Chapter Three

8:10 a.m. Monday 16th

Karen came back from getting coffee, but Jim still wasn't at his desk. She looked out the window, but he wasn't coming up the street. The elevator pinged but no man and dog rounded the corner.

"Who's up?" Fisk called.

"Dunbar I think." Tom looked to Karen who nodded.

"Well, where the hell is he?"

The three detectives looked at each other. Fisk rolled his eyes.

"Fine, Tom you take this DOA on 2nd Avenue. Could be suicide, could be homicide. Karen, go find your partner and ask him if he'd like to work today."

Karen was already dialing but Jim's phone rang through to the answering service. She put in a page.

A few moments later, Fisk stepped up to her desk. "You find him?"

She shook her head, biting her lip. "No, and he's never been late and not called in so…"

Fisk nodded at her unasked question. "Go. But keep your phone on. I have a feeling this is going to be a fast start week.

8:11a.m. Monday 16th

The dog's ears pricked up, it sat, barked hoarsely.

The noise pushed through dreams of gunshots, sand, and flies, and dragged the man from a fevered sleep. Unsure what was going on, he fumbled at the insistent beeping at his waist. His fingers found the pager and he pressed the buttons randomly. A small electronic voice spoke up, "The squad." The squad, the squad… it rang bells in his head but nothing more than that. He roused himself from his doze and pressed again, "The squad." Cursing, he banged the heels of his hands against his head and pressed them into his eyes. Why couldn't he remember anything? Why couldn't he see anything? Who had put him here and where was everyone else? He was sure days had passed, not just hours. He had felt the heat of the sun, the cold of night, several times. Although, with the injury to his head, there had been a long time in the beginning of this ordeal, when he had been confused and had not kept track of time, there had been two distinct periods when it had been cold and he was sure they were full nights. Even at a landfill, there had to be traffic of some kind. But he had heard no one, no trucks, no motors, other than the occasional boat too far for contact. What version of hell had he found himself in and what had he done to end up here? The endless questions rose up to burn his mind, and he was tempted to sink down into the dreams of a war in which he could at least see the barriers and targets in front of him. Instead, he stood again, amid the buzz of flies, the cries of the sea gulls and stepped forward.

The dog rose beside him on fatigued legs and rubbed its head against his leg.

He may have been confused about how long he'd been living at the dump, but he knew for sure it wouldn't be much longer. His lucid moments were few, but one thing was clear when they came; he needed water, and he wouldn't last another twenty-four hours without it.

8:37 a.m. Monday 16th

Karen banged on Jim's door. There was no answer. "Jim!" she called but all was quiet inside. Not even Hank's claws, tapping their way to the door.

She found the super in his apartment on the ground floor and flashed her badge. The man remembered her and handed over the key without question. He said he hoped Detective Dunbar was okay and went back to his daytime TV.

Jim's apartment was empty. No signs of foul play. Everything was exactly in place as usual. She checked the fridge. Three boxes of Hank's food remained on the bottom shelf. She knew he got one box a day and Jim prepared them on Sunday. That mean Hank had not been fed since Thursday night. Karen pulled up her phone and dialed the boss. Her hands were cold with fear.

10:00 a.m. Monday 16th

"Order, order. The first point of business is our union action to support Miguel in his fight to retain his job. Who's in favor of breaking the strike?"

A few hands were raised but after glares from their colleagues, they were dropped and heads were shaken.

"Who is in favor of allowing the garbage to build up in Manhattan until they drop the charges against Miguel and give him his job back?"

The men and women of the barge and garbage union took pleasure in being able to rub the noses of the company bosses in their own shit.

"We have a press announcement. The strike continues!"

10:15 a.m. Monday 16th

The man stood again, using the wall for support, and listened to the waves. It felt like he'd been walking for a week. He'd failed to find the entrance of the dump, an office, a road through the rubbish. He considered jumping the retaining wall and trying to swim, but he had no idea which direction to go, and he was so exhausted, he doubted he could swim far. His lips were cracked and caked with his own blood. His eyes were sticky and sandy and his skin had no elasticity left. By his own condition, he estimated he'd been lost for three days. The pain in his head had subsided to a pulsing roar, and at times he had been sure his vision was clearing. But now it was black as ever, and it took everything he had to reach out, slide his hand along the wall, and take another step in the dark.

10:46 a.m. Monday 16th

"Thanks for the update, Sergeant Watts." Fisk put the phone down. The strike continued. He grimaced. Somehow, garbage strikes always meant more DOAs. But, they wouldn't find them for several days, until the heat brought them to a point where the garbage couldn't hide its secrets. He wished Sanitation would just give the idiot his job back and let the city get on with what it had to do. But he guessed they would be in for a week or more of rotting refuse in the streets.

10:50 a.m. Monday 16th

Karen and Marty entered the elevator together. "You find Dunbar?"

"No. He wasn't there. What happened with your DOA?"

"Definite suicide. Sorry note, locked doors, the lot." Marty was clearly relieved, "Mother turned up, worried because he hadn't called so I don't even have to do a notification."

They walked into Fisk's office and Tom joined them.

Fisk took Marty's verbal report and clarified what Karen had explained about Jim, "You last saw him when you dropped him off at 9 o'clock Friday night?"

Karen nodded.

"And where did you go between here and his place?"

"With Tom and Marty, we all had dinner together at that new Thai place."

"And you saw him go inside the apartment?" Fisk demanded.

Karen closed her eyes and pictured the evening. She shook her head slightly before she answered, "No, I dropped him off, he headed for the apartment and I left."

"Where would he have gone?" Fisk asked them. "Is he seeing anyone at the moment?"

"Ah, no." Tom answered. When the others sent him questioning looks, he shrugged. "Hey, we're both single, we talk about women. Besides, you can just tell when he's got someone on the go."

Karen nodded. "There's been no phone calls or anything since that one that came into the squad a few weeks ago. She didn't last long."

"Okay. Okay." Fisk looked to Tom, "Dump his cell phone records, find out when the last call was made. Karen you call his ex-wife and see if he's contacted her. If there's nothing, we call in Missing Persons Unit."

Karen nodded, her face was pinched and white. "We can still go look for him though, can't we, Boss?'

"Yes of course. But we need to call in MPU. They do this all the time, and we need to do things by the book, as well as every other way we can come up with." It was nearly four hours past the time Dunbar would have shown up, and by all reports, no one had seen him for three days. Gary Fisk grimaced, the 48 hour window cops usually relied on to find a perp, a victim, or a missing person had already passed before they even knew he was missing.

"I'll call the hospitals," Marty said, avoiding Karen's eyes.

Twenty minutes later they had all reported back in to the boss. Christie hadn't heard from Jim for months, she'd like a call to say he was okay when they found him. His cell phone had been inactive since Friday at 4 o'clock and was currently turned off, so no way to track its whereabouts. No one fitting Jim's description had been admitted to emergency in any of the hospitals that Marty had called.

"Is there anyone else who might know where he is?" The Lieutenant asked the detectives.

Karen shook her head, thinking about Jim's life. "There's a gym he goes to, and that pool hall… he mostly gets his groceries delivered…"

"And I know a couple of places he hangs out, I can check those," Tom volunteered.

"I'll start a canvass from his apartment," Marty said.

"Good. Go." Fisk called his counterpart at the next precinct over. "Jarrod, I need a favor…" By the time he had hung up, he knew any urgent cases could be fielded, allowing the squad every opportunity to dig up a lead. His next call was to MPU and then the Chief of D's.

The detectives all headed out, well aware they were possibly working a cold case already.

Karen's first stop was the park Jim took Hank to every night. Chances were he would have gone there before returning to the apartment on Friday night. On the way, Karen called her long time friend Ann Donnely. "Ann, have you been seeing Jim again?"

Ann laughed, "No, why do you ask? You know I'd tell you if I was."

Karen sighed, she wished she had found another way to ask, she didn't want to tell Ann he was missing. Somehow saying it would make it more real.

Her phone beeped, another call coming in, "Ann, I gotta go, it's the Boss calling me."

"Bettancourt."

"Anything?"

"Not yet."

"I just spoke to MPU they're on their way here and will want to see you immediately."

"Yes, Boss."

Karen decided to search the park before returning to the squad. The bar and the gym, she could call but the park was something she'd have to look at herself. She'd walked here a number of times with Jim and Hank, over the years. She knew his usual route and found the bench where he sat. She could imagine Jim sitting there on Friday night, waiting while Hank hurried around, nose to the ground searching for just the right place to lift his leg. There were boot prints that could have been Jim's and scuff marks that could have indicated a struggle, but it was a park and there must have been dozens of people through here since Friday night. A mother with kids at the swings hadn't been in the park on Friday. She did say she sometimes saw a blind man and his dog when she brought her children down but hadn't seen him recently. "He seemed nice, I hope he's okay," the woman said, making an expression of condolence.

Karen gritted her teeth and moved back to the bench. The patch of mud behind it contained a few straggly looking bushes and she combed through them. There, a phone, she lifted it gingerly with an evidence bag. Yes, it looked like Jim's. Was it enough to determine this was a crime scene? She called for a CSU and waited until they arrived before heading back to the squad and the MPU detectives.

12:05 p.m. Monday 16th

"Yes, Chief, I know. No publicity… Yes, MPU has been called… No, of course I won't pull my detectives off what they're doing… No they're all out on cases… Yes. We'll leave it with MPU." As soon as the Chief of D's hung up, Fisk slammed the phone into its cradle. "Bastard!"

There was a knock on the Lieutenant's door. "Come in."

Two men entered.

12:15 p.m. Monday 16th

Karen raced Jim's cell phone down to the lab.