That Darkness

by Lisa Black

  After that he again searched for Maria Stein, hoping something would pop up—a traffic ticket, a registered vehicle, a court case, a water bill, entry into CODIS—but nothing did. She had shed that name as she had shed everything else that might identify her. Even her picture, compared to the mug shot database with facial recognition software, didn’t help. Jack had so many resources—for instance if he only knew what she drove these days, the tag number, then he could access a commercial website that collected data from all the license plate readers in the country whether stationary or mounted to a police vehicle. He could run the tag and see if it had been captured anywhere, with the date, time, and a photo of the vehicle provided. But he didn’t have her tag. He didn’t have her name. He didn’t have her real Social Security number. She had become a more effective ghost than he ever could.

  Meanwhile, he had woken up still debating about Viktor’s girls. They would have been liberated by now, with a translator called to help the cops wade through their confused and, doubtless, untrue statements. He felt sorry for them, imagining their terror as uniformed officers had to break the door to get inside and their panicked cries as they tried to come up with stories that would not get them deported. He doubted any one of them had a scrap of ID or documentation—Viktor would have collected all that immediately to keep them from wandering and stored it in his loft.

  If the girls were connected to the corpse on the bridge, and if the corpse on the bridge were connected to the loft on West 36th, perhaps that would help the girls’ situation. Perhaps not, since their passports were fake anyway . . . it might just get them in worse trouble. If they had sense they would give their real name and address and be sent home to their parents. If they had none, well, that was how they came to be here in the first place.

  He could inject himself into the investigation, then connect Viktor to the girls, to the loft, and to Taisia. Closing the homicide case could only be a good thing for all concerned. Except maybe him, but he couldn’t be selfish.

  He logged off and exited the room, his mind examining the situation from all angles. By the time he reached the lobby, heading for his office, he had not found a bad one. The details were under control. Any detective assigned to Viktor would be looking for suspects in the shadowy world of human trafficking, a world that could certainly benefit from a thorough investigation—and the last suspect on their list would be some kind of bizarre vigilante cop whose closest connection to Russia had been a childhood lust for the heavily accented countess played by Nita Talbot on Hogan’s Heroes.

  And very soon he should have enough to find Maria Stein. Finally. He had allowed her to slip away once and it wouldn’t happen again.

  He strolled across the lobby feeling fairly cheerful about the whole thing, until he caught sight of the homeless Clyde speaking to one of the uniformed cops. Then his sangfroid dissipated like the puff of smoke after a trigger pull.

  Chapter 11

  Wednesday, 10:10 a.m.

  The detectives, Maggie thought, looked confused. This couldn’t be due to the sudden influx of her information—she’d presented it clearly enough. But the lack of obvious explanations must have given pause, because the same group of four she had met with the previous day now sat in stunned silence.

  “Wait,” her ex-husband said. “Say that again?”

  “It could make sense.” Jack Renner’s partner spoke with a sort of generosity, showing a kind indulgence for her crazy theory. His name, she had learned, was Riley.

  At Patty’s request Maggie had walked them through that morning’s activities. She had collected from the coroner’s office—having spent entirely too much time there in recent days—the fingerprints of the dead man from the bridge and the hairs and fibers from his clothing. This time all the clothing had been American, so far as she could tell, yet she came to suspect his nationality from a tattoo on the inside of his wrist. She couldn’t read it but it contained the square-topped b and dots-topped e of the Cyrillic alphabet, so she collected a second set of prints to give to Matt Freeman at ICE. She had also noticed four fleabites around his ankles.

  Next she’d taken a look at the pieces of tape that had collected loose hairs and fibers from his clothing. That’s when things had gotten weird.

  “So this John Doe from the bridge had carpet fibers and cat and dog hair on him,” Rick said.

  “Gray, wool carpet fibers,” Maggie clarified. “Old and brittle, the same color and size as what was on the girl. The same dog, a tan-colored pit bull. And they both had flea bites.”

  “So you think the same guy killed them both?” Jack Renner spoke, and then looked sheepish when everyone looked at him. Strange. Maggie had never known a shy detective. People who spent most of their time accusing other people of lying, assaulting, and murdering tended to have a pretty solid self-esteem.

  “I think they were staying in the same place, a place with fleas and gray carpet. I suppose the same person could have killed them both but used totally different MOs—the girl was brutally beaten, but the man didn’t have a mark on him except for the bullets in his head.”

  “Maybe he was a witness,” Riley suggested.

  “I don’t think so. He wore boots with studs on the soles—small, shallow ones, but enough to leave their pattern on the girl’s hands. I’m running DNA on swabs from the studs now. If it hadn’t all worn off as he walked, I’m betting it’s going to match her.”

  Riley said, “So this guy killed the little girl. But who killed him?”

  “Someone who didn’t care for him killing a little girl,” Maggie said.

  “Someone who had already paid for the little girl and didn’t receive her,” Jack said.

  Patty spoke: “You said our victim Brian Johnson also had dog hair on him.”

  “Your victim,” Riley corrected. “He isn’t my victim. Whoever killed him did the city a favor.”

  No one argued or told him not to talk like that. This was a private meeting; political correctness could be checked at the door. Maggie’s ex-husband, Rick, said that perhaps the same could be said about Bridge Guy. Assuming Maggie was right, of course.

  Maggie stayed on track. “The dog hair is from different animals. Both pit bulls but different pit bulls, and Johnson didn’t have any gray carpet fibers. What he did have were blue polyester carpet fibers.”

  Rick yawned. Even Patty’s eyes glazed over.

  “I found similar fibers on our guy from the bridge.”

  “Similar, or same?” Jack Renner pressed her.

  “Same, but that doesn’t guarantee they came from the same car. Manufacturers might use a supply of carpet in a number of different models for years at a time.”

  He frowned. “What makes you think the fibers are from a car?”

  “I can’t be sure. But the large diameter and the trilobal shape usually indicate automotive carpet.”

  Patty rubbed her temples. “There’s nothing that says the bodies were dumped. Both guys could have been shot right where they were found, except . . . we didn’t find a lot of blood spatter in the alley or on the bridge platform. Just a few drops in the alley, and the bridge is hard to tell because it was a sort of mesh framework, the blood could have wound up in the river. But—”

  “No casings in either place,” Riley pointed out. “So they might have been dumped, unless the shooter’s smart enough to police his area.”

  “Again, the bridge doesn’t really count—”

  “Because they could have fallen into the water. The dive team will go out tomorrow. You could tell them to look for an inch-long casing while they’re swimming around looking for the murder weapon, but I don’t want to be around when they lay one of those oxygen tanks upside your head.”

  “So maybe both victims were dumped and maybe this polyester is from a car,” Patty summarized, saving Maggie the trouble. “What else?”

  “There’s the cat hair—white, and short—and the asbestos fibers. Both men had a few clinging to their pants. And a powdery mineral
on their shoes. Johnson had a smear of some sort of fluorescent paint on his, too, but not the other guy.”

  The bridge guy also had a Kevlar fiber clinging to his raincoat, but neither Johnson nor the girl had had any of the smooth, tubular fibers on their clothes, so Maggie didn’t mention it. More and more career criminals were beginning to use paramilitary gear. Given the life expectancy in their line of work it could be the most sensible decision they would ever make.

  She could see the attention span of her audience begin to peter out—all except for Jack Renner. He peered at her as if his life depended on it. Still, she tried to condense. “The mineral seems to be marble dust—granite. I’m not that great with minerals, but from the illustrations I can find, I’m fairly sure.”

  “So you think a gangbanger, a teenage runaway, and a possibly foreign who-knows-what found on a bridge are all connected?” Patty asked.

  “No.”

  “Teenage runaways usually wind up with gangbangers,” Riley pointed out.

  “No,” Maggie said. “I mean Bridge Guy and the girl are connected by fleas, gray carpet, lead paint flakes, and a dog. Bridge Guy and Brian Johnson are connected by cat hair, blue polyester, asbestos, and powdered granite.”

  A short silence ensued as everyone in the room tried to wrap their heads around that.

  “You said the granite and the asbestos were found on the guy’s pants,” Patty said.

  “And their shoes. And yes, the girl had neither pants nor shoes so perhaps those materials were on her originally. But Bridge Guy had the cat fur and the polyester on his shirt and in his hair, and Johnson had two of each on his shirt. The girl had nothing. So she could have been in contact with Johnson but I can’t tell you that. I can say that Bridge Guy probably killed her—if the DNA works out I can say he definitely killed her—and right now I can say that at one point they were in the same place.”

  Jack Renner finally spoke. “But you don’t know if it was at the same time.”

  “No, of course not. And I can only believe that Bridge Guy and Johnson were in the same place—or in the same series of places, but that would make the logistics even more complicated. Time, I can’t tell. They both had full stomachs, too.”

  “They’re men. They don’t make a habit of starving themselves,” Patty grumbled. “They eat the same things?”

  “No. Johnson ate seafood, Bridge Guy liked Mexican.”

  “Huh. Thought maybe they shared a last meal.”

  “No way. Bridge Guy had only been dead about eight to twelve hours. But there is the MO—both were shot three times with a twenty-two.”

  “Ballistics?” Rick asked.

  “I doubt it, and the pathologist wasn’t hopeful. The bullets were unjacketed and mashed up from ping-ponging around inside their skulls.”

  “And Johnson and the girl had none of these hairs and fibers and fleabites in common?” Rick asked.

  Maggie nodded.

  “But they’re all dead within three days of each other,” Patty said, the expression on her face more serious than Maggie had ever seen it. “Very, very interesting. Anything else you can tell us, Maggie?”

  “No.” Again, short attention spans. Keep remarks brief.

  Footsteps approached outside in the hallway, and a portly, gray-haired man in an untucked dress shirt poked his head in. “Did you hear about the girls?”

  Jack looked around the apartment with some curiosity. He had never been inside, of course, and felt faintly surprised that it looked exactly as he had pictured it. Or more accurately, as Maggie Gardiner had pictured it. The girls’ stuff had been left behind by the ICE agents for now—small duffels or backpacks with thin, feminine garments spilling from each compartment, nail polish, eye makeup, cheap jewelry carefully hidden in the deepest recesses, and mementoes from home, including worn photos, a diary, a paperback novel in a foreign tongue, and what looked like a campaign button. And one blanket apiece, no pillow.

  But underneath the girls’ meager and scattered belongings sat ancient gray carpeting, peeling paint, the faint smell of the last tenant’s dog, and—Jack scratched one ankle—the fleas it had left behind.

  The wrappings from last night’s dinner had been neatly—they were girls, after all, or perhaps Viktor had had rules for his temporary tenants—crumpled up and smashed into an overflowing garbage can next to the kitchenette sink. The single bathroom had a good deal of mold but running water, the only bill Viktor had paid. The absentee owner of the building had kept the electricity on for the sporadic renovations, so Viktor had simply paid the water bill at the Lakeside Avenue office, in cash, on the same man’s behalf. The utility company saw nothing strange in it, and the real owner never knew about it.

  Jack knew this from a bout of snooping but his coworkers did not, and schooled himself to keep his mouth shut when they speculated out loud how human traffickers managed to squat in a downtown building without attracting notice. Just as he had ignored the homeless man on his way through the lobby earlier. The last thing he could do would be to find the uniformed cop and inquire as to the business of a man of whose existence Jack should not even be aware. No, he simply went to work, telling himself that Clyde would never be able to identify him. Never.

  Instead, he watched Maggie Gardiner slice out a section of the ancient carpet with a disposable scalpel. She would want to collect a sample of that gray wool, of course, but then she said: “I have a bloodstain here.”

  No one found that too surprising. She put her head closer to the floor than Jack would have been able to stomach and peered at the linoleum in the “kitchenette” area of the room. She dampened the end of a strip of paper with a water bottle and tested the grout between two squares. “Probable blood on the tile. He might have killed the little girl from the cemetery in here.”

  “In front of the other girls?” Patty asked of no one in particular. “No wonder they’re scared. What are they saying?”

  One of the Vice detectives who had made the initial entry spoke. “Most of them aren’t saying a thing, just giving the big-eyed, innocent look and pretending not to understand our Russian translator. But a few of the younger ones are spilling. They haven’t said anything about a murder, or any violence at all. They did identify Bridge Guy as the man who picked them up at the airport and brought them food here.”

  “Airport? They came in through the airport?”

  “That’s what they said. I know, we would have figured the port as a point of entry.”

  “And nobody had any idea they were here,” Patty mused.

  She might have meant the construction workers who made sporadic forays into the building. She might have meant Customs. Or she might have meant that Vice should have picked up on an international human smuggling ring going on right under their noses.

  The Vice detective apparently assumed the latter and bristled. “We knew some kind of operation like this has been going on—we’ve known for months. We’ve run into his girls here and there. We just couldn’t put a name to him. None of them would talk.”

  “Uh-huh,” Patty said. If she meant that to sound soothing, it didn’t. “Did he rape any of these girls, the ones staying here? Beat them?”

  The Vice detective continued to pout for another moment, but then answered. “Not a word about that, and none of them appear to be injured. They said Viktor was very kind—that’s what they called him, Viktor. They ID’d his picture but didn’t want to get him into any trouble, started to cry when we told them he was dead. They insist he had just been trying to help them. Of the two that talked, one is fifteen and her stepfather turned her out onto the streets of some little town I can’t pronounce a few days after her twelfth birthday. The other is sixteen, grew up in an orphanage in some other little town I also can’t pronounce. She says it wasn’t bad but there was no place for her to go, no jobs, no husbands on the horizon, so she wanted to try to get a job here. Where it was warmer. Can you imagine moving to Cleveland for a warmer climate?”

  Patty asked, �
�Was she planning to turn tricks here?”

  “Not at first, but she figured out that would most likely be her new ‘job’ from talking to the other girls. But according to her, what choice did she have? Especially once she found herself in another country with a fake passport and the windows nailed shut. The door had a keyed deadbolt. We had to break in.”

  Jack nodded. He had burnt Viktor’s identification and clothing tag in a metal bowl in his kitchen sink, wishing the act felt as cathartic as it looked, but the key now rested in his pants pocket. Again he debated that maybe it would have been better if he’d simply come by last night, unlocked the door, and then slunk away. He thought, not for the first time, that his actions might have made things worse instead of better for the people left behind. Perhaps by interfering in the world’s natural entropy he created more chaos than he solved. Perhaps his “solution” stemmed from nothing more than arrogance.

  No way to tell, he concluded—also not for the first time. Either way things could have gotten worse for the girls, or better, or some combination of the two. But either way he had to act instead of debate. That was what men did. They acted.

  A more immediate concern stood in front of him now, inspecting some trail along the linoleum visible only to herself. Maggie Gardiner had connected the dead girl to Viktor, which was not a problem. But she had connected Viktor to Johnson, and that was.

  Now she moved in a crouching walk to a lower cabinet that had a very sturdy-looking hasp on the door, kept closed with a combination lock. It could be the remnant of an exasperated landlord making an attempt to keep tenants from adjusting water or radiator valves, but Jack guessed it had a more ominous purpose than that. Maggie Gardiner, as well, wasted no time in retrieving a bolt cutter from her city vehicle.