The doors opened but the apartment was dark except for the large flat-screen television in the living room. A huge dark form sat on the edge of the couch, feet up on the coffee table. An episode of South Park was turned up too loud. An arm the size of a jackhammer reached out and the light on the end table came up. Dax turned to look at them.
“What are you two looking so tense about? You said it was urgent, yeah?”
Lydia started to breathe again and wondered when she’d become so jumpy.
“Yeah,” she said, dropping her leather coat over one of the chairs and stepping down into the sunken living room. “It’s urgent.”
“Great,” he said. “Can we talk over pizza? I’m starved.”
She sat on the coffee table and looked at him, reached for the remote, and flipped the television off.
“This is what I’m thinking. I’m thinking all of this started a long time ago. I’m thinking Rhames and Samuels both worked for Sandline.”
The smile dropped from Dax’s face and he got that granite look, those flat eyes he got when she pushed too hard into his past.
“I think Rhames and not The New Day was trying to ruin Tim Samuels’ life. And I think he convinced Mickey to help him.”
Dax sat silent and Jeffrey came up behind him.
“What I don’t understand is what Tim Samuels did that could cause Rhames to hate him so much for so long, what could cause Mickey Samuels, the boy Tim raised like his own, to join forces with a psychopath and do all the awful things he’s done.”
“And you think I know the answer to that?”
“I think you know something about Sandline. And if you do, maybe you know something about what might have happened between those two.”
Dax got up and walked toward the window on the other side of the television. He drew in and released a breath.
“If I knew something that would help you, do you think I would keep it from you?”
“If you had to or thought you had to, yes,” she said to his back. “There are huge parts of your life we know nothing about.”
He nodded but kept his back to her. “And that’s probably not going to change. But I’m telling you the truth when I say that I don’t know anything about this situation.”
Lydia sighed and leaned back on the couch. She looked at the familiar form of their friend and thought he seemed like a stranger. She didn’t think he would lie to her but she realized she didn’t know for sure. And she wondered what that meant about their relationship. Can you trust someone who chooses what he reveals about himself? Can there be a true friendship with someone who hides huge parts of his life? Lydia didn’t know. She felt a strange sadness, an odd distance from him as he came to sit across from her on the low, stout cocktail table.
“What I can tell you is that no one talks about Sandline. Everything about them, including whatever you’ve done for them, is classified. You violate that agreement and they burn your life down-not just your life, but the life of anyone you’ve told.”
“If that’s true, then I don’t know where to go from here.”
He shook his head and looked at the floor. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“There’s only one place we can go, I think,” said Jeffrey.
“Grimm, right?” said Lydia, leaning forward looking at Dax. “How do we find him?”
Dax smiled. But the smile was cool and didn’t reach his eyes. “You’ll never see Grimm again.”
“There’s only one person who knows what links Rhames and Tim Samuels,” said Jeffrey, coming to sit beside her. “There’s only one person who might know the secret that would cause Mickey to turn against his stepfather like this, destroying his whole family in the process.”
Lydia rubbed the tension from her neck. “Monica Samuels,” she said. “She wouldn’t tell us before.”
“Let’s try again,” said Jeffrey.
Thirty-Three
They found Monica Samuels at Lily’s apartment, looking pale and shaken.
“The police were just here,” she told them as she held the door open for them. “They say Mickey may be alive, that he tried to kill a police officer. Can that be true?”
She looked at them with wide eyes and her skin was gray and papery. She seemed fragile, barely solid, as though the news the police had brought her might carry her away like a tornado.
“Where’s Lily?” asked Lydia, looking around the small apartment.
“She left,” said Monica, looking at the door.
“To find Mickey?” asked Jeffrey.
“Mostly to get away from me, I think,” said Monica, sinking into the couch and curling her legs up beneath her.
“You fought?” asked Lydia sitting beside her. Jeffrey leaned against the granite countertop. Lydia released a breath when Monica didn’t answer.
“Let us help you,” Lydia said. “This has to end. Whatever you’re hiding has destroyed your life.”
Her face stayed blank, her eyes glazed over. “It’s too late, I think. The family is shattered, just like he wanted. Just like he’s wanted since he was a little boy.”
“Why would he want that?”
She rested her forehead in her bony, well-manicured hand. “Because he thinks we killed his father.”
“Simon Graves?”
Monica nodded. “They’re so alike, that same dark place inside of them. They disappear in there. It swallows them… the anger, the sadness.”
Lydia didn’t say anything, waited for her to go on.
“Simon had Mickey with him that day when he walked in on Tim and me making love. We were at Tim’s house on the island, you’ve been there. Simon and Mickey came strolling in. We were by the fire.”
“They knew each other?”
“They were close friends,” she said, looking at Lydia. “And they worked together.”
“At Sandline,” said Lydia.
Monica startled, like the sound of the word frightened her. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “How do you know that? We’re never to talk about that.”
“So all of them, Rhames, Samuels, and Graves worked together?” Jeffrey said from the counter.
Monica gave the slightest nod. But that’s not what she wanted to talk about. There were other things she wanted to lay down before Lydia. “Mickey was too young to really understand what he was seeing. And because he was there, Simon just picked him up and left us without a word.” She laughed a little. “Part of me was glad he found us. All the lies and sneaking around were finished. I figured he’d leave me; we’d all pick up the pieces and move on. I could finally be free of that darkness that leaked out of him like a fog. It was killing me.”
“But he killed himself instead.”
“Several weeks later, yes,” she said, her hand flying to her mouth, the tears starting to fall.
“And Mickey blamed you and Tim.”
“At first, yes,” she said with a quick nod, wrapping her arms around herself.
“What changed?”
She seemed to shrink a little here, wanted to make herself as small as possible. “He was young, too young to really understand what he saw. Simon tried to spare Mickey by hiding his anger that day. But you can’t really hide things from children. ‘You made Daddy so sad and now he’s gone,’ he’d say to me afterward. ‘Why was he so sad?’ ”
She paused here, released a shuddering sigh. Then, “We couldn’t take it. We didn’t want Mickey growing up with that memory.”
“And you didn’t want him reminding you.”
She looked at Lydia and shook her head. “Over a period of months, we were able to convince Mickey that he hadn’t seen what he thought he saw, that it was a dream.”
Lydia shook her head, not understanding. “How?”