Into Darkness

by T. J. Brearton

  Caldoza said, “Past these sites, to the east, are the railyards.” He pointed up Second Street. “Right up there, Long Island City Yard.” He showed her his phone and she got a bird’s-eye view of the point, the streets, the railyards. “We’re getting the cell ping in here, right in this area.” He swirled his finger around the screen. “The problem has been, we don’t have the call detail record yet. We’re working off two low-range towers in this area, covering a few city blocks. What’s helping us is that we’re on a point. If she’s out in the water, we probably wouldn’t be getting a signal. So we’re either going to find her or at least her phone right here on the Point, among these construction sites. Up Center Boulevard, up Second Street, or maybe over on Fifty-Fourth.”

  Heinz found them and they made a plan to start by moving up the East River. They fanned out, Shannon taking the route closest to the water’s edge, feeling her pulse kick a little harder. Ten months in the field with the FBI, and this was her first potential serial killer case.

  A sign declared Hunters Point South Park. She navigated a zigzagging walkway between the river’s rocky edge and the long thick grass along the embankment rolling up away from the river to the groomed park. A couple of Jet Skis zipped around on the water. A ferry drew closer, going faster than she thought ferries ought, creating a froth. Shannon turned away from it all and watched the long mats of river grass as she picked her way along the asphalt walk. She felt excited, scared, but calm all at once. Maybe a little embarrassed. Because she was once a poor farm girl from rural New York State, and now she was thirty years old and a special agent with the FBI, working in New York City, and she felt the thrill of that – the pride of that – and she was afraid of pride, afraid of vanity.

  Red flags marked a spot where someone – a conservancy group, probably – had posted a sign about bird habitat and not walking on the grass, but that was all she saw. She left the walkway where it ended at the ferry dock, people waiting to board. She moved faster, jogging now, as she left the river behind and moved down Borden Ave toward the Long Island Rail Road. She turned down Second Street, feeling a thread of sweat roll down her back.

  She was going to head into the railyard when a news van passed her, trucking along Second Street. It turned onto Fifty-Fourth, just a block south. Shannon kept going that way, eyes on everything as she jogged. Two low-range towers? Monica Forbes could be anywhere. They could be looking for hours. Maybe days. And they might find only her phone – because what abductor let his victim bring her phone along for the ride? Anyone living in today’s world knew police would get a warrant and ping the device. In most cases they’d be able to triangulate it within a few hundred yards. This area was an exception because, until recently, it had been mostly neglected.

  Maybe Monica was alive. It was still possible that her disappearance wasn’t related to Eva Diaz. That, despite what her husband thought, Monica Forbes had changed her routine, stopped somewhere for a few drinks, maybe tripped and fell on her way home. Were there any bars around here? Caldoza had pointed out some restaurants on the way to the Point. She’d also seen a few street vendors selling things like wallets and purses.

  Shannon turned left down Fifty-Fourth and jogged past a low, redbrick construction supply company. People were out, unloading trucks: black men and Latino men and the occasional tattooed white man. She noticed these things because, growing up, you could count on your fingers the people of color in her hometown.

  Someone was behind her. Still jogging, Shannon glanced back, saw another van rolling slowly along, unmarked. More press? The van passed her and slowed, then sped up again. Looking for something? How the hell had the media gotten here so fast?

  Shannon passed a series of garages on her left, watching the van slow again. She almost caught up to it when the driver hit the gas and took off. There was an empty lot on her right; a sign – Pinnacle Realty – advertised it for sale, even though it was populated with vehicles – fifteen-passenger vans, transit buses, blue vans with “SuperShuttle” embossed on the sides.

  She stopped running.

  She glanced up the street to where the van had slowed again. It looked like it was turning around, the people inside it watching her. Waiting to see what she did.

  The bright sun starred off the rows of commercial vehicles. The back of the lot abutted Newton Creek and was overgrown like the tip of Hunters Point, full of fast-growing cottonwood and ailanthus. Weed trees. An odor caught her attention – the kind of baked urine smell that wafts up from subways and homeless encampments under bridges and in certain parks.

  Maybe Monica Forbes wasn’t connected to Eva Diaz, no.

  But if she was, Diaz had been found in a place like this one. The back lot of a building where a construction company parked its vehicles. Given the many arbitrary places to look, this was the better among them. Shannon entered through an open gate.

  Caldoza called her phone as she walked in. “We’ve cleared the parks,” he said. “We’re focusing on the construction sites. Where are you?”

  She gave him her location.

  “Doing okay?”

  “I’m good. I think I saw a news van. Maybe two.”

  “Yeah, they’re all over. Somehow they’re on it. Must’ve followed us from North Seventh.”

  Shannon only remembered one reporter at North Seventh and doubted that one would have given up new information to her competitors. Baldacci had struck Shannon as an “anything for the story” type of reporter. Maybe the type to listen to police communications and know ten-codes?

  Still, it was very fast.

  “Keep in touch,” Caldoza said.

  Shannon disconnected and put her phone away. The sweat was really running down her back now – the Kevlar vest was comforting but made her all the hotter.

  She picked her way through the vehicles, getting closer to the weeds and trees on the creek bank. An urban environment, somewhat, but the trees and bunches of overgrown grasses evoked feelings of home. Hunting with her brothers. Turkey in the spring, deer in the fall. She’d had a thing with guns in her youth and had learned to hunt with a compound bow instead. Her first deer had been harvested that way, her arrow right through its lungs. It had run, forcing her to give chase. When she’d found it at last, the animal was dead and she’d said a prayer over it, even cried.

  You didn’t know what that experience was going to be like until you’d lived it.

  Monica, she thought, where are you?

  Shannon had worked her way all the way into the back corner. Concrete blocks supported a city bus without wheels. She started working her way back toward the street.

  Then she stopped. Beneath the bus, something blue.

  Monica Forbes had last been seen wearing blue.

  Shannon pulled her weapon, heart rate speeding up. Instinctively: “Hello?”

  No one answered. Construction rattled in the background. The white noise of traffic all around, but muffled by distance and heat. Shannon eased down into a squat for a better view beneath the bus. She was breathing a bit harder, aiming her gun, just in case.

  The blue – a blouse, for sure – was attached to a body. A person.

  Shannon pulled her phone out. Her fingers trembled slightly as she keyed Caldoza’s number.

  “You got something?”

  She spoke; the words snagged in her throat. She grunted and continued, “I got her. I’ve got Monica Forbes.” She looked in at the woman, at the marks on her neck, the way her head was bent back, eyes staring, seeming to look right at Shannon. Through her. “She’s dead.”

  “On my way. Don’t move.”

  Shannon dropped the phone on the dusty ground. She put a hand over her mouth, looking around a little bit more. He dumped you here. Stuffed you under a bus like some discarded item … It couldn’t have been for long. Maybe a few hours. Otherwise, some stray dog might’ve come poking around, or maybe the rats …

  Shannon heard a noise behind her, stood fast, and aimed. A redhead reporter and her potbel
lied cameraman stopped in their tracks. The reporter’s eyes went wide. She tapped the cameraman’s shoulder and pointed below the bus. He squatted down for a better angle and aimed the camera.

  “Get back,” Shannon said, chest pounding.

  “Is that her?” the reporter asked.

  “I’m going to need you to back up,” Shannon said. She kept a grip on the gun but pointed it down. “This isn’t safe back here. I want you out past the gate.” She thought and added, “What are you doing here?”

  The reporter and cameraman exchanged looks. The reporter said something to him, too low to hear, and they moved quickly for the street.

  Shannon watched until they were out of harm’s way, then faced the bus again. She dipped her head and was just able to see a bit of the body from this angle.

  “Ah, man,” Shannon said to the dusty parking lot. Then she said a prayer.

  Keep her with you.

  Keep her with you now. Don’t let her go.

  Sirens rose in the near distance.

  The crime scene unit had been just a few miles away in Williamsburg and so reached the new scene in minutes. In the meantime, Shannon had stayed with the body until NYPD dragged it carefully out from under the bus and covered it up, then roped off the area and closed off the entrance to the lot.

  The media set up in the street. TV reporters with cameramen, a couple of photographers and half a dozen more newspeople standing around with their notebooks out. A feeding frenzy. Shannon recognized the reporter from North Seventh Street, Baldacci. Baldacci scribbled in her notebook as she soaked up the scene.

  The medical examiner arrived and pronounced Monica Forbes dead. Shannon pushed through a growing crowd of cops and asked for time of death. “At least seven hours ago,” the medical examiner said. He was an older man with wild gray eyebrows. “Maybe more.”

  It was noon. Seven hours ago meant just before dawn.

  So the killer slips into the lot, dumps the body, shoves it under the bus. How? Carrying it?

  The lot hadn’t even been locked. He could’ve easily driven in.

  “We need to be casting for tire tracks,” Shannon said to Caldoza.

  He raised his eyebrows at her. “I hear you, but this is a dirt parking lot for shuttle vans and transit buses. We need to focus on the body.”

  Shannon did: Monica Forbes had been strangled, according to the ME. A belt of some kind had been used. “But not leather,” the ME said, “too much abrasion. Although that’s just preliminary, to give you something.”

  Beyond that, Forbes would be autopsied and checked thoroughly for any fibers that rubbed off from the ligature. She’d also be checked for any fingerprints, hair, or touch DNA. Her hands were bagged – the pathologist would check under her fingernails. Had she clawed at her attacker as he’d tightened the belt around her neck?

  But Shannon smelled it – she asked Caldoza if he smelled it, too, and he gave a sniff near the body. Caldoza asked, “Bleach?”

  She nodded and stepped away, dialing Mark Tyler.

  “Agent Ames,” Tyler said, “been hoping to hear from you. What have we got?”

  She explained the situation, a victim strangled, just like Diaz. Sanitized, also like Diaz. “The body is fully clothed,” she added. “Like Diaz.”

  “I thought he cleaned them.”

  “He could dress them again. It’s hard to tell – she was in an awkward position – but it could’ve been that the clothes were off. That the shirt was crooked.”

  “What else?”

  Shannon was feeling keyed up, the adrenaline still pumping through her from finding the victim. She flashed on the face of Ben Forbes, his sad eyes and stooped shoulders. This was going to devastate him. Eva Diaz was just as important, but at least she’d been unmarried, childless. Monica Forbes’s children were going to come home from their idyllic little summer camps and learn that their mother was gone. No more hugs and kisses, no more of her soft eyes, her gentle touch, wafts of her perfume. Never again.

  “Ames?”

  “Now that we have a dump site – Forbes here in Long Island City, and we know Diaz was in Maspeth – just a reminder about that geographic proximity. The perp could be close, sir.”

  “Let’s not rush to judgment. We need an autopsy, for one thing …” Tyler went on and said something about getting ahead of the evidence, but Shannon only half heard him. She was watching the crowd of reporters beyond the lot entrance. The group had swelled to twice the size. She tuned back in as Tyler finished his spiel: “… to monitor and let me make the decisions whether or not we need to devote more resources to this, all right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s not our job to take over investigations. That’s not what we do. We offer assistance if it’s appropriate, if we’re asked.”

  The way he said it, it was almost like Mark Tyler resented these facts. But, then, maybe that was too hasty of her, too judgmental. “Understood, sir,” she said.

  “All right,” Tyler said, and broke the connection.

  Shannon put her phone away and reached the reporters. Cameras swung in her direction and microphones stretched toward her face. They started to barrage her with questions: “Are you NYPD?” “What can you tell us about what happened here?” “Is that Monica Forbes? Can you confirm Monica Forbes’s death?” Shannon held up a hand to say, That’s not what I’m here for. She also hoped that Ben Forbes wasn’t sitting at home, watching TV. It was local PD’s job to call him – Caldoza had said he would be the one. She hoped it would be soon.

  Shannon looked over the group of reporters, zeroing in on the redhead who had arrived first. “How did you know to come here?”

  Faces turned toward the redhead.

  “I got a text,” she admitted.

  A woman near the back raised her hand. “So did I.”

  “Same here,” someone else said – Shannon didn’t see who.

  Shannon asked, “A leak?”

  The redhead shrugged and said, “I assumed it was someone in the department. It happens. I mean, usually they like to get paid, but sometimes they like to see themselves on camera …”

  Someone else in the group disagreed with this and it elicited an argument. Half of the media group squabbled over the intentions of sources, while the other half started lobbing new questions at Shannon.

  “We’ll have another press conference,” she said, looking past them. One reporter was moving away. The one from the Gazette, Baldacci.

  Baldacci crossed the street, looking at her phone, and then while she was looking, broke into a light trot. Where was she going?

  Shannon repeated, “Press conference will be soon. I’m sure Detective Caldoza will fill you in on things. We’ll, ah, we’ll know more in a little, ah …” She was too distracted by Baldacci. Moving away from the scene, headed down the street in such a hurry, the reporter acted like she’d gotten some sort of emergency call. Maybe it was personal. Or maybe it was another hot tip.

  Shannon pushed her way through the gauntlet. “Excuse me … sorry …” By the time she got through, Baldacci was half a block down, moving toward some dumpsters. The reporter then stopped and did something else with her phone. Shannon realized she was taking video with it.

  “Hey!” Shannon called. She glanced at the rooftops of the low brick buildings on Fifty-Fourth Street as she jogged along, reminded again of hunting, sitting with her brothers in the deer stand they’d built over two large boulders. The Rock Stand, they’d called it. From there, you had a deep view of the woods. One brother would put on a drive – he’d go through the woods making noise, hoping to flush out some deer – while another brother would wait in the stand.

  Shannon glanced back at all the reporters gathered, a couple of them having admitted that they’d received an anonymous tip. Either that, or they’d been protecting sources. But if there was a killer out there who had it in for reporters …

  She returned her attention to Baldacci. The reporter had reached the dumpsters. She opene
d one and peered inside. She had her cell phone light on and shined it in.

  A truck came rumbling down Fifty-Fourth and Shannon jogged out of its way. When it passed, Baldacci had moved to the second dumpster, in the middle.

  “Hey!” Shannon called again.

  Baldacci glanced over at her.

  Shannon said, “Don’t do that!” Her skin was crawling.

  Baldacci turned away. She opened the next dumpster.

  It was like getting punched by the wind. The explosion picked Shannon up off her feet and threw her backward. She hit the ground butt and elbows first. When her head struck the pavement, everything went black.

  8

  In her dream, the water was icy cold. She swam in darkness, knowing the one whom she was trying to save was somewhere near. He was right there, just beyond the reach of her fingertips.

  The water was so cold it seemed to burn.

  She awoke in a bright room, chest exploding. After a few ragged breaths, she got her bearings. White walls, antiseptic smells, beeping machines. The hospital.

  The skin of her arms and legs felt constricted. Touching her face, she felt bandages. The pain registered next, present but distant, like a storm muffled beyond thick walls.

  The shuttle van lot in Queens. The three dumpsters across the street. Jordan Baldacci, hurrying to her death.

  No one had even considered a bomb. The Reporter Killer – if he could be called that until there was something better – hadn’t yet used explosives. His MO had seemed straightforward: abduct, kill, then dump in fairly plain sight.

  Things to think about: who owned the dumpsters? When was the usual pickup time? How did the killer know someone else wouldn’t open the lid first? What was the bomb made of? How hard was that? How exotic were the components? But most pressing – why had Jordan Baldacci gone for the dumpster to look inside?