That was the real bones of detective work, slowly looking at every possibility. Quietly visiting, observing, asking careful questions, sometimes the same question over and over. The old dogs, the guys that had fifteen, twenty years on them said they used to be able to do their jobs like that. Today, it was all political, high tech. Get the DNA, the fingerprint, run it through the system, find your man. Clear the case; bring the crime stats down so the mayor looks good. Fast was key. Careful was not so important. In the Missing Persons Division, the first thirty-six hours was the panic, the rush when all resources were available to you. After that, they figured you were looking for a corpse. The bosses started to get impatient for you to clear or move on. But Lily never got her thirty-six hours; they were long past before anyone realized she was gone. He felt that crush in his chest again.
They were out on the street before either of them spoke again.
“Thank you, Detective,” she said. “I know this isn’t easy or comfortable for you.”
He nodded. “I want you to find her. I’ll check my ego and break a few rules to help you to do that,” he said.
She looked at him thoughtfully.
“You know my husband left the FBI because he felt like the politics and policies, the rules and procedures put the Bureau before the victims. He left so that he could be a better investigator.”
Matt nodded. He knew what she was getting at. But he was a cop; it was the only thing he had ever wanted to be.
“Anyway, all I’m saying is call me if you decide the same thing about the NYPD. There’s something to be said for the private sector.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said with a smile as she slid into her Mercedes. He stood and watched her as she pulled into traffic and sped off with a gunning of the engine.
At the first traffic light, Lydia checked her cell phone. She’d had the ringer off in the restaurant but it had still signaled her when messages came in; she’d felt it vibrating in her pocket. Jeff had called and Dax, too, within a minute of each other. While she’d still been with the detective, she’d received a text message from Jeffrey. “With DS?” it read. “Mt @ D’s 2100. 5683U. J.” His shorthand translated to: “Are you with Detective Stenopolis? Meet me at Dax’s at 9 p.m. Love you, Jeff.”
The glowing red light from the dashboard clock read 7:08. She had some time. There was a stop she wanted to make before meeting the boys.
She turned on the radio and flipped through stations, finally settling on some old-school house music. It lifted the pall that was settling over her a little, bringing to mind heaving dance floors and disco lights. Then she remembered the last time she’d been in a place like that and watched a young girl die there. She turned off the radio and drove in silence.
There was a personality profile for people who joined cults. That’s what The New Day sounded like to Lydia-a cult. Lily didn’t fit that profile. But maybe Mickey did. Tim Samuels claimed that his stepson struggled with depression all his life. She well knew that the death of a parent was traumatic enough to leave scars that last a lifetime. But the suicide of a parent must be even more devastating. It might have left him with a lifelong terror of abandonment or a deep sense of unworthiness that would account for what she remembered Lily saying and what Jasmine had confirmed: that Mickey was a seeker. He might have been vulnerable to a place like The New Day. Of course, Lily had had the same experiences but she was younger and she had accepted Tim Samuels as her father. She didn’t remember Simon Graves and so maybe avoided his terrible legacy.
In her class at NYU, Lydia had taught that the art of investigation was much like the art of method acting. The investigator had to develop an empathy for the person for whom she was looking, reach inside for the true heart and mind of the subject to find their motivations. Otherwise the search would be hollow, superficial, and ultimately unsuccessful, unless they got lucky. She didn’t mention, and she probably should have, how terribly dangerous this could be. How it could lead an investigator to become personally involved with his or her subject. How it could lead to burnout, at best. Or at worst the kind of haunting Lydia experienced. The lost girls were always with her, always waiting to be found.
She wondered about Lily, grieving, feeling alone, convinced that her brother had not killed himself and being the only one who felt that way. She was vulnerable to begin with; she began her investigation with a tremendous love and empathy for her subject. If she’d followed Lydia’s investigative techniques and philosophies, she could have easily been sucked into the same black hole that took Mickey.
She pressed a button on the dash. “Call Jeffrey,” she said to the voice-activated phone in her car.
“Where have you been?” he said when he answered.
She told him about Detective Stenopolis and all he had shared about The New Day, then told him her thoughts about Lily.
“I was wondering how long it would be before you found a way to blame yourself for this,” said Jeffrey.
“I’m not blaming myself,” she said defensively. “I’m just following my own advice. I’m getting inside her head.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, letting the subject drop. “Well, Dax thinks he found a way inside The New Day.”
“He thinks?” She had a brief but vivid imagining of them all being captured by The New Day, strapped into five-point restraints on gurneys, forced to watch some kind of religious videos with their eyes pried open in a hideous Clockwork Orange scenario.
“Well, it’s not an exact science, breaking and entering,” said Jeffrey. “There are a lot of variables, as you well know.”
“Great,” she said.
“I’m with Dax now in Riverdale,” he said. “We’re going over the details. When can you get here?”
“I have to make a stop first and then I’ll be there.”
“Where are you stopping?” he said, sounding suspicious. She had a bad reputation for doing reckless things on her own and paid for it by having to answer a lot of annoying questions from her husband.
“I have to pick something up from my grandmother.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure.”
She was so glad her grandparents had moved into the city. The house they’d had in Nyack and then later the one they’d had in Sleepy Hollow had each been uncomfortable for her in different ways. The house in Nyack was so like the house in which she had lived with her mother, the house in which her mother had been murdered. Same clapboard, white trim, same shingled roof.
When her grandparents moved to Nyack to take care of Lydia after the death of her mother, they thought it was important that she stay in the same neighborhood, attend the same school so that her life as she knew it wasn’t totally obliterated. Looking back, Lydia wondered if it had been the best idea. It might have been harder initially but in the long run, moving to another area, starting at a new school might have helped her to reinvent herself. Instead, in school she would forever be “the girl whose mother was murdered.” Living less than a mile from the house where her mother had been killed, she always had to consciously avoid that street and notice neighbors and the parents of her classmates avoiding that street during car pools. There were always small reminders that seemed to keep the wound forever fresh.
The house in Sleepy Hollow had been different, quaint and Victorian. But Jed McIntyre had been there, too. The move to the city had been good for everyone.
She walked into the lobby of the luxury high-rise and nodded to the doorman, who recognized her and let her through without buzzing up to her grandparents. The heels of her boots clicked loudly on the marble floors and echoed off the high ceiling. She looked at her reflection in the polished metal doors of the elevator and thought she might try wearing some other color than black one day, but doubted it.