Chapter Thirty

We make love again at dawn.

Maura rolls on top of me. Our eyes meet and stay locked. It’s slower this time, more soulful, comfortable, vulnerable. Later, when we are lying back and staring up into the silence, my mobile dings a text. It’s from Muse and it’s short:

Don’t forget. 9AM sharp.

I show it to Maura. “My boss.”

“Could be a setup.”

I shake my head. “Muse told me about it before I met up with Reeves.”

I am still on my back. Maura flips around so that her chin is on my chest. “Do you think they found Andy Reeves yet?”

It is something I’ve been wondering too. I know how that will play out: Someone notices the yellow car first, maybe they call the cops right then and there, maybe they search the premises. Whatever. They find the body. Did Reeves have ID on him? Probably. If not, they’ll figure out his name from the car’s license plate, they’ll get his schedule, they’ll see he worked that night at the Hunk-A-Hunk-A. A club like that will have CCTV cameras in the lot.

I’ll be on them.

So will my car. The CCTV will show me getting into Reeves’s yellow Ford Mustang with the victim.

I’ll be the last person to see him alive.

“We can drive by the scene on the way,” I say. “See if the cops are there yet.”

Maura rolls off me and stands. I’m about to do the same, but I can’t help pausing in something approaching sheer awe to admire her first.

“So why did your boss call this meeting?”

“I’d rather not speculate,” I say. “But I don’t think it’s good.”

“Then don’t go,” she says.

“What do you suggest I do?”

“Run away with me instead.”

That could be the greatest suggestion ever made by anyone ever. But I’m not running. Not now, anyway. I shake my head. “We need to see this through.”

Her reply is to get dressed. I do the same. We head outside. Maura leads the way back to the parking lot of the no-tell motel. We scout the area, see no nearby surveillance, and decide to risk it. We get in the same car we used last night and start toward Route 280.

“You remember how to get there?” I ask.

Maura nods. “The warehouse was in Irvington, not far from that graveyard off the parkway.”

She takes 280 to the Garden State Parkway and veers off at the next exit, for South Orange Avenue. We pass by an aging strip mall and turn into an industrial area that, like many such areas in New Jersey, has seen better days. Industry leaves; manufacturing plants close. That’s just the way it is. Most times, progress comes in and builds something new. But sometimes, like here, the warehouses and factories are simply left to decay and disintegrate into bitter ruins that hint at past glory.

There are no people around, no cars, no activity at all. It looks like the set from some dystopian movie after the bombs hit. We cruise past the yellow Mustang without so much as slowing down.

No one has been here yet. We are safe. For now.

Maura swings the car back onto the parkway. “Where is your meeting?”

“Newark,” I tell her. “But I better shower and change first.”

She gives me a crooked smile. “I think you look great.”

“I look satiated,” I say. “There’s a difference.”

“Fair enough.”

“The meeting will be serious.” I point at my face. “So I need to figure a way to wipe this grin from my face.”

“Go ahead and try.”

We both smile like two lovestruck dopes. She puts her hand on mine and keeps it there. “So where to?” she asks.

“The Hunk-A-Hunk-A,” I say. “I’ll grab my car and take it home.”

“Okay.”

We enjoy the quiet for a few moments. Then in a soft voice Maura says, “I can’t tell you how many times I picked up the phone to call you.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Where would it have led, Nap? One year later, five years later, ten years later. If I had called you and told you the truth, where would you be right now?”

“I don’t know.”

“Me neither. So I’d sit there with the phone in my hand and I’d play it all out again. If I told you, what would you do? Where would you be? I wanted to keep you safe. And if I came home and told the truth, who’d believe me? No one. If someone did—if the police took me seriously—then those guys at the base would have to silence me, right? And then I started thinking about it this way: I was alone in the woods that night. I ran away and hid for years. So maybe the guys at the base would pin Leo and Diana on me. How hard would that be to do?”

I study her profile. Then I say, “What aren’t you telling me?”

She puts on the turn signal with a little too much care, puts her hand back on the wheel, keeps her eyes too focused on the road. “It’s a little hard to explain.”

“Try.”

“I was on the road for a long time. Moving, hiding, being on edge. Pretty much my entire adult life. That’s the only life I knew. That constant rush. I was so used to it, to running and hiding, I didn’t get being relaxed. It wasn’t my baseline. In my own way, I’d been okay like that, under threat, trying to survive. But then when I slowed down, when I could see clearly . . .”

“What?”

She shrugs. “It was empty. I had nothing, no one. It felt like maybe that was my fate, you know. I was okay if I kept moving—it hurt more when I thought about what could have been.” Her grip on the wheel tightens. “How about you, Nap?”

“How about me what?”

“How has your life been?”

I want to say, It would have been better if you stayed, but I don’t. Instead I tell her to drop me off two blocks away, so I can walk to the club without anyone seeing her on CCTV. Sure, there is a chance we’ll be picked up by another camera in the area, but by then, this will all be played out, whatever way it ends up going.

Before I get out of the car, Maura again shows me the new app I should use to contact her. It’s supposedly untraceable, and the messages are permanently deleted five minutes after they arrive. When she’s done, she hands me the phone. I reach for the door handle. I’m about to ask her to make me a promise that she won’t run, that no matter what happens, she won’t just disappear on me again. But that’s not me. I kiss her instead. It’s a gentle kiss that lingers.

“There are so many things I’m feeling,” she says.

“Me too.”

“And I want to feel them all. I don’t want to be guarded with you.”

We both get this connection and openness, don’t we? Neither one of us is a kid anymore, and I understand how this potent cocktail of lust and want and danger and nostalgia can warp your perspective. But that’s not what is happening to us. I know it. She knows.

“I’m glad you’re back,” I say, which may rank as the biggest understatement of my life.

Maura kisses me again, harder this time, so that I feel it everywhere. Then she pushes me away, like that old song about the honesty being too much.

“I’ll wait for you by that office in Newark,” she says.

I get out of the car. Maura drives off. My car is where I left it. Hunk-A-Hunk-A is, of course, closed. There are two other cars in the lot, and I wonder whether they too were claimed to be the result of too much drinking. I need to fill in Augie about Maura’s return and Reeves’s demise.

As I drive home, I call him on my mobile. When Augie answers, I say, “Muse wants to meet me at nine A.M.”

“What about?” Augie asks.

“She wouldn’t say. But there are some things I need to tell you first.”

“I’m listening.”

“Can you meet me at Mike’s at quarter to nine?”

Mike’s is a coffee shop not far from the county prosecutor’s office.

“I’ll be there.”

Augie hangs up as I pull into my driveway and park. I manage to stumble out of my car when I hear a laugh. I turn and see my neighbor Tammy Walsh.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” she says.

I wave to her. “Hey, Tammy.”

“Long night?”

“Just some work.”

But Tammy smiles as if it’s written all over my face. “Yeah, okay, Nap.”

I can’t help but smile too. “Not buying that?”

“Not in the least,” she says. “But good for you.”

“Thanks.”

Some twenty-four hours, am I right?

I shower and try to get my head back in the game. I pretty much have the truth now, don’t I? But I’m still missing something, Leo. What? Or am I overthinking it? The base was hiding a terrible secret—that it was a black site for high-value potential terrorists. Would the government kill to keep that a secret? The answer is so obvious the question is by definition rhetorical. Of course they would. So that night, something set them off. Maybe it was Maura running toward the fence. Maybe they spotted you and Diana first. Either way, they panicked.

Shots were fired.

You and Diana were killed. So what could Reeves and his cohorts do? They couldn’t just call the cops and admit what happened. No way. That would expose the entire illegal operation. They also couldn’t just make you both disappear. That would lead to too many questions. The cops—and especially Augie—wouldn’t rest. No, they needed a good ol’-fashioned cover-up. Everyone knew the legend of those train tracks. I obviously don’t know all the details, but my guess is they pulled the bullets from your bodies and then transported you to the tracks. The impact of the train would leave the corpses in a state where no medical examiner would find any clues.

That makes total sense. I have all my answers now, don’t I?

Except.

Except fifteen years later, Rex and Hank are murdered.

How does that fit in?

Only two members of the Conspiracy Club are left alive now. Beth, who is hiding. And Maura.

So what does that mean? Don’t know, but maybe Augie will have a thought.

Mike’s Coffee Shop & Pizzeria somehow manages to look like neither a coffee shop nor a pizzeria. It’s in the heart of Newark, on the corner of Broad and William, with a big red awning. Augie sits by the window. He’s staring at a guy who is eating pizza before nine in the morning. The slice is so obscenely enormous it makes his full-sized paper plate look like a cocktail napkin. Augie is about to crack wise about that when he sees my face and stops.

“What happened?”

There is no reason to sugarcoat any of this. “Leo and Diana weren’t killed by a train,” I say. “They were shot.”

To his credit, Augie doesn’t start with the “What?” “How can you say that?” “There were no bullets found” standard-issue denials. He knows I wouldn’t just say something like that.

“Tell me.”

I do just that. I tell him about Andy Reeves first. I can see he wants to stop me, wants to argue that none of this means Reeves or his men killed Diana and Leo, that he was waterboarding me because he still wanted to protect the secrecy around that black site. But he doesn’t interrupt. Again, he knows me well enough.

Then I get to Maura rescuing me. I skip how Reeves dies for now. I trust Augie with my life, but there is no reason to put him in a spot where he may have to testify to what I’m saying here. Simply put, if I don’t say Maura shot Reeves, then Augie can’t testify to that if he’s under oath.

I keep going. I can see my words are landing on my old mentor like body blows. I want to pause, give him time to breathe and recover, but I know that it will only make it worse and that it would not be what he wants. So I just keep the onslaught going.

I tell Augie about the scream Maura heard.

I tell Augie about the gunfire and then the silence.

Augie sits back when I’m done. He looks out the window and blinks twice.

“So now we know,” he says.

I don’t say anything. We both sit there. Now that we know the truth, we are waiting for something to feel different. But that guy is still eating his enormous slice of pizza. Cars are still cruising down Broad Street. People are still going to work. Nothing has changed.

You and Diana are both still dead.

“Is it over?” Augie asks.

“Is what over?”

He spreads his arms wide as if to indicate everything.

“It doesn’t feel over,” I say.

“Meaning?”

“There has to be justice for Leo and Diana.”

“I thought you said he was dead.”

He. Augie doesn’t use Andy Reeves’s name. Just in case.

“There were other people at the base that night.”

“And you want to catch them all.”

“Don’t you?”

Augie turns away.

“Someone pulled the trigger,” I say. “Probably not Reeves. Someone picked them up and put them in, I don’t know, a car or a truck. Someone pulled the bullets out of their bodies. Someone tossed your daughter’s body onto a railroad track and . . .”

Augie is wincing, his eyes closed.

“You were indeed a great mentor, Augie. Which is why I can’t move on. You were the one who railed against injustice. You, more than anyone I ever knew, insisted on making sure the bad guys paid a price for what they did. You taught me that if we don’t get justice—if no one is punished—we never have balance.”

“You punished Andy Reeves,” he says.

“That’s not enough.”

I lean forward now. I had seen Augie knock heads too many times to count. He was the one who helped me take care of my first “Trey,” a subhuman slither of scrotum whom I had arrested for sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl, his girlfriend’s daughter. It got kicked on a technicality, and he was heading back home—back to that little girl. So Augie and I, we stopped him.

“What aren’t you telling me, Augie?”

He drops his head into both hands.

“Augie?”

He rubs his face. When he faces me again, his eyes are red. “You said Maura blames herself for running toward that fence.”

“In part, yes.”

“She even said maybe it was her fault.”

“But it’s not.”

“But she feels that way, right? Because maybe if she didn’t get stoned and run like that . . . that’s what she said, right?”

“What’s your point?” I ask.

“Do you want to punish Maura?”

I meet his eyes. “What the hell is going on, Augie?”

“Do you?”

“Of course not.”

“Even though she might in part be responsible?”

“She isn’t.”

He leans back. “Maura told you about the big bright lights. All that noise. Made you wonder why no one called it in, right?”

“Right.”

“I mean, you know that area. The Meyers lived close by that base. On that cul-de-sac. So did the Carlinos and the Brannums.”

“Wait.” I see it now. “You guys got a call?”

He looks off. “Dodi Meyer. She said there was something going on at the base. She told us about the lights. She thought . . . she thought maybe some kids broke in and turned on the floodlights and set off firecrackers.”

I feel a small stone form in my chest. “So what did you do, Augie?”

“I was in my office. The dispatcher asked me if I wanted to take the call. It was late. The other patrol car was handling a domestic disturbance. So I said yes.”

“What happened?”

“The lights were out by the time I got there. I noticed . . . I noticed a pickup truck by the gate. It was ready to pull out. There was a tarp over the back. I rang the bell at the fence. Andy Reeves came out. It was late at night, but I didn’t question why so many people were still at a Department of Agriculture compound. What you said about a black site, that doesn’t surprise me. I didn’t know exactly what was going on, but I still foolishly trusted my government back then to be doing the right thing. So Andy Reeves comes to the gate. I tell him about us getting a disturbance call.”

“What does he say?”

“That a deer jumped into the fence. That’s what set off the alarms and lights. He said one of his guards panicked and started shooting. That was the gunfire. He said the guard killed the deer. He pointed to that tarp in the back of the pickup.”

“Did you buy that?”

“I don’t know. Not really. But the place was classified government stuff. So I let it go.”

“What did you do next?”

His voice is coming from a million miles away now. “I went home. My shift was over. I got into bed, and a few hours later . . .” He shrugs away the rest of the thought, but I’m not ready to let it go.

“You got the call about Diana and Leo.”

Augie nods. His eyes are wet now.

“And you didn’t see a connection?”

He thinks about that. “Maybe I didn’t want to see one. That way, like I asked you with Maura, it wasn’t my fault. Maybe I was just trying to justify my own mistake, but I never saw much of a link.”

My phone goes off. I see the time is 9:10 A.M., even before I read Muse’s text:

Where the F are you??!!

I text back: There in a minute.

I rise. His eyes are on the floor.

“You’re late for your meeting,” he says without looking up. “Go.”

I hesitate. In a way, all this explains so much—Augie’s reticence over the years, his insistence that it was just two stoned kids doing something stupid, his disconnect. His mind wouldn’t let him link the murder of his own daughter to his visit that night to the base because then he’d have to live with the additional guilt of maybe not doing anything about it. As I turn and head for the exit, I wonder about that now. I wonder about dropping this all on him, shattering him anew, whether every night from now on, as he closes his eyes, he’s going to see that tarp over the back of a pickup truck and wonder what was underneath it. Or has he already been doing that in some subconscious way? Is the reason he so easily accepted the more obvious explanation for his daughter’s death because he couldn’t face his own small role in what happened?

My phone rings. It’s Muse. “I’m almost there,” I tell her.

“What the hell have you done?”

“Why, what’s up?”

“Just hurry up.”