Josie sobbed and moaned.
“Josie,” Shannon whispered. “Hey, it’s gonna be okay.”
“No, it’s not.” Beecher was back. He stood behind Josie and he slipped a nylon strap under her chin and tightened it against her neck.
33
Josie’s eyes went wide. She writhed in the chair, arched her back, and twisted against her restraints. Her tongue flailed, and gagging sounds issued from her open mouth.
“Stop it!” Shannon leaned toward Josie, tried to reach her. Her feet tied, she couldn’t kick off against the dryer and knock the chairs together. But she could rock that way, throw all of her body weight to the left, grunting, breathing explosively as Josie was strangled beside her and Beecher bore down with intense, sustained pressure, his face reddening, teeth clenched, eyes rolling over white …
Shannon toppled her chair into Josie’s chair. Beecher let go and the strap slackened. “God dammit,” he said. Shannon was lying across Josie’s lap, but starting to rotate forward. If she crashed onto her front side, the chair would be on top of her and she’d be uselessly hog-tied on the floor. But Beecher intervened anyway, grabbed her by the hair and one shoulder, and righted the chair. She tipped too far, but inertia brought the chair back down on all four legs with a bang.
Beecher returned to Josie. She was screaming now, high-pitched siren sounds, but distorted by a raw throat. She stopped and coughed and gagged as he searched for the strap on the ground. Sweat beaded along his forehead and ran down the sides of his face.
For Shannon, everything seemed to slow down. Tied to the folding chair, staring at Josie and Henry Beecher, she suddenly existed bestride two worlds – she was here, now, and she was looking into the icy water at her brother’s floating body.
Floating in all that black.
There, in the frigid water, because of her.
“John? It’s me.”
The memory played in her head of its own accord.
“Can you come get me?”
Calling on her brother for a ride because she’d been too drunk to get herself home. He’d done it because he would’ve done anything for her. It was easy to romanticize people in hindsight, but John had always been a giver. He’d become a local sheriff’s deputy for no other reason than to help people. She knew it was pure truth. And she’d taken advantage, and he’d come for her, and his car had hit the ice on the bridge …
Shannon pulled a breath through her damaged nose, feeling sharp nettles of pain. But the pain there and on the side of her head was fading. Everything was slowing, getting quiet, sharpening.
Beecher found the strap. He stood up and positioned himself behind Josie.
For years, Shannon had lived with the worst guilt of her life. Endless nightmares of John in the water. Sometimes, she’d jump in after him. Sometimes, she could only watch from afar.
All that guilt. Until one day, she’d known it had to stop.
Josie’s head hung, and blood and drool and snot oozed from her face onto her thighs. Beecher grabbed the girl’s head, lifted her face. If there was anything human left in him, it had almost left completely.
Shannon said, “Have mercy.”
Beecher either didn’t hear or ignored her. He twisted his right fist around one end of the strap, then his left fist around the other, and pulled it taut.
“Have mercy,” Shannon repeated.
A nerve fired just outside the corner of his eye. He slipped the strap down over her face, up against her neck. Josie continued to cough and whimper.
“Show the world,” Shannon said quietly. “Show the world what’s right.”
“Shut up,” he breathed.
“Everything that happened to Charlotte was wrong. People threw her away when she needed forgiveness. Show the world what it looks like to forgive.”
A tear carved a track through the sweat and dust on his face. His lower lip wobbled like he was about to fall into the emotion, but then he gritted his teeth. He brought his fists together at the back of Josie’s neck, once more strangling her.
“Show the world …” Shannon said. She felt disconnected from her body. She repeated the phrase, like a mantra, until there came a banging sound above them.
Beecher instantly loosened his grip on the belt and looked up at the basement ceiling.
The noise came again. Knock knock knock.
Someone else was at the front door.
Beecher had disappeared behind her. When he was back between her and the camera, he had a gun. He looked up the stairs.
A muffled voice, possibly familiar: “NYPD! Open up! Agent Ames? Miss Tenor?”
Beecher made no comment, only bent his body slightly toward the stairs, as if he were about to mount them and head up, but then tilted back and regarded his two hostages. Josie was slumped forward, having passed out from shock and fear. A ragged wheeze indicated her breathing. Her head moved in barely perceptible measure with her shallow breaths.
Then Beecher’s eyes locked on Shannon’s.
She had no idea what this exacting killer was going to do next. Because, she thought, he didn’t either. This was a coin toss. A moment of fate. Or perhaps saintly intervention. He tore his gaze from her and ran up the stairs.
Shannon let out an explosive exhalation. She worked furiously to free herself, first leaning forward, coming to the edge of falling over and holding there. From such a position, the chair folded incrementally. It was enough to get her arms up over the back of it. Now her bound wrists were directly behind her back. She strained to lift her buttocks, both legs twisting in pain, kneecaps grating against cartilage and bone. She gnashed her teeth, wriggled and shook and struggled until she had her bound wrists now at the back of her knees. Bent forward like this, she was able to touch her ankles, which were lashed to the crossbar of the chair.
Two feelings washed through her almost simultaneously: relief that her ankles were connected to the chair with a rope she could potentially untie. But despair that they were fixed together, like her wrists, by plastic zip ties.
A floorboard creaked above her head. Beecher had gone up and was in the kitchen. Remembering the layout of the main floor, she knew there were two ways to come upon the entrance. Down the hallway with the pictures of Josie and her brother, or through the living room. Another floorboard gave way, confirming Beecher’s use of the latter route.
“Beecher is here!” Shannon screamed. “Beecher is in the house!”
Knock knock knock. “NYPD! Ames, you in there?” Then the doorbell rang. Whoever it was hadn’t heard her or understood what she’d said. “All right, I’m coming in!”
Slam.
Nail-filled mason jars rattled on the shelves with the impact. The cop had rammed himself, or something, against the front door.
She shouted again, “Beecher is armed!” Then she felt for the knot. Once she had it, she worked feverishly with her fingertips, her muscles straining, ligaments stretched to their limits. Force to bend forward, she stared at the concrete floor, saw every granule of dirt, every puff of dust.
Josie wheezed beside her.
“Hang on, girl,” Shannon said. “Josie, you hang on. Hear me? Listen to me – you keep listening to me. Keep hearing my voice.”
Something gave way in the knot. Her heart soared and her excitement tried to gallop ahead of her. She tried to yank her feet free, but there was still more untangling to do. A drop of bloody sweat fell from her face and splatted in the dirt and dust.
Slam.
The house shook a second time. “Down here! I’m down he–”
Two gunshots boomed upstairs in quick succession. Something hit the floor. It was followed by thudding footfalls. A second later, three more gunshots, rapid fire – these had a different pitch, from a different caliber.
Beecher was shooting it out with the cop.
Shannon lifted her face to the camera. Red recording light still on. The killer wouldn’t give up without completing his masterpiece, would he? He was going to come back down here. At this point, forg
et the poetry, he’d just shoot Josephine and follow it up with a bullet in Shannon’s brain.
The rope! The last bunch of the knot came loose, and her feet, though still bound, were released from the chair. She was able to touch down on the floor and straighten her upper body.
When she stood at last, shaky on her still-tied feet, the chair, which had been staying open by clamping itself against her body, folded the rest of the way and clattered on the hard floor.
Someone ran across the living room above her.
She dared to turn from the stairs and look back. There in the corner, what she was hoping for: a workbench on which a few random tools were scattered. First, she lowered her wrists down behind her. The tie bit flesh as she worked around her buttocks. Once she got her wrists to the backs of her ankles, she was able to step through the loop of her arms. Now her wrists were in front of her. She hopped to the bench, picked up a bright orange box cutter and went to work sawing away the tie clasping her ankles together.
A new noise upstairs, like a door thrown open. Back of the house. Like Beecher had escaped.
Freeing her wrists was much harder. She was shaking too much and unable to leverage the box cutter at the right angle. It wasn’t working. Of all the things they taught you at Quantico …
Instead of working the blade, she twisted her hands back and forth, the hard plastic digging even deeper into her flesh and drawing blood. No good. Cops used these every day on criminal suspects, and they were virtually unbreakable. She scrambled in front of Josie and patted the girl’s cheeks. Josie’s eyes fluttered and showed only white crescents. She’d been partly strangled and had lost critical oxygen. That, or shock, or both. Shannon started to work at Josie’s bonds.
“Help!” It was a hoarse cry, a croak, from upstairs.
Shannon sat bolt still. She looked into Josie Tenor’s face, the mass of sweat and tears and matted hair. She brushed aside some of that hair with her bound hands and kissed the girl’s forehead suddenly, without thinking. “I’ll be right back.”
She returned to the bench, found a ballpeen hammer. Then she ran to the stairs, and up them, and stopped before she stepped through the open doorway. It could be a trap. It hadn’t sounded like Beecher, but he could be right there, waiting. She’d only thought she’d heard the back door open and close.
She held her breath, stepped through the doorway and into the back of the kitchen.
Sprawled on the floor was Luis Caldoza.
The bullet wound in his abdomen leaked blood that looked like cherry syrup in the darkened kitchen. At some point, Beecher had turned off the lights.
“Luis,” Shannon said. “Luis, hang on.”
“In back,” he grunted.
“He went out the back?”
Caldoza could barely talk – the words seemed to ride the ragged breaths coming through his nose.
She laid the hammer beside him and took his gun. She was able to hold the grip in one of her bound hands and just get her finger through the trigger loop. “I’m going to go look,” she said.
She moved through the dark to the rear entrance. The door was still ajar. If Beecher was still on the premises, he might’ve gone around to the front, so she jogged quietly that way, avoiding the windows. She eased down the hallway, past the pictures of Josie and her family, aiming Caldoza’s gun at the front door. She breathed and waited as long as she could bear. Beecher was gone.
Returning to the kitchen, Shannon managed to stick the handgun in her pocket. She felt along the wall above the countertop for a light switch. Her hands left bloody streaks. She found the switch and snapped it on. Harsh white light frosted the room. Now everything was bright and too real – Caldoza’s blood crimson, his usually handsome complexion blanched and sickly. He looked up at her. “I’m sorry …”
She searched the drawers for a clean towel.
“I felt bad,” he said. “So I pulled out of the job with Heinz.”
“Shh. Don’t talk.”
“Heard over the radio they didn’t … have the guy. Came to see … if I could help.” He was on the linoleum, his legs bent beneath him. He groaned and straightened out and laid his head back.
“Stay with me, Luis!” She found a dishtowel and knelt beside him, pressed it against his wound. The way the blood was pouring, Beecher’s bullet had gone through Caldoza’s body. She felt beneath him, her fingers encountering blood-soaked clothing. Another towel for the exit wound, more pressure. “It passed through,” she said. “That’s good.”
Car tires screeched outside. Maybe a few houses down.
“Go,” Caldoza said.
“No.” She glanced at the basement door. “The girl is downstairs. Josie Tenor.”
Caldoza suddenly gnashed his teeth and pushed himself up.
“What are you doing?”
He continued to push himself, sliding on the floor, back against the cabinets, closer to the basement door. “Give me back my gun. I’ll protect her.”
Could she do anything to help Luis or Josie? No, but abandoning them as they lay injured – it wasn’t part of who she was. And Beecher had fooled them one time too many.
The front door flew open. “NYPD! Coming in!”
Shannon got to her feet awkwardly, using her tied-up hands to grab a drawer handle and pull herself up. She limped to the hallway and got a visual. Two uniformed cops were aiming their weapons at her. When they saw her hands, the cops relaxed. “Officer down,” she said.
“That Caldoza back there?” One cop started down the hallway while the other checked the rooms.
“He’s been shot,” she said.
The other one said, “Ma’am? You alone here?”
“Girl downstairs. She lives here. Josephine Tenor. She needs an ambulance.”
The first cop moved past her into the kitchen. The second tucked his head to his shoulder and pressed the talk button on his radio. He relayed the information to a dispatcher.
Shannon stepped back into the kitchen.
“Shannon,” Caldoza said. His eyes were clear, even as his face seemed lined with worry and pain. He stared at her, into her. “Go get him.”
She went back to the cop who was clearing the house. He looked at her. “Shit. You okay?”
“What do you know?” she asked.
They stood in the dark living room as he used a tool to detach her wrist tie.
“Beecher was seen on foot, headed southeast, couple of streets over. Exchanged fire with our officers.”
“He’s got a secondary vehicle,” she said, massaging her abraded wrists. “Might be a Dodge Challenger. Metallic blue.”
The cop just looked at her. His name tag read Gray.
She said, “Officer Gray, I’ve got an eyewitness – Alfonso Mendoza – who saw that car outside Dylan Construction, probably as the killer cased the site as a potential dump spot. Twice. I need you to get everybody on the radio.”
34
Wednesday night
Josie Tenor and Luis Caldoza were taken to different hospitals. Shannon argued to stay at the scene, but allowed an EMT to treat her superficial wounds. In the Tenors’ bathroom, she studied her reflection and took inventory: Beecher’s punch had bloodied her nose and darkened both of her eyes. Her wrists were bandaged. Mostly, it was her pride that hurt.
Josephine Tenor had almost died. Law enforcement had failed her. Shannon had failed her.
When she went back downstairs, she recognized the blonde agent in the basement as the scene was processed and Beecher’s equipment got bagged by technicians. Shannon remembered her name – Agent Amy Dodd, from digital forensics.
They talked for a few minutes about Beecher’s methods. As far as Dodd was concerned, this particular video might not have successfully streamed. “We haven’t seen it,” Dodd said. “We’re not getting any reports of it.”
Shannon thought back. “The girl gave him the wrong Wi-Fi password?”
“He’s got a device called Black Magic – quick rendering for livestreaming. It l
ooks like he was connected. But it might’ve been weak down here in the basement. The family doesn’t have a very powerful router, so not enough bandwidth to stream effectively.”
Shannon’s phone buzzed. Tyler. The supervising agent sounded concerned. “You didn’t let them take you in?”
“I’m all right.”
A pause. “Beecher took your weapon?”
“I think so, sir.”
“Might be another way we can track him. If he uses it.”
“Sir …”
“The wife is completely uncooperative,” Tyler said. “Literally hasn’t said one single word since we picked her up.” He let out a long breath that rattled over the connection. “Ames, where is he?”
“Sir, I don’t know. But his beat as a cop was Hunters Point. He’s had some place he’s based his operations. I think it’s likely he’ll retreat there. Or he might run. I don’t know.”
“We haven’t seen the vehicle so far. How solid are you on it?”
“He might’ve stashed a murder kit somewhere on the property here, sir, but we haven’t seen any evidence of that. And I don’t think he was carrying the tripod and camera and gear, plus a chemical inhalant around with him on the subway or in cabs – we haven’t found a bag or backpack. And he got out of here quick. Local NYPD has been doing the door-to-doors, and we’ve had one visual confirmation.”
A witness two streets over had looked outside during the firefight between Beecher and the cops, seen a man running, then jumping into a car described as a blue “race-car-looking thing.” But Tyler made one last protestation: “We checked DMV as soon as we had Beecher as a suspect. No Dodge Challenger was registered in his name.”
Shannon said, “So he has a friend at the DMV. This guy has been able to stay one step ahead because of his experience and connection as a former police officer. It’s his car.”
Tyler, clearly gun-shy after the last manhunt debacle, was nevertheless compelled. “All right.”
Into Darkness Page 23