by Lisa Unger
“So why was Myra Lyall trying to reach you?” said the third guy who’d come in to talk with me. He was older, looked pasty and tired. His belly strained the buttons on his shirt; his gray pants were too short. He’d introduced himself but I’d already forgotten his name. At this point, my depression felt more like apathy.
“I guess for a story she was working on, a profile on Project Rescue babies.”
He looked at me for a second. “That’s where I know your face.”
“That’s right,” I said, yawning in spite of how rude and arrogant it seemed to do so, or maybe because of that. I was so sick of all these cops, playing their stupid games. They all thought they were so savvy, that they knew something about the human condition, that they knew something about me. But they didn’t. They didn’t know the first thing. I’d sat in too many rooms like this since the investigations into Project Rescue began. The process had lost its ability to scare and intimidate me.
The cop kept his eyes on me. They were rimmed red, flat and cold. He was a man who’d seen so much bad, he probably didn’t even recognize good anymore.
“Are you tired, Ms. Jones?”
“You have no idea.”
He gave a little sigh, looked down at his ruined cuticles. Then he looked at me again.
“A girl is dead. Do you care about that at all?”
His question startled me. Of course I cared about that. In fact, if I let myself think on it at all, on my responsibility for what had happened to her, how she was the second person to die in front of me in less than two years, I would crumble into a pile of broken pieces on the floor.
“Of course,” I said softly. The admission brought a pain to my chest and a tightness in my throat. I hoped I wouldn’t cry. I didn’t want to cry. “But I don’t know who killed her or why. I’d only known her for twenty minutes.”
He nodded at me solemnly. He got up and left the room without another word. I folded my arms across the table and rested my forehead there. I tried not to see Sarah collapsing on the street in front of me, tried not to remember the night that Christian Luna had slumped over on the park bench, a perfect red circle in his forehead. I tried not to see the gun and silencer on the trash bag. But of course, all of these images flashed through my mind like some macabre slide show. Those black fingers were slowly tightening their grip around my neck.
The door opened and closed. I gave myself a few seconds before I looked up to see who was next to question me. I never thought I’d be happy to see Dylan Grace, but the sight of him caused every muscle in my body to relax. That’s when I started to cry. Not sobbing, just tearing with a little nose running. He walked over to me and helped me up.
“Let’s get you out of here,” he said quietly.
“You’re not going to cuff me, are you?” I said, wiping my eyes with the tissue he produced from his pocket. I figured that he was taking me into federal custody. I couldn’t think of any other way for him to spring me from the NYPD.
“No. Not if you behave yourself.”
HIS PARTNER, WHOSE name I still didn’t know and didn’t really care to know, escorted me out to the sedan while Agent Grace filled out the necessary paperwork. They were calling me a federal witness, I’d overheard in the discussion between Agent Grace and one of the detectives who had questioned me. I wasn’t sure what that meant.
His partner didn’t talk to me, just opened the back door and closed it once I slid inside. He stood right outside. It was a bright, sunny day, cool and windy. He lit a cigarette with difficulty, then leaned against the trunk. I tried the door handle; it didn’t open from the inside.
AFTER AGENT GRACE got in the car, we drove uptown. I assumed we were heading to the FBI headquarters but eventually I realized we weren’t. I didn’t ask where we were going. I just used the drive to close my eyes and figure out how I was going to get away from these guys in time to get in touch with Grant, and get up to the Cloisters. Believe it or not, it wasn’t even one o’clock in the afternoon yet. I still had time.
When the car came to a stop, I opened my eyes. Agent Grace handed his partner a manila envelope.
“This paperwork needs to be filed,” he said.
“Why do I have to do it?”
“It’s part of your training,” Agent Grace said with a smile. “When you’re training a rookie, then you can get him to go and do your paperwork.”
“Where are you going with the witness?”
I watched their reflection in the rearview mirror, saw resentment on the partner’s face and indifference on Agent Grace’s. Agent Grace got out of the car without a word and then opened the door for me. We were at Ninety-fifth and Riverside. I wasn’t sure what was happening. His partner gave him a dark look through the glass, then pulled out quickly into traffic, tires screeching.
“What are we doing?” I asked him.
“We’re taking a walk,” he said.
I felt my heart start to flutter. I didn’t like Agent Grace’s partner, but he did seem like the “good cop.” He might be personally unpleasant, but he didn’t seem dangerous. I guess I didn’t trust Agent Grace very much. There weren’t many people around us. It was a residential neighborhood, working class, bordering Morningside Heights. Riverside Park is a narrow strip of land nestled between Riverside Drive and the Hudson River. It rests atop a high divide and the highway runs alongside it, down a couple stories below. I could hear the traffic racing by, though a tree cover blocked my view of the road. A couple jogged by us as we walked the path into the park. Other than that, the park and the surrounding neighborhood seemed deserted.
“What are we doing here?” I asked him again, coming to a stop. I didn’t want to walk any farther with him until I understood what he wanted. He stopped, too, put his hands in his pockets, and looked at me. Then he strolled over toward one of the park benches that lined the path and took a seat. Somewhere a car alarm blared briefly, then went silent. I hesitated a second, thought about sitting, then decided to stand.
“Let’s cut the shit, shall we?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s just you and me now, Ridley. No one can hear us. Just tell me what’s going on.”
“Why should I?”
“Because you and I have a common goal. We can help each other.”
I looked up at the trees above us, the blue sky with its high white cirrus clouds. I smelled exhaust and wet grass. I heard a radio playing a salsa tune somewhere.
“I can’t imagine what you think might be our ‘common goal.’”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No.”
“We’re both looking for your father.”
I knew he meant Max, and I hated him for saying it like that. Maybe because it was true. I was looking for my father, literally and figuratively. Maybe I always had been. A denial bloomed in my chest, then lodged in my throat.
“We’re all looking for him,” he went on. “I am, you are, your boyfriend, too.”
“Max is dead.”
“You know what? You might be right. But you still need to find him, don’t you? You still need to know who he was…or who he is.”
I looked anywhere but into his face.
“Do you even know why?” he asked, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his thighs. I sensed another of those one-sided conversations coming on. “Because until you know, really know, you think you can’t find out the answer to an even more important question. You can’t know who you are. Who is Ridley Jones?”
“I know who I am,” I said, raising my chin at him. But he’d opened a chasm of fear through my center, a fear that he might be right, that I wouldn’t know who I was until I truly knew Max. Since last year, the only thing I knew for sure about myself was that I wasn’t Ben and Grace’s daughter. That I wasn’t the good child of good people. I didn’t know whose daughter I was, not really. I had a better knowledge of my biology, but that was it.
You might be thinking that I am wrong. You might be thinking that
if I was raised by Ben and Grace, taught and loved by them, then they are the people I come from—they are my true parents. And of course, in part that’s right. But we’re more than just our experiences, more than the lessons we have learned, aren’t we? Isn’t there some mystery to us? Any mother will tell you that her child was born with at least a part of his own unique personality, some likes and dislikes that had nothing to do with learning or experience. That was the piece of myself I was missing. I was missing my mystery, the part that existed before I was born, that lived in the strands of Max’s DNA. If I didn’t know him, how could I ever know myself? For some reason, I didn’t have the same burning questions about Teresa Stone, my biological mother. She seemed distant and almost like a myth I didn’t quite believe. Maybe those questions would come later. Max occupied this huge space in my life.
I’d been so hard on Jake for his obsession with Max. I guess I was really angry with myself for having one of my own.
“Do you?” Agent Grace asked. “Do you know who you are?”
“Yes,” I said, defensively.
“So why are you chasing him?” he asked.
I gave a little laugh. “I’m not chasing him. Why are you chasing him?”
“It’s my job.”
“No,” I said, sitting down beside him and looking at him hard. “It’s more than that.” Now it was his turn to look away. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized why I didn’t trust this man. He had an agenda, something that ran deeper than just a drive to do his job. He needed something from Max, too. I had sensed it in him, without being able to name what I was feeling.
“What is it, Dylan?” It was the first time I’d called him that. It felt right all of a sudden, made us equals. I’d noticed he’d started calling me Ridley a while back, though I’d denied him that privilege more than once. “What are you looking for?”
I expected him to snap at me or to tell me he didn’t have to answer any of my questions. But he released a long breath instead, let his shoulders relax with it a little. I saw something I hadn’t seen on his face before. It made him look older somehow, sharper and sadder around the eyes.
“Max Smiley—” he started, and then stopped, shut his mouth into a firm, tight line. The words seemed to stick in his throat. He looked at something off in the distance, something very far away. I didn’t push him, cast my eyes to the concrete so it didn’t seem as if I was staring at him. I shoved my hands in my pockets against the deepening cold.
After a while, maybe a minute, maybe five, he said, “Max Smiley killed my mother.”
I LET HIS words hang in the air, mingle with the sounds of traffic and distant salsa music. Somewhere I heard a basketball bouncing on concrete, slow and solitary. In the distance I caught sight of a painfully thin teenage boy alone on a court, shooting for the basket and missing.
I didn’t know what to ask him first. How? When? Why? The information spread through my body. I tingled with it; a headache started a dull roar behind my eyes.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Forget it,” he said. “It’s irrelevant.”
I put a hand on his arm but quickly withdrew it.
“Don’t do that,” I said. He still had his eyes on that faraway place. “Tell me what happened. If you didn’t want to, you wouldn’t have brought me here, you wouldn’t have said anything at all.”
I thought about Jake then, all the secrets in his past that I’d had to find out slowly, sifting through layers of lies and half-truths. The wondering of where he was and why he hadn’t called was like having a sprained ankle—I was walking around but was always mindful of the pain. Since we met, there’d been only one other time that he’d disappeared like this, and that had occurred amid desperate circumstances. I’d wondered more than once if maybe he had killed Esme, if he was on the run. But I couldn’t really see it. Or maybe I just didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility that Jake’s rage might have finally got the best of him.
“The details aren’t important,” he said.
“But you think he killed her.”
“I know he did.” He finally turned to look at me.
“How?” I asked him.
He remained stone-faced and silent.
“You can’t just throw out an inflammatory statement like that and then clam up. Who was she? How did she know Max? How did she die?” I asked. “Why do you think Max killed her?”
He released a long breath. “Her body was found in an alley behind a Paris hotel. She was beaten to death,” he said. The information chilled me. I thought about the things Nick Smiley had told me. But Dylan’s voice was flat, his face unreadable. He seemed to have checked out on an emotional level.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
No response. I didn’t understand this guy’s communication style. One minute you couldn’t shut him up, the next he was doing his best impression of a brick wall. I sighed, stood up, and walked a little back and forth to get my blood flowing through my freezing limbs. Something seemed off to me. I kept my eye on the time.
“Why do you think Max killed her?” I asked again. Without any details, the whole thing just seemed made up. It didn’t ring true.
He opened his mouth, then closed it. Then: “Let’s just say he had ample motive and opportunity.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to disrespect him or his tragedy, but that wasn’t exactly proof positive.
“You’re going to have to do better than that,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t see what this has to do with me.
“I mean,” I went on when he didn’t answer, “if you’ve focused in on me because you think I know something about Max, you’re talking to the wrong person.”
“I don’t think I am,” he said. “I think you’re exactly the person I need to be talking to. I’ve told you before that I don’t think you’re telling me everything you know. I’m giving you the opportunity to do that now, just you and me. Right now you’re not a federal witness, I’m not an agent; we’re just two people who can help each other find what we need to survive. You need to find your father. I need to find the person who killed my mother. They’re the same person. We can help each other or we can hurt each other. It’s up to you.”
“I have a better idea. Why don’t we just leave each other alone? I watched someone die today. I want to go home and forget that any of this ever happened. How about you go back to work and I go back to my life and we forget we ever met? You can get some therapy. Maybe I will, too.”
At that, I started backing away from him.
Maybe we did have similar agendas: We both wanted Max Smiley to answer for things he might have done. But I didn’t believe for one minute that we were on the same side. For all I knew, this was just some ruse to gain my trust so that I’d ally myself with him, share what I know, possibly lead him to the arrest of his life—a real career-maker.
I felt confused and scared, angry, too. I felt battered by the events of the last few days and by this man who wanted me to think he was my friend and my ally. I did the only thing I thought I could do in that moment. I ran.
10
I am a pathetically bad runner. I’m not built for it. No speed, no endurance. But I still managed to elude Dylan Grace, though only, I suspected, because he didn’t get up and chase me with any real determination…and because I managed to hail a cab before he made it to the street.
“Ridley, don’t be stupid!” he yelled.
I waved to him as the cab sped off.
“You shouldn’t run away from your boyfriend,” the cabdriver admonished. I looked at the ID plate: Obi Umbabwai. He had a heavy African accent. “There aren’t that many good men around.”
I gave him a dark look in the rearview mirror.
“Where are we going?” he asked after he’d driven south a block or two.
“I don’t know yet,” I answered. “Just drive around a minute.”
“You must be rich,” he said.
“Just drive please, sir,” I said. I pu
lled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed the number I’d taken off of Grant’s website. I prayed not to get voice mail as the phone rang. It was one-thirty.
“Go,” he answered.
“I need to see you,” I said.
There was a pause. “Do I know you?”
“Yeah, are you kidding? We met last night at Yaffa. You said you wanted to see me again.”
He started to protest. Then he got it. Not too quick on the draw for a conspiracy theorist. He probably met his buddies on Thursday nights to play Dungeons & Dragons; that’s probably as close as he’d come to any real intrigue.
“Oh, yeah,” he said reverently. “Glad you called.”
“Can you meet me right now?”
“Now?” he said, sounding surprised and a little uncertain.
“Now or never. I’m not a person with a lot of time.”
Another pause. His breathing sounded heavy, excited. “Where?”
I told him where to meet me and hung up. I figured I was probably making his day or even his year. I repeated my destination to the cabdriver, who gave me a disapproving look in the mirror.
“Whatever you say, honey.”
My cell phone rang and I saw Dylan’s number on the screen. I pressed the button and put the phone to one ear but didn’t say anything.
“Ridley, you are making a major mistake,” he said. “Do you really want to be a fucking fugitive?”
I could tell by the pitch of his voice and by the fact that he’d resorted to cursing that he was really upset. I hung up and closed my eyes, leaned back against the faux leather interior of the spotlessly clean cab, and let it speed me toward Times Square.
YOU’D NEVER KNOW it by my adult life, but my adolescence was fairly free from drama. My brother caused enough chaos for both of us, so I always felt it was my responsibility to be the “good” kid, the one who never caused any trouble for anyone. I got caught with cigarettes once (they weren’t even mine), broke curfew now and then. Nothing too terrible. I don’t remember ever even being grounded for anything.