Reckless. Andrew Gross

him he couldn’t do it anymore. Their shining star. He had made detective, got fast-tracked into management, faster than anyone before. His career had arced upward in a steady, unflagging line.

      As part of the settlement he agreed to talk it out with someone. A police shrink. The doctor urged him to come to the group. Just to show he didn’t need it, he went.

      Hauck didn’t think about those years much anymore. The Dark Ages, he liked to call them. Depression. Maybe it was a chemical thing, lurking in his brain for years. Maybe it was like the towers, the well-built wall he had erected around himself—sports hero, Colby grad, the pretty wife, the picture-book family, his career—all brought down. Leaving ashes behind.

      Whatever it was, he had built himself back up. He had moved away, to Greenwich. Found a new home. Slowly found new people to love. Rebuilt his career. Clearly, his life was moving upward once again.

       The Dark Ages.

      The memories were back again.

      He remembered watching her from across the circle of twelve patients. She was both pretty and at the same time quiet, hurt. Their eyes met with a brief smile. Both of them saying, in the way everyone there seemed to say, I really don’t belong here, you know.

      “April,” Dr. Paul Rose said, “we have a few new people here. Would you give us a little about yourself and tell us why you’re here?”

      “Sure,” she said, shrugging diffidently. “I’m, uh, Frasier got canceled on Thursday nights, so I was free…” There were a few polite laughs. “Sorry,” she said, flattening her lips. A delicate light shone on her face.

      Then she told everyone about her darkness.

      The Glassman murders received a lot of attention. Marc Glassman’s notoriety and position made all the cable news shows and the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The FBI was involved. Along with the SEC. It seemed unbelievable that Marc Glassman had turned out to be some kind of rogue trader. That he had cost Wertheimer Grant billions of dollars. What kinds of controls were there? Now the firm hung on the verge of collapse. Rumors were everywhere. THE MURDER THAT MAY SINK ONE OF WALL STREET’S MOST RESPECTED FIRMS, the New York Times headline read.

      All sprung from a local crime spree that had gotten out of control.

      Finally Hauck knew the right thing was just to stay out. He made his decision. Let the right people back at Havemeyer Place handle it. He walked away. He had Annie.

       April,…could you tell us why you’re here…?

      Hauck recalled that most mornings Steve Chrisafoulis dropped off his daughter at the high school before heading into work. A few days after the story broke he waited for him, until he saw the blue Chrysler minivan pull up and Emily jump out and shut the door, merging with a group of kids on the walk. She waved. “Bye, Daddy…”

      Steve waved back. “See you tonight, hon…”

      Hauck stepped up just as he was rolling up the window.

      “Funny, I didn’t know you had kids in the school here.” The detective smirked with a roll of his cynical eyes.

      Hauck shrugged. “Can’t help myself. Sometimes I still hang around here, just to make sure everything’s okay.”

      “You better watch yourself. Someone may get the wrong idea and you’ll get yourself arrested, Ty.”

      “Look, I know it’s awkward to talk to me on this, Steve.”

      “It’s not awkward,” the detective said. “It’s more like inappropriate. You’re not wearing a badge now.”

      “You don’t find it just a shade peculiar how this break-in seemed to bust the Wertheimer thing wide open?”

      “Peculiar? I also think it’s peculiar how the safe in the house was emptied and the drawers were rifled through, Ty.”

      “Any thoughts on what they might have been looking for?”

      Now it was Steve who shrugged. “Money, jewelry. Call me crazy…Look, I really gotta get on to the office now.”

      “How’s the boy? How’s he doing?”

      “Spooked.” Chrisafoulis nodded. “Like anyone might be. He’s with his grandparents up in Darien. One day he’s gonna have to come to terms with what he saw in there. The rest of his family murdered. How’s your kid doing, Ty?”

      “Jessie? She’s doing great, thanks. Starting high school this year. You said the kid had taken some pictures…Anything ever pan out?”

      “Ty, you’re asking something I can’t divulge. You know that. This is the second time you’ve pumped me for what’s going on. Want to let me in on the story, dude?”

      Hauck bent down at the window. He met the new head of detectives face-to-face. “You remember that career night we did at the high school a year or two back?”

      “Yeah.”

      “April Glassman set it up. We just got friendly.”

       “Friendly…?”

      “Not that kind of friendly, Steve. We just had a cup of coffee. Bumped into each other once or twice. Started talking. You know how it is; sometimes you just find a person you can open up to. Stuff comes out.”

      “Pretty gal.” Chrisafoulis’s mustache twitched, amused. “Look…” He reached across to the passenger seat and unfastened his case. He lifted out a large white envelope. “Fitz finds this out, I’m gonna have you barred from the office Christmas party, you understand?” He grinned. “I know how tough it is to find someone you can open up to.”

      “Got it.” Hauck smiled and met his eyes. “Thanks.”

      “We blew up the shots.” Steve lifted out a series of eight-by-ten photos. “He snapped them off from the upstairs window overlooking the drive.”

      The first was a shot of the backs of two men, wearing masks and what seemed to be dark work uniforms, one carrying a black trash bag, heading away from the house. The second shot showed them climbing into a black SUV at the end of what Hauck recalled was the Glassmans’ long driveway. “A Ford Bronco,” Steve said. “Too bad the plates were obscured. Would have made things easy. Amazing what these little buggers will do, huh?”

      Hauck flipped the photos and the last ones were tight blowups of the first. Magnified around fifty times. The two men hurrying off. The first just had the side of one of their faces; he had taken off his mask. White. Thirties. Looking away from the camera. Not much there.

      The last one did have something distinguishing. It was a close-up of the perp’s neck. He was white as well. A knot of hair, braided up like in a small ponytail, peeking out from under the mask.

      And something on the back of his neck.

      “We thought it was a birthmark or something,” Chrisafoulis said, seeing Hauck pause. “But the lab was able to enhance it. Turned out to be a tattoo.”

      “Like a dragon’s tail?” Hauck asked, squinting.

      “Or the tip of an arrow. Hard to tell. You know the only reason I’d even show you these is what you did for me. This stays between us, right? You got your own job now. You left. This one’s mine.”

      Hauck handed him back the photos. “Not much of a getaway bag for all that loot, you think?”

      Chrisafoulis looked at him. Steve might have been new to the rank and all the crap it brought with it, but he’d been a detective in the city for fifteen years, knew his work as well as anyone and exactly where Hauck was heading. “Okay, there was something I might not have mentioned…Upstairs. By the wife and daughter. We did find something unusual, now that I think of it.”

      “What?”

      “You know how the drawers