Firefighters were dragging hoses back to trucks, and workmen in boots were raking debris and carrying Hefty bags to a blue dumpster in the driveway. Shingles and burned wood lay strewn all over the lawn, deeply rutted and churned up with footprints, full of standing water. Lucinda’s rosebushes were smashed and broken. I had mulched the beds after she put in some bulbs a week ago, staining my hands brown.
I cleared my throat. “How bad does it look inside?”
“I don’t know,” Special Agent Gupta answered, her tone sympathetic. “Only firefighters are permitted in, given the structural damage.”
“Can you look for the contents of a room on the second floor, the bedroom on the end of the hall? That’s my son’s. I’m looking for some little cedar boxes.”
“Hold on, let me see.”
Special Agent Gupta crossed the ruined lawn toward a pile of debris, as the phone screen jolted along. She passed a drenched pile of my old law hornbooks; Torts and Contracts, the green covers now black. Then our family-room television, charred, found randomly among drinking glasses. A stack of dishes, a pile of Lucinda’s handbags. The detritus of our family.
Special Agent Gupta muted the call, and I waited. After a few minutes, she came back on, then we jolted along again. “Sir, items from your son’s room are in a row ahead. We’ll give a look and see if the boxes are here, okay?”
“Thank you,” I said, and onto the phone screen came Ethan’s Rubik’s Cube collection, their unnaturally bright colors standing out on the muddy lawn. Then there was a pile of sneakers and clothes.
Special Agent Gupta kept scanning the row, and among a slew of old videogames I spotted the two cedar boxes.
“Those!” My heart lifted. “That’s them.”
“Great.” Special Agent Gupta picked up the two cedar boxes, showing them to the camera.
“I really appreciate that. That’s very kind of you.” My throat caught, my emotions raw. I felt like a wreck, like I was the burned-out house, a shell without structure, unable to bear weight.
“So, mission accomplished?”
“Yes, and if you see any of our family photographs, that would make my wife so happy. She’s a photographer.”
“I did see some.”
“If you could box them with the cedar chests, could you send them here?”
“Sure, I’d be happy to.”
“Thank you.”
“Anything else?”
I thought of something else. “Yes, one last thing.”
* * *
—
Dom pocketed the phone. “I’m glad you got the cedar boxes.”
My chest was still tight. “But what does it mean that Milo’s in Mexico?”
“It means we go after him there.”
“It’s not that easy, I know that.” I couldn’t help but despair. “He killed Allison and now he’s out of the country.”
“It’s not easy, but it’s doable. DEA knows the players as well as we do. Better.”
“Dom, tell me the truth. Don’t bullshit me.”
“I’m not bullshitting you. I never will.” Dom’s expression was sympathetic, which softened me.
“Are you telling me that the DEA knows of Milo, Junior, and the organization? Small-time drug dealers in the Philadelphia suburbs?”
“Yes. GVO is not small-time.”
I wanted to believe him, so badly. “You can’t pretend this is good news.”
“I’m not trying to. But it’s not a disaster, either.”
“To me, it is. Our chances of getting him are worse than before.”
“It’s a setback, at most.”
“What is this, semantics?” I threw my hands in the air. “He got out when you guys were looking for him!”
Dom winced, and I could see I had landed a blow, which conflicted me. The man had vowed to take a bullet for us.
“Dom, I don’t mean you, per se, and I didn’t tell your boss you showed us the video.”
“I noticed.” Dom met my eye. “Thank you.”
“I think it was a BMW. Was it? Was he the guy who burned down my house and office?”
“I don’t know either of those answers. Honestly, they don’t tell me. It’s strictly need-to-know, and The Babysitters Club does not need to know.” Dom shook his head. “My job is keeping you and your family alive, and if possible, happy. That will be harder if we don’t trust each other. You have to trust me.”
“Can I?”
“Yes.” Dom cocked his head. “But can I trust you?”
“Of course.” I felt taken aback. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“When I showed you the video, you took that picture of it. Now you’re trying to identify the car and who was driving. It’s exactly what I wanted to avoid.”
I realized he was right. “Fair enough.”
Dom extended a hand, with a smile. “Let’s start over.”
I shook his hand, smiling back. “Okay.”
“We’ll get this guy, Jason.”
“I believe you,” I told him, trying.
Chapter Seventeen
I went back inside the house, got online, and searched Mexican cartels, wanting to learn all I could. I clicked and clicked, reading one grim article after another, passing one hour after the next, going down a gruesome wormhole of Sinaloa, Jalisco, and Pablo Escobar, the truly horrifying numbers of murders, beheadings, and other carnage.
I made a pot of coffee and a cheese sandwich as the afternoon wore on, and Lucinda and Ethan didn’t come downstairs. I stayed online and plugged in Mexican cartel and Avondale, John Milo, George Veria, Big George, and George Veria, Jr. to see if there were any reported connections. I knew it was probably futile, but it was all I had to go on. There were no articles.
On impulse, I plugged in our last name to see if there was any new mention of us. The first entry caught me off guard, and the link read WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BENNETTS? Astonished, I clicked and was taken to the website of one Bryan Krieger, who called himself America’s premier citizen detective, above a photo of a middle-aged man in wire-rimmed aviators, with salt-and-pepper hair and a darker beard. Above him was a heading, CASES, and the first one was the bennett family.
Aghast, I clicked and read:
Folks, it looks like a bona fide mystery in the Philly suburbs, where an entire family disappeared in one night—Jason Bennett, wife Lucinda, daughter Allison, and son Ethan. Not only that, their house burned down, his court-reporting business burned down, and the mom’s photography studio was trashed, all in one night. And the family vanished into thin air.
My ears pricked up when I heard about it from my cousin. Your favorite citizen detective （me!） is leaving NYC now to investigate. Legacy media is missing the story, but we sure won’t. Looks like Jason runs a successful business, but who knows? His website lists lots of clients, but again, really? The site shows pictures of the office staff, and there’s a sweet young thing. Is that what’s going on here? Did Jason have an affair, then kill his family and run off?
I recoiled. I hadn’t known there was such a thing as citizen detectives, much less that they were speculating about me and my family. The “sweet young thing” could only be my employee Justine Vanderlost, who happened to be gay.