The Betrayer

by Daniel Judson

  The more, too, she realized the real reason for racing to his apartment the way she did.

  That photo she had sent him.

  The least I could do, she had thought at the time. A moment of weakness, one she knew she shouldn’t give in to but then ultimately did anyway. No one had ever asked her for such a thing. And the idea of him having it — seeing her in that way, and being able to whenever he wanted — had deeply appealed to her.

  She had taken the photo with her cell phone camera — standing before her bathroom mirror, holding the phone off to the side, framing it just right so he would see all of her, her face as well as her fully naked body. All that was beautiful and all that was flawed, laid bare. She’d sent the photo via text message to his cell, felt a thrill once it was on its way to him, a tingling in her scalp and stomach, felt her heart racing in a delightful and yet powerful way. Certainly he had taken his cell phone with him tonight, so there would be no point in looking for it now. But a cell phone photo could easily be transferred to a computer, no? And, from there, printed out.

  She looked immediately toward the small table in the kitchen, thinking maybe that was where his laptop usually sat, but it wasn’t there. She saw no sign of it anywhere and began a new search, this one for a single printout. It was a more frantic search. She felt more fear than she had ever felt before. She looked first under his mattress, then pulled out his dresser drawers and looked under and behind them. She remembered her younger brother hiding photos he had cut out of dirty magazines there when they were kids. But nothing. Growing more frantic, she checked every conceivable hiding place but came away empty-handed.

  He’d sent the text containing his sister’s number, just as he said he would, but that had come through as she was heading from her house toward the parkway. This was, what, close to an hour and a half ago now? She checked her phone again, in case he’d sent another, maybe at a time when she was out of range. Nothing.

  When did he say his meeting was? Midnight. How long had he said he thought it would take? An hour, two at the most.

  So what now?

  Time passed slowly. She sat in silence, her cell phone gripped in her right hand, listening for the sound of his key sliding into his lock. At one point she heard someone in the hallway, rose, and hurried to the door only to see through the peephole that it was a neighbor coming home.

  Sitting down again, it occurred to her that her husband could have called the house after she left. Still more fear rose in her at just the thought of that. She told herself that this would be easy enough to explain. I’d needed to sleep through the night, so I turned the ringer off. Certainly if he had tried the house and got no answer, he would have called her cell. So far she hadn’t received any such call. But if that were to happen, couldn’t that call be used to prove that she wasn’t actually home? If he wanted to, he could easily check the records. The phone was in his name. Her location at the time of the call could be determined by which cell phone tower ultimately relayed the call to her phone. That’s how it was done on all those TV shows.

  The phone in her tight hand suddenly felt like a bomb about to go off.

  In the end, though, her husband did not call, nor did Jeremy send a text. The two hours he’d said it should take passed. She waited another hour, then nearly another. By then she knew that something had gone wrong. It was time for her to do what she’d been asked to do, but she thought it would be best to first get out of his place unseen.

  Slipping quietly down the stairs and out into the night, she looked around before retracing her steps to her Volvo. Once behind the wheel, she hesitated at the idea of calling the number he had provided. If she really was going to do that, it couldn’t be from her cell phone, that much she knew. So as she drove back toward the West Side Highway, making her way through the maze of the West Village, she looked for pay phones, saw none at first, then finally caught a glimpse of one on an empty corner. Still, she didn’t pull over.

  It would be better if I made the call from somewhere outside the city, no? Somewhere between here and my home, she thought.

  She pulled onto the West Side Highway and headed north. All lanes were empty, and she got lucky for a few moments, caught several green lights in a row. Twenty minutes later she was approaching the Henry Hudson Bridge. A toll bridge, security cameras mounted at every booth. The E-ZPass transponder mounted on the windshield tripped the system automatically. There was now a record of her first crossing the bridge from the north just prior to one a.m. and then again from the south four hours later. How could she explain that? She just had to pray she wouldn’t have to.

  Across the river, she continued north, picked up the Saw Mill again. There were no pay phones along the parkway — none that she could remember anyway — but she knew there was one outside the Saw Mill River Motel. She told herself that was the one she would use.

  But when she finally came to the exit she needed to take, she passed it by. Getting off at the next exit — her exit — she passed the train station. Phones there, no? She glanced at the well-lit platform but kept her foot on the accelerator.

  Minutes later, the Volvo was parked in her three-bay garage, the engine and lights off. Safely back home, a familiar silence around her, she pulled up his text and looked at the number it contained.

  It was clear to her now. Painfully.

  She did not have what it would take to make the call. All she could do was hope that despite his silence, Jeremy was somehow safe.

  And that she was safe as well.

  And would remain so.

  Deleting the text, she exited her vehicle. The button controlling the garage door was mounted on the wall near the kitchen entrance. She pressed it, and the heavy garage door began to lower noisily. She waited till it was completely closed before going inside and making her way upstairs.

  Five minutes later she was undressed and back in bed with the lights off. She tried to sleep but couldn’t. Lying there, staring at the ceiling, wondering — this was all she could do.

  The sky beyond her window was paling with the approaching dawn, and the cell phone on her night table was as still as a stone.

  Eventually she got up, crossed the bedroom to her bureau, and opened the bottom drawer. Reaching far into it, she removed the small tin box she kept hidden under a stack of sweaters. Her husband was a less-than-curious man and would never look there, but if for some reason he did and found the box and opened it, he would only find the trinkets that his notoriously sentimental wife collected.

  Select ticket stubs (concerts, Broadway shows, movies) dating as far back as high school, her old college ID, the keys to both her first car and first apartment, various pieces of junk jewelry that reminded her of wilder times.

  Among these was yet another key, a mailbox key. Newer than the others, barely ever used, in fact, it had been given to her by Jeremy for safekeeping.

  In case the worst happened.

  Elizabeth took out the key and, standing naked in her bedroom, looked at it. A part of her — the sensible part of her — told her to get rid of it. Either dispose of it or, if the worst had happened, get it to Jeremy’s sister, just as she had been asked to do.

  But the part of her that was still wild — the part of her Jeremy had reawakened, the part of her she had missed for a very long time — demanded that she keep it, here among her other mementos.

  If only to be reminded of him during the many long nights of loneliness that lie ahead of her.

  Chapter Four

  Cat Coyle was awake, though barely. She had gone to bed late, only to struggle to find sleep, but once she did, she descended quickly into violent and vivid dreams — end-of-the-world nonsense, she the only being left alive and condemned to roam alone through a decaying New York City. Around four a.m. she’d had enough of that and switched on the white-noise machine sitting on her nightstand. She was lying still and listening to ocean waves endlessly crashing, letting her thoughts drift freely and making no attempt to hold on to any of them, w
hen her cell phone rang.

  The ringtone was “Message in a Bottle” by The Police, her favorite band since she was a child. The number displayed on her phone’s screen belonged to Donnie Fiermonte — his cell number, though, not his office number. Cat’s first instinct was to ignore the call; if he were looking to give her good news, he would have no doubt waited for a more decent hour, so whatever this was, whatever he needed to tell her now, it had to be bad.

  Also, there was the chance that Fiermonte wanted to follow up on the conversation they’d had over after-work drinks a week ago. His marriage was over, he’d told her, he would be moving out soon, and he wanted — needed — to confess the feelings — strong feelings — he had for her. He was twenty-plus years older than she, he was like family, she’d known him all her life — these were just a few of the reasons why, he said, he knew he shouldn’t be telling her what he was telling her. But he felt it was time that she knew — apparently he’d been feeling this way for a while. She’d told him that she was flattered, and that she probably had feelings, too, which maybe was true, but they both knew she was a mess these days, and maybe when he was officially moved out, when papers were filed, and enough time had passed, they could talk about it then. It had seemed the thing to say. After finishing their drinks and parting ways with a handshake, Cat promptly headed from that bar in downtown Manhattan to another not far from her Long Island City apartment. There she met a man and, after a few hours of drinking and talking, she brought him back to her place. He turned out to be a mediocre lover — too tentative, unwilling to look her in the eye, and less than eager to kiss — but she was used to men like that and knew how to take over. The best thing she could say about him was that he had the common sense to be long gone when she woke the next morning.

  So whether this call would turn out to be another confession to feelings she couldn’t live up to, or some other kind of bad news, Cat knew there was no point in avoiding it. Fiermonte would probably worry when she didn’t answer and try back. And anyway, she was up.

  Answering, she said flatly, “What’s up, Donnie?”

  “Sorry if I woke you, Cat.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “Listen, I need you to meet me right away. Can you do that?”

  She tried to read his tone but couldn’t. Sitting up, she moved to the edge of her bed. The sheets were twisted from her troubled sleep, her right ankle caught in a devious tangle. She felt a little like an animal in a trap and kicked until she was free. “Why?”

  “I’m outside the Delancey Bar and Grille. You should get here as soon as you can.”

  She detected something in his voice now. Something grave. And then there was the fact that he didn’t actually answer her question. “What’s going on, Donnie?”

  “Not over the phone.”

  “Seriously?” You’re really going to leave me hanging like this? was what she meant. Her tone conveyed that clearly enough.

  “Just get here, Cat. Okay? As soon as you can.”

  She drew a short breath, let it out. She liked to think she knew when to stand her ground and when to surrender. It seemed, though, that surrender was more often than not the route to take. Or at least the easier one.

  “Yeah, okay. I’m on my way.”

  ***

  The Delancey Bar and Grille was located near the foot of the long entrance ramp to the Williamsburg Bridge, which connected Manhattan and Brooklyn. Two police units with their lights flashing blocked off the north side of the wide street, one at Clinton Street and the other at Attorney Street. Cat, in her ten-year-old Mustang, was approaching the cop at Clinton and reaching for her identification when he waved her through. Fiermonte must have instructed the officer to look out for her.

  Cat spotted Fiermonte a hundred or so feet away, talking with a male detective. The detective was pointing to what was obviously the topic of their discussion — a crashed motorcycle. Fiermonte, nodding at something the man was saying, looked up and saw the Mustang. He immediately excused himself and stepped away, gesturing toward where he wanted Cat to park — a good distance, she noted, from where the motorcycle lay. She got the sense that Fiermonte, in a protective way, was putting distance between her and it.

  She pulled the Mustang to the curb and got out. She was dressed in dark slacks, dress shoes, and a white shirt, a light Windbreaker over that. Her Glock was holstered to her belt, her badge on a chain hanging around her neck.

  Fiermonte crossed the distance between them quickly. He was tall, athletically built, had always struck her, even when she was just a girl, even before she understood such things, as a vital man. Just as her father had been. Fiermonte had steady blue eyes — he looked at you when he talked to you as if you might be lying — and dark hair that had recently begun to gray. He was a man making that transition into distinguished, and doing so with ease.

  Cat looked past him and toward the motorcycle — or tried to; the detective had moved around the bike and was now standing in her line of sight, his back to her. Cat scanned the scene, taking quick note of the vehicles gathered there. Fiermonte’s sedan, the detective’s sedan, and the two patrol units. What she didn’t see was an ambulance.

  Fiermonte reached her and said, “Thanks for coming, Cat.”

  Being an assistant federal prosecutor, his presence at a crime scene wasn’t an entirely unheard-of thing. What Cat didn’t understand was why he had called her. For the past year she had worked in the FBI’s Cyber Crimes Division, had nothing at all to do with crime scene investigations, hadn’t for a while now. Her career path, in fact, was taking her further and further from fieldwork and closer and closer to administrative. Maybe “career” wasn’t even the right word; maybe “careen” would be better. She hadn’t really fought the pull toward administration, though; she’d long ago lost the love she once had for the job, and for the Bureau itself. She’d lost the ambition to rise within it, as well.

  Of course, having the last name of Coyle didn’t help matters any.

  How far, really, could the daughter of a “traitor” expect to go?

  “We’ve got a bit of a situation here,” Fiermonte said.

  “I see that.”

  He paused, then: “When’s the last time you spoke with your brother?”

  “Johnny?”

  “No. Jeremy.”

  She felt her gut tighten and looked again toward the crashed motorcycle. The detective had crouched down, so she still couldn’t get a good look at it. “I don’t know. A while, I guess.”

  “How long is a while?”

  “Six months, maybe. Christmas, I think. What’s happened, Donnie?”

  “There was an altercation here a few hours ago. The pieces are still being put together.”

  The thought occurred to her then that the ambulance — or coroner’s wagon, for that matter — could have already come and gone. “Does that bike belong to Jeremy?”

  “It’s registered to him, yes.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No. Not that we know of, anyway.”

  She thought about that. Would it be terrible for her to admit that if he were dead, she would feel, mixed in with real grief, some degree of relief? Her kid brother — ten years younger than she — seemed to have been born to suffer. And to cause suffering. He had so excelled at both.

  “He was living in our father’s old apartment,” she offered.

  Fiermonte was watching her closely. He nodded. “That was the address on the registration. The detective sent a unit there an hour ago but no one answered.”

  “I have a key on me. I could let the detective in. We wouldn’t have to wait around for a warrant.”

  “We’ll keep that between us for now.”

  She looked at him. “Why?”

  “I don’t want anyone to find anything that might incriminate Jeremy.”

  Fiermonte and her father had been colleagues, who had, over time, become close friends. They had worked together on a number of cases, had even begun their careers aroun
d the same time — Fiermonte back then an ambitious assistant district attorney, John Coyle Sr. an on-the-rise FBI agent. A loyal family friend, Fiermonte, in the three years since their father had been killed, had done whatever he could, whenever he could, to help his late friend’s children. He had pulled strings to keep Cat in New York City — FBI agents were usually assigned to a number of different field offices around the country in the course of their career, but he’d thought it would be better if Cat remained near what was left of her family.

  So his desire to protect Jeremy wasn’t uncharacteristic, nor was it unfounded — God only knew what the poor kid had gotten himself into now.

  “I could go,” Cat said. “I could have a look around.”

  “I’d rather not put you in that situation if we can avoid it.”

  It was obvious to her what he meant. Her career was hanging by a thread, and the last thing she needed was to get involved in some kind of cover-up.

  Cat looked toward the detective once more. “How’d he know to call you?”

  “I’ve worked with him before. So did your father. His name is Morris; he’s a good guy. When he saw the name on the registration, he thought he’d better let me know.”

  “What does he know so far?”

  “All we have at this point is that an unknown male fired shots at a second unknown male. The second male was driving the motorcycle and the one doing the shooting was chasing him on foot. Since the bike is registered to your brother, we’re assuming he’s the second male. We don’t think he was hit — there isn’t any blood on the bike or the pavement. According to witnesses, the rider was heading for the Williamsburg Bridge and gunning the engine when the bike went down. Morris found a patch of antifreeze where it first crashed. I’m told rain can make spills like that pretty slick. Both the bike and the rider slid for a few yards before coming to a stop. Then the rider got up and started running.”