*
They had fallen into a routine, a comfort zone; they had fallen into this idea that they both had a ring on their finger and two beautiful children and maybe those things, those things alone, were all that was needed to keep them together.
He hadn't thought about it years ago, hadn't thought about the consequences of his work and her work and their own distance before they started; the distance that only grew as the years passed.
So they had fallen into this routine and tonight, as he loosened his tie, dropped his bag onto the floor, and walked past her lazy body sprawled in a skimpy nightgown he'd once found attractive, he knew what had happened: he had stopped loving her; stopped loving her in all the ways he was supposed to love her, all the ways she probably deserved to be loved, and he caught her tired eyes as she looked up at him from her position and knew -- knew she had stopped loving him as well.
They had never said the words.
"This has got to stop, Jack, " she murmured, turning her attention back to CNN.
"Big case, Maria, got a lot of avenues to explore, it takes time --"
"I know you take your cases to heart, Jack, but this is ridiculous."
"This one's different, " he spoke, throwing his tie onto their bed.
He ran a hand over the sheets on his side of the bed, realized they no longer felt comforting, no longer welcomed him into a peaceful sleep. It felt alien to him.
"We're not working, Jack."
He sighed, watched his ring slide loosely around his finger, ready to fall off with a simple nudge.
"I know."
He always had.
"We separated and you came back and -- and you didn't come back, Jack."
"Marriage is two-sided, Maria."
She ran a hand through her hair, closed her outer robe tightly around her body.
"I know, Jack. That's why we need to stop kidding ourselves here. We need to think about where we're going. I think --"
He waved a hand, cutting her off.
"I think I should leave tonight, I'll get a room somewhere. I'm tired, I need to sleep. I can't do this right now."
"We can't run away from this. We've been doing that for too long, Jack."
"I know, " he said.
He gathered some clothes together, stuffed them hastily into a duffel bag, and nodded a goodbye. He had run through this scenario in his mind before and somehow, that preparation never really prepared you when it came down to it. He wondered if he should feel a sadness for what he knew lay ahead -- if he should regret anything.
And when it didn't hurt to leave that bedroom, to leave her for what would probably be forever, he knew it had been over long ago.
*
"Danny, I want you in Brooklyn Heights checking out some of the bars, figure out where she was working. I'm heading into Midtown, find out where she's at now."
"Why do you think she's in Midtown?" Martin asked as he took the photograph from Jack he was passing around the table.
"I saw a girl the other night who matches this picture we made yesterday. Said she lived in Midtown. I want Danny in Brooklyn Heights so we can get a better background on her, get a clue where she might be working. There's plenty of bars in Midtown, she could be in any of them."
"Martin, Kathy, I want you two banging on doors in the apartment buildings from here 69th, shove her picture in every tenants' face if you have to."
"Viv, you're with me."
The team collectively stood, fueled even further by their newly developed pictures of her that they hoped would bring them closer to her.
*
"Yeah? Yeah. All right, Danny, we're on it. Thanks, " Jack spoke, closing his cell phone as he ended his conversation. The heat on 55th Ave. seemed to build all around him and he desperately wished he could afford himself the luxury of at least removing his tie.
May 7 and the heat was already bouncing off the buildings and encasing the city like a furnace. He wiped his brow with his finger.
May 7 and the heat was bringing him down to hell with it.
"That was Danny -- got a hold of her former employer, said she's working at O'Neill's Irish Pub on 46th, far as he knew. Let's check it out."
Vivian nodded, following Jack as he did a turnaround on the street.
"So you saw this girl?"
He took a deep breath.
"I'm pretty sure I did."
She knew that look in his eyes and continued before he could trap himself, "It's not your fault. You didn't catch her right then -- it's not your fault. It was dark, raining."
"I should've known, Viv. I should've known her face well enough without that picture, should've been able to pick her out of a crowd. She was right there -- right there and she just slipped away."
"Well, at least we know she's in the city, Jack. We know she's in Midtown. We're a hell of a lot closer than we were two days ago, that's progress."
"That's luck."
"Some might call it fate."
"What?"
"Fate. Funny, don't you think? You were walking out at just the exact moment she was walking by? Stuff like that doesn't just happen. We're meant to find her -- and we will."
He looked at her for a moment, digesting his words, interrupted then by her voice again.
"Well, we're here, " Vivian waved, indicating the Pub.
"We are, " he replied, pulling his hands out from his pockets, opening the door and waiting for the smoke to clear before he walked in. He could feel her when he walked in. He heard the door close behind him, some pool tables clink in the back, and followed Vivian to the bar, pulling out the photo of Samantha as they neared the bartender.
*
"Remember those two girls upstate that were kidnapped and killed?"
"Who?"
"You know -- uh, Annie Miller and uh, Siobahn...geez, I don't remember her last name. I think it was Italian. Anyway, remember them?" Ted asked over his coffee.
"Yeah. What about them?" Samantha responded, spooning some sugar into her mug and lifting it to her mouth as she sipped the hot liquid carefully.
"I heard they're dedicating, like, this park in their memory or something. I only thought of it because my grandparents used to live in that town -- I spent a couple of summers there. It was so safe, I would've never guessed something like that could happen."
"No, we never do, " she replied absently, her mind drifting to the news ticker she'd seen on the two girls months ago. She remembered being sad and wondering how that loss must've felt to the parents and the police involved, the ones who had devoted themselves to finding them, the ones who couldn't.
She couldn't fathom a loss like that, a loss of that kind.
"So, first day, huh? You nervous?"
"Nah, it's going to be great. My boss is nice. Says I did such a good job interning he's gonna let me run it by myself during the afternoons."
"Wow, Ted, that's an honor. Pay's better too, right?"
"Yeah, stepping up."
"Good for you, nice to see one of us is, " she spoke, standing the dump her remaining coffee down the sink.
Ted stood as well, doing the same.
"You'll get there, Janet."
"Yeah, " she replied, absently, looking away for a moment. She turned back to him and smiled, enveloping him in a hug.
"You better get going, don't want to be late on your first day. You got a lunch break?"
He nodded, pulling away shyly from her embrace.
"I'll get you and we can check out that new deli down the street."
He smiled, waved goodbye, and the silence hit her instantly. She was glad for the friendship, glad for this life she had started constructing, but lost without the comfort of her own identity, of being who she'd always wanted to be.
She thought of the man she'd seen the other night, the man who had been so kind, who had taken the time to look at her as though she mattered, as though she deserved to be more than she had become. She wanted to know him and wished she hadn't left. She seemed to find herself in what she did best: running away.
*
He removed his glasses in frustration, clutching the phone casually as his wife's disenchanted voice reprimanded him once again for his late nights, his absence from family dinner, and his general disregard for the scattered pieces of their nonexistent marriage.
He could hear it coming in her voice, could hear it in the disapproval of her verbal lecture.
He could hear the cold woman she had become and wondered how long they had been this way, how he had let it get this bad.
So he knew before she spoke what she was going to say.
"Jack, " she sighed, "it's over."
And this time...it really was.
*
Martin knew the man's answer from the blank expression on his face, knew they would have to endure another "no" even before he shook his head and shrugged.
"Sorry. Never seen her before. Wish I could be more help."
The apartment owner closed his door with a firm, decisive click, and Martin shook his head in frustration.
He and Kathleen had been canvassing apartments all morning, and the most they'd gotten were polite shakes of the head and wishes of good luck.
Even Kathleen's rookie optimism appeared to be slightly wilting, though she threw him a game smile as they walked back into the early May heat.
She understood, and he understood, and they both knew that through all the dead-ends, the hopelessness, the frustration, they would push on.
It was the job, and more importantly, it was someone's daughter, someone's friend, someone's hope..someone's last chance.
*
Fate...
Vivian's words played of their own accord through his spinning mind. What was fate, anyway? He vaguely remembered hearing the word on his wedding day..
"..they make such a beautiful couple, it must be fate.."
He wondered if fate was supposed to fade, to vanish, to disappear.
Somehow, he didn't think so.
The ring remained on his finger, because he wasn't quite ready, wasn't prepared yet for Vivian's blunt questions or the quiet raise of Danny's eyebrows or the chill he knew would accompany the sudden absence of the warm metal.
So he avoided it, and concentrated on her. On what may have been fate, or luck, or progress, or a strange combination of the three.
*
"Sure, that's Janet Leblanc. Only she doesn't work here anymore. Quit about two months ago." The bartender nodded firmly before handing the photograph back to Jack.
"Janet Leblanc? Are you sure?" Vivian persisted.
"Of course."
"Must have changed her name," Jack mused quietly to Vivian. Janet Leblanc. It made sense.
"Why did she quit?" Jack turned his attention back to the man behind the bar of O'Neill's Irish Pub. He flipped a glass into place before shrugging.
"Better pay somewhere else, I guess. She mentioned something about Ganley's over on 68th. Oh, and I think she cleans hotel rooms during the day." The bartender shook his head. "I got the feeling she didn't like staying in one place for too long, you know?"
He knew.
"Do you have any idea where she lives, or what hotels she works for?" Vivian's tone was expectant, but the man offered only another shrug.
"Sorry. I hired her on the spot, and she kept to herself most of the time. Didn't really learn much about her."
Once again, she hovered just out of his grasp. He was a step, a day, a week too late, and unsure of how to catch up.
But he would.
It was fate.
*
"Sorry," a breathless Ted apologized as he took the seat across from Samantha in the bustling deli. "We got really busy, and I couldn't leave.."
"It's okay," she assured him with an amused half-grin. "I've only been here for about ten minutes."
She watched relief cross his face, and initiated a conversation about his first day. As he eagerly relayed the events, Samantha allowed part of her mind to wander, to wonder about the people eating, moving, talking around them.
She did that often; let herself create idle stories about where they came from, where they were, where they were going and what they might face along the way.
It was, she understood, probably a mode of dissociation, of distancing herself from her surroundings and her own story.
She did it anyway.
So when she casually shifted her gaze from the table to her right to the deli's large glass window, she wasn't prepared to recognize the man quietly passing by.
Tall and broad, dark-haired and solemn, she knew his face and she knew his walk.
She knew him.
It wasn't raining, it wasn't nighttime, and he was now accompanied by a shorter, dark-skinned woman, but she couldn't shake the feeling that settled over her.
As he stepped out of view and she tried to turn her attention back to Ted, she couldn't stop wondering.
She wondered about the case he was on.
She wondered about his name.
She wondered if he would believe her if she told him her name was Janet Leblanc.
She wondered if she would ever get to tell him her name, her real one, because somehow, she knew she wouldn't be able to tell him anything else.
She wondered why she wondered so hard about the man with the crooked collar who'd smiled at her through the rain.
*
"You okay?" Vivian squinted against the brilliant sun, peering up at him as they continued their walk to Ganley's Pub.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Jack offered her a quick smile, one that he knew she only pretended to be satisfied with.
Vivian nodded, retrieving her cell phone from her belt.
"Hey, Martin. Yeah, we hit a dead end too, but the owner of O'Neill's did tell us that he thinks Samantha cleans hotel rooms in the mornings. You and Kathleen start with hotels within a three mile radius of O'Neill's, find out if she's currently employed at any of them, or if she ever was. Tell Danny to work on the other hotels in Midtown. We're on our way to Ganley's--O'Neill's owner said she might be working there. Oh, and use the name Janet Leblanc. We're pretty sure she changed it. Great, thanks Martin."
Jack dropped his hands to his pockets and raised his face to the sky before turning back to Vivian.
"There must be a million hotels in Midtown," she observed.
"We're going to find her, Viv." At her questioning expression, he shrugged. "Fate, remember?"
In his left pocket, the ring slipped from his finger.
*
Gold was the color of power and wealth and superficial beauty. It wasn't a very strong metal, rather valued for its shiny exterior, the skin it wore that bounced off sunshine and lamps and tears, anything that could take in beauty and reflect back anything but.
Gold was the color of his wedding ring.
Silver was the color everyone overlooked; it got pushed aside and forgotten, cringed at when won in tournaments, smiled at with lies when handed off as a gift; lost...lost. Silver was the color of everything that had once existed and wanted to be once again.
Silver was the color of his St. Jude medal and he found it fitting somehow that the color and the Saint had found each other. He found it fitting that he held it now as he no longer held his ring.
The medal was old, perhaps smudged in its own way from years of prayer. He wondered at the whispers it had heard in its lifetime. His fingers traced the outline of it, the figure of St. Jude with his cane, his name, the beads that chained him to something tangible and made certain it could be worn always for those who needed it.
St. Jude belonged to the ones who had been forgotten and lost and fallen between whispers and shadows and the sunshine that had turned its back on them.
St. Jude belonged to the ones who watched their tears fall in silence, the ones who'd forgotten their own faces.
St. Jude belonged to memory.
Silver, St. Jude, Samantha Spade...and...and Jack Malone.
They all fell together in time.
*
"Oh sure, Janet works here. Good kid, knows her stuff. Get a lot of compliments on her drinks. She makes a good martini, grasshopper, you know, the usual. Her speciality's the Metropolitan, and uh, Mudslide. Yeah, good kid. Lots of tips."
Jack put the picture back into his coat with care.
"Got any idea where she's living?"
He shrugged. Seemed the attitude was, 'If you don't tell me, I don't care.'
"Probably nearby. She doesn't have a car, walks as far as I know. I doubt she's livin' in Battery Park and takin' a bus or subway everyday...nah, not her style. She's not dirt poor, but she's not exactly comfortable, not the type to spend money on transportation if she can walk."
"Right. Anything else you can tell us?"
He scratched his head, flinging the bar towel over his shoulder.
"Not at the moment, but if I think of anything, you've got my call."
*
"I got something, something good, " Danny spoke, breezing into the bullpen. He slid some files across the conference table.
"Tracked down a Janet Leblanc at the Park Central Hotel on 55th. Right across from Carnegie Hall. You've got Rockefeller Center and Times Square in walking distance."
"Something a person who's always wanted to live in New York would want to be near."
"Right. And -- there's more, " he continued, holding a finger up as he thumbed through the folder and pulled out some pictures.
"I got a hold of some surveillance videos, had the tech print me some pictures while you and Viv were at Ganley's."
Danny spread out the five black and white pictures on the conference table. They were slightly grainy, but had been zoomed in and touched up just enough and in the right spots to give them what they needed.
"That's our girl, " Danny pointed to Samantha's face consecutively in each picture.
Jack took one and studied it closely.
"Classy hotel."
"Not bad -- three and a half stars. Stylish. Manager says she works the graveyard Tuesday, Thursday, and every other weekend."
"Good pay?"
"With a bartending job on the side? I'd say she's stepping up. It's not the best, but it's better than what she was doing as a waitress in Brooklyn."
"All right, give Martin a call, tell him I want him and Kathy to continue canvassing the apartments around that vicinity, up to the Upper East Side. Viv and I will start further down near 53rd. Danny, I want you to get in touch with the mother, tell her what we've got and to come into the city. We're zeroing in on Samantha and she needs to be here."
He nodded and shuffled the pictures back into the folder, set it on his desk, and went about his duties.
Jack got Vivian's attention and motioned her out of the building.
*
"Most of these apartments are way out of her price range, Jack."
"We're only on 52nd, there's plenty around here that she could afford. I don't think she cares much about the little luxuries."
"Can't afford the little luxuries."
"Exactly."
His phone rang and he flipped it open, continuing to walk.
"Yeah. Yeah. All right, Martin, thanks."
Vivian raised her eyebrows in question.
"Martin found an apartment near Central Park -- Janet Leblanc lived there until about a month ago. Tenant says she was looking at one around 45th. We're almost there."
"There's no 'almost there' in this heat, Jack."
He shot her a smirk.
"It was a cheap apartment, this one's a little more expensive. Better neighborhood."
She's getting there, he thought.
In her own way.
*
"Excuse me, I'm Agent Jack Malone, this is Agent Vivian Johnson, we're with the FBI. Can you give us any information about a tenant of yours -- goes by the name Janet Leblanc?"
The landlord, unsurprisingly, looked frustrated at this request, and turned around to the hallway he'd just come from.
"Excuse me, did you say Janet Leblanc?"
Jack looked over his shoulder at the young man who'd asked him the question.
"You would be?"
"Her neighbor -- friend...good friend. Uh, is she in some kind of trouble?"
Vivian turned around, sharing a brief glance with Jack before she asked, "Not trouble, but we are looking for her. Is she in the building?"
"Just went out for the night. What's this about?"
"Do you know where she went?"
"No, she just likes to walk around, sometimes she'll go see a movie if she's got the movie. She's usually gone for hours, doesn't get back until late. She'll be around tomorrow, though, she's coming to the bookstore I work at."
Vivian took over the conversation with Ted and dealt with the landlord as Jack moved to the side, pulling out his cellphone to communicate what they'd just learned with the rest of his team.
He turned back to Ted and Vivian.
"Now, uh..."
"Ted."
"Ted. We're going to need to ask you some questions."
*
TBC...