Brooklyn Blue: A Madison Knox Mystery (Book 1)

by M. Z. Kelly

  She regarded me for a long moment. “You’re never going…” She didn’t go on, and looked away. “Never mind.”

  “What?”

  Amy looked back at me. “The not knowing what happened to her, it must be something that’s hard to live with.”

  I nodded slowly and brushed the hair out of my eyes. “You know me pretty well after all these years.”

  We rode in silence before Amy said, “My mom and me…we don’t have much of a relationship anymore.”

  “Why is that?”

  “She and Stinky never got along. He drove a wedge between us.” She looked at me. “I’m thinking maybe I need to go by and see her one of these days.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.” I reached over and touched her hand. “Life is short…that sort of thing.”

  Amy smiled and squeezed my hand. “Give that Tina and Amy thing some thought. I’ve always thought of us as sisters.”

  The cab let me off on Breaker Street, where I found my mom’s drug program was still in business. It was a transitional area, in a building that was probably subject to rent control. As we came up the street, I’d seen there were some refurbished units a couple blocks down the street with For Sale signs. They were advertising prices in the low millions.

  The drug program had an office on the ground floor, where I got in line behind a couple women who were making inquiries about going into rehab. Before I got to the receptionist, I learned there was a six month waiting list for beds, but they offered outpatient counseling to their clients in the interim.

  When I’d been a teenager and had last visited the program, telling them I wanted information about my mother, I’d been summarily dismissed and turned away. This time, when it was my turn, I decided to show my police credentials and make it sound like I was there on official business.

  “I’m looking into the disappearance of a woman who was here several years ago,” I said. “Is there anyone here who might have been with the program back around the year 2000?”

  “Oh, my,” the receptionist said. She was probably in her fifties, overweight, and, by the look of her desk and the waiting room, extremely overworked. “You would probably need to talk to Mr. Walker. His office is on the third floor. Let me ring him.”

  After a ten-minute wait, she located a counselor named Hiram Walker, who, I was told, had been with New Beginnings for over twenty years. I was sent to the seventh floor, where he was helping renovate one of the units.

  “Come in,” a black man said, as I entered the unit. He was probably in his fifties, and had a paint roller in his hand. “Grab a brush if you’d like.”

  I saw no reason not to help out and dipped a brush in a tray of paint. After introductions, while I worked on the trim around one of the windows, I explained why I was there, leaving out the fact that I was looking for my mother.

  “You say this girl—Mary Knox—she was here back in 2000?” He paused, apparently making the connection between our last names. “You two related?”

  I stopped working on the trim and looked at him. “She’s my mother. She went missing during the time she was in the program, or shortly thereafter.”

  His dark eyes fixed on me. “She was one of the girls.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The police came by a few months after she left, saying there was a man taking girls. They said Mary could be one of them.”

  “Do you remember her?”

  He nodded. “Your mother.” He smiled. “She was hard to forget.”

  I put the brush down and walked over to him. “Why is that?”

  Walker put down his own brush and walked over to a couple folding chairs. He invited me to take a seat. “I take it you haven’t seen your mother in all these years.”

  I found myself becoming emotional as I sat next to him. I blinked back a tear and tried to steady my voice. “She left me with my aunt and uncle to raise when I was twelve.”

  He nodded, his gaze moving off. I had the impression Hiram Walker was a kind man who had a real affinity for the people he worked with. “I was Mary’s…your mother’s counselor. I was somewhat new to the program back then, so I remember most of my clients.”

  “What can you tell me about her?”

  “Your mom, she wanted very much to clean up her life, get out of the drug scene, but she was…” He took a breath. “…let’s just say there were other issues.”

  “As in?”

  “There was a boyfriend.” He scratched his head. “I don’t remember his last name, just the first. She called him Jax.”

  “Could it be that was part of his last name, as in Jackson?”

  “Maybe. Not sure, but I remember her spelling his first name J-a-x in her paperwork when she entered the program.”

  “Would you still have her paperwork?”

  He smiled. “Sorry, we periodically purge our files. Something from that long ago would be long gone.”

  “My mother never…” I took a breath, steadied myself. “She never mentioned being involved with anyone before she left.”

  “That was probably for your benefit. I remember her saying the guy was very controlling.” He lowered his dark gaze and brushed a hand through his short gray hair. He looked at me again. “I got the impression he might have been abusing her.”

  “Do you know if that was the reason she left the program?”

  “I can’t say. All I know is that she spent about two months here. I came into work one Monday morning and learned that she’d packed up over the weekend and was gone. Never saw her again.”

  I thought about what he’d said. “What about the police? Did they tell you anything when they came by?”

  “I think it was about a month after she left that they came here, but it wasn’t the police. It was the FBI.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Just that they were looking into the disappearance of some women who had been in drug programs. I remember they mentioned another girl who had been here at one time. They said something about both her and Mary, sorry, your mother, possibly being taken.”

  “Do you remember the name of the other girl?”

  He shook his head.

  “Did they ever mention someone who went by the name ‘the Phantom’ as being involved?”

  “Not that I recall, and I’m sure I would have remembered something like that.”

  I spent a couple hours more with Hiram Walker, helping him paint the vacant unit as a thank-you for his cooperation. I didn’t get much else that was useful, but I now knew that my mother had been involved in an abusive relationship about the time she went missing. I just hoped the FBI would have some information about Jax, whoever he was.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I got home around six, where I found Amy and Max in our living room, with Darryl and Merrill.

  “Big funeral tomorrow,” Darryl said.

  “It’s for some family named Cumberland,” Merrill added. “Looks like my bro and me will be busy all night with hair and makeup.”

  Amy looked at Max and me, raising a brow. “Hope you guys are good with puzzles and got a strong stomach. From what we heard, the Cumberlands were a family of four.”

  “It might be gruesome,” Darryl said, smoothing a hand through his gelled hair. “But my Go-bro and me are up to the challenge.”

  Merrill agreed. “The good thing about dead people is they never complain about their hair. They’re the perfect customer.”

  “Just be sure Thorndike gets the right customer in the right box,” Max said. “He’s got priors for mixing up bodies.”

  “What are your thoughts about your new boss?” I asked them. “Max and I found him digging around in the graveyard last night.”

  “I think he’s a genius,” Merrill said.

  I noticed that he’d had his hair cut shorter. His youthful appearance and good looks reminded me of a teenager. “Why is that?”

  Darryl answered for him. “He’s brilliant when it comes to dealing with the dead. He tol
d us he’s got a PhD in mortuary science from some European university. He wants us to call him Doctor Thorndike.”

  “He’s a creepy little ghoul,” Amy said. “You guys watch yourselves, make sure he doesn’t want you to give up an arm or a leg to complete one of his bodies.”

  After lots of laughter and bravado, Darryl and Merrill headed off to work in the bowels of the mortuary, while I had a bite to eat with my friends. I told them about my meeting with Hiram Walker. “He remembered my mother and said she was involved in an abusive relationship. He thought that might have had something to do with why she left the drug program.”

  Amy brought over a bottle of wine from the fridge and poured us all drinks. “Maybe she married the guy, and you’ve got a bunch of brothers and sisters out there somewhere.”

  I’d never considered the thought that I might have siblings. “I doubt it. I think this guy—his name was Jax—was violent and controlling. He was coming around the program, so it could be she left to get away from him. I’m hoping the feds can shine some light on what happened when I talk to them.”

  Amy changed the subject, updating Max on our meeting with her assistant. “Edgar knows a guy he thinks can get on the inside with Angelo, that Landon asshole, and the girls. If that happens, we need to come up with a plan of action.”

  Max sipped her wine, then said, “I snooped around the neighborhood where the girls were held before they moved them. I found a cat lady who spends her time watching the Weather Channel and lookin’ out her front window for blizzards. She said she saw what went down the other night. She heard the shots that were fired and saw two guys taking the girls to a van.”

  “Did she get a plate?” I asked.

  Max shook her head. “No, and she couldn’t give me a description of the guys that was worth anything, but she did tell me there was a total of six girls.”

  “So what’s our plan, if Edgar’s CI gets inside?” Amy asked, looking at us both.

  “If we get a location where the girls are being held, we’re gonna have to take this to the lieutenant, lay it out, and get the local precinct involved,” Max said. “We can’t put the girls, or ourselves, in danger.”

  I agreed with her. “I guess we see how it plays out and make the call from there.”

  Amy checked the time on her phone and stood. “I’ve got to take a shower and change. I’ve got that play date with Jake.”

  “Just be sure you’re home by 11:30, young lady,” I said, chuckling.

  After she said something about my parenting skills and was gone, I said to Max, “You think she’ll be okay?”

  Max refilled our glasses. “All I know is we got us wine and hot water.” She raised her glass to mine, and, maybe thinking about her former life as a homeless person, added, “Sometimes life can be jolly good, even in a graveyard.”

  THIRTY-FIVE

  The next morning, Max and I were leaving for work when we ran into a couple zombies down the hallway from our living quarters.

  “What the hell happened to you two?” Max said, regarding Darryl and Merrill.

  I’d been to a lot of accident scenes in my time as a cop, but nothing quite compared to these two. They looked like they’d been slimed from head to toe in—I wasn’t sure what was covering them.

  “We got our butts kicked,” Merrill complained. “That Cumberland family was in about a dozen different parts.”

  The younger of the two Go-Bros reminded me of Stufflebeam after he’d fallen into the vat of grease. His golden locks were plastered to his head, and there was something that looked suspiciously like blood on his cheek.

  “How did things turn out?” Max asked.

  The zombies exchanged glances. “We did the best we could, under the circumstances,” Darryl said. “I just hope the family doesn’t want an open casket.”

  We told them we would see them later and headed for the train station. Along the way, Max said, “I’m gettin’ me some more crazy vibes about Funk’s Fields. What the hell do you think is really going on with Thorndike?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe we should ask Woody if he knows anything more about him when we get to work.”

  As it turned out, Lieutenant Dennert had arranged for Precinct Blue staff to spend the day with the department’s Firearms and Tactical Section doing retraining. We were all bussed to the Bronx, where a peninsula of land called Rodman’s Neck jutted into Long Island Sound.

  I’d been to the training facility a few times over the years. It included several firing ranges, classrooms, mock buildings called the Urban Training Center used for various scenarios, a FireArms Training Simulator, called a FATS, and an explosives detonation facility.

  We spent our morning in a classroom, where several instructors went over firearms safety, before being bussed to a firing range in the afternoon. Max and I were finally able to talk to Frank Woodson while some of the other staff went ahead of us on the range. We were at an outdoor picnic table, waiting our turn, when Max mentioned Thorndike to him.

  “The guy’s about five feet tall,” Max said. “He looks kind of like Grandpa from The Munsters, and he’s weird as hell. You ever heard of him?”

  Woody scratched at his thatch of brown hair, his gaze moving off. “Thorndike.” He looked back at us with his usual frozen features. “Are you talking about Doctor Thorndike?”

  “That’s him,” I said. “He claims he’s got a degree in mortuary science from some European college.”

  “We think he went to school in Transylvania,” Max added.

  If her humor registered, Woody gave nothing up. “If memory serves me right, there was some kind of scandal back around ’08 or ’09 involving him. I think it had to do with disappearing bodies.”

  I looked at Max, back at Woody. “Do you know any of the details?”

  “All I remember is there was a mix-up, and some families complained that their loved ones weren’t in their coffins before they were buried. I think it resulted in an investigation, and some people got paid off.”

  “Paid off, as in paid to withdraw their complaints?”

  Woody nodded and with a straight face said, “Money talks, and the dead don’t. The families don’t tell any tales either, as long as you make it worth their while.”

  I said to Max, “Maybe we should ask Amy to talk to Alex Funk, the owner of the cemetery, see what he knows.”

  “Not a bad idea.” She looked at Woody. “Anything else?”

  “Just rumors about there being a catacomb.”

  “Huh?”

  “An underground passageway with a bunch of people buried there. From what I heard, there’s some kind of secret entrance below the cemetery. Maybe Dr. Thorndike knows something about it.”

  Max looked at me. “It might be that’s where the little troll lives, along with the rest of the vampires.”

  “I’m gonna kill you.”

  We all turned, seeing Carmine O’Brien stomping his way over to us.

  “What’s going on?” I said, as he stopped, inches from Woody.

  Lenny Stearns had followed Carmine and stopped behind him. “We were doing live fire drills on the firing line when somebody replaced The Thug with Carmine’s photo,” he said to me.

  “The Thug” was the paper target used on the firing ranges with the silhouette of a man, supposedly developed as a likeness to a former instructor at the training facility.

  “I know it was you,” Carmine said to Woody. “I’m not gonna put up with your continual harassment.”

  Woody’s flat features remained implacable. “Sorry, but you can’t blame me for this one.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I make a point of never shooting assholes.”

  ***

  Max and I had managed to keep Woody and Carmine from coming to blows, and enjoyed an uneventful afternoon. When we got home that night, Amy reminded us that we had to work security for the Cumberland funeral. As we got ready to head over to Balfour Chapel, I asked her about last night’s date with the p
lumber.

  “We had a nice evening,” she said with a cryptic grin.

  “I got a feeling there’s somethin’ she’s not telling us,” Max said to me.

  All right, give it up,” I said to my friend.

  Amy folded her arms and exhaled. “We agreed not to see one another for six months.”

  “Why is that?” I said.

  “What the hell happened?” Max demanded.

  Amy sighed again. “As it turns out, Jake is an incurable romantic. We had drinks, and I told him about my marriage ending and me taking things slow. One thing led to another and we decided to see the sights of New York. We ended up at the top of the Empire State Building.”

  “Don’t tell me the jolly jumper wanted to jump,” Max said.

  Amy chuckled. “Don’t be silly. Jake said he was already developing feelings for me, but he respected my need to take some time before becoming involved. He wants to meet six months from last night at the top of the Empire State Building. He said it would be similar to what happened in that old Cary Grant movie, An Affair to Remember, and if we both showed up, it would mean we’re meant to be together.”

  Max scowled. “That’s the weirdest thing I ever heard. You sure Jake ain’t a little too jolly?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe he’s jolly, as in gay.”

  Amy laughed, a little too loudly. “Of course not. He’s just…like I said, a romantic.”

  I also thought it was a little strange, but kept my thoughts to myself, until Max continued to express her skepticism, and Amy asked for my opinion.

  I tried to choose my words carefully. “I think…I think…his idea sounds very noble…” I laughed. “For someone who lived about fifty years ago.”

  “You think he’s weird, too, don’t you?” Amy said.

  “Maybe a little, but it will give you some time to get past Stinky.”

  “Believe me, I’m already past him, and that asshole told me he’s keeping Mr. Psycho.”

  I thought it was just as well that her ex was keeping their cat as Amy released a long breath and continued. “Maybe the world’s just full of weirdos and I found another one of them.”