Dark Web

by T. J. Brearton

  Trooper Bronze opened the door to the police cruiser and looked out at Swift. Bronze would drive him to the substation, a few miles away. Another trooper would bring his own car along later.

  He slid into the warm vehicle and felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. Expecting a call, either from the captain or the lieutenant, he pulled it out. It was another email message.

  He grunted and asked Bronze, “You know how to deactivate email alerts on these damn things?”

  “Sure. I’ll fix it for you when we get there.”

  Swift sighed and gave the screen a series of touches with his fingertips, figuring out how to open the email. It wasn’t that hard, actually.

  “What a night,” he said. He could still feel the adrenaline racing.

  “You got that right.”

  There were two new messages, both from the same address. He thought he vaguely recognized the email address as having something to do with his bank.

  The first one was about suspicious activity detected on his account.

  He frowned and shook his head. Just what he needed at the start of a new case. He opened the next email.

  This second one told him to take defensive action, with instructions on how to prevent future incursions

  “For God’s sake,” he muttered. Bronze glanced at him as he pulled away from the crime scene, engine roaring, lightbar flashing, tires kicking out fans of snow.

  PART TWO

  THE SUSPECTS

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The State Police substation just outside New Brighton was a squat, one-story building with a few small offices and a single interrogation room. The main space featured basic equipment, including a copy machine, a paper shredder, an emergency medical cabinet, and a breathalyzer with its attending Datamaster. There was a kitchenette in the corner with a sink, refrigerator, and coffee maker. The interrogation room was a simple ten-by-twelve box, the walls institutional green, with a pane of one-way glass into a neighboring room the size of a walk-in closet that smelled of mice. There was no closed-circuit television; to watch a suspect sweat it out in the box, you sweat it out in the cramped space next door.

  State Police Captain Tuggey was waiting as Swift came in. He watched wordlessly as Swift shrugged off his jacket and hung it up. He motioned the detective to sit down opposite him.

  The bitter aroma of coffee percolating on the kitchenette counter filled the air. It looked to Swift as though Tuggey had dressed hastily. There was some black soot on his fingers, his white shirt was smudged with what looked like creosote and Swift could scent wood smoke. Tuggey had a large ranch-style home ten miles away. Probably his wife had asked him to stoke the stove before he left. Life had to go on, even when you were a cop’s wife.

  “Mayor called half an hour ago,” Tuggey said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah. Lieutenant is en route. Know what the mayor said?”

  “Tell me.”

  “‘How long you gonna keep this road blocked off?’ That’s what he says.”

  Swift blinked. He remembered his conversation with Silas.

  Tuggey puffed his chest out. “‘As long as it takes,’ is what I told him. But you got out pretty fast.” The captain looked his hands, turning them over, examining the backs and fronts and in between the fingers.

  “Cap’n Tug, Silas wanted to take her time, as she should, but we soon saw that the body was going to be our best evidence . . . and the three kids picked up in the car back on the interstate . . . Besides finding a piece of cardboard and some deer shit, there was nothing else at the scene.”

  “Fuck,” Tug said softly. Profanity was unusual for the captain and he seemed to think that swearing in a low voice somehow reduced the level of venal sin. Swift watched Tuggey search the objects on his desk, as if the answer lay in the jar of miscellaneous pens or scribbles on the pad of paper.

  “So, what’s the play?”

  “For now? I want to see what I get from our three teenagers. Or, is it two and a twenty-something. Troopers tossed the car on site — just a quick search incident to arrest. The two younger kids had phones on them, so we checked their latest messages, and we’re pulling the laptop from the victim’s room.”

  Tuggey nodded slowly, and resumed, “Mayor said his own phone was ringing off the hook. Says to me, ‘I’ve got six inches of accumulated snow on that stretch of road the highway department can’t get to. I’ve got people trying to get to work along the back way, one car in a ditch right now.’”

  No doubt Mayor Engle had awakened as Tuggey had, alerted by the all-points bulletin. Deputy Cohen, first on the scene, had made a general announcement from the site that went out to all law enforcement bodies, including his own Sheriff.

  Which made Swift ask, “Why isn’t Sheriff Dunleavy running this?”

  Tuggey all but rolled his eyes. “Oh, no doubt Engle had been hoping this case would have stayed within the Sheriff’s Department so he could have polished his image. Amazing. Even someone dead in the middle of the cold road ain’t enough to push politics aside.

  “But, Dunleavy made the right choice, Swift. That’s why you got the call. The Sheriff’s Department doesn’t have the manpower or experience for this. Dunleavy’s good at what he does: the jail is a tight ship, the Deputies serve the community and the mental health offices, but he would be in over his head on this so he T.O.T.-ed it to us.”

  “He’s worried about over-running his budget,” Swift observed.

  “Hey, you don’t want to catch cases? Then you should have taken that Attorney General’s job.”

  “I didn’t mean that, Tug.”

  “Dunleavy can’t stretch a dollar, so what? What’s important is that we had a body in the road, a crime scene in the middle of a snow storm, and potential witnesses or suspects fleeing the scene. It’s more than Dunleavy was prepared to handle. He made the right decision. What I’m just telling you, is that the Mayor was wadded up over it. Says to me, ‘When can we get this road cleared? We got people have to get to work.’”

  “Should have asked him to make that statement publicly.”

  Tuggey threw his head back and laughed, dispelling the slight tension in the air.

  “Exactly right. I should have.” Tuggey grew serious again. “What I did say was: We don’t rush a crime scene. We process it. We work up to the body.” He looked shrewdly at Swift, his sooty fingers forgotten. “You sure you and Silas got everything? Last thing I need, Swift, is people saying we rushed it. The mayor wouldn’t take any heat from that — he’d deny it. But did he or anyone from his office contact you, put pressure on you?

  “No, sir. We’re getting the road open sooner than later because that weather isn’t giving us anything. What we got is how that kid died and, right now, anything those three kids know about it. And I think we’re in agreement that CLS headquarters in Albany is too far away and too long to wait for an autopsy, so I made the call and went with Doctor Poehler in Plattsburgh. Had the on-call mortuary service pick up the body and take it up.” Swift felt a chill as he recalled the mother’s face through the van’s small windows. It haunted him. Why did a mortuary service van have windows anyway? “We can use the Albany FIC if and when we need the DNA databank. I’m on a first-name basis with two analysts there. Whatever we need will come quick. Okay?”

  Tuggey pointed a finger in the air. “Okay, but listen. I’m going to keep the Sheriff’s Department plugged in on this all the same. Alan Cohen is a good man and Dunleavy tells me he’d like him to get a little more experience. And they were first on scene. Least we can do is show him some respect for not going all cowboy on us.”

  “Long as he knows this isn’t a ham and egg routine.”

  Tuggey narrowed his eyes. “He knows. Everybody knows.”

  “Okay.”

  Tuggey sighed and shifted his posture; the chair protested beneath his weight. “So, you said you wanted to see these characters one at a time. Two of them are juveniles, as you know. So for them we’ve got the video
as well as the audio recorder in the room. I didn’t know who you wanted first, so I gave you the Asian kid.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tuggey swung open the door into the interrogation room. A frail-looking kid with stringy black hair, olive skin, and almond-shaped eyes turned his head to look back at them. He seemed terrified. He was maybe sixteen, and wore a track suit, black, with red-piping. Swift could smell the fear, like sweat and battery acid combined.

  “Thank you,” said Swift.

  Tuggey promptly closed the door. Swift turned and looked at the kid, who looked down. Swift walked around the table where the video camera was mounted on a tripod. He looked it over for a moment before finding the record button. He fumbled with the DAT recorder for a second before turning it on. Finally he took a chair across from the kid. Once he was seated, he pulled out a notepad and pen from his inner pocket. He set these on the table and folded his hands in front of him.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Detective John Swift.”

  The kid looked up. His eyes were dark, but his face was open. He was obviously petrified. This thing could be over before Swift knew it. Things were looking up.

  “Have you been given your Miranda Warning?”

  “Yes,” answered the kid, his voice so light and quiet it was almost inaudible.

  “You understand you have a right to counsel. Would you like to contact an attorney at this time?”

  “No.”

  Probably didn’t want his parents to find out what was going on, Swift thought. He couldn’t know that the troopers had already called them when he was brought in. His driver’s license had been run, and the parents’ number came up right away. If anyone was going to call a lawyer, it would be them. But the interview was on tape. Who knew what could happen down the line? All you needed was a sharp defense attorney claiming his client asked for a lawyer and didn’t get one, and you could have an entire confession thrown out of court.

  “Can you state your name and age, please?”

  “Your name sounds fake.”

  Swift blinked and put on a smile. “My name? No, it’s real.”

  “Sounds like a character.”

  “Oh I’m a character. Just ask my ex-wife. You want to know what? I’m actually John Swift the Third. And, get this, you want to know something even worse?”

  Swift waited until the kid said, “What?”

  “My middle name is Leslie. John Leslie Swift the third.”

  The kid was silent.

  “But there’s a good reason. My great grandfather was named Leslie. Back then, you could name your son Leslie and no one thought two ways about it. And he was a good man too. Know who he was?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, silly question. I’ll tell you, real quick, just so you know how crazy this gets. He was one of the very first State Police Detectives; joined way back in 1925. Just seven years after the State Police were first founded. So. There’s this guy named Sam Howell was murdered down in Westchester County. He was foreman of a construction company. But there was no local police department to investigate, so the state legislature put together the troopers. Just like here, in New Brighton, there’s no local department. There’s a Sheriff’s Department, and sometimes they handle stuff like this, if they have detectives. But this one doesn’t. That’s why I’m here.”

  Swift sat back and fixed the kid with a level gaze.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Hideo Miko.” He pronounced it Hid-aye-oh Mee-koh.

  “That’s different, too.”

  “It’s Japanese.”

  Swift gave him another smile. “Is it Hideo Miko the third?”

  “No. My father named me after a Japanese baseball player. Hideo Nomo.”

  “Oh. Very cool. Your father a big baseball fan?”

  “He’s crazy over it.”

  “You get along with your father?”

  The chitchat seemed to make the kid more comfortable; some of the fear he’d been exuding had abated. “Not really. Why?”

  Swift shrugged. “Just asking. My old man and I didn’t see eye to eye on anything. I’m talking about my stepfather. Practically everyone in my family is in law enforcement, though. That’s how it usually works. My father was killed in the line of duty. He was a state police detective, too. My stepfather, though, he was a highway patrolman.”

  Hideo looked away and studied the wall for a moment. Maybe he sensed what was coming next.

  “Point is, I guess it’s in the blood and in the backstory. Know what I mean? So I’m going to ask you a few questions, and I really hope you can be honest with me. Alright? I just need to know a few things, and then I can get you out of here and back home.”

  The kid averted his eyes.

  “What were you doing up here tonight? You and your family, you don’t live up here. Do you?”

  “No.”

  “So what were you doing up here?”

  “Visiting a friend.”

  “And that friend was Braxton Simpkins?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you look at me, son? Would you mind?” Maybe it was rude in Japanese culture to look authority figures in the eye, but Swift needed to see what was going on there.

  Hideo slowly brought his gaze back. The fear carved through his features. It made a knot of his mouth, as though he was afraid to blurt something out, or start crying.

  “Thank you. Why were you visiting him in the middle of the night?”

  Hideo shrugged his shoulders.

  “Are you afraid to tell me something?”

  No response, and then Swift saw tears filling his eyes. He looked away again, up towards the corner of the room. He nodded twice, which caused the tears to spill over his eyelids and track down his face.

  “Okay. So where do you live? Philadelphia?”

  He nodded again.

  “Do your friends, the two other guys in the car with you, do they live in Philadelphia, too?”

  Now the kid shook his head, no.

  “Where are they from?”

  “New York City. And Short Hills, I think.”

  “Short Hills? Where’s that?”

  “Jersey.”

  “Okay. So we got three of you from three different states. How do you all know each other?”

  “Online.”

  “And is that how you know Braxton Simpkins? From online?”

  Hideo nodded. His whole mouth now was working, his mouth pursed, the lips crinkled, and his features contorted as he tried to staunch the flow of tears.

  “What sorts of things online? Like Facebook? Social Media? That sort of thing?”

  He shook his head, no.

  “Then what? Something else?”

  The kid was very still. He stared at the desk.

  When he finally spoke again, his voice trembled. “I don’t want to say anymore. I’m sorry.”

  “Hey, no. Hey. It’s okay. You’re doing great.”

  “I guess . . . I guess I should call a lawyer after all.”

  His voice cracked on the word lawyer and he lowered his face into his hands. A few seconds pause, and then Swift thought he heard the kid say something. He leaned forward and listened to the muffled words.

  I’m sorry, the kid was saying into his arms through the wet snuffle of his tears. I’m sorry.

  One down, thought Swift.

  * * *

  Swift took a quick break and called Trooper Bronze, who’d gone back out to 9N to keep an eye on things.

  Swift could hear the wind rattling around in the background as Bronze answered.

  “You’re still holding the scene?”

  “Yes, sir, Swifty.”

  “Okay. I’d like you to call some relief. Leave the scene and head back over to the family.”

  “Sir?”

  “Keep an eye on them, get the stepfather and his girls anything they need. I’ll be there as soon as I can — these kids are opening up like flowers. I’m going to get a confession out of one of them.”
<
br />   “Excellent.”

  “But we still need to keep an eye on the stepfather. And while you’re doing that, helping him out, we’re going to get everything from the decedent’s bedroom. Our CSI, Silas, is going to get the laptop — we need to make sure of that. These kids know each other from the internet. Emails, social networks, and whatever else they do.”

  “Copy that, sir.”

  “Thank you, Trooper.”

  “You got it.”

  Swift hung up and walked back to the interrogation room, which was now occupied by the driver of the Hyundai. This kid was twenty-three. His name was Robert Darring. He looked up at Swift. The look gave Swift a slight chill. He’d seen a face or two like that in his day. This kid was going to be a pisser, not like the Asian kid, but a tough nut.

  Then I’ll have to crack him.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Mike’s hands moved over the keys of Braxton’s laptop. The girls were sitting in the other room, eating snacks and watching cartoons on the TV.

  He opened a new tab in the internet browser and went to Yahoo mail. His gaze swept the screen, registering what was there.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  Braxton had not kept his email account open with the password stored in memory. Mike clicked on “Sign in” and then sat back for a second, trying to think what Braxton’s password could be.

  Are you serious? You’re looking to hack into your son’s email right now in the middle of everything that’s going on? Are you crazy?

  Still, he had to try. They were going to go through this laptop, of that Mike had no doubt. A laptop was a modern person’s journal, photo album, record of business transactions — a whole psychological profile, a veritable window on their soul. Braxton had been lying out there in the middle of the road covered in the snow. Some unknown kids had fled the scene. The cops would pounce on this laptop and Braxton’s Kindle, too — anything that connected him to the outside world.

  Mike tried something he thought might work. A couple of years ago Braxton had played Minecraft obsessively on the Kindle. There was a spooky character in Minecraft that just showed up at random, stealing your possessions and destroying whatever you had built. This character looked just like you, but had white, glowing eyes, an expressionless face. It was called “Herobrine.”