“Which street? Fifty-Fifth?”
“Yeah, Fifty-Fifth. Just sitting there. Happened twice. It would sit for a minute, engine running, and then drive away.”
“This was before you found the body, Alfonso?”
“Yeah. This was like a week before.”
“Did you see the driver?”
“No. I mean, I could tell someone was sitting there behind the wheel, you know. Couldn’t see them or anything.”
“Okay … and the make of the car?”
“Um, Dodge Challenger. Really nice.”
“Vintage or modern?”
“Oh, definitely one of the new ones. Big and blocky. Metallic blue. But I didn’t say anything because, I don’t know. I didn’t think about it when I found the body. Not really at all. But then, you know, this thing keeps happening. So Selena said you were here, and I thought, maybe you can use all the help you can get.”
He fell silent.
“Thank you, Alfonso. That’s good thinking.”
They talked a little more about it, but that was the gist – a blue Challenger had shown up twice in the week before Diaz was found. On its own, it meant nothing. She thanked him again, ended the call and stood looking out over the night-draped city.
After a moment, she went back through the Priests’ home, thinking it all through again, imagining the glamourous lives of a celebrity couple. But the answer to their death wasn’t here. She knew it. Not here in the three-dimensional world. Not in their physical lives.
The answer lay in their digital lives.
Back at her office, the new data points begged inclusion: James and Evelyn Priest, social media influencers. They weren’t journalists covering stories, but without a doubt, they disseminated information.
We have never had to apologize for the fear we sell …
The way we spread fear, generate outrage, and disseminate disinformation …
Maybe it did fit the anti-media ideology. But that could be a convenient cover for the killer.
With a tall cup of coffee riding the desk beside her, she went through the Priests’ Instagram account. Their Twitter and Facebook accounts. Back, back, through their online history.
On Instagram, a picture of Evelyn modeling a new outfit. The both of them posing like Lady and the Tramp over a bowl of spaghetti in an Italian restaurant they endorsed. A video of James talking about a new pair of sneakers for running. He held them up and rotated them in the air like a salesman. A very handsome salesman with a boxy chin, two-day stubble, thick, manicured eyebrows hooding big brown eyes. Cut to shots of him running through Central Park. Who was the cameraman? Was it Evelyn? Doubtful. God rest her soul, but she wouldn’t have been able to resist a moment turning it around on herself for a wave or a wink. Was the cameraman significant? At the end of the video were brief credits – Shannon took the name down anyway: Saul Bennett.
Back, back, further in time. Instagram was mostly original content, pictures and videos, a plethora of likes. Twitter had much of the same stuff, but then there were copious retweets. Ah, to get retweeted by the Priests! It must have been make-or-break for some people.
She took a break, feeling punchy, getting cynical.
The office was quiet, but a few agents were working. Shannon walked up and down the hallway, passing Tyler’s empty office. She focused on her leg, hip, lower back. Tried to imagine knots unravelling. Muscle fibers relaxing their stranglehold, inflammation subsiding.
After midnight now, no one calling with a bead on the Priests. Were they still swinging from their nooses? The account that had streamed the video was gone. There was no more user named CrazyEights88. If anything was for posterity, it would’ve had to have been screen-recorded by a third party, or maybe somehow by the killer himself. But so far no one had posted their bootleg of the Priests’ horrible hanging murder. Maybe there was a shred of decency left in the world. Or perhaps no one had recorded it.
CrazyEights88. Many brains at the FBI were currently trying to crack that one, too. What did it mean? Someone who liked card games, born in 1988? As good a guess as any.
Shannon stared at the wall. She consulted her database. The four reporters – Diaz, Forbes, Baldacci and Spencer – had exactly nineteen stories in common. At least, ones she’d been able to track thanks to the employment records from their respective TV stations and newspapers and personal records, and thanks to getting access to Spencer’s laptop. But she was just scratching the surface with the Priests’ online history, let alone their dozens of contracts with businesses and advertisers.
She found something anyway: the first formal exhibition of a famous New York City street artist known as Stellan was an event covered, in one way or another, by all of the Media Killer’s victims. The Priests had attended and tweeted. Diaz had reported live for WCBS-TV. Forbes had discussed it with co-hosts the following day on The Scene. Baldacci had written a small piece on it in Newsday, while Spencer had covered it in much more detail for The Forward.
Not exactly the kind of story convergence that stirred up a serial killer, but at least it was something that connected them all.
And there were more. Similar stories to the art exhibition, stories that crossed the entertainment barrier into “serious” news, as writers like Spencer and Baldacci, for instance, could shape philosophical or ethical questions out of certain events.
Shannon searched, she scoured, but found no evidence that the Priests had dipped into the Pelham Bay story. No indication they even knew about the land development or Nikolay Lebedev. And no connection that she could find between the Priests and Blackout. Spencer had written about Blackout once three years ago, but he was the sole victim to connect.
A metallic blue Dodge Challenger had apparently idled outside Dylan Engineering and Construction twice in the week prior to the body of Eva Diaz being dumped there. Who drove a metallic blue Challenger? Was it Lebedev? Was it Raymond Tanzer? He had a different car registered in his name, but it could’ve been a loaner.
And he sat there in the street, watching – for what? To know when people left for the day, when they returned the next morning? Whether there were cameras watching or guard dogs patrolling? Because he’d gotten fired for slacking off and maybe being a drug addict, and now turned his rage against all media professionals?
One a.m. The coffee was long gone. She was running on pure ambition, her mind going nonstop, like this:
Ray Tanzer was working for Paul Torres. Torres had holdings in a company that paid the Priests to endorse. Blackout was really a much more sprawling underground organization than anyone realized, with growing terror cells and connections to elites all over the city. Perhaps the nation. Perhaps the world.
The name of the two most recent victims was Priest. They could have been selected for that reason alone! For the symbolism of it: social media was the new place of human congregation, the new church, and they were its ordained ministers, offering the sacraments of social inclusion, performing rites against the evils of FOMO – fear of missing out.
Monica Forbes had willingly gotten into the back of an SUV, according to a severely myopic eyewitness. She’d been dumped under a bus.
Thrown under the bus.
To throw under the bus: to betray a friend for selfish reasons.
Monica Forbes, a friend to the killer? An ally?
Nothing could be ruled out. Which meant Shannon was farther than ever from a reasonable hypothesis.
This was bordering on insanity. She was beginning to sound like Heinz.
It was two a.m. and she needed to call it a night. Her day had begun some eighteen hours earlier, a morning heavy with guilt. She’d killed a man. Someone for whom no guilt had been proven. And the day had ended with her inability to save yet two more victims. Her inability to predict where the killer would strike next, because she had yet to learn why he was striking at all.
Without thinking, Shannon gritted her teeth and swiped everything off the side of her desk. The motion sent pens and papers flying, and the empty
coffee cup to the floor.
She stood and went to the wall. Her hands hooked into claws, she tore down the faces of Forbes and Diaz. The words of Spencer and Baldacci. Thumbtacks popped from the wall as she ripped away the twine she’d used to connect ideas. Stories to other stories. Names to names. She tore it all down.
But she didn’t leave. There was no one waiting for her at home but Jasper. She’d been here a year, lived in the city a year, and she’d not even dated. She was married to the job. Went to church on Sundays, ran through Prospect Park three times a week, saw the occasional movie, and avoided returning to her family home. Avoided the cloying, almost desperate love of her father, the cool distance of her mother. A mother who never got over the death of her oldest child – and who could blame her?
There was nowhere to be but here. There was nothing to do but this.
So she continued to cross-reference the victims.
She looked while the night cleaner came vacuuming down the hallway and was gone again. She looked until she’d picked up the coffee cup three different times, only to suck a little air and coffee-flavored moisture from the spout. She searched until she found two more stories covered by all victims that were unlikely candidates for initiating a murdering spree, but then one that … well, might’ve been.
It was a story that was covered by Diaz, Baldacci, and Spencer that had also been tweeted about by the Priests. The only problem was, there was no record of Monica Forbes having worked it.
But the more she saw, the more she learned, the more compelling the story became.
As she read Spencer’s article for The Forward, Baldacci’s piece on her own blog, and watched Diaz’s report of it on TV, she thought, Now this – THIS is something that could drive a person to the very edge of sanity.
She’d been seeing advertisements for the season finale of American Stars all over the city. Commercials on TV. They all took on a new significance now.
This one …
This one she couldn’t let go. This one was too good.
This had all the elements.
And it wasn’t just one story that involved American Stars …
Really, it was two.
When Shannon finally left the office, she was running.
28
Late Tuesday night/Early Wednesday morning
Shannon held her ID to the glass until the concierge let her in. “I need to see Mr. Forbes,” she said, coming into the coolness of the lobby.
“Um …” The concierge, a handsome black man in his late forties or early fifties, looked dubious. “Is Mr., ah, Forbes …”
“He’s not expecting me. But this is a matter of a federal investigation. Please buzz him.”
The concierge did, and about thirty seconds later, a sleepy voice came through the intercom: “What is it?”
“Mr. Forbes. I have a federal agent here to see you. She says it’s urgent.”
There was a pause. “Send her up.”
The elevator doors opened onto the penthouse antechamber. Forbes stood in the doorway to his place in sweatpants and a body-hugging tank top. Bare feet. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m sorry it’s so late.”
“It’s okay. Please come in.” He stepped back and gestured that she enter his home. The apartment was tranquil, distant lights of Manhattan twinkling in the windows, the hushed rumble of air-conditioning moving through the vents. “I’m picking up the kids today,” he said, leading her into the kitchen. He pulled out a barstool for her, then sat down himself.
She stayed standing. “Is there anything Monica was working on that wouldn’t be in her records?”
Forbes just looked back at Shannon a moment, then averted his gaze. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, no. I don’t know. What do you mean?”
“Anything that, for whatever reason, wouldn’t show up in her employment records? Something she might’ve even scrubbed from her own personal records?”
He glanced up, just a flit of his eyes. “I don’t know. Why would someone do that? You think it’s relevant? To what happened to her?”
“Mr. Forbes, I know it’s a bad time. I know this is a sudden question, and …”
He patted the air with his hand and bobbed his head. “No, it’s okay.”
“Did you see what happened earlier tonight?”
He’d gotten up and moved toward the softly humming fridge. Now he stopped and gave her a look. “The influencer couple, there? The Priests?”
“It’s the same guy.”
Forbes didn’t move. He stared off into some middle space between them. She could see him working it out – whether or not to tell her something he knew, making the calculations.
“It’s not that bad,” Shannon said. “If Monica was involved in what I think she was involved in, it’s not that bad. She was just doing her job.”
That got Forbes’s full attention. He studied her, a mixture of indignation and sorrow on his face, and then turned back to the fridge. “Can I get you something, Agent Ames?”
“No.”
His back to her, he said, “Come on. One beer. You drink beer, I bet.”
She cleared her throat and found herself sitting up a little bit straighter. “Okay. One beer.” Whatever got him talking.
He leaned into the fridge and came out with a bottle in each hand. He rotated around and set them on the corner, then pulled open a drawer beneath. She watched him do all of this, reading his body language, his face. He’d already made his decision; he was just coming to terms with it. That’s how people were. She gave him the time.
He opened both beers, pushed hers across the island. When she had it in hand, he raised his own bottle, but said nothing. She raised hers, their eyes connected, and then each of them took a drink. Forbes set his bottle down and stayed standing. He leaned against the countertop with his palms. Let his head lower to his shoulder blades.
“Charlotte Beecher,” he said. “That’s what you’re talking about?”
“It is,” Shannon said, feeling a thrill she barely kept out of her voice.
He nodded slowly, his face angled down. “Okay,” he said softly. “Okay …”
Sensing the opportunity, she started, “Mr. Forbes, what I would like to do now is–”
“Monica was mortified by that whole thing,” he said. He lifted his face to Shannon, eyes shining with emotion. “She didn’t want any part of it. And then when … when the girl did what she did, Monica was just devastated. I mean, just devastated. She threatened to leave her job. She wanted to.” Forbes stood fully upright and took a few steps back as he spoke, until his back was against the fridge, his arms folded in front of his chest. “But they begged her. They begged her. We went through it for two weeks. Longer. She was having nightmares. Finally, she said – she was thinking about our kids, okay, about us having enough money for their future, for college – she told the network she’d stay, but she wanted the whole thing expunged from her record. Wanted her name taken off anything to do with that one episode. I think it was episode one-eleven. I don’t think you can find it. I think they took it down everywhere it was online. Unless someone filmed it on their TV, or screen-recorded it, whatever that is …”
Forbes was sputtering out. He gazed down at the floor again and fell silent.
“I understand.”
His eyes snapped back. “Yeah. Well, it wasn’t good. And so now – you think this is – how does this have to do with that? Who would be …?” But Forbes trailed off, perhaps finding the answer was right there, right in front of him. He uncrossed his arms and put a hand over his mouth. “Oh my God,” he said through the hand.
She was off the barstool a second later and came around the island toward him. “Ben, listen to me.”
He was lost in the horror of it, staring into space again.
“Ben.”
He focused on her.
She said, “This stays between us right now, do you understand? You can’t talk to anybody.”
He nodded, but b
arely.
“Anybody,” she repeated. “You need to go get your kids today. You need to tell them whatever you’re going to tell them about their mother, but not this. Not this part. And then you need to – I don’t know. Go somewhere. Be with them. Get away from here. You hear me?”
Ben Forbes had absently raised his hand to his mouth and was nibbling on a knuckle. He suddenly struck her as childlike, the adult in him broken. “Yes,” he said. “I hear you.”
“Not because she’s guilty of anything,” Shannon said. “Your wife is a victim. This is a sick man. But your kids don’t need to see this. What’s going to happen.”
“It was his daughter,” Forbes said, almost whispering.
She started to respond, but Forbes quickly moved away. She let him go. It passed through her mind to have him followed. Maybe even for his own safety, or the safety of his children. But also to ensure that he kept in confidence what had just been discussed.
“Ben?”
He didn’t answer or return to the room. He was gone from sight and then a door closed. Probably his bedroom. Now she was torn. There was so much to do. She had him! She had the guy! She knew the identity of the Media Killer.
Don’t get ahead of yourself.
She took another quick pull of the beer, then realized she didn’t know if it was hers or his. She was in a state. Don’t get ahead of yourself? This was the break she’d been waiting for, the story she’d been hunting, the piece that tied it all together.
Charlotte Beecher.
“Who is Charlotte Beecher?”
Ready for the question, Shannon booted up the video. She kept thinking about Ben Forbes, but Tyler had signed off on putting someone on him, an agent named Kim Tam.
The YouTube video began to play. Tyler crossed his arms as they waited through a stupid advertisement for car insurance. She’d called as she’d left Forbes’s place, then gone right to his house. Four thirty in the morning, dawn just smudging the eastern sky salmon and gold. Tyler was no doubt thinking this’d better be good.
Into Darkness Page 18
