Into Darkness

by T. J. Brearton

  The advertisement ended.

  The video that followed started with a cut into a program that was already in progress. A massive audience swelling against a brightly lit stage.

  “What is this?”

  “This is American Stars.”

  “It’s one of those shows,” Tyler said.

  “Yes. This is two years ago. Watch.”

  The host of the show, a supermodel with long legs stemming from a puffy, fur-coat-like outfit, strutted to center stage, microphone in hand, and introduced the next contestant to uproarious cheering. Apparently, this was one of the final rounds of competition for the vocalists. The current contestant rolled out in a wheelchair. One of his arms was bent against his chest. The din rose to distortion-causing levels; the speaker on Tyler’s laptop crackled.

  “Ames,” Tyler said, sounding impatient.

  “Hang on …”

  Various sweeping shots covered the audience as they leapt and waved their arms and shrieked for the disabled performer. A few tighter shots selected various overjoyed fans. And then one shot showed a young woman jumping up and down, her arm hooked into a claw, her tongue hanging out. Like she was mocking him.

  Then the crowd hushed, the lights dimmed, changed, and the disabled performer began to sing. His voice was astonishingly good.

  Shannon hit pause. Her heart was beating hard, both because of what she understood, and her zeal to bring Tyler into that same epiphany. “Now look at this,” she said, selecting an accompanying video. It was much shorter, just thirty seconds, and put the mocking young woman’s antics on a three-second loop, so that she jumped and flailed and stuck out her lolling tongue and rolled her eyes back in her head again and again.

  Shannon risked a glance at Tyler’s face. She could see it sinking in. They were in his home office, a small room with a banker’s lamp over the desk. It smelled like he’d recently burned a candle in here. That, and her own sweat – she’d been up for nearly twenty-four hours now, running all over the place, the toasted sourness of coffee lingering in her mouth, a subtle ache in her jaw from all the adrenaline.

  “Now this,” she said, and typed a phrase into the search field and hit Enter.

  Eva Diaz stood in front of Radio City Music Hall with a microphone. She swept a hand in the general direction of the venue. “Right here,” she said, “the final rounds of American Stars have been playing out. But amid the drama of whose favorite contestant will become America’s favorite new pop star, a controversy is sweeping the nation: what to make of the actions of this audience member?”

  Shannon’s skin stippled with gooseflesh as she watched the same shot of the young woman pulling faces at the end of the performer’s song.

  The shot came back to Diaz. The attractive young reporter had repositioned herself up a wide set of stairs, and she slowly walked down toward camera for effect, gesturing with her free hand. “It’s an image that has stunned millions – an audience member blatantly making fun of a disabled contestant. And it raises the question: even if we have our favorites, is this appropriate behavior? What has happened to common decency? Eva Diaz, Entertainment News for Channel 2.”

  End video.

  Shannon was still moving fast, mindful of Tyler’s skepticism. She was aware of him beside her, brushing a finger back and forth over his lips as she navigated to Todd Spencer’s piece in The Forward. It was called “Cancel Culture: What Happens When It’s Not a Celebrity?” Tyler scanned it; she had already read it. In the article, Spencer suggested that celebrities paid a worse penalty for their cultural crimes of indecency or political incorrectness, since they had more to lose. Everyday people, on the other hand, could fly beneath the radar, be indecent, politically incorrect, and come away unscathed. Spencer, who mentioned having a daughter of his own about the same age as the unnamed girl in the video, was disgusted by that girl’s behavior.

  Shannon’s fingers flew over the keyboard to present Tyler a similar article from Jordan Baldacci.

  “Baldacci’s piece focuses on youth culture, and the idea that the youth are desensitized, isolated in their social media bubbles, and out of touch with reality. Makes a pariah out of the girl.”

  Tyler thought about it, finger swishing back and forth. “And the girl is Charlotte Beecher.”

  “Yes. I can get to that now.”

  He put out a hand. “How are the Priests involved?”

  “This was two years ago. They retweeted a video clip that went on to get over a hundred thousand likes.”

  “Retweeted from whom?”

  “I’ve just got the Twitter handle for that, no user yet.”

  He leaned over the laptop. “How did the first clip even come into being? I mean, it’s a live TV show …”

  Shannon felt a little pulse: he’s on board. She clicked the keys. “Okay, this is the first video I could find. It’s from SmileyGrady004 and it’s the whole song. Probably a fan. You can see this is a video camera recording off his TV – see how it’s kind of distorted right there? And then someone took a screen recording of this and excerpted the bit with Charlotte Beecher. That’s this user here, and this is where the tweet links to.”

  Finished, she stepped back, letting Tyler think.

  After a few seconds staring at the laptop, he asked, “Forbes?”

  “I spoke to her husband an hour ago. She discussed it on The Scene. He said her network pulled that episode after Charlotte Beecher killed herself. And Monica asked that she be completely disassociated from having anything to do with it.”

  Tyler looked at her. “Have you seen that episode of The Scene?”

  “No.”

  “How did the girl kill herself?”

  Shannon had been waiting for it. “She hung herself, Mark.” After letting him absorb this, she said, “Her family has a house in Astoria Heights.”

  His eyes were unfocused. “Astoria …”

  Shannon bent toward the computer again. She hit a few keys. After a moment, Tyler was beside her, looking.

  “This is her father,” Shannon said quietly. “Henry Beecher.”

  Tyler didn’t say anything at first. He just nodded two times, then shook his head, then grunted. “Ah, fuck,” he said.

  29

  They sat a safe distance from Henry Beecher’s house in Astoria Heights, with the sun just breaking over the rooftops. Shannon was in the passenger seat of Tyler’s car. He’d ordered her to stay put and was out on the street, talking to local PD and pointing.

  Shannon studied the house. Long and skinny and two stories. Beige vinyl siding, black plastic window shutters. The relatively large yard was the major amenity, a coveted element in this working-class neighborhood.

  Black-clad SWAT officers in helmets crept in close and surrounded the place.

  The excitement of discovery dissolved into the somber reality: two years ago, Henry Beecher’s daughter had ostensibly mocked a disabled performer on a massively viewed television show. A short time later, she’d taken her own life. By all accounts, her suicide was the result of a relentless online bullying that followed her unwitting appearance on American Stars.

  Shannon watched as three SWAT cops prepared to enter the front. Two flanked the door; one knocked. She watched Tyler, waiting across the street. He’d pulled on some tracksuit pants and a sweatshirt, like he was trying to be Luis Caldoza.

  The cops at the door knocked again. One rang the doorbell. Four others had gone around to the back of the house. The cop who’d rung the doorbell spoke into the radio transmitter clipped to his shoulder. Déjà vu washed over her. She had visions of the minivan in Amityville, smoke roiling from the hood, the dead man behind the bullet-punctured windshield. The oozing hole in his neck. Winston Hitchcock. Now, more than ever, looking like someone who had nothing to do with the media killings.

  But this wasn’t that. If anyone had motive, it was Henry Beecher. Not only that, he had opportunity. Diaz, victim number one, lived only one mile away in Ditmars-Steinway. Forbes was just over in William
sburg. These were targets he could access, and they had been his first.

  Don’t let the conclusion lead the evidence: her own frank advisement to a superior.

  Which was why finding out that Beecher had been part of the awards dinner security team had been a critical find.

  As a security guard for the awards dinner in Manhattan, Beecher had gained yet more opportunity. He’d managed to get into the audio-visual technician area and splice his video into the presentation. Then he’d positioned himself by the front door, so that as everyone ran screaming, he could cut Spencer’s throat.

  Chilled, she tried to distract herself by looking at the other houses on the street. The color palette was subdued: pale blues, light greens, grays and whites. All the roofs were gray shingles. What a thing, New York City. From skyscrapers to projects to residential homes in a row. Turn a corner, something completely different. Thousands of independent universes, just a block or two in dimension, all coexisting in this one place.

  A car came rolling down Seventy-Third. A Mustang – Caldoza. It stopped, double-parked, and the NYPD detective got out, tucking a button-down shirt into his jeans. He looked at Beecher’s house, then saw her in Tyler’s car, and came over. She rolled down the window.

  “Holy shit,” he said when he reached her.

  “Yeah.”

  They both watched the house. The SWAT cop at the front entrance was now picking the lock to the outer door, an out-swinging steel security door.

  “How you doing?” Caldoza said.

  “I’m okay. You?”

  He nodded. “Good. Just can’t believe this. The whole department is going crazy. How sure are we?”

  “We’re never completely sure. But this is looking close.”

  They watched as Tyler came over. He gave Caldoza a kind of dirty look, and Caldoza backed away from the car. Tyler said to Shannon, “Not home. House is cleared. We’re going in.”

  She opened the door. Both men moved to help her, and Tyler cut Caldoza another one of those looks. She closed the door and ignored them both, walked to the sidewalk and up to the front door of the house without much limping. Caldoza had the cane again, anyway – she’d left it in his car the night before.

  The lock-picking cop had gotten through the outer door. Four more guys moved past her up the steps with a small battering ram and busted through the inner door. Shannon noticed some faces in the windows of the surrounding houses. Then Tyler went past her, into the house, and she followed.

  The SWAT cops who were first through didn’t like what they saw inside. “The fuck? Beecher? I know this guy,” one said.

  Caldoza stepped through the entrance, overhearing. “He’s retired,” Caldoza said to them.

  One guy, beefy, removed his helmet. “So he don’t get due process?”

  “He got his due process,” Tyler answered, from out of sight. “The FBI has evidence to place him as the number one suspect in the media killings.” Tyler emerged from deeper in the house, past the stairway. He pulled a piece of paper from the pocket of his navy blue track pants. “Got the warrant right here. Thanks, guys, you can wait outside.”

  The two SWAT cops gave him the stink eye, then one said to the other, “Fuck this,” and they left.

  On the wall near where they’d been standing hung Henry Beecher’s picture. With the American flag behind him, Beecher smiled big and a bit crookedly, dressed in the navy blue shirt and peaked cap of his NYPD uniform.

  Shannon and Caldoza followed Tyler back to the kitchen. Not bad. Recently redone, everything new and shiny and a freshly retiled floor. Shannon lingered over a different picture on the fridge: Henry and Charlotte and another woman. Her name was Teresa, Shannon knew, Henry’s wife. Charlotte’s mother.

  “All right,” Tyler said, looking around. He put his hands on his hips. “Let’s get everybody. And I mean everybody.”

  The lack of sleep was starting to get to her, but she pushed it aside. Henry Beecher stared at her from the blown-up version of his police headshot. Tyler had it up on the main screen at the resident agency. The supervising agent had changed from his tracksuit into a professional three-piece for the small crowd of law enforcement, FBI, and New York City police present in the conference room.

  Tyler said, “Okay, here is what we know. Henry Beecher, fifty years old, former New York City Police officer. Beecher retired after twenty-two years of service. Apparently, he’d planned to stay longer, until mandatory retirement at age sixty-two, but for the death of his daughter and the subsequent hospitalization of his wife, Teresa.”

  Tyler hit a button on the remote he was holding, and the image changed to a woman’s face. “This is Teresa Beecher. Forty-nine years old. Currently an inpatient at Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn. She’s been in and out of there over the past two years, suffering from chronic depression and acute anxiety.”

  Another click of the remote. “And this young lady is Charlotte Beecher. Young Miss Beecher completed a suicide after feeling humiliated by a spate of news and social media covering her actions during the live taping of a reality TV competition show – you all have that in your briefings – you can watch on your own time.”

  Tyler switched back to Henry. A silence followed, heavy and remorseful. “Look,” Tyler said, walking toward the group. “We’re not happy about this. Nobody is happy to have our prime suspect be a decorated police officer. But let’s not focus on that, but instead, what it means.” Tyler ticked off the attributes on his fingers as he listed them. “It means he’s very capable, very smart. He’s had access to things ordinary citizens might not have. He knows people. And people who know him said he’s a highly motivated person. Always had a project going. He’s a bit on the introverted side. He’s quiet, a serious guy who stays busy. There’s every chance he’s been planning this for a long time. Charlotte Beecher hung herself in August. That’s two years Henry Beecher could have been putting this together.”

  Tyler had kept walking into the seated group of them while talking. He stopped next to Shannon. “All right, everybody. Right now, I want to turn this over to Special Agent Ames. Many of you know Agent Ames.” He glanced down at her, then swept the group with his gaze. “For those of you who don’t, Shannon was the one who cracked this thing open.” He turned to her again. “Agent Ames?”

  She got to her feet.

  They’d spent hours in Beecher’s home, looking for clues to his present location. They had his phone number; calls went straight to voicemail and the phone wasn’t showing up on any satellites – it was powered off or destroyed. Somehow, Beecher had known they were close. Either that, or he certainly did now and wasn’t going to ever come out of hiding.

  Shannon pointed to a map on the screen. “There’s two things I want to touch on, then I’ll leave you to it. The first thing, we know Beecher’s beat as a police officer was, at least for a time, an area that included Long Island City and Hunters Point. That means, not only does he know the area well, but he might have a home base there, a place where he’s bathing his victims, or hanging them, in the case of the Priests. But while we’re out there canvassing, I want everyone to bear something in mind – we don’t know that he’s finished. This thing – this event with his daughter, her gestures during the American Stars broadcast – this was picked up and distributed as news by all sorts of people. Journalists, reporters, commentators like Monica Forbes, social media influencers like James and Evelyn Priest.” She paused, looking over the faces of the men and women in the room listening eagerly. “As Agent Tyler just said, we have to consider that Henry Beecher has been planning this for a long time. And … I can’t be sure of this, but it seems reasonable to think that there are more potential victims.”

  An agent, dark hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, tilted her head. “So what’s the criteria? You just said there are dozens of people involved in this thing. I mean, could be hundreds, if you think about it. Anyone who passes something like this on. You look at child porn, you’re complicit in the crime.
He’s out there playing judge and jury – why these specific people? And it’s not just opportunity based on proximity – he got Baldacci, and she lives outside his area.”

  “It might be the reach,” someone said before Shannon could respond. A male agent near the back. “You know, how many newspapers in circulation, how many viewers a show has, how many likes a tweet got …”

  The female agent shook her head in disagreement. “He’s somehow calculating all of that? TV viewers? Who is he, Nielsen?”

  A few people chuckled.

  Shannon listened, feeling exhilarated. At least they were talking along these lines, thinking critically, figuring it out. She said, “You’re right – I don’t think it’s an exact science for him, but by the gut. Imagine that this was you …”

  “No thanks,” interrupted the argumentative agent, drawing a few more laughs.

  Shannon’s gaze connected with Caldoza, who gave her a wink of encouragement. She said, “I’m saying, if you can manage to put yourself in the shoes of a man who lost his daughter. What’s your metric for determining the guilt of the people you feel drove her to her death?” Shannon took the remote control for the laptop and flipped back to the slide of Charlotte Beecher. It showed on the huge, connected flat-screen TV in the room. Everyone looked at the fourteen-year-old girl. Auburn hair pulled straight back and frizzed out at the sides. A sprinkling of freckles across her upper cheeks and nose. Brown eyes, despite the fair complexion. Smiling, one tooth in front slightly pushed ahead of the one beside it.

  “This is a young woman whose life was cut short,” Shannon said softly.

  The agent in the back grunted through his nose.

  “You have any kids?” Tyler asked. He’d been in the corner, observing. “Agent Rappaport – you have any children?”

  “No, sir.”

  Tyler just left it there and nodded at Shannon.

  “My question,” she began, “is not one I’m looking for you to answer, but to keep in mind today. As we’re out there looking, as this whole city is looking for Henry Beecher, I want to impress this upon you – he may not be done. He may become desperate, act capriciously. But I don’t think so. I think this is a very methodical man. I don’t think he fears jail or even his death at this point. He wants to complete his list.”