Half-Past Dawn

CHAPTER 9

Jack Keeler could hardly remember a time when he and his father didn’t disagree, didn’t fight, didn’t go for long spells without speaking.

Jack had grown up in a family of privilege, though not multimillionaires. His father’s successful career in finance left Jack wanting for nothing. He lived inside a bubble, his friends and family from similar backgrounds with similar morals and viewpoints. As far as Jack was concerned, life as it was in his town was the way the world was.

Jack had been the goalie on his high school hockey team and rode his talent to play Division III at Williams College in Massachusetts. While his father had pushed him to play Division I-the stepping stone to the pros-Jack was under no illusion of ever having the skill set to play in the NHL. He was happy having a good time and enjoying the sport for what it was. It had allowed him to attend a school that his grades couldn’t get him into, and it kept him the center of attention on campus for the first two seasons.

Jack was all of twenty when his world was turned upside down. His father was a senior VP of a small investment firm and had been pushing his son toward the power world of finance, badgering him about his grades, his appearance, his reputation. When he ventured into the city, his father ensured that he met with all of the movers and shakers, laying the groundwork for the future. In the summer of his freshman year, he interned at the investment bank Millar and Peabody in Manhattan, and his sophomore year saw him spend eight weeks at Wyeth Investments. But the experience did not have the effect his father had hoped for.

Earl Nathanson was their neighbor, a successful investment banker, a thrice-divorced father of five who regularly had forgone seeing his children’s baseball games and swim meets for work and the track. Earl’s house next to the Keelers’ was the finest on the block. He always claimed that it would have been three times its size if he didn’t have to pay his three ex-wives and so much child support.

Jack’s father truly hated the man. He found him despicable not only in his personal life but also in business, having made his money off of questionable trades and the backs of others. They both worked at Wyeth Investments but in different offices. Earl was considered a star in the company, and many said he was the man to learn from, but Jack’s father told him that he was the type to avoid, the type never to aspire to be.

But three weeks after that lecture, Earl and his father did a significant deal together, one that made them both a considerable amount of money. And in the small celebration in the firm’s conference room, with champagne flowing, Jack watched as his father shook the hand of the man he despised, all the while smiling and laughing, choosing money over principles.

He looked around the room, seeing men with phony smiles that masked hidden jealousy and agendas, employees driven by greed, all secretly hoping that the next champagne toast would be to them. Jack wondered how many of them would put aside their convictions and dreams to chase the dollar.

Jack silently railed against his father, his moral compromise for financial success, his lack of genuine honesty in his job. He swore that he was not going to let his dreams die, compromise himself for anything. Unbeknownst to his father, Jack formed his own plans.

It was in the summer, just before the start of his junior year, that he finally declared his major: criminal justice, a major that his father frowned upon.

Jack Keeler took the New York City police entrance exam in his senior year of college and headed to the Police Academy-much to the disappointment of his father-the day after graduation, his degree and pedigree making him a unique commodity in the New York City Police department.

It turned out that Jack was gifted with a gun, finishing head of his class at the range. He represented the N.Y. Police Academy at several competitions, always taking home the top prize. He never had a love for guns but found them to be like an extension of his body. His skill with a pistol in the obstacle-laden practical shooting courses was only bested by his ability with a rifle. His instructors recommended him for SWAT and made the military aware of his talent, but Jack would have none of it. He wanted to be engaged in fighting crime, solving crime; he wanted to use his mind far more than a firearm.

With the honors bestowed upon him, Jack was given accelerated entry into homicide, the division where he thought he could do the most good, applying his deductive reasoning to capturing those who committed the most heinous acts.

With an affection for puzzles since his teens, he was a natural as a detective. His aptitude helped him get assigned to a six-month apprenticeship under Detective Frank Archer. The department believed that the veteran would impart his wisdom and skills to someone with youthful energy, drive, and passion for police work.

Frank at first thought Keeler was some rich kid playing cops and robbers, a showboater who would be the front-page poster child of the “new” kind of cop. The fact of the matter was that Jack was not rich in the sense of privilege, having been raised in the upper-middle-class world afforded by his father’s income. Jack had all but rejected his father’s monetary assistance and connections upon graduating from college. He was neither arrogant nor vain, and his passion turned out to be entirely genuine.

Although Frank was fifteen years Jack’s senior, they became fast friends, working together on multiple cases over the six-month period. Jack absorbed his new friend’s knowledge, while Frank found Jack’s drive and commitment refreshing in a world where work ethics were as ephemeral as a cool summer breeze.

Frank’s world was the antithesis of the life Jack had started out in. He was street-tough and spoke his mind without thought; his bulldog body and attitude were the outward manifestation of his heart. Frank had spent ten years in homicide and had yet to become jaded. Bronx-born and -raised, at the age of eighteen, he joined the Army in search of adventure but ended up spending the majority of his ten years of service as a sergeant stateside, barring a single tour in Germany.

His wife, Lisa, never complained as they crisscrossed the country from base to base for six-month stints, but she exacted a promise from Frank that once he was out of the Army, he would figure out a way to buy her a small house with a garden, where they could settle down and have kids.

Frank fit right in at the NYPD, which was happy to embrace a military man. He worked his way through narcotics, robbery, and special units, finally settling into homicide. Lisa had feared for his life far more than she ever had when he was in the army.

She had hoped to overcome that by focusing on family and children. But despite all the years of trying, despite all of the doctors’ promises and bills, a child was not in their future. They dealt with their heartbreak as they did with so many of the problems they had faced in life: distraction. Lisa became a teacher, indirectly sating her maternal instinct by helping to form the lives of other people’s children, taking pleasure in her third-grade class and the students’ magical, inquisitive minds.

Frank found an even greater focus at work, rising to the top of his game, with multiple accommodations and countless convictions. He and Lisa purchased a small Cape Cod-style house in Byram Hills and had finally found a peaceful balance to life.