Half-Past Dawn

by Richard Doetsch

  His mother shook her head as she leaned in and studied the tattoo on his arm. “That thing is horrific.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Columbia.”

  “What?” Jack’s BlackBerry beeped. He pulled it out and saw the incoming e-mail he had just sent himself.

  “They have a huge language and sociology department.” Heidi looked closer at the tattoo. “And I’m pretty sure linguistics and anthropology. Jeez, Jack, that thing is ugly.”

  “Remember what I said about the girls.” Jack kissed her cheek and ran from the room.

  He headed back up the stairs and stepped into his old bedroom to see the girls still fast asleep. He stared at them, taking comfort in the knowledge that they were safe, that they had no idea what was going on; their young minds were still unblemished with the dangers and realities of life. He silently walked to the bed and tucked the two bears under the covers between them.

  As he turned to leave, he nearly jumped out of his skin, for sitting there was the one man he didn’t expect to see. If Jack’s relationship with his father-in-law was bad, the one with his own father was far worse. They hadn’t spoken in months, and the conversations they did have over the years were few and far between. They would start out cordial, with false smiles and handshakes, talking of the weather and the girls and maybe the Yankees, but after thirty seconds of niceties, David Keeler would only speak of himself, his world, his fishing and golf, how hard he worked. And the conversation would soon devolve into criticism and words of disappointment. His father was critical of his career choice, wasting his education on politics, living the life of an elected official; he never saw his son’s life as one of sacrifice, of protecting the people, of fighting crime. He would tell him he was wearing a white shirt in a blue-collar world.

  He made Jack feel like a child, inadequate and small, with a diminished mind not worthy of a life.

  But as Jack stared at his father, sitting calmly in his old wooden desk chair, his father looked back with eyes Jack hadn’t seen in years. They were filled with concern, with worry, so contrary to his usual expression of disappointment.

  Jack stared at him for a long moment and walked out of the room without a word.

  CHAPTER 9

  JACK

  Jack Keeler could hardly remember a time when he and his father didn’t disagree, didn’t fight, didn’t go for long spells without speaking.

  Jack had grown up in a family of privilege, though not multimillionaires. His father’s successful career in finance left Jack wanting for nothing. He lived inside a bubble, his friends and family from similar backgrounds with similar morals and viewpoints. As far as Jack was concerned, life as it was in his town was the way the world was.

  Jack had been the goalie on his high school hockey team and rode his talent to play Division III at Williams College in Massachusetts. While his father had pushed him to play Division I-the stepping stone to the pros-Jack was under no illusion of ever having the skill set to play in the NHL. He was happy having a good time and enjoying the sport for what it was. It had allowed him to attend a school that his grades couldn’t get him into, and it kept him the center of attention on campus for the first two seasons.

  Jack was all of twenty when his world was turned upside down. His father was a senior VP of a small investment firm and had been pushing his son toward the power world of finance, badgering him about his grades, his appearance, his reputation. When he ventured into the city, his father ensured that he met with all of the movers and shakers, laying the groundwork for the future. In the summer of his freshman year, he interned at the investment bank Millar and Peabody in Manhattan, and his sophomore year saw him spend eight weeks at Wyeth Investments. But the experience did not have the effect his father had hoped for.

  Earl Nathanson was their neighbor, a successful investment banker, a thrice-divorced father of five who regularly had forgone seeing his children’s baseball games and swim meets for work and the track. Earl’s house next to the Keelers’ was the finest on the block. He always claimed that it would have been three times its size if he didn’t have to pay his three ex-wives and so much child support.

  Jack’s father truly hated the man. He found him despicable not only in his personal life but also in business, having made his money off of questionable trades and the backs of others. They both worked at Wyeth Investments but in different offices. Earl was considered a star in the company, and many said he was the man to learn from, but Jack’s father told him that he was the type to avoid, the type never to aspire to be.

  But three weeks after that lecture, Earl and his father did a significant deal together, one that made them both a considerable amount of money. And in the small celebration in the firm’s conference room, with champagne flowing, Jack watched as his father shook the hand of the man he despised, all the while smiling and laughing, choosing money over principles.

  He looked around the room, seeing men with phony smiles that masked hidden jealousy and agendas, employees driven by greed, all secretly hoping that the next champagne toast would be to them. Jack wondered how many of them would put aside their convictions and dreams to chase the dollar.

  Jack silently railed against his father, his moral compromise for financial success, his lack of genuine honesty in his job. He swore that he was not going to let his dreams die, compromise himself for anything. Unbeknownst to his father, Jack formed his own plans.

  It was in the summer, just before the start of his junior year, that he finally declared his major: criminal justice, a major that his father frowned upon.

  Jack Keeler took the New York City police entrance exam in his senior year of college and headed to the Police Academy-much to the disappointment of his father-the day after graduation, his degree and pedigree making him a unique commodity in the New York City Police department.

  It turned out that Jack was gifted with a gun, finishing head of his class at the range. He represented the N.Y. Police Academy at several competitions, always taking home the top prize. He never had a love for guns but found them to be like an extension of his body. His skill with a pistol in the obstacle-laden practical shooting courses was only bested by his ability with a rifle. His instructors recommended him for SWAT and made the military aware of his talent, but Jack would have none of it. He wanted to be engaged in fighting crime, solving crime; he wanted to use his mind far more than a firearm.

  With the honors bestowed upon him, Jack was given accelerated entry into homicide, the division where he thought he could do the most good, applying his deductive reasoning to capturing those who committed the most heinous acts.

  With an affection for puzzles since his teens, he was a natural as a detective. His aptitude helped him get assigned to a six-month apprenticeship under Detective Frank Archer. The department believed that the veteran would impart his wisdom and skills to someone with youthful energy, drive, and passion for police work.

  Frank at first thought Keeler was some rich kid playing cops and robbers, a showboater who would be the front-page poster child of the “new” kind of cop. The fact of the matter was that Jack was not rich in the sense of privilege, having been raised in the upper-middle-class world afforded by his father’s income. Jack had all but rejected his father’s monetary assistance and connections upon graduating from college. He was neither arrogant nor vain, and his passion turned out to be entirely genuine.

  Although Frank was fifteen years Jack’s senior, they became fast friends, working together on multiple cases over the six-month period. Jack absorbed his new friend’s knowledge, while Frank found Jack’s drive and commitment refreshing in a world where work ethics were as ephemeral as a cool summer breeze.

  Frank’s world was the antithesis of the life Jack had started out in. He was street-tough and spoke his mind without thought; his bulldog body and attitude were the outward manifestation of his heart. Frank had spent ten years in homicide and had yet to become jaded. Bronx-born and -raised, at the age of eighteen, he joine
d the Army in search of adventure but ended up spending the majority of his ten years of service as a sergeant stateside, barring a single tour in Germany.

  His wife, Lisa, never complained as they crisscrossed the country from base to base for six-month stints, but she exacted a promise from Frank that once he was out of the Army, he would figure out a way to buy her a small house with a garden, where they could settle down and have kids.

  Frank fit right in at the NYPD, which was happy to embrace a military man. He worked his way through narcotics, robbery, and special units, finally settling into homicide. Lisa had feared for his life far more than she ever had when he was in the army.

  She had hoped to overcome that by focusing on family and children. But despite all the years of trying, despite all of the doctors’ promises and bills, a child was not in their future. They dealt with their heartbreak as they did with so many of the problems they had faced in life: distraction. Lisa became a teacher, indirectly sating her maternal instinct by helping to form the lives of other people’s children, taking pleasure in her third-grade class and the students’ magical, inquisitive minds.

  Frank found an even greater focus at work, rising to the top of his game, with multiple accommodations and countless convictions. He and Lisa purchased a small Cape Cod-style house in Byram Hills and had finally found a peaceful balance to life.

  CHAPTER 10

  FRIDAY, 8:15 A.M.

  Jack rolled up his sleeve and stared at the intricate tattoo on his left forearm. It was truly like nothing he had ever seen before, not in print, not on canvas, and certainly not on skin. He looked at it closely, examining the dark ink, the tightly woven pattern, the odd lettering from a language he couldn’t fathom. He wracked his brain but could find no recollection of getting it. It certainly wasn’t something he would have chosen. The one on his hip was one thing, a drunken mistake. This was different, and while his memory of the last two days seemed to have slipped away, he knew that this mosaic on his flesh was somehow connected to Mia’s disappearance.

  “Like my body art?” Jack asked, trying keep a little humor in the car before Mia’s situation overwhelmed them. He rolled down his sleeve.

  “You know”-Frank suppressed a smile as he ate the bacon sandwich Jack’s mom had made for him-“that’s going to come up in this year’s campaign.”

  “Front-page material,” Jack said.

  “Mia’s not going to be happy.” Frank spoke as if confident that finding her was already a given.

  “Hell,” Jack said, “she probably knows about it. Who’s to say we haven’t already fought about it?”

  “Did it occur to you that maybe it was her idea? She may have had you branded, trying to make sure her prize cattle didn’t get lost.”

  Jack reached around to his side and pulled out his Sig Sauer. He had fetched it from the oversized gun safe in his workshop before they left. He rarely touched it except to clean it, having left his particular talent with the weapon in his past.

  “I haven’t seen you holding that in forever,” Frank said. “You remember how to use it?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said quietly. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Why don’t you let me handle things involving weapons?” Frank smiled. “I have an aversion to being shot.”

  Jack ignored the joke. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”

  “You’ve got to learn to put that guilt away.” Frank admonished his friend as if he were his son. “Everyone else has except you.”

  Jack didn’t respond. The car fell silent as Frank turned his eyes on the highway ahead.

  Jack Keeler was dead-the world thought it, the papers screamed it, and it was the lead story on every local news channel. In the matter of an hour, Jack’s mind had gone from confusion to fear to relief and back to confusion. While the faint odor of Mia’s perfume had sparked his memory of the night before, and the two bears had helped fill in his memory from the beginning of the week, nothing else came forth. He tried everything: he looked at pictures, looked at her clothes in her closet, read her various Post-it note reminders around the house in hopes of dredging up those lost days, but he found no key to unleash his recent past.

  “You know, if someone sees you alive,” Frank said, “it’s going to create a lot of questions.”

  “Whoever has her thinks I’m dead. It’s an advantage for the moment.”

  “Do you think this is connected to a case out of your office?”

  “I’m sure the list of people who want me dead isn’t small, but then, why ask Mia about the box?”

  “And you didn’t see the box before?”

  He heard their demand; it still rang in his ears, box 7138. No matter how he tried, he could remember nothing about a box. When he saw it pulled from the rear of the Tahoe, he was more than surprised. Mia must have hidden it there underneath the tons of crap-soccer balls and tennis rackets, water bottles and blankets, shopping bags and toys-that they had accumulated over the summer. And what it contained he had no idea.

  “No. At least, I don’t think-” Jack paused. Something gnawed at the periphery of his mind, just out of reach of clear thought, like a two-day-old dream that was discarded as insignificant… although he couldn’t grasp it.

  “Listen,” Frank said, “you said you remember last night, you remember the attack, going over the bridge, climbing out of the water. But how did you get home?”

  Jack remained silent.

  “Someone else was there,” Frank said slowly.

  Jack didn’t respond.

  “Stitched you up. Do you remember and are just not saying?”

  “No,” Jack said.

  “Jack?”

  “Don’t you think if I could remember, I would?”

  “Someone helped you, kept you alive. Maybe if we could figure out how you got home-”

  “How did I get home?” Jack asked rhetorically. “How the hell did I survive the fall off the bridge? Being shot? I’m not Rasputin. Who sewed me up, got me back to my house? Who wrote this crap on my arm?” Jack pulled up his sleeve, revealing the dense black symbols, the unfamiliar language. “What the hell is going on?”

  • • •

  It was on a hot August day when Jack completed his tenure with Frank. And while Jack regretted parting ways, he was looking forward to shedding his apprentice label and getting more actively involved in homicide. There were six guys in the Manhattan Detective Bureau’s Homicide Division, a breed apart from the other divisions. They were tenacious, hardened by what they had seen, and thankful for new blood with Jack’s arrival. It was more akin to a club, with their own way of doing business, ensuring arrests, making sure the cases they built were seamlessly turned over to the DA’s office for successful prosecution. No cop wanted a murderer back on the street as a result of his incompetence.

  A tight group, they all had nicknames for one another: Double D for Dicky Donaldson; Shank, short for Hank the Shank, whose real name was Hank Ramon and who had a tee shot that went forever to the right; Sean Sullivan arrived at homicide with the name Red for obvious follicle reasons; Two used to be called Two Ton Tonelli but had lost so much weight that they shortened his name; for Apollo, there was debate about whether the name came from the Greek god, the solving of some murder near the Apollo Theater up in Harlem, or Rocky Balboa’s toughest opponent and friend, Apollo Creed; and there was Deuce, not to be confused with Two, who loved playing poker, both literally and figuratively.

  That evening, Jack was asked by Shank to follow up on a lead on a gang murder. When he got into the car, he found Apollo in the driver’s seat, his thick, meaty hands wrapped around the wheel as he drove out of the garage.

  “So, Jack, unless you came into homicide with a nickname like I did, we get to name you.”

  “So, the name Apollo has nothing to do with a murder at the Apollo Theater?

  “You don’t see the slight resemblance to Apollo Creed?”

  Jack smiled.

  “Irony of ironies, I was
on a case near the Apollo Theater, but truth be told, my uncle was kind of a mythology buff and gave me the moniker when I was eleven.”

  “Why?”

  “You want to hear the big story?

  Jack nodded.

  “There isn’t one.” Apollo laughed. “It’s what my uncle called my father when they were kids.”

  Jack rolled his eyes.

  “Laugh it up, Shooter.”

  “Shooter? You’re kidding, right?”

  “Well, we thought about Lily for Lily White, you being so pure, but that would be too cruel. Then Golden for Golden Boy, seeing you were the pride of the force who got fast-tracked onto our team. But Shooter won out, because we all had to admit it, you’re a hell of a shot.”

  They drove over to Alphabet City, and Jack hopped out of the car while Apollo parked. Although Apollo had told Jack to wait, Jack was overanxious and figured nothing could go wrong in speaking with the grandmother of the victim. Apollo would only be two minutes behind him.

  Jack met the grandmother in her apartment on the sixth floor of the 1920s walk-up and asked her a few routine questions about the grandson she had raised only to see him lose his life at the age of sixteen during a drug deal gone bad. Jack promised her that they would do everything to find his killer.

  As Jack emerged from the tenement, he saw Apollo racing down the street, pursuing two thugs. Jack took up the chase, following the three as they sprinted across the city streets. They cut down through the subway, leaping turnstiles, across platforms, hopping up the far stairs, emerging onto the street and crashing into a vacant loft building. Apollo and the thugs seemed to have vanished as Jack entered just steps behind them.

  The building was dark. Rats scurried in the shadows, and the stench of urine filled Jack’s nostrils. Several homeless people lay on cardboard in their makeshift homes, casting their eyes downward, paying no attention to the pursuit in their midst.

  Jack crept along, working his way up the stairs, four stories up, following the elusive sounds of racing footfalls.