“Agent Bufort?”
“He’s okay. Took it in the vest. He’s just getting his wind back.”
“The other guy …” she said.
“Stemp,” the agent answered, making him Lonsdale.
A loud screech and violent wrenching crash-boomed in the distance. Both Shannon and Lonsdale got moving and trotted down to the street, weapons ready, aimed at the sky. Straight down, two intersections away, the minivan had collided with another vehicle. Stemp was running in that direction.
Lonsdale got going, but it was hard for Shannon to keep the pace. She started to say go ahead to Lonsdale, but someone got out of the minivan and opened fire.
“Shit!” Lonsdale ran off the street to the right. She limped to the left, behind a containment wall that provided cover. Stemp shot it out with the man, and Stemp got him – the man holding the shotgun dropped to the road. A second later, another man ran. Stemp tracked him, but the man was clearly hurt badly already. He dropped too, just a few yards away.
Stemp moved in. Lonsdale returned to the street and ran to join the other agent in order to back him up. Shannon got to her feet again, and she walked. There was no running left in her. She looked down her gunsights as she approached, watched as Stemp got the driver’s side door open and grabbed the driver. Lonsdale aimed his handgun into the vehicle as he circled around the passenger side, then yanked that door open.
The sirens were louder now. An NYPD car took a corner at speed and raced toward the scene. Another followed seconds later.
Shannon got closer and positioned herself behind Lonsdale. A man she’d never seen before, never met, was the passenger, his head lolling to the side, mouth hanging open, a bullet wound in his neck. Shannon didn’t need a ballistics report to confirm it; the knowledge twisted her stomach: the bullet inside this man was one of hers. She’d just killed a human being.
Feeling suddenly dizzy, nauseous, she stumbled back from the damaged minivan and turned her attention to the other vehicle involved in the accident – a sleek SUV.
She almost couldn’t look. Didn’t want to know. But as the NYPD cars screeched to a halt and doors were flung open, footfalls beat toward the scene, Shannon forced herself to peer through the glass into the interior of the civilian vehicle at the man behind the steering wheel.
He looked back at her, bewildered, shocked, blinking. Breathing. Relatively unharmed.
She nearly collapsed. Caught herself against the SUV; forced her spine to straighten. Thank you, God. She grasped for the handle of the SUV driver’s door and swung it open. “FBI,” she said to the man. “Are you hurt?”
“They just came out of nowhere,” the motorist said, slack-jawed and staring. “I just came to the stop sign, stopped, started rolling forward, and they just came tearing through, clipped me right in the front there. My God. Who are they? What’s happening?”
“Someone will be right with you, sir. Just sit tight.”
She needed air. Even though she was outside in it. She stumbled away, taking another look inside the minivan and the person she’d never met, gone from this earth.
Then someone had her by the arm, and he was talking to her, but his voice was coming from a long ways away …
22
Monday afternoon
“God,” Bufort said. “What a thing.”
Shannon sat in the SUV she’d arrived in with Bufort. Hours had passed like minutes. Of the four criminals, two were dead. Two were alive – Tanzer, who’d run from the vehicle and collapsed – and the driver, James Paddock.
The deceased were Winston Hitchcock and Manuel Lopez. All four had records; all four had drug charges. Tanzer’s jacket was the lightest – one possession of marijuana charge from five years before. He’d managed to deal with it and keep his job at Ion. Of the other three, two had done time for opioids, one for heroin. They didn’t exactly seem like intellectual revolutionaries.
And Stratford was dead, too. The medical examiner said he’d succumbed within seconds of getting shot, most likely by Hitchcock, the one with the shotgun, the only weapon the group possessed besides a snub-nosed revolver found on Paddock.
Bufort’s arm was in a sling – but only because of the sprain he’d sustained falling through the door. The bullet was lodged in his Kevlar vest. He’d refused a trip to the hospital and said he’d check himself in that afternoon, back in Queens.
Shannon thought the whole thing was nuts. They should’ve watched Tanzer for a couple of days, got something on him they could use, then brought him in. As it was, his house was practically empty. Not a stick of furniture, just boxes. They could ask Tanzer why, if he was moving to a new residence or what the story was, but he was at the hospital with multiple internal injuries.
“Fuckin’ Stratford,” Bufort said, watching the street, watching Tanzer’s house, the porch where the agent had succumbed. “He shoulda waited.”
“What was he acting on?”
Bufort shook his head, saying, “He was on this all weekend. Tanzer has ties to Blackout …”
She shifted in her seat, trying to get more comfortable. It wasn’t working. “Blackout isn’t a terrorist group. They don’t murder journalists, make bomb threats. They’re paranoid intellectuals.”
Bufort shot her a mean look. “Hey …” He held a finger in the air. His mouth worked, but all he ended up saying was, “All right?”
She relented. Stratford was gone. They had Tanzer. As soon as he was able, they’d question him. It all seemed unnecessary to her, but maybe this was how it was out in the real world. You followed procedure, but part of that was making judgment calls. Tanzer was a former TV guy who got fired, left on bad terms, and Agent Stratford had connected him to a group with ostensible motives for systematic attacks on the media. It didn’t fit with what she believed, but then, she wasn’t sure exactly what she believed. And anyway, it wasn’t about criticizing someone else’s operating theory, it was about coming up with your own that was better.
The rest of the day was spent talking to people.
Doctors: Can you feel this? Yes. Can you hear this? Yes. Follow the light, please.
Department of Justice: And then what happened, Special Agent Ames? Then the minivan started to back up and I fired three times into the windshield. Were you aiming for one of the suspects? I was … I just tried to …
Tyler: What the hell were you thinking?! Bufort is a senior agent, sir. You said– I didn’t say abandon all good sense! Now I’ve got the DOJ so far up my ass they’re going to find my tonsils. Bufort is suspended. You’re lucky I don’t suspend you, too …
Finally she was home. She fed Jasper and watered the plants, and when she sat on the couch after a shower, the cat came to her and jumped into her lap. It purred, looked at her, then leapt away suddenly, as if spooked.
Night filled the window and she drew herself into the fetal position on the couch and pulled a blanket over her head.
The guilt for killing Winston Hitchcock was going to destroy her if she let it.
She sat up, wiped her tears, and picked up the remote. She watched TV for the next twenty minutes. Every channel covered the Amityville event. Serial Killing Terrorist One of the Media’s Own? Profiles on Tanzer. Video footage of him storming out of the Ion offices three weeks prior. “Just days before Eva Diaz was found in a pair of garbage bags,” one commentator noted.
Shannon watched, and she remembered the words of the manifesto: misinformation and wild-goose chases. Reporting on other stories as if they were facts.
No court or judge or jury had convicted Raymond Tanzer yet. No law enforcement member or body had made definitive connections between Blackout and the killings, the manifesto. But the media was. Rather, they posed the question. They put the idea out there, got it rolling through viewers’ heads.
Dissemination of disinformation …
Shannon got off the couch. It was late, the eleven o’clock news concluding, but she felt suddenly wired. She almost called Ben Forbes – his kids were coming back from summer camp
this week – but she didn’t. Terribly inappropriate. She used Caldoza’s cane and got up off the couch, then set out a yoga mat and did some leg stretches. Her hip and buttock flared with pain. She gritted her teeth and worked through it.
Who are you?
She imagined Raymond Tanzer standing in the street as Monica Forbes walked home that night. The man somehow convincing her to get into his car. Because she knew him? Ray? What are you doing here? Once she was lured into the vehicle, he attacks. After regaining consciousness, she finds herself bound to a gurney. Given a script to read. Words that sound eerily similar to the statements made on the Blackout website.
Shannon finished stretching and brought her laptop down onto the floor and scoured that site. She bit her thumb and read. Blackout feared and loathed the “establishment media.” There were no pictures of Tanzer, of course – all members of Blackout were anonymous – but Stratford had connected him to the murders. Because Tanzer was on the guest list at the Crunchtime Club awards dinner. And because Tanzer was a disgruntled, fired employee who knew people from Blackout. How?
She closed the laptop and rolled over and stared up at the ceiling, hands across her chest. She would learn more tomorrow.
The cat found her, climbed up onto her, purring, and she stroked his soft fur.
This time, he stayed.
23
Tuesday
Two days, and no one was getting back to her.
Two days. Because her call meant nothing to them? Because they’d checked it out and found no cause for concern? Because they were so overwhelmed with everything that was going on?
It had to be the last one, Josie thought. Had to be, because this thing had spread all the way out to Long Island, to Amityville, for God’s sake, where a bunch of Secret Service–looking cops had just had a shoot-out with some crazy terrorist group.
Terrorists.
That was the word buzzing through the beehive at present. Reporters were hazy on the details – big surprise – but in the early hours of that morning, the FBI had “moved in on” a house owned by Raymond Tanzer, a former cameraman at WPXU, Ion Networks. It must’ve been the guy the hotline cop said the police were interested in. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation sought to question Mr. Tanzer in connection with the bomb scare during the annual awards dinner for the prestigious Crunchtime Club in Manhattan on Saturday, and the brutal slaying of freelance journalist Todd Spencer that same evening,” said a platinum blonde TV reporter standing in front of Tanzer’s little brown house in Amityville.
Josie watched, eating ice cream out of the container, as further shots showed a car accident in the street, a sheet draped over a body, a gathering of concerned citizens (there was even a woman in hair rollers, dear God) – but no one from the FBI did any talking at the scene. Still, Josie had seen glimpses of a woman with some kind of burn on the side of her face. A ridiculously attractive cop, if that’s what she was, burn or no burn.
“I like girls,” Josie said, digging the spoon for further excavation. “So what are you gonna do about it?”
She spent a little time upstairs after the ice cream, with her T-shirt hitched up and tucked under her chin, pinching the fat around her stomach. She looked at her butt in the shorts she was wearing. She changed into yoga pants. Even less flattering. Not that it mattered. No one was going to see her. She hadn’t left the house in days. At least, she figured, it looked like they’d caught the guy.
But later there was a press conference, and some middle-aged dude who was trying to look like a millennial with his high hair gave a statement on behalf of the FBI. He said that they were not only still thoroughly investigating the deaths of Eva Diaz, Monica Forbes, Jordan Baldacci, and Todd Spencer, but they were running an internal investigation into the nature of the events on Tuesday morning.
Josie saw the woman again, standing off to the side, her hands folded in front of her. So she was FBI, then. Brunette. Light brown eyes. Damn cute for FBI.
The reporters off camera started lobbing questions, and the dude with the high hair said he couldn’t answer since it was a sensitive investigation. Josie heard things asked having to do with the “anti-media group known as Blackout” and “Is it true that Mr. Tanzer spent a week with them the previous winter?” and “Are these attacks on the media being considered hate crimes?” but none of them were answered.
“How’s that make you feel?” Josie asked the unseen reporters on the giant flat-screen TV.
Yeah, she definitely needed to get out. She was talking to people who couldn’t hear her, couldn’t talk back.
How appropriate, though. What a theme for her life.
When the news paused to advertise American Stars – yet another summer season coming to a finale for the TV talent show that just wouldn’t die – she clicked off the TV. Talk about a horrible, ugly reminder.
She walked into the kitchen and threw the ice cream spoon into the sink with a large clang, then threw the empty pint container in after it. For a moment, like a goddamn ghost, she saw Charlotte’s face, big as life, hanging suspended in the gloomy kitchen. Smiling.
24
Shannon walked down the hallway toward her office. She started past the conference room, hearing voices. Half a dozen agents were gathered inside. Domestic terrorism specialists, hate crimes specialists. Tyler was just shutting the door. He glanced at her, said, “I’ll be with you in a bit,” and then closed off the sights and sounds.
In her office, she booted up her computer and opened the spreadsheet database with stories covered by each victim. She sat looking up at the photographs and news clippings she’d amassed.
She ran a search for Winston Hitchcock. The man she’d killed was a former truck driver. He’d spent two years at Rikers Island for distribution of OxyContin. He had three children, two teens and one little four-year-old girl. His mugshot made him look hardened, a typical criminal projecting strength, but she couldn’t ignore the pain in his eyes.
She shut it down. Grabbed the cane, left her desk and went back down the hallway. Out.
NYPD’s 90th precinct in Williamsburg. She found Caldoza and Heinz in the bullpen. Their desks faced each other. Caldoza had his hands behind his head, feet up. Heinz was blowing his nose. Heinz noticed her, wadded up the tissue, and threw it at Caldoza. Caldoza batted it away, got angry, started to grumble something, and Heinz nodded in Shannon’s direction. Caldoza looked, saw her, then stood up fast, nearly knocking over his chair.
“Agent Ames, how you doing?”
“I’m okay.”
She was acutely aware of Heinz watching them, noticing their body language, the vibe Caldoza was putting off. But it wasn’t why she was here. “What are you boys working on?”
Caldoza scratched the back of his neck. He had his badge hanging at his chest, gold against a black T-shirt. He wore blue jeans and blue cowboy boots. He looked at Heinz. “Well, ah, you know, we’re following up on everything here and …”
“The hotline calls?”
Caldoza kept avoiding her eyes and darting looks at Heinz. Heinz adopted a smug look, sitting there in his gray suit. “The Ray Tanzer thing …” he started to say.
She held up a hand, nodding. “I understand. We took it and ran with it.”
Caldoza moved a little closer, at last engaging her with his eyes. “You had quite a bit of action out there. You okay?”
“Yeah.”
Heinz asked, “Tanzer awake yet? I heard he’s having complications.”
“They’ve induced a medical coma because his brain is swelling. No one has been able to talk to him yet.”
Heinz opened his hands, did a half shrug. “I mean, he’s good for it, right? What about the other guy? What’s his name? Paddock?”
“They’re going to grill him today.” She looked between the city detectives. “Why aren’t you guys still working the Forbes case?”
Heinz shrugged again. “Talk to Whitaker. Talk to your boss, there, Tyler.”
“I will,” she said. S
he turned on her heel and headed for Whitaker’s office, going by memory.
Caldoza hurried to catch up with her. “Hey, we’ve really had no choice here …”
“Who’s on the hotline calls? They’re still coming in?”
“Yeah. Yeah, there’s still calls coming in. We’re checking them.”
“Anybody heard from Ben Forbes?”
“The husband? No … look, you’re going to sprain something. Slow down …”
She turned and pushed into him, suddenly seeing red. They were in the corridor just beyond the bullpen, still in sight of half the precinct, and people were watching. She didn’t care. “Why does nobody give a shit about the Forbes case anymore?”
“I give a shit.” Caldoza held up his hands in peace. “I do.” He added, “But it’s out of our hands.”
“Why?”
“Why? Like Heinz said, maybe you need to ask your supervisor. As soon as that video played at the awards dinner, your team took over. The whole thing moved into domestic terrorism territory. We’re just superfluous. No one is looking at Monica Forbes as an isolated homicide.” He added, “Or even as some serial killer’s second victim.”
“I am.”
He searched her eyes and said, “Well, maybe I’m with you, but we’re alone.”
She had him pinned to the wall. Not touching, just pushing with her aggression. It dissolved away and she stepped back, using the cane for support.
Caldoza’s voice was low. “Have dinner with me tonight.”
She looked closely at him, saw the sincerity, the attraction. And she said, “I’d like to see the hotline calls.”
“You’ve already got them,” he said. “Everything was transferred over to the FBI early this morning.”
She turned and headed for the exit, then stopped. “I’ll let you know about dinner.”
Into Darkness Page 15
