by Kevin Fox
“Look, Kat, I have to do my job. If I want to find those girls and you want me to catch the guy that tased you, I need to follow up this lead and go get Rigan Kelly.”
“It wasn’t a woman who tased me. It wasn’t her.”
“So she knows who it was. Maybe it she can tell me if it was one of the Russians from that boat.”
“He wasn’t Russian. I know the sound and feel of a Russian man – how their hands move. Besides, I was assaulted inside that house. You can’t expect me to go back in there alone.”
“No? If you can’t go in alone, does that mean you’re moving out? Or do you expect me to be home with you at all times?”
“Are you volunteering?”
“Look, I’m not going to my Dad’s this time. I’m not going to see some crazy conspiracy theorist. I’m going on police business to question a suspect. I can’t have you coming along.”
I couldn’t take her with me. Not only could I not explain it to Burke, who didn’t approve of me investigating in the first place, but I also couldn’t predict Kat’s reaction to whatever, and whoever, we might confront. If we ran into whoever assaulted her, it might get real ugly, real fast.
“So you bring me back here? Where I was tased and tied up? Where I could have been raped? When it’s already getting dark out?”
“Turn on the lights.”
“And when the generator runs out of gas?”
“It’s safer here.”
“The only way it’s safer is if I have a gun. You willing to give me one of yours?”
“Fine,” I said, before I’d really thought about it. I was willing to say anything just to get her out of the car. I was an idiot.
“Really?”
“Will you go?” I asked, weighing the odds that she wouldn’t do anything stupid in the amount of time I would be gone. Kat hesitated, but finally nodded. That was good enough. I had less than seven minutes to meet Burke. “…Then get out. The code on the gun safe is your birthday.”
“My birthday?” She asked, unable to suppress a grin.
“It’s the one date you’d never guess because you think I don’t care enough to remember it.”
“You don’t.”
“I do when it means you can’t get to my guns,” I told her honestly.
“That’s sweet in a demented and backward sort of way,” Kat said as she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, her mood swinging to its opposite pole as she bolted out of the car, eager to get into my guns. I called after her, regretting my decision already.
“I’ll change the code as soon as I get home. They’re not toys…”
Kat walked backward toward the door, grinning. “No duh. Give me some credit. You’ve seen me shoot. I’m army trained.”
“You’re paranoid and trigger happy – with a touch of PTSD. I’ll be shocked if you don’t shoot me when I get back.”
Kat gave me her back and the finger all in one graceful motion. Too bad she was cracked. If she wasn’t, she might be too beautiful to resist.
The city hadn’t bothered with many streetlights along the section of Sharrotts Road where Rigan Kelly lived. Out of the four lights that I could see, two were out and one flickered wildly enough to cause epileptic fits, but at least they were on – that was an improvement over last night, when there was no power to any lights on the island. Now there was just enough light to see that the home Sean described was in worse shape than he’d remembered, at least on the exterior. Moss was growing on the cedar shake siding, rose bushes and lilacs grew out of control all around the yard, and the brick sidewalk in front had heaved so badly that it’d be easier to walk on the dead and waterlogged grass.
There were dozens of homes like this one on the South Shore of Staten Island, littered around the edges of the former swamps now called ‘preserves’: Wolfe’s Pond Park, Lemon Creek, Arbutus Woods, Long Pond Park, Fairview, Bloomingdale Park – hundreds of acres of undisturbed wetlands, and all of them so close to one another that if you traveled through every one of them you’d never have to leave the woods for more than a few hundred feet. Rigan Kelly’s house backed right up to Clay Pit Ponds Preserve, so the overgrown backyard dissolved into a mass of sticker bushes and low-growing scrub brush. The house was about as remote as you could get inside of New York City.
As I checked the time on my phone again, a four-door sedan came around the corner from Bloomingdale Road and pulled off the shoulder, turning its headlights off. It had to be Burke. No one except a cop would walk the extra fifty yards in the wet and cold just to insure that he approached quietly. Even the mobbed-up guys always brought a friend when it was too dark.
As Burke approached, I rolled down my window and the stench of stale cigarettes drifted in as he leaned in, sighing that heavy west-of-Ireland sigh all the old-timers seem to have perfected.
“This better be good, Collins,” Burke grumbled. “We’ve got other shit goin’ on, if you hadn’t noticed.” I nodded. He wasn’t wrong. Hurricane Sandy had really fucked up the island.
“The woman who took me to the hospital lives here,” I told him. “Rigan Kelly, she works with at-risk kids in South Beach – including trafficking victims. I think she might be harboring the two girls.” Burke stared at me for a moment, as if expecting me to go on. It was an old cop trick to see if I was holding anything back. I returned the stare and he finally nodded.
“I know the name. We send kids her way,” he said, stopping to look at the old house, cowering in the dark. “So, I was right. It was no coincidence that she was out there night before last, was it? She somehow knew what was going on and was there for the kids?”
“It’s possible.”
“You think she’s in on it? She uses her position to recruit, is part of the whole thing? Is that why I’m here? You can make an arrest as easy as I can.”
“I have questionable standing. And you know more about what was on that boat. If I’m right, she might have the stuff I saw on the yacht inside.” That got Burke’s attention. He looked back at the house, knowing that if he broke this case with Markov involved, he’d get headlines – maybe even a book deal. I could see his retirement flashing in front of his beady eyes.
“What about a warrant?” he asked, suddenly invested in his own future.
“You know a judge that would approve a warrant with what I have?”
“Depends. What do you have?”
“A coincidental name. A tangential professional connection. That’s it. I can’t even confirm the woman I saw is the woman who lives here.”
“Jesus, Collins. You brought me out here with a whole lotta nothin’?”
“It’s her. Can’t prove it in a court of law, but it is. Too many coincidences,” I told him, not wanting to get into details about the cold case, her looking for my dead uncle, or Anthony’s description of the Witch of Wolfe’s Pond.
“I don’t believe in those. You got anything besides coincidences?”
“Not much more than when I saw you at the hospital. The Feds claim the boat was cleaned out, remember? I can’t get near that yacht. How about you, you got anything more?”
“Zilch.” Burke shrugged, staring at the house. “What the Feds should be doing is hunting down is Josef Markov. He’s running this whole thing, but everybody’s assuming he’ll wash up on Midland Beach in a few days. Most I can do is watch the street dealers and see if any high-grade white shows up.”
“It won’t if Rigan Kelly took it off the boat.”
“Unless she’s in it with Markov… so what’s your plan?”
“We talk our way in.”
“That’s a crap idea. If she was in business with the Russians it’s a mistake to just stroll up to the front door,” Burke said with annoyance, obviously wishing that I had a better plan.
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“Give me five minutes. I’ll take a look. You don’t hear from me, ring the bell. Just thank her for the ride to the hospital and see if you can find out what she was doing there. Maybe she
’ll invite you in – or give you probable cause,” he finally said, moving off into the darkness.
“And if she doesn’t?”
“Keep her busy as long as you can. Maybe I’ll stumble across something ‘in plain view’.” Burke smirked, melting into the long shadows. He was going to take a look, warrant or not, and I was going to be the distraction. I watched as he walked away, staying on the soft shoulder of the road, avoiding downed trees and storm detritus. For an old guy, he moved quickly and easily, blending into the darkness as he moved. It was only when he reached the gravel driveway that I saw him again, and then only because the flickering streetlight suddenly lit up, illuminating him for a moment before he moved beyond its glare.
I had five minutes to kill, which is nothing until you’re alone on a dark street in the rain, sitting in a damp car with the engine off. Then it’s mind numbing. I played solitaire on my cell phone for a couple of minutes, then got out and wandered across the street to get the lay of the land. There wasn’t much to see other than a lot of downed trees, wet leaves, and some shingles that had been blown off of Rigan’s house, lying in the sticker bushes. A little further up there were a few empty beer bottles and cigarette butts, as if some kids had been hanging out in a car drinking and smoking.
I looked closer at the cigarettes, noticing that they were filter-less and not completely waterlogged – so they were discarded after the worst of the storm. I looked closer at the beer bottles – they were an international brand some stores had started stocking lately to cater to the blue-collar crowd that couldn’t quite rise to the level of wine-snobs: Baltika. A Russian beer.
Shit. This wasn’t good.
I tried to rationalize my apprehension away. Maybe there were Russian immigrants living in the neighborhood, or the smokers were self-conscious hipsters – but I was lying to myself. The likelihood that Russian cigarettes and beer were dumped across from Rigan Kelly’s house in the last hour – by chance – was approaching nil. The knife wound in my chest started to throb. Sure, I was probably due for some pain meds, but that wasn’t the only reason. I thought about numbing the pain and my nerves with more, but I was better off not being fuzzyheaded with slow reaction times.
I looked over at Rigan’s house and still saw no sign of Burke. I couldn’t wait. At four and a half minutes I walked up the front walk, being careful not to trip on the bricks, and climbed up the worn and crumbling stoop with one hand on my gun, scanning the night as the flickering streetlight came on.
I listened for a moment. Nothing. Peered through the side panel windows next to the door. No movement. That meant no probable cause. I rang the bell and listened as its electronic version of the William Tell Overture ended.
Then I heard movement – the light tread of feet on creaky wooden floors and the metal-on-metal sound of old hinges bearing the weight of a heavy door. Someone was inside. I was sure of it… but then the house went silent again.
I waited. After a moment there were lighter footsteps, headed for the back of the house. There wasn’t much I could do except hope they ran out and right into Burke. It’s not a crime to ignore your doorbell, but it should be, especially if you’re leaving someone outside on a cold, wet night.
Without a warrant I was stuck. Whoever was inside was never going to answer, so I turned to go find Burke. That’s when I saw her – a silhouette, half-hidden by everything that had been lifted and discarded by the winds of Sandy, standing right at the edge of the woods. The figure was slighter than a man, with longer hair and could have been a teen boy, but she didn’t stand like one. I have a keen eye, and this person had curves. Hips. Serious hips. Not big, but definitely not a man’s.
Whoever she was, she wasn’t moving and from her position, it looked like she was watching me. I never would have been able to see her except for the fact that the flickering streetlight briefly lit up the area behind her, outlining her slender form. Ignoring her, and keeping my eyes averted from where she stood, I moved down the walkway, running through the possibilities in my head. It could be Rigan, or Alina, the older of those two girls. From what I remembered, Dariya was smaller. Whoever it was had to have seen me knocking and had stayed hidden, not approaching or leaving, which led to one conclusion – she had something to hide.
Once off the walkway I kept going back toward my car, pretending not to see her. About halfway back to the Nova I took advantage of a downed tree, using it to obscure me from her line of sight as I ducked into the woods. During a normal fall season it would have been hard to walk silently on twigs and dried leaves, but the weather had cooperated and Sandy had left the ground cushiony and silent under my feet. I was able to circle silently around the woman. She kept her eyes on my car. When I was within ten feet, I brought my gun up, stepping slowly closer.
“Don’t move,” I told her calmly, but she did anyway. She was slow, and deliberate, turning to look right at me. I still couldn’t see her face, but her voice I recognized.
“Pulling your little pistol on an innocent woman? Nice,” she said, and for a moment I was tempted to pull the trigger.
It was Kat.
She stepped closer and a shaft of flickering light finally illuminated her face and her pale blue-green eyes. The flicker and the intensity of her stare made her look possessed. Either that, or I knew her too well and I was biased.
“Does that count as excessive force? Is that why the NYPD has such a bad rep? No manners?” Kat asked, her voice whispery-soft
“Are you nuts, Kat? I mean, not your usual bat-shit crazy type stuff, but honestly certifiable? What are you doing here?”
“That’s a rhetorical question, right? ‘Cause I could ask you the same thing – pointing a gun in my face just because I’m walking on public property? These woods are a nature preserve you know. Open to the public.”
“You were following me.”
“So you’re going to shoot me?” She asked, incredulous. I so badly wanted to answer ‘yes’, but didn’t have the time for an argument.
“How’d you get here?”
“My Vespa. I parked it out on Bloomingdale.”
“I told you to stay home.”
“It got dark. I was staying out of your way until you decided to sneak up on me and try to kill me.”
“Out of my way? Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you following me? You’re not good at this,” I told her, trying to figure out how to get rid of her. Burke was nearby and the last thing I needed was him running into Kat in the woods.
“So you say. I’ve been arrested for stalking. Twice.”
“Exactly my point. You don’t get arrested if you’re good at it.”
“Twice – eight years ago – before the Army trained me. There’s been like fifteen times since. No one sees me coming now.”
“Except me.”
“Yeah. But you’re like a real detective. You’re better than most,” Kat said, her voice going low again as she put a hand on my arm. It was warm, and soft, and in the cold damp night it felt good, but I shook it off, annoyed.
“Go home. I don’t need your help.”
“I can’t. God says I gotta look out for the feeble-minded,” she said, smiling, refusing to quit playing her games.
“I don’t need help. I’m not feeble-minded,” I protested, taking her firmly by the arm to lead her back out to the street. She walked with me, unresisting but still negotiating.
“Really? Tell me anything that happened to you before you were seven. Or about how it felt when you got laid for the first time.”
“Fuck off. Go home. I have work to do.” I left her in the street, heading back toward the house. I got five steps away and the streetlight flickered on again, causing Kat to snicker.
“If you’re not feeble-minded, then why didn’t you notice the motion sensor?” She asked with a mocking tone. It was her tone that made me realize she wasn’t messing around.
“What motion sensor?”
“The one wired into the streetlight,” she said, pointin
g at it. “It flickers whenever someone gets too close to that house.” I looked at the streetlight and tried to recall when it had gone on or off since I got here. It could have been a coincidence, but I knew it wasn’t. Kat was right.
“How’d you notice it?”
“I dated this mob guy up on Todt Hill once. He said no one notices a screwed-up streetlight because half of ‘em are screwed up already. Great early warning system. It’s like the way the Taliban uses goats – those bleating fuckers give you away every time.”
At times like this Kat really pissed me off, but I didn’t have a chance to be angry – whoever was inside Rigan Kelly’s house had known we were coming. They knew it before I ever got to the door and before Burke went around the back. Which meant they had time to prepare. They’d already be out the back door, into the woods…
…And I hadn’t heard from Burke in over ten minutes. I rushed toward the back of the house without thinking, knowing in my gut that whatever I found was going to be bad. Kat followed me.
“Stay here,” I told her, without turning.
“Screw you—” she mumbled, right behind me. I moved faster, letting branches slap her as I let them go, hoping to keep her a safe distance back at the very least…
That’s when I heard the scream – no, screams – at least two, muffled by the trees and brush and the heavy, damp air. They came from deep in the woods and I was trying to figure out from which direction when the sharp sound of three gunshots rang out – silencing the screams.
“Kat – get in the car and lock the doors!” I yelled, running headlong through sticker bushes, feeling whip-like branches stinging my cold cheeks as I lunged headfirst toward the shots. I didn’t bother to look back for Kat. I couldn’t stop her if she decided to follow. She lasted two tours in Afghanistan for good reason.