Sunrise Highway

by Peter Blauner

  “It’s wonderful.” She nodded blandly. “Steve always remembers his friends.”

  Her hand was on top of his wrist. Not grabbing it and throwing it off. Just registering he was there. Like she was frozen and unable to react in response. Which was all he really needed. He knew he could fuck her anytime and not have to pay for it.

  He turned back to her husband. “Glad to hear that, Steve,” he said. “It’s hard to believe that we started off where we did and wound up here.”

  A not-so-subtle reminder that he knew about Snyder’s little juvenile delinquent caper stealing Yes albums from the local E.J. Korvette’s department store. He saw the flinch in the county executive’s eyes and began to slide his hand further up and under the wife’s skirt. And the rush of the sensation filled him up so much that he almost felt the need to loosen his belt to accommodate it. Because once a man realizes that others just have to shut up and take it from him, that they feel utterly compromised in his presence, he can be whatever he wants to be.

  But in that same instant, a part of him was bored and restless. Asking, like in that old song, is that all there is? Because already he was starting to realize that the big desk could be a trap. Yes, he had the power and the position now, but he also had the added scrutiny. Even as he sat here, he couldn’t get up to take a leak, because too many people kept coming up to shake his hand and slap him on the back.

  It would only be worse at work. The endless budget meetings, the CompStat strategy reviews, and the village council powwows. The bureaucratic days stretched out like anonymous tombstones between here and the end of his time on earth. No, it was intolerable. What was the point of having accumulated all this wealth if you couldn’t spend it?

  “Congratulations, chief,” said Snyder. “And it’s only the beginning.”

  Joey looked the county executive straight in the eye and put his hand exactly where he wanted to, knowing no one was going to stop him now.

  “Steve,” he said without even looking at the wife. “In all honesty, I couldn’t have done it alone.”

  34

  SEPTEMBER

  2017

  The day after her release, Lourdes found Sullivan living out of suitcases at a motor inn in Commack, just off Jericho Turnpike.

  The room was distinctly un-Sully-like: a downy white quilt on a round waterbed, smoky triple-X mirrors on the walls and ceiling, a heart-shaped tub in the bathroom.

  “Por que, big man?” Lourdes stood on the threshold marveling.

  As usual, her language brought a blush to his naturally ruddy complexion, which contrasted with the crow-black hair he’d obviously started dyeing again.

  “They’re giving me a good monthly rate,” he said sheepishly. “I just needed a place to keep my things until I figure out my next move.”

  “I’m saying, why you bail me out, Papi? Ain’t you got nothing better to do with your money?”

  “If I do, it’s slipped my mind.” He looked down at his stockinged feet on the shag carpet, like he was embarrassed to be seen without proper shoes. “I guess you better come in.”

  She stepped across the threshold and he closed the door after her.

  “I repeat,” she said. “What the fuck, Sullivan? You come up with fifty G’s on short notice to bail me out. What am I supposed to do with that?”

  “Forty of it came from the bail bondsman me and your boyfriend met up with the other night. The rest I had on hand from selling the house. You could just say a simple thank-you and leave it at that.”

  “Why are you being so good to me, my man?”

  “What can I tell you?” He stooped his still-broad shoulders. “An elephant never forgets. You stuck up for me when things went south on the Dresden case and the bosses wanted to put me out to pasture before my time.”

  “De nada,” she said. “They wouldn’t have let me anywhere near that murder in the first place if it wasn’t for you.”

  He looked even more embarrassed and awkward now, the gruff old cop exterior giving way to the appearance of a shy, lonely widower.

  “Well, you’re gonna get your money back from the court, so don’t worry about that.” She sat down at the end of the bed. “My lawyer says we’re gonna get the charges dismissed by the end of the week.”

  “How is he going to be able to manage that?”

  “Since we can prove we were borrowing another team’s car from Queens Narcotics, the cops in Suffolk can’t even prove where those drugs came from. Which is a good thing for them, since the truth is they probably took them from their own evidence facility before they planted them on me.”

  One side of Sullivan’s mouth went up in a cynical half smile. “And it all gets swept under the rug and we live happily ever after … except for all that dirt they spread about your father in the press.”

  She sucked her teeth and a rotting taste filled her mouth, like an old piece of food had been stuck behind a molar. Made her want to spit. The media had been given stories to run about her getting cleared, but she hadn’t even started to deal with the fallout emotionally.

  “So now it looks like there’s peace in the land and the spirit of cooperation reigns between the NYPD and the police out here,” Sully said.

  “Can’t prove it by me.” She pursed her lips. “Gonna take me a long time to get over this. And I’m still wondering who tipped them off about who my father was. At first I thought it was Danny Kovalevski, but the more I think about it, the less—”

  “Don’t get sidetracked,” he cut her off. “Have you asked yourself exactly why they went this far, pulling you over and flaking you in the first place?”

  “Uh, duh. Only about every five fucking seconds.”

  He winced. “Do you mind with the language, Robles?”

  “Oh, excuse me.” She pretended to smooth the wrinkles from her lap. “I forget my manners when other cops start airing all this dirty shit about my father.”

  “What’s the answer?”

  “Obviously, Tolliver and the rest of them are looking to intimidate me and undermine the credibility of an outside investigation,” she sighed. “They’re playing defense to keep control.”

  “Yes, but have you asked yourself why they’re playing so hard?”

  “I’m guessing you’re gonna mansplain it to me now.” She folded her arms.

  “Your boyfriend tell you about the conversation we had with the bartender?”

  “He said that Bird Dog was a nickname for a girl named Bergdahl.”

  “It’s been nagging at me since you started working on this case.” He frowned, making his face craggy with memories. “The pregnant girl that washed up in Rockaway with the stones in her throat.”

  “That’s not supposed to be public information,” she said.

  “It reminded me of something but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.”

  “My man Rakesh over at the medical examiner’s office told me he’d never even heard of anything like it,” Lourdes said.

  “It would’ve been before your time, and his as well.” Sullivan nodded. “And it didn’t happen in the city anyway. I only remember because I’m old. But I was talking to this Gillispie and all of a sudden it came back to me. Twigs and branches.”

  “Wha’?”

  “He didn’t need to say the rest. One minute the thought wasn’t there, and the next minute it was. Like when you smell apples and realize you’re not in love anymore.”

  He was starting to get that other expression she remembered, what she used to call his Cochise look. When the intuitive Irish detective became the mystical Apache warrior channeling the database of the dead. Other cops claimed these were the trances of a hungover drunk or an acid casualty, but Lourdes had learned to give the man some room when he wanted to go into this state.

  “They shoved twigs and branches down this poor girl’s throat,” he said.

  “What ‘poor girl’ are we talking about? You gotta give me some context, Sullivan.”

  He seemed to come back to the ro
om briefly. “It wasn’t anything I was involved in personally as a police officer. It was just a case I read about in the newspaper, like any other citizen.”

  “You remember a newspaper story you read forty years ago?”

  “I know, I’m like the head of an old vacuum cleaner that needs to be cleaned. Some things just stick with me. But you’ll be the same someday.” He handed her a file full of papers. “Yesterday, after the hearing, I went to the town library and found the story on the microfilm. About a fifteen-year-old girl found dead behind a football field in Shiloh with twigs and leaves down her throat.”

  Lourdes opened the folder and started to read. The top sheet was a smudged photocopy from a newspaper called the Long Island Press. The paper was slick and thin; it had clearly come from an old microfiche machine at a seriously underfunded local branch. Didn’t Sullivan know these things were online now? But then she noticed the date on the article was 1977, possibly before everything had been scanned in.

  The headline read: “Defense Takes Plea in Shiloh Girl Murder Case.”

  “Look, Sullivan, for real, I’m not following you here.” Lourdes looked up after a few paragraphs. “This says a black high school football player named Delaney Patterson took a plea for killing a fifteen-year-old white girl named Kim Bergdahl on Long Island. What’s that got to do with Chief Tolliver or any of our cases?”

  “I thought you were supposed to be smart,” he said with sudden harshness. “One night in lockup and you lose fifty IQ points?”

  “Hey.”

  “Read the damn article.” He loomed over her, jabbing a finger at the sheet. “And read it more carefully, for Christ’s sake. Who was the prosecutor on this case?”

  “It says the district attorney was Philip O’Mara.” She kept reading, a little stung by his tone. “And the assistant district attorney handling the trial was a … Kenneth Makris.”

  “Who is currently the district attorney for the whole county,” Sullivan reminded her. “And has been since 1984.”

  “Yeah, I know, Sully. B.B. and me talked to him. He gave us nothing. But so what? Somebody else went to prison for this murder. There’s no connection to our cases.”

  “Look harder,” Sullivan insisted. “It says the defense folded after witnesses testified before the grand jury.”

  “So…?”

  “So I called Gillispie back and he gave me the scuttlebutt. Which is that the defense folded after they saw the grand jury testimony of a teenage witness. By the name of Joseph Tolliver.”

  “Are you shitting me, Sullivan?”

  He placed a hand over his heart. “Language, Robles. Do you mind?”

  “Sor-ree.” She huffed, trying to get her wind back. “But are you serious? Tolliver was a ‘witness’ in a case from forty years ago with a similar MO?”

  “It would appear so. The grand jury testimony might be sealed, but Gillispie said the rumors had been around for a long time.”

  “Wait.” She put out her arms like she was directing traffic at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge, cars rushing at her from every direction. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. You’re telling me that the chief was a witness in some sicko murder case when he was a kid.”

  “Right.”

  “And most witnesses aren’t kindergarten teachers. They’re usually at the scene of a crime, because they’re involved.”

  “That would be my experience, over the course of forty-odd years,” Sullivan said.

  “But Joseph Tolliver became a police officer.” Lourdes held a finger up, wanting to parse this carefully.

  “Everyone who testifies before a grand jury gets transactional immunity.” Sullivan shrugged. “Or maybe he was never charged with anything because he came forward. All we know is that this case made Kenny Makris’s career and put him on the map. And according to Gillispie, Makris then rewarded Tolliver by sponsoring him to get into the police academy. And it’s been like this ever since. One hand washing the other, until one gets to be the DA and the other gets to be chief.”

  “Okay, but so what?” Lourdes shook her head, knowing she needed to stress-test this. “A police officer and a prosecutor have a relationship. That doesn’t mean either one of them is a killer.”

  “Of course not. But it certainly raises some questions.”

  “Still a stretch. We’re talking about a crime that happened forty years ago. And this Patterson kid already pled guilty to the 1977 murder. The article says he got sentenced to twenty-five years in ’78.”

  “And if he served all twenty-five, which he probably did if he’s black, he couldn’t have murdered victims who were found dead in that period,” Sullivan said. “And he may have been coerced into taking the twenty-five deal after Makris and Tolliver buried him. We both know it wouldn’t be the first or the last time that happened.”

  Lourdes rubbed her chin. Like most police officers, she didn’t have a high tolerance for gray area discussions when it came to perps. If you pled guilty, you were guilty. False confessions might be possible, but she had never seen one with her own eyes. Over time, she’d become convinced that the vast majority of people who were in prison were there for a reason. Including her own father, who was doing life for killing a rival drug dealer.

  “You already knew you might be looking at a cop for killing these women,” Sullivan reminded her.

  “Yeah, but a chief?” Her voice went high. “Of a major department?”

  She thought again of her own visceral reaction in the Marriott bar that night. Right after he said, “Hey, my name starts with a J,” and his mustache split as he laughed. The way the noise crashed in around them but left him unaffected. And most of all, how she found herself wanting to take cover even though he hadn’t done anything.

  “If it’s one person who killed all your victims, haven’t you asked yourself how he could’ve gotten away with it for so long?” Sullivan said. “A cop would know what other cops would be looking for as evidence. And if he was high enough up, he’d know how to control an investigation and direct resources so that no one suspected him.”

  “This is still just a theory,” she said, trying to stay steady and methodical.

  “Yes, but it fits. Especially when you start asking how he could have done it alone. The answer is, maybe he didn’t.”

  “Whoa.” She threw her hands up. “Now you’re really running wild. You’re saying other people knew the whole deal?”

  Even as a world-class consumer of crime novels and TV shows, she couldn’t get there from here. Conspiracies were notoriously difficult to pull off, because people couldn’t keep their mouths shut. A good reason for serial killers being lone wolves.

  “I’m not saying other people were covering up the acts,” Sullivan clarified. “But people close ranks when they think they need to protect the institution. True in our world and everyone else’s.”

  She was still struggling to get her mind around this. It wasn’t that she was totally in denial about dirty cops. No one who’d come up hard in the projects like she had could be. But on the night her father got arrested, she’d thrown in her lot with the good guys.

  So she could easily accept that an individual psychopath had gotten on the job and used his shield as a license to commit crimes. But the idea that others, including good cops, had not only missed it but perhaps had semiconsciously aided and abetted a murderer blew her circuits out.

  “All I’m saying is you need to look into it.” Sullivan picked up the article again. “You’re not doing your job if you don’t.”

  “And what happens if it is true?” she asked, the pit of her stomach dropping as she thought through the full implications.

  “Then you’ve got real problems.” Sullivan looked grave. “This isn’t a regular skell, but, like you said, the chief of a major department who commands a lot of people and a lot of loyalty. If you come after him, he’s gonna hit back with everything he has. The traffic stop might have just been a warning shot. He has the ways and means to put a much
worse hurting on you and yours.”

  “Yo, I’m starting to get seriously freaked out,” she said. “Remember you told me about a call you got from an investigator named Martinez a long time ago?”

  He nodded slowly. “The one from the state investigations commission?”

  “I just heard from the state cop on our task force that she was killed back in the mid-nineties. Supposedly by an angry ex-husband, who’s still in prison for it. Which is why she had a different name and it took us a while to track her down. Now I’m beginning to wonder. If somebody else did time for the Bird Dog murder, then…”

  “We don’t know what we don’t know.” Sullivan raised a hand, to caution her. “But the circumstances bear looking into.”

  Lourdes felt herself starting to shake, as if the mental process of letting go of so many conventional assumptions at once had started to physically destabilize her.

  “You could still be wrong, you know,” she said. “I could go after this Tolliver with everything I have and it could all blow up in my face. And then what? I’ll be out of a job, with my sister missing and my mother in assisted living. My life will be a wreck. Maybe you can afford that, but I can’t.”

  “What’s your alternative?” He shrugged. “You know you can’t back down now.”

  “Spoken like a man who already has his pension.”

  “If you just want to turn a blind eye, go ahead,” he said. “But I didn’t think that was what Lourdes Robles was all about.”

  “Oh my God. What a shit show.”

  She felt like she was looking up at King Kong menacing her from the top of the Empire State Building. If it all came down, it wouldn’t just be the big ape crushing her, but the entire structure. Stone and glass, flesh and blood, office upon office, oh the humanity. This would all bury her, taking countless others down along the way, and even after they got done digging they’d never be able to separate her remains from the rest of the damage.

  A wave of physical exhaustion washed over her. She realized he was right, as usual. But she’d slept maybe a total of four hours in the last two days and now it was all catching up with her. What she needed to do was go home, run a hot bath, watch movies with Mitchell, get a little lovemaking off him, and do a major reset before plunging into this case headfirst again.