbed it off his belt. It was 5:10 in the morning. Anyone not insane was still asleep. The screen read
PRIVATE
. Text message.

Some kind of picture coming through.

Pappy yelled forward to Al to hold it and jumped back from the
Persephone
’s gangway. In the predawn light, he squinted at the image on the screen.

He froze.

It was a body. Twisted and contorted on the street. A dark pool beneath the head that Pappy realized was blood.

He brought the screen closer and tried to find the light.

“Oh, Lord God, no…”

His eyes were seized by the image of the victim’s long red dreadlocks. His chest filled up with pain as if he’d been stabbed. He fell back, an inner vice cracking his ribs.

“Pappy!” Al called back from the bridge. “You all right there?”

No.
He wasn’t all right.

“That’s Abel,” he gasped, his airways closing.
“That’s my son!”

Suddenly, he felt the vibration of another message coming through.

Same:
PRIVATE NUMBER
.

This time it was just three words that flashed on the screen.

Pappy ripped open his collar and tried to breathe. But it was sorrow knifing at him there, not a heart attack. And anger—at his own pride.

He sank to the deck, the three words flashing in his brain.
SEEN ENOUGH NOW?