“If you don’t mind my asking, what did you find in there?” Hauck asked, pointing to the record for the safe-deposit box.

“Money.” Karen exhaled. “Lots of money. And a passport. Charlie’s picture, with a totally assumed name. A few credit cards…”

“He left this all behind?” A year ago. “This may have been just some kind of backup.” Hauck shrugged. “I guess you understand, this wasn’t unpremeditated. He was planning this.”

She nodded, biting her lower lip. “I realize that.”

But what Charles could never have planned, Hauck knew, was how he would execute this. Until the moment came.

His thoughts settled on another name. Thomas Mardy.

“Listen.” Hauck swiveled to her. “I have to ask, did your husband have any history of…you know…”

“Did he what?” Karen stared at him. “Did he play around? I don’t know. A week ago I would have said that was impossible. Now I’d be almost happy to hear that’s what it was. He had that passport, those cards… He was planning all this. While we were sleeping in the same bed. While he was rooting for the kids at school. He somehow managed to get away from that train in the midst of the chaos and say, ‘Now it’s happening. Now’s the time. Now’s the time I’m going to walk out on my entire life.’”

For a few seconds, there was only silence.

Hauck pressed his lips together and asked again, “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know. Part of me wants to just put my arms around him and tell him that I’m happy he’s alive. This other part…I opened that box and realized he’s kept a whole part of his life secret from me. From the person he supposedly loved. I don’t know what the hell I want to do, Lieutenant! Slap him in the face. Throw him in jail. I don’t even know if he’s committed a crime. Other than hurting me. But it doesn’t matter. That’s not why I’m here.”

Hauck wheeled his chair closer. “Why are you here?”

“Why am I here?” Tears rushed into her eyes again. She clenched her fists and tapped them helplessly against the table. Then she looked back up at him. “Isn’t it pretty obvious? I’m here because I can’t think of anywhere else to go!”

Hauck went over to her as she just folded, weightlessly, into his arms. She buried her head on his shoulder and dug her fists into him. He held her, feeling her trembling in his grasp, and she didn’t pull away.

“He was dead! I mourned him. I missed him. I agonized on whether his last thoughts were about us. There wasn’t a day when I didn’t wish I just could have talked to him one last time. To tell him I hoped that he was okay. And now he’s alive…”

She sucked back a breath, wiping the tears off her dampened cheeks. “I don’t want him hunted down. He did what he did, and he must have had some reason. He’s not a bastard, Lieutenant-whatever you might think. I don’t even want him back. It’s too late now. I have no idea what I even feel…

“I guess I just want to know…I just want to know why he did this to me, Lieutenant. I want to know what he’s done. I want to see his face and have him tell me. The truth. That’s all.”

Hauck nodded. He squeezed her arms and let go. He kept a tissue box by his desk. He pulled a couple for her.

She sniffled back a smile. “Thanks.”

“Part of the job. People always seem to be crying in here.”

She laughed and dabbed her eyes and nose. “I must be like a goddamn train wreck to you. Every time you see me…”

“No.” He winked. “Anything but. However, you do seem to present some intriguing situations.”

Karen tried to laugh again. “I don’t even know what the hell I’m asking you to do.”

“I know what you want me to do,” he replied.

“I’m not sure where else to turn, Lieutenant.”

“It’s Ty.”

What he said seemed to take her by surprise. For a second they just stood there, drawn to each other. She brushed a wave of auburn hair away from her still-raw eyes.

“Okay.” She sucked in a breath and nodded. “Ty…”

“And the answer’s yes.” He sat back on the edge of his desk and nodded. “I’ll help.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

He’d said yes. Hauck went over the scene again.

Yes, he would help her. Yes, he knew what she needed him to do. Even though he knew in that instant it could never be accomplished with him on the job.

He took the Merrily out on the sound that night. He sat in the dark with the engines off, the water calm, the lights of downtown Stamford flickering on the shore.

Why? he asked himself.

Because he couldn’t get the image of her out of his mind? Or the feel of her softness when she leaned into him. Her sweet scent still vibrant in his nostrils, every hair on his arm on edge, every nerve awakened from its long slumber.

Was that what it was, Ty? Is that all?

Or maybe it was the face that crept into his head as he sat with his Topsiders up on the gunnels, drinking a Harpoon Ale. A face Hauck had not brought into mind for months but that now once again came back to life for him, frighteningly real.

Abel Raymond.

The blood trickling out from under his long red hair. Hauck kneeling over him, promising he’d find out who had done this.

Charles Friedman hadn’t died.

That changed everything now.

Thomas Mardy. He’d been a supervisor at a credit-checking business. He’d gotten on the 7:57 that day out of Cos Cob and had died on the tracks in Grand Central, in the blast.

Yet somehow one of his credit cards had been used for a limo ride up to Greenwich three hours later.

Now Hauck knew how.

He wondered, could the Mustang just have been a coincidence? Charlie’s Baby… It had thrown him off. It would have thrown anyone off.

But now, seeing Charlie’s face on the screen, he knew-more clearly than Karen Friedman could ever know-just how her husband had spent the hours between being caught by that camera coming out of that station and ending up hours later in the vault of that bank.

The son of a bitch hadn’t died.

That afternoon Hauck had run Charlie’s name through the NCIC system. The usual asset check-credit cards, bank accounts, even immigration. Freddy Muñoz brought it back, knocked on the door wearing a quizzical expression. “This guy’s deceased, LT. On April ninth.” His look sort of summed it up. “In the Grand Central bombing.”

Nothing. But Hauck wasn’t surprised.

Charles Friedman and AJ Raymond had been connected. And not by the copper Mustang. That much he now knew. They had lived different lives, a universe apart. Yet they had been connected.

What the hell could it be?

Hauck drained the last of his IPA. The answer wasn’t here. The kid had family. Pensacola, right? His brother had come up to claim his things. His father was a harbor captain. Hauck remembered the old man’s photo among AJ’s things.

Yes, he would help her, he had said. Hauck pulled himself up out of the chair. He started the ignition. The Merrily coughed to life.

He’d help her. He only hoped she wouldn’t regret whatever he found.

“CARL, I’M GOING to need a little time.” Hauck knocked on his boss’s door. “I have a bunch built up.”

Carl Fitzpatrick, Greenwich ’s chief of police, was at his desk, preparing for an upcoming meeting. “Sure, Ty. C’mon in, sit down.” He swiveled his chair around his desk and came back with a scheduling folder. “What are we talking about, a few days?”

“A couple of weeks,” Hauck said, unconfiding. “Maybe more.”

“Couple of weeks?” Fitzpatrick gazed at him over his reading glasses. “I can’t authorize that kind of time.”

Hauck shrugged. “Maybe more.”

“Jesus, Ty…” The chief tossed his glasses on his desk, looked at him directly. “What’s going on?”

“Can’t say. Things are pretty clean right now. Whatever comes up, Freddy and Zaro can cover. I haven’t taken more than a week in five years.”

“Is everything all right, Ty? This isn’t something about Jess, is it?”