The New York City afternoon air is cold and wet. The fog patchy and eerie. The casket black. I stand next to my father, the high-pitched sound of bagpipes cranking up my already hyped emotions. The wind gusts lifting my blonde hair, that is for once not in a neat braid at my neck, and I pull up the collar of my black trench coat, seeking shelter from the weather, though there is no escape from the grief clawing at my mind and body. In that moment, I have a renewed sense of my father standing next to me and the heaviness of his grief. He reaches for me and pulls me under his arm, sheltering me with his substantial six-foot-two frame, as if he’s afraid I will die next. No. Not as if. That’s what he fears and how can he not? We’re surrounded by men and women in badges, all honoring the death of my uncle, his brother, and one of New York’s finest homicide detectives. There’s no way around the fact that I’m one of those badges, a newly-knighted detective, and even in the wake of my uncle’s death, an eager protégée to his legendary skill. That’s a hard pill for my father to swallow on a day like this one, especially when I’d once found my father’s pharmaceutical empire the inspiration for a medical degree, now long abandoned.
My gaze lifts and I scan the thick crowd of uniforms and suits, some heads bowed, some heads lifted to the sky as if looking for answers. Many with tissues in hand and to their eyes. A sudden, strange pull has my attention lifting beyond the casket and to the right, far in the distance. I squint and bring a man in a hat and trench coat into focus. He’s a good twenty-feet from the service, and yet, he’s focused on us. He is too far away for me to decipher his features, and surely the scene, complete with flags, trumpets, bagpipes and uniforms, is a spectacle to see, but every instinct I own tells me he’s here for my uncle. While that could be about respect, my gut says otherwise. Perhaps he’s here to celebrate the death of a man who brought many a killer to justice. I do not like this man, nor the new chill that chases a path up and down my spine and has nothing to do with the weather.
The trumpets begin to play Taps and I suck in air at what feels like the beginning of the end. My father’s arm falls away from me and he clutches his fist at his chest. All thought of the man in the distance fades. I take his arm, holding onto him, never wanting to let go. Too soon, the song fades into gunfire: one, two, three, four shots, and my father and I are suddenly holding each other, holding on so very tight because a killer, one who my uncle was closing in on, decided to end his life. The way a random criminal in a convenience store had ended my mother’s life two years go. Just as a monster had raped and murdered my best friend in college.
The rest of the presentation drags on eternally. It could be five minutes, but it feels like an hour of emotional torture. I’m handed a flag. I shake hands, so many hands. I say: “thank you” over and over. Finally, and yet too soon, it’s over. Those who’ve come to honor Jonathan “Big C” Carpenter fade away and for a long time my father and I simply stand at the casket. We don’t speak, but we do cry.
A long time later, I think, we walk toward the car. A single droplet of cold rain splashes down on my nose, but there is none that follows. I crave the next for some reason, perhaps because when there is nothing more to follow, there is nothing but death.
Three days later...
It’s after seven in the evening on a Friday night, and word from my father’s assistant is that he’s worked fifteen-hour days since the funeral and has yet to offer one of his brilliant, now famous, quips and smiles. Concerned for him, my shift drags on forever until I can finally head to his office, a fancy high-rise building in the financial district that is a ghost town this time of evening. I enter the building by way of a glass door etched with “Carpenter Pharmaceuticals” to find the lobby quiet and empty. I head through the sparkling lobby, with its shiny black floors and silver-steel accents, to the security post where I greet Joe, the sixty-something guard I’ve known since I was a kid.
“I brought him some of his favorite cookies,” I say, holding up a bag. “I want to surprise him.”
He indicates the coffee shop on the opposite side of the lobby. “He’s in the back corner. Been there for hours.”
The grim look on his face matches his tone and stirs my concern. “He’s not good,” I say, and it’s both a statement and a question.
His lips thin. “I have nothing but instinct and twenty years working here to go on, but no. He’s not good.”
Instinct and observation is golden, I think, or so my uncle used to say. “Thank you, Joe.”
I turn away and waste no time finding my father in his little corner of the now-deserted coffee shop. The minute I round the corner his head lifts, his handsome face rather gaunt, while I swear his brown hair is washed in more gray than it was yesterday. The lines around his pale blue eyes are perhaps a smidge deeper. He watches me walk down the narrow aisle, his expression unreadable, lacking the normal gleeful joy he’d otherwise exude from my surprise visit.
I sit down and indicate the bag. “I brought you the macaroons you love from Aaron’s Place.”
“You have to quit the force. Go to medical school. Save lives that way. You’re twenty-five. You can be practicing by thirty-one.”
“Dad—”
He slams his hand on the table, shocking me with the display of temper. “I mean it. You have to quit.”
“Now is not the time for me to quit,” I say. “Now is the time for me to fight harder. I have to make up the gap that is left behind now that—”
“My brother and your uncle is dead?” he demands sharply.
“Yes,” I say. “Exactly. Now is the time that I fight monsters like the one that took him from us.”
“I lost my wife. I lost my brother. I cannot lose my daughter.”
His voice trembles, his voice never trembles. He runs an empire. He’s powerful. He’s strong. “I know you’re grieving,” I say. “I’m grieving, too.”
“You will quit. The end.” His gaze lifts over my head and I turn to find his corporate attorney, Nick Rogers, approaching.
“We have a problem to deal with,” my father says as I turn back to him. “I don’t know how long it will be. Let’s have dinner at the house tomorrow night and talk about your future. Yes?”
I want to argue, but now is not the time. “Yes,” I say, standing up while he does the same. “I’ll see you—”
He pulls me close and whispers in my ears. “Thank you for the cookies. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I say, tears forming in my eyes.
He pulls back and there are tears in his eyes, too. Damn it, this is killing me. I turn away from him and do the cordial thing with Nick before I exit the building to the street. I start walking toward my apartment eight blocks away, and while the night is cold, I reject the idea of wearing a coat over my pantsuit. Now more than ever, I want that easy access to the gun at my belt. I replay the conversation with my father in my head, more so the look in his eyes that was gut-wrenching even in memory. I turn right onto my street which is lined with street lamps as well as gated private walkways leading to concrete steps and private doors. I stop at my apartment, my hand on my gate, when a sense of being watched has me pausing.
My gaze lifts and reaches down the street and to my left where I find a man in a hat and trench coat. The man from the cemetery. I feel his energy. Obviously, he’s here to talk to me, perhaps about my uncle, or about a case my uncle was handling. I start walking in his direction, and he holds his ground, seeming to wait for me, but just when I might make out his features, he disappears around a corner. An instant sense of urgency and loss overcomes me and I start running.
Pushing forward, I am across the street in rapid speed. Rounding the same corner that he disappeared around, I halt as I bring a cookie-cutter street into view, and find no one that resembles the man anywhere in sight. Actually, I find no one at all, but there is no way the stranger made it the full length of the street to disappear. He’s here, sheltering in one of the gated entrances to the apartment buildings. The problem is that there are about a dozen buildings on either side of the street, and ten tenants in each building, and he could have slipped into a doorway easily. Or he could be hiding against a wall, hoping I won’t follow. He’s playing a game with me and I don’t like games. I start forward, checking each building and its mini-courtyard. I cover the entire street, and then back down the other side. He’s not here. He’s inside a building, and probably out the back door. Finally, I have no choice but to accept that he’s outsmarted me.
I don’t know who he is. Maybe he’s a confidential informant my uncle used, of which he had many, and he’s trying to decide if he can trust me, too. Maybe it’s the asshole who walked into a restaurant and shot him dead that has yet to be caught. Or maybe it’s one of the assholes at the precinct who hate women cops, and see this murder as a good time to spook me. “Sick bastard,” I murmur, “whoever you are,” but for now, I let him think he’s won when no one on my list of probable offenders gets to win. Especially my uncle’s killer, who I plan to hunt down and make pay.
I return to my apartment and open the gate, walking into the courtyard, then up the stairs. I’m about to key in my code into the panel by the entrance only to find a note taped across the keypad that reads: You’re not ready yet.
I frown and grab the note, keying in my code and then scanning the street before entering the building. I head up two flights of steps to my level, which I share with no one, and enter my apartment. I lock up and I’m about to crumple the note to toss it, but I think better. Instead, I walk through my living room to my kitchen and flip on the light before sticking that note on my fridge, and I read the words all over again: You’re not ready yet.
I stare at the handwriting and remember the day I earned my detective’s badge. I’d hurried to share the news with my uncle, finding him in his office in the basement of the department behind records, because well, he’d earned his privacy and he hated most people. Except me, my father, and his job. I’d rushed through rows of files, and found him sitting behind his old wooden desk, a cigar in his mouth. Suddenly I am right there, reliving that moment.
I hold up my shiny new badge. “I made it.”
He scowls at me. “You’re not ready, kid.”
Those words punch me in the chest. “I’m ready. I’m been working hard and—”
“You will never be ready for the shit this job will throw at you and the minute you think you are, you’ve let your guard down, and then you know what happens? You die. And dying sucks.”
I jerk back to the present and the cold hard memory of his casket. “Yes,” I whisper. “Dying sucks.” Which, I add silently, is exactly why I don’t intend to die any time soon. To which my uncle would say, “No one plans to die, little girl.”
“And yet they do,” I answer as if he’s here. “Which is why I have a job.”