The Lazarus Trap by Davis Bunn

“Stack the books that fit on that empty shelf.”
    The books were a mixture of marriage counseling, Bibles, and crisis resolution. By the time they were finished and the map repinned to the wall and the table moved back into place, both men were breathing hard.
    Don stepped back, surveyed the blank space, and asked, “What happened to this guy?”
    Terrance went back to Val’s office.
    When he was finished with the computer, Terrance opened the rear French doors in the living room. He stood listening to the night. The overcast sky was illuminated an orangish yellow by the city’s false dawn. A rising wind blew in from the south. The palms rattled like angry observers, irritated by his calm. Terrance wondered if this was how triumph was supposed to feel. Like a barrier had been erected between himself and all of life. Perhaps this was why warriors of old paraded through the streets and danced around mammoth fires. They sought to create externally what they should have felt inside.
    â€œVal doesn’t even have a safe.” Don came in with a trash bag full of papers. “All the interesting stuff was in a shoe box on the closet’s top shelf. Have a look at this.”
    Terrance turned his flashlight onto the paper in Don’s hands. “A false birth certificate?”
    â€œUnless he’s done a name change and forgot to tell us.” Don shook his head. “He’d use the birth certificate to apply for a passport, right? Looks like our guy was getting ready to fly.”
    Terrance read the name on the birth certificate. “Jeffrey Adams.”
    Don shone his flashlight down on the photograph dangling from Terrance’s hand. The picture was of a laughing infant, held by an adult excluded from the frame. “That Val’s kid?”
    Terrance stared out at the night and declared, “Mine. The child is mine.”
    Saying it often enough almost made it so.

THE NIGHT ACTED AS AN AMPLIFIER TO THE STREET’S ENERGY. Everything outside Val’s hotel was louder, faster, harsher. He walked back the three blocks to the cyber café. Cars cruised the avenue, their salsa rock and hip-hop punching the air with pneumatic fists. Val was just another solitary guy walking the concrete in search of his fix. Just another mark.
    Val reentered the café. A spiky-haired youth with spiderwebs tattooed on both forearms had replaced the young woman. The guy accepted Val’s deposit and directed him to a computer without seeing him at all.
    Val went to the Yahoo.com Web site. The screen address had come back to him while he had been seated in the hotel lobby. Just another shard of memory, another fleck of another guy’s past. Val punched the button for e-mail retrieval, then typed in his screen name and password.
    A long sweep of e-mails filled the screen. Val went through them carefully. The names and the messages formed imperfect mental fragments. Some e-mails asked him to get in touch with them if he was able. Most held the formal air of concerned business colleagues. After reading each one, Val hit the “keep as new” tab, so there would be no record of his having stopped by for a read. What he found there revealed no reason to go back.
    Then a screen name leapt out at him. She used her own name, of course. Audrey d’Arcy. A very direct woman, surrounded in Val’s mind by candlelight and sorrow of his own making.
    Val hit the key to open her e-mail.
    My beloved Valentine,
     I can’t believe this time you’ve left me for good. Now I’m alone and sinking inside the void where a heart used to be. Asking questions to a night that threatens to swallow me whole. I prayed for nothing more than to connect with you. Why was I doomed to fail with the one man I ever truly loved . . .
    Val masked the letter and glanced around. No one paid him any attention. He stared at the front window and the night beyond, seared by her words.
    He rose to