“Yeah.”
Some people surely called just to comfort themselves, to feel some sense of control. Others were more narcissistic, wanting a part to play. And some, certainly, had to be thinking that they had genuinely helpful information.
She pictured this Josephine watching TV, or learning about the bomb scare some other way – maybe social media. And it activating her interest – even spooking her. She sounded legitimately afraid. Why? What did she know?
“Where does she go to school?”
“Hang on,” Caldoza said, working on the next computer.
Shannon clicked the keyboard. “Gonna play it while you look for the school.”
“Okay.”
The recording began, “New York Police Department tip hotline.”
The girl sounded more confident this time: “My name is Josephine Tenor. I’m at 22-28 Seventy-Second Street in Astoria Heights.”
Shannon froze. A second later she was fighting the urge to get up and run out. “That’s the next street over from Henry Beecher …”
Caldoza was looking at Shannon, still listening to the call.
“I know who he is,” Josephine said.
“Who who is?”
“The Media Killer …”
“Okay. Let me put you through to an – oh. I see you here on the screen, Miss Tenor. Yes, we have your call, it’s on file, and someone will get back to you as soon as possible …”
“Got it,” Caldoza said, having gone back to his search. “She goes to school at Long Island City High.” He added, “Same as Beecher.”
“He’s not going to stop,” Josephine said on the call. “He’s going to get everyone.”
31
Wednesday evening
Shannon had Caldoza send a patrol car over to the Tenor residence. She’d called twice now and gotten no answer. Two minutes later, Caldoza picked up his desk phone, said, “Okay … okay, good. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. No, I understand. Listen, tell her … All right, listen – no, I get it – tell her that someone is going to come by and talk to her. All right? Be nice and assure her everything is going to be all right.”
He hung up and looked at Shannon.
She opened her hands, palms up. “So?”
“Officer Rosen says the girl is there at the house.”
“Okay. Okay, good.”
“She’s a bit jumpy, he said. Parents are divorced, she lives with the mom, the mom is somewhere with her new boyfriend. The girl has her music blasting, didn’t hear the phone.”
Shannon was ready to go. Caldoza seemed hesitant. He added, “And I guess she’s been drinking.”
“Okay … so?”
“Rosen asked her how much, and she said none of his business. Then she said, ‘All week long, motherfucker.’”
“She doesn’t sound drunk to me on that call. And if she was?”
Heinz came walking up to the desks with a fresh paper cup of coffee. He blew on it and looked up through his eyebrows at them. “Hey, so what’s the latest on the guy? Beecher?”
“They’re right on top of him,” Caldoza said. “Any minute now.”
Heinz nodded. At his desk, he checked the magazine of his Glock and slipped the firearm back into his hip holster.
“We’re just talking about one of the hotline calls. Teenaged girl says she knows the killer. Or thinks she does.”
“Uh-huh.” Heinz pulled some Tic Tacs from a desk drawer, popped one in his mouth. He looked between them, then shook the package at her.
“No thanks.” She turned to Caldoza, who was looking at his watch. She got the sense they were leaving. “You two on your way somewhere?”
Caldoza just looked back at her, then averted his eyes, as if ashamed.
“We gotta go knock on somebody’s door,” Heinz said. “We got a lead on a guy who fits a suspect description on a hit-and-run.”
“A hit-and-run?”
Heinz said, “Hey, I got fifteen open cases. Monica Forbes landed in our lap because of jurisdiction. It’s time to get back to work.”
Heinz walked away and Caldoza lingered a moment. “I’m sorry. He’s right. It’s why we’re even here on the night shift – we’re backed up, bad. Forbes sucked up a lot of investigative oxygen.”
She fought through the immediate sense of betrayal. Ridiculous – Caldoza and Heinz weren’t hers to control. They had their own jobs to do. She could call Tyler, but for what? The whole city was closing around Henry Beecher. No one wanted to devote resources to some hyperbolic teenaged girl when this thing seemed to be over.
“It’s all good,” she said to Caldoza.
He looked like he didn’t believe her.
“I understand,” she said. “Now go. Get to work.”
He hung his badge around his neck. “Listen. Rosen will be there at the house. If you’re going to swing by, he’ll wait until you get there. And if you need anything, just call me.”
“I can handle it,” Shannon said. “This girl is freaked out. I’m going to talk to her – if she’s legit, maybe it’ll help me put my official profile together.”
He nodded, then lowered his gaze. After a moment, he lifted his eyes to her. “Hey. Mexican food, Thai food, whatever. I’ll eat fucking chicken liver if I can see you again.”
She laughed. Jerked her head. “Get outta here.” She added, “I’ll be seeing you. All right?”
His eyes held on her for just another moment, then he was gone, walking through the soft chaos of the 90th and out into the night.
After a few seconds, she followed.
She drove with the radio on, listened to a little ’90s rock music – Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” followed by “Been Caught Stealin’” by Jane’s Addiction, and she felt pretty good. Maybe she could use a few more hours’ sleep, but that would be soon enough. Things might have even turned a corner. Tyler’s relationship to her had changed. Technically, she was still on probation, but it didn’t register in his eyes the same way.
She took the interstate, 278, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and traveled northeast. The night traffic was thick, but at least moving. It was midweek, and the heat had finally lifted some. She drove with the window down, risking glances at the Manhattan skyline in the distance. All those lights. The wet rush of traffic all around. Distant ambulances racing off towards some other tragedy.
It was possible she was starting to love this place.
After crossing Newtown Creek into Maspeth, going over Queens Boulevard, through Woodside, she exited on Astoria Boulevard and made a right onto Seventy-Third. She remained impressed by the quaint homes on the street – something about them almost storybook-like – then she slowed as she passed the Beecher residence. The windows were lighted squares, shadows flickering past as forensics continued moving through the place, gathering further evidence for prosecutors. Two NYPD cars sat parked out front. A cloud of cigarette smoke drifted toward the street, and the uniformed cop who had exhaled it gave her a long hard look as she rolled past.
She rubbernecked until the house was out of sight, then turned left and got over onto the next block, watching the house numbers until she was at the Tenor place. Rosen was sitting in the car out front. As soon as she slowed, he got out and put a flashlight on her. She still had the window rolled down and announced herself.
“Ah, all right, yeah. Sorry. Caldoza said you was comin’ by. Just park anywhere.”
She found a spot three houses up and had to parallel park to make the tight fit. She brought her ID and phone with her and locked up the car. Rosen had relocated to the front entrance. A chain fence, painted white, surrounded a postage-stamp yard with a little patch of grass and a birdbath in it. “She’s in there,” Rosen said, nodding at the brown storm door. “Saw her stick her face in the window a couple of times. She flipped me the bird, too. Real nice.”
“Thanks,” Shannon said. He opened the gate for her. Three strides and she was there, the front door atop four brick steps. She took one step, swung open the storm door, and knocked. Music vibrated i
nside; the windows were rattling. Shannon located the doorbell and pressed it.
“I just talked to her,” Rosen said from behind Shannon.
“No problem.”
She waited.
“So, pretty crazy,” Rosen said. “You really think Beecher did it?”
“We’ll see.” The last she’d heard from Tyler, he was in a helicopter looking at a 2018 Chevy Tahoe registered to Beecher, sitting outside a Jersey motel.
Rosen said, “You must wish you were out there right now, right? I mean, this whole thing is kinda you. That’s what I heard. You found Beecher out. Man, I’d want to be out there right now.”
Shannon heard footfalls approaching. The inner door lock made a clicking sound and the door swung open. The girl just inside was pretty, on the round side, wearing heavy eye makeup and big fake lashes.
“Josephine Tenor?”
“Yeah?”
Shannon put her ID up against the transparent part of the storm door. “I’m with the FBI. My name is Shannon. Can I come in?”
Josephine’s eyes lit up. “It’s you,” she said. Her face bloomed red. “I saw you on TV …”
“Oh yeah? Listen, can we talk? I know about your calls to the police …”
Josephine blinked the big lashes, then glanced past Shannon at Rosen. Her lip curled in a snarl of distaste. “Yeah – a lot they did.” Then her gaze came back and she pushed open the storm door.
Shannon stepped through into a foyer. A row of hangers on the right for jackets. A skinny table with a bowl for keys. Straight ahead, carpeted stairs going up. It smelled predominantly girly, lots of shampoo and perfume and makeup. Intertwined with those scents, the fermented odor of cheap wine. “Nice place,” Shannon said.
Josephine only stood there a moment, looking at Shannon in a way that suggested she was trying not to stare. Then she said, “Thank you.”
“So your parents aren’t around? Your mom?”
Josephine shook her head. “Uh-uh. No. My mom’s in Atlantic City.”
Shannon nodded. “You want to go sit down and talk?”
“Yeah. Um, yeah, sure. Let’s go in the kitchen.” She started past the stairs and Shannon followed, checking out the hanging pictures in the short hallway – two women, ages roughly seventy and forty, sat beside a twelve- or thirteen-year-old Josephine in the kind of studio portrait you got at a department store. Did they still do those?
Next were other framed photos of Josephine and then several of a boy who looked a little like her. In one, he was taking a knee, hand resting on his football helmet, his jersey white with blue letters.
Shannon stepped through to the kitchen. “You have a brother?”
“Yeah.” Josephine stopped at a tile-topped kitchen island. Something about the décor was very 1980s. Maybe it was the buttery yellow colors, the curvy handles on the cabinets and drawers.
“He’s older?”
“Yeah. He goes to Stonybrook? Out on Long Island?”
“Oh yeah? What year is he?”
“It’s, ah … he’s, um … it’s his third year.”
“Cool,” Shannon said.
Josephine pointed at the refrigerator. Brown, the kind with the freezer on the side. “Can I get you something to drink or anything?” There was an empty wineglass beside the sink.
“No thanks.” Shannon turned her attention to the table and chairs in the corner. “Mind if I sit down?”
“Oh yeah, go ahead.”
Shannon sat, but Josephine remained standing at the island. Then she moved around between it and the kitchen sink behind her. A window above the sink overlooked the backyard. The way she kept looking at Shannon made her feel like some kind of celebrity. Or that, maybe – the way Josephine’s eyes glinted – the girl had a crush.
“So,” Shannon said, “have you lived here your whole life?”
Josephine bobbed her head. “Yeah. Yeah, but when Robbie was little – my brother – my parents lived in Flushing. My dad is back there now. My parents, um, they got a divorce a few years ago, and my dad moved back there. He lived with his brother for a little while, and then he got his own place. He’s always saying how crazy divorce is because you have to pay double for everything.”
Shannon’s phone buzzed against her hip. She glanced at the number – it was the resident agency – but left it for now. She asked Josephine, “You spend a lot of time here alone?”
The girl only looked back at Shannon for a moment. Then she hung her head, as if in shame. “Yeah, I mean, I thought about that a lot. That I was just … you know … too much in my head. You can get that way and, like, overthink things. Make more out of something.”
Shannon held out a hand. “I didn’t mean you should doubt yourself. I’m glad you called. I think you did the right thing. So, did you know Charlotte Beecher? Go to school together?”
Josephine’s forehead creased in a frown – the exaggerated concentration of the alcohol-buzzed. “We’ve been best friends since the first grade.” When her skin smoothed, she stared off into space. “I mean, we were. Best friends.”
“So you were close, yeah. And you think … well, why don’t you tell me, in your own words, why you were worried. Why you called the hotline.”
Josephine’s eyes remained unfocused, her finger rubbing absently at the corner of her mouth. “Because I was watching TV. Seeing everything that was happening. The people. You know, the reporters, the woman from TV, and I thought …” Josephine seemed to sort of coalesce back into the present moment, and she looked at Shannon with a mixture of fear and determination. “So they’re going to get him?”
“They might be putting the cuffs on him right now.”
Josephine stared off, as if picturing it. Then she said, “I thought I was part of that group because of what I did.”
Shannon’s phone buzzed again. Tyler this time.
“I’m sorry, Josephine. I have to take this.”
“It’s okay. You can call me Josie.”
“Josie. Great. This will take one second.” She put the phone to her ear as she walked out of the kitchen through a second doorway and into a living area. “Hello?”
“Ames, where are you?” It sounded like Tyler was near traffic. Plus voices, radios going off around him.
“I’m with Josephine Tenor. She was a hotline caller, went to school with Charlotte Beecher.” Shannon looked at a clock with a cat’s eyes going back and forth, tail swishing with the seconds.
“Ames … Beecher is not with the vehicle.”
It took a second to register. “Not with the vehicle?”
“The 2018 Tahoe. It’s his wife, Ames. Teresa Beecher. We’ve got her in custody. She had the phone – his phone we’ve been tracking. He’s not with her. Ames, you hearing me? We don’t have Henry Beecher.”
There was a knock at the front door.
The face of Officer Rosen floated in the high, small window of the interior door. Shannon approached with Josephine behind her. Rosen saw them and shouted something.
Cautiously, slowly, Shannon opened up. Rosen blurted, “I got called back to the Beecher place. Something going on.”
“Yeah,” Shannon said, not wanting to elaborate in front of the girl. “I just got that message, too. We’re doing all right here. Just going to finish up and we’ll be on our way. In fact we’ll head over to you right after.”
Rosen opened his mouth, then looked past her at Josie. When his gaze came back to Shannon there was understanding in his eyes. “Got it. Yeah. Hurry up, we’ll see you over there. We’ll take care of you.”
He gave a quick nod and turned, bounded down the steps and hurried to his vehicle.
From behind her, Josie said, “What’s going on?”
Shannon let the storm door close. She backed inside, shut the interior door, and faced the girl. “Listen, everything is all right. But I’d like you to do something for me. I’d like you to come with me over to Charlotte’s house. The Beecher house. Can you do that?”
Josie’s eye
s were wide with alarm. “What happened? They didn’t get him, did they?”
Shannon reached for her, but she recoiled. “Everything’s all right,” Shannon said. “Listen, you can come stay with me if you want. You want to grab a couple of things? Go ahead.”
She seemed frozen in panic. “I’ve known him my whole life.”
“Okay. I understand. But, Josie, you haven’t told me – why would he want to hurt you? You’re his daughter’s best friend. Okay? You’re not in the media. You’re not an influencer …”
Josie’s eyes instantly filled with tears. “Because of what I did.”
“What did you do?”
Shannon’s heart jumped at a sound behind her – the storm door squawked as it reopened. Rosen must’ve forgotten something.
She turned into the interior door just as it opened – too fast, too hard – and it slammed into her.
She was shoved back as the door was forced all the way open. Her hands went up to protect herself, but the intruder was quick. He hit her in the head with something and she dropped to the floor.
Josie screamed, but the scream was cut off abruptly when the intruder hit her, too. Then he jumped on top of Shannon before she could pull her weapon. He pressed a damp rag against her face. An acrid, chemical odor filled her nose and throat and she kicked at him and clawed at his hands. She held her breath, but it was too late – the intruder’s breathing and grunting sounded like it was coming through an elongating tunnel – she was passing out.
Her body forced her to breathe automatically. Her vision went fuzzy. Sights and sounds faded, tattering, spiraling off into a dark emptiness.
32
A headache grew and pulsed in time with her heartbeat, like the worst hangover. At first, Shannon thought it was her graduation, the last time she’d let friends convince her to go out and get really ploughed. A country western bar in Stafford – she could even hear Waylon Jennings singing about Bobby McGee in the background.
But as soon as she sensed that her wrists and ankles were tied, the phantom music died and she shed the false memory. Images of the attack flooded her mind, bringing her back to reality. With her vision still blurry and her mind sluggish, she stared into the blank, black eye looking back at her. It took a moment before she realized what it was.
Into Darkness Page 21