Sunrise Highway

by Peter Blauner

  “Oh shit.” She stood on tiptoe and gasped from the cold. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  Soon the level would be up to her mouth. She remembered being afraid to put her face in the water when her grandfather took her for swim lessons at the YMCA pool. Saying this was one black girl who was going to learn how to stay afloat. Barely took off her water wings or let go of the kickboard before she quit that as well. But now she was starting to panic as the water came up to her chin.

  “Oh my God, oh my God…”

  Muscle memory got her legs bike-pedaling and her arms dog-paddling. Come on, come on. She panted, trying to stay above the surface, catching a whiff of raw sewage in the air. The steady patter of rain was more distinct now, and she could hear what sounded like the sustained yowl of a monster in the distance. A broken-off piece of brick floated past her eyes. She looked up to see where it had come from and spotted water rushing through a new gap in the bricked-up window frame.

  She kicked her legs harder, trying to get to the gap as more of the basement flooded. She realized the house must be near a large body of water; otherwise the flooding couldn’t be happening so quickly.

  The bottom of the window frame was less than a yard overhead. She reached for it, to have something to hang onto, but her arm wouldn’t extend. The long handcuff chain came a few inches out of the water and then stopped. She realized she was still attached to the bar below the dark swirling surface.

  “Oh no.” She yanked, her hand achingly close to getting a hold. “Fuck me…”

  She thrashed and struggled against the shackles, her legs starting to hurt and grow tired. The egg cartons on the ceiling were disintegrating from the water coming through. She cursed him all over again, not just for keeping her captive, but for cheaping out with his slipshod amateur construction.

  She reached again for the gap in the bricks but the chain held firm, stopping her within inches of getting a safe handhold. She began to sink down in fatigue and despair. But as soon as her head went under the surface, the baby began to kick, as if it was protesting, “You had your life, now let me have mine.”

  She flailed spastically back to the surface one more time, gasping and tilting her head back to keep from swallowing more contaminated water. Something wriggled by that could have been a snake. A purple-pink piece of egg carton drifted after it like a piece of heart tissue.

  Her body gathered itself in for one last burst. She paddled closer to the wall and braced her bare feet against it. She bent her knees, grit her teeth, and with an expulsion of breath pulled with both hands and all her might.

  Something was starting to come loose.

  The handcuff at the other end of the chain was still hooked to the bar somewhere below the surface, but it felt like the bolts had been poorly secured behind the plaster and were now partway out. She almost laughed in demented-little-girl glee at her own strength, but then a slap of dirty water went in her open mouth and down the back of her throat.

  She swallowed, put her feet flat against the wall, and pulled harder. Both sides of the bar were breaking free from the sodden plaster. She could feel it. She pulled a third time and the whole bar came loose. She raised her arm out of the water, and the bar and shackles came with it. She realized he must have had the other cuff on so tight that it wouldn’t just slide off the bar.

  She put her shoulders back and buoyed herself higher, rising with the water until she could get a part of her butt resting on the windowsill. Then she pulled on the chain until she had the bar in her hands, with rusty bolts hanging off either end.

  She banged it against the brickwork in the window and saw red powder fly out. Then she wedged one end into the gap where the water was coming in and started to pry it loose. Making her way out into the black roaring night, piece by piece.

  44

  OCTOBER

  2017

  Lourdes knew it wasn’t a good sign when she walked into the squad the next morning and saw that the captain’s office had been commandeered by the NYPD chief of detectives, Dave Pritzker.

  “You want to come in and shut the door?” he said—telling, not asking. “I don’t think you want a lot of people to hear this.”

  “Sir?”

  He was a short, restless man, hard of eye and firm of mouth, who had gotten ahead by knowing exactly who had the power in any room and being willing to move decisively against those who didn’t.

  “Sit down,” he said. “You know what this is about.”

  “If it’s about Chief Tolliver, then…”

  “Of course it’s about Tolliver. What’d you think I came to talk about? Your goddamn sister?”

  “Sir.” She closed the door and sat. “Before we get into this, I want you to know that we’re making real progress in the larger investigation.”

  “Give me your phone.” His eyebrows descended.

  He was a man defined by dark outlines: black hair, black brows, black suit contrasting against a pale complexion.

  “What?”

  “I said get your phone out. I don’t want this recorded and showing up online.” He snapped his fingers. “Let’s go.”

  She turned her phone off, showed him the black screen, and put it facedown on his desk.

  “There are two conversations we need to have, official and unofficial. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Officially, this is still an ongoing investigation and we’re still working cooperatively with other members of the task force and local law enforcement agencies.”

  “But unofficially?”

  “Unofficially.” His pupils, dark and small as dice dots, strayed to her phone on the desk. “Are you fucking kidding me, Robles? This is the head of one of the biggest police departments in the country and you confront him in the middle of a bar full of his subordinates?”

  “Sir.” She sat up, trying, as she always did in these situations, to assume the proper posture of an English horse lady on a wild-ass bronco. “My understanding is that my strategy had been cleared through channels and you were aware of it.”

  Of course she wouldn’t have done it on her own. One Police Plaza micromanaged everything to the point where you needed an okay from headquarters to requisition a paper clip.

  “I called your office yesterday, after my tire got shanked,” she said. “And I thought that we all agreed it’d be a good idea to shake him up and see how he’d respond.”

  “Well, I have no paper trail to support that.” He stared at a spot somewhere over her head. “And certainly no one spoke to me directly.”

  “For real?” She gripped her armrests, feeling like she’d been grabbed by the ankles, swung around, and dropped back into her chair. “Sir, everyone knows you signed off on this.”

  “You calling me a liar, Robles?”

  “No, sir, but…”

  Her voice died in her throat. Fourteen years on the job and basic bureaucratic injustice could still make her feel like a child struck speechless by discovering her father’s first lie.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.” She tried for a reset. “I’m sure you know we’re getting subpoenas for all his personnel records, to see if he reaches out to an accomplice…”

  “Nope.”

  “Sir?”

  “Those subpoenas just got quashed by a Supreme Court judge out in Riverhead.”

  He dropped a file on the desk, the slap of paper like five fingers across her face.

  “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “You had a prosecutor named Mitchell Vogliano help draft the subpoenas.” Pritzker slid the file to her. “Are you living with him?”

  “Yes,” she said, pissed and embarrassed that he had gotten that far into her business. “But I don’t see why that matters. Mitchell’s in the Brooklyn DA’s office. The subpoena was signed by an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District. Why does it matter who helped?”

  Though now she was deeply sorry she’d dragged Mitchell into it after their little yoga room argument, when she�
�d pressured him to use his federal friends as cover.

  “Well, now it’s blown up in all our faces.” He pushed the file at her with a hiss of disgust. “The judge found you’d overstepped by a country mile, asking for the records of a police chief without probable cause.”

  “We have probable cause. We know Tolliver was on duty as an officer and in the vicinity for at least three of the murders we know about. We’re trying to show his photo to the prostitute who said she was choked by him at a party…”

  “That’s not good enough, Robles. Those were all Long Island cases and you are a New York City police officer. Not only are you operating outside your jurisdiction, you’re accusing the chief of a major police department of multiple A-1 felonies when it’s more plausible that most, if not all, of these are gang-related cases. And if that wasn’t bad enough, now Tolliver’s people are saying you have an ax to grind because you got pulled over with drugs in the car.”

  “Which they planted on me.”

  “Let’s not get into that, Robles. We all know your side of the street isn’t completely clean either.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, challenging him.

  “Meaning Erik Heinz and Raffi Robles. Nuff said?”

  From the corner of her eye, she saw B.B. drift by and give what was probably supposed to be a sympathetic nod, before he plopped down at his desk and took out his cell phone.

  “Sir, all due respect, but if I’m getting too close too soon it’s because everyone else has been dogging it for too long. These murders have been going for decades without anyone seeing the pattern.”

  “And you’ve done good work, connecting some of the dots. But now you need to take a step back.”

  “Ain’t just ‘dots,’ sir,” she said, no longer able to hide her disgust. “At least one of them was carrying a baby.”

  “Okay, then let me say this more plainly.” He raised his voice and cast a look at the door, making sure it was closed. “You’re way off the reservation. Rein it in.”

  In a TV show, or maybe even in a college classroom, she’d be turning this around on the boss. Standing tall and accusing him of letting down the victims. And calling him out on this “reservation” shit in the process. Straight-up racism, that’s what that was.

  But this being the real world, and her wanting to hold on to her job, the only job she’d ever really wanted, and one that would provide her with a healthy pension if she could hang on another seven years, she was going to take her aunt Soledad’s advice. She was going to put the ass on her lip and keep her mouth shut. Like every other grown-up in the real world who wanted to maintain their paycheck and their health benefits.

  “Listen,” the chief sighed, taking it down a notch. “I know how you’re taking this seriously, but there’s a whole other level to it. It isn’t our world where most of this is happening. They’ve got their own way of doing things out there. It’s a machine and none of us have the access codes.”

  “I don’t know if I can access your code,” she answered. “What are you telling me?”

  “I’m telling you that the judge who quashed that subpoena used to be a prosecutor working under Kenny Makris, who’s still the DA out there.”

  “And Makris owes Joey Tolliver for helping him win his first big case,” Lourdes said.

  “Perhaps.” The chief nodded. “But what you need to bear in mind is that Kenneth Makris helped Steve Snyder become county executive out there. And then Snyder became a congressman. And now he’s the junior senator from our august state. Do you know how that happened?”

  “Should I?”

  “Yes, because he won his congressional race by two thousand votes. Which is how many police officers Joseph Tolliver turned out at the polls for him. And which is what gave him a leg up when he ran for the senate.”

  “Oh.”

  “‘Oh’ is right, detective. Did you know that Steve Snyder is now a key ally of the president, serving on several key committees that oversee appropriations for our state and our department?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  Lourdes put her fingertips to her temples like she was trying to keep two halves of her skull together.

  “Sir, we’re talking about seven or eight bodies,” she said. “Minimum.”

  “I know what we’re talking about, detective. Believe me.”

  “Do you? Because, sir, all due respect, we’re only beginning to get the picture here. I think this guy had accomplices.”

  “Accomplices?”

  “Yes, sir. Both after the fact and maybe ahead of it as well.”

  “Like little assistant serial killers? Robles, get off the hard stuff.”

  “I haven’t nailed it all down, sir. But I’m certain he couldn’t have acted alone. It’s how he managed to have alibis for some of the murders. And when there are accomplices, it means there could be a chance to turn someone…”

  “I said, rein it in. You need a hearing aid, detective?”

  “So we’re just gonna look the other way? Because of politics?” She started shaking her head. “Really?”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth, Robles. No one’s talking about looking the other way. But only one of those bodies was found within city boundaries. And even that was iffy. And you damn well know it.”

  “So we’re gonna let outside agencies tell us who gets to work a case? That it?”

  “Oh, will you please…?”

  He stopped himself and in the clenching of his fist she could see a lifetime’s frustration with women like herself coming together.

  “Look.” He tried to start over. “I’m not here to litigate with you. You ran your little number in the bar and now Tolliver is going to argue you have it in for him.”

  “Because he is our guy. All we need is the rest of those records to prove it.”

  “The other members of the task force are all over that.”

  She looked out the glass and saw B.B. still on the phone, hunched over in his chair, hand on his forehead like he wasn’t still keeping an eye on her.

  “So we’re just going to hand over the whole case?” She looked around, like there was someone else in the room to share her outrage. “That’s not what I signed on for when I joined this department.”

  “Spare me the diatribe. It’s true that you connected the bodies, but it’s a multi-county investigation, which technically should make it a state police case. The FBI has the expertise in serial killers. We’re lucky we were even on that task force.”

  “And now you’re pulling me off it?”

  “No one’s pulling anything,” he said. “You’re being asked to play more of a support role. Let Detective Borrelli be more the face of this investigation. For now.”

  She turned and saw that B.B. had his back to the window, so she was looking right at the bald spot beneath his comb-over.

  Obviously, he’d gotten to Pritzker before she did, short-circuiting any argument she could have made about him being fatally compromised. Sullivan had already told her to leave this alone now, and so until she had proof, she’d have to go along to get along.

  “If that’s the way you want it, sir.” She stood up. “Will you excuse me to tie up some loose ends?”

  “You’re excused.” He already had his phone out, ready to deal with other problems.

  45

  OCTOBER

  2012

  When Renee finally got outside, it looked like she had stumbled out onto the lip of an active volcano.

  There was fire in the air and water in the streets. The muffled roar she’d heard from the basement was five times louder out here. She staggered away from the house, trying to figure where she was and what had happened. It was night. All the lights were out in the street. But there was a full moon. Flaming embers passed in front of it, then sizzled as they hit the water. The flood was coming from two different directions and nearly up to her waist. The wind was making her hair a riot. Something brushed against the backs of her thighs and she realized
that it could have been a fish.

  Feet numb and teeth chattering, she turned toward where she could see cars and houses outlined in silver by the moonlight. A red station wagon came toward her with its lights blinking and its horn blaring over and over. She waved her arms to get the driver’s attention. But then it kept coming, right at her, and she had to lunge left to get out of the way.

  “What the fuck?”

  The vehicle swayed and rocked as it went past her, indifferent. Floating, instead of rolling, with no driver at the wheel. Like the three cars drifting after it, lifted off the ground by the rising tides. The smell of salt water filled her nostrils. She realized she would drown if she stayed still or he’d come back and find her outside the house.

  Rain pelting her in the face and the baby kicking her kidneys like tiny soccer balls, she waded toward where there appeared to be more houses. Two more cars came at her, going cockeyed and back end first. She heard a thonking sound and saw a large chunk of boardwalk hitting the side of a house where the hedges were barely peeking over the swampy surface.

  She pushed on, smelling gas mixed with the salt water now. Patio furniture and plastic hampers came floating by. She realized her left arm wasn’t weighed down quite as much as it had been. The cuff with the chain was still on her wrist, but the bar at the other end must have slipped off. There was more of a main road ahead, perpendicular to the street she was on. A yellow light glowed a few blocks away on the left, while a faint red light was in the farther distance on the right. She sloshed toward them, more frantically, the colder water up to her midriff now. Her legs were starting to go numb. It felt like she was in the no-man’s-land of a war zone, no side willing to claim her.

  A part of her just wanted to give up, stop moving, and sink to the bottom. But the baby kept squirming and poking, insistently reminding her that she had to think for two now. She took a deep breath and tried swimming toward the street corner, doing a kind of half-assed breast stroke, the one she’d learned at the Y.

  Unmanned boats jostled with drifting cars on the avenue. Sirens wailed behind the almost-solid curtain of rain, signs of life buried deeper in the night. She clawed toward them, gasping and snorting after she put her face in the brackish water. A shower of sparks fell from a tower up ahead, as if a transformer had just blown out.