Into Darkness

by T. J. Brearton

  Camera.

  She went for her gun, but her hands were caught. Her holster was empty anyway.

  This was a basement. Felt small, cluttered. To her immediate right, a washer and dryer, wafting the scents of detergent and fruity-smelling dryer sheets. To her left, the girl, Josie, tied up in another chair, her head bent forward, upper vertebrae of her neck shining in the harsh overhead light.

  “Josie,” Shannon said, the word slurring. “Josephine …”

  Her head ached. The more she grew in consciousness, the more the pain took specific shape, from the front left side of her skull, radiating across her forehead and down her neck, around her ear on that side. He’d pistol-whipped her? Struck her with something very solid anyway. She could feel the slow ooze of blood. And then he’d forced her to inhale sevoflurane.

  Straight ahead of her were messy shelves of household items ranging from cans of pureed tomatoes to rolls of toilet paper, a clear bin of plastic knives and forks, and, on the lowest shelf, some sporting items like figure skates and basketballs.

  Shannon couldn’t turn around. The back of the chair was too high, her arms wrapped back around it at a painful angle, a ligature binding her wrists. But she got the distinct sense that he was back there behind them.

  “I’m a federal agent,” she said.

  A foot scuffed the concrete floor, something clicked, as if plastic being fitted together, nothing more. Quiet breathing.

  “The whole city is looking for you,” Shannon said.

  Beside her, Josephine moaned. The girl’s eyelids fluttered, but her head stayed down. A long strand of drool hung from her mouth and connected with her thigh. The anesthesia he’d used on her, too, was slower to wear off.

  Beecher continued to move around behind them.

  Where was Rosen? It’d been a minute, maybe less, after the NYPD officer had left that Beecher came crashing in. He’d been hiding somewhere, waiting. A dozen or more law enforcement personnel attended his house a block away while he just ran around the neighborhood. He’d sent cops on a wild-goose chase after his depressive wife.

  How long until Tyler wondered why she wasn’t responding and sent someone around? Fifteen minutes? Half an hour? He would be scrambling to locate Beecher after botching the big moment. Police all over the city would remain focused on the manhunt.

  Yet here was the killer.

  Here he was in Josephine Tenor’s basement. Why here and not the place he’d used with the others? The more she thought it through, the more sense it made that, with law enforcement so close on his heels, Beecher was improvising.

  The camera was dark, no discernible red light. Unless he’d somehow hidden or disabled the indicator, it wasn’t yet recording. What was he planning now?

  The victims are in order of guilt.

  It was a persistent theory that made sense – from the entertainment reporter already covering American Stars to the rich social media influencer couple who could make or break people with a single retweet …

  And the way in which Beecher killed them had a certain ring of poetic justice to it. Imperfect, yes, but nevertheless a kind of turn-the-sin-against-the-sinner MO. For the Priests, Beecher had created a scenario in which their own mindless fans were their murderers, bringing the couple closer to death with every pressing of the ‘like’ button. For narcissist Spencer, his colleagues ran past and trampled over his bleeding body in order to save themselves …

  So – what had Josie Tenor done to make her so important on the list?

  And what was he going to do to punish her?

  Shannon was starting to form an idea when Beecher, of all things, suddenly sneezed. The unexpectedness and force of it sent her heart into her throat.

  “Fuckin’ dusty down here,” Beecher said.

  It was the first time she’d heard his voice. Good God, he sounded like anyone else. A normal man. If profane.

  Her mind racing, she said, “It’s a basement. Better dusty than mildew and mold …”

  “That’s because of the vintage,” he said without missing a beat. “These old houses have imperfections. Cracks and gaps where the air gets in.”

  He was talking to her like this was any other day. Like they were a couple of acquaintances.

  “Cracks and imperfections are a good thing for a house – lets it breathe, keeps the mold from forming. The places that get mold are these newfangled places. Energy-efficient green homes.”

  Ben Forbes flashed through her mind, if for no other reason than his work in construction.

  Knowing every moment that passed was one closer to police coming to her aid, she said, “Mold is mentioned in the Bible. Deuteronomy. Or maybe it’s Leviticus.”

  “Uh-huh,” he said. Something made a clicking sound, like plastic.

  “It’s part of punishment for disobedience,” she said, heart rate gaining speed as she came out of the anesthesia fully. “The Israelites were worshipping idols, not obeying God’s commands …” She trailed off and fell silent. Her whole body was shaking.

  Calm. Stay calm and steady.

  No response from Beecher. Another flash: sitting in church with her family. Mother in the pew in front of her with John. Shannon behind them with her three other brothers, who were always squirming and arguing, and their father, placed there to keep them in check. The back of her mother’s head, her dark hair, the sweater she liked to wear with the frilly collar …

  Shannon took a shuddering breath. “You know what? Wait. Leviticus is where God gives Aaron and Moses instructions for removing mold. Right? I remember, he said if a homeowner found mold or mildew, they had to contact a priest. And the priest would come and remove all the items and close the house for seven days …”

  She fell silent again, waiting.

  Josie moaned and her head came up, then dropped again. Shannon felt a tear slip down the side of her face. Or maybe it was blood. Don’t. Don’t lose it. Not now.

  Beecher squeezed past her on the right, moving between her and the washer and dryer. He was wearing a dirty pair of tan work pants with cargo pockets. A gray, long-sleeve shirt with some writing and decals too faded to read. Black boots on his feet. Blue plastic gloves on his hands. He kept his back to her as he manipulated the camera. Shannon watched, feeling the heat draining from her body as panic took over.

  Beecher then moved between the camera and Josie with something in his hand. He lifted her head and attached it to her shirt – a small microphone which connected to the camera with a thin black cord. “The batteries were dead in the wireless,” he said to Shannon. “This will have to do.”

  A stubble of grayish, reddish beard peppered his square jaw. His hair was buzzed short but just starting to grow over his ears. He was in shape, a man of average height, with a compact sort of physique, barely an ounce of fat on him.

  He looked strong. Wiry.

  He had yet to make eye contact.

  Finished clipping the microphone to Josie, he stepped back. He put his gloved hand on her forehead and pushed her head back. Her eyelids fluttered, opened a little, and she said, “Erguff …” and he slapped her once, hard.

  “Keep your hands off her!” Shannon tried to get up, pure instinct, but her ankles were held fast. They were tied beneath her and secured to the chair. Both chairs were the metal folding kind, a stabilizing crossbar between the two back legs.

  Josie’s head had bent to the side with the slap; now she righted her head with her face contorted in pain, eyes shut tightly. She opened them, blinking through the tears.

  She looked at Beecher, pure terror in her gaze.

  “Oh no …” she whimpered. Her voice was high, light, and tearful. Like a small child’s. “Oh no. No, no, no …”

  This was her nightmare. Her worst fear made manifest.

  “Touch her again and I’ll kill you,” Shannon snapped. She hadn’t planned to say anything.

  Beecher’s head slowly turned as he looked at her at last. His eyes were a kind of chameleon gray, the color of the ro
om, the emptiness of an alleyway. He bent forward and moved toward her. He made a fist.

  Pain exploded in her nose and upper lip and teeth. Something snapped in her neck as the force of his punch rocked her head back. She couldn’t see, couldn’t hardly think through the pain shooting through her face and head.

  “Shut up,” Beecher said.

  She watched him, his shape distorted by her tears, fixing Josie’s hair and clothes. Then he walked back to the camera and clicked on the camera light. Josie flinched and blinked her eyes some more. She was still whimpering the word, very softly, “No …”

  “Josie? I need you to tell me your Wi-Fi password.”

  “My Wi-Fi …”

  “Tell me your password.”

  “It’s f … It’s freesocks199.”

  “All lowercase or what?”

  “Yeah.”

  He was quiet as he poked at the back of the camera. A panel there, Shannon guessed, with menu options. His camera was able to connect to the internet. He was going to livestream this.

  A moment later, the red recording light came on.

  “Okay,” Beecher said. “We’re live. First thing, I want you to tell everybody your name.”

  Josie dropped her chin to her upper chest and sobbed.

  “Lift your head up. That’s it. Look right here. Tell the world who you are.”

  “Josie. Tenor.”

  Shannon whispered, “Stop.” Her head was a scrambled network of shooting pains.

  Beecher ignored her. “Good. Now tell everybody what you did. Get it off your chest.”

  Josie’s expression was slack a moment, as if, suddenly, she’d forgotten everything – where she was and the horror of the situation. Like she was simply listening to an adult giving her instruction.

  Then she crumbled again. She lowered her face and cried.

  “Come on, Josie,” Beecher said. He glanced up the stairs, which were directly on his right side.

  He doesn’t have much time and he knows it.

  As Beecher continued to prod Josie – in an eerily patient and gentle way – Shannon got a hold of herself. Put some thoughts in order. Beecher knew he was busted – had to. He was calm because he’d planned everything out. That was one thing – when you planned everything ahead of time and weren’t acting emotionally and impulsively, it helped you keep a cool distance. Almost like you were working for someone else, carrying out a job.

  But how many more people did Beecher think he could get with the entire city closing around him? This had to be the endgame.

  Or maybe that was naïve. After all, he was here now, right under the noses of the NYPD, with a federal agent abductee in the basement of a potential victim’s house. And he was a cop; he knew how cops thought. Familiar with all police frequencies and codes, he’d surely known the precise moment Rosen was called back to the Beecher home because he’d been listening. And if that was true, he would’ve known that Rosen had been posted at the Tenor home in the first place, that FBI – Shannon – had been en route. Yet he’d come anyway.

  Because he was going to see this through to the end.

  “Josie,” he said, a note of impatience in his voice at last, “come on now. Tell the world about Charlotte.”

  Josie’s chest jumped with a sob. She nodded – two big exaggerated bobs of her head. Then: “Charlotte was my fr – fr – my friend …”

  “That’s right. Your best friend. For many years. For many years, right? Until what happened? Josie? What were you supposed to do together?”

  Josie breathed in rapid bursts, like she’d been crying a long time. She was watching him, looking to him for some sign of hope, some possibility of forgiveness: seeing it made Shannon sick. This man was someone Josie had known her whole life, she’d said. How many dinners had she spent at his table? How many nights sleeping over in Charlotte’s room, under his roof?

  “We were …” Josie managed.

  “Go ahead.”

  “We were supposed to go to the … to the American Stars show together.”

  “That’s right. You both had tickets. Tickets that I bought.”

  She slurped back snot and tears and nodded. It looked like she was marshaling strength. Then she sobbed again.

  “That’s enough of that,” Beecher said. “Stop that. You don’t get to cry. Okay? My baby girl … my daughter hung herself because of what you did. You understand?”

  Josie sobbed harder.

  Shannon said, “This won’t bring your daughter back.”

  He stabbed a finger at her. “You shut the fuck up. This isn’t your show. You’re not even supposed to be here. Shut up and let her talk.” He drilled into Josie with his eyes. “Come on. Come on, you little dyke. Pretending to be her friend. Pretending to care.”

  “I was her friend!” Josie shrieked with sudden ferocity. Her face was red and wet with tears, but with anger in her eyes now, deep defensiveness. “I was her friend,” she repeated.

  A moment later: “But we fought sometimes. And a couple of days before we were going to go to the American Stars show, we had a big one. Like, a really bad one. The kind where you called each other bitch and say you never want to see each other again.”

  Profound surrealism washed over Shannon: here was a middle-aged man interviewing a beaten teenaged girl in her basement. Like the most bizarre, sadistic reality TV show.

  “I hated her,” Josie said about Charlotte. “And then she went to American Stars, and I watched it. I was so angry. And then it came to the part where she made that face, where she sort of wiggled around like that when the boy in the wheelchair was about to sing. I knew she was just being stupid. She was the nicest person. She was probably messed up because of how bad we were fighting. I know she would’ve told that boy she was sorry–”

  “She did,” Beecher said from behind the camera. “She did apologize. But the media didn’t care about that story. They didn’t cover that. This is your turn, Josie. Your turn to tell the world.”

  She was crying again. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what? Come on! For what?”

  Shannon could smell him – a kind of acrid stink, like anger and adrenaline. He reached behind himself for something and turned back around with a photograph. He held it up for Josie to see. Then he showed it to the camera.

  “My daughter went into hiding,” Beecher growled. “She didn’t leave home. We had rocks thrown at the house. She got death threats. People said she was a horrible person. Not just in the news – random people. They wrote her and said she was the worst person. That she should rot.” He was getting teared up. “Charlotte couldn’t go outside, Josie. She couldn’t go online. She sat in her room and she cried. She was mortified. Do you understand? You understand what you did? What you started when you put that video online?”

  Josie cried and nodded. “Yes. Yes, I know …”

  Shannon’s mind raced. It was clear now: Beecher blamed Josie for starting the campaign against his daughter. “It’s not her fault,” Shannon said abruptly. “If it hadn’t been her, someone else would’ve shared that video. And how do you know she was first? The Priests retweeted someone else’s post. I never even saw Josie’s stuff online. You gonna go after all of them?”

  His face darkened with blood. “She was her best friend! She knew the truth! That Charlotte wasn’t like that!” He looked from Shannon to Josie. “She should’ve spoken up. She should’ve said something. But she didn’t and my daughter hung herself.”

  “You want someone to blame. I can understand th–”

  Beecher was quick. He came for her and this time gripped her neck. His knuckle and thumb sank into her flesh, incredibly painful, cutting off her air. The world started to dim. She made gagging sounds as she stared up into his eyes. His skin seemed to ripple as he choked her.

  Then he let go, and she gasped for air. Bright spots danced around in her vision.

  “That’s what she felt,” he said, pointing to the picture he still held. “That’s what my daughter fel
t when she took her own life.”

  He stepped back and stared down at Shannon as she took ragged, burning breaths, her vision starring with fresh tears. Beecher said, “You’ve been in my house, I’m sure. You know how steep the stairs are. Charlotte went out to the shed, got one of my winch straps, tied it off to the banister on the second floor. When you push off that top step, and you swing down, the strap cinches tight. She hung there, feet dangling. Didn’t break her neck, but stretched it. Suffocated. All while she was probably looking out the front door. Out to the street. Out to the world that had written her off as a terrible human being.” He turned to Josie and said, “Just like you.”

  Josie, who’d managed to pull it together for a few seconds, was on the verge of a fresh breakdown. Beecher squeezed between the two of them and disappeared into the back of the basement.

  Shannon was finally able to breathe normally again, but her throat burned and her neck throbbed.

  When Beecher reappeared, he was holding a length of Scotch tape. He loomed above Josie. “You feel bad for what you did?”

  “Yes …”

  “You think you understand what she went through? What Charlotte went through?”

  Shannon said, “Don’t …”

  Beecher slapped her across the side of her head and kept going with Josie. “Do you think you understand the pain she felt? The humiliation?”

  Josie’s lip trembled. “Yes …”

  Beecher just stood there. “You don’t have a fucking clue,” he said finally.

  He showed the camera the four-by-six of Charlotte one more time, then taped it at the bottom of the lens, so both Josie and Shannon could see it.

  Josie was fully bawling. She’d gone over into a place of total resignation and regret.

  Beecher said, “You don’t understand, but you will. The whole world will see you come to understand.”

  Beecher walked between them again, out of sight.