Sunrise Highway Read online

  The girl was insulated from all of this, in the basement with no access to TV, radio, or Internet. She probably didn’t even know about the neighbors’ preparations, since he’d bricked up the basement windows and the nearest standing house was at least fifty yards down the block. But she started asking questions when she saw him bringing down extra jugs of bottled water and a high-powered flashlight with new batteries, and then watched him install a camera in a corner of the ceiling that transmitted images to an app on his cell phone, so he could keep an eye on her while he was at work.

  “Seriously?” She rattled the chain at him. “You ever think of talking to somebody about your control issues?”

  He was still torn about keeping her around. Back in the day, he would have disposed of her by now, killing her, covering her up and putting the memory in a tidy box, so he could take it out and stroke it once in a while.

  But it was getting more complicated. Part of it was procedural. When he’d started, there were no cell phone pings or GPS devices to track your every move. No search engines. DNA couldn’t reveal your identity by a mere sweaty touch or an accidental spray of spittle. Nowadays, it was getting close to the point where you could just talk in a room and someone would be able to prove you’d been there.

  But it wasn’t only fear and caution keeping her alive. He wasn’t at the mercy of such weak emotions. And it wasn’t just wanting to toy with her and torture her a little longer. Pain and helpless terror no longer excited him the way they used to. Something in him had shifted because something in her had shifted. What he’d made was inside her now. A presence that could enter a room without going through a door. A miracle. The idea of it made him feel as powerful as he did the first time he put his headlights in a woman’s face.

  He’d wondered how he could make this work in the long run. Typical domestic arrangements were out of the question. How could he let her out and about after all that had happened? What was the alternative, though? You saw stories about cretins and fanatics keeping women hostage for years in such circumstances and then photos of the women stumbling into daylight, blinking like moles, and stumbling into the arms of waiting relatives who hadn’t tried that hard to find them.

  He was much smarter and savvier than any of the so-called masterminds. Maybe he could stay under the radar while monitoring every aspect of her environment, create the home and family he’d always wanted, to make sure everything came out right this time.

  All that was required was diligent attention to detail, total resistance to outside influences, and unyielding vigilance.

  All the same, he had an uneasy feeling when he left her with three ready-made meals in the basement that late October morning. The radio in the Jeep said the storm was still at least three miles out at sea, but the clouds were already holding a black mass in the eastern sky and the tide was already rushing in further and faster than usual, splashing up between the boardwalk planks.

  As soon as he arrived at headquarters, he was under siege, fielding a constant stream of emails, texts, and calls from local mayors, town supervisors, and police substations working with volunteers to reroute traffic, barricade roads with poor drainage, and help keep the beaches deserted. His desktop screen was split into multiple views of major intersections and potential trouble spots while subordinates barged in and out of the office with minute-by-minute updates on the storm forecast and street conditions.

  By four o’clock, it was plain that this was no longer a drill. The governor had shut down mass transit in the city the day before and now schools were closed, emergency shelters were open, and there were mandatory evacuations in the surge zones of Babylon, Islip, Southold, and Fire Island. His office was turning into a war room with rising voices, nonstop phones ringing, and everyone’s screens flashing with more and more dire alarms. The Weather Channel was talking about twenty-foot waves and raw sewage in the streets. Then reports came in about fallen power lines sparking in the gutters and homes without electricity starting to catch fire. He tried to project cool-eyed authority behind the desk, but hundred-mile-an-hour winds were howling outside, shaking and battering the windows.

  Every few minutes, he pulled out his cell phone to check on the transmission from his father’s house. The image of the pregnant girl chained up in the basement was oddly reassuring. Sitting there barefoot, tenderly holding her belly and moving her mouth as if she was talking to the unseen presence within. A cold hand gripped his heart. He realized that this was in danger of turning into one of the emotions other people always talked about. Somehow he had been tricked into caring about what happened to her. And the realization scared him as much as the sight of a patrol car’s lights drawing near before a body was buried. Because now he had something to lose.

  The image froze and refused to refresh. Leaving the still life of his prisoner Madonna on his phone. He tried turning it off and back on but the connection was broken. The power had gone off in the neighborhood and the generator hadn’t kicked on. Probably no one’s cell phones were working. She was alone in the house with the baby in her womb. And soon she would know about the water.

  42

  OCTOBER

  2017

  With Mitchell fed up with her—temporarily, she hoped—and B.B. on her personal no-fly list, Lourdes elected to go out to Central Islip on her day off to look through court records and see if she could find anything about Tolliver in the Kim Bergdahl case file. Unsurprisingly, the clerks hemmed and hawed, made furtive phone calls, and pulled out endless forms to be filled out by hand. And then said they had nothing.

  When she came out to the parking lot mid-afternoon, there was a sharpened screwdriver stuck in the left front rear tire of the Camry, which she’d taken because B.B. was holding on to the squad car for the day.

  She had to call around to a nearby tire shop and then call into the squad to make sure they’d pay for the replacement. Then she made another call to the chief of detective’s office, getting permission to hatch a plan she’d had cooking in the back of her mind for a couple of days.

  Despite the bartender’s antipathy toward the chief, Sullivan had heard that Tolliver sometimes hung out at the bar called Legends. She called Sully at the Motor Inn and lured him out with the prospect of a drink and interesting conversation.

  Tolliver’s eyes got wide when he saw the two of them walk in, just after seven o’clock that night. The chief had been sitting at a round table with droopy old Charlie Maslow and a couple of women in slinky dresses who looked like a million dollars from the back and fifty dollars from the front.

  “Hey, chief, I think I have something of yours.” Lourdes walked up to the table.

  “What’s that?” Tolliver tried to keep the party going in his eyes.

  The bar was crowded and the music was loud, but everyone was watching. Obviously he thought that by smiling he could make it look like this was a normal conversation and she was just another chick he’d banged.

  Lourdes put the sharpened screwdriver on the table in front of him. “I think you might have misplaced this,” she said.

  The two women got up from the table. Charlie Maslow angled his chair away.

  “I have no idea what that is.” Tolliver maintained his bon vivant grin. “But pull up a chair, detective. You look stressed.” He glanced over her shoulder at Sullivan. “And tell your older friend to take a load off. I’ll buy you both a round.”

  “Yeah, that’s nice,” Lourdes said. “But I don’t drink when I’m working.”

  “You working now?” Tolliver turned down the corners of his mouth. “Aren’t you the dedicated little public servant?”

  “Actually, I was spending a little extra time out here because I had to change a flat on my car. My friend, Detective Sullivan over here, agreed to meet me here after some asshole stuck a screwdriver in my tire.”

  “How’s it going?” Tolliver gave Sullivan a halfhearted wave.

  Sully dead-eyed him, the full fearsome Golem.

  “Anyway, I figured you
might have been missing your tool.” Lourdes glanced down at the screwdriver. “It’s got some rust on it, but it still has an edge.”

  “Not mine.” Tolliver shrugged and shook his head. “I know where all my tools are.”

  “Do you?” Lourdes let her voice go high. “Hard for me to imagine it could be anybody else’s. But maybe you have people that work for you that don’t do such a good job cleaning up after themselves.”

  Maslow took that as a cue to rise and slide away. “I’ll get us another round.”

  The women followed him away, leaving the chief on his own.

  “What are you trying to accomplish here, detective?” Tolliver asked. “Are you trying to embarrass me on my home court?”

  “I’m not after embarrassment, chief. You know that as well as I do.”

  “Okay, then clue me in. What are you after?”

  “I’m letting you know that I’m pursuing a lead on this Sunrise Highway case and I’m not going to be intimidated,” Lourdes said, playing it out. “Not by a phony traffic stop and not by somebody giving me a flat tire.”

  “If you want roadside service, you’ve come to the wrong place.” Tolliver raised a half-empty stein. “This is a bar, young lady.”

  “I’m just interested.” She leaned down so her face was inches from his. “You’re not just focusing on me because I’m the girl in the squad, are you? Because that would be messed up.”

  He gave her a smile so glassy that she could have sworn he wasn’t just half-drunk but high on drugs. “I notice none of your regular male colleagues are in here with you,” he said. “At least none who are young enough to still be with the NYPD.”

  “Can’t buy me off with a job in your department, chief,” she said.

  “You thinking of somebody we know?” Tolliver asked.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw Sullivan give a subtle headshake, discouraging her from running down B.B. when she was recording the conversation on her cell phone.

  “I can’t speak for any of them,” she said. “But I’d hate to think it’s because you have some deeper problem with women.”

  “Believe me. I got no problems with women.” He broadened his grin. “In fact, my only problem with women is that I have no problem with women.” He glanced at Sullivan, as if he wanted to share the joke. “You know what I mean, big guy?”

  “The lady is the one talking to you,” Sullivan grumbled. “Not me.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree.” Tolliver turned back to Lourdes. “A hundred percent.”

  “Yeah, that’s what Delaney Patterson said as well. About your testimony putting him away.”

  Tolliver’s eyes drifted and his lip curled ever so slightly, revealing the bored delinquent still inside him.

  “That’s history.” He yawned. “Nothing to do with anything going on now.”

  “We’ll see about that, chief. We’re not excluding any possibilities.”

  Everything else in the bar seemed to have faded away. It could have been just the two of them trapped in a stalled elevator.

  “Let me ask you something, Robles,” he said, no longer playing the smile for the room. “Are you still on this case or is this just a personal matter now?” He stared at Sullivan. “And why is this old-timer with you? Is he sweet on you? Or is this something more serious?”

  “It’s not just personal, chief,” she deflected, as stone-faced as she could get with dimples. “We’re pursuing the leads where they take us. Even when one of your officers shoots the son of a potential witness at an Exxon station.”

  “That matter is under investigation by the DA’s office.” Tolliver shrugged. “But I can assure you my officers did nothing wrong. That young man was reaching for a gun when he was shot.”

  “Sure it wasn’t a screwdriver?” She pointed at the tool still lying in front of him.

  “Let me ask you one more time: What are you trying to accomplish here?”

  He absently picked up a thin red cocktail straw that one of the women had abandoned at the table. Then he slowly wrapped it around a finger like he was strangling a vein. She halfway hoped he would spit in her face or try to shove a napkin down her throat, or do something careless that would give her a sample of his DNA that she could try to match to one of the crime scenes.

  Or, failing that, maybe she could goad him into making another mistake after the fact, like calling someone later tonight, whose phone number they could discover through a subpoena.

  “I’m just letting you know that I know who you are,” she said.

  He stared back at her, not just sober but unnaturally focused. As if he had only now decided to finally give her his full undivided attention. It reminded her of the first time she’d been close enough to a tiger at the Bronx Zoo to see that its eyes really were yellow and inhuman, and that its interest in her had a strong element of hunger.

  “I know who you are,” he said. “You’re a shitty little affirmative action hire who only got promoted to fulfill a quota who couldn’t make it in a squad with any real standards. So why don’t you get your fat ass off your high horse before you break its back?”

  “Watch that,” said Sullivan.

  “Or what, grandpa?” Tolliver waved for the women to come back to the table. “Gonna kick my ass? You couldn’t get your leg up that high. Or any other part of you.”

  “Classy,” said Lourdes. “You may want to think of stepping down now. To focus on your personal and legal issues. But I want to let you know in the meantime: if I find another screwdriver where it doesn’t belong, you’re gonna have a more immediate problem.”

  “Hey, miss, look around you.” Tolliver made a sweeping gesture. “This is my world. You are here as guests. If you wish to stay, my offer to buy you a drink still stands. Otherwise, we can continue this conversation in my office, with a recorder running, in the presence of my lawyer. Is that clear to you?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Thanks for stopping by to give me the update.” Tolliver pulled out a chair for one of the returning women. “And be careful drinking and driving out here. My officers are out on the road and an NYPD courtesy card won’t get you out of a ticket.”

  Sullivan tapped her on the shoulder, signaling that the time had come. They walked out together, passing the wary eyes and tight mouths of local off-duty cops packed in at the counter, narrowly resisting the urge to pull her gun when she heard someone mutter, “What a pair, huh?”

  43

  OCTOBER

  2012

  She didn’t know what time the water started coming in, because there were no clocks in the basement.

  With the windows above her head all bricked up, there was no way to distinguish between morning, afternoon, and night either; the only demarcation was when he would show up. Otherwise, she was adrift, with no defined edges, sleeping for hours and waking up in terror, with no idea where she was or whether anyone was looking for her. She didn’t know if they’d had the election or who was president now. There were imaginary conversations with people who weren’t present and hallucinations involving rodents doing the Macarena and armies of singing cockroaches. And of all the things he’d done to her—the handcuffs, the beatings, the weird sex, even the way he’d roofied her and brought her down here in the first place—stealing the sun and the moon was the worst. Because it deprived her of the one thing every man and woman on earth deserved: a sense of time passing.

  So she’d taken it back. Or maybe it had been given back to her. The life growing inside her was a clock. It reestablished a schedule for her. It put order in her life. The baby slept in the day and kicked at night. It told her when to eat and when to rest. It demanded she pay attention to the moment and forget about the past and the future. Especially now, as the water seeping between spaces in the bricks began to stream down the wall. She looked around and saw it was leaking through in other places, dripping from the egg cartons on the ceiling and dribbling from cracks in the other walls.

  “Hey, what is
this?” she called out to the camera he’d put up in a corner of the ceiling—no idea whether it had a microphone. “You seeing what’s happening here?”

  She heard a spatter and saw that more water was spilling down over the landing where the stairs had been torn out.

  “Hey, yo.” She waved at the camera. “I think you must have left the bath running upstairs or something.”

  She looked down and saw there was already an inch on the floor, rising up toward her bare ankles. Something scurried behind the boiler in the corner; it could have been one of the rats she’d seen earlier, making its escape through a tiny hole. Water bugs were crawling along the badly plastered spots on the walls. Because he’d done most of the work down here himself, the basement had a hurried, slapped-together look. And if he’d done an equally crap job with the plumbing, this could be a burst water pipe. But then it dawned on her that a pipe wouldn’t be gushing from so many different places at once.

  It was pouring from the brickwork filling the window frame, dribbling down onto the toilet in the corner, and running freely down the opposite wall near the refrigerator where she thought she’d seen the face of Jesus in the growing mold.

  “Hey, a little help here?” she yelled, pulling against the handcuff chain. “There’s a fuckin’ pregnant woman in this house.”

  The water was almost up to her knees. It was brownish from the sediment on the floor and it had squiggles in it that she hoped weren’t worms or live bacteria of some kind.

  “Yo, for real now,” she cried out. “Somebody help me. I’m all alone.”

  How was an old black gospel lady’s voice coming out of her mouth? Her mother had no religion except for dollars and crack, and her grandparents had only managed to drag her screaming and kicking to church three or four times before she cut loose.

  The basement was flooding more quickly now, water rising up and soaking the baggy blue running shorts and the sweatshirt he’d given her.