moved toward it but had wound up sinking back into the couch. She knew all about opening boxes. Once the lid was off, it could never be closed again. She considered herself a pretty tough chick, but that box scared her. She couldn’t quite say why.
The buzzer on Jeffrey’s desk sounded and a voice came over the speaker. “Lydia,” said Jessa, one of the trainees, “are you in there? There’s a Matt Stenopolis on line two.”
She jumped up, glad for the distraction. “Got it,” she said and picked up the call.
“Detective,” she said.
“Yeah, Ms. Strong. Can we get together?”
She was surprised he wanted to meet rather than talk on the phone. She got the feeling that he didn’t like her very much, considered her a necessary evil as far as Lily Samuels was concerned.
“Sure,” she said. “Where and when?”
The New Day achieved tax-exempt status in 1997. They claim to have over two hundred and fifty thousand members worldwide, growing steadily since their origination in 1977,” Matt told Lydia over strong coffee and a scratched Formica table at a Greek restaurant in midtown. It was bustling with the dinner crowd, loud voices, clinking silverware, and the occasional cry of “Opa!” as a waiter lit the
“So The New Day is a religion?” she said, sounding skeptical, tracing the rim of her coffee cup with a delicate finger.
“Yeah, I guess that’s what they call themselves,” he said. Matt was not of the belief that you could just start a religion in the same way that you could start a company. It seemed a little backwards to him and he was suspicious of any so-called religion that had just popped up in the last twenty or thirty or even fifty years. Some backwoods bumpkin or science fiction writer declares himself a prophet, gets a few weak-willed souls to agree, and all of a sudden he’s talking to God. Maybe he was just being picky but frankly he would need some parting of the seas, water into wine, or something along those lines to be convinced.
“What are their precepts? I mean are we talking a Heaven’s Gate kind of thing… hitch a ride to God on the Hale Bopp Comet? Or what?”
“Well, from what I can determine, there aren’t any deities involved. They claim to be compatible with any religious belief, kind of a direct line to whatever God you believe in. Their whole concept is that through a kind of spiritual cleansing they can help people overcome addictions, reach their full potential as human beings and in so doing get closer to God.”
“And what do they get from their members in return?”
“The members of The New Day turn over everything to the church when they join. It’s not that they
She nodded thoughtfully and he wondered if she was thinking what he had when he heard that. He’d thought about Lily Samuels cashing out all of her accounts while someone waited for her in a black SUV.
“What if you want to join The New Day and you don’t have any money?” said Lydia.
“I don’t know,” he said. He only had limited information.
After he and Jesamyn met with the other detectives working on the Rosario Mendez case, and Jesamyn had left for the evening, Matt had called a friend of his, a guy he went to high school with out in Queens who was now an agent with the FBI. Special Agent John Starks was part of a unit whose task it was to track and observe the activities of domestic groups, such as the Michigan Militia or the Branch Davidians, with political or religious agendas that might pose a threat to homeland security. To Matt’s surprise, his friend, Starkey to everyone from the neighborhood, knew a lot about The New Day.
“Basically, when you sign up, it’s like going to rehab,” Starkey had told him. “They separate you from your life and your family. You can have no other club affiliations, like not even a gym membership. And you have to quit your job. Apparently, there’s a period they call ‘cleansing’ which can last from six months to a year. After this time, you’re allowed to return to your life if you want, while remaining a member of The New Day the way you would belong to any church. Or you can go to work for the church.”
Lydia had pulled a notepad from her pocket and was scribbling notes.
“I’m just taking some notes,” she said when she saw him watching her. Then, “How did the FBI learn about The New Day?”
“They’ve been investigated by federal agencies three times in the last twenty-five years.”
“What for?” she asked. Her phone beeped in her jacket and he waited while she fished it out, glanced at the screen, and returned it to her pocket. She smiled briefly, thoughtfully, and turned back to Matt. He continued.
“They started calling attention to themselves when they bought up a whole bunch of property in this small town in Florida. It was this kind of sleepy beach town with lots of undeveloped land and struggling businesses. They bought up some historic buildings and started renovating, really giving the area a face-lift. They brought a bunch of members in and helped them buy small businesses. But people were suspicious of them and wanted to know what they were doing there. The FBI investigated but they weren’t doing anything illegal and nothing came of it. That was back in 1980. They continued to grow their presence in that community and now they own more than fifty percent of the commercial property.”
The waitress brought Matt’s
“In 2000,” he went on, “a man named George Benchly claimed that he had ‘escaped’ The New Day. He said that at a very low point in his life, he had been laid off from his job at a dot com and his wife had left him, he had attended an open meeting, having heard about the organization from a friend. He turned over his assets and signed on for a cleansing. They told him that he could leave at any point. But when, about three weeks into it, he decided it wasn’t for him, they wouldn’t let him go. He managed to escape and went to the authorities. When confronted, a New Day official claimed that it was their policy to ‘discourage’ people from leaving a cleansing, much in the way someone who wanted to leave a drug or alcohol treatment center would be discouraged. They returned Mr. Benchly’s assets to his control, claiming that he had a serious substance abuse problem and needed help. Three weeks later, Mr. Benchly was found dead in a motel room. He’d shot himself in the head. Tox reports showed crack cocaine. The thing was, prior to his joining The New Day, Mr. Benchly had never had a substance abuse problem at all, at least not according to his ex-wife, former employers, and friends.
“This incident caused the FBI to investigate The New Day again. But again, they found nothing illegal in their activities.”
“But they were taking people’s money and holding them against their will.”
“Well, no. Those people were willingly signing over their assets to be managed by accountants who were also New Day members. And in the contract people sign when they are accepted for a cleansing, it states clearly that they will be ‘discouraged’ from leaving before the cleansing is complete.”
“You have to wonder,” said Lydia, taking a sip from her coffee. “Where do you have to be in your life to turn over your autonomy like that? Your assets, your freedom.”
She shuddered slightly as if she couldn’t imagine anything worse.
“Maybe you just have to be really desperate,” said Matt, finishing off his food and thinking about another order. “Or clinically depressed or hopeless, vulnerable to anyone who promises to make you feel better.”
Lydia looked at him then and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. She had a very still face, beautiful in the way that precious metals were beautiful, cool, and distant. The gray of her eyes was impenetrable; there was no way to know what was going on behind them unless she told you.
“Did you sense that Lily was that kind of person?” she asked.
“No,” he said without hesitation. “I didn’t.”
“But her brother might have been.”
“Did Tim Samuels tell you that?”
