The Dark Tide Free for a Limited Time (14 page)

Karen went back through all of Charlie’s things as Hauck had asked her. She opened the cartons she had kept piled in the basement, doing her best to avoid the attention of the kids. Heavy, boxed-up files that Heather, his secretary, had sent with a note:
You never know what’s in them. Maybe something you’ll want to keep
. Brochures for trips they had taken as a family. The ski house they rented one year at Whistler. Letters. A kazillion letters. A bunch of things on the Mustang, which Charlie had asked her in the will he left not to sell.

Basically, the sum of their lives together. Stuff Karen had never had the heart to go through. But nothing that helped. At some point she sat in frustration with her back against the concrete basement wall and silently swore at him.
Charlie, why the hell did you do this to us?

Then she went through the computer that was still sitting at his desk. She turned it on for the first time since the incident. It felt weird, invasive—as if she were prying into him. His signature was everywhere. In a million years she would never have
done this when he was alive. Charlie never kept a password. Karen was able to get right in. What on earth had there ever been to hide?

She scrolled through his stored Word documents. Mostly they were letters he’d written from home—to industry people, trade publications. The draft of a speech or two he’d given. She went on his AOL account. Any e-mails he might’ve written before he disappeared had probably long since been wiped away.

It felt futile. And dirty, going through his things. She sat there at his desk, in the messy study, much of it still just as he’d left it a year before, where he’d paid the bills and read over his trade journals and checked his positions, the desk still piled with trade sheets and prospectuses.

There was nothing. He didn’t want to be found. He could be anywhere in the fucking world.

And the truth was, Karen had no idea what she was gong to do if she even found him.

She contacted Heather, who was working at a small law firm now. And Linda Edelstein, whom Karen still occasionally used as a travel agent. She asked them both to think back on whether Charlie had made any unusual purchases (“a condo somewhere, as crazy as that sounds, or a car?”) or booked any travel plans in the weeks before he died. She concocted this inane story about discovering something in his office about a surprise trip he’d been planning, an anniversary thing.

How in the world could she possibly tell them what was really in her mind?

As a friend, Linda scrolled back through her travel computer. “I don’t think so, Kar. I would have remembered at the time. I’m sorry, hon. There’s nothing here.”

This was insane. Karen sat there among her husband’s things at her wits’ end, growing angry, wishing she never had watched that documentary. It had changed everything.
Why would you do this to us, Charlie? What could you possibly have done?

Tell me, Charlie!

She picked up a stack of loose papers and went to throw them against the wall. Just then her gaze fell to a memo from Harbor that was still there from a year before. Her eye ran down the office distribution list. Maybe they knew. She spotted a name there—a name that hadn’t crossed her mind in months.

Along with a voice. A voice she had never responded to, but one that now suddenly echoed in her ears with the same ringing message:

I’d like to speak with you, Mrs. Friedman…. There are some things you ought to know.

The address was 3135 Mountain View Drive, a hilly residential road. In Upper Montclair, New Jersey.

Karen found Jonathan Lauer’s address in one of Charlie’s folders. She checked to make sure it was still valid. She didn’t want to talk with him on the phone. It was a Saturday afternoon.

There are some things you ought to know….

Saul had said it was just a matter of personnel issues, compensation. Karen had never heard from him again. And it wasn’t that she didn’t trust Saul. It was just that if they were turning over every stone, the way Ty wanted to, she thought she might as well hear it from Lauer directly. She had never called him back. It had been an awfully long time.

But suddenly Charlie’s trader’s cryptic words took on a more important meaning.

Karen pulled into the driveway. There was a white minivan parked in the open two-car garage. The house was a cedar and glass contemporary with a large double-story window in the front. A kid’s bike lay on the front lawn. Next to a portable soc
cer net. Rows of pachysandra and boxwood flanked the flagstone walkway leading up to the front door.

Karen felt a little nervous and embarrassed, after so much time. She rang the bell.

“I got it, Mommy!”

A young girl in pigtails who appeared around five or six opened the door.

“Hey.” Karen smiled. “Is your daddy or mommy at home?”

A woman’s voice called out from inside, “Lucy, who’s there?”

Kathy Lauer came to the door, holding a rolling pin. Karen had met her once or twice—first at an office gathering and, later, at Charlie’s memorial. She was petite, with shoulder-length dark hair, wearing a green Nantucket sweatshirt. She stared at Karen in surprise.

“I don’t know if you remember me—” Karen started in.

“Of course I remember you, Mrs. Friedman,” Kathy Lauer replied, cradling her daughter’s face to her thigh.

“Karen,”
Karen replied. “I’m sorry to bother you. I know you must be wondering what I’m doing here, out of the blue. I was just wondering if your husband might be at home.”

Kathy Lauer looked at her a bit strangely. “My husband?”

There was a bit of an awkward pause.

Karen nodded. “Jon called me a couple of times, after Charlie—” She stopped herself before she said the word. “I’m a little embarrassed. I never got back to him. I was all caught up then. I know it’s a while back. But he mentioned some things….”

“Some things?”
Kathy Lauer stared. Karen couldn’t quite read her reaction, nervousness or annoyance. Kathy asked her daughter to go back into the kitchen, said she’d be along in a second to finish rolling the cookie dough with her. The little girl ran off.

“Some things about my husband’s business,” Karen clarified. “By any chance is he around? I know it’s a little strange to be coming here now….”

“Jon’s dead,” Kathy Lauer said. “I thought you knew.”

“Dead?”
Karen felt her heart come to a stop and the blood rush out of her face. She shook her head numbly. “My God, I’m so sorry…. No…”

“About a month ago,” his wife said. “He was on his bike coming back up the road, up Mountain View. A car ran into him. Just like that. A hit-and-run. The guy who hit him never even stopped.”

Dock 39 was a dingy, nautical-style bar in the harbor, not far from the navy yard. A shorted-out Miller sign flickered on and off in the window, while a carving of a ship’s bow hung above the entrance on the wooden façade. From the street Hauck could see a TV on inside. A basketball game. It was playoff time. A crowd of people gathered whooping around the bar.

Hauck stepped inside.

The place was dark, smoky, jammed with bodies fresh from the docks. A noisy throng at the bar was following the game. The Pistons versus the Heat. People were still in their work clothes, blowing off steam. Dock workers and seamen. No office crowd here. Ray Dubose had told Hauck that this was where he could find him.

Hauck caught the barman’s eye and asked him for a Bass ale. He spotted Pappy, huddled with a few guys drinking beer down at the end of the bar. The old man seemed disinterested in the game. He stared ahead, ignoring the sudden shouts that occasionally rang out or the jab of his neighbor’s elbow when someone made a
play. At some point Pappy turned around and noticed Hauck, Pappy’s eyes narrowing balefully and his jaw growing tight. He picked up his beer and stood up, pushing himself away from his crew.

He came over to Hauck, pushing through the crowd. “I heard you been asking about me. I thought I told you to head back to where you came.”

“I’m trying to solve a murder,” Hauck told him.

“I don’t need you to solve no murder. I need you to leave me alone and go back home.”

“What did you stumble into?” Hauck asked. “That’s why you won’t talk to me, isn’t it? That’s why you quit your job—or were pressured to. Someone threatened you. You can’t keep pretending it’s going to go away. It won’t go away now. Your son is dead. That’s what that ‘accident’ up in Greenwich was about, wasn’t it? Why AJ was killed.”

“Get the hell away from me.” Pappy Raymond pushed away Hauck’s arm. Hauck could see he was drunk.

“I’m trying to solve your son’s murder, Mr. Raymond. And I will, whether you help me or not. Why don’t you make it easy and tell me what you found?”

The more Hauck said, the more the anger seemed to build in Pappy Raymond’s eyes. “You’re not hearing me, are you, son?” He thrust his beer mug into Hauck’s chest. “I don’t want your help. I don’t need it. Go on out of here. Go back home.”

Hauck grabbed his arm. “I’m not your enemy, old man. But letting your son’s death eat away at you by doing nothing is. Those ships were falsifying something. They were empty, right? There was some kind of fraud going on. That’s why AJ was killed. It wasn’t any ‘accident’ up there. I know it—you know it, too. And I’m not backing off. You don’t tell me, someone will. I’ll pitch a tent on your goddamn lawn until I know.”

A roar went up from the bar. “C’mon, Pappy!” one of his buddies yelled to him. “Wade just hit a three. We’re back down by six.”

“This is the last time I’m telling you.” Pappy glared. His gaze burned into Hauck’s eyes. “Go on home.”

“No.” Hauck shook his head. “I’m not.”

That was when the old guy raised his arm and took a swing at him. A wild one, his fist catching on the shoulder of a man nearby, but the punch of a man who was used to throwing them, and it surprised Hauck, catching him on the side of his face. The mug shot out of his hands, crashing to the floor, spilling beer.

People spun around to them.
“Whoa…!”

“What is it you want from me, mister?” Pappy grabbed Hauck by the collar. He raised his fist again. “Can’t you just go back to wherever the hell you’re from and let what’s happened here die out? You want to be a hero, solve someone else’s crime. Leave my family alone.”

“Why are you protecting these people? Whoever they are, they killed your son.”

Pappy’s face was barely an inch away from Hauck’s, the smell of beer and anger all over him. He raised his fist back again.

“Why?” Hauck stared at him.
“Why…?”

“Because I have other children,” Pappy said, anguish burning in his eyes. His fist hesitated. “Don’t you understand?
They
have children.”

Suddenly the wrath in the old man’s eyes began to diminish, and what was left there, in his hot, tremoring irises, was something else. Helplessness. The desperation of someone boxed in, with nowhere to turn.

“You don’t know.” Pappy glared at him, lowering his fist, releasing Hauck’s collar. “You just don’t know….”

“I do know.” Hauck met the old man’s eyes. “I know exactly. I lost a child, too.”

Hauck pressed something into Pappy’s hand as a couple of his friends finally came over and pulled him away, saying the old man had had one too many, offering to buy Hauck another beer.
They dragged him back to the bar, where he sat, his face flushed with alcohol and incoherence, amid the hollering and smoke.

Dejected, Pappy opened his fist and stared. His eyes widened. Then he looked back at Hauck.

Please,
his expression said, this time with desperation.
Just go away
.

“Mom?”

Samantha knocked on the bedroom door.

Karen turned. “Yes, hon.”

Karen was on the bed with the TV going. She didn’t even know what she was watching. The whole ride back to Greenwich, it beat on her—Jonathan was dead. Struck by a car coming down from the hill while cycling back to his home. Charlie’s trader had been trying to tell her something. He had a family, two young kids. And just like that boy who had Charlie’s name in his pocket, who had died in Greenwich the same day Charlie disappeared—Jonathan had died the same way. A hit-and-run. If she hadn’t had the thought to go and see him, she would never have known.

Samantha sat beside her. “Mom, what’s going on?”

Karen turned down the volume. “What do you mean?”

“Mom, please, we’re not idiots. You haven’t been yourself for over a week. You don’t exactly have to have a medical degree to see that you don’t have the flu. Something’s going on. Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m okay, honey.” Karen knew that her face was saying something different.
How could she possibly tell her daughter this?

Sam stared. “I don’t believe you. Look at you. You’ve barely left the house in days. You haven’t been working out or gone to yoga. You’re pale as a ghost. You can’t keep things from us. If they’re important. You’re not sick, are you?”

“No, baby.” Karen reached for her daughter’s hand. “I’m not sick. I promise.”

“So what is it, then?”

What could she possibly say? That things were starting to piece together that were really scaring her? That she had seen her husband’s face after he’d supposedly died? That she had come upon phony passports and money? That he may have been doing something illegal? That two people who might’ve shed some light on it were dead? How do you drag your children into the truth that their father had deceived them all in such a monstrous way? Karen asked herself. How do you unleash that kind of hurt and pain onto someone you love so much?

“Pregnant,
then?” Sam pressed her, with a sheepish grin.

“No, honey”—Karen smiled back—“I’m not pregnant.” A tear built up in her eye.

“Are you sad about me going off to college? Because if you are, I won’t go. I could go somewhere local. Stay here with you and Alex…”

“Oh, Samantha.” Karen pulled her daughter close and squeezed. “I would never, ever do that to you. I’m so proud of you, hon. How you’ve dealt with all this. I know how hard it’s been. I’m proud of both of you. You’ve got lives to live. What’s happened to your father can’t change that.”

“So what
is
it then, Mom?” Sam curled up her knee. “I saw that detective here the other night. The one from Greenwich. You guys were outside in the rain. Please, you can tell me. You always want honesty from me. Now it’s your turn.”

“I know,” Karen said. She lifted the hair out of Sam’s eyes. “I’ve always asked that from you, and you’ve given it, haven’t you?”

“Pretty much.” Samantha shrugged. “I’ve held a few things back.”

“Pretty much.” Karen smiled again, looking in her daughter’s eyes. “That’s about all I could ask for, isn’t it, honey?”

Samantha smiled in return.

“I know it’s my turn, Sam. But I just can’t tell you, honey. Not just yet. I’m sorry. There are some things—”

“It’s about Dad, isn’t it? I’ve seen you looking through his old things.”

“Sam, please, you have to trust me. I can’t—”

“I know he loved you, Mom.” Samantha’s eyes shone brightly. “Loved all of us. I just hope that in my life I’m lucky enough to find someone who loved me the same way.”

“Yes, baby.” Karen held her close. Tears wound their way down her cheeks as they clung to each other there. “I know, baby, I know—”

Then in mid-sentence she stopped. Something unsettling crossed her mind.

Lauer’s wife had said he was set to testify regarding Harbor the week he was killed. Saul Lennick would have known that.
Let me handle it, Karen….
He had never told her anything.

All of a sudden, Karen wondered,
Did he know?

Did he know Charlie was alive?

“Yes, baby…” Karen kept brushing her daughter’s hair. “I hope to God one day you do.”