Dark Web

by T. J. Brearton

  Janine understood. Swift wanted something right now that he could turn around on whoever he had sweating in a small room beneath the lights. But she didn’t have that for him. She didn’t have medical history, nothing. “Best I can tell you that’s pertinent right now, Swift, is that the kid is deceased. And my hunch — and I hate hunches — is that it’s not from natural causes.”

  “Okay. Thank you, Doctor. I’ll have the troopers escort the mother out of there.”

  “That would be very helpful. I’ll call you as soon as I finish the external examination.”

  “Perfect. Thanks again.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Janine hung up. She turned around and looked into the observation room.

  The mother was standing right at the window, her hands up on the glass. The troopers were behind her, attempting to gently but forcibly pull her away. The woman’s mouth was moving. It looked as though she was saying something over and over again. Janine could just hear her voice, muffled, through the glass.

  Please, she seemed to be saying. Please.

  A moment later the male trooper took his phone from his belt and put it to his ear. Likely he was going to cry for Mental Health to please come and medicate this woman. Janine had half a mind to do it herself, at least it would ease the poor woman’s suffering. Or she could call the hospital and get her taken in to emergency care. Her anger had diffused somehow during her brief discussion with Swift. She found herself wondering if, before she was even aware of it, he had charmed her out of her righteous indignation.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Swift had just put his phone back in his pocket and turned to re-enter the interrogation room when Trooper Bronze came walking briskly down the corridor, white snow still melting on his shoulders. Close at his heels followed Assistant District Attorney Sean Mathis.

  “Detective Swift!” called Bronze.

  Swift raised his eyebrows.

  Mathis pushed in front of Bronze, slightly out of breath. “Sasha Bellstein. Your third from the car. He called a lawyer in New Jersey; he’s advised the kid not to talk to you. Told him to sit tight, doesn’t need to talk to anyone, ‘they’re not going to charge,’ he says, ‘and they’ll have to let you go.’”

  Swift held out his hand. “You’re the new ADA. I’m John Swift.”

  “Yes, I know.” They shook. Mathis was unsmiling and looked tired despite his crisp suit.

  “We talk?”

  “I’m in the middle of an interrogation, Mr. Mathis, and—”

  “Really need to talk urgently,” Mathis said. Swift saw a speck of sleep still left in the corner of the man’s eye, and could smell the cologne rising from him in a fog.

  “Of course,” Swift agreed, and something sank in the pit of his stomach.

  Swift looked at the trooper, who understood that the two men needed another room where they could have a private conversation. He glanced at the door to the interrogation room, and then back at Swift.

  Swift winked. “He can sweat a bit longer. Good for him. Builds character.”

  Bronze smiled.

  * * *

  Swift and Mathis could watch Robert Darring through the one-way glass in the adjoining room. Mathis sat on the edge of the table, his hands folded in his lap. Mathis was young, still in his twenties, which, as far as Swift was concerned, was diapers. Mathis looked unhappy, like most young ADAs. They spent their time either preening for the cameras or reading the riot act in small, claustrophobic rooms like this one. Mathis didn’t disappoint.

  “The hell is going on?”

  Swift blinked. “Come again?”

  Mathis jerked his thumb at the next room, where Darring sat looking down at the table in front of him. The kid seemed almost meditative, Swift thought, not sweaty at all. Eerily inactive. Normally you had a suspect in a box like that, even if they were innocent, they became nervous and began fidgeting. Everyone had some dirt on them, everyone had lied about something. Whether it was taxes or unpaid parking tickets or the porn collection tucked away in the basement, everyone carried some measure of guilt. Being in an interrogation room with police breathing down your neck was like being in a sauna, it leached the poison out of you. Didn’t matter if whatever you felt guilty about related to the investigation or not. Or, you had your zealots, your self-righteous types who talked about their rights being violated, and police harassment. Young men who drove drunk, let’s say, got arrested, refused to be handcuffed, got pepper-sprayed, then turned around and started alleging use of “excessive force.” Darring acted like none of these. He didn’t seem nervous, nor was he claiming police abuse. In fact he did nothing at all. As if he were on pause. Barely there.

  “You got this kid in there,” Mathis growled, “you got a dead body, three suspects, two of them juveniles, in custody with, from what I hear, paper-thin stories — were you going to call me at some point? Gonna charge them with a crime, maybe?”

  “We pulled these three in for questioning on probable cause for a felony, a good faith belief that they’re involved, or, at the least, they know something about it. I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time reviewing the case until we had charges that would stick.”

  “Are you . . .?” Mathis gave Swift an incredulous look, as though he had just landed from another planet. “Are you presenting me the steps in a criminal case as if I’m your nephew at some family reunion, bouncing on your knee?”

  Swift pointed at the one-way glass. “I had one of these kids in tears less than an hour ago, saying he was sorry, and the other one was just about to get the news from my pathologist that the victim’s death was unnatural.”

  Mathis’ expression suggested Swift was the dimmest bulb in the light factory. “I’ll never understand cops. You want a suspect to talk, you charge them with a crime. Scare them, get them talking, put some muscle behind it. You make charges and then amend as you go. Let the law work for you.”

  “You charge them right off, they clam up, get lawyers, and you get nothing out of the interrogation. Right now, that’s all we’re subsisting on. What that kid in there has to say, and what the dead kid on the table has to say.”

  “Anyone thinking hit and run? Pathology look that way?”

  “No. And to come from three different states, drive for hours through the middle of the night, to hit this teenaged kid with their car?”

  Now Mathis dropped the look of long-suffering incredulity. His forehead creased. “They came from three different states?”

  “Yes, Mathis. They car-pooled up here. And they first arrived and then drove away from the scene while the witness, Duso, was there.”

  Mathis closed his eyes for a second and massaged the bridge of his nose. “So it was Duso who gave the witness statement? Jesus. Okay. So, far as we know they arrived at the scene after the fact.”

  “Wait, what do you know about Duso?” Swift felt the hair on the back of his neck stiffen.

  “Nothing. Relax. I know you and his son, Frank, have had a past beef, that’s all.”

  Swift let it go for now. “Well, anyway, that’s what we got from the witness. They arrived, they turned around, they drove away. Hence the probable cause, hence the questioning, but that’s it for now.”

  “What about tire tracks? We’ve got the vehicle in impound?”

  “It’s dumped almost a foot of snow out there overnight. No tracks. We can impound the car if I make the call that there is evidence which couldn’t be readily removed at the scene.”

  “You’re doing it again.”

  “What?”

  “The nephew bouncing on the knee.”

  “Jesus . . .” Swift waved a hand in the air. He wanted to get back into the box. Why was the frigging ADA hounding him now?

  “Who’s the CSI? Silas?”

  “Correct.”

  “What do her logs show so far?”

  “I left her at the scene. She found some snow. And some more snow.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it
.”

  “And on the body? In his pockets? Anything?”

  “He’s dressed in pajamas. Nothing in his pockets.”

  Mathis turned and looked into the interrogation room again. Darring hadn’t moved. “God.” Then he looked back at Swift. “What else? What about the kid’s home? Parents? Anything unusual?”

  “We’re going to go through the kid’s things. His laptop.” Swift nodded toward Darring. “So far two of them admit to knowing the decedent online only. They’d never met in person. This was their first rendezvous.”

  “Huh. Who do we have for that?”

  “We have Kim Yom from the Cyber-crimes Division. She’s got a bit of a journey to make, but she’ll get here in a few hours. Meantime, Silas will pick through the kid’s room when she’s done with the core scene; she’ll retrieve the laptop, hand it off to Yom. We’ll keep good track of the chain of evidence.”

  Mathis looked down between his shoes and blew out a breath. Someone wasn’t much of a morning person, Swift thought. The young new ADA was likely used to late nights in the city watching his money slide across the counter and come back as exorbitantly priced drinks. The only bar around here was The Knotty Pine. Probably not in Mathis’ style. He seemed to be simmering down now, having come in on the boil.

  “You know we’ll have to kick these kids loose if we can’t come up with something. You’ve got to formally charge suspects eventually, detective.”

  “Now you’re bouncing me on your knee.”

  Mathis frowned. “Funny. And yanking the body out of there so quick? You think that was the right call?”

  “You can’t have it both ways, Mathis. You can’t ride me for not calling you sooner so you can slap on charges and at the same time ride me for moving the crime scene along too fast. Plus, without a confession, these guys are going to ask for a grand jury, and you know it.”

  “You better hope not.”

  Swift turned on a smile. In his younger days he would have fed those diapers he was wearing right back in the young ADA’s face. But his lack of control had gotten him into more trouble than it was worth.

  Besides, Darring could wait a little longer. Swift decided he’d make a quick detour to Plattsburgh. Check on the mother. See what Janine Poehler had to say about the body.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Janine spoke into her recorder.

  “Name: Simpkins, Braxton Thomas. Date of birth: October 22, 2001. Date of death: February 17, 2015. Age: Thirteen. Body Identified by Callandra Mary Simpkins, mother. Medical Examiner’s case 2014-227. Case number 003428-23E-2015. Investigative Agency: Bureau of Crime Investigation, New York State Police.”

  She circled around the table and continued to record her observations. “The autopsy is begun at 6:14 a.m. on February 17, 2015. The body is presented under a white evidence sheet. The hands have been bagged. The decedent was wearing black pajama pants and a long-sleeved t-shirt with detailed art work on the front. Socks and sneakers on the feet. No jewelry. Upon removal of the clothing, an odor of urine was detected. Areas of the body were swabbed and submitted for detection of uric acid, as were the pajama pants and t-shirt. Following removal of the shirt, various scars were observed along the left forearm that suggest possible cutting and at least one mark from ligature, as if the victim’s left wrist had been bound at some point. A second ligature mark, which will be known throughout this report as Ligature B, was observed on the decedent’s neck. The mark is dark red and encircles the neck, crossing the anterior midline of the neck just below the laryngeal prominence.”

  She stopped recording for a moment and took another long look at the young body. Virtually hairless. Thin, pale. A typical teenage boy. The marks on the forearm that indicated cutting were not surprising — in her twenty-five year career as both a pediatric and adult forensic pathologist, she had seen more young people who cut than she could count. It was a sad, disturbing trend.

  The anomaly lay in the ligature around the one wrist. There was no matching mark on the left arm, which was pristine. Who tied up only one arm?

  The mark around the neck was a different story. Upon first glance it looked like it could be caused by attempted suicide. But a closer inspection suggested otherwise. Janine began to envision an odd and rather gruesome scenario wherein the teenager had tied his wrist to his neck, and perhaps applied force to tauten the ligature and maybe to cinch the windpipe, shutting off the blood and oxygen to the brain. It could even have been a perverse kind of “high,” or a new type of sadomasochism she hadn’t yet encountered.

  She clicked the record button, her gaze resting on the mark around the neck.

  “The width of the mark varies between 0.7 and 1cm and is horizontal in orientation. The skin of the anterior neck above and below the ligature mark shows petechial hemorrhaging. Ligature B is potentially consistent with the apparatus that caused Ligature A. The absence of abrasions associated with Ligature B, along with the variations in the width of the ligature mark, are consistent with a soft ligature, such as a length of fabric, rather than a belt or a rope.” She clicked off, thought, then resumed recording. “Or a soft belt. No trace evidence was recovered from Ligature B that might assist in identification of the ligature used.”

  She paused again. For a moment, she felt light-headed. She needed to take one of her pills — the early call from the State Police had disrupted her morning routine.

  That job as Commissioner of Health looked better all the time. An office, not a lab. A desk, not an operating table. She’d heard through the grapevine that John Swift was also considering a slight career change, and that the Attorney General’s office had made him an offer to investigate for them directly. Corporate and political malfeasance was a tropical paradise compared to the lab and the streets and the ripped-apart families. When this was over, she would offer to buy Swift a cup of coffee and the two of them would convince one another to make the transition without further ado. Just two aging divorcees, urging one another a little farther along the path. He was a handsome man, too, in a Clint Eastwood kind of way, so a coffee could have other perks.

  Then she looked up from the body and into the observation room, and there was the senior investigator, raising his hand in a wave.

  * * *

  “You scared the hell out of me.”

  Swift smiled. “What’ve we got?”

  She went through the external examination with him as they stood next to the body, giving him an overview rather briefer than her more detailed notes. “I’ll have the whole Summary Report to you by midday,” she said, searching his face. “But something tells me you don’t want to wait.”

  “You mean other than the fact that I just showed up and scared the hell out of you?”

  “Meaning I can see it in your eyes.”

  “Yeah. We’re struggling with a spoiled crime scene and hysterical parents and an antsy-pants new ADA looking to prove himself to the District Attorney. I understand you offered the mother a mild sedative?”

  “We did. Unusual, but I had to do something. She seems to be coming around. Where’s the father?”

  Swift pulled in a slow breath. “There are two little girls . . .”

  “Oh God,” Janine said, dropping her gaze and looking away.

  “Yeah. And they’re with him.”

  “Poor things.”

  “Yeah. So I’m going to go ahead and speak with the mother and father separately; try to get them together later in the day.”

  Her eyes opened wider as she looked at him again. “Don’t overwhelm them, John. They’ve been through just about the worst thing that can happen to a person.”

  “I know. And I believe there are three kids sitting in Essex County right now who are responsible, or at least know who or what is to blame. But I need something to link them to it. Sounds like what you’ve got so far is taking me in the other direction — ligature marks, self-inflicted wounds.”

  “I haven’t done an internal. You want me to do it?”

  He scowle
d. He wanted her to do one. And she knew she was compelled to. But to cut open that kid . . . Her job had never before affected her like this. All through her career, friends and family had wondered, how do you do it? How can you cut open a dead human being and poke around inside them? She’d never been bothered by the biology of humans or animals. In high school she’d dissected insects and amphibians with total aplomb and made the transition to grad school cadavers without batting an eye. It was just how she was. She was easily able to compartmentalize. But it had become harder and harder over the past few days, or weeks. She was really feeling it today.

  “I’ll get started on the internal,” she said.

  Swift stood still, looking at her, his eyes still fixed on her.

  She squinted at him. “You’re not telling me to hurry are you? You’re not telling me to rush the internal examination of a human being in a homicide case, are you, Detective Swift?”

  He pursed his lips, suppressing a smile, and exhaled through his nose. “Of course not.”

  “Back later,” he called on his way out of the door.

  She watched him exit the room and took some small comfort from the fact that his job was, in many ways, as tough as hers. She had to internally examine the boy who lay on the table; Swift now had to go talk to the mother.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “He was very gifted.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Callie Simpkins had composed herself somewhat. She must have gone into the bathroom and splashed some water on her face, tying her long, sun-streaked hair back into a ribbon. She and Swift were sitting in a small café down the street from the morgue. The place was quiet, the only sounds coming from the cook in the kitchen, banging around with steel pots. The air smelled of fresh coffee and old bacon grease.

  “I mean, gifted.” Her eyes were red from crying, the surrounding skin shrink-wrapped. But her look was focused, despite the sedative she’d been given. “And like most gifted people, that came at a certain cost.”