The Good Stranger (A Kate Bradley Mystery)

by Dete Meserve

“You’ve been going through my trash?”

  “Not on purpose,” she said, her accent thickening. “I lost a receipt and went to the dumpster to look for it—”

  My voice rose a notch. “You went through my trash.”

  “If you’re drinking two bottles of wine by yourself, you have problem.”

  “I didn’t drink two bottles by—wait. What I do is none of your business.”

  “Neighbor upstairs has drinking problem. Years I put up with him being awake at all hours. Banging, stomping all night long. Vomit on the stairs.” She looked away. “I can’t take it.”

  “What makes you think the wine bottles are mine?”

  “Aren’t they?”

  I stifled the urge to shout, even though shouting was what I had been hearing all day. “No. They were open bottles of wine in my friend’s fridge. I dumped them out and tossed the bottles. I can’t believe you went through my trash.”

  She turned on her heel. “You’ll get over it,” she said, then disappeared into her apartment.

  I sank into the couch and dove into the dumplings. Soggy. Pasty. Bland. Wasn’t New York supposed to be the “greatest food city in America,” and possibly on Earth?

  I set down my fork and tried to make sense of the numbness, the sensation of being adrift in a vast and endless ocean that had engulfed me ever since Eric broke up with me. Sometimes I was relieved for him, knowing that he didn’t have to leave the team he captained and the work he loved to be in this hellhole with me. Other times, my thoughts burned with anger. Our love was not enough—I was not enough—for him to choose me.

  It wasn’t hard to see my own fault in this. Why had I left behind everything I loved, everything I cared about, for this frustrating job? Why hadn’t I been content to stay where I was, doing what I knew how to do? I couldn’t see that I had gained anything by coming here. Only soul-crushing loss.

  A text from Josh, my former cameraman at Channel Eleven in Los Angeles, swooped across my phone.

  Hope you are living it up in the great metropolis.

  I frowned and then replied, Hardly.

  Probably already forgotten us at Channel Eleven . . .

  I cracked a smile. I missed covering the news in Los Angeles. Not just because I knew practically every street and neighborhood in the city and was on a first-name basis with hundreds of contacts, from the head of the sanitation department to the chief of police, but also because I understood where I fit in. Here, I felt like I was balancing on a high wire, desperately trying to decode how things worked, knowing that it was a scary, lonely ride down if I fell.

  Never. Miss you.

  Admit it. You just miss my stash of Snickerdoodles

  Upstairs, the neighbors were in the midst of a Sinatra marathon, and the familiar strains of “New York, New York” began to play at unimaginable volume. I set the soggy dumplings aside and gazed out the window and into the apartment window framed by Christmas lights across the street. The blinds were lifted again tonight, and the woman with a cloud of black hair sat at a table illuminated only by a small lamp. Silky red fabric draped around her small frame, her fingers fluttering like moths in the light. It took me a moment to realize what she was doing: sewing.

  I watched her for a few minutes, haunted. Her loneliness mirroring my own.

  Upstairs, Sinatra crooned about New York, wanting to be a part of it. But as I looked out at the sea of apartments across the way, thinking about how many people were cloistered in them with the rumble and screech of the city as a dizzying backdrop, I wondered why anyone would want to be a part of this.

  I was about to close the vinyl shades when a huge boom split the air.

  The lights flickered, then blinked off. In the darkness, the air conditioner did a slow groan and stalled.

  I glanced out the window to see a pulsing orb of blue in the sky, casting the skyline in an eerie silhouette. Then suddenly the whole eastern side of the sky lit up and changed colors from pink to red, then eerie electric blue.

  I heard shouting in the streets. Dogs barking.

  My heart pounding, I flung open my apartment door and ran into the hallway, now plunged into darkness.

  A bright light swept across my face, blinding me. “Who’s there?” a woman’s raspy voice called out.

  “Kate Bradley. 1B.”

  The woman lowered her flashlight, but the bright light had left spots in my eyes.

  “Your neighbor. Cora,” she said, her voice sounding hollow in the dark. “We met . . . earlier. You think it’s terrorists?”

  “Let’s go see what’s going on.”

  Her voice shook. “It’s not safe walking around in the dark like this.”

  “Let me help you.” I reached for her hand and found it, bony and trembling. As I walked with her to the door, I felt oddly protective of her, when less than an hour earlier I had been angry at her for her nosy assumptions about wine bottles in the trash.

  Outside, the aqua glow lingered in the sky, and I smelled electricity in the air. The neighborhood, the entire city—except for the sky—was pitch black and blanketed by a low-frequency hum. A giant plume of smoke filled part of the skyline. Was it over Queens?

  People surged into the streets shouting. Panicking. Traffic was snarled, and the din of honking cars only added to the chaos.

  “What’s happening?” someone shouted.

  “What do you think it is?” Cora whispered.

  “Aliens!” a man shouted in the streets. “Call 911!”

  At the busy intersection, a couple of drivers tried directing traffic themselves using flashlights but only added to the confusion.

  “Cell phones aren’t working!” someone in the apartment across the street yelled.

  “It’s terrorists!” a woman screamed as she sprinted down the street, hauling a large duffel bag.

  Then, from behind me, I heard Raymond’s familiar voice boom, “It’s like every alien-invasion movie ever.”

  I ran back inside, grabbed my phone and my running shoes, and went to work.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Kenny Chang owned an electronics store a few blocks away that was looted as the power remained off. “They kicked out the window, then ran out of here with TVs. Computers,” he told me, visibly shaken, as I recorded him on my phone. “They were shouting ‘Christmastime.’ Like it was some kind of game.”

  A few doors down from him, a young woman cried as she told me about the robbers who threw a rock through her first-floor apartment window—even though it was fortressed by steel bars—then reached through the bars and stole her son’s laptop from a table by the window. “Makes me lose faith in humanity.”

  Just six streets over, a fire raged through the top of a six-story apartment building, sending up billowing black smoke before firefighters could get there, delayed by clogged city intersections and stoplights that weren’t working. “One minute we’re having a party. The next minute . . . this,” a woman named Angie said, her voice choked with tears.

  As I watched FDNY firefighters battling the blaze, my mind drifted to Eric. Wondering if there would ever be a time when I’d see a firefighter or pass by a fire truck and I wouldn’t think of him. Miss him. But I had to keep moving.

  About a half mile from the ANC studios, I interviewed a woman and her daughter who had just been trapped alone in an elevator on the thirty-ninth floor for nearly an hour.

  “We had no cell phone. No water. And it was so hot in there. Only thing I had was TUMS. We started to panic because no one answered the emergency alarm. And my daughter’s in a wheelchair. Seemed like forever before the generators kicked in and a maintenance worker helped us out.”

  Although cell phones didn’t work, many people shared information they’d heard on car radios or TVs operating on backup generators. LaGuardia Airport had shut down, with flights rerouted to nearby airports. Subway service was disrupted, and thousands were trapped in tunnels throughout the city. Aliens and terrorists were ruled out. An explosion at a generator in Queens wa
s the likely culprit.

  Thousands of people were gathered in the streets, escaping the stifling heat of their apartment buildings. Some were laughing and drinking as though it were some kind of late-night block party, while others clustered together, sometimes clutching small children, worried expressions on their faces.

  On the off chance power was restored quickly, I gave out my cell phone number to everyone I met, urging them to text me if they saw anything or had a news tip about the power outage.

  Ninety hectic minutes later, I ran the last few blocks to ANC, using the flashlight on my phone to find my way in the dark. A meaty security guard I hadn’t seen before stood inside the glass doors of the ANC building, his face lit by the harsh glare of the emergency lights in the lobby.

  “I’m Kate Bradley,” I said, out of breath. “I work here.”

  “You got ID?”

  In the rush, I’d left my ID at home. And I was too new at ANC for him to recognize me. “I left it back at my apartment.”

  He shook his head. “Can’t let you in without ID.”

  I noticed the firearm on his belt. “I work with Mark Galvin. Call him. He’ll confirm.”

  He didn’t budge. “Phones are down. I need ID.”

  I zipped through the photos on my phone, found one, and pressed the phone to the glass door.

  He peered at it to get a closer look. It was a photo of me reporting from a massive mudslide on the iconic Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu with my former station Channel Eleven’s news banner on screen.

  “This is my ID.”

  Mark Galvin was happy.

  Okay, not happy. Not even cheerful.

  But his gray eyes lit up for a brief moment as I played the footage I’d captured.

  “You got all this since the power went out?” he asked. Before I could answer, he was waving his hands at a nearby producer who was racing through the newsroom, dimly lit now because we were operating on backup generators. “Isabelle, get this to the editors. Justin, specifically. I want it ready in ten.”

  Isabelle looked exhausted, her red hair clipped in a messy bun and her hands juggling a coffee mug, a tablet, and a sheaf of papers, but she took my phone with crisp efficiency. “Back in a minute.”

  “You’re surprising me,” Mark said, turning to look at me for the first time. He stood. “You’re sturdier than I expected.”

  Sturdier. Was that supposed to be a compliment?

  “I’ll take that to mean you like it.”

  He glanced through a list on his iPad. “We’re short on reporters tonight, so I need you to get out there and cover the counterterror security precautions NYPD is taking at city landmarks.”

  “Terrorism has been ruled out.”

  “True. But I covered the Northeast blackout in 2003. When the power went off, it was a free-for-all. People are at their worst in times like this.”

  I set out that night armed for battle in a city without power. A city in crisis.

  But unlike my first day at ANC, when I’d calmly assembled a tote bag full of a reporter’s essentials, a production coordinator and I had thrown together a backpack with flashlights, phone chargers, a GoPro camera, and several bottles of water in under a minute. She’d even tossed in a loaner phone from ANC, in case the cell service came back on and my phone didn’t work.

  “You can never be too careful,” she said with wide eyes, clipping a 130-decibel personal alarm to my bag. Then she reached into a cabinet, pulled out a bright-pink canister of pepper spray, and slapped it in my hand. “Be safe.”

  My nerves hummed as I left the busy newsroom and headed into the streets, where the wail of sirens assaulted me from every direction.

  It turns out that New York City is very dark without the streetlights, the glare of taxi headlights, or the floodlights that shone on the facades of some buildings. And without the interior apartment lights or the fluorescent-lit grocers and stores, those streets without heavy traffic were so dark I couldn’t see more than five feet in front of me without a flashlight.

  Above our heads in the inky-blue sky, I could make out hundreds of newly visible stars, a sight that seemed to baffle many, including a group who gestured wildly at the sky. I stopped to watch with them. On a night with only a sliver of a moon and no clouds, I was amazed at the glittering map of constellations unfurled above us. I’d seen the stars stretch from horizon to horizon once deep in the Anza-Borrego desert, but in the sprawling sky glow of LA, I was lucky if I could spot the Big Dipper.

  “Wow,” I whispered.

  “Exactly,” the woman next to me answered.

  After that, making my way in the dark illuminated only by flashlight was unsettling. I had no way to tell the difference between, say, a woman clutching a baby and a man with a gun. “Hello,” I said as people passed by. Some responded with a quick remark about the power outage, but plenty didn’t respond at all, as though the darkness had somehow taken away their voices.

  I headed first to city hall, the landmark nearest ANC. I’d been there once with my father when I was in grade school and remembered gazing up at its soaring rotunda and feeling dizzy. My nerves were on high alert now because Mark had told me to expect “heavily armed teams of special counterterror officers,” but as I passed the fountain in City Hall Park, I saw no signs of law enforcement.

  Instead, I saw . . . balloons.

  Hundreds of them. No, thousands. Purple and white balloons tied to every column and balcony of the iconic white limestone building and every flagpole, lamppost, and fence in the square. Thousands more were tied to the trees that flanked the building. Lit by the silver light from the emergency lamps in the square, they had an almost mystical glow to them. As I watched them sway and bob in the gentle breeze, tingling goose bumps raced through my body, and I was overcome by a feeling simple and pure: awe.

  I’d had a similar feeling when my dad took me to see the Grand Canyon when I was eight. And I remembered experiencing something like it when I watched gold and red leaves pirouette in the light wind one fall day in DC. But I always thought the feeling was reserved for majestic things we saw in nature. Yet here it was, sparked by the sight of balloons.

  The hundreds of people milling around the square seemed mesmerized as well, snapping selfies with the balloons as a backdrop. I found Melanie McComb from the Office of Management and Budget on the city hall steps, easily identifiable as a city official by her charcoal-gray suit and heels on a hot night during a power outage. She denied the City was behind the balloon displays. “The New York City government is not wasting money on thousands of balloons when we have a power crisis,” she said curtly.

  “Then who did?” I asked.

  She had no answer.

  Purple and white balloons floated from lampposts and fences on the way back to the ANC studios. Hundreds of them. They seemed to be everywhere. But in the narrow beam of my flashlight, I noticed something else. Bouquets of purple and white flowers graced countless stairs and doorways to apartment buildings. They were simple arrangements—purple coneflowers and a kind of daisylike white flower tied together with brown twine—but during the blackout they seemed especially vivid and radiant.

  “I don’t know who they’re from, but I love them,” a very pregnant Chinese woman told me. She brought the bouquet to her nose and breathed deeply. “I found them here on the steps. Gave one to my neighbor. Keeping this one for me.”

  I pulled together footage and a few more quick sound bites, then zipped back to ANC to show my report to Mark.

  His eyes were cold, unsentimental, as he watched the images on the screen. Then he was silent. The kind of long moment that made me think he was either having a stroke or very angry.

  “People are getting looted. A guy in the Bronx went missing. Food shortages are coming if power doesn’t come on soon. And you want me to run a story about balloons and flowers?”

  “Aren’t you curious what it’s all about?” I pointed at the monitor as images of balloons and flowers floated by. “And why?
”

  I met his eyes and saw something mocking in them. “Balloons and flowers. That’s a story for children. Not a news network.”

  I shook my head. “It’s part of the story.”

  His eyes suddenly seemed smaller. Darker. “It is if you’re looking for a very short career at ANC.”

  Was he threatening to fire me? Or seeing how far he could push me?

  “Maybe more good things are happening out there, if we’re willing to look for them.”

  He crossed his arms. “Tell that to Jim Hollister, who just had his clothing store looted in SoHo. They broke down the door and stole armfuls of T-shirts and sweatshirts. Go interview him, take a look at the broken glass and massive loss, and then tell me about ‘good’ things happening.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  By early morning, power was restored throughout the city, and Manhattan went back to business as usual. Kids trudged off to school, the trains were running mostly on schedule again, people commuted into work, the emergency generators were moved off the streets, and workers were back to fixing potholes and sewer lines.

  But something had changed. When I got into work, the first text I got was from one of the women I interviewed who’d found flowers on the doorstep to her apartment.

  Felicia here. You interviewed me last night. I work at the DMV in Lower Manhattan. Someone left flowers on every single person’s desk here this morning.

  Anyone see who did it? I typed back.

  Boss thinks they must have snuck in with the early morning cleaning crew.

  Moments later, Stephanie rushed in and tossed her bag on her desk. “This is a first. I had breakfast with Ashley Clark at Le Pain Quotidien on Broad Street. She’s the executive producer of ANC Investigates. You’ll never guess what happened.”

  “Dead rat?”

  She frowned.

  “Homeless guy dropping his pants?”

  She flashed me a wry smile. “Seriously?”

  “What? Both those stories were on the NYC news rundown this week.”

  “True. But get this, before we finished eating, the waiter came over and said our bill had already been paid. We looked around, figuring maybe someone had seen us on ANC or something. But whoever it was paid cash for everyone’s meals, not just ours.”