by Neal Baer
Claire didn’t realize she was smiling until she remembered what they’d just been talking about, and then she changed her tone. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks,” Nick said. “At least it was quick. We put her right into hospice. They shot her up with morphine and she didn’t feel a thing.”
“That’s good,” Claire said, and then qualified, “If something like this can ever be good.”
What a stupid thing to say, Claire thought. She’d played this scene in her head at least a dozen times on her way over, wondering how she’d feel seeing this man who not only saved her life, but also helped her bring closure to the horrible childhood event that defined her. She owed Nick so much that it had embarrassed her to stay in contact with him. She’d been sure he’d greet her with indifference because she’d just disappeared with no explanation. But as she stood before him, she realized Nick’s grin wasn’t the only thing on his face she didn’t expect. He sported the beginnings of a beard; Claire estimated about a week’s growth.
Wow, that really works for him. . . .
Nick was still as handsome as Claire remembered, only his piercing blue eyes crinkled more in the corners and his hair was tinged with a touch of silver she didn’t remember being there last year. His lean, muscular build hadn’t changed. Claire thought that he must still be hitting the gym every day.
She shut herself down before she could take in any more of him. She had never let attraction enter into their equation before.
Nick seemed to sense her discomfort. He turned to his daughter to break the charge between them.
“Homework done?” he asked.
“School’s almost over, Dad,” Jill said, sounding for the first time like the teenager she was in that “are you stupid?” way kids speak to their parents. But Jill got the message. “I’ll leave you two alone,” she said, smiling at Claire. “Don’t let him get you into any trouble.”
“I won’t,” said Claire, turning back to Nick, trying not to admit to herself his eyes held the same spark for her that she couldn’t hide from him.
“She’s all grown up,” Claire said, breaking the silence.
“Both of them are, and way faster than I would have wanted,” Nick replied, leading Claire into the living room and lowering himself into a comfortably worn brown leather chair that was a close match to the new couch. His face was turned slightly away toward the window. Claire thought he was trying to watch the raindrops against the panes while he still could.
Turning back to Claire, Nick spoke. “The girls loved their grandmother. She took good care of them. And then she died so fast they barely had time to say good-bye.”
“They’re stepping up to fill the void,” said Claire. “It’s common after the loss of a parent.”
“They wouldn’t have had to if their mother was still alive,” he replied.
He’s still blaming himself, Claire realized.
“They’re lucky they have a strong father,” she offered, trying to reassure him.
“A blind father,” Nick reminded her. “At this point, I’m an insult to fatherhood.”
“You’re doing the best you can,” said Claire, suppressing the urge to move toward him and trying not to sound like a shrink. “Their mother’s death wasn’t your fault.”
Nick’s smile was bittersweet. “Jill’s the new mother around here. To Katie and, sadly, to me.”
“That’s not your fault either.”
“I thought about you a lot while all this was going on.”
Claire tried to cover her shock that he’d actually say something like that. She didn’t remember this man as being a fountain of emotion.
“Jill said she tried to call me,” was all she could think of. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for her. I would’ve been glad to help.”
Nick brushed an imaginary bit of lint from his jeans. “You had your own shit to deal with. I thought I could handle mine. I don’t need a shrink,” he quipped, accenting the ongoing private joke between them. Claire smiled, feeling sorry for him and hoping it didn’t show, knowing it was the last thing that would help him now. He’s depressed. He’s lost so much and he’s about to lose even more.
“Are you keeping yourself busy?” she asked.
“Believe it or not, I’m still working,” Nick replied.
“Not as a cop . . .” Claire blurted, at once regretting it. When they’d met a year earlier, Nick was a homicide detective in the New York City Police Department. He’d later admitted to her, and only her, that he suffered from retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative and incurable genetic disorder that would eventually rob him of his vision. He’d gone to great lengths to hide his condition to avoid being forced to retire from the job he loved, though his pride and stubbornness almost killed not only him, but Claire and his daughters as well.
She made sure to tamp down her disbelief when she continued. “You still haven’t told them?”
“Relax,” Nick said. “I told my boss.”
What a relief, thought Claire. “Lieutenant Wilkes?” she asked, referring to his former supervisor and protector, with whom she was more familiar than she ever wanted to be.
If Nick had a problem with this line of conversation, he didn’t show it. “He’s a deputy inspector now,” he replied. “But yeah.”
“Deputy inspector?” asked Claire, unfamiliar with the term.
“It’s a rank in the job. Two up from where he was a year ago.”
“I didn’t know that was possible.”
“He was the golden boy after last year.”
“Is that why they let you stay?” Claire asked.
“Yep. Chief of detectives made a concession for the so-called hero cop,” Nick said, almost embarrassed, though there was nothing “so-called” about it. “Put me on the ‘Rubber Gun Squad.’”
“I don’t understand,” said Claire. “What kind of squad is that?”
Her naïveté made Nick laugh. “One that doesn’t really exist,” he said. “When they take your guns away, no matter where you’re assigned, you’re on the Rubber Gun Squad. Usually, it’s a disgrace. In my case I get to keep working and feeding my kids.”
“Where do they have you working?” Claire asked.
“Homicide Analysis Unit,” Nick nodded. “All desk, all the time. At headquarters, in the chief of D’s office. Where he can keep an eye on me,” Nick said, his eyes narrowing as he smiled mischievously.
“That your idea or the chief of D’s?”
“His,” Nick admitted. “To save me from myself. Also his words. All of which is code for stopping me from doing anything resembling real police work. I spend my days putting virtual pins in virtual maps on a computer,” he said, musing as if coming to terms with his fate. “Not my first choice, but it beats the hell outta taking my pension and sitting on my ass feeling sorry for myself.”
He didn’t feel himself lowering his eyes as one does in shame. But Claire knew that’s exactly how he felt.
“I had the best job a cop could have—clearing murders,” Nick said. “Speaking for the dead. And until my eyes started crapping out on me I was damn good at it.”
“You were good at it even after,” Claire reminded him. “We wouldn’t be sitting here right now if you weren’t, because I sure didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Nick replied, shaking his head in disagreement. “As I remember it, you were pretty good with that gun.”
“Please, don’t remind me of that,” Claire begged him.
He looked up at her. “Are you just gonna stand there? Because I’m starting to get an inferiority complex. Like I got Freud himself hovering over me.”
Claire hadn’t realized how frozen in place she was. “Actually, you’re right. Freud wouldn’t have approved of my hovering,” she said, taking a seat on the new sofa, its pillows a bit firmer than she preferred. She shifted, and her obvious discomfort reminded Nick that he hadn’t asked her a single question. “You haven’t told me
how you’re doing,” he said.
“Better,” Claire replied.
“So once again the shrink won’t allow herself to be shrunk.”
Touché, Claire thought. “That moment ... with the gun. I think it’s in one of the nightmares I keep having.”
“You think?” Nick asked, eyebrows raised. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t remember the details very well. Of the nightmares.”
It was more than she wanted to say. But somehow being in Nick’s presence made her comfortable in a way she hadn’t felt in months. She found herself leaning against the arm of the sofa, starting to relax and wondering how she felt so at home.
“You know there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore, right?” Nick tried to convince her, looking straight at her as if interrogating a suspect.
“I wish it were that simple. The feeling—the fear—stays with me even after I wake up.”
“But those dreams aren’t the only thing scaring you right now,” he said, standing up as if satisfied he could read her mind. Claire shifted again, unsure how to broach the reason she was there, uncomfortable that Nick could sense what she was thinking. And then he did it again.
“Whatever it is you need my help for, you don’t have to be afraid to ask,” he said. “So go ahead. Ask away.”
How does he know?
Claire stiffened. “I don’t want to take advantage—” was all she could muster before Nick interrupted her.
“Ask,” he ordered.
She dove into the story of what had happened to Rosa Sanchez that morning. She talked for ten minutes, with Nick asking only the occasional question. When she finished, he summed up the situation.
“You think the guy who cuffed her was impersonating a cop,” he said.
“I’ve checked everywhere that made sense and called everyone I could think of,” Claire said, not trying to hide her exasperation. “If she was arrested she would’ve turned up by now. The guy using Rosa’s cell phone to call her mother clinched it for me.”
“I’d be thinking the same thing,” Nick said, the wheels in his head turning.
“Would it help if you called Missing Persons?” Claire asked, anxious for a solution.
“Problem is, for an adult they won’t take a case until the person’s been missing for forty-eight hours,” Nick said. “And even I couldn’t grease any wheels with them. They get calls like this all the time. They’re not gonna add this one to their caseload on my say-so.”
“Is there some unit in the police department that handles kidnappings?”
“Major Case Squad,” said Nick. “But they need proof someone’s actually been snatched, which you hardly have. And even then, they only move on order of the chief of detectives.”
Claire thought her problem was solved. “You just said you work in the chief’s office.”
“If I went to him with this or he got wind I was looking into it, he’d string me up like a Chinatown window chicken.”
As much as she wanted to find Rosa, Claire knew she couldn’t do it at the expense of Nick’s job.
“How about tracking Rosa’s cell phone?” Claire suggested. “At least then we could see where she’s been for the last twelve hours.”
Nick looked at the ceiling thoughtfully. “Tough to do without a warrant.”
“She’s on probation, and the man on her phone claims she left the state. Doesn’t that make her a fugitive?”
“Right. But Probation would have to declare her a fugitive,” Nick answered, “and the warrant would have to come from them.”
It was exactly what Claire didn’t want to hear. “If Probation gets involved, it’s out of my control,” she told him. “She’s a victim, not a perp.”
“Unless you can prove that, no judge will let us go digging into someone’s phone records.”
“Okay,” Claire said. She wasn’t giving up. “You said it’s tough to do without a warrant. So it’s not impossible.”
She said it as bait, but Nick wasn’t taking it. “This isn’t as easy as it looks on TV,” he said with serious eyes, “and excuse me for being selfish here, but it’s my ass we’re talking about. If I try doing this without Rosa’s permission, that’s breaking the law. I wouldn’t just be fired, I’d lose my pension and maybe go to jail. And we can’t exactly get Rosa’s permission, can we?”
He rose from the chair and took a few steps, looking exasperated. Claire realized why: he wanted to help her. His willingness triggered something in Claire’s brain. “Does the permission have to come from the person who actually has the phone in their possession, or can it come from the person who holds the account?”
Nick stopped walking and looked at her; he hadn’t thought of this. “Tricky legally, but is that the case here?” he asked.
“I don’t know for sure. But I do know Rosa’s mother. And I doubt any cell phone company would’ve taken a chance on a woman convicted of passing bad checks. Would you?”
“No way,” Nick agreed, leaning on the chair he’d been sitting in. “That’s why we spend so much time banging our heads against the wall trying to track disposable cells. It’s the easiest way to reach out and touch someone without a credit rating or an income.”
Claire was ready for this. “But that wasn’t an option for Rosa, because she’d have to keep changing phone numbers. I made it a condition of her release from Rikers that she get a regular cell phone and be reachable at all hours of the day or night. It was more for Rosa’s own safety than for me to keep tabs on her. I’ll bet Rosa’s mother has two phones on her account and one of them is Rosa’s. And her mother would do anything for me.”
Nick looked at her with those piercing blue eyes. “Even with the mother’s permission, it’s a huge risk if we’re caught.”
Though it came across as a warning, Claire could see that it was nothing more than a disclaimer. Nick was in. Determined. Hungry for the answer. And eager for the hunt he missed so badly.
“If Rosa was kidnapped,” she said, “it’s worth the risk. Isn’t it?”
Nick considered. If Claire was right, there was someone out there in big trouble.
“No promises. And if anyone comes sniffing around I may have to stop. But I’ll give it a shot,” he said. “How’s that?”
Claire stood. The Nick Lawler she knew, the one who wouldn’t take no for an answer, was back.
“It’s more than I have a right to ask,” she said. “Thanks.”
CHAPTER 5
It was just before seven the next morning when Nick Lawler emerged from the dark subway station under the old Municipal Building at the end of Chambers Street. He rubbed his eyes, trying to make them focus in the bright sunlight and oppressive humidity, and made his way toward the NYPD’s monolithic headquarters about a hundred yards away.
The previous day’s thunderstorms had done little to relieve the late spring heat wave scorching the Northeast. Nick carried his charcoal-gray suit jacket over his arm because as bad as it was above ground, stepping onto a subway platform in weather like this resembled stepping into a steam bath wearing a parka. Air-conditioning hadn’t been an option when the city’s subway stations were built. But until Nick’s gun was taken away, neither was taking off his jacket in public.
Fortunately there was great air-conditioning on the new subway cars the city had purchased over the last decade, no doubt because the former three-term billionaire mayor himself rode the trains to work. Nick silently thanked him for his cool thirty-minute respite from the heat in a frigid subway car and hoped he could make it inside police headquarters before he started to sweat.
He looked up at the boxlike structure looming before him, a building most cops mockingly called the Puzzle Palace or, more derogatorily, the Porcelain Palace. To him, though, the building appeared less like a toilet than a kiln that would, in this hundred-degree heat, bake anyone who entered. Most cops would argue that could happen in this place on even the coldest day.
He’d just felt the first beads of sweat h
itting the T-shirt he wore under his blue oxford dress shirt as he made it into the building, his police ID card already hanging from a strap around his neck, his detective’s shield clipped to his belt. The only missing accessory was the nine-millimeter Glock, and without it he felt like an outsider. Every cop knew the gun and the authority to use it was the real badge of the job; the power to use it to save a life or take one was what separated them from every civilian. Especially a man like Nick, who’d been an expert marksman. A cop without a gun was like a man without balls. That he had to enter this place each day without his was just one constant reminder of his fate.
As he walked through the doors into the expansive lobby and swiped his ID card across the reader, Nick told himself as he did every day that his new assignment was both a blessing and a curse. He’d be able to support his daughters as long as he could still see, perhaps long enough to retire with nearly three-quarters of his pay and health insurance for the rest of his life. Maybe they’d even let him bring Cisco, his trained service dog, to work. Presently, Nick used Cisco at night to guide him on long walks through the city. Eventually, Nick mused, he’d need Cisco during the day too.
He joined the queue of people waiting for the next elevator and wondered how they’d react to Cisco guiding him around when that time came. The scene before him resembled similar scenes at this time of day in every office building in Manhattan: the coffee-cup-and-briefcase-holding masses heading for another day of work in an office or cubicle. The only difference here was the attire. The ID cards everyone wore identified them as either cops or civilian employees of the police department. Stripped of his gun, Nick felt more like a civilian these days.
As the rickety, forty-plus-year-old elevator doors opened, he determined to prove to himself and everyone else that, half blind or not, he was the real deal. The information Claire Waters had given him last night would open a path to his salvation.
The elevator car was already occupied with uniforms and suit-wearing cops lucky enough to rate a parking spot in the garage below the building. Most, if not all of these cops, also rated department-issued vehicles, and many of them drove great distances to get here. Nick knew he was lucky to have a short commute. He’d inherited his rent-controlled apartment from his parents; it was the only way anyone could live in Manhattan on a cop’s salary back when he came on the job, and especially now.