Smoke

She shook her head, her neat blonde bob shimmering prettily in the light from the streetlamp coming in through the windshield. “No. I need him home with me at night. And I like to get him off to school in the morning when I can, have breakfast together. It’s important, you know.”

He nodded. He knew it was hard on her, being a single mother. But he admired her and envied her a little for it. In a way, it couldn’t be all bad to be needed so much by someone. And Benjamin was a sweet, cute little kid. With a button nose, deep, warm brown eyes, and a pouty little mouth, he looked just like his mom. And he wasn’t much shorter.

“Meet you back here at nine? We’ll head over to the bank offices. See about that security video,” he said.

She looked at him. “I’m not sure what to hope for, you know. If she’s on it and looks okay, we have to drop the case, but maybe she did take off. If not, then-” She stopped. She didn’t have to finish; he was thinking the same thing.

The gentleman his mother had raised compelled Matt to watch as Jesamyn climbed into her Ford Explorer and took off up Fifth Street tooting her horn good-night. It used to make her mad, like he was implying that she couldn’t take care of herself. And it was silly since if it came down to it, she’d probably wind up protecting him as he tripped over his own big clumsy feet. But he didn’t think she minded anymore; they understood each other better after working together for two years.

“How’s it going, Mount?” called the desk sergeant as Matt entered the precinct through the heavy wood doors.

The other cops at the Ninth called him Mount, short for Mount Stenopolis. Very creative bunch of guys. Real geniuses.

“Pretty good. How ’bout you, Sarge? Case of the clap clearing up?”

“Under control,” he said with a smile. “Hear your mother’s still on meds, though.”

He smiled, even as he felt his chest constrict with anger. You don’t insult a Greek guy’s mother. His big secret was that he was sensitive about his mother. That he was sensitive in general. Matt could banter with the best of them, but he knew it got to him in a way it didn’t get to the other guys. He did a good job of hiding it, though.

“You’re killin’ me,” he said.

He lumbered up the three flights to his office, taking two steps at a time with ease. At his desk, he checked for messages on his voicemail, found none, and pulled out Lily’s file. He looked up at the picture he had pinned to the corkboard over the desk in his cube. Whoever had taken the picture had captured her essence. There was a sweetness to her, but also a kind of wisdom in her black eyes. Her smile was warm, her heart-shaped face open and friendly. A storm cloud of jet-black curls framed her face. He felt an ache looking at her, knowing that the clock was ticking.

Maybe, if he was honest with himself, that was why he’d finally gone to see Lydia Strong. Maybe part of him was hoping that she’d take an interest, so if tomorrow turned out to be the last day they’d be able to devote any real time to Lily, someone else would pick up the trail. If there was a trail to pick up.

Somewhere on another floor a phone rang and rang. He could hear Marilyn Manson music coming from the gym on the floor above him and the heavy clink of someone doing reps. There was an unpleasant smell in the air like someone had burned popcorn in the microwave oven again. He looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight.

He’d spend a couple of hours going over the file again, see if they missed anything. Then he’d grab a few hours on one of the bunks, shower and change here in the morning. He always kept a clean set of clothes in his locker because he spent a lot of nights at the precinct. After all, it wasn’t like he had anyone to go home to.

Three

The day dawned bright and cold but Lydia barely noticed as she surfed the web looking for information on Lily and Mickey Samuels. She’d been up half the night thinking about it, keeping Jeffrey awake with her nervous energy. Around four, she gave up on the idea that she might go back to sleep, headed to her office, and booted her computer. She logged onto LexisNexis and plugged in the name Mickey Samuels and came back with nothing. She tried “Michael Samuels” and got three listings. Scrolling through them, she discovered that only one of them related to Lily’s brother.

The Riverdale Press ran a brief piece on Mickey’s suicide, which basically confirmed the details Matt Stenopolis had given her the night before, without adding much more.

Local Cafe Owner Ends Life

The body of Michael James Samuels, 28, was discovered yesterday by a local resident as he arrived to work at the Walmart on Broadway. Police have ruled the death a suicide, Samuels having died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Jessup Irving, 65, noticed a car parked at the far reaches of the empty lot and went to investigate.

“I saw someone sitting there so still. It just seemed odd to me, early as it was. Not yet seven.”

As he approached the car, he made a gruesome discovery.

“I just started praying,” said Irving. “Then I took my cell phone and called 911.”

The discovery of gunshot residue on Samuels’ right hand and powder burns at his temple confirmed what police had surmised at the scene, that the death was a suicide. Police say there is no evidence of foul play. Friends reported that Samuels had lately been depressed and acting erratically due to a recent breakup and the fact that business was slow at his recently opened coffee shop and performance space called No Doze. Neither Samuels’ family nor ex-girlfriend could be reached for comment.

“It just goes to show that guns and alcohol don’t mix well,” said Irving, commenting on the discovery of a half-consumed bottle of whiskey in Samuels’ car.

“Words to live by,” said Lydia out loud as she read, lingering on the photograph of Mickey Samuels. He was a good-looking guy with high cheekbones, bright blue eyes, and an expansive smile he had in common with his sister. There was that same brightness to him, the same wide-open, happily expectant look to his face that she had always liked about Lily. It was hard to imagine him sitting alone in a dark car with a gun and a bottle of JD, thinking that the barrel looked brighter than the rest of his life. Lydia made a note on a pad of paper by her keyboard: Girlfriend?

She tried searches on Google and Yahoo as well, but came up with nothing. She wasn’t that surprised. People had strange attitudes about suicide and it wasn’t covered much in the media, unless the deceased was a celebrity or the case could be tied into a larger story on, for example, the failure of a controversial anti-depressant or something like that. Otherwise people seemed to want to avoid the topic. Maybe because there was so much guilt and anger involved for the people left behind, such a sense of disconnect from the loved one who’d chosen death instead of life with them.

There was a larger piece on Lily in the Post. It talked some about her education, her career, her grief over her brother’s death. The article reported that she had packed a bag on October 15th after taking a week off from work and headed up to Riverdale. Local residents reported her asking questions of residents and business owners, spending time in her brother’s apartment, at his coffeehouse that had been closed since his death. And like Detective Stenopolis had said, no one had seen her after October 22nd. Residents of Riverdale who had contact with her just assumed she had given up and gone home. It was October 30th, her mother’s birthday, before anyone reported her missing. The article ended with a mention of a ten-thousand-dollar reward offered by the family for any information leading to Lily.

There was a sidebar about missing persons statistics in the United States. Apparently, in California alone in 2003, more than thirty thousand people had disappeared from their lives voluntarily. Meaning that they packed some things, cashed out their accounts, and without a word to anyone in their lives, just left. Five hundred eighty- five disappeared under suspicious circumstances with significant evidence of a stranger abduction. And 247 were missing, the circumstances of their disappearance totally unknown. Nationally, in 2001 more than eight hundred thousand adults and children were counted as missing by the FBI’s National Crime Information Center. Nearly a million people gone by accident, foul play, or design. Just gone.