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Chapter 2
The past hours had been chaotic− blurred, at best. In a hazy state between shock-induced stupor and unconsciousness, David Marquez, known lately as Mark Denkman, rose unsteadily to his knees. It was… possibly darker around him than it had been inside his head when they'd hit him, and he could feel the harsh, unpleasant chilliness of bare concrete under him. Not trusting his legs enough to support his weight, he remained immobile, concentrating on the faint and almost invisible ray of light a few feet from him. A door, maybe.
Too weak to clear his thoughts and examine his surroundings more thoroughly, Mark let a pain-filled breath escape his lips. Unsure what the time was, or how long he'd been in this dark place, he once more lied down on the cold floor. Was it really dark, or was the obscurity in his head? A few fuzzy images flashed through his mind. A windy street corner, a hotel lobby with red colors… the quiet ding of an elevator breaking the silence... long corridors… He remembered dark shadows, a muffled scream− his− and something solid, hard and excruciatingly painful hitting him.
Like a bad dream, the memory now felt imaginary, but the dull throbbing on the back of his head was not. Shutting his eyes and praying to wake up in the safety of his apartment, he fell again into an abyss of darkness.
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At this time in the morning, Josephine Denkman should have been either asleep or cooking, busily preparing something that would taste like heaven and remind her that this was one of the things she did best. It was a fairly interesting activity that she had picked up over the years, and it kept her satisfactorily occupied− that was, when she was cooking. She had woken up to the loud, strident ringing of her phone and the voice of a police officer. From that moment on, her morning had been comprised mostly of telephone calls, pacing restlessly around her small apartment and building up the most unimaginable scenarios to explain why her grandson Mark could be missing.
And now here she was, facing an FBI agent from the leather sofa that took up most of her minuscule living room's space, feeling both confused and apprehensive.
Vivian Johnson, expert at picking up the smallest of details, had been quick to notice that Mark and his grandmother did not look very much alike, but she hadn't really stopped to consider it. Mrs. Denkman had light blue eyes when Mark's were brown, and her delicate features were a contrast to Mark's masculine strength, but such differences were not uncommon when there was a two-generation gap. Josephine Denkman's concern for her only grandchild, after all, seemed genuine, having none of the fake honesty Vivian had often encountered in family members who had something to feel guilty about.
"So the last time you saw Mark was on Sunday," Vivian summarized when she had gone through her list of questions and felt the conversation coming to an end. "He came for lunch and left after dinner, brought you some groceries. You didn't hear from him in the last few days but didn't think much of it because you usually see him only during the week-ends."
This FBI agent, Josephine Denkman told herself as she nodded in agreement, was a conscientious worker. She was polite and dedicated and skilled enough to ask inquisitive questions without giving the impression that she was prodding. But as agent Johnson's eyes began to travel around the living room and stopped on a few family pictures on the wall, Mark's grandmother began to think that she was a little too conscientious.
"I think I… I think I'm going to make some more tea if you don't mind," Josephine rose. Her seventy-seven–year-old legs were still strong and she moved without difficulty to the other side of the couch. She wanted to know that Mark was safe, she really did. But there were things about him and his past that, if revealed, would have devastating consequences.
Things she couldn't let the FBI find out.
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Studying Mark's partner as she moved in and out of the ambulance to secure med kits, Danny couldn't decide if she was edgy from his presence, running late, or physically incapable of staying still for one minute. Observing the station, he realized he could hardly imagine their missing person in this environment. If at first he hadn't given it much thought, the question now seemed legitimate. Did this kid really clamp arteries and treat gunshot wounds in dubiously safe neighborhoods?
"How long have you worked with Mark?" Danny asked as she jumped from a bus, brushing hair out of her face and dusting imaginary dirt off her paramedic's jacket. The large board by the station's entrance had told him that Mark's partner was pulling in a double shift, and finding her here had saved him some precious time.
"I dunno. Two, three months? He used to, uh, ride with someone else but we rotate every once in a while." Never stopping, she moved around the ambulance, making sure everything was in order, and Danny followed her as sirens wailed in background.
"How did Mark seem lately?"
A shrug was the only answer he would get, or so he thought before she said, "Good. Yeah, I don't know… Normal. T'was hard for us all after… you know," she said, emphasizing the words with a vague gesture. "Since September we're… s'posed to like gang shootings and sick grannies more than smoke and fire."
"Supposed to?"
Pausing for the first time, she appraised the agent in front of her. Digging a hand into the pocket of her uniform, Mark's partner shifted uncomfortably from one foot to another. "Yeah… most of us do."
Conveniently, and just as he seemed to be getting somewhere, her radio came alive. Switching postures, Danny pressed on quickly, "Why do I have the distinct impression that you're keeping something from me?" He tilted his head at the open doors and added, "You wanna answer that call or you wanna walk out of here a suspect?"
She sighed, checked for prying ears around them and lowered her voice anxiously. "Ok. We, uh, got a series of kids last week who OD'd and it kinda got to Mark. Then yesterday afternoon, we got this call at the corner of Spring and Hudson. There were a few guys− including the dealer− around the girl and she was as good as dead. Mark started chest compressions, trying to get her back while I went for the defibrillator and before I knew it, he got into it with the dealer and punched him." She shrugged. "Nothin' that doesn't happen everyday around here, but it's outta character. Got me wondering why he was so edgy."
"Dealer got a name?"
"Yeah, Igor. Don't know his last name, but he's always hangin' out around Spring and Hudson."
"Is Mark a user?"
"Mark? Shit, no way. You ask me 'bout a couple of other guys I wouldn't be so sure. But Mark? Na. Too freakin' decent to get into anything like this."
"Where's the girl now?"
Mark's partner looked at Danny with an air of complete powerlessness. "I dunno. Check with the morgues." Tentatively, she tilted her chin at her radio, and Danny acquiesced. Letting another paramedic brush past him and climb behind the wheel of the closest bus, he watched as the ambulance drove away, sirens and lights on. He hoped for the sake of whomever needed assistance that Mark's partner was more collected on the job than she was when answering questions.
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As Samantha had predicted, it was now raining outside and the horizon was bathed in dreary gray light. In a surprisingly short amount of time, the team's work area had gone from clean and tidy to a cluttered, paper-filled, coffee-scented space that resembled his office. Emerging from it and trading one mess for another, Jack had the distinct feeling that Danny and Samantha were not getting much out of the stacks of folders piled in front of them.
Danny rubbed his eyes and tapped his pen restlessly against his desk, pushing back his chair. He'd cross-checked the information available on Mark Denkman, and all he had gotten from it was a serious headache.
"Jack, I verified with the high school Mrs. Denkman pretends her grandson attended. As a matter of fact, I checked with all the other high schools in the state and none of them have a record of Mark Denkman."
Curious, Jack moved to Danny's side and peeked at the long list of schools that had patiently been highlighted. The absence of such a basic element from a missing person's past usually resulted in an uncommon case. There was definitely something fishy going on here, and as Jack's mind scanned through the possibilities− improperly kept records, falsified files, identity change− he realized something else: Mark's grandmother was lying.
"Anything from DMV?"
Samantha answered from her computer. "He owns a grey Taurus with New York license plates, but as far as I can remember it wasn't in front of his apartment." She turned her head and waited for Jack to confirm it before she went on, "I've put an APB on the vehicle. I've also double-checked Mark's phone lines but there's not much apart from a couple of calls for pizzas last week."
Danny chuckled. "How 'bout this: the delivery guy is a fan of horror movies. He went to Mark's apartment, kidnapped him, tied him up and chopped him to pieces. And the tape's on the Internet."
"No more caffeine for you," Jack said seriously, snatching the cup from Danny's hands. Giving it back to its owner amidst cries of protest, he allowed himself a smile before his eyes fell on the picture on the white board and his face became serious again.
"He's not part of any club or association," Samantha said softly, meeting Jack's eyes. "As far as we know, Mark Denkman patches bad guys and grannies, goes home, flips on TV and orders pizza. What kind of a life is that?"
It was a rhetorical question, but Jack had no doubt she was thinking the same thing he was: that a healthy, good-looking 26 year-old kid who could have had any girl, job or attention he wanted must have either an incredible sense of nobility or a profoundly guilty conscience to live a life made of such sacrifices. Jack didn't know yet what they would find on Mark, but it must be something significant enough to explain his lack of both social life and school records.
Since their search of the apartment had produced no conclusive result apart for the near-irrelevant mention of Fulton Street, Jack made up his mind. Knowing two opinions were better than one in the delicate matter of interviewing potential suspects, he chose to pair Danny with Vivian to investigate the most promising lead. "Pay a visit to the drug dealer Mark's partner mentioned. It wouldn't be the first time a kid in shiny armor tried to interfere with dirty gang business. And grab something to eat before Viv comes complaining that you're cranky when you're hungry."
"Getting right on it," Danny said with a grin, opening his phone to locate Vivian.
Following Jack out of the bullpen, Samantha fell in step with him. Without speaking, she made eye contact and silently asked where they were headed.
"We're going to pay another visit to Josephine Denkman; I want to know why she lied to Vivian this morning. We'll intimidate her a little," he said, not hiding the smirk from his face. Stopping by his office to take his coat and feeling her eyes on him, he wondered, "What are you thinking?"
She took a moment to answer. "I'm just hoping we're not losing our time like… like we did with Lisa Millardi."
He cringed subconsciously, the name associated with some painful memories, and many more regrets.
"Lisa," Samantha insisted when he didn't answer. "The woman who left for the weekend a few months ago with her secret boyfriend and asked her sister to lie to us so she could show up two days later with a husband and a suntan. And in the meantime we had to give up our searches on that little girl that we found dead the next−"
"I know," Jack said quietly.
Samantha gave a small nod as they entered the elevator, standing as far apart as the space would allow. Seeing the emotion in his eyes, she spoke softly, "I sometimes forget that you remember them all."
He didn't reply immediately, but when he did, she could not miss the sadness in his voice. "So do you."
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Their suspect, Igor Zlotsky, was the type of criminal you didn't approach without keeping a watchful eye on your partner and a firm hand on the holster of your gun. It wasn't that he was worth less than his counterparts in tailored suits managing the world's finances a little ways south− only, different rules applied here. Five miles from the rich, busy, animated arteries of the city and the contrast was always striking. Five miles and though no visible line separated one neighborhood from the other, it was obvious that surviving took precedence, here, over living.
Igor Zlotsky promptly admitted to punching Mark Denkman, but denied ever seeing, meeting, or talking to him after the incident. He belonged, Vivian could tell, to the sort who could be guilty for someone else's disappearance, but his whereabouts for the previous night were quickly confirmed by high-quality video footage. Unless he had the gift of being in more than one place at once, which Vivian did not believe, there was no way he could have been clubbing uptown and abducting Mark Denkman at the same time.
As they made their way back to the car, stopping only so Danny could hand out a couple of green bills in exchange of a spicy burrito, they discussed what the dealer had told them and came to the most probable conclusion: that Mark Denkman had received a few punches from a delirious gang dealer during one of his many routine calls. The incident, though worth mentioning, had nonetheless been nothing more than a minor confrontation. As procedure dictated, it would fill a few lines of their reports; but as far as Vivian was concerned digging deeper here was a waste of time.
Before they reached the car, she sensed Danny's silence, and when he frustratingly threw his burrito's paper bag into a trashcan she glanced sideways at him. Out of all the members in the team, he was perhaps the most different. If Jack and Samantha had indubitably changed on subtle, elusive levels Vivian wasn't sure she wanted to interpret, Danny had somehow… lost the unwavering faith he once had in the city.
As if on cue he wondered, "You ever go down there, Viv?"
She stepped around a stroller and a group of young kids, giving Danny a sympathetic look. There was only one down there and it would remain down there, she supposed, because most did not feel comfortable verbalizing the name of the place.
"Sure… I go there sometimes."
All of them, she believed, went there at one point or another. Searching for something that could have been missed or something left behind; looking for the memory of a brother or sister, a colleague, a friend. All of them looked up toward the sky, missing the towers and missing the faces that had lived here, once, sharing hellos and goodbyes and exchanging formalities and smiles as they moved in and out of the buildings, in and out in a brilliant, endless dance.
"I went there this morning. I keep thinking… I keep thinking it could've been me."
It was something they all dwelled on: their luck, their continued existences. It was also something they failed to understand− the mysteries of life and death and how the latter could take so much and give back so little.
"You have to stop doing this, Danny. It just… it doesn't help."
His voice grew quiet. "Then what does?"
As they reached the car, her eyes traveled up and down the buildings in front of them, evaluating their heights, their sizes. "You gotta talk to someone."
Not for the first time, he thought about therapists, skeptical as to their ability to understand and help. He didn't believe in doctors that asked a million questions and pretended they had it right and… didn't understand a thing, really. He didn't believe in therapists who didn't know what it felt like to close a case, to keep thinking, I didn't do enough for this person. For her. For him. For them. For those who had woken up on a clear morning and checked in for work like usual, not knowing that on the eleventh of September, the city would be changed forever.
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A large advertising sign for cheap ice skates drew Samantha's attention as they slowed down into the heavy city traffic, and she turned her head to follow the sign for as long as she could. The laced-up design was familiar, although she probably shouldn't compare the latest, improved ice-skate models to anything that had been labeled comfortable twenty years earlier.
As they slowed to a near stop, Samantha let a particular memory unfold. On a freezing January morning, her sister had suggested they skated on the frozen lake a mile or two from their house, back in the small town of Kenosha, Wisconsin. The ice was thin and the experience both dangerous and exciting and they both knew how Doug from middle school had fallen through and barely made it out alive the previous winter when the surface had cracked like crystal glass.
It was the last time Samantha remembered skating. The following month, the following summer had brought changes so great she still struggled to understand how profoundly it had upset her adolescent years. It had been the darkest, and arguably the most painful transition in her life. But it had shaped her, defined who she was and who she would become. That summer was the last time she spoke with Emily and the conversation didn't resolve around a man named Joe Henry; the last time she followed her mom to church, and the last time she saw a prison and didn't feel her heartbeat surging and a visceral fear gripping at her insides. She had lied about something important that summer, not knowing that for the rest of her life, she would forever wonder what would have happened if she'd done things differently. Because the truth was often twisted and rarely beautiful, but still it resonated better than the tissue of lies she had come up with, and clung to, her entire life.
Her existence was divided, now, into multiple moments and memories. Her time in Wisconsin, as innocently joyful and painfully upsetting as teenage years can be. Her time in New York, comprised of the moments she spent alone, and the moments she spent with the team; with Jack.
"Samantha?"
With some amount of shame, she realized that he was waiting for her. They had arrived in front of Josephine Denkman's residence and from the look on Jack's face, she should have been out of the car two minutes ago. She offered him a sheepish smile, and followed him inside the building.
Despite its northern orientation, Mrs. Denkman's apartment was surprisingly well-lit, the walls painted in light soothing tones. It was clean and tidy, with decorations on the walls and, if not outwardly expensive, tasteful and well-arranged furniture. After the expected introductions, Mark's grandmother offered the agents seats on the living room's sofa and chose a chair across from them.
"Well…" she began, looking first at Samantha, then Jack, her eyes curious. "I'm afraid I don't know what else I can tell you. I already spoke to one of your colleagues this morning."
"It's precisely why we're here," Jack said, carefully observing the elderly woman's facial expression as he spoke. "We know for a fact that you lied to agent Johnson, and that makes us question your role in Mark's disappearance."
Josephine glanced uncertainly at Samantha, but the female agent kept her face neutral. Trying to read and understand the woman facing her, Samantha decided that either she was very good at feigning ignorance, or she genuinely believed that keeping quiet was in her best interest. Either way, she knew something.
"You lied about Mark's background," Jack went on as Samantha stood up, this time walking around the coffee table. "You told us he went to a high school that doesn't have a record of him. And that makes me wonder what else you're lying about."
"He went to James Madison High," Mrs. Denkman said, reaffirming something both Jack and Samantha knew was false.
Jack's patience was wearing thin. "Of course," he said curtly. "Then they threw away his file, erased his name in their databases, lost his grades and forgot all about him. Tell me, what are the odds of that?"
"He went to James Madison−"
"Then you'll have no problem whatsoever giving me the address of his former high school friends?"
"He… he didn't keep in touch."
"How convenient."
"He's my only grandson!" she exclaimed. "I'm seventy-seven, I don't have anyone else left, agent Malone. Do you really believe I would want Mark to disappear?"
"Would you take a polygraph?"
Josephine swallowed. Then she said very distinctly, "Yes, I would."
Disbelievingly sharing a glance with Samantha, Jack silently asked her if she was finding anything from her discreet inspection of the room. Just then, her eyes fell on several pictures on the wall that had been taken at various moments in time. In a large frame was a happy-looking couple grinning as they held an umbrella above their heads; next to it were recent pictures of Mark and his grandmother together. On the far side of the wall, Samantha discovered a series of photographs featuring only Mark. On one of them, he was shaking the hand of a football player and proudly holding a banner with his school's name on it. It distinctly read 'James Madison High School'.
"Let me remind you that you're lying to two federal agents as we speak," Jack leaned forward. "I'm going to find out why you didn't tell us the truth, Mrs. Denkman, and when I do, you're not going to be looking for your grandson, you'll be looking for your lawyer."
Meeting Jack's eyes briefly when they received no answer, Samantha silently asked him to let her do this. Sensing his approval, she moved back to the couch and asked in the gentlest tone she could muster, "Mrs. Denkman, do you know where Mark is?"
Mark's grandmother shook her head. Samantha could sense Josephine's fear as if it was her own, and it left her feeling disconcerted and strangely vulnerable.
"Is there anything else you can tell us? Something that could help us find him?" Receiving another shake of the head, she wondered, "Does he have something in his past that could explain why he's missing?"
Incredibly she said, "I can't tell you."
The words, so softly spoken, took both Samantha and Jack by surprise.
"I really can't help you." She lifted tearful eyes to Samantha, and repeated, "I can't."
Jack glanced at Samantha, but she gave him a small shake of the head. No, she didn't think it was necessary to bring her in. Samantha felt Josephine had decided to keep Mark's secrets, whatever the consequences for her. There was something there just under the surface waiting to be revealed. And it would take them time− a few hours, perhaps, or a few days, to figure out what Mark and Josephine's secret was.
But they would find out.