Sunrise Highway

by Peter Blauner

  A silver Honda station wagon came hurtling by in the eastbound lane. Joey’s pulse quickened with the bass line of a new song starting on the radio. But when the lights found the driver, she was just some prune-faced bitch, nearly his mother’s age, with two brats sleeping in the back seat. A few seconds later, there was a middle-aged white guy in an exhaust-spewing Chrysler Cordoba, his face as beat-up and poorly cared for as the car. Then nothing for several minutes.

  Just unlit road and the song.

  The chick singer trying to sound tough, threatening to harden her heart. He’d been half hypnotized watching the video on that new MTV channel the other night, at the new bar Billy Rattigan opened off Jericho Turnpike in Coram. The chick dressed in a black leotard, getting chased down a narrow corridor by some unseen stalker. The set as cheesy and sleazy as the saxophone that kept swanking in and out of the verses. Shitty office trailer lighting with a low ceiling and wood-paneled walls. You could almost smell the piss cakes in the urinals and the smoke from the tinfoil ashtrays. The chick in the video kept pulling on doorknobs, trying to get away from whoever was pursuing her. It was like being inside someone else’s nightmare. She wasn’t all that pretty, but Joey liked how scared her eyes were as she looked over her shoulder and bounced off the walls, and how she sang “harden my heart” like she was really thinking about someone chasing her with a monster hard-on. Then at the end of the video, two guys came along in tuxedos and visored helmets and destroyed the trailer with a bulldozer and a flamethrower, so there was no evidence that any of it had ever happened.

  A new pair of headlights was moving slowly in his direction. The driver hesitating where the road curved, losing confidence. Just for a second. Something a woman would do, at 1:33 in the morning, on a windswept stretch of highway without a lot of houses around. She tried to pick up speed again as the road straightened out. But he was already onto her, hitting the high beams for her approach. He clocked her going maybe forty as she passed into his light.

  A white Ford Escort with a female driver. Young, maybe mid-twenties. Brown hair like the chick in the MTV video. The way they did it now. All curly. Like a poodle with highlights. Skinny neck. Too much makeup. Hand up to her face, like she’d been wiping something from her eye as she passed. Lost in her own little problems. Maybe listening to the same song on the radio. Trying to harden her heart.

  He hit his siren and flashers as she went by. Knowing that would give her heart a jolt. Their first physical interaction. Raising her pulse rate without even touching her. The start of a relationship. He swung in right behind her, coming up fast and filling her rearview with his overpowering beams. Her brake lights flared red. A good sign that she was slowing down right away. Immediate compliance.

  “Pull over to the side please.” He sounded like the voice of God on the loudspeaker.

  She went off to the right, not as close to the shade of the trees as he would have liked, and then annoyed him by putting on her hazards, potentially attracting attention from passing cars.

  He killed his lights and siren, then took his time getting out. All five foot ten, two hundred pounds of him, with a regulation haircut, a clean-shaven chin and arms hanging apelike at his sides with his flashlight and gun in easy reach. Giving her a chance to worry about what the problem could be.

  She had a Mercy College sticker on the back window. Dobbs Ferry. Westchester. Not Harvard. But still. A college girl. Approach with caution.

  He came up to the driver’s side window, took the flashlight off his belt, and shined it directly into her eyes. “Good evening, ma’am.”

  “Good evening, officer.” She used her hand as a shield.

  Up close, she was a little disappointing. A heart-shaped face already going soft around the edges. Mascara running from her left eye.

  “License and registration, please.”

  She pulled out her wallet and reached into her glove compartment. She was dressed like she’d expected to have a nice evening out: white scoop-necked halter top, pearls, and silver earrings. Her body was okay: long neck, prominent collarbone, breasts sticking out just a little more than her stomach. He rated her a Long Island 6, which would be a Manhattan 3.

  “You a student?”

  He glanced back at the college sticker and put the flashlight on her license. Stephanie Lapidus. Age twenty-six. Brookhaven address.

  “Part-time,” she said.

  “And what are you studying?”

  “Political science.” She sniffed. “Look, officer, I know that I wasn’t speeding…”

  “You’re a long way from Mercy.” He tipped the light back into her face, enjoying his own joke. “Dobbs Ferry is a good hour and a half away.”

  “I’m going to see my mother.” She winced. “Is that against the law?”

  “Nope.”

  She’d definitely been crying until he stopped her. Probably just broke up with a boyfriend and was heading to her mother’s for comfort in the middle of the night. She probably thought the drive across Long Island would do her good. Give her a chance to clear her head.

  “Do you know why I pulled you over?”

  “No, officer.”

  “You were operating your vehicle in an unsafe manner.”

  “That’s totally not true.”

  “Ma’am, I’m not going to argue. I observed you driving erratically and changing lanes without signaling.”

  “Are you kidding me?” she said, like someone who’d been told she was “feisty” and thought it was a good thing. “There’s no other cars on the road.”

  He leaned in the window and smelled the white wine on her breath. The boyfriend had probably broken up with her in a bar to keep her from making a scene.

  “Ma’am, how much have you had to drink tonight?”

  “Hardly anything. Come on, officer. You know this is ridiculous.”

  He made a show of shining the light on her ID again. “Stephanie,” he said. “You have any points on this license already?”

  “I was driving safely.” She looked straight ahead and put her hands on the wheel, ten and two, playing the model driver.

  “Listen, nobody wants to see your insurance rates go through the roof…”

  “Can you just give me the ticket already?” she snapped. “I don’t want my mother waiting up all night, worrying about me.”

  In the stillness of the night, with her red hazards still blinking in the dark, the stark nakedness of the lie was obvious. Her mother was in bed. Stephanie had left Westchester around midnight, with tears in her eyes and a couple of drinks under her belt, only thinking about the solace of sleeping in her childhood bedroom. Unlikely that she even called Mom to wake her. No one knew she was out alone at this hour.

  “Turn off your hazards and get out of the car, please.” He turned off the flashlight and let it dangle down, heavy and long, from a belt loop.

  “You have no right to ask me to do that. Just give me the summons and let me be on my way.”

  He almost smiled. The pressure behind her words said she already knew she wouldn’t be getting to Mom’s anytime soon.

  Another car whipped by behind him, pissing him off by coming too close and reminding him that this was taking too long.

  “I’m going to ask you again.” He rested a hand on his gun belt. “Turn off your rear blinkers and exit the vehicle.”

  “What happens if I just say no?” Another passing car’s headlights caught a faint glint of defiance in her eyes.

  He put her license and registration cards in his shirt pocket. “Stephanie, you said you were studying political science at Mercy, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Her hand was on the window frame. Now he could see she was the kind of girl who bit her nails.

  “Who do you think is the most politically powerful person in the United States right now?”

  “The president.”

  “No, it’s not Ronnie Reagan.” He had both hands on the gun belt now, shoulders back, thumbs outside the loops, like he w
as looking down on her from high in the saddle. “I’ll tell who it is. It’s me. Because I am a police officer. And right here, right now, my word is the law. I can grab you by the hair and drag you out of that window. I could impound your car. Hell, I can draw my weapon and shoot you this second if I feel threatened.”

  A fresh black glob of mascara had formed in the corner of her left eye and begun its grimy descent down her cheek. “Please,” she said quietly. “All I want to do is get to my mother’s.”

  She was as scared now as the chick running down the hall and looking over her shoulder in the rock video. She understood who was in charge and that it wasn’t just his heart that was hardening.

  “Cut your hazards and get out of the car,” he said. “Or the next time I won’t ask so nicely.”

  She pushed the button and the night stopped turning red every few seconds, leaving them alone with just the chirping of crickets and the silence of the stars winking down.

  9

  AUGUST

  2017

  Danny Kovalevski looked up in alarm to see Lourdes smacking the roof of his Malibu and yelling at his window.

  “Get outta that car, Danny.” She slipped from B.B.’s grasp. “You and me got a problem, hombre. Big as you are, I’ll kick your ass right here in the driveway.”

  “Robles, chill.” Bobby got a hand on her elbow. “We don’t know what’s what yet…”

  “Yo, fuck that, B. I got a problem with this asshole and we’re gonna settle it right now.”

  Danny rolled down his window, as Jason Tierney looked on from the passenger seat, a cell phone pressed to his chest. “Listen, we’re as confused as you are, L. Ro. Tierney’s calling Missing Persons, trying to find out what happened.”

  “I call bullshit.” She broke free from B.B. again. “You guys are holding out on us.”

  “We’re not.” Tierney looked befuddled and scared, as he put the phone back to his ear. “All right, whatever, call me back when you pull up the files. I got some unhappy campers on my hands.”

  “Seriously? ‘Unhappy campers’?” Lourdes stuck a finger in the window. “Is that some Long Island racist dog whistle shit?”

  “She for real?” Tierney eyed Danny.

  “Bobby, can you ask her to chill?” Danny pleaded.

  B.B. stepped back, arms akimbo, disclaiming all responsibility.

  “This girl Renee’s been missing five years and y’all ain’t done shit.” Lourdes pointed back at the house, where the girl’s grandmother was watching from a bay window.

  “Look, the sergeant wasn’t even with the department when that happened,” Tierney said. “And it wasn’t my case either. We’re not the NYPD, but we’re a big department. I don’t know everything everybody is doing.”

  “And now we know she’s fucking dead and so’s the child she was carrying.” Lourdes paused to catch her breath. “Because you all weren’t out looking for her.”

  Tierney looked at B.B. again, as if expecting an explanation for her fury. Lourdes turned just in time to catch B.B.’s hapless sellout shrug. Men.

  “Can we cool down and discuss this like grown-ups?” Danny asked. “And not put all this drama out on the street?”

  “Right.” Lourdes reached in his window and found the door lock button. “B.B., get in.”

  “This a hijacking?” Danny tried to smile, even as his eyes remained anxious.

  “You keep talking stupid, I’ll hijack your ass to Fresh Kills, Danny, and dump you there with the rest of the trash.” She yanked open the backdoor as B.B. got in on the passenger side behind Tierney. “Take us around the block and stop jerking us.”

  “Nice job handling the city cops, sarge.” Tierney looked at Danny. “Thought you said you were friends with these guys…”

  “Don’t you say shit, Danny.” Lourdes climbed in and slammed the door. “Or I’ll pull my gun on you right now.”

  “Some history here?” Tierney glanced at Danny again, as he started to back out of the driveway carefully.

  “You guys dropped the ball on a missing person who’s turned up pregnant and dead, with possibility of a bigger pattern.” B.B. broke in. “I don’t know about you, but I try to stop arguing when I see a woman’s got a point.”

  Spoken like a man ready for his fourth and hopefully final marriage, Lourdes thought.

  “So what do we know about the pattern anyway?” she said. “How come we haven’t heard about it in the city until now?”

  “I’m not even sure it is a pattern,” Danny said. “Tierney and me are arguing about it.”

  “I say it is,” Tierney countered. “No one noticed until now because most of the victims were from below the radar.”

  “You’re saying they were prostitutes?” Lourdes asked.

  “Five in the course of like fifteen years.” With typical consideration, Danny used his flashers as he went around a yellow bus disgorging school kids on the corner. “Not that much, considering. I mean, being a whore has a lot of occupational hazards. Am I right?”

  “Bet you wouldn’t talk that way if some of them looked like your sister, Danny,” Lourdes shot back.

  “As a matter of fact, two of them were white.” Danny turned off the flashers and showed her his profile. “So don’t try to make this into another one of your racial things.”

  “Screw you, Danny. There must be something else that connects if Tierney here thinks it’s part of a pattern.” Lourdes put a hand on the back of his seat. “Especially if Tierney here was trying to horn in on our Far Rockaway case. Did any of these others have rocks down their throats?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Tierney said. “But remains wrapped in that kind of plastic? Check. Found dumped between here and the eastern tip of the Island? Check. Broken or missing hyoid bones in the throat? Check. Could be a coincidence, could be a gang initiation thing…”

  “Or it could be one fucked-up psycho.” Lourdes finished the thought. “And he could’ve been doing it to Renee when you should’ve been out looking for her.”

  “Come on, L. Ro.” Danny interrupted. “Renee was a full-grown escort with a known drug problem who stopped returning her grandmother’s phone calls. And we’re supposed to drop everything and go crazy over that as a tragic missing persons case? You tell me there’s a major police department that would make that a priority, I’ll call you a liar.”

  “Missing person turns up possibly pregnant and dead with rocks in her throat on our beach,” Lourdes said. “That’s great police work.”

  “Well, we’re waiting to see what the file says.” Tierney pulled down his Ray-Bans as they drove into the direct sun glare. “But I wouldn’t just come out here and automatically assume someone on our side screwed up.”

  “It’s true,” Danny said. “There are a lot of good cops out here. At least as good as the people we’ve worked with at NYPD. And let’s not forget, not every victim is just a victim. People make choices with their lives.”

  “Whatever that means.” Lourdes crossed her arms.

  She watched the neighborhood go by. More ranch houses. Two-story houses. Oak trees. Maple trees. Two-garage houses. A playground with no trash on the ground. A couple of kids no more than nine in blue polo shirts and backpacks, walking by themselves. A porch with a rainbow flag like the one her aunt Soledad, out and proud, had in her living room in Sunset Park. Maybe I could live out here. Then another Make America Great Again sign on a fenced-in lawn with Beware of Dog and private security company stickers. No, maybe not.

  B.B. reached over and tapped Danny on the shoulder. “Hey, Kovalevski, you want to do us a solid, save us some time? Could you get us the files on those other cases? And maybe the numbers for the investigators?”

  Nice and easy, like he was ordering a salami and provolone hero at his local deli counter. It still irked Lourdes that she had not only worked with Danny for three years but had actually gone to bed with him a handful of times without getting anything close to this relaxed goombah rapport and assured cooperation.


  “Here’s the problem, though,” Danny said, pulling down the car’s sun visor. “I checked. Half those cases are across the county line, at the eastern end of the Island.”

  “So?” Lourdes hunched forward.

  “So it’s a whole other jurisdiction,” Danny said.

  “What are you, freaking kidding me?” Lourdes said. “They’re your next-door neighbors. You must work joint operations with them all the time. They should be part of this task force anyway. You’re telling me you don’t have someone you can just pick up the phone and call?”

  Tierney turned with his sunglasses down, trying to give her a badass glare from behind the shades. “All I’m gonna say is, they’ve got their own way of doing things out there.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.

  Danny put too much muscle into rounding a corner and tossed her around in the back seat. “Just go easy and tread lightly,” he said. “Word is, Savak County don’t play.”

  “Yeah, all right, that’s cool, D.” Lourdes straightened up and reached for her seat belt. “It’s not like you might have some crazy-ass psycho Hannibal Lecter serial killer running around who might strike again at any time.”

  “Hey, L. Ro., not for nothing, but you may want to work on your sandbox skills out here,” Danny said. “A girl could get the wrong kind of rep.”

  10

  SEPTEMBER

  1982

  Everyone was surprised when Joey Tolliver showed up that morning and moseyed over to where Stephanie Lapidus’s car had been found by the side of the highway. They shouldn’t have been. He’d already established that he was an active young cop, eager for experience and overtime, listening to the scanner in his car during off-duty hours, just in case backup was needed to control a bar brawl or an incident on the highway.