Sunrise Highway Read online

  “I disagree,” Lourdes said. “With respect, of course. Digging a hole takes time. Just dumping them in a nature preserve or dropping them in a body of water near the highway is way smarter and way easier. Even if they turn up eventually, there’s a good chance that nature’s taken its course and destroyed crucial evidence.”

  “Then why wrap them in plastic?” The chief raised a hand to quibble.

  “Listen, I’m no serial killer—I don’t have all the answers.” Lourdes pulled her hair back from the sides of her face. “Maybe he was planning to dredge them up and keep them as trophies at some point. Or he thought the rocks he stuck in the plastic would help weigh them down.”

  “Hey, the guy has got a screw loose if he’s killing all these women in the first place.” B.B. nodded, back on her side finally. “Who knows what he could have been thinking?”

  “Look, we’re pledging our full cooperation to help your investigation.” Tolliver sighed. “Mi casa es su casa, Detective Robles. I just don’t know what else we can offer.”

  Lourdes smiled at him but it took some effort. Again, she found herself puzzled by her own reaction. The man was saying the right things and now offering to do them. So why was something inside her hanging back outside the perimeter?

  “We’re thinking our man’s been pretty active for a long time,” she said. “We don’t know if he’s still out there, preparing to do more or even how many he’s killed in the past. It seems like he knows enough to vary his pattern sometimes. We’re thinking you may have open cases that could turn out to be him.”

  “Unlikely.” The chief huffed like an old cushion sat on too many times. “We don’t have that many open cases. Detective Borrelli, you’re probably old enough to remember when this used to be the home of the Ninety-Four Percent Squad. We closed almost everything.”

  “I do indeed.” B.B. rested a hand on his chin, a permanent groove on the ring finger that was unbanded at the moment. “Those were the days, my friend.”

  “Not like that anymore, brother.” Tolliver’s mustache curved into a wistful smile. “Our crusading DA put an end to that years ago.”

  Lourdes cleared her throat, not wanting them to get distracted going down some deep rabbit hole of white men’s useta-be’s.

  “We’d like to see the files on whatever open cases you do have,” she said.

  “Seriously?” The chief looked to B.B., trying to drive a wedge between his visitors again.

  “You just said you don’t have that many open ones,” Lourdes reminded him. “Ninety-four percent and all.”

  “Yeah, but come on…” Tolliver rocked back in his chair. “How many years back are we talking?”

  “How many years back you got?” Lourdes asked. “We don’t know how old this guy is or how long he’s been doing this.”

  Maybe it was just her. Maybe she was pushing too hard or expecting too much. Or maybe there were greater geographic forces at work here. The tectonic plates of city and suburb pushing up against each other. All she was sure of was that there was resistance here that couldn’t just be explained by entrenched rivalries or bureaucratic intransigence.

  “It’s going to take a while.” The chief sighed and laced his hands behind his head, a man with nothing to hide. “Some of these files may not even be digitized yet. You know you’re asking for the moon, don’t you?”

  “I do.” Lourdes put the dimples in her grin. “But as Detective Borrelli will tell you, that’s just the kind of girl I am.”

  14

  OCTOBER

  1986

  The Mets were in the World Series, for the first time in seventeen years. The Red Sox were playing them, trying to beat the Curse of the Bambino and win their first world championship since 1918. But right now, all Joey cared about was getting the rookie to snort up the white line of powder he’d tapped out onto the dashboard.

  “Danziger. What kind of fuckin’ name is that, anyway?” He handed the kid a rolled-up dollar. “You a Jew, or what?”

  “Sarge?”

  “Simple question: What are you? Everybody’s something.”

  Since the promotion, Joey had started paying an almost scientific attention to the people he worked with. He’d always been detached and observant, even as a little kid, when he figured out how to play his parents. But now that he was moving up, he was keying in on assessments. Learning to evaluate others for their strengths and weaknesses. There was a pecking order and a food chain. Everyone had their malleable spots. A place where they could be pushed in and manipulated. Everybody could be gotten to at some level. And then used. You just had to sound the depths and figure out where to drop the hook.

  They were near the end of their tour, close to midnight, parked behind a “We Buy Gold” pawnshop in Smithtown. Not quite cooping but not really on patrol either. Just hanging out, observing, and categorizing for future reference.

  Any cars passing by with white guys at this hour were in the market for drugs or whores.

  Any woman out on her own was selling what her mama gave her.

  And any rookie who’d pass what Joey thought of as the reverse integrity test by leaning over a line of blow never officially turned in was as vulnerable to his sergeant as a hooker shivering in a twenty-dollar minidress on a thirty-degree night. An object to be used, not a fully sentient human being like himself.

  “Lutheran,” Danziger said, watching Joey aim a rolled-up twenty-dollar bill at the line.

  “Ha?” Joey snorted.

  “You asked what I was. My parents raised me Lutheran. It’s part of the church.”

  “If you say so.” Joey offered him the rolled-up bill.

  “It is. Comes from Martin Luther. You know? He came out against the indulgences.”

  Joey gave him a deadpan stare. “Why would anybody do that?”

  Danziger was a lanky, lantern-jawed kid who had no business being out on the street at this hour or any other hour. A farm boy from Patchogue, said to be going to night classes at LIU and thinking of getting his law degree. A Kenny Makris type, only not Greek and maybe not as smart. At first, Joey had bristled when he got assigned to show the kid the ropes. The last thing he needed was an altar boy in his vehicle cramping his style.

  “He didn’t believe you should just be able to buy your way out of punishment for your sins,” Danziger said, eying the bill nervously.

  “Hey, you gonna do this or what?” Joey nudged him.

  “Uh, sarge, I don’t know. I never did drugs.”

  “Then how can you work on the streets or understand what we’re dealing with?”

  “I thought we were supposed to be locking people up for doing drugs,” Danziger said.

  “Look.” Joey put a heavy hand on the officer’s shoulder. “We went into the 7-11 together and you didn’t pay for your soda, right?”

  “But you said we didn’t have to.”

  “And we got drinks on the house the other night from Harrigan’s. Didn’t we?”

  “You said cops drink for free in there.” Danziger was starting to look scared. “Every night.”

  “We’re working out here together. You’re expecting me to put my life on the line for you, as your sergeant. And you’re gonna leave me hanging out here, because I gotta worry that I did something in front of you that you might tell somebody about? How can I ride with you if I can’t trust you?”

  “I don’t know, sarge.”

  “Put this in your fucking nose, and get going.” Joey handed him the bill. “We’re not in a Lutheran church right now.”

  Just like that, the kid took the bill, leaned over, and inhaled the half a line his sergeant had left for him.

  “Hey, you got a little dribbling out of your nose.” Joey swiped a thumb across Danziger’s lip, just to show he could touch him whenever he felt like it.

  “Uh … Thanks, sarge.”

  “You know what I say? ‘Clean up your act before you start telling anyone else what to do.’”

  Meaning: I own you now, bitch. The
rookie looked stricken.

  Static and hyped-up voices poured from the radio, interrupting the announcer who was talking about the Mets game going into extra innings.

  “I didn’t get all that.” Danziger turned up the volume, trying to catch the tail end. “What’s going on?”

  “Bullshit domestic dispute call on Edgewood Ave.,” Joey translated. Five years in the department, he was one of the only people who could consistently understand the dispatchers. “At least one gun in the house and kids are involved.”

  He turned down the game, switched on the engine, and tore out of the lot, the car almost going up on two wheels as they made the abrupt U-turn onto West Main Street, then hit seventy-five going under the train trestle, pasting the rookie back against the passenger seat. Danziger struggled with his seat belt and tried to hang on to the ceiling strap as street lights and gas stations hurtled by like they were going into hyperspace in Star Wars.

  “Uh, sarge?” The rookie was trying to speak through gritted teeth, as residual coke from the dashboard flew back into his face. “Shouldn’t we be letting Emergency Services take the lead on this?”

  “We’re in the vicinity,” said Joey, pushing harder on the gas to make sure the rookie was properly daunted. “He’s got a gun and kids in the house.”

  Putting the newbie through the rush, and not giving him the chance to turn around and ask questions about what they’d just done. It never failed. Probe. Breakdown. Bond. Build up. Repeat. And never forget: everybody has done something they don’t want other people to know about.

  The house was a tidy ranch from the 1970s, with a patched asbestos roof, storm windows, and a two-car garage. Even at night, it was plain to see that the exterior needed a fresh coat of white paint and that some of the black shutters were in need of repair. The neighbors, middle class but starting to slide, were out on the sidewalk in their bathrobes, hugging themselves against the autumn winds and looking spooked.

  “And I swear, to look at them, this is the all-American family,” a woman was saying as Joey got out.

  The thing was to demonstrate to the rookie that he had no fear of anything. Especially not a subordinate officer turning on him. The drugs were doing their job, pumping him up, making him hard all over, like every vein in his body was erect. He felt as if he was ten feet tall and hung like a prize bull.

  “Whose house is this?” he asked the woman who’d spoken, a frowzy brunette loudmouth in pink bunny slippers.

  “Randy Carter. He’s gone crazy since he got laid off at Northrop Grumman. You should see the empty liquor bottles in the garbage…”

  “Did someone call in that he’s got a gun?” Joey asked.

  “At least two, maybe more.” Bunny Slippers wagged a finger. “My husband’s been to the shooting range with him and…”

  “How many others inside?” Joey asked, making sure Danziger saw him taking charge here.

  “Five. There’s Randy, his wife, and the three kids. And the cat. The kids are twelve, ten…”

  He put up his hand, having heard enough.

  “Sarge, ESU is at least seven minutes out,” Danziger called out the window. “Maybe we should hold off till—”

  Joey was already on the move, past the jungle gym in the front yard, unswept leaves on the stone path to the porch crunching underfoot and prematurely announcing his arrival. He pulled his service revolver from his belt, rapped sharply on the front door, and then stood to the side in case a bullet answered.

  “Police, Mr. Carter. Open up.”

  There was no reply. A name like Randy Carter, a neighborhood like this, he could be white or black. Not that it made any difference to Joey. Just that it was easier to find justification for shooting a black man than a white one. But really they were all just chum in the water. Bone and blood. A means to an end. He put an ear to the window and heard the moron ranting at his family inside. Probably drunk. Or high. And never mind the irony; Joey could handle his poisons.

  The wife was audibly begging and crying. She must have been a mongoloid herself for marrying such a loser. And having his imbecile children, who were screaming and sobbing as well. Good argument for enforced sterilization.

  He tried the handle and found the door was unlocked. No warrant but guns plus kids equaled exigent circumstances.

  He stepped in with the gun raised and both hands on the grip. The hallway lights were on. Kids’ baseball caps and warm-up jackets hung on hooks. A bottle of Mr. Clean sat on the floor that needed to be stripped and polyurethaned big-time. Arguing family voices competed with the sound of the World Series on the kitchen TV. God forbid they should turn it off in the middle of a crisis.

  Through the open door at his back, he could hear Danziger outside on the sidewalk, calling more frantically for backup on his radio. Good that he didn’t have the guts to come in yet. More reason for him to feel ashamed and thimble-dicked later.

  Joey followed the sound down the hall, checked the side rooms, then got an angle to see into a kitchen with lots of counter space and a good high ceiling. There was an empty quart of some dumb-ass redneck bourbon next to a pizza box on the Formica counter. The freezer door was open. The cat was eating something off the floor. The wife was waving her arms frantically. And the three children were huddled in a corner near the dishwasher, weeping hysterically with wet swollen faces like they had been caught in a shipwreck. And these were white people? What happened to being the master race?

  “Don’t do it, Daddy.” The oldest kid, a blonde like her mother, was crying the hardest. “Please put the gun down. We love you.”

  Joey stepped into the kitchen with his weapon raised. The smell of burnt rice put him back in his own childhood home for a half second, and a shot of searing hot rage went through him even as the sports announcers on TV nattered on.

  “Daddy, please don’t hurt yourself,” the little girl was saying. “We need you.”

  The father had a .45 pressed to his temple. Maybe a SIG Sauer. It would leave a hole to be sure.

  He was a big galoot who’d been drinking for a while. Tall and broad-shouldered, with a burgeoning beer belly and an unshaven face that was getting much too fleshy for the amount of hair he had left.

  Randy.

  He didn’t deserve that pneumatic, hard-bodied wife he had looking at him imploringly. Not much of a face but she almost made up for it with those tits in a red tube top and tight little buns in show-off spandex shorts. Like she was working double-time to keep herself together while the alleged man of the house was falling apart.

  “Sir, you want to put that weapon down.” Joey aimed at Randy’s center body mass. “Right now.”

  Randy’s sluggish expression became more animated for a second as he took the gun away from his temple and aimed it at Joey instead.

  “Get the fuck outta my house,” he said. “No one wants you here.”

  The hand with the .45 wasn’t as brave as the voice. It was trembling. This kind of loser could probably put the barrel right under his chin and miss. But a gun was a gun, and with only twenty feet between them, there was a chance he’d hit something: shoulder, neck, chest, groin.

  Joey still felt strangely numb, though. Both in the midst of the scene and ten miles above it. Even as he heard Danziger scampering up the hall behind him. The freeze spreading from the membranes in his nose to the rest of his body. Cold and in control. Because he truly didn’t give a shit. Didn’t care about any of them. Whether the whole family lived or died meant nothing. As long as he came out of it undiminished in the eyes of the rookie, who would then tell the rest of them that the sergeant was the man. He’d learned from the house he grew up in that you were either the dominant or the dominated. And it was better to be the dominant. Weakness was worse than fatal in a situation like this. Because a bullet could kill you instantly. But shame took its time doing the same thing, and that was worse.

  “Officer Danziger, please get the rest of them out of here,” he said in a calm, commanding voice. “We don’t want any
accidents.”

  Joey kept his eyes locked onto Randy’s, letting the man know he could see everything he had and thought little of it.

  “Go on now.” Joey glanced at the wife, so she’d understand who had taken charge. “Take care of your children.”

  She threw an anxious look at her husband, who was weaving in place a little, and then at Joey. She knew who had the balls in the house now. And so did Danziger. He hustled the rest of the family out, leaving the two men pointing guns at each other while the Shea Stadium crowd on TV grumbled and the cat licked the linoleum floor.

  “Pussy,” Joey said.

  The front door slammed and Randy looked startled, like it was a shot coming from another direction.

  “You heard me,” Joey said. “You’re a fuckin’ pussy.”

  “Yeah? Would a pussy do this?”

  Randy put the .45 in his mouth, deep-throating the barrel. His legs were still unsteady and there were dark circles under his eyes, but there was nerve in them that hadn’t been there a moment or two before. With his family out of the house, he could complete the action.

  With a sudden thud in his own chest, Joey realized that this wasn’t what he wanted. No credit or glory to an officer arriving and failing to prevent a suicide. The wrong kinds of questions might come up afterward with the Firearms Board. And Danziger, without proper deference, might say the wrong thing.

  “This is how you want your kids to remember you?” Joey asked, trying to get the upper hand back. “Dead from a self-inflicted gunshot?”

  Randy took the barrel out of his mouth. “They’re better off without me,” Randy said in a 16 rpm slur. “I’ve messed up everything. My wife doesn’t even know the half of it…”

  His elbow rose as he pressed the muzzle against the side of his head. Joey felt three more thuds in quick succession echoing within his own chest cavity.

  “Sir, I need you to put the gun down.”

  “Or else what? You’re gonna shoot me?”

  “I will if I have to.”

  “Go ahead. We’re upside down on our mortgage and hundreds of thousands in debt to the Money Store,” Randy said. “Our life insurance is the only way out.”