Buzz Killer

by Tom Straw

  “Stop with the partner, OK?”

  “Does that mean no burglaries, for real, or none I’ll discuss with you, you fucking 99-percenter fuck?”

  Wild caved and jumped over to his thread. “Hard to know what’s being discreet or what’s hiding the truth. One more thing to ask Mr. Hall.”

  “Also I want to ask why we had names for all the other victims, and not here. Put that in your little book—partner.” Macie started to get pissed off. Then she looked at him and started to laugh.

  ♢ ♢ ♢

  Something was up with Dr. Edda. When she approached them at the jail ward nurses’ station she looked like a version of herself, like her much older sister. “What is it?” asked Macie.

  The neurosurgeon regarded both of them grimly. “He’s gone.”

  Wild heard a click in her throat as she swallowed and steadied herself on the counter. “When?” And then to soften the sharpness of her reaction, “You did warn us about setbacks.”

  “Oh, forgive me.” The doctor put a gentle hand on her forearm. “He isn’t dead. He’s gone. Mr. Hall escaped.”

  C H A P T E R • 24

  * * *

  Wild entered the Manhattan Center for Public Defense in a vertigo daze. After holding sopping paper towels to her face in the restroom, Macie emerged feeling revived, but far from clearheaded. Outside the conference room door, Tiger popped a cold can of Diet Coke and handed it to her on their way into the team meeting. As if caffeine were the drug of sense.

  She had nearly asked Gunnar to come with her. But then came the swarm of second thoughts. The boat-rocking his presence might create in her team—especially with her official investigator, Jonathan Monheit—wasn’t worth it just when she needed all her resources ready to address the new crisis. NBC4NY made the decision for her. The assignment editor tapped him to do freelance coverage of a subway platform stabbing, and Gunnar peeled off to make his rent. Afterward, he said, he wanted to do a check-in on the naughty Angolan prince, Jerónimo Teixeira, to see what the subject of his VICE Media doc was up to. But really to see if his goon, Luka Borodin, was back in play. So she laid out to her defense team what she knew about Jackson Hall’s escape from Bellevue.

  It wasn’t much.

  Following Hall’s ambulation session, which amounted to an assisted walk around the corridors, his physical therapist stopped at the nurses’ station to sign him back in. When the rehab worker turned around from the clipboard, after mere seconds, no Jackson Hall. That triggered a lockdown and search, but the prisoner was nowhere to be found anywhere in the jail ward. The guard posted at the elevator was certain he did not get by her. Nonetheless, the New York Hospital Police conducted a full search of all floors of Bellevue, inside and outside the jail ward, including a survey of all taxis and transit that made pick-ups on First Avenue and the surrounding area. They came up empty. Wild concluded by saying, “Right now, NYPD and Hospital Police are reviewing security video to track his movements after the nurses’ station.”

  Soledad Esteves Torres shook her head. “They’ll never tell us.”

  “How does someone get out of there?” asked Chip. “When I was doing my coma watch on him they told me Bellevue’s jail ward is as secure as any state prison.”

  Tiger chuckled. “Unless somebody delivered him ground beef with hacksaw stuffing.”

  “It’s normal to jump to the conclusion that he broke out,” said Soledad, “but let’s not overlook other possibilities, right?” The social worker gave a cautioning look around the conference table before she continued. “There can be aftereffects of brain trauma and coma. Short-term memory loss, confusion, disorientation, even reactions to overstimulation from noise and light.”

  Wild scoffed. “Oh, sure. So he just sort of wandered out of a high-security jail ward like Mr. Magoo?” Soledad’s head snapped toward her in disbelief. “Sorry, Sol. Don’t know where that came from.”

  “I’m guessing a shitload of pressure,” said her friend.

  “Driving over here 1010 WINS was saying that NYPD and PAPD have broadcast a Be On the Look Out for an accused murderer on the loose. That puts our client in the crosshairs. And considering Mr. Hall’s diminished capacity,” she went on, with a nod to her social worker, “there’s an extra layer of danger surrounding him. So . . . danger from the cops, danger from Luka Borodin, who is still off the grid . . .” Wild paused, considering whether to share the potential danger from the Pipe Wrench Duo who went after the crew chief. That would mean explaining her night of dodgy surveillance with Gunnar, including the questionable means by which they tracked down his apartment. Taking another uncharacteristic step away from transparency, she held it back, rationalizing that nobody in that room doubted Jackson Hall’s peril, and that adding that detail only would be redundant.

  Raising his hand to be called on in the back of the room, the L-1 intern was anything but sheepish when he spoke. “Any of y’all consider that our client’s playing us?” Chairs pivoted his way. “I’m new, but it seems to me nobody’s talking about how he hasn’t been straight with us from the start. Hiding facts from you, Ms. Wild. Then there’s the threats he made to the murder victim. Now he’s got an APB for being an accused murderer on the loose, because that’s kinda exactly what he is.”

  “Mr. Ross, I completely agree that there is more to our client than he has disclosed,” she replied. “But if this summer internship teaches you nothing else, let it be that innocent until proven guilty doesn’t mean faultless. But it does mean that we advocate for justice for him. At the same time, we keep a healthy BS detector too.”

  From there she briefed them on her day in the field interviewing Jackson Hall’s burglary victims, ending with the burglary denial at The Ajax, which they all found odd too. “Speaking of BS detection. Tiger, I know you have a full plate, but run a check of records to see who owns the penthouse at The Ajax. Don’t make contact, just dig it out.”

  “Too right,” said the Aussie.

  On the opposite side of the table, Monheit flashed angry eyes at the paralegal for infringing in his territory. But Macie wasn’t done with assignments. Jackson Hall’s escape was a game changer, opening another flank in her investigation and reminding her how thinly her resources were spread. God, where would she be without Gunnar, she was surprised to find herself thinking. The bigger surprise was what she found herself saying. “Jonathan, I need to get you back out in the field.”

  “Ah . . . sure.”

  Wild moved to the Case Board. “See the list of Mr. Hall’s regular hangouts and known associates? I want you to pay a personal visit to all of them. The bar, the fishing pier, even Amador Spatone—you never know.”

  “Got it.” Then he said, “What am I looking for?” causing her to second guess her decision.

  “A lead on our client. Barring that, agreement to notify us if he shows.”

  “You really think they’d bust him?”

  “Tell them, it’s either us or the police.” Jonny F-ing Midnight, she thought. “Soledad, I didn’t get much out of his doctor, she was too traumatized. Would you follow up at Bellevue and see if there’s anything he may have shared with Dr. Edda that would hint at a direction he might have gone?”

  “You got it. Meantime, fugitives go to ground with family and lovers. I’ll make a second effort to locate Pilar Fuentes. Even go back to her apartment uptown.”

  “Good idea. And Chip? I’m going to give you contact info for the burglary victims I talked to today. The last one, Larry Don Henkles, said Rúben Pinto got in touch to extort money to sell back some of his property.” Flagging it as privileged, Wild shared it was a betting ledger, but instructed the intern to reach out to the other victims to see if any ransom attempt was made by Pinto—or anyone else.

  “You mean like Mr. Hall?”

  “I mean like Mr. Anybody. I want to establish whether this whole burglary club was about extorting or if it was just Rúben Pinto.”

  “Because?” asked her lead investigator.

&nb
sp; “Because, Jonathan, it could be a motive for murder.”

  ♢ ♢ ♢

  Assistant District Attorney Theresa Fontanelli’s phone call to Macie Wild was full-frontal, loud, and clear. “I am serving you official notice that, as an officer of the court, you are required to hand over your fugitive client, or face criminal prosecution as an accessory and for obstruction of justice.”

  “And hello to you, too, counselor.” The verbal body slam had jarred Macie while she was still in a vulnerable place. But, once again, unconsciously stealing a page from Gunnar Cody, she volleyed with a wisecrack. The assistant DA was less than amused.

  “Fuck hello,” said WTF. “A murderer is at large. He is your client. I want him locked up.”

  “One: he is only accused of murder. Two: I have no idea where he is. Three: if you don’t dial it back, you’re going to be listening to a dial tone.” The fact that Wild was on her cellular and, as such, there could be no dial tone made her worry her bravado sounded false. So she blew past it. “For the record, Theresa, I don’t want him at large either. Not that I worry he will do anything; I’m more concerned a rookie cop will box him into a bad situation or some vigilante who saw his face on the news tonight will deal out some street justice.”

  Fontanelli did bring it down a peg, but held her ground, if more civilly. “You can worry about that. I get to worry about the safety of citizens and law enforcement. Your man’s running with a banner on his BOLO that reads: ‘Armed and dangerous.’”

  “Based on what?”

  “Counselor. He busted out of a high-security ward at Bellevue. It makes him capable of anything. Now to get back to the reason I called. If Jackson Hall makes any contact with you, you are obligated by law to urge him to surrender and to notify us immediately of his whereabouts. Clear?”

  “As a sworn officer of the court, I would do nothing less.” The line went dead. “Fuck good-bye, too, I guess,” said Macie.

  At ten forty-five that night, Wild stood before a forest of microphones in the carriage turn off First Avenue in front of Bellevue Hospital. The blaze of TV lights mutated the news reporters and crews behind them into distorted silhouettes like dancers in the Lady Gaga halftime show. She looked for Gunnar but couldn’t locate him through the glare. He had counseled her on the where and when to do this presser. The “where” was to avoid the Manhattan Center for Public Defense, which screamed criminal law. Bellevue made sense because a hospital made a better visual case for spinning her client as a patient, rather than a murderer. “Like it or not,” he’d said, “TV news is all about the optics.” The “when” was early enough for the ten p.m. local newscasts to go live; close enough for the stations with elevens to use her video as a breaking news lead.

  “Good evening,” she began, introducing herself and spelling her name for the record. “I am a public defender with the Manhattan Center for Public Defense. Today my client Jackson Hall, who was a patient here at Bellevue Hospital, disappeared following ambulation therapy that was part of his rehabilitation from a coma. Mr. Hall was a patient in the jail ward and it is unknown whether he escaped or wandered out due to disorientation, which is a common condition, post-coma, or whether or not he was taken. I not only come here tonight to address the media, I also want to speak directly to my client.”

  Not knowing which camera to look at, Macie selected the one directly in front of her. “Mr. Hall, if you see this message, I urge you to immediately go to the nearest NYPD precinct and turn yourself in. Otherwise, I ask you to get in contact with me. You have my number. Call and I will arrange safe passage for you. But do not remain at large. Please come in. Now.” In her pause, Macie glimpsed Gunnar in the crowd with his camera up, then continued. “To any friends and family of Jackson Hall: If you hear from him, call me. You are not helping him by harboring him. The greatest help you can be to him will be to assist us in bringing him in safely.” Wild recited her phone number and indicated that it would be answered anytime, day or night.

  Reporters called out questions to Wild but she stepped away. She had made her points, and nothing more she could say would do anything but confuse her messages. When she reached the pillar where Chip was waiting for her with a bottle of water, she twisted the cap and scanned the press line again for Gunnar. There was a gap where he had been standing and she felt an unexpected hollowness.

  ♢ ♢ ♢

  In her dream she was watching Gunnar but through the blinding white harshness of TV lights—and at a distance. Because he was on a video monitor. A monitor on the rack inside his van. She watched Gunnar on screen, drifting like smoke, disembodied, untethered from the planet. Here, and then not. Because he was also with her in the back of the van. Not beside her but underneath her as she straddled his lap. She was thinking, I can’t, but it was also she who was driving this moment. She felt, as much as saw, his gaze locked into hers. Riveted, as she had seen it clamped on the monitors so often in the crackling seconds before scales tipped from anticipation to anxiety to violence. The thrill of watching—the excitement of knowing and being unknown, noticed and unnoticed—filled her. And warmed her.

  In her dream.

  Wild awoke in dampness. Perspiration at her neck and lower back chilled her as she sat up with naked skin suddenly exposed to air conditioning. By habit, she checked her iPhone for missed calls and e-mails. She found a voice mail. Macie didn’t recognize the number, and listened. It was Gunnar, no doubt from one of his burner cells. “Call whenever you get this. I’m working an incident for Channel 2. They found a body.” She threw off the remaining covers and stood, not shivering from the AC, but from alarm. Macie waited for him to say whose body, but the thin blue bar on her screen tracked across two seconds of silence, hit :00, and then reset.

  C H A P T E R • 25

  * * *

  Some cops call them floaters. Bodies discovered in water: rivers, ponds, canals. Floaters are a superset of dry floaters, which are bodies discovered high and dry in out-of-the-way places like abandoned warehouses, parking garages, and basements. Wet or dry, they are called floaters because body gases from decomposition have given them a degree of inflation. Even the dry ones look like they’d bob pretty good.

  It all happens fast. When death shuts off the oxygen supply and the body’s pH balance goes south, enzymes immediately get to work breaking down cells. Methane, C02, hydrogen sulfide, and nitrogen get released as a byproduct, inflating the cadaver in gruesome ways. Anyone who saw drifting corpses in the Katrina footage knows how the horror show plays out. Up close it’s more disconcerting to the uninitiated. Even in the early stages, after just a day, when swelling disfigures the mouth, contorts eyes into a bulge, and warps the skin to a marbled, multicolored sausage casing.

  Gunnar Cody had documented that and more in the series of close-ups he had taken of the remains before the homicide squad arrived at the tidal marsh near Co-op City. Now shooed away outside the yellow tape, he stood beside Macie, getting long lens shots, pictures that could be shown on broadcast TV. Against the rising sun, the gang from the Office of Chief Medical Examiner erected a fabric partition around the discovery site. Behind it, the body would be hoisted from the muck and onto a gurney for a prelim field exam.

  While Gunnar uploaded his G-rated video files in time for the morning newscast, Wild surveyed the grim work of the medical examiners across the swaying reeds and wondered if this was the body dump, or if Jeff Stamitz had come in on the tide.

  Macie walked back to the dirt service road under the drawbridge where Gunnar had parked on the verge. She waited, leaning against the open cargo door of his van as his fingers danced over the keyboard and trackpad. He said a toneless “Ka-ching” when his last file shipped to the news editor, then invited her in to screen the extra footage he’d shot. “No, thanks, I get it. Pretty grim stuff.” But her decision was as much about avoiding the ghastly footage as the residue of her erotic dream. Best not to mix the two, she thought.

  “A fave? Next time, leave a complete message. You s
cared me shitless it was Jackson Hall.”

  “Promise,” he said. “Next time I call you in the middle of the night about finding a corpse ass-up in a tidal basin, I’ll comply with all your personal requirements.” Then he resumed his screening.

  She accidentally surfed a glimpse of one angle and quickly turned away. “Are you actually going to use this in your VICE piece?”

  “Not sure. Parts, probably. Depends on relevance. But I’m not screening for that, not yet. I’m doing my own little forensic on the decedent.” After freezing some frames and zooming in, he shut down and pivoted in his chair toward her. “Our crew chief was tortured. Majorly.”

  “We saw that through his window.”

  “I mean after. And more than the pipe wrenching. That was the teaser. He’s got split fingernails from spikings, one of his eyes looks like it got an acid wash, and burn marks on his skin are telltales of TENS wanding.”

  “I need help here.”

  “Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation. Holistic doctors use it therapeutically. S&M practitioners crank it up and use it as a fetish. Black Ops max it out as a way to get prisoners to talk. My guess is, unless they find a bullet hole somewhere I missed, the TENS juiced him into a heart attack. Somebody wanted him to talk about something.”

  Wild, who had walked picket lines over waterboarding, shivered at the barbarity of what Gunnar was describing. She tried to set aside her feelings for the victim and focus professionally on what it meant, on how it related to the murder charge against her client. “Pinto. He wasn’t just killed. You were with me and saw all the blood. He must have been tortured too.”

  “Except this is next-level. This here, this was a rendition.”

  “And looking less and less like Rúben Pinto was a kill over the crew’s split.”

  “I wouldn’t argue with that.” His gaze raked past her and she turned. A new pair of plain-wrap undercover vehicles pulled up to the crime scene. A man and a woman, both in sharp suits, got out of each car. Gunnar picked up his still camera to snap off some shots.