Half-Past Dawn

by Richard Doetsch

  The soldiers took the bag, smiling in appreciation, waving to the lieutenant.

  And without warning, an explosion tore the front of Joe’s car apart. A large fireball rolled into in the sky, black smoke curling upward, spreading out in a large cloud.

  Joe stumbled from the car in shock, his eyes scanning for Mia. And once he saw her running toward him, once he saw that she was all right, he collapsed.

  The three gatehouse guards were ten yards behind Mia, their guns drawn, yelling at her to stop, fearful of another bomb. But nothing could stop her from getting to her dad.

  Joe Sullivan lay in the middle of the road, his car in flames behind him. Blood stained his burned clothing as his chest heaved and he gasped for air. Mia came charging to his side, kneeling beside him, lifting him into her lap, cradling his broken body to her chest. He was always bigger than life to her, but now…

  “Dad? Look at me.”

  Joe struggled to breathe, his body convulsing in short bursts, his eyes struggling to stay open.

  “Please!” Mia cried out. “Oh, God, please don’t…”

  The three guards looked at Joe, instantly assessing his condition. They formed a perimeter around the lieutenant and his daughter, guns aimed out, searching for the perpetrators, protecting Mia and her father in what they knew would be their final moments together.

  Sirens blared in the distance as the soldiers spoke into their radios, but Mia heard none of it. All of her senses were focused on her father.

  “Dad!” Mia pleaded as the tears poured down her face. “Please-”

  His wheezing breaths grew shallow as every muscle in his body went limp.

  Without a word, he looked up into Mia’s eyes, a world of emotions passing between them, and he died.

  Joe Sullivan had fought in three wars, had been in countless battles and firefights, had spent his naval career in some of the most hostile locations on earth, only to be felled by a car bomb in his own country.

  What was first thought to be an act of international terrorism turned out to have been committed by a small domestic group known as Peace for All whose members preached passivity while demanding the withdrawal of U.S. forces from all countries and the abolition of the U.S. military. After a one-week manhunt, the three American perpetrators were captured by the FBI, tried, and executed.

  Mia’s world was shattered. Her father was everything to her. She felt adrift without his words of wisdom, his guidance in life, the sound of his voice as he arrived home at night after work. She couldn’t wipe the image of his dying in her arms from her nightmares. And while her mother comforted her, Patricia Sullivan was equally devastated, often lost in her own grief, unable to function.

  Within six months, her mother moved on, falling for the FBI agent who had captured the killers of her husband. No one spoke of the Freudian influence on her heart.

  Sam Norris took them in, adopting and embracing Mia as his own. Against her wishes, Mia’s mother made her change her name from Sullivan to Norris, explaining that she couldn’t go through the pain of explaining how her daughter had a different name, that it would force her to relive the agony all too often, never realizing the betrayal it caused for Mia.

  They moved to Washington, where her stepfather was made deputy director of the FBI. A year later, he began serving three years as director. He retired and moved to New York to start a security consulting business, a firm where he could capitalize on his vast government connections.

  As Sam Norris’s business expanded, their creature comforts grew. Mia’s mother embraced their large home, her fancy car, their life of privilege, but to Mia, none of that could replace her father. The money made her uncomfortable. It seemed to be a patina over the lack of love and affection in their new family.

  And so she became focused on herself. Although Sam Norris hadn’t filled the vacancy left by her father’s death, he did offer a window into the FBI, entree into fighting people like the ones who killed her father. As she rose through the ranks, investigating and arresting criminals and terrorists, it was as if she was taking down her father’s killers again and again and again.

  Jack would have liked her dad. They were alike in so many respects: wise, selfless, extremely athletic yet always modest and always believing nothing was ever out of reach.

  Mia looked around the small room, locked away in who-knows-where, thinking of the impossibility of escape, and she relived that day of flying with her father and embraced his words, knowing them to be true.

  Nothing is impossible.

  CHAPTER 19

  FRIDAY, 12:30 P.M.

  After finding out about the ominous warning on Jack’s arm, Frank, Jack, and Joy agreed that there was one thing that held the answers they needed. Whatever was in the evidence case had frightened Mia as if it were death come to claim her soul. Jack beat himself up for respecting her wishes and for not forcing her to tell him what she was involved in, the gift of hindsight condemning him. The three agreed that the answer to finding Mia was not in the tattoo on Jack’s arm; it was in the case.

  It was just after 12:30 when Frank walked through the lobby of the Tombs. There was no need to flash his badge, as he was greeted by his first name at every checkpoint he went through.

  “Your disappearance from the force was just a rumor, hey?” the skinny guard with washed-out skin said as he stood up from the central reception desk.

  “Good to see you,” Frank said as he offered his hand, shaking Larry’s warmly.

  “I knew you wouldn’t be gone for long. You’re here about sublevel five?”

  Frank was shocked that the young guard would know where he was going. “As a matter of fact…”

  “I hate when the feds go sniffing around in our business.”

  Frank didn’t respond, although his mind was already spinning.

  “Surprised they didn’t call you in earlier.” Larry flicked the button under his desk, releasing the security lock to his gate and allowing Frank to enter the central lobby.

  Frank walked through and headed for the bank of elevators against the far wall, then turned back to Larry.

  “Thanks, Larry.”

  “I’m glad you’re back,” Larry said with a nod before returning to his post.

  As Frank hit the elevator button, he knew that things were about to go far off track. If the feds were in sublevel five, the situation that couldn’t get worse was already well past that point.

  As the elevator doors opened on sublevel five, Frank saw yellow police tape stretched the length of the small lobby. Several black rolling cases of various sizes sat in the corner as if someone was moving in. Two men in dark suits said nothing as they stepped into the cab, not waiting for Frank to disembark, and hit the button for the ground floor.

  Frank walked out, shaking his head. He ducked under the tape and stepped to the glass window, pulling out and placing his ID flush with the glass, rapping on the window with his knuckles.

  Charlie spun around in his desk chair, his usually cheery face awash in grief.

  “Frank,” Charlie said with relief.

  “Hey, Charlie.” Frank nodded.

  “This is god-awful.” Charlie’s usually perfect tie was askew, his hair mussed, making him look like someone at the end of a forty-eight hour shift. But Charlie had just arrived. “Their poor kids, both parents, how do you tell a kid their mother and father aren’t coming back?”

  Frank nodded, wishing he could wipe away the pain with the simple truth, but that was out of the question for the moment.

  Charlie glanced at Frank’s ID and buzzed the door. Frank pulled open the steel security door as the release buzzer screamed in his ear and headed straight into Charlie’s small office.

  “Police tape?” Frank said. “What the hell?”

  “Feds are here, looking for an evidence case they say belongs to them.”

  “And that would be down here because…”

  “They say Jack Keeler hid it down here for his wife.”

  “
Did he?” Frank wasn’t sure how much Charlie was involved.

  “They’re not going to find anything,” Charlie said in unspoken understanding. “They come down here thinking they’re smarter, that we’re just a bunch of cops out of a Keystone movie.”

  “The feds are always so charming.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  Frank turned to see a tall man, thin and wiry, standing ramrod-straight in the doorway, his head seeming a little large for his body, what little hair he possessed buzz-cut short. The exhaustion in his eyes left no doubt that the man hadn’t slept in days; the dark circles and humorless expression were not what anyone was accustomed to seeing in Gene Tierney. The FBI’s assistant director in charge of the New York field office was known for his sense of humor, a dark, dry wit honed over a twenty-five-year career, which Frank had come across on several occasions. Frank would never consider Tierney to be a friend, but he respected him, which was something he could only say about one other FBI agent, and nobody knew where she was right now.

  “Since when are you back on the force?” Tierney quickly said.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Frank asked.

  Tierney stood there, troubled, mulling over Frank’s question. “We’re looking for an evidence box that Mia Keeler had, and it seems to have disappeared.”

  “And why would it be here?”

  “Mia’s smart. We believe she asked her husband to hide it down here.”

  “So you think Mia was hiding evidence and Jack was committing political suicide?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. But as with everything, there’s more to the story that none of us knows.”

  “Do you know what’s in the case?”

  “Evidence from a murder investigation.”

  “And you think Jack and Mia are somehow involved?”

  “Nobody is accusing them of wrongdoing. I’ve known Mia since she was a senior in high school, and her father forever. If she did something like this, she did it for a reason.”

  “So all this to figure out that reason, you just come in and take over?”

  Tierney took a moment, running his hands through his bristly hair. “We got the mayor, the governor, and we have a warrant, which I haven’t needed to wave around, because everyone is trying to work together on this. We’re not saying Jack or Mia did anything wrong, but something got them killed. And we need that evidence case.”

  “So what’s taking so long? You’ve got a whole team down here, and you can’t find it?”

  “Nothing is in the system,” Charlie cut in.

  “He’s smart. He didn’t log it in, which means either someone was helping him”-Tierney paused as he looked from Charlie to Frank-“Or he tucked it into some other case file.”

  “The DA’s office has thousands of active cases. Are you telling me you’re going to go through every evidence file?”

  “Welcome to my hell,” Tierney said as he took a step into the evidence room. Frank followed him into the enormous storage space. Frank had been in there too many times to count.

  “Do you mind if I take a walk around?”

  “Yes, I do,” Tierney said, a tired tone of suspicion in his voice. “Until you tell me why someone who was so anxious to retire and get away from all of this is back.”

  Frank stared at him a moment. “You and I both know it was no accident; otherwise, you wouldn’t be down here.”

  “It’s no coincidence that we’re both here right now. I know what I’m looking for. Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for?”

  Frank’s mind was scrambling. He was never one for lies, always spitting out the truth before his mind could hold it in check.

  “I heard you guys were here, something that’s never happened before. Like you said, no coincidence.”

  “We’ve spent the entire morning looking at every ongoing case that Keeler was working on.”

  “And nothing is missing.”

  “Nothing’s missing.”

  “You really give a shit if I look around?”

  “Actually, I do, unless you’ve got something to offer, something that might point us in a direction?”

  Frank nodded, looking down the corridor at the rows upon rows of enormous shelves of evidence. A group of white-shirt analysts sat at four makeshift tables, computers and boxes before them. They checked each and every case, pulling out files, guns, bags of drugs, whatever the box might hold, logging the information on their clipboards and computers. Two young agents wandered around, each one no more than thirty, eyes alive, their pistols visible on their belts.

  Frank turned his eyes back down the central aisle, all the way to the end, all the way down to row Y, where he knew the case was hidden away. Second shelf from the top, seven feet up, Jack had said, a white bar code sticker on the top.

  “No offense, Frank,” Tierney said.

  “It’s OK, I understand.” He did understand, but he was seething nevertheless. Mia’s evidence case just slipped further away. “What the heck happens to any cop looking to log evidence in?”

  “We have no problem with anything coming in,” Tierney said. “We’re not going to interrupt the process of law, but this place is under lockdown. Nothing goes out until Monday, and that’s after being thoroughly inspected.

  “Your suspicions only further confirm ours. Someone is after this case, and I think we’ve seen how far they’re willing to go to get it. So, I’m keeping a team here until we get to the bottom of this. You guys may have great security, but a few extra guns never hurt. If that box is down here, it’s not leaving with anyone but me.”

  Jack sat in Frank’s Jeep. Joy had nodded off beside him, the ordeal of his death and resurrection exhausting her. Jack stared at the rear entrance to the Tombs, feeling impotent, completely and utterly helpless, trapped within a car while Frank did what he should be doing: retrieving Mia’s evidence case. Yet all the while, Jack suspected that the real answer to everything-how he got back to his house, who helped him, who wrote the tattoo on his arm-lay somewhere in his own mind.

  As he looked out at the city of New York, at its skyscrapers, its bustling sidewalks, the traffic-filled streets, he knew the search was not out there. The search was within, and all of his efforts should go to cracking open his memory. It was like some cruel puzzle, images, flittering impressions of the night before remaining just out of focus, like waking from a dream that he could no longer remember. While the tattoo was a mystery and the box that they had hidden away held some answers, Jack knew that if he could just recover his memory from after the crash, he would have his solution to find her.

  He wondered if his memory loss was from the cancer, the small tumor in his brain manifesting itself in blackouts. Of all places to hit, of all times to attack-Jack thought the twist of fate was beyond cruel. A man known for his mind, for his memory of everything back to his earliest youth, was now rendered a mnemonic cripple. His greatest asset and skill was in solving problems, seeing solutions where others only saw frustration. And now, in his most desperate hour, he was like a novitiate without a guide, no map, no clue to what direction he should take.

  It had been nearly fifteen minutes since Frank had ventured inside the Tombs. There was no word, no call on his cell phone, and the silence only confirmed the worst. Mia’s evidence case was deposited two days ago in the one place they both thought secure. She had been insistent on hiding it away from the world, on keeping it out of reach of the people around her, all the while being terrified of its contents-which she never explained. But now that he thought on it, maybe she had. Maybe she had told him everything, what was going on, what scared her, what was in the box, and he just didn’t remember. Jack wanted to scream.

  Trying to calm his mind, he once again looked around the bustling streets of downtown Manhattan, and his focus was drawn to a blue Crown Victoria, the standard cop-issue, law-enforcement vehicle, that had come to a stop across the street. There were several of them parked in the reserved NYPD spaces, among the cop cars and pr
isoner-transport vans, but this one in particular drew his attention for a single reason. The man inside was staring at Frank’s car.

  Jack felt it in his gut, deep in his belly. He remained low in the passenger seat, comfortable in his anonymity behind the smoked windows, watching as the man’s eyes alternated between the Jeep and the side door to the Tombs.

  A heavy rumble shook the street, the subway that wound its way beneath the city reminding him that much of life was hidden beneath the surface. The man stepped out of his car. He stood just under six feet, his muscled arms stretching the sleeves of his short-sleeved shirt. His blond hair fluttered on the summer breeze, and all at once, Jack realized whom he was looking at.

  Joy stirred beside him, opened her eyes, and looked at him staring intently out the window. She followed his gaze to the man across the street.

  “Who’s that?” Joy said, her voice hesitant, as if not really wanting the answer.

  Jack didn’t break his stare, the moment dragging on to almost the point of forgetting the question. His voice was low and steady as he answered her, although his tone was filled with vengeance. “That’s the man who killed me.”

  Frank stepped into the elevator with far more questions than answers. Whatever Mia had stumbled upon was worse than he had imagined. The effort mobilized to recover the case was being overseen by Tierney personally, and the assistant director only took on-site charge of an investigation when the matter had far-reaching implications.

  The elevator ride back up into the world seemed to take forever, which suited Frank fine. His mind was churning with scenarios, thoughts, and ideas. He had no intention of leaving the Tombs without the case, no matter how many feds were down there.

  As the doors to the lobby opened, Frank pulled out his cell phone, quickly dialing as he continued out into the rear hallway to get cell service.

  In the car, Jack sat glaring at the man who shot him at point-blank range, who helped send him hurtling off Rider’s Bridge. Rage clouded Jack’s mind; thoughts of unquenchable revenge were all he could think of. He wanted to leap from the car and kill the man with his bare hands. But his thoughts were interrupted by the ring of his cell phone. He saw Frank’s number and quickly answered it.