Into Darkness

by T. J. Brearton

  I want to help this woman.

  I maybe just need a little help. A little help to show me the way …

  20

  She ventured out into the night air, grateful to be free of that cloying, formaldehyde stink of the preserved dead. The heat had barely let up, the humidity oppressive, but she didn’t mind. She sat on one of several concrete benches near the Medical Examiner’s Office, listening to the muffled traffic surrounding her, and watched the blinking red/green lights of a low 747 coming in for a landing to the north, LaGuardia Airport.

  She went through it one more time:

  Forbes had been killed almost a week ago now. Diaz was two weeks before that. Baldacci was killed right on the heels of Monica Forbes, no lag in between. And the most recent murder, Spencer, came a few nights later, because of the awards dinner. Baldacci and Spencer were killed at that time and place for a reason. The other two? Were the times of their deaths arbitrary?

  Serial killers were known to speed up. Like drug addicts, their needs increased as their patience decreased. They got a high from the killing, or the reliving of the killing, then developed a tolerance to that high, and needed to up the stakes to achieve the same chemical satisfaction.

  This wasn’t that. This killer was organized. He was so good, he’d killed a man in cold blood with two dozen cops right there. Right in the same place.

  “He’s got to be there,” she said under her breath, thinking about the three hundred guests at the awards dinner, the employees. But, like she’d told Caldoza, everybody was checking out.

  How was that possible? They’d missed something. Or there was someone they’d yet to see …

  Maybe Tyler and Bufort were right. This was terrorism, plain and simple. Someone who hated the media, hated corporations, hated America – et cetera.

  On the other hand, maybe Ben Forbes was right – this was payback for reporters not only covering a story, but for having information dangerous to someone like Nikolay Lebedev. The story about the Pelham Bay apartment building wasn’t in Spencer’s employment history, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been working on it.

  She needed to get to his house, go through his things.

  Spencer had a tiny but chic studio apartment at the southernmost tip of Manhattan, right near Battery Park. After deciding to man up and drive herself this time, she handed over her identification to a positively ancient Asian man, who scrutinized it and made several soft grunts before unlocking the sixth-floor space. He stood in the doorway as she walked in.

  The Statue of Liberty, dark and just barely visible, took up a small space within one of the two front windows. A Murphy bed was enclosed in the wall. A handful of dishes – coffee cup, bowl and spoon – sat in the sink. On the fridge, a picture of Spencer and his daughter, a pretty teenaged girl, possibly of mixed race. They posed in front of the entrance to Disney World, in Florida. There were more pictures of the daughter from when she was younger – riding a bike in what looked like Central Park, sitting on stage with a small band, playing the oboe. An English test, graded A-plus, adorned the center of the fridge door. Nice Job, C! was written in red.

  Huh.

  Spencer was a proud father.

  Shannon pushed around some mail on the table, but it was the laptop she was here for. Spencer’s phone was already in custody, but no one, not Tyler or Moray, not NYPD, had sent a unit to his house to bring more personal items into evidence. He’d been a person of interest for about a minute, then a sudden victim, and it had only been twenty-four hours since the switch. Law enforcement was struggling to keep up.

  The laptop was a MacBook Air. She tried a few passwords, and it shook her off each time. Shannon smiled at the landlord still guarding the doorway. She pulled out her phone and called Tyler and requested they get a unit over to Spencer’s to pick up his devices and give the place a thorough sweep.

  “The hell are you doing, Ames?” Tyler sounded angry but distracted.

  “I’m trying to pick up some slack, that’s all. I know how busy you are – everyone is.”

  “You’re out there running your own investigation.”

  “I just think there are things … Maybe Spencer knew the killer. And I don’t have everything he was working on, since he was freelance. It could help.”

  Tyler made no response.

  “Sir?”

  “Fine. I’ll sign off and get someone over there in the morning. But please remember your place here, Ames. I know we’ve moved beyond simple monitoring, but you still need to run everything past me. Or at least check in with Bufort.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She hung up, gave Spencer’s place one last look, and left. It was midnight. Time to go home, feed the cat, and try to get some sleep.

  Thump-thump-thump.

  The pounding on her apartment door startled her awake. She groped for her phone, but it wasn’t on the bedside table.

  Shannon threw the sheet back and swung her legs out of bed. The floor was cool beneath her bare feet. She scuffed toward the door, rubbing away the sleep in her eyes with the heel of her palm. Her gun and badge were on the table. Her phone, too. Still in silent mode from the briefing. Shit. But it wasn’t even five a.m. Who the hell was here?

  Thump-thump-thump.

  She grabbed the gun and cocked it, then peeked through the glass peephole while keeping most of her body – her vital organs – away from the center of the door. A training habit.

  Bufort’s head looked abnormally large through the convex glass. He stood in the hallway dressed in a Kevlar vest. Another hung from his grip. “Ames, open up. It’s me.”

  “Hang on,” she said. She was still only dressed in her underclothes. She grabbed a blanket off the couch, wrapped it around her waist, set down the gun, and unlocked the door.

  He came in, looking at her, checking out her place.

  She asked, “Why’d you come up?”

  “I’ve been calling you.”

  “I was deep asleep, sorry. What’s up?”

  “We’ve had guys looking for Ray Tanzer.”

  Caldoza had just asked about Tanzer the day before. “Tanzer is the guy who got fired from Ion?”

  “And made a big stink on his way out, ranting and raving about how he wanted to see the whole media establishment take some bitter medicine.” Bufort glanced down at her bare feet. “Get dressed. We can talk on the way.”

  Tyler’s voice in her head: Remember, you’re an agent during her probationary period.

  When she didn’t move, Bufort said, “Unless you want to sit this one out.”

  She stuck a finger in the air. “One minute. Tops.”

  21

  Monday morning

  Fifty-two seconds later, they were riding the elevator down as she affixed the Kevlar vest. She’d dressed in jeans, a white T-shirt, and sneakers. These vests, though, were starting to give her a bad feeling.

  Bufort watched the numbers. “So Stratford went through the manifesto all night long, line by line. The big thing, at first, was how Forbes kept saying ‘we.’ At the beginning of the manifesto, she’s saying ‘we this’ and ‘we that.’”

  “Like it was written for her. Or at least to include her as a media professional.”

  They reached the bottom floor and moved fast through the lobby, Bufort saying, “Well, right – but then it goes into accusation mode.” He pushed through the glass doors and Shannon followed. A black Tahoe with tinted windows idled in the faint light. Bufort squeezed the fob in his hands to unlock it.

  Shannon looked around. “Where is everybody else?”

  “On their way.”

  “Why did you come to get me?”

  He glanced at her. “You want to learn? This is an experience.”

  He jumped into the driver’s side and she entered on the passenger side, and they were rolling before she got the door fully closed. Bufort cranked the wheel and they shot down her street, redbrick apartment building rapidly shrinking in the mirrors. “So,” he said, “you can i
nterpret that we/you switch multiple ways, the switch from inclusion to accusation, but Stratford had the idea this manifesto was really written stream-of-consciousness. He has all sorts of reasons for it, but whatever – point being, it was his professional opinion that this was someone in the media. Either actively or formerly.”

  “Was Tanzer at the awards dinner?”

  Bufort cut her a side look. “Bingo. Now you’re thinking. He was on the list. Either they forgot to take him off after his firing, or it’s just not their policy.”

  “I never saw the guest list.”

  “That was a decision made way at the top,” Bufort said. “To keep that guest list from getting into anyone’s hands, in case our suspect was on it. National security guys wanted it quiet, too. Anyway, we looked through video and didn’t see Tanzer, but we talked to one of the witnesses, someone who saw Todd Spencer spurting blood, and gave her an image of Tanzer, and she thought maybe he’d been there.”

  After several rapid turns, Bufort got on the Southern State Parkway and they barreled southeastward. “But that’s not what clinched it. What clinched it was this group called Blackout. American-based, anti-media, government watchdog group. Their big thing is in boycotting media – no social media, no mainstream news, no newspapers. They use virtual private networks and DuckDuckGo for their internet searches. They think everything is suspect. Facebook, Google, all of it. They’re paranoid that reality has disappeared and we’re just living in a world of stories produced by corporations and governments. Stories capitalizing on and exacerbating existing divisions for maximum revenue – so it says on their website, right next to the part about spreading fear, generating outrage, and disseminating disinformation.”

  She felt a chill. That was a direct line from the manifesto.

  She asked, “You think they’re dangerous?”

  He was silent a moment. “Agents Stratford, Lonsdale, and Stemp are about fifteen minutes ahead of us,” he said, dodging the question. “However long it took for me to come get your ass. They’ve got local PD out there backing them up.”

  “So Tanzer was home?”

  “Yeah. We posted a guy out there as soon as your fella over there at NYPD – Caldoza – as soon as he sent the information over to us.”

  “It was Detective Heinz who found the guy. NYPD.”

  “Whatever. So Tanzer’s not there Friday night, he’s not there Saturday – the night of the awards. But he shows up at his home last night about three a.m., at his residence in Amityville. Our guy says there’s others in there with him – he came in with three other guys. Middle of the night. So we’re not taking any chances.” Bufort reached for a Snapple iced tea in the console, popped the top and took a long guzzle.

  They passed JFK International Airport, and then they were due east, cruising through places like Valley Stream and Malverne, headed deeper into Long Island, headed toward the breaking dawn, the sky bronzed with haze.

  Bufort walked her through the plan. Traffic was light, the agent’s foot was heavy; they were there in thirty minutes.

  Tanzer’s place was a small brown house with solar panels on the roof. A chest-high chain-link fence surrounded the front yard. Not much else to see yet from a block away – Bufort had parked behind a dark gray van. One of their own, Shannon recognized. Bufort had a two-way radio and he clicked the transmitter twice.

  A moment later, two clicks came back.

  “They’re still waiting,” he told Shannon. “Must be local PD aren’t here yet.”

  Everything was still in the early-morning heat.

  The radio blew static. Then, “I want to just do this,” a voice said. Stratford.

  Shannon tried to see into the van parked ahead of them on the street. No good, but she could imagine it: three guys with itchy trigger fingers who wanted to get their man. “All right,” Bufort said into the radio. “Let’s make it happen.”

  The van doors opened and the agents poured out into the bright day. Bufort opened his door, paused, and looked at Shannon. “Just hang back a bit, okay?”

  “Sure.” She exited the vehicle and crossed the road behind the men, who were moving faster. One undid the chain-link gate and headed up the walkway toward the front door. Two men flanked the house on either side. Bufort came up behind Stratford, watching his back. As they moved, as if sharing one mind, they all drew their weapons. Stratford reached the door as Shannon reached the edge of the lawn. She stayed in the street, getting the wider view on things.

  Stratford knocked. He kept away from the door, off to the side. He jabbed the doorbell next. Shannon could just hear it, a telephone-like ring from deep in the house. Something caught her eye in one of the upstairs windows – the flip of a curtain. “Got something,” she called. “Second floor.” Her pulse hit harder as she drew her weapon. She glanced around the street. Not yet seven in the morning. People were just getting up, getting ready for work. Families pushing their kids towards the door. It was fairly quiet now, birds chirping, a dog barking in the distance. But in a few minutes things would start to liven up, people leaving for their commutes.

  She gripped her gun tightly and watched as Stratford rang again. Something felt off. Was this correct procedure? Just rolling up on a suspect like this without an arrest warrant? Bufort had said “just talk,” but with NYPD presence. This seemed rushed. Aggressive.

  The radio Bufort carried made noise. Someone whispered something, but Shannon was out of earshot. Stratford looked at Bufort, twirled his finger, and Bufort nodded. He started jogging around the house, his shaggy blond hair flapping. He looked at Shannon as he went, and held out a hand, palm down, fingers splayed, just sit tight.

  But she felt exposed down here on the street at the end of the walkway. This wasn’t the way that–

  The blast made her jump. It sounded like two things at once – an explosion and shattered glass. Stratford went down. Where he’d been standing, the window was blown out. Shannon ducked and ran for cover. Another blast followed. Bits of dirt and grass sprayed her. Someone was firing a shotgun and the last load had just hit the lawn beside her as she ran. Reaching the corner of the fence, she crawled behind the thick hedgerow bordering properties. She was breathing hard, her mind racing.

  It’s okay. It’s okay …

  Her hip and leg beat an alarm of pain in time with her accelerated pulse as she peered through the vegetation. Stratford wasn’t moving. Shouts rose from the back of the house. More gunfire. Shannon heard a noise behind her. She was on the edge of another yard, and the homeowner had stepped out onto the porch, looking curious. He saw her, and Shannon made shooing gestures. Get back in the house! He understood and quickly disappeared.

  She couldn’t stay here. No one seemed to be exiting the front. She wanted to help Stratford, but there was no cover coming at the house from the front like that. What’d they been thinking? She moved along the hedgerow on the neighbor’s side until she was flanking Tanzer’s house. From the porch around front, Stratford’s radio burst with static, then some unintelligible shouts. They hadn’t even given her a radio.

  She pushed through the juniper hedge. No easy feat. It was thick, with tons of tiny branches scratching her face and forearms. On the other side, she ran fast to the house and slammed her body up against the wall. Get control of your breathing.

  Now, to see about Stratford, she moved toward the front of the house, went around a chimney, and reached the corner. She risked a quick look. The elevated porch was chest level. She could see straight down to where Stratford was. He stared right back at her. Blood covered half of his face and made trails down his nose and cheek to his mouth. There was no sign of life in his wide eyes. A kind of cold stone slid down into her stomach.

  She heard thumping from inside. Bufort had said three men, plus Tanzer, had arrived in the middle of the night. Someone had gone out the back. But there was nothing coming from the rear of the house–

  Wait, there it was. A car engine just fired. Voices, two of them – “Turn it off! Turn
off the ignition and step away from the–”

  More gun blasts. Shannon ran toward the rear of the house. She slowed when she got to the back corner. Directly in front of her, three trash bins. She took cover behind these as she watched the shoot-out in the driveway – two men in a Dodge minivan were exchanging fire with agents – Bufort and either Lonsdale or Stemp – she didn’t know their faces yet. Bufort, standing in the back doorway, took a hit in the upper body and fell inside the house. The other agent was in a four o’clock position behind the minivan, firing into the vehicle. Glass shattered. Bullets punched plastic and metal. The driver of the minivan hit the gas in reverse and Lonsdale/Stemp jumped out of the way.

  Shannon stood up. She took aim on the vehicle windshield and fired four quick rounds. The windshield cracked badly but didn’t fall in. Driver visibility would be greatly reduced – the glass was practically opaque with fractures – but the driver managed to back into the street. Shannon left the bins and ran toward the vehicle. She only had seconds before the passenger would have a direct shot on her. She aimed for the tires and unloaded her magazine. Then she dove into the open garage and out of range just as the driver put the minivan in gear and jerked forward. She was sure she’d punctured the front right tire with at least one round.

  Nothing happened for three full breaths. Just Shannon, on her ass, in the oil-smelling open garage, staring across the driveway at the house, the rear doorway into which Bufort had fallen. She didn’t see him. After the final breath, another agent stepped into view in the doorway. He startled when he saw her, then quickly pointed his gun away.

  The first sirens rose in the distance.

  “Fuck,” the agent said. “This is bad.”

  Shannon pushed herself up and gained her feet. “Is the house clear?”

  He nodded his head. “It’s clear. Nobody in there.”