One by One

by Sarah Cain

  “He might have. He probably didn’t want to see it turn up in the paper. If you’d called me before you went running off to Jersey, you wouldn’t have been involved at all,” Kevin said.

  He waited for Danny to come back at him with some remark, but Danny just stared at the floor before saying, “What’s going on here, Kevin? This is pretty weird, even by my standards.”

  “I don’t know.” There was no answer but the obvious: some nutjob was stalking Danny. Usually, stalkers fell under the annoying-but-mostly-harmless category. Danny would attract the weirder kind. “You weren’t involved with Greg or his friends at all?”

  “I sold Greg some weed back in the day. And then he asked me to look into whoever was texting him.”

  Kevin grimaced when Danny mentioned he sold weed. He preferred to forget that Danny had been the local dealer. Danny liked to play down those days, make it sound like a prank. Kevin knew better. Still, it was in the past, and Danny was never a major player. Kevin cleared his throat. “Well, someone’s got you connected for some reason. Maybe you should get another dog, y’know?”

  Danny’s shoulders slumped, and Kevin could have bitten off his own tongue. Stupid. Stupid. Danny was never going to get over losing Beowulf. That dog had been like a second child.

  “I, uh . . . no.” Danny looked up and gave him a grim smile. “Whoever this is, he already has my home address and phone number. If someone’s after me, I expect he’ll find me.”

  Kevin took a breath and let it out. Relax. Don’t strangle him. “All right, let’s review here. No, let’s not. You just tell me where you’re going to be.”

  “Maybe taping some TV, because of that series on human trafficking that ran in the Times, but really not much. Do you think any of this is connected to my writing?”

  “Not unless Greg Moss was into human trafficking.” Kevin didn’t think Greg’s murder was connected to Danny’s writing, though it was possible that the dead realtor was either a porn fancier or seller. Danny had written about sex clubs before, and he’d just finished a series on underage sex trafficking for the New York Times. It was possible he’d stumbled on a connection. You never knew. Since Greg Moss was an old high school friend, it was more likely something Danny was choosing to forget or, worse, didn’t understand himself. In twenty-some years, memories grew hazy, and details became distorted. Assholes didn’t change.

  It was disturbing that three more of Danny’s classmates were dead and that they had all been shot. Kevin had gotten reports on the classmates from those phone calls Danny had asked him to make. At least one other had gotten a Bible quote: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil.” Kevin remembered that one. It gave him the chills.

  “You sell all of these dead guys weed?” Kevin asked.

  Danny shrugged. “I sold to Greg, and he probably shared.”

  “And you said Greg was involved with some development group as well.”

  “Cromoca Partners. I have a feeling he hosted special parties for friends.”

  Kevin paused for a moment before he said, “And you think that because?”

  “He sort of invited me to one.”

  “Jesus. If this is some kind of pervie sex thing, I’m gonna save myself the trouble and lock you up now.”

  “I don’t know that Bible thumpers are big on kinky sex, but you never know.”

  “I’m gonna check in with Ted Eliot in Camden,” Kevin said.

  When Kevin had spoken to Eliot last night, the cop had implied the murder was somehow tied to Danny’s days as a drug dealer. Kevin doubted it. He knew Danny had sold some pot and pills under the guidance of their sister, Theresa, and her scum suck of a husband, but Danny had never been much of an outlaw. Becoming a reporter was Danny’s way of rebelling. Their old man never got over it.

  “Little bastard,” he’d mumble into his scotch when he’d reached the end of a long night at the Shamrock. “Going to work for that no good Jew cocksucker Andy Cohen. He’s a fuckin’ lap dog.”

  “Danny always wanted to write,” Kevin would say.

  “What the fuck do you know, you stupid son of a bitch?”

  Tommy Ryan was a man with a bad word for everyone.

  Kevin turned his attention back to his brother, who stood watching him with his head tilted slightly, like he could guess what Kevin was thinking. Kevin didn’t know if Danny understood the potential for shit hitting the fan, but it pissed him off all the same. He didn’t understand how Danny could be so freaking casual.

  “Kev? I didn’t have anything to do with Greg’s death.”

  Kevin sighed. “I know. I’ll get you through it. But first I’ve got to call Ted Eliot.”

  11

  Danny watched Detective Eliot approach the tongue as if it were a piece of discarded gum. Maybe in his line of work that’s all it was. If Eliot was surprised, he didn’t show it. Instead he slipped on a pair of latex gloves and carefully inserted the tongue into a plastic evidence bag.

  “You woke up and found this in a box in your foyer?” the detective asked.

  “Yeah, I thought maybe Alex—my friend from yesterday—had left it. She doesn’t live far.” Danny cleared his throat.

  The detective made a quick note, and Kevin said, “That tongue isn’t terribly dehydrated. Someone took care to keep it . . . fresh. Maybe someone was making a statement.”

  Eliot nodded. “Could be.”

  “You knew this was missing yesterday,” Danny said.

  “It wasn’t something you needed to know,” Eliot replied. He looked at Kevin when he spoke, and Kevin gave the barest of nods as if to signify he agreed. “I didn’t want this to show up in the paper. I still don’t.”

  Danny didn’t bother to protest. “So what happens next?” He looked from Eliot to Kevin. They both wore their cop faces, but the similarity ended there. Eliot wore another impeccable dark-gray suit with a white shirt and maroon tie while Kevin wore wrinkled khakis and a threadbare blue sports jacket. Kevin really needed to lose some weight, Danny observed. He was venturing into heart-attack land.

  “We’ll try to trace the blood and the prints,” Eliot said, glancing at his watch. “In the meantime, I’d try to think about any connection you have to Greg Moss. Anything you can come up with will help us, and that will help you.” Danny might have been tempted to give a smart answer, but he couldn’t take his eyes off that watch. What kind of cop wore a Patek Philippe watch?

  It wasn’t a common timepiece. He had a nearly identical model sitting upstairs—a ninety-thousand-dollar anniversary gift from Beth, part of her efforts to remake him into a more socially acceptable model. It sat in a box in his bureau, a monument to everything that had gone wrong in their marriage.

  He took a step back. Kevin stood there, in cop stance, his right hand tucked into his belt. He frowned, so Danny said nothing.

  Kevin walked Eliot out to his car, and the two stood talking like old friends. They mirrored each other with their arms, right hands resting on their holsters, as they stood beside Kevin’s Navigator.

  What do cops discuss? Fingerprints? Blood spatter? Corpses? Danny knew cops liked telling stories, the grosser the better. They weren’t that much different than reporters in that, except cops always had that look when noncops were around, like they were sizing you up, trying to figure out whether you were trustworthy or not, always suspicious. They saw people at their worst, so they tended to be a cynical lot. But Ted Eliot was a different kind of cop.

  *

  “Just stay the hell out of trouble,” Kevin had said before he’d left. Danny tended to agree with his brother for once, though he wasn’t sure he had control over the situation. He’d told Kevin about Eliot’s watch, but Kevin had shrugged.

  “Probably a knockoff,” he’d said.

  “If he wanted a knockoff, he’d probably get a Rolex. Everyone knows Rolex.”

  Danny didn’t press it, especially since Kevin didn’t seem to think it was important. He’d let it go for now. Investigating cops was
something to be handled delicately. It was easier to start with his own skeletons.

  “One last thing,” Kevin had said. “Will you please keep your goddamn doors locked? Maybe use that fancy alarm system?”

  “Oh, yeah. I lock my doors.” He did at night, though he seldom bothered during the day. It didn’t seem necessary. The worst thing that happened in this neighborhood was the occasional out-of-control teenage pool party. But Kevin always anticipated the worst.

  12

  Danny had been sure he was destined to spend the rest of the weekend picking body parts out of the trash, but so far it had been quiet. He’d dug his old high school yearbook out of one of the unpacked boxes in the attic.

  He wasn’t sure why he’d kept the yearbook, but he’d carried it with him every time he’d moved. Maybe it was a warning: don’t forget where you came from. He generally didn’t wax nostalgic about the good old days. He’d been glad to escape, though high school hadn’t held any particular terror for him.

  Neither a jock nor an outcast, Danny had been lucky. No one had picked on him because his brothers were Tom and Kevin Ryan, and thanks to his sister, Theresa, he could get his hands on decent weed, which made him semipopular. Theresa’s significant other, Vic Ceriano, had been a South Philly legend. There wasn’t a drug created that Vic Ceriano couldn’t supply.

  In a weird way, school had been a refuge for Danny, particularly after Ms. Taylor, his sophomore-year English teacher, decided he could write. She was the first person who told him he was good at anything, so he’d worked his ass off in her class and joined the student paper because she was the monitor. She’d submitted his essay about his romp in juvie to the Sentinel. After he’d gotten established, he’d written a column about her.

  He flipped through the yearbook pages until he found Greg Moss, the quarterback with the symmetrical face and killer smile. He wrote “Greg Moss” on a notepad and circled it. Their only point of common ground was high school. The problem was they ran with different crowds. Greg’s close friends were jocks—the Awesome Eleven, the starting offense for the football team. But they had all attended the same high school, so that was the first connection. Danny didn’t personally know most of the other members of the Awesome Eleven, but he jotted down their names.

  Since the text sent to him had read, “June 1992,” Danny decided to eliminate the juniors and concentrate on the seniors for now. That left him with seven names. Four of the people they belonged to were dead. Danny looked up the last three.

  There was fast-talking LeVon Winston, the team’s All-State wide receiver. If Danny remembered correctly, LeVon had gone to play for Ole Miss and then had a stint with Oakland or Tampa Bay or maybe both before he’d torn his ACL. They used to call him “Smokes” because of his last name and because he’d liked to pretend to shoot off imaginary guns when he scored a TD. That had been the Smokes Winston victory dance: arms crossed, head slightly down while he gyrated his narrow hips. The girls had loved it.

  Quintel Marshall had been the running back, a solid guy with good hands and a serious face. Danny thought Quintel Marshall might have enlisted in the army right before or after graduation. He made a note to check.

  The last guy was Sherman Goode, the other wide receiver. Sherman had been sort of the class showboat, a kid who loved being onstage. He’d been a rapper and had a minor local hit called “Get Me Booty” or something like that. He’d been fast, but not a supernova, and had planned on heading for LA, though Danny had no idea what had happened to him.

  Danny found it interesting that the three black players hadn’t been targeted. At least not yet. Was this really about the football team? If so, why include him? Danny hadn’t been part of the Awesome Eleven.

  Danny flipped back to the pages of the senior class and looked at the pictures at random, trying to dredge up memories to go with the faces. There was Ray Gretske, looking small and dazed, his blond hair sweeping his shoulders, his pale eyes and happy smile giving him an otherworldly look. He had a nickname. The Alien? The Phantom? No, that wasn’t right. It was something unearthly. Danny couldn’t remember. Not a football player, Ray spent most of his time on the streets, trying not to go home to his mother and her boyfriend of the week. Danny used to buy him a slice of pizza or a soft pretzel when he’d see him hanging around after school. After all, Ray was one of his best customers. He’d done at least six months in juvie for drugs.

  Poor Ray. They might have gotten caught together in a dope transaction, but Ray never seemed to hold it against him. In all probability, he was dead.

  Just above Ray, Frank “the Ferret” Greer stared up from the page with his intense, close-set eyes. He was the kind of guy who liked dissection, not because he wanted to study biology, but because he liked killing frogs and other small creatures. He probably killed for a living now. Maybe he was the guy behind these murders.

  A little down from the Ferret was poor, chubby Jenna Jeffords, who read too many romance novels and tried to dress like the skinny girls. She used to tell Danny he looked like Johnny Depp and would blink at him and smile.

  “No, I don’t,” he would say.

  “Yes, you do. Same cheekbones and eyes and voice and hair, and you’re just like him. He’s my favorite actor in the world.”

  “I have blue eyes and look like my Great Uncle Francis, the priest,” he’d say, though Great Uncle Francis was six inches taller, had a lumpy face with a broken nose, and hadn’t seen the inside of a church in a decade. “I might have a vocation.”

  “Yes. You’re going to be a writer. Like on the bestseller lists.” Jenna had smiled, looking like a placid cow, and he’d wanted to shout at her to shut up. It probably wouldn’t have annoyed him if one of the cute girls had gushed over him.

  Frank Greer was the guy who’d started calling him Danny Depp after he’d overheard Jenna. Danny had hated her for that, though he’d tried not to show it.

  Danny looked at Jenna Jeffords’s round face and heavy-lidded eyes. She’d had a small black mole high on her left cheekbone. She’d called it a beauty mark. The guys used to call her Jumbo Jen—JJ for short. Danny heard she died not long after graduation, or maybe it was a rumor. She’d been easy to forget.

  He flipped the page to Ollie Deacon, the goofy, wide-eyed kid who was the general target of Frank Greer and every bully in the class. He had taken Jenna to the prom, and Danny still remembered the unsubtle sneers and laughter over Jenna’s tight red dress and Ollie’s white tux.

  “Together they make a beach ball,” one of the girls had said.

  Danny didn’t know whether Jenna and Ollie heard the snickers or not. At the time, he’d figured they deserved one night of fun. Now he wished he’d stood up and told the bullies to shut up. He’d spent twenty-some years atoning in print for the times he hadn’t spoken, and it still gave him a twinge of guilt to see Ollie’s earnest round face peering up at him.

  He remembered Ollie telling him how much he wanted to be a cop.

  “To serve and protect, y’know?” He’d nodded, hands clenched together. “Maybe I could talk to your Dad?”

  “My dad isn’t the best . . .”

  “He probably hates talking about the job, right? Doesn’t want to freak you out?”

  “Yeah, something like that.” How did you tell someone like Ollie that catching the old man sober would involve walking to the Shamrock and waiting at the front door? And getting between the old man and his scotch, especially after a bad shift, was always a perilous idea.

  Danny had learned to survive by becoming invisible, and it was an arrangement that seemed to work for both his father and him. He wasn’t about to risk his front teeth so Ollie could get a few vicarious thrills, though maybe he should have let Ollie meet the old man. He might have changed his mind about becoming a cop. He might still be alive.

  He turned the pages. There was Frank’s sidekick, a goof named Stan “the Skunk” Riordan, a gangly kid with jug ears and small teeth. His main role in life was to suck up to Frank and an
noy the shit out of everyone else. Stan was the water boy for the football team and thought he was one of the guys. Greg had always treated him like a slightly backward puppy.

  But Frank could always talk Stan into doing his bidding: petty theft, vandalism, anything small and mean. Stan would always go along because he thought Frank was his ticket into the inner circle.

  Danny flipped the pages to Michelle Perry, his senior year girlfriend. He’d loved her golden-brown hair and deep-hazel eyes. Her mother hadn’t liked him because she knew about his family and believed he’d become abusive. Maybe that was why Michelle dated him. Underneath her National Merit exterior beat the heart of a bad girl. They’d spent a wild spring rocking the springs in his narrow, single bed.

  She’d gotten into NYU and never looked back.

  Nate Pulaski was a few photos down from Michelle. He barely remembered Nate. Small bullet head, massive shoulders—he was a mountain.

  Danny closed the yearbook. What good did remembering do? Whoever killed Greg Moss might have been a member of their class or might have been connected some other way. It was possible, however unlikely, that Greg had a connection to a story Danny’d written. Still, he had a list of names, a starting place.

  Maybe the Jersey cops would find something to tie everything together. Danny doubted the cops would call to tell him their findings, but maybe they’d call Kevin.

  Or maybe not.

  Something was peculiar about Ted Eliot. That watch still bothered Danny. If you were going to get a knockoff watch, you’d go for a Rolex. It would be easier—the knockoffs abounded. No, Ted Eliot had bucks.

  Why would a guy with that kind of cash become a cop? He made a note to do a search.

  Danny looked at his list of names. Not very promising. He erased Jenna Jeffords and replaced her with Barbara “Babs” Capozzi, Greg’s old girlfriend and the class dream girl. What Babs lacked for in intellect she made up for in street smarts, though Danny wasn’t sure if that made her a potential suspect or victim.