by Kevin Fox
I took the girl’s hand. She was still hidden in the shadows, but I pulled her out into the night, getting a quick glimpse of a face that was so familiar now. It was hard to focus on her, because in my dream I was always focused on what we’d been hiding inside of – something white and made of metal with rivets stitching it together.
The plane.
“No. We can’t leave. No—” she protested, pulling back.
“We can’t hide here. We have to go,” I told her, grabbing her harder, needing to run before the men arrived. She finally followed, but as we emerged, a light blinded me and –
—I was suddenly staring into the cold white light of a uniformed cop’s Maglite. We had approached Rigan Kelly’s house while I was distracted and his light caught me off guard. I felt like I did in the dream – every time something became more illuminated and clear, the light would slip away and it would be left deeper in darkness.
My dreams, the ones I remembered, where all centered around these woods, and I was starting to understand why. They were reflections of some sort of reality. I had been here when it all happened. I came out here that night with Uncle Joe and the two kids my father mentioned. For whatever reason, I was with him and something happened. Something went wrong with the informant he was supposed to meet. Maybe the car crash was a cover…
“You two stop. Show me ID,” the Uniform interrupted my chain of thought, flashing the Maglite in our eyes again.
“Jesus freakin’ hell. Can you get that damn thing outta my eyes, you moron?” Kat asked the cop, not quite politely. I shielded my own eyes, taking in the third crime scene unit at Rigan Kelly’s house.
“This is a crime scene, Miss, and unless you’d like to end up in handcuffs, you might want to leave. Now,” grunted the uniform, with the tone and attitude of a guy that wore the badge with no sense of humor, little intelligence, and a self-inflated sense of his own authority. I hope I was never like that, but it didn’t matter much anymore – I pulled out my gold shield, flashing it in the blinding light. My authority was more inflated than his.
“She’s a material witness,” I told the uniform, “…and she’s with me. So back off.” I strode past the guy before he could start thinking too much. Kat followed, giving the cop a smug look.
“I appreciate you standing up for me, Kill, but he was kind of buff and was about to put me in handcuffs.”
“Don’t push your luck, Kat. Keep your mouth shut. We’re going home.”
“Stay dry and warm,” she told the cop as we passed him, watching the ice-cold rain drip down his face with a perverse pleasure. “We’re going home. Together. To bed. Where I’ll keep him warm…”
Have I mentioned that Kat could be a complete bitch when she wanted to be? I waited until we were almost to the street before I confronted her. “Hand it over,” I told her, putting out my hand as the streetlight started to flicker again.
“What?”
“Whatever it was that Anton handed you. I saw you take the evidence.”
“Are you accusing me of a crime?” Kat asked, wide-eyed. “Are you going to strip search me?” Now she was grinning. I didn’t have the patience for it.
“No. I’ll have Burke do it,” I told her, and when she still hesitated I pulled open her jacket and lifted her shirt – finding a torn and crumpled scrap of paper tucked in her waistband. I pulled it out, stepping away from her before she could react.
“That’s the most action I’ve had in a week. Keep going, tiger.”
I ignored her, looking at the paper. It had small, neat handwriting on one side: ‘Rigan, Anton and I moved the cargo. Will give it to Markov when you and the kids are safe’. The rest of the note was scorched and the signature was gone, but it looked as if it could start with a ‘T’.
“You’re lucky I was there to help you out and grab this before Burke got it. You’re clearly not on your game. This whole time somebody’s been a step ahead of you, haven’t they? Leading you by the nose through your own past?” Kat asked as I looked more closely at the paper.
“Thanks for pointing that out.”
“I’m just wondering how they keep staying ahead of you. I mean, I don’t think you’re stupid, but I was only trained by the Army and not the NYPD so I’m no expert on detecting and shit.”
“Clearly,” I agreed, pocketing the note. “Especially since this note doesn’t change anything.”
“Other than proving Rigan has an accomplice. That she did go back to the boat like Burke said. Maybe she and Markov double-crossed each other and she was in on the trafficking..”
“Or she knew what he was carrying and wanted to stop him,” I objected, for some reason finding it hard to see Rigan Kelly as a trafficker.
“You giving the note back to Burke?”
“No, I’m taking it and going home.”
“Going home?” Kat asked, stopping in the middle of the street, twenty feet from my Nova. “There are killers on the loose – with those poor girls and that woman at their mercy.”
I didn’t want her to cause a scene out here, not with stolen evidence under my jacket, but I was tired and losing my patience. “What world do you live in? This is not a game. I need sleep. Painkillers. Dry clothes.”
“You’re going home. To be dry.” She stomped her foot, ready to go all out toddler-tantrum on me. I walked away, going for the car. She wouldn’t stand out in the rain for very long if I got in and ignored her.
“Yes. I am. And when I am, I’ll figure out what to do next. I need to be able to think clearly, not fuck up because I’m overtired.” Kat started walking again, changing tactics as I took out my keys.
“The woman was kind of hot, don’t you think?”
“Not now, Kat. This isn’t a night at the Four W’s Bar where we both get drunk and rate the locals.”
“You didn’t notice what a stunning woman she was? She was the woman who saved your life down by The Annex, right? And you’re not going to return the favor?”
“Will you just get in the car?”
“Yes or no? Did you notice she was smokin’ hot?”
“She was hot. Yes. Fine. She saved my life. You jealous? Why do you even care?” I opened the door, hoping she would let it go once we got in. Kat followed me, unable to stop herself.
“—They’re out there in the rain. What were their names again?”
“Dariya. Alina. Rigan… You don’t need to personalize it. I know their names. I’ll find them, but I need time to think.” I started the Nova, putting it into gear as Kat buckled her seatbelt.
“What about the Taser King of the South Shore? The guy who attacked me – isn’t he a lead? He came for some newspaper article on that plane and then here we are, right where it crashed.”
“Yes. It’s a lead, but it’d help if I knew more about him. You said he sounded old. Would you recognize his voice if you heard it again?” I asked, pulling out, weaving my way past police cars and crime scene unit vans.
“Doubt it. He didn’t waste many words and my head was spinning after getting fifty thousand volts from his Taser. All I know is that he knew about the old case.”
“Then I guess he knows more than I do.”
“Apparently that’s not hard,” I heard from the back seat. It took me a second to realize that the voice was not Kat’s –
– It was Rigan’s. I started to turn, but felt cold metal against my neck.
“Don’t. I don’t want the cops to see you. Just drive,” Rigan said quietly.
“You got away.”
“They still have Alina. Dariya’s here.”
“Not by choice,” I heard Dariya mutter in her strange accent.
“Where are we going?” Kat asked calmly, staring out at the cops without batting an eye.
“Out of here. We need to get away from the police. I don’t trust them or the FBI. One or both are working with Markov,” Rigan said as I turned right onto Bloomingdale Road, leaving the lights of the crime scene behind.
“How do you know
?” I asked, driving into the shadows.
“Unlike you, I have a memory.”
“What do you know about my memory?” I turned to confront Rigan, but felt the gun pressed into my neck again and thought better of it.
“I think she’s calling you an idiot. At the moment, I agree,” Kat muttered.
“You want my help, Rigan, tell me what you know that I don’t.”
“I know that there’s no way that Markov, who’s never been to Staten Island before and has no idea who I am, could have found us without help.” Rigan caught my eye in the mirror, an accusation in her look. “Was it you?”
“Him? Are you out of your mind?” Kat defended me, turning on Rigan only to look down the barrel of her gun.
“Markov must have tracked the girls the same way I did,” I told Rigan. “If he asked the right questions, followed them to the emergency shelters…”
“A Russian oligarch’s son can’t just walk around asking questions the way you did. Staten Islanders are suspicious. I’m surprised they even talked to you.” Rigan had a point. It didn’t matter how Markov found them, or who may have betrayed them. All that mattered was that we get some distance between us and the psychopaths who might burn any of us at the stake. Rigan had the same idea.
“Head for the bridge,” she ordered.
“It’s closed.”
“Not to cops it’s not. Use your badge.”
“Not happening. No one’s getting in or out. We can’t get off and neither can Markov.”
“Until they open it and he can. He has Alina. He’ll take her and be gone if we don’t –”
“They won’t open it until they get power back – look,” I said, nodding to where the bridge stood in the inky wet blackness. “No power, no bridge. We have at least until morning. We can go to my place—”
“—No,” she interrupted. “They know where you live. We need somewhere Markov doesn’t know about.”
“Tottenville,” Kat chimed in. “It’s under curfew to keep out looters. Your parents—”
“—No,” I said, cutting her off. Going to my parents was truly a bad idea.
“Stop being such a wuss,” Kat told me, then turned to Rigan. “He’s got attachment disorder or something. Family issues.”
“I understand. But we need to lay low somewhere.”
“Why don’t you tell me what this is all about? Why did you call me to that boat? What do you know about the trafficking? The drugs? And who took the heroin as collateral for the kids?” I asked, frustrated.
“Later. Neither of them needs to hear it,” Rigan said, indicating Dariya and Kat.
“I trust Kat.”
“I don’t. Now get to Tottenville, before I have to shoot someone,” Rigan said as she pulled the gun up, pointing it at Kat. I didn’t have much choice. I made a quick U-turn on Maguire Avenue, dodging downed trees and flooded underpasses as well as barricades and power crews to head to the ass-end of the island for the second time in twenty-four hours.
Chapter Seventeen
The seven-minute drive was tense, but I couldn’t shake the thought that I was missing something, that there was something I was missing, some way Markov might have found Rigan, Alina, and Dariya. It occurred to me as I turned the corner onto my parents’ street – and then only because I glanced in my rear-view mirror to make sure we weren’t being followed and caught sight of Dariya in the darkness.
Dariya was a teen girl in the back seat of a dark car and there was no glow on her face from her cell phone. None. She had no electronics at all. The connected generation was completely disconnected. Apparently.
“Dariya, are you carrying anything Markov or his men gave you? Wearing anything? Anything at all?”
“Why?” asked Rigan, nervously.
“Markov isn’t an idiot. He’s technically savvy. His father owns part of a Russian Telecom.”
“He’s also former KGB who spent seven years in Lubyanka Prison after his brother – Mikhail Markov – disappeared and is now financing unrest in the Crimea and the Ukraine, dealing drugs for arms and kidnapping opponents’ kids,” Rigan said, lashing out. “Don’t whitewash him as a businessman. He’s a criminal.”
“So, why’s a criminal bothering with politics?”
“Money. Congress is trying to pass this Magnitsky Act thing, derailing some of the deals he’s made for oil in the Arctic. Could cost him billions. Crimea has oil, though – and would make up some of the losses,” she explained. “Putin and the other Oligarchs are backing him. Heroin coming in here also creates havoc – payback.”
“So he has access to power and to Russian Intelligence. Which is why I need to know if you’re carrying anything he gave you,” I told Dariya, trying to be patient.
“Just a bracelet…” Dariya said quietly. “…It doesn’t come off. One time they drugged us and I woke up with it on.”
“Fuck me. That’s how they found you,” Kat muttered.
“How they can still find you,” I added. “There’s a GPS tracker in the bracelet.”
“What’s the range on the GPS?” Rigan asked, worried.
“I don’t know. We need to get it off. Now. I’ll need tools. Let’s get inside and hope Markov’s cell phones and GPS trackers are as fucked up by Sandy as everyone else’s have been,” I said, pulling into my parents’ driveway as the motion sensor flood lights lit it up.
Kat was examining a bracelet that looked like it had been welded onto Dariya’s wrist. She’d found tin snips, swiped from my father’s tool kit and was trying hard to cut it off, distracting distract Dariya by talking incessantly –
It wasn’t working.
“Are you going to cut me?” Dariya asked, gritting her teeth. She was laid out on a patio recliner in my parents’ sunroom, where the sound of rain on the roof and the warmth of the space heaters made me realize that the adrenaline was wearing off and that fatigue was setting in. The power had come back on, but the lights still flickered periodically, stressing us all out. If we didn’t finish this operation soon, one of us was bound to snap.
Most likely my mother.
She had let us in through the back door so we didn’t wake my father, who was asleep in his bedroom on the other side of the house. I made her leave before I brought in Dariya and Rigan. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother, but she gossips like an Irish housewife, and anyone who came by asking about us would have gotten a complete eyewitness account of what we did that would be so specific it would make every prosecutor in the country drool.
“Relax, I’m good with tools,” Kat told Dariya as she slid one sharp edge between the bracelet and Dariya’s pristine flesh closing the snips hard. It must have pinched, because Dariya squealed and moved as a thin line of blood formed on her wrist. Before the blood even started to flow, Kat had ripped off a corner of her shirt to stop it.
“This isn’t going to work. We need a bigger tool.”
“Lucky I’m here then. I’ll see if I can find a hacksaw,” I offered.
“What do you need a hacksaw for? Haven’t you done enough to that poor girl already?” My mother asked. I turned to find her brazenly coming in, focused on Dariya’s cut. I shouldn’t have been surprised, it was typical behavior. She never listens. Especially when it’s for her own good.
“Mom, I asked you to stay out.”
“That was the first red flag for me. Then I come in here to see that you brought strange women into my house, didn’t introduce them to me – and you’re cutting open this poor girl’s arm on your father’s recliner?”
“Listen, Theresa, why don’t you leave the detective work to the detectives…” I began, in my father’s sternest tone of voice. I knew it would send her over the edge, but I was unable to resist.
“Don’t you give me that ‘Theresa’ bullshit that your father tries to pull. He may have lost his memory, but he’s still too sharp to miss blood on his chair. Thank God this half-assed dyke knows how to dress a wound,” she said, looking at Dariya’s arm. This was the There
sa Collins I grew up with, and she was on a roll, turning to confront Rigan.
“Who are these people?” she started to ask, but stopped as she saw Rigan.
“My name’s Rigan Kelly, Mrs. Collins,” Rigan told her, saving Mom from her momentary lapse of vicious speech.
“...Why are you here?” My mother spit out like an accusation. “Where do I know you from?”
“I grew up in Staten Island. South Shore. You used to be a nurse at the old Richmond Memorial Hospital, right? Pediatrics?” Rigan asked. Something about Rigan’s tone put me on edge and made me suspicious. She was asking leading questions, as if trying to predetermine my mother’s answer.
“…And the psych unit. You spent time there. I know your face.” The distasteful look my mother had for Rigan made sense now. She had hated her time on the psych floor, having felt all the patients were either drug addicts or fakers, looking for an easy way out of work. Compassion was not one of Theresa Collins’ gifts.
“As a kid,” Rigan admitted. “I had a rough bit. I think you might have been my nurse at some point.” My mother nodded, as if she wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. When she did, it was hesitant.
“Well, I’m glad to see you healthy. A lot of the kids I took care of offed themselves when they couldn’t handle it. Or worse. Drugs. Sold themselves…” she said, as if trying to provoke a reaction, but Rigan just nodded.
“I know.”
My mother stared at Rigan for a moment longer, something passing between them. I felt as if I’d missed half the conversation and they’d reached some kind of unspoken truce.
“I’ll get you that hacksaw,” Mom said, turning to leave. I almost let out a sigh of relief as she left, but then heard her call from down the hall. “Killian – I’m going to need your help.”
Kat grinned, enjoying the fact that my mother was as much of a pain in the ass to me as she was to everyone else.
