Buried in the middle of nowhere, the New Day Farms kept only a high chain-link fence at the end of the drive that connected to the road. Lydia and Jeffrey scaled it easily; Dax took it a little harder and the landing looked like it caused him some pain. But all in all, he seemed to be getting back to form, still stiff but much stronger and more agile.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m some foreign specimen under a microscope.”
“I just don’t understand-” she started but Jeffrey held up a hand and looked at them both sternly.
“This is not the time.”
“I’m the same person,” he whispered to her as they walked along the edge of the drive. She nodded, looked into his eyes. “Nothing has changed,” he said when she didn’t answer him.
The air was so thick with humidity that Lydia felt like she was breathing gauze. Even in short sleeves, she was sweating as they made their way quietly but quickly in a light jog up the drive. The heavy foliage around them was so green it was black in the dark; it had a pulse, it moved. She felt like they were walking beside a living thing. She heard the flapping of giant wings in the leaves above them, something scurrying near their feet. There was a threatening aura to the exotic ferns, twisting vine-covered trucks, fanning palm leaves, so much they couldn’t see. She kept close to Jeff and away from Dax.
“There won’t be any security to speak of until you get to the end of the drive. Then it’s going to get complicated,” Grimm had told them.
But Lydia felt watched. She felt like the wall of living green to her right had eyes, that they were expected and someone was having a good laugh about it.
“I don’t like a single thing about this,” said Lydia to Jeffrey.
“Me neither,” said Jeffrey. “Just stay close and be careful.”
So what you’re telling me is that you just happened to be in the neighborhood at the time of the shooting and spotted The New Day van on the side of the street.”
Jesamyn shrugged, wondering if he’d let it fly. But he turned a hard look on her.
“Detective, if we’re straight with each other things might go easier for everyone, including your partner.”
She sighed and sat down at Clifford Stern’s dining-room table, old, full of nicks and hairline scratches. It wobbled when she put her elbow on it. Bloom sat beside her. She looked at him and wondered: Was he a good cop just looking for the truth? Or was he an asshole who thought he already had it sewn up and any new evidence or information that proved otherwise would be an assault to his ego?
She looked up at Dylan, who nodded.
“I asked my ex-husband to come up here and watch Clifford Stern, see where he went, see who visited him.”
“And you saw the van?” asked Bloom, turning to Dylan who stood behind him. Dylan nodded, told him how he’d seen it pull up and sit.
“But no one got out. No one went into the Stern residence.”
“No,” said Dylan, shaking his head and folding his arms across his chest. “I waited a few hours, there was no activity from the van. I went to get Jez-Detective Breslow, to show her the van, and while we were here deciding what to do, we saw three flashes in the window, heard the sound of gunfire. We called 911.”
Bloom had his head cocked to Dylan, but his eyes were on the wall beside him, as if the scene were playing out for him there. “Then you took off?” asked Bloom with a frown that was somewhere between surprise and suspicion. “Why didn’t you investigate?”
Dylan and Jez were silent, exchanged a look. “We weren’t sure how it would look,” Jez said finally. “I thought, if they could frame Mount the way they did, why not me?” She paused and looked down at the table. “I have a son.”
Bloom looked at her carefully, with a slight narrowing of the eyes.
“But the van’s gone now,” he said after a minute of considering their story. They both nodded. “Seems like you could have called and told me what you were up to, Breslow.”
“I told you about The New Day when you questioned me. You didn’t seem to be taking me seriously.”
He shrugged. “I was taking you seriously. But some crazy-sounding story about a cult framing your partner and actually seeing the van in front of the residence of the only eyewitness to his crime is a different matter. Don’t you agree?”
She nodded, feeling like she’d let Matt down in a major way.
“Did you get the plate?” Bloom asked Dylan.
Dylan removed a slip of paper from his pocket and handed it to the Detective. Jesamyn looked at him. She’d asked him the same question right before the gunfire and he hadn’t had a chance to answer.
“Did you run it?”
Dylan nodded. “The van is registered to The New Day. There are two outstanding parking tickets, one on the Upper West Side, and one in Riverdale.”
Jesamyn started at the harsh ripping sound of a body bag being zipped. She felt despair at the sound of it. “Two.38 slugs to the head,” said Bloom as the ME rolled the corpse out.
Jesamyn nodded. She knew Mount had a Smith & Wesson five-shot at home. His off-duty revolver, smaller and lighter than the Glock he carried on the job. From the look on Bloom’s face, he knew it too.
“You said two shots?” asked Dylan. “You find a third slug?”
Bloom shook his head. “Not yet. We’re not finished with the scene.”
“We heard three shots,” said Jesamyn.
Bloom shrugged. “If it’s here, we’ll find it.”
Jesamyn held Bloom’s eyes. She knew what he was thinking; she was thinking the same thing. If they’d come in here after the shots were fired, what would they have found? She pushed the thought away; there was no point in worrying about that now. But if she had to make the decision again, she’d do the same. Ben came first. He always came first. She fought the urge to put her head in her hands.
Since the slashing of his Achilles tendons, Dax Chicago had had a lot of time to think about the things he’d done. He’d managed to push so many days and moments from his memory that there were big black spaces in the narrative of his life. He liked it that way. Some things he wasn’t supposed to remember, other things he just didn’t want to remember. The little game Lydia played, trying to tease him into telling her things he couldn’t tell. She thought he was keeping things from her. And in some cases, that was true. There were things he couldn’t tell her or anyone. But there were plenty more he’d succeeded in forgetting altogether. Most people didn’t understand how that was possible. But then most people hadn’t been the places he’d been.
Since the accident, memories had returned unbidden. It was the inactivity, the insomnia, the time that was filled only with the pain of his slowly healing legs that allowed his deeds to come marching back. Now people, too, it seemed. People like Grimm. He’d never thought they would see each other again, and that had been fine by him.
Lydia and Jeffrey were ahead of him on the path. She was just within his reach. He wanted to grab her shoulders and spin her around, force her to look into his eyes. Her new knowledge of his past-or what she thought was her new knowledge-didn’t change their friendship. Jeffrey, Dax knew, was comfortable with the gray choices. He knew better than most that the just thing wasn’t always the legal thing. He knew that some people had to die so that other people could live. And Jeff, like Dax, was willing to be the person who made choices like that. But Lydia had never shared those feelings… even when her own life was at stake.