Книга - Vengeance Road

Vengeance Road
Rick Mofina


A woman’s body lies twisted in a shallow grave. Carved into her bloody skin, one word. Guilty.A trail of bodies litters America’s loneliest highways, their branded corpses marking a path of brutal retribution. This killer is judge, jury - executioner. For a detective hiding a dark secret and an ordinary man willing to put his life on the line to stop the killing spree is running out.Judgement day has come. Who is ready to die?












Praise for

RICK MOFINA


“A lightning-paced thriller with lean, tense writing … Mofina really knows how to make the story fly.”

—Tess Gerritsen, New York Times bestselling author on A Perfect Grave

“At full-throttle from the first page and doesn’t let up till the last.”

—Linwood Barclay on Every Fear

“A snappy action-packed, hard-to-put-down thriller.”

—Daily Mail on The Dying Hour

“Rick Mofina keeps you turning the pages with characters you care about, a believable plot and as many twists as it takes to keep the suspense at a high level until the shattering conclusion.”

—Peter Robinson on The Dying Hour

“It moves like a tornado”

—James Patterson on Six Seconds

“Grabs your gut—and your heart—in the opening scenes and never lets go.”

—Jeffery Deaver on Six Seconds

“Classic virtues but tomorrow’s subjects—everything we need from a great thriller.”

—Lee Child on Six Seconds


Also by Rick Mofina

SIX SECONDS

Jason Wade novels

THE DYING HOUR

EVERY FEAR

PERFECT GRAVE

A Jack Gannon novel

VENGEANCE ROAD

Coming soon from MIRA books

THE PANIC ZONE


vengeance

road

RICK MOFINA














www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


This book is for Barbara




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


Thank you, Amy Moore-Benson

My thanks to the New York State Police.

Thank you to Valerie Gray, Dianne Moggy, Catherine Burke and the excellent editorial, marketing, sales and PR teams at MIRA Books. As always, I am indebted to Wendy Dudley. I also thank my friends in the news business for their help and support; in particular, Sheldon Alberts, Washington Bureau Chief for CanWest News Service, Glen Miller, Metro, Juliet Williams, Associated Press, Sacramento, California, Bruce DeSilva and Vinnee Tong, Associated Press, New York. Also Lou Clancy, Eric Dawson, Jamie Portman, Mike Gillespie, colleagues past and present with the Calgary Herald, Ottawa Citizen, CanWest News, Canadian Press, Reuters, the Toronto Star, Globe and Mail and so many others.

You know who you are.

Thanks to Ginnie Roeglin, Tod Jones, David Fuller, Steve Fisher, Lorelle Gilpin, Sue Knowles, David Wright and everyone at The C.C. I am grateful to Pennie Clark Ianniciello, Shana Rawers, Wendi Wambolt and Melissa McMeekin.

Very special thanks to Laura and Michael.

Again, I am indebted to sales representatives, booksellers and librarians for putting my work in your hands. Which brings me to you, the reader—the most critical part of the entire enterprise.

Thank you very much for your time, for without you, a book remains an untold tale. I hope you enjoyed the ride and will check out my earlier books while watching for my next one. I welcome your feedback. Drop by at www.rickmofina.com, subscribe to my newsletter and send me a note.


I am the man that hath seen affliction

by the rod of his wrath.

He hath led me, and brought me into

darkness, but not into light.

Surely against me is he turned; he turneth

his hand against me all the day.

—Lamentations 3:1–3

The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones.

—William Shakespeare

Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene ii




1


The taxi crawled along a road that knifed into the night at Buffalo’s eastern edge.

Its brakes squeaked as it halted at the fringe of a vast park.

Jolene Peller gazed toward the woods then paid the driver.

“This is where you want to be dropped off?” he asked.

“Yes. Can you kill the meter and wait for me, please?”

“I can’t, you’re my last fare. Gotta get the cab back.”

“Please, I just have to find my friend.”

The driver handed her a five in change, nodding to the pathway that twisted into darkness beyond the reach of his headlights.

“You’re sure your friend’s down there?”

“Yes, I need to get her home. She’s going through a rough time.”

“It’s a beautiful park, but you know what some people do down there at night?”

Jolene knew.

But she was living another life then. If you could call it living.

“Can’t you wait a bit?” Jolene asked.

“Not on my time. Gotta get the cab back then start my vacation.”

“Please.”

“Look, miss, you seem nice. I’ll take you back now. I’ll give you a break on the fare because it’s on my way. But I ain’t waitin’ while you wander around looking for your problem. Stay or go? What’s it going to be?”

Tonight was all Jolene had to do the right thing.

“I have to stay,” she said.

The driver gave her a suit-yourself shrug and Jolene got out. The taxi lumbered off, its red taillights disappearing, leaving her alone.

She had to do this.

As she walked along the path, she looked at the familiar twinkle of lights from the big suburban homes on the ridge that ringed the parkland half a mile off. When she found Bernice, they’d walk to a corner store then get a cab to Bernice’s apartment. Then Jolene could take another one to the terminal, claim her bags and catch a later bus.

But not before she found Bernice.

Not before she saved her.

And tonight, for one brief moment, she thought she had.

Less than an hour ago they were together in a downtown diner where Jolene had pleaded with her.

“Honey, you’ve got to stop beating yourself up for things that were never your fault.”

Tears rolled down Bernice’s face.

“You’ve got to get yourself clean and finish college.”

“It’s hard, Jo. So hard.”

“I know, but you’ve got to pull yourself out of the life. If I can do it, you can do it. Promise me, right here, right now, that you won’t go out tonight.”

“It hurts. I ache. I need something to get me through one more day. I need the money. I’ll start after tomorrow.”

“No!”

A few people cast sleepy glances at them. Jolene lowered her voice.

“That’s a lie you keep telling yourself. Promise me you won’t go dating tonight, that you will go home.”

“But it hurts.”

Jolene seized Bernice’s hands, entwined their fingers and squeezed hard.

“You’ve got to do this, honey. You can’t accept this life. Promise me you will go home. Promise me, before I get on my bus and leave town.”

“Okay, I promise, Jo.”

“Swear.”

“I swear, Jo.”

Jolene hugged her tight.

But after getting into her taxi and traveling several blocks, Jolene was uncertain. She told the driver to go back so she could check on Bernice.

Sure enough, there she was. At the mouth of a dirty alley, on Niagara, hustling a date. The cab stopped at a light, Jolene gripped her door handle, bracing to jump out and haul Bernice off the street.

But she didn’t.

To hell with that girl.

Jolene told the driver to keep going to the terminal. She didn’t need this shit. Not now. She was leaving for Florida tonight to build a new life for herself and her little boy. Bernice was an adult, old enough to take care of herself.

Jolene had tried to help.

She really had.

But with each passing block, her guilt grew. Soon the neon blurred. Brushing away her tears, Jolene cursed. She couldn’t leave Buffalo tonight with that last image of her friend standing in her memory.

Bernice was an addict. She was sick. She needed help. Jolene was her lifeline.

And tonight, every instinct told Jolene that something was wrong.

The driver muttered when she requested he take her back to the alley. But by the time they’d returned, Bernice and the man she’d been hustling were gone.

Jolene had a bad feeling.

But she knew exactly where they’d be.

Down here, by the creek.

Funny, Jolene thought, during the day this was a middle-class sanctuary where people walked, jogged, even took wedding pictures near the water.

And dreamed.

Most locals, living their happy lives, were unaware that after dark, their park was where hookers took their dates.

It was where you left the real world; where you buried your dignity; where each time you used your body to survive, a piece of you died.

Jolene knew it from her former life; the life she’d escaped when she had Cody. He was her number-one reason for getting out. She’d vowed he would not have a junkie mother selling herself for dope.

He deserved better.

So did Bernice.

She’d been abandoned, abused, but had worked so hard to get into college, only to face a setback that led to drugs, which pushed her here. The tragedy of it was that she was only months away from becoming a certified nurse’s aide.

Bernice didn’t belong in this life.

Date or no date, Jolene was going to find her and drag her ass home, if it was the last thing she did. Jolene was not afraid to come down here at night. She knew the area and knew how to handle herself.

She had her pepper spray.

She arrived at the dirt parking lot, part of an old earthen service road that bordered the pathway meandering alongside the creek. The lot was empty.

No sign of anybody.

As crickets chirped, Jolene took stock of the area and the treetops silhouetted against a three-quarter moon. She knew the hidden paths and meadows, where drugs and dates were taken and deals completed.

Through a grove, she saw a glint of chrome, like a grille from a vehicle parked in a far-off lot. Possibly a truck. Jolene headed that way. She was nearly there when a scream stopped her cold.

“Nooo! Oh God nooo! Help me!”

The tiny hairs on the back of Jolene’s neck stood up.

Bernice!

Her cry came from the darkest section of the forest near the creek. Jolene rushed to it. Branches slapped at her face, tugged at her clothing.

The growth was thicker than she’d remembered. Her eyes had not adjusted; she was running blind over the undulating terrain.

She stepped on nothing and the ground rose to smack her.

She scrambled to her feet and kept going.

There was movement ahead, shadow play in the moonlight.

Noises.

Jolene didn’t make a sound as she reached into her bag, her fingers wrapping around her pepper spray.

A blast to the creep’s face. A kick in the groin. Jolene had done it before with freaks who’d tried to choke her.

She swallowed hard, ready to fight. Heart pumping, she strained to see what awaited her. Someone was moving; she glimpsed a figure.

Bernice? Was that her face in the ground?

A metallic clank.

Tools? What was going on?

The air exploded next to Jolene with a flap and flutter of a terrified bird screeching to the sky. Startled, Jolene stepped away and fell, crashing through a dried thicket.

She was unhurt.

The air was dead still.

A figure was listening.

Jolene froze.

The figure was thinking.

Her blood thundered in her ears.

A twig snapped. The figure was approaching.

She held her breath.

It was getting closer.

All of her senses were screaming.

Her fingers probed the earth but she was unable to find her bag. Frantic, she clawed the dirt for her pepper spray, a rock, a branch.

Anything.

Her pulse galloped, she didn’t breathe. After several agonizing moments, everything subsided. The threat seemed to pass with a sudden gust that rustled the treetops.

Oh, thank God.

Jolene collected herself to resume looking for Bernice, when she was hit square in the face by a blazing light.

Squinting, she raised her hands against the intensity. Someone grunted, a shadow strobed. She ran but fireworks exploded in her head, hurling her into nothingness.




2


What was that?

The next morning, Jack Gannon, a reporter at the Buffalo Sentinel, picked up a trace of tension on the paper’s emergency scanners.

An array of them chattered at the police desk across the newsroom from where he sat.

Sounds like something’s going on in a park, he thought as a burst of coded dispatches echoed in the quiet of the empty metro section.

Not many reporters were in yet.

Gannon was not on cop-desk duty today, but he’d cut his teeth there years ago, chasing fires, murders and everyday tragedies. It left him with the skill to pluck a key piece of data from the chaotic cross talk squawking from metro Buffalo’s police, fire and paramedic agencies.

Like a hint of stress in a dispatcher’s voice, he thought as he picked out another partial transmission.

Somebody had just called for the medical examiner.

The reporter on scanner duty better know about this.

For the last two weeks the assignment desk had promised to keep Gannon free to chase a tip he’d had on a possible Buffalo link to a woman missing from New England.

He needed a good story.

But this business with the police radios troubled him.

Scanners were the lifeblood of a newspaper. And no reporter worth a damn risked missing something that a competitor might catch, especially in these days of melting advertising and shrinking circulation.

Did anyone know about this call for the medical examiner?

He glanced over his computer monitor toward the police desk at the far side of the newsroom, unable to tell who, if anyone, was listening.

“Jeff!” He called to the news assistant but got no response.

Gannon walked across the newsroom, which took up the north side of the fourteenth floor and looked out to Lake Erie.

The place was empty, a portrait of a dying industry, he thought.

A couple of bored Web-edition editors worked at desks cluttered with notebooks, coffee cups and assorted crap. A bank of flat-screen TV monitors tilted down from the ceiling. The sets were tuned to news channels with the volume turned low.

Gannon saw nothing on any police activity anywhere.

He stopped cold at the cop desk.

“What the hell’s this?”

No one was there listening to the radios.

Doesn’t anyone give a damn about news anymore? This is how we get beat on stories.

He did duty here last week. This week it was someone else’s job.

“Jeff!” he shouted to the news assistant who was proofreading something on his monitor. “Who’s on the scanners this morning?”

“Carson. He’s up at the Falls. Thought a kid had gone over but turns out he dropped his jacket in the river. Carson blew a tire on his way back here.”

“Who’s backing him up?” Gannon asked.

“Sharon Langford. I think she went to have coffee with a source.”

“Langford? She hates cop stories.”

Just then one of the radios carried a transmission from the same dispatcher who’d concerned Gannon.

“… copy … they’re rolling to Ellicott and the park now … ten-four.”

Calling in the M.E. means you have a death. It could be natural, a jogger suffering a heart attack. It could be accidental, like a drowning.

Or it could be a homicide.

Gannon reached down, tried to lock on the frequency but was too late. He cursed, returned to his desk, kicked into his old crime-reporter mode, called Buffalo PD and pressed for information on Ellicott.

“I got nothing for you,” the officer said.

All right. Let’s try Cheektowaga.

“We got people there but it’s not our lead.” The officer refused to elaborate.

How about Amherst PD?

“We’ve got nothing. Zip.”

This thing must have fallen into a jurisdictional gray zone, he thought as he called Ascension Park PD.

“We’re supporting out there.”

Supporting? He had something.

“What’s going on?”

“That’s all I know. Did you try ECSO?” said the woman who answered for Ascension Park.

A deputy with the Erie County Sheriff’s Office said, “Yeah, we’ve got people there, but the SP is your best bet.”

He called the New York State Police at Clarence Barracks. Trooper Felton answered but put him on hold, thrusting Gannon into Bruce Springsteen’s “The River.”

Listening to the song, Gannon considered the faded news clippings pinned to low walls around his desk, his best stories, and the dream he’d pretty much buried.

He never made it to New York City.

Here he was, still working in Buffalo.

The line clicked, cutting Springsteen off.

“Sorry,” Felton said, “you’re calling from the Sentinel about Ellicott Creek?”

“Yes. What do you have going on out there?”

“We’re investigating the discovery of a body.”

“Do you have a homicide?”

“Too soon to say.”

“Is it a male or female? Do you have an ID, or an age?”

“Cool your jets there. You’re the first to call. Our homicide guys are there, but that’s routine. I got nothing more to release yet.”

“Who made the find?”

“Buddy, I’ve got to go.”

A body in Ellicott. That was a nice area.

He had to check it out.

He tucked his notebook into the rear pocket of his jeans and grabbed his jacket, glancing at the senior editors in the morning story meeting in the glass-walled room at the far west side.

Likely discussing pensions, rather than stories.

“Jeff, tell the desk I’m heading to Ellicott Creek.” He tore a page from his notebook with the location mapped out. “Get a shooter rolling to this spot. We may have a homicide.”

And I may have a story.




3


Gannon hurried to the Sentinel’s parking lot and his car, a used Pontiac Vibe, with a chipped windshield and a dented rear fender.

The paper was downtown near Scott and Washington, not far from the arena where the Sabres played. The fastest way to the scene was the Niagara leg of the New York State Thruway to 90 north.

Wheeling out, with Springsteen in his head, Gannon questioned where he was going with his life. He was thirty-four, single and had spent the last ten years at the Buffalo Sentinel.

He looked out at the city, his city.

And there was no escaping it.

Ever since he was a kid, all he wanted to be was a reporter, a reporter in New York City. And it almost happened a while back after he broke a huge story behind a jetliner’s crash into Lake Erie.

It earned him a Pulitzer nomination and job offers in Manhattan.

But he didn’t win the prize and the offers evaporated.

Now it looked like he’d never get to New York. Maybe this reporter thing wasn’t meant to be? Maybe he should do something else?

No way.

Being a reporter was written in his DNA.

One more year.

He remembered the ultimatum he’d given himself at the funeral.

One more year to land a reporting job in New York City.

Or what?

He didn’t know, because this stupid dream was all he had. His mother was dead. His father was dead. His sister was—well, she was gone. His ultimatum kept him going. The ultimatum he’d given himself after they’d lowered his parents’ caskets into the ground eleven months ago.

Time was running out.

Who knows? Maybe the story he needed was right here, he told himself while navigating his way closer to the scene, near Ellicott Creek.

It was on the fringes of a lush park.

Flashing emergency lights splashed the trees in blood red as he pulled up to a knot of police vehicles.

Uniformed officers were clustered at the tape. Gannon saw nothing beyond them but dense forest, as a stone-faced officer eyed his ID tag then assessed him.

“It’s way in there. There’s no chance you media maggots are getting any pictures of anything today.”

The others snickered.

Gannon shrugged it off. He’d been to more homicides than this asshole. Besides, guys like that never deterred him. If anything, he thought, tapping his notebook to his thigh, they made him better.

All right, pal, if there’s a story here, I’m going to find it.

After some thirty minutes of watching detectives in suits, and forensics people in overalls, walk in and out of the forest, Gannon was able to buttonhole a state police investigator with a clipboard heading to his unmarked sedan.

“Hey, Jack Gannon from the Buffalo Sentinel. Are you the lead?”

“No, just helping out.”

“What do you have?”

Gannon stole a glimpse of the data on his clipboard. Looked like statements.

“We’re going to put out a release later,” the investigator said.

“Can you give me a little information now?”

“We don’t have much, just basics.”

“I’ll take anything.”

“A couple of walkers discovered a female body this morning.”

“Is it a homicide?”

“Looks that way.”

“What age and race is the victim?” Gannon asked.

“I’d put her in her twenties. White or Native American. Not sure.”

“Got an ID?”

“Not confirmed. We need an autopsy for that.”

“Can I talk to the walkers?”

“No, they went home. It was a disturbing scene.”

“Disturbing? How?”

“I can’t say any more. Look, I’m not the lead.”

“Can I get your name, or card?”

“No, no, I don’t want to be quoted.”

That was all Gannon could get and he phoned it in for the Web edition, putting “disturbing scene” in his lead. In the time that followed, more news teams arrived and Lee Watson, a Sentinel news photographer, called Gannon’s cell phone sounding distant against a drone.

“What’s up, are you in a blender, Lee?” Gannon asked.

“I’m in a rented Cessna. The paper wants an aerial shot of the scene.”

Gannon looked up at the small plane.

“Watch for Brandy Somebody looking for you,” Watson said. “She’s the freelancer they’re sending to shoot the ground. Point out anything for her.”

When Brandy McCoy, a gum-snapping freelancer, arrived, the first thing Gannon did was lead her from the press pack and cops at the tape to the unmarked car belonging to the investigator he’d talked to earlier.

The detective had gone back into the woods. His car was empty, except for his clipboard on the passenger seat. Gannon checked to ensure no one could see what he and the photographer were doing.

“Zoom in and shoot the pages on the clipboard. I need the information.”

“Sure.”

Brandy’s jaw worked hard on bubble gum as she shot a few frames then showed Gannon.

“Good,” he said, jotting information down and leaving. “My car’s over here, come on.”



Twenty minutes later, Gannon and Brandy were walking to the front door of the upscale colonial house of Helen Dodd. She was a real estate broker, and her friend, Kim Landon, owned an art gallery in Williamsville, according to the information Gannon had gleaned from the police statements.

Gannon thought having Brandy accompany him would help. Barely out of her teens, she was nonthreatening, especially with that sunny gum-chewing smile.

As they reached the door, it opened to two women hugging goodbye.

“Excuse us,” he said. “I’m Jack Gannon, and this is Brandy McCoy. We’re with the Buffalo Sentinel. We’re looking for Helen Dodd and Kim Landon?”

Surprised, the two women looked at each other.

“Would that be you?”

Kim nodded. Helen was uneasy. Both women looked as though they had been crying. Gannon didn’t want to lose them.

“Can we talk to you a bit about this morning?” he asked.

“How did you get this address?” Helen Dodd wanted to know.

Gannon said, “Well, we just came from the park, talked to police sources and stuff. We understand you found the woman.”

Awkward silence followed until Brandy punctuated it with a prompt.

“It must’ve been terrible.”

Kim resumed nodding.

“It was horrible,” Kim said.

“May I take notes?” Gannon asked.

“I don’t know.” Helen eyed their press tags. “You’re going to put this in the Sentinel?”

“Yes, for the story we’re doing,” Gannon said.

“For as long as I live, I’ll never forget it,” Kim started. “At first we thought it was a joke. When you see something like this, it makes you appreciate what’s important. It was just so horrible. I mean, neighbourhood kids play in that park.”

“I hope they catch the monster who did it,” Helen said. “I’m calling my home-security company to make sure they keep an eye on my house.”

“Can you walk us through how you found her?” Gannon asked.

“We take a regular morning walk in that area and spotted it. Her,” Kim said. “At first she looked like a mannequin, entangled in shrubs and small trees. We didn’t get too close once we realized what it was.”

“Can you tell me exactly what you saw?” Gannon asked.

“We’d heard stories about what happens in there at night, which I never believed until now. We saw condoms and hypodermic needles,” Kim said.

“She was in a shallow grave,” Helen said. “We saw dark hair, an arm bent over a head in a swimmer’s posture, like she was breaking the surface of the earth.”

After they finished, Gannon dropped Brandy off at the scene to keep vigil until they removed the body.

He had to get back to the newsroom.

This was shaping up to be a grisly homicide, he thought, settling in at his desk. While eating a club sandwich from the cafeteria, he checked regional and state missing-person cases posted online, using the detective’s description of a white or Native American woman in her twenties as his guide.

So many of them fit the general description, he thought, wondering if there was any chance this was linked to that tip he wanted to chase about a missing woman from Vermont or Connecticut. He stared into their faces, reading their information.

Was he staring at the unidentified victim near Ellicott Creek? Who was she? And how did her life come to an end there? She was someone’s daughter, maybe someone’s wife or sister?

He was pierced by a memory of his sister, Cora.

And what became of her life?

He couldn’t dwell on that now and forced himself back to his story.

“Do we have any idea who she is?” Tim Derrick, the assignment editor, had a habit of sneaking up behind reporters and reading over their shoulders.

“Not yet.”

Gannon clicked onto the latest news release from the investigators. He touched his pen to the words “unidentified female, in her twenties.”

“She was sort of half buried in a shallow grave,” Gannon said.

“Cripes,” Derrick said. “Well, we’ve got strong art from the air and the walkers. Front will take your story. Give us about twenty-five inches or so. Make sure the Web people get it.”

“Sure.”

Derrick patted Gannon’s shoulder.

“And nice work.”

“Hey, Tim. Anything more to the rumors going around about more cuts?”

Derrick stuck out his bottom lip, shook his head.

“The way things are in this business, those rumors never go away.”

A few hours later, as Gannon was giving his story a final read through, polishing here and there, his line rang.

“Hi, Jack, it’s Brandy.”

“How you doing there?”

“The medical examiner just moved the body. I got some good shots and sent them in to the photo desk.”

“Thanks, I’ll have a look.”

After he’d finished his story Gannon joined the night editor at the photo desk where he was reviewing the news pictures with Paul Benning, the night photo editor.

“It’s all strong.” Benning clicked through the best frames as he worked on finishing a milk shake.

Here was the sharp overview showing a brilliant yellow tarp isolated like a flag of alarm amid an all-consuming forest, Gannon thought.

Here was the medical examiner’s team, grim-faced with a black body bag strapped to a stretcher, loading it into a van.

Here were Helen Dodd and Kim Landon, tight head shots, shock etched in their faces. Here was Kim, looking off, eyes filled with worry.

“Go back to the aerial,” Gannon said.

Benning sucked the remnants of his shake through a plastic straw.

“You see something?

“Maybe. Can you blow it up?”

Benning enlarged it.

Click after click drew them closer to the tarp and a fleck of white near the left edge. Click after click and the fleck grew, coming into focus as a hand.

The woman’s hand, reaching from the tarp.

Reaching from her grave, as if seizing him in a death plea to tell the world who did this.

Before they did it again.




4


Some thirty-six hours after it had been removed from its shallow grave, the body was autopsied at the Erie County Medical Center, on Grider Street off the Martin Luther King Expressway.

Death was classified a homicide.

Using fingerprints and dental records, the dead woman’s identity was confirmed as being Bernice Tina Hogan, aged twenty-three, of Buffalo, New York. The facts of her death were summarized in a few sentences in a police news release.

Nothing about the pain of her life, Gannon thought as he worked on a long feature about her. After her name had been released, some of her former classmates had contacted him at the paper.

“Bernice had a hard life,” one friend told him.

Bernice never knew her real parents. She’d been told she had some Native American blood, maybe Seneca, and had been raised, for a time, on a reservation. Maybe Allegany, or Cattaraugus. She wasn’t sure. Bernice had never been sure about much in her short life, her friends told him.

Some sent him photos.

She stood stiff and shy in obvious embarrassment; a heavyset girl with low self-esteem who’d been abused by her foster father, who also beat her foster mother.

At first she’d overcome it all. Bernice did well in school, going on to study nursing at Buffalo State, nearly graduating before she was drugged and raped at a party.

“After that happened she was so brokenhearted. It was like she just gave up. She began missing classes,” one friend said.

Bernice had grown addicted to crack. Few people knew that she’d slipped into prostitution as she descended down a path that ended in a makeshift grave under a thicket of twisted maple near Ellicott Creek.

Gannon wanted to talk to Bernice’s family, but no one knew who her foster mom was, or where she lived. So he made a lot of calls over the next few days until he got a lead.

“You didn’t get this from me, but her name is Catherine Field,” a source at the city’s Social Services and Housing Department told him.

Catherine Field was a widowed fifty-nine-year-old diabetic who lived alone on welfare in an older section of the city west of Main. Gannon had gone to the address several times but in vain.

No one was home.

But he refused to give up trying to find her.

Maybe today would be different, he thought as once again he rolled by the home where Catherine had raised Bernice. It was a small two-story frame house built with the optimism that had blossomed when the Second World War ended. Now, with its blistering paint, missing shingles and sagging front porch, it looked more like a tomb for hope.

It sat among the boarded-up houses near a vacant lot where several old men leaned against an eviscerated Pinto and passed around a bottle wrapped in a paper bag.

Memories of his sister rushed at him before he turned his attention back to the story and the house, eyeing it intensely as he drove by. His hopes lifted when he saw a woman in the backyard.

This time he parked out of sight down the block and approached the house from a different street, coming to the back first, where he saw a woman in her fifties, tending a flower garden near the rickety back porch.

“Catherine Field?”

She turned to him, the toll of a hard life evident in the lines that had woven despair on her face. Her red-rimmed eyes stared helplessly at him.

“You are Catherine Field, Bernice Hogan’s foster mom?”

“Who are you?”

“Sorry,” Gannon fished for his photo ID. “Jack Gannon, a reporter for the Buffalo Sentinel.”

As if cued, breezes curled pages of the News and the Sentinel that were on a small table between two chairs. Also on the table: a glass and a bottle of whiskey that was half-empty.

“I’ve been trying to reach you,” he said.

“I was burying my daughter.”

“I’m sorry. My condolences. There was no notice of the arrangements.”

“We wanted to keep it private. My brother had a plot, a small cemetery on a hill overlooking an apple orchard.”

“Where is it?”

“I don’t want to say.”

“I understand. May I talk to you about Bernice?”

“You can try, I’m not in good shape.”

She invited him to sit on the porch. Gannon declined a drink. Catherine poured one for herself, looked at her small garden and spoke softly. She told him that Bernice’s mother was a child, fourteen years old, when she gave her up for adoption.

But Bernice was never adopted. Instead, she was bounced through the system. Catherine and her husband, Raife, a carpenter, became Bernice’s foster parents when Bernice was eleven. By then Bernice was aware that she’d been given up for adoption.

“I loved her and always felt like her mom, but she chose to call me Catherine, never Mom. I think it was her way of emotionally protecting herself because she’d had so many ‘moms.’ No one could ever really be her mother.”

Not long after they got Bernice, Raife started gambling, and drinking. He became violent and abused Bernice and Catherine before she left him.

“I’ll spend my life regretting that I didn’t do more to protect her.”

Catherine considered her glass then sipped from it.

“She was such a bright girl. Always reading. I was so pleased when she left home to get her own apartment and start college. So proud. She was on her way. She volunteered at a hospice in Niagara Falls. I just knew she was going to make it. Then the bad thing happened.”

“Her friends told me about the party.”

“They think someone slipped something in her drink. She never overcame it. She turned to drugs to deal with it. She wouldn’t talk to me or anyone, but I heard that when she ran up drug debts, she turned to the street.”

Tears rolled down Catherine’s face.

“When was the last time you saw, or talked, to her?”

Catherine wiped her tears and sipped from her glass.

“She called me about a month ago and said she was going to try to get clean, try to get off the street. Some friends were trying to help her.”

“Did she say who those friends were?”

Catherine shook her head.

“You can’t print anything I’ve just told you.”

“But I’m researching your daughter’s death for a news story. I have to.”

“No. You can’t print anything.”

“Catherine, I identified myself as a reporter. I’ve been taking notes. This tragedy is already public. Now, did Bernice say anything about anyone possibly harming her?”

“I’m not supposed to say anything. They told me not to talk to the press.”

“Who?”

Catherine stood.

“Please, you can’t print anything. You have to go.”

“Wait, who told you not to say anything?”

Several moments passed.

“At least tell me who told you not to speak to the press about your daughter’s murder.”

She looked at him long and hard.

“The police.”




5


Two days after her corpse had been identified, Bernice Hogan’s shy smile haunted Gannon from the Sentinel’s front page.

Her picture ran under the headline:



Murder of a brokenhearted woman

Nursing student’s tragic path



Here was a troubled young woman whose life held promise. A woman who, despite the cruelty she’d endured, had been striving to devote herself to comforting others. His compassionate profile was longer than his earlier news stories and contained information unknown to most people, including his competition.

Not bad, he thought, sitting at his desk, rereading his feature in that morning’s print and online editions.

Tim Derrick swung by, drinking coffee from a mug bearing the paper’s logo.

“Nate likes what you did,” Derrick indicated the corner office of Nate Fowler, the paper’s managing editor, the man who controlled the lives of seventy-five people in editorial. Invoking his name gave currency to any instructions as quickly as it made people uneasy.

Fowler was not a journalist. He was a Machiavellian bureaucrat and Gannon did not mesh with him as well as he did with the other editors.

“Did he say anything else?” Gannon asked.

“He wants you to stay exclusively on the murder story, do whatever you can to make sure we own it. He said we need hits like this to boost circulation and stay alive.” Derrick pointed his finger gunlike at Gannon’s old Pulitzer-nominated clips and winked. “And if anyone’s going to take it to the end zone, it’s you.”

Gannon was not so optimistic.

He needed a strong follow-up today but faced a problem.

The New York State Police led the Hogan investigation and he didn’t know the lead detectives. He looked at their names on the last news release, Investigators Michael Brent and Roxanne Esko.

He’d put in calls to them but none were returned. He could go around them, but it meant asking sources to go out on a limb by leaking information to him.

He had sources everywhere: the Buffalo homicide squad, Erie County, Amherst, Cheektowaga, the FBI, Customs and Border Protection, the DEA, the U.S. Marshals Service, pretty much every agency in the region.

But nobody was saying much.

Maybe it went back to what Catherine Field had said about the police telling her not to speak to the press. At first he hadn’t been concerned because detectives often asked relatives of victims not to speak to reporters, especially during the early days of an investigation.

But now, as he sat at his computer searching for a new angle, he wondered if it was a factor here. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something.

“That Hogan case is sealed, man,” one source had told him. “But I heard that some of the people close to it were rattled by what the guy had done to her. I heard that it pushes the limits of comprehension.”

Another source said that a number of law enforcement agencies were called in to help, possibly because of the area where she was found, and possibly because of other complications.

“I’ll tell you something nobody in the press knows,” the source said. “There’s a closed-door case-status meeting with a lot of cops from a lot of jurisdictions. It’s been going on all morning out at Clarence Barracks.”

Gannon grabbed his jacket.

He’d go out there and see if anyone would talk to him.

The New York State Police patrol east and northeast Erie County from the drowsy suburb of Clarence, east of Buffalo. Clarence Barracks was on Main Street, housed in a plain one-story building.

When Gannon arrived, the woman at the reception desk was twirling her pen and talking on the phone.

“I’ve been temping all week, just when they get this big case … meeting after meeting, people coming, people going—one second, Charlene.” She clamped her hand over the phone. “May I help you?”

“I’d like to see Michael Brent or Roxanne Esko. I’m with the Buffalo—“

“They’re all in the meeting, third door on the right.” She pointed down the hall with her pen. “I’m supposed to send everybody there.” She went back to her conversation. “What’s that? She’s pregnant! OH MY GOD! How many is that now?”

“But I’m with the Buffalo Sentinel.”

Ignoring what he’d said, the receptionist pointed him down the hall.

“Go,” she told Gannon. “It’s all right. Everybody’s in the meeting.”

He hesitated for as long as it took the receptionist to buzz him through the security door. As he went down the hall he could almost hear the floor cracking under him for he was treading on thin ethical ice. Through innocent circumstance he’d gained entrance to the inner sanctum of the investigation of Bernice Hogan’s murder. The door to the meeting was half-open. He could hear loud voices.

How should he play this?

He’d knock on the door, identify himself then request to speak to Brent or Esko. They’d likely shoo him away, have him wait at reception.

At that instant the door opened and a man he didn’t recognize exited, talking on his cell phone. Gannon turned and bent over a water fountain as the man, his tie loosened, shirtsleeves rolled up, whisked by him to the opposite end of the hall talking loudly on his cell.

“Tell Walt this Hogan thing is going to be a ballbuster,” he said into the phone. “No one will believe where they’re going with it. Yeah, they’re keeping a tight lid on this. Yeah, I got to get back.”

The man returned to the room and Gannon inched closer to the door.

It remained partially opened. Voices of people arguing spilled from it.

“I don’t buy it.”

“Look at what we know so far.”

“What you have so far is hearsay, Mike!”

Gannon’s breathing quickened. As he inched closer he got a limited view of a large whiteboard. He glimpsed a patch of handwritten times, dates, streets, arrows, then a clear view of initials written in blue marker under the heading “Suspect.” The initials on the board were blocked by an open hand slapping it to stress the point someone was making.

“Given all that we’ve got so far, all that we’re following up with, this guy is our suspect and the focus of our investigation.”

The hand vanished.

Gannon’s heart beat faster as he glanced around to be sure no one could see him. He stepped closer and saw the initials of the suspect.

K.S.

Who was that?

“It’s bullshit, Mike, I’m telling you!”

For an instant Gannon caught sight of someone he knew.

“How can you be so sure? We just don’t buy it.”

“It’s not a done deal. Listen, we’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of us, but based on what we’ve got, everything points to him. He’s the key.”

“Let’s see if I have this right. Based on the things a couple of crack hoes on Niagara told you, you’re telling us that a cop, a decorated detective, is your suspect for Hogan?”

A cop?

Gannon froze.

Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.




6


Gannon turned around to see the receptionist’s puzzled face.

“Aren’t you going to go in?” she asked, holding a stack of files she appeared to be delivering.

“No, I was just leaving.” He kept his voice down as he walked to the door. “I have to go.”

“Well, I forgot to have you sign in,” she said. “But if you’re done I guess it doesn’t matter.”

Gannon waved his thanks, headed to his car, hurrying when he got to the lot. He pulled away, a thousand concerns shotgunning through his mind as he struggled to concentrate on what he’d heard.

A detective was the prime suspect in Bernice Hogan’s murder.

This was big. Huge.

He wouldn’t alert the desk yet, not until he nailed it. He had to keep this to himself until he had it in the bag.

Never oversell a story.

First things first.

He had to confirm the name behind K.S. and the police department the suspect worked for. He had an idea and drove downtown to the headquarters of the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library system. The building took up two city blocks in Lafayette Square.

He went to the public computer terminals and logged into the databases for the city of Buffalo employee listings by department. The Buffalo Police Department was the area’s largest police force.

Let’s start here, he thought as he began searching the BPD’s directory for all officers whose surname started with an S.

Damn.

They were not ordered alphabetically but rather by seniority. With more than eight hundred officers to check, this would take time. Page after page of names blurred before he found a K.S.

Ken Smith. Then another. Kim Sailor. Then another. Kent Sanders. And another. Kevin Sydowski.

By the time he was done, he’d mined nine possibilities from the Buffalo Police Department. He moved on to the database for officers with the Erie County Sheriff’s Office. After searching some four hundred names there, he had three more candidates: Kal Seroudie, Kyle Sawchuk, and Keen Sanchez.

But there were numerous police departments that served greater Buffalo, like the Cheektowaga Police Department, the Amherst Police Department, Hamburg, North Tonawanda, West Seneca, and Ascension Park, to name a few.

He continued scouring the databases.

As time passed he realized that he would never get through them all. He stopped to think. So far, he had some sixteen possibilities, but this was turning out to be a needle-in-a-haystack search.

He needed help confirming the name.

He’d use another option.

He abandoned the computer, went to a public telephone and called the private number of the person he’d seen at the meeting. He hadn’t talked to his source for some time and was reluctant to push, but the stakes were high.

No one answered.

He left a message then returned to the newsroom, which was in full midday mode with reporters talking on phones, or typing at keyboards, or huddled with editors discussing stories. Gannon had grabbed a BLT in the cafeteria and was threading his way to his desk.

“Hey, Jack, what’ve you got?” Tim Derrick held up his clipboard listing the stories for tomorrow’s paper. “I’m heading into the meeting. I’ve got you skedded for a follow-up on the investigation into Hogan.”

“I’m expecting more information. I’ll let you know if it falls through.”

“Remember, Nate’s counting on you for a scoop.”

As Gannon settled in at his desk and prepared to eat his late lunch, his phone rang. He answered after getting two quick bites down.

“Jack Gannon, Buffalo Sentinel.”

“I got your message.”

The caller’s number was blocked but he knew the voice.

“Thanks. It’s been a while,” he said. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know me. Same old same old. And you?”

“I’m a bit under the gun. I need a favour,” he said.

“Something to do with Hogan?”

“I understand they’re looking at a cop for it?”

Silence hissed in his ear.

“Why ask me?” the caller asked.

“I figured you might know something. I’m poking around everywhere.”

Another stretch of silence passed.

“Listen,” Gannon said, “I need to confirm what I’ve learned. I think the suspect’s initial’s are K.S. and I need to clarify some details.”

After considering the situation, the caller said, “Jack, you have to guarantee that you will protect the source of this information.”

“You have my word.”

“You don’t give my name to anyone.”

“That’s right.”

“It’s true. Your information is solid.”

He stared at nothing. His breathing quickened.

“And this is from inside the investigation?” Gannon asked.

“Absolutely. I was at a case meeting today.”

“Who’s the cop?”

“A detective with the Ascension Park Police Department.”

“Got a name for me?”

“Karl Styebeck.”

Gannon thumbed the cap off of his pen, found a fresh page in his notebook and started writing, oblivious to the newsroom activity.

Styebeck.

“I’ve heard his name before,” Gannon said.

“Check your archives, he’s some kind of hero.”

“You’re absolutely sure we can go with this in the paper?”

“Dead certain.”

“Thank you.”

Pen clamped between his teeth, Gannon launched into a search of the Sentinel’s news databases, the archives of every community newspaper in the region, the Web site of the Ascension Park Police Department and various community sites online.

Soon, he had enough from community papers for a short biography.

Karl Styebeck was a decorated twelve-year veteran who coached children’s sports teams, volunteered for charity runs and gave stranger-awareness talks in Ascension Park schools. On Sundays, he went to church with his wife, Alice, and their son, Taylor. Occasionally, he sang in the choir.

This guy’s a saint.

Several years back Styebeck was off duty, returning from a Bills game, when he came upon a house fire. He’d rushed into the burning building and rescued four children. They’d been left alone by their parents who’d gone to a casino at the Falls. For his bravery, Styebeck was awarded a Chief’s Citation.

Now he’s suspected of murdering a nursing student.

Gannon had to confirm his information with the state police.

He called Clarence Barracks and asked them to convey an urgent message to Michael Brent, the lead investigator.

“What does this concern?” the duty trooper asked.

“Information about the Hogan homicide.”

“I’ll pass your message to him.”

Five minutes later, Gannon’s line rang.

“This is Mike Brent, New York State Police.”

“Thanks for getting back to me. Sir, I’m seeking your reaction for a story we’re preparing for tomorrow’s Sentinel that will report that Detective Karl Styebeck, of the Ascension Park Police Department, is the suspect in the murder of Bernice Hogan.”

Brent let several moments of icy silence pass.

“I cannot confirm your information,” Brent said.

“Is my information wrong?”

Silence.

“I would hold off writing anything like that and save yourself a lot of grief.”

“What? I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“I can’t confirm your information.”

“But you don’t deny it?”

“I think we’re done here.”

“Sir, you have not denied the information that Styebeck is a suspect.”

Brent hung up.

Gannon circled the few notes he’d taken from Brent and weighed matters. Brent wouldn’t have warned him to hold off if his information was wrong. Because if it was wrong Brent wouldn’t have cared, which told Gannon that his information had to be dead on the money.

No way was he going to sit on a story this big and risk letting the Buffalo News scoop him.

There was only one more person to confront with the story.

Karl Styebeck.




7


Karl Styebeck’s address and phone number were not listed, a step most cops took to protect their families.

Gannon had a hunch.

After he finished eating his sandwich, he picked up his phone and punched an internal extension.

“Circulation, Ashley speaking.”

“Hi, Ash. It’s Jack in news.”

“Jack Gannon?”

He’d dated Ashley Rowe a few times after meeting her at the paper’s Christmas party. They got along but they didn’t think it would go anywhere. They’d parted as friends, or so he thought.

“Hello, are you there, Ashley?”

“I’m here, Jack. What is it?”

“Can you check a name for me? See if they’re a subscriber? Styebeck, Karl Styebeck. Karl with a K and last name spelled S-t-y-e-b-e-c-k.”

“You know it’s against policy for us to share the paper’s subscriber list.”

“I completely understand. But it’s for a story.”

Gannon heard an annoyed sigh then typing on her keyboard.

“I cannot tell you that yes, we do have a subscriber by that name and the number and address are as follows.”

Gannon wrote the information down.

“I appreciate this,” he said.

“I’m sure you do.”

Gannon called Karl Styebeck’s home. The phone was answered by a woman.

“No, I’m sorry, Karl’s not here at the moment.” She was pleasant. “He’s coaching the game at the Franklin Diamond. May I take a message?”

“No, no message, thanks.”

Gannon did not identify himself.

He made a copy of Styebeck’s photo from a recent profile of him in one of the community newspapers then drove to Ascension Park.

It was an established middle-class neighbourhood of streets lined with mature trees that arched over well-kept homes. Franklin Diamond encompassed a playground, basketball and tennis courts that were busy with activity. The bleachers at the ball diamond were sprinkled with parents cheering the players of a game in progress.

He neared the benches, getting close enough to scrutinize the coaches until he was satisfied he’d locked onto Styebeck. The cop was leaning against a chest-high chain-link fence, drinking from a can of soda, watching his players in the field.

“Let’s go, Bobbie!” he shouted to his pitcher. “Big swinger!”

Gannon sidled up to him then waited for a lull in the game. Styebeck pulled a rolled roster from his rear pocket when Gannon interrupted.

“Excuse me, Detective Styebeck?”

Deep-set intelligent eyes turned on Gannon from a face as cold and still as a frozen lake. The man was in his early forties, stood an inch or so over six feet. He had a medium build with firm, large upper chest and arms. He wore a ball cap, baseball shirt and jeans.

“Detective Karl Styebeck?”

Styebeck nodded.

“Jack Gannon from the Buffalo Sentinel.”

“The Sentinel? You guys never cover our games.”

“I’m not here for that, sir.”

Gannon nodded to an empty picnic table by a tree, thirty yards away from the first-base line.

“Can we go over there for a moment?” Gannon asked.

“I’m kind of busy. What’s this about?”

“Bernice Hogan.”

“You better show me some ID.”

Gannon produced his press ID. Styebeck examined it, gave it back, then went to the picnic table with Gannon.

“What do you want?” Styebeck folded his arms across his chest.

“I need to ask you a few questions for the record.”

Gannon extended his small recorder.

Styebeck looked at it but didn’t move.

“Sir, I’d like your response to a story we’re running tomorrow that will name you as a suspect in the murder of Bernice Hogan.”

Styebeck’s eyes narrowed.

“What? Is this some kind of joke?”

“I understand that you are a suspect in the murder of Bernice Hogan, the nursing student whose body—”

“I know who she is. I’m working the case with the state police. I don’t know where this is coming from, but your information is unmitigated bullshit.”

“I’m going to quote you, sir.”

Styebeck crushed his soda can in his fist just as two boys wearing jerseys emblazoned with Kowalski’s Towing, ran to them.

“Coach!” one boy said. “We’re up! Who bats?”

Styebeck glared at Gannon.

“T.J. is up, Dallas is on deck.”

“Coach, you’re bleeding!”

The twisted metal had cut into Styebeck’s fingers. Blood dripped from them, dampening the earth. Gannon looked at it, then at Styebeck, catching something cold threading across his eyes.

“I’m fine, fellas. Let’s get back to the game.”

Styebeck held back, leaned into Gannon and dropped his voice. “You better watch yourself, asshole.”

Styebeck returned to the game. Gannon stood alone, puffed his cheeks and exhaled slowly.

Then he checked his recording and walked to his car.

When he’d returned to the Sentinel, Tim Derrick was collecting his briefcase and throwing off to Ward Wallace, the night editor.

Gannon went to them and told them what he had.

“The prime suspect in Bernice Hogan’s murder is a detective working on the investigation.”

Wallace and Derrick exchanged glances.

“Christ, that’s a helluva goddamn story.” Wallace waved over Ed Sikes, the front-page editor. They used the empty city editor’s office for an impromptu conference.

Wallace removed his glasses, tapped them on his chin as other deputy and night editors joined them.

“This is dynamite,” Derrick said. “How’d you get it?”

“I picked it up when I went out to Clarence Barracks. Then I went to a good source who confirmed it.”

“Who’s your source?” Sikes said.

“They’re inside the investigation. I can’t name them.”

“Why not?”

“That was the deal.”

“Policy requires you give us a name, Jack. Even if we don’t use it,” Sikes said.

“I know, but this is deep inside. Come on. I gave my word and this is exactly how we broke the jetliner story. We were tipped by an unnamed source.”

“You also got the document that nailed it,” Sikes said. “Got any paper on this tip? A warrant? A police report? A memo?”

“No, not quite.”

“What do you mean, ‘not quite'?”

“My information is solid.”

“Jack, is your source on this information a cop?” Wallace asked.

“Yes.”

“With the New York State Police?”

“My source is a cop inside the investigation. That’s as far as I want to go. I gave my word.”

“This story’s huge,” Derrick said. “Who else did you call?”

Gannon told them.

“Christ.” Wallace ran his hand through his hair. “We need a story like this. He’s got the investigator on the record, and the suspect.”

“Alleged suspect,” Sikes said. His eyes were like black ball bearings as they bored into Gannon. “You trust your source with everything, Jack? Because with this kind of story, if you’re wrong, we could all pay dearly.”

Gannon took stock of the faces staring at him. Beyond the office, a few reporters raised their heads to look at the sombre group, curious about what was happening.

“I stand by my story.”

Sikes kept Gannon in his gaze for a long time.

“We’re taking a risk here.”

“I trust my source completely.”

“Write it up,” Sikes said. “I’ll take it for front. Better find a picture of Karl Styebeck.” Then he pointed his finger at Gannon. “You’d better be right about this.”




8


That night in a quiet neighbourhood of Ascension Park, Karl Styebeck sat alone before his television.

It was the only light in his darkened living room. Flickering images lit up the creases of his taut face. As he surfed from channel to channel, he chewed on his thumb while his wife descended the stairs after checking on their son, who’d gone to bed.

“Goodness, why are you keeping it so dark in here?” She swept into the room and switched on a light.

“Keep it off, Alice.”

“Why?”

“Just keep it off.”

“Fine, you vampire.” She smiled and switched the light off. “Don’t you think you’re taking this a little too seriously, Karl?”

“Taking what too seriously?”

“You lost the game and some of the parents got upset. Taylor told me what happened at the diamond.”

“No. It was a good game, could’ve gone either way. Nobody got upset.”

Alice retrieved her needlepoint from the sofa and tapped his shoulder.

“I’m going to need some light, here.” She switched on a low-wattage table lamp and he didn’t object. “Would you find something to watch. I hate it when you channel hop. Men. Sheesh.”

Styebeck landed on a local channel just as it offered a brief news update between commercials, reporting, “No new developments on the murder of Bernice Hogan, the former nursing student from Buffalo State.”

“That’s such a sad case,” Alice said. “Well, Taylor told me some guy you were talking to at the game made you mad.”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“Is it work? You’re awfully pensive these days.”

“Something like that. I’m getting a drink, you want anything?”

“Some water would be nice, thanks.”

In the kitchen Styebeck poured himself a glass of orange juice, stood at the window over the sink, looked out at his yard and continued ruminating.

Immediately after that reporter, Gannon, had confronted him, Styebeck made a round of calls on his cell phone to detective friends. It was odd. Few of them had time to talk, and those that did seemed cagey.

“Yeah,” a cop from Erie County told him. “There was a joint-forces case-status meeting today out at Clarence Barracks. Hush-hush. Mike Brent was running it. You didn’t miss much, just a bunch of wild-ass theories about suspects.”

“Any names come up?”

“Names? No, Karl, they had no names on the board. As far as I’m concerned, Brent’s a prick. They’ve got no evidence and the way he’s headed, he’ll never clear this. Sorry, Karl, I have to go.”

Why hadn’t he been called to that meeting?

Now, as he finished his glass, Styebeck asked himself again.

Why wasn’t he invited to that meeting?

He didn’t know Brent, but he’d talked to him and his partner earlier about his theories on the Hogan homicide. They’d come to him because he had a lot of confidential informants downtown.

That’s what they said.

Then this reporter, Gannon, bushwhacks him with this crazy allegation.

Where the hell was that coming from? What did he know?

“Oh, Karl, I forgot to tell you.” Alice entered the kitchen, startling him. “Some guy called for you when you were out.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say. He didn’t leave a message and the number didn’t come up. I figured it had something to do with the game and told him you were at the park.”

He said nothing.

It was likely Gannon, he thought. Well, he wasn’t worried. There’s no way the Sentinel would run a story based on that B.S. he was peddling. No one could possibly know what he knew about Bernice Hogan’s murder.

“Karl, is something going on? We’ve had quite a number of strange calls over the last few weeks. And you’ve been so edgy. Is there something you’re not telling me?”

Styebeck turned away from his wife and went back to searching the night through the kitchen window.

“No, Alice. It’s all work related. Everything’s fine.”




9


Jolene Peller surfaced through the haze of semiconsciousness.

A low monotonous rattling sounded in her head as memory and awareness fell upon her in ominous drops.

Where was she? What happened?

Bernice.

She’d had a bad feeling and had gone to help Bernice; had followed her into the night where she’d heard pleading.

Bernice begging in the confusion then a scream.

The man.

Jolene had glimpsed him in the chaos and he saw her; hit her with a blazing light, blinding her, locked onto her, chased her, hunted her.

She ran but could not outrun the darkness.

It was a nightmare. She’d had a nightmare. Okay, then wake up.

Wake up!

SHE WAS AWAKE!

Jolene’s heart thumped as her memory gave way to an onslaught of crushing fear.

What was happening?

Bernice? What happened to Bernice?

What’s going to happen to me?

The blood rushing in her ears roared with the droning.

What was that noise?

Why was this happening?

Why her?

The air smelled of old wood, cardboard and something foul. Oh God. Oh God. She trembled, her stomach roiled. She kept her eyes shut tight, fought to stem her mounting hysteria and clear her mind.

Think.

You’re alive.

You’ve got to get out of this.

She was lying on something padded. A disgusting-smelling mattress. Her tongue burned with an awful aftertaste and her jaw ached. Something between her upper and lower teeth was splitting her mouth open. It felt like a leather belt strapped so tight to her head her eyes hurt.

She raised her hand to try to relieve the pressure, but her hands were welded together by something cutting into her wrists. Some sort of binding.

Breathe.

The stench of the air was choking.

Jolene clawed at the buckle at the back of her head in vain. Her nose was clear. If she stayed calm she could breathe.

Did she dare open her eyes?

She had to.

Okay. All right. Easy. Breathe.

She opened them wide to absolute blackness.

She raised her hands to her face and saw nothing. It was as if she’d been disembodied.

As if she were dead.

She was terrified of the dark.

Terrified of being buried alive.

Overcome with vertigo, she was consumed by a sickening sense of whirling and falling. A muffled whimper escaped from deep in her throat and echoed in the silence.

Breathe, she told herself. Stay calm.

You’re alive.

If you’re alive, you can fight to survive. Be strong. Don’t cry. Fight. The earth shifted.

Jolene was jolted across the mattress. Humming, hissing and, now, mechanical grinding grew louder. What was happening? The world started moving.

Jolene’s dark prison was now mobile and gathering speed.




10


The next morning, victory called out to Gannon from his front-page story.

On every street corner with a Buffalo Sentinel newspaper box, his exclusive took up six columns on page one, above the fold, under the headline:

Hero Cop Suspected in College Student’s Murder

This was a clean kill against the competition, the Buffalo News. Those guys had squat. Looking at the bank of news boxes while waiting for a downtown traffic light to change, he savored the rush of pride.

Don’t get cocky. Glory was fleeting in this business, where you’re only as good as your next story.

But a cop? Man, he’d hit this one out of the ballpark.

His story was the line item in the Sentinel’s morning edition. It went to homes, stores and news boxes across Buffalo, across Erie, Niagara and eight other counties; everywhere the Sentinel battled the News for shrinking readership. It also anchored the Sentinel’s Web site, where most people went for their news these days.

He had scored. No doubt about it. Buffalo radio and TV morning news led with the story, wire services picked it up.

It was the win he needed.

The light changed and Gannon continued through traffic, turning into the Sentinel‘s parking lot, concentrating on the reason he’d come in early today: to work on a follow-up. Beating the competition always meant they’d come back at you big-time.

He was not going to lose this one.

He grabbed a paper from the security desk in the lobby before stepping into the elevator. Ascending alone, he studied the front-page photo of Styebeck’s handsome hero face next to one of Bernice.

What a heartbreaker.

During his years on the crime desk, he’d encountered tragedies every day: the deaths of children, school shootings, gang murders, fires, wrecks, calamities, manifestations of evil in every form. He went at things wearing emotional armor.

But something about Bernice Hogan’s tragedy got to him.

Looking at her face, he vowed to see that, in death, she received the respect that had eluded her in life.

The elevator stopped and he went to the newsroom kitchen for coffee.

The best follow-up to this morning’s exclusive would be a feature on Styebeck. He’d go into Styebeck’s life, his upbringing and how he came to be a hero cop and suspected killer. Maybe he’d call some criminal profilers, talk about cases of murderers leading double lives.

He’d need a few days but it might work.

“You’re in early.” Jeff kept his eyes on his computer screen where he was playing solitaire.

“Anything going on out there?”

“It’s deadsville, Jack. Nice hit on the cop. You blew away the Buffalo Snooze.” Jeff nodded to the managing editor’s glass-walled office across the newsroom. “Nate’s been trying to reach you.”

“About what?”

“Don’t know. Can’t be good. I’d give it a minute.”

Gannon didn’t like the scene he saw playing out in the office. Nate Fowler kept jabbing his finger at Ward Wallace who kept throwing up his hands. Their voices were raised but Gannon couldn’t make out what they were saying. As night editor, Wallace never came in at this hour unless there was a problem.

A serious problem.

“What’s going on in there?” Gannon set his coffee down. “What’s Wallace doing here?”

“Beats me. Oh, and there’s a lady here to see you. I told her you usually get in later, but she’s been waiting in reception for about an hour.”

“She say what she wants?”

“No. I’ll get her.”

Gannon did a quick check of e-mails and sipped some coffee before he saw Jeff direct a woman in her fifties toward his desk.

She wore no makeup, had reddened eyes and unkempt hair. Her sweater and slacks had frayed edges. She held a slim file folder, her fingernails were bitten.

“You’re Jack Gannon, the reporter?”

“That’s me. And you are?”

“Mary Peller, and I really need your help, Mr. Gannon.”

“It’s Jack.” Gannon cleared a stack of justice reports from an extra chair for her. “How can I help you?”

“My daughter, Jolene, is missing.”

“Missing? How old is she?” Gannon fished a notebook from a pile, flipped to a fresh page.

“Twenty-six.”

“Twenty-six? What’s the story?”

What came next was a tale Gannon had heard before. Jolene’s dad walked out on them when Jolene was eleven. When Jolene hit her teens, Mary lost her to drugs and the street. A year ago, after Jolene nearly died from overdosing on bad drugs, she started going to church and decided, for the sake of her three-year-old son, Cody, that she had to get clean.

Jolene got a fast-food job, took night courses, and through a service, landed a junior motel manager position in Orlando.

“Jo was over the moon because it was her chance to start a new life. She wasn’t proud of the things she’d done to get drugs …” Mary Peller’s voice trailed off and she stopped to regain her composure. “We don’t have much money, Mr. Gannon. Jo left last week on the bus to Florida. She was supposed to set herself up then return for Cody. But I haven’t heard from her.”

“Nothing?”

“Not a word. She never arrived. She should’ve been there days ago. It’s like she’s vanished.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Police here, police in Florida, social workers. Nobody cares.”

“You consider hiring a private detective?”

“I can’t afford it.”

She passed her folder to him.

“I was hoping you could do a story, it might help me find her. You’re good at finding things out. Please, Mr. Gannon, you’re my only hope.”

Gannon looked at the folder’s contents, beautiful pictures of Jolene and Cody, some letters, personal papers, numbers, addresses, more pictures. One photo stopped him.

Man, she looks like Cora in this one.

A shadow fell over them. When Gannon lifted his head, Nate Fowler was there.

“Excuse us, ma’am,” Fowler said, turning to Gannon. “I need you in my office, now.”

Fowler left.

Gannon closed Mary Peller’s folder, gave her his card and stood.

“Can you leave this file with me?”

“Yes.”

“I won’t guarantee I’ll do a story. But let me look it over. I have to go. One way or the other, I’ll call you.”

Mary Peller took his hand and shook it.

“Thank you. Thank you for listening.”

“Jeff will show you out.”

In Nate Fowler’s office, Ward Wallace’s haggard face conveyed the climate. Gannon had stepped into a shit storm.

“Shut the door.” Nate twisted a rubber band around his fingers while staring at Gannon.

“Jack, as managing editor of this paper I sit on the boards of many charitable organizations that do a lot of good work for this city. Did you know that Detective Karl Styebeck is also a board member of some of these groups?”

He didn’t know that.

“And did you know, Jack, that I was reminded of that fact this morning when I got a wake-up call from the publisher, who got a wake-up call from a police commander, who said your story was wrong?”

“Wrong?”

“He called it a fabrication and demanded a retraction.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Am I smiling?”

“My story’s not wrong.”

“It should’ve been verified before the presses rolled. I should have been called.”

“We called you, Nate,” Wallace said.

“I got in last night off a late flight from Los Angeles and had no messages.” Fowler glared at Wallace, then Gannon. “Give me your source’s name so we can confirm and stand by the story. Otherwise we run a retraction.”

Gannon swallowed, took quick stock of Fowler’s office, the citations, framed news pages, including Gannon’s for the Pulitzer nomination. There were photos of Fowler with city, state and federal politicians. His wife had a power job with the New York State attorney general’s regional office. His brother was married to the publisher’s daughter.

Fowler was a political player and Gannon didn’t trust him.

“I can’t give you my source’s name.”

Nate looked at Wallace then back at Gannon.

“You can’t? Did I hear you right?”

“My source has too much at stake.”

“And you don’t?” Fowler glared at him. “Do you have any documents supporting the story?”

“No.”

Nate Fowler glared at Ward Wallace then Gannon.

“Jesus. So we have nothing in our possession. No warrant, no affidavit, no court record?”

Gannon shook his head.

“Do you have a source or not, Jack?”

“I have a source, but I can’t give them up to anyone. I gave my word. You have to trust me.”

“The hell I do! As an employee conducting business for this company, you are required to advise your managers of your source, or be considered insubordinate.”

“Jack,” Wallace said, “just tell us who your source is and where they work.”

“I can’t. My source would lose more than their job.”

“Job?” Fowler said. “Let me tell you about jobs, Gannon. If we print a retraction, we rupture the paper’s credibility at a time of eroding readership. At a time of possible staff cuts. Do you understand what’s at stake here?”

“I do. I swear my story’s good.”

“Is it? Without so much as a thread of evidence, you’ve accused an outstanding member of this community of murder! A man recognized for putting his life on the line, a man who volunteers to help street people. Your story claims he killed a goddamn prostitute!”

“A human being. A troubled nursing student, that’s what she was.”

“A drug-addicted hooker.”

“My story’s not wrong, you have to trust me.”

“Trust you? We’re way beyond that.” Fowler thrust his finger at Gannon’s face, then the door. “You’re gone!”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m suspending you indefinitely, effective now and without pay.”

“My story’s not wrong, Nate.”

“Then give me your source.”

“I can’t.”

“Then get the hell out of my newsroom.”




11


Gannon left the Sentinel struggling to make sense of what had hit him.

Blood drummed in his ears as he walked through the parking lot to his car. He rested his arms on the Vibe’s roof, letting time pass as he contemplated the building and his options.

He had none.

He’d given his word that he would not give up his source to anyone. Not even his editors. There was too much on the line.

Sentinel workers were arriving. Oblivious to his trouble, some waved. As he watched them, Nate Fowler’s ominous words about staff cuts made his stomach tighten and he drove off.

Navigating through Buffalo’s downtown traffic, he dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, adrenaline still rippling through him.

The fact was Nate Fowler refused to believe his story. The guy had no respect for his own reporters. He didn’t care for the truth. He kowtowed to politics and could not be trusted with sources.

Gannon recalled the advice of Sean Allworth, the paper’s Washington bureau chief, when they’d teamed up last month for a story that never saw publication. It was on state and county real estate contracts.

Fowler had spiked it and that set Allworth off in one of their calls.

“Jack, never give that guy your sources. He’s a snake. When I broke that land development story last year, I had to give him my source. A week later, Fowler’s brother bought some key property. The whole thing stunk.”

Allworth said he’d heard rumors that Fowler was going to run for some state office, and through his wife, was cozy with big backdoor players. “He’ll give up your sources to build alliances. Be careful.”

A popular hero cop like Karl Styebeck could give Fowler a ton of community support, Gannon figured as he stopped at a 7-Eleven lot.

Okay, he was suspended, so now what?

He’d pursue the story on his terms, as an outcast.

Start at square one.

He made a call from a public pay phone and it was answered by the third ring.

“It’s Gannon, you read today’s paper?”

“Yup. Big story.”

“I need to see you.”

“All right, the usual spot, say, half an hour.”

He took the New York State Thruway south to Lackawanna, the former steel town, which was now harvesting the wind. When he got there, he entered the south section of Holy Cross Cemetery.

One of the area’s largest cemeteries, it held over one hundred thousand graves, including those of people who had built this part of the country, immigrants who’d helped dig the Erie Canal, or worked on Great Lakes steamers or in the steel mills.

A good place to bury secrets, he thought as he drove slowly along the graveyard’s eastern edge, to the Garden of Consolation. After parking, he sat on a bench near a stand of oak trees and waited.

Within ten minutes he saw a familiar Chev Impala stop some distance away. A woman got out and started toward him. A white woman about his age, dressed in a lavender T-shirt, dark blazer, jeans and navy leather flat shoes. Her auburn hair was pulled up in a neat bun.

This was Adell Clark, a former FBI agent.

Two years back, he’d covered a botched armored-car heist at a strip mall in Lewiston Heights. The FBI had been tipped to the robbery and moved to thwart it. Clark was on the scene and was shot twice. She returned fire, killing the two suspects, aged twenty and nineteen. They were brothers from Philadelphia.

In the days that followed, Clark agreed to be interviewed. He wrote a feature on the case and they’d kept in touch ever since.

Her recovery had been rough. A bullet was still lodged in her lower back, forcing her to walk a little slower than most people, or endure a lot of pain. “Pills make me loopy, so I never take them.” To this day, the full terms of her disability claim remained tied up in red tape.

Clark was a divorced mother of a little girl who needed expensive drugs to cope with a rare medical condition. They lived in a seventy-year-old two-bedroom house with a leaky roof on Parkview in Lackawanna where Clark ran a one-woman private-detective agency.

She used him as an investigative resource. And he used her. That’s how it was.

Clark lowered herself carefully onto the bench.

“So, Jack, talk to me. How’d it go?”

“I need you to reassure me that our information is solid, Adell.”

“This stays here with you, me and the dead,” she said.

“Of course.”

“After they found Bernice Hogan’s body, SP’s lead detectives called a multi-agency meeting with Buffalo homicide, Erie County, Amherst and several local and federal agencies, including the DEA, BATF, the border people and the FBI.”

“Why?”

“They brainstormed with anyone who’d ever investigated anything linked to prostitution in the Buffalo area,” she said. “I was called in because I’d been involved with the INS on cases that had involved East European gangs smuggling prostitutes into the U.S. across the Canadian border at Niagara Falls.”

“So what about Styebeck?”

“His name came up as a suspect through a vehicle connected to him. By the way, how did you get his initials?”

“Let’s just say I had another source,” he said. “Can you tell me how they connected Styebeck to the case?”

“That information came from hookers. First they saw Bernice arguing with another woman, then they saw Styebeck talking with Bernice Hogan before she vanished. The car’s plate was recorded through a security camera from a building on Niagara. The vehicle was a rental and the rental agency confirmed the renter was Karl Styebeck.”

“So, there’s no doubt he was on the suspect list?”

“None. Zero.”

“But Styebeck’s friends at the meeting got pissed off, said Brent’s statements came from crackhead hoes, and discredited the information. They said Styebeck was likely doing outreach work for his church, or one of his charities. The guy’s a beloved hero. Anyway, his pals appear to be winning support to downplay, or even remove, Styebeck as a suspect.”

“This is dangerous stuff.”

“I thought so, and what troubled me was that I’d heard similar accusations about Styebeck years ago from my confidential informants when I was working the INS case,” Clark said. “I talked to Styebeck back then and got a bad read off of him. Hero or not, he gave me the creeps.”

Clark gazed at the headstones.

“Believe it or not, I was going to call you,” she said.

She gave Gannon a few moments to absorb everything.

“Jack, what’s going on?”

“Somebody high up in police circles called the publisher this morning. They said my story was a fabrication and pressed the paper to retract it. My editors wanted me to name my source.”

“Did you?”

“No. Normally, I would. I’m supposed to tell an editor.”

“So why did you protect me?”

“I don’t trust Nate Fowler, my managing editor. Rumor is, he’s going to make cuts at the paper then take a hefty severance package. A while back, our Washington bureau chief told me Fowler’s going to make a run for office. Maybe the senate or Congress. I think that if I gave him your name, Adell, he’d give you up to ingratiate himself with influential law enforcement types.”

“I could be charged, you know.”

“I know.”

“I could lose custody of my daughter, lose my disability benefits, which are still in dispute. I’d lose everything.”

“That’s why I refused to give you up.”

“So what happened?”

“I’ve been suspended without pay.”

Clark looked off into the distance.

“I’m so sorry, Jack.”

“Don’t be.”

“No matter what anybody says, Styebeck’s a suspect. That’s a fact. And it remains a fact unless they clear him or charge him.”

Clark pressed her hands against the bench, leaning on it hard as she stood.

“At that meeting,” she said, “I was afraid that they were not going to look hard at Styebeck and I started to feel guilty.”

“Why?”

“When I’d heard these stories about Styebeck before, I did nothing. Now …” She turned away. “Jack, if you saw the crime-scene pictures of what Bernice Hogan’s killer did to her … I can’t explain it. Dammit, I helped you because I believed it was the right thing to do.”

A few tense moments passed.

“Thank you for protecting me.”

She touched his shoulder, offered him a weak smile, and then made her way to her car.

Gannon watched her drive off.

He sat alone in the Garden of Consolation, where stone angels watched over him and the dead as he contemplated his next move.

His cell phone rang.

“It’s me,” Adell Clark said. “Just heard on WBEN that there’s a news conference at eleven on the Hogan murder, out at Clarence Barracks.”

“Any idea what it’s about?”

“I don’t know, maybe they’ve got a break in the case.”

“Thanks, Adell. Gotta go.”

As he jogged to his car, Gannon checked his watch. He had just enough time to get out there.




12


The lot at Clarence Barracks was filled with TV trucks and news cars from the Buffalo News, WBEN, Niagara Falls, Batavia, Lockport, campus newspapers and the community Hornet chain, when Gannon arrived.

Indignation pricked at him when he saw a car from the Buffalo Sentinel. Who’d they send? Walking by the Sentinel’s Saturn, he glanced inside for a clue as to who it might be. He saw nothing. Forget it. Besides, he was here on his own, a freelancer.

Inside, he went to the woman at reception, who’d replaced the one he’d encountered earlier.

“I’m here for the news conference.”

“Just sign in and go that way,” she said.

Nearly two dozen news types were stuffed into a small meeting room. A forest of TV cameras on tripods lined the back. Operators made final adjustments as reporters in folding chairs gossiped, gabbed on cell phones, checked Berrys or made notes.

At the head of the room, three men and one woman, each stern-faced, sat behind a table heaped with microphones and recorders.

Bernice Hogan looked upon the gathering from her Buffalo State ID photo, which had been enlarged and posted on the big tan tackboard behind the officers.

A few hundred yards from the room where Gannon stood was a church and the upscale neighborhood of Serenity Bay, with its custom-built homes, clubhouse, tennis courts, beaches and residents who had little interest in the region’s latest murder.

While a few miles west, hidden in the woods near Ellicott Creek, was the shallow grave where Bernice was found.

A sad juxtaposition, Gannon thought, looking from the picture and opening his notebook.

“Let’s get started,” the white-haired man at the table said. “For those who don’t know me, I’m John Parson, captain in command of Troop A, Zone 2. To my left is Lieutenant David Hennesy. To my right, from our Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Investigators Michael Brent and Roxanne Esko, who are heading the investigation into the homicide of Bernice Hogan.

“Lieutenant Hennesy will give you a status update, then we’ll take a few questions.”

Hennesy summarized the case.

“To date we’ve received twenty-seven tips and are following all leads. Of importance are reports of a blue truck, a big-rig tractor without a trailer, possibly with unique markings on the driver’s door. It was seen several times in the Niagara-Lafayette area of Buffalo, prior to Bernice Hogan’s disappearance on the tenth of this month. If anyone has information on a vehicle fitting this description, we’re asking them to call us.”

Murmurs rippled across the room and pages were flipped.

A blue rig. This was new.

“Thank you, Dave,” Parson said. “We’ll take a few questions now. Yes, Cathy from the Observer.“

“Do you have more details on the blue truck?”

“The driver is believed to have had conversations with Bernice Hogan before her disappearance. However, we have no description on the driver, or the year and model of the truck. So we’re appealing to the public.”

“Hold on a second,” Gary Golden, a TV reporter, held up a copy of the Buffalo Sentinel. “With all due respect, seems we’re avoiding the elephant in the room. Is Detective Karl Styebeck of the Ascension Park Police Department your prime suspect? Yes or no?”

After a chorus of throat clearing and an exchange of glances among the four police officials, Michael Brent leaned into the microphones.

“Detective Styebeck is not the focus of this investigation.”

“Is he now, or has he at any time, been a suspect?” Gannon said from the back.

Heads turned to Gannon.

“He is not the focus of this investigation,” Brent said.

“That’s not a denial,” Kip Ramon, from the Buffalo News, said.

“Reports suggesting Karl Styebeck is the key suspect and focus of this investigation are wrong,” Parson said.

“Do you have other suspects? This mysterious blue truck, for instance?” That question came from Pete Martinez from the Sentinel.

“As Dave said, we’re following nearly thirty tips and we have some promising leads.”

“Has Karl Styebeck been ruled out?” Gannon asked.

“We’ve answered that,” Parson said.

“Sir,” Gannon pressed, “you have not answered that question.”

“Has Karl Styebeck been questioned?” Golden asked.

“We’re not going to publicly discuss all details of this case.”

“So you have questioned him?” Golden said.

“Next question,” Parson said, pointing to a reporter from one of the Niagara Falls news stations. “Go ahead, Loretta.”

“Did you find any DNA, fingerprints or usable trace evidence?”

“We’re not going to go into that here,” Parson said. “I think we’ll conclude this for now. We’ll keep you apprised of any developments.”

Several reporters tried to get in last questions. The investigators waved them off as they gathered file folders and left the room. As the conference broke up, Martinez called to Gannon, pointing outside to talk privately.

Martinez was a seasoned general-assignment reporter who could cover anything, a good-natured guy who got along with everyone, including Gannon. They walked alongside the building, to the rear, where they could be alone.

“You’re playing with fire being here, being suspended and all, Jack.”

“Guess you heard what happened?”

“There are no secrets in a newsroom.”

“Well, my story’s not wrong, Pete.”

“I’m not going to judge you, buddy,” Martinez said. “Before you got here, I was talking with Golden and Ramon from the News. Seems nobody can find Styebeck. Any chance you could share any other contact data, Jack?”

“I don’t have anything, sorry. I’m here as a freelancer.”

“Really, for who?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Watch yourself. You’re persona non grata.” Martinez looked around, then stepped closer and dropped his voice. “Nate fully intends to run a retraction if you don’t give up your source. That’s what I’m hearing.”

“I can’t do that, Pete.”

Martinez’s cell phone rang. “I don’t care what you do. I’m just keeping you posted.” Martinez shook Gannon’s hand, answered his call as he headed for his car.

Gannon reviewed his notes, considering the new lead on the blue truck as the sunlight dimmed.

“Well, look who we have here. Mr. Jack Gannon, the legend who almost won a Pulitzer. At last we meet, in the flesh.”

Michael Brent and Roxanne Esko were now standing next to him. He glanced around. No one else was in sight. Esko had car keys and a file folder in her hand.

“Quite an interesting story in your paper today,” Brent said. “Unnamed sources say the darnedest things. Well, we heard something, too.”

Gannon let Brent fill the silence.

“We heard you got fired or something for writing fiction. Care to comment?”

“I stand by my story. I trust my source. It’s that simple.”

“No, it’s not,” Brent said. “Because you and your ‘source,’ whoever they are, don’t have a clue about what’s going on. You don’t know jack shit, Jack.”

Gannon flipped to a clear page, poised his pen.

“Why don’t you enlighten me, Investigator.”

Brent stared at Gannon’s notebook, then at Gannon.

“Enlighten you? I think you have a hearing problem. Seems when you called me, I told you to hold off with your little tale there, said you’d save yourself a lot of grief.”

Gannon shrugged.

“So, how’s that grief working out for you today, Slick?”

Gannon didn’t answer.

Brent’s jawline tensed, then relaxed as he stepped into Gannon’s personal space.

“You’d better get ready for more grief,” Brent said, “because I’m going to find out who your source is, and when I do, I’m going to make sure they face the consequences of obstructing our investigation.”




13


Gannon left that mess with the state police behind him in Clarence and drove to the Great Lakes Truck Palace at Interstate 90 and Union Road.

He needed to check out the revelation on the mystery rig.

After navigating his small car through a realm of eighteen-wheelers, with their hissing brakes and diesels spewing black smoke, he parked at the office of general manager Rob Hatcher.

“I’ll help you if I can. A crying shame about that girl,” Hatcher had said on the phone.

Gannon knew him from earlier stories he’d written on a couple of bad wrecks and had called him after the news conference.

Now, with Gannon watching him, Hatcher clicked his pen repeatedly as he gazed upon Bernice Hogan’s picture in the Sentinel, which was spread across his service counter.

“So, you really think a cop did it?”

“He’s a suspect.”

“Well, two state police investigators came in three days ago, maybe four. They asked us to help them locate a blue truck.”

“Did they say why?”

“Naw, they didn’t provide much information.”

“Did they ask you anything about this guy?” Gannon tapped the paper on Karl Styebeck’s face.

“Nope.”

“What did they say about the blue rig?”

“All they said was that the truck had unique writing and art on the doors.”

“What kind? Did they give you any more details, like a plate?”

Hatcher shrugged.

“They didn’t specify. They asked us to alert them if we saw a rig fitting that description.”

“That’s a pretty general description.”

“I know.”

Hatcher chuckled and nodded to the lot.

“We’ve got forty acres out there, partner. We run one of the largest operations in western New York. Seven or eight hundred trucks pass through here every twenty-four hours. Finding that rig is like finding a needle in a haystack. But the word’s gone out.”

“Will you call me if something breaks on this?”

“I can do that.”

Gannon left the Truck Palace and spent the rest of the day working the street for data. He went to downtown coffee shops, hotel lobbies and taxi stands and talked to waitresses, doormen and cabdrivers for anything new on Bernice Hogan’s murder.

At one point, Adell Clark sent him a text message.

FYI: Crime scene should be released by tonight.

Could be something for later, he thought as he entered Kupinski’s Diner. Stan Kupinski, a former navy cook, ran a twenty-four-hour greasy spoon off Niagara that was a favorite of blue-collar workers and street types.

The smells of frying bacon and coffee greeted Gannon as he slid into a vinyl booth. He took stock of the checkered floor, the chrome stools at the worn counter with take-out containers towering to the ceiling.

He ordered a club sandwich and in no time at all Kupinski tapped a bell with his spatula, then left a heaping plate of food at the pick-up window. Lotta, the ample waitress—regulars called her Whole Lotta—set Gannon’s food before him. He invited her to sit at his booth and talk about the murder. Since she needed to take a load off, she agreed.

“As a matter of fact, darlin', I did hear things about that little girl, Bernice,” Lotta said. “I heard she and some other girl got into a little spat the last night anyone saw her.”

Gannon’s eyebrows climbed and he got out his notebook.

“Any idea what they fought about?”

“Maybe leaving, or something,” Lotta said then stole a fry.

“Did you tell the police?”

“Police didn’t come in here asking, like you.”

“You know who the other girl is?”

Lotta’s earrings swung when she shook her head.

“I can ask around,” she said.

“Thanks—” Gannon put a five-dollar tip in Lotta’s hand “—because I’d like to find her.”

It was getting late but Gannon would try one more thing.

Experience from working on investigative stories had taught him that you should always keep tabs on your subject. It could yield a break, he thought as he headed to Ascension Park and Karl Styebeck’s street.

Styebeck’s house was a well-kept colonial with a two-car garage. It sat far back from the street, deep into the lot as if isolated within the neighborhood.

Gannon parked several doors away and watched it from his rearview mirror as he considered the story.

Why did the police consider Styebeck a suspect behind closed doors while not confirming it publicly? Where was the pressure to discredit his story coming from?

Was this the home of a monster?

Hold on.

The garage door was lifting as Karl Styebeck got into one of the two cars a dark sedan alone, then drove out.

Gannon started his Vibe’s engine and followed him from a distance.




14


After leaving his house, Karl Styebeck waited at a traffic light, determined to fight his way out of this crisis.

Everything was on the line.

Jack Gannon’s story in that morning’s Sentinel had exploded in his home, claiming his wife and son as collateral damage.

Alice had buried her face in her hands

“Oh my God, Karl! This can’t be happening!”

Taylor, his twelve-year-old son, was scared. “Why is Mom crying, Dad?”

Styebeck struggled to explain the story.

“It’s wrong,” he’d told them. “This guy, Gannon, screwed up. I’m helping with the investigation. His information is dead wrong. I’m going to straighten this out, okay?”

That seemed good enough for Taylor, who worshipped his dad. Still, Alice kept him home from school, and later she pulled Styebeck aside.

“Is this story true?” She glared at him. “We’ve had strange phone calls the last few weeks. You’ve been on edge and moody lately, tossing in your sleep. You tell me right now if you had anything to do with this girl’s murder! You tell me, Karl!”

What could he say?

He stood before his wife, trying not to remember what he was and what he had come from.

“I swear to you, I did not kill that woman.”

Alice’s eyes searched his for a trace of deception until she was satisfied there was none.

As the hours passed, her fears were somewhat mitigated by the steady flow of friends calling and e-mailing their support, especially the volunteers with Styebeck’s charity and outreach groups.

And the fact that the state police challenged the accuracy of Gannon’s story at a news conference that morning had helped. Styebeck’s lieutenant got behind him after calling to say, “Somebody got their wires crossed. Hang in there, Karl.”

The police union offered legal help, which he declined. It wasn’t needed. He’d booked off several days of saved vacation.

He’d take care of this himself. His way.

Night had fallen now as he cut across the city to his destination in the Delaware district. It was one of Buffalo’s most prestigious communities, an area of mansions built in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

He went to the side door of a grand Victorian home and rang the bell. The door was opened by Nate Fowler.

“Thank you for seeing me privately, Nate.”

“Certainly, please come in. Right this way.” Fowler led him to a room with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, a fireplace and a grandfather clock. “Can I get you a coffee or anything?”

“No, thank you, this won’t take long.”

“I want to assure you that nothing you say leaves this room.”

“As I mentioned in my call this morning, your reporter, Gannon, ambushed me. I tried to reach you before the story ran.”

“I was traveling. It was unfortunate for both of us. My apologies.”

“This story has hurt me and my family, Nate.”

“I understand, given your outstanding reputation.”

“As you know, I have confidential informants on the street. Rumors get started and make their way into investigations. Things get misconstrued, things get leaked and fiction becomes fact. The truth is, I’m assisting the state police with the Hogan homicide. I can understand how a reporter trying to find a good story could get carried away.”

“It happens, yes.”

“I want you to know I had nothing to do with the homicide. It’s ridiculous.”

“Today the New York State Police publicly disputed our report on you. And given the circumstances under which our story made it into print, I think a full retraction and apology is necessary.”

“Thank you.”

“Additionally, we’ll find the source of this injurious information. I trust that would be useful to you?”

Relief spread across Styebeck’s face.

“That would be helpful.”

“You don’t deserve this, Karl. You’re a hero in the eyes of this community. A great number of people admire you. I enjoy the charity work we do together and want to maintain our relationship.”

As Styebeck stood to leave, his attention went to the woman who’d entered the room.

“Karl, this is my wife, Madeline, with the State Attorney General’s Office.”

“Yes, we’ve met at functions.” Styebeck shook her hand.

“Maddy,” Fowler said, “I was just telling Karl how I value our relationship.”

“He thinks the world of you, Detective.” She smiled. “Did he tell you he’s willing to underscore that point at your fund-raiser this week?”

“No. That would be appreciated.”

“In fact—” Fowler put his hand on Styebeck’s shoulder as they walked to the door “—and this is confidential, please. But I’m considering a run for public office and would like to know that I can count on your support.”

“I see …” Styebeck hesitated. “I don’t really get involved in politics.”

“I understand completely, Karl,” Fowler said. “Not asking you to do or say anything. Just think about it. Besides, I’m taking steps to ensure this unfortunate matter will blow over.”

“I need for that to happen.”

“Now,” Fowler said, “I know it seems the obvious move for me would be to fire Jack Gannon.”

“I didn’t want to raise that, or my legal options, here.”

“Right. Just so you’re aware, I can’t fire him. Gannon’s Pulitzer caliber, one of my best reporters. I almost lost him once. And while he’s a zealous crusader, the fallout at the paper if I terminated him now would cause me too much grief with the news guild, just as we’re positioning to sell the paper. That’s confidential.”

“Of course.”

“I’ve pulled Gannon off this story and suspended him. One wrong move on his part and he’s gone. That should keep him out of your business. How’s that sound, Karl?”

“That sound’s fine, Nate.”

The men shook hands at the door then Styebeck got into his car.

Unseen, in the park across the street, Jack Gannon watched Styebeck leave Nate Fowler’s house.




15


Gannon couldn’t believe this.

Why was Karl Styebeck visiting Nate Fowler?

He doubted they were discussing their charity work.

Gannon walked from the park to his car then roamed the city, chewing on what he’d just witnessed, wondering where, or if, it fit with the latest aspects of the story. There was the mystery truck, the argument Bernice Hogan had had with another woman before she vanished, and the state police discrediting his reporting on Styebeck.

And now Styebeck pays Fowler a late-night visit.

Piece by piece a picture was emerging. Something large was percolating beneath the surface, but he didn’t know what it was.

Was a cop suspected of murder being protected?

All right, better let things simmer, he told himself as he got to Cheektowaga, one of Buffalo’s first suburbs. He lived in Cleveland Hill, a working-and middle-class neighborhood of proud, flag-on-the-porch homes built after the Second World War.

Mostly Polish-American families lived here, going back two and three generations. But he hadn’t gone very far either. He’d grown up on the fringes of Cleveland Hill, near the Heights, a rougher district.

Buffalo was his home. A place he loved.

It was also his prison, he thought as he pulled into a parking space at the building where he lived, a tired-looking apartment complex built in the 1960s. He grabbed his bag, got his mail and took the elevator to the sixteenth floor.

His building had more good tenants than bad. There were a few noisy neighbors and a few creeps. And sometimes the halls were heavy with the smells of exotic cooking. But generally people left him alone.

He liked that.

His apartment had a large, sweeping view. The wind often charged off Lake Erie and rattled his windows, but it was warm in the winter.

He sat on his couch and sorted through his mail. There were mostly bills, then a letter from Ron Cook, an old reporter friend, who’d quit his job at the Detroit Free Press to teach English in Addis Ababa.

“Buddy, here’s an application if you’re looking for a career change and an escape from the snow!”

Gannon pondered the idea for a moment, but he had too much going on here to give it serious consideration.

No, thanks, Ron.

Then he came to a letter from the lawyer handling his parents’ estate, reminding him that the anniversary was coming up for payment on the unit where he’d stored their belongings. Did he want to pay for another year, or did he have other plans for his family’s property?

He’d deal with that later.

He tossed the letters on his coffee table, opened his bag, and had started reading the file Mary Peller had given him on her missing daughter when his cell phone rang.

“Gannon.”

“It’s Fowler. We’ve got a substantial retraction going in tomorrow’s edition. In thirty minutes we start rolling it off the presses.”

“You didn’t call to tell me that.”

“Give me your source and I’ll kill the retraction.”

Gannon said nothing. Now more than ever he didn’t trust his managing editor.

“Jack, give me your source and we can all have our lives back.”

“Does Bernice Hogan get her life back? Why does Styebeck get a free ride?”

“The police have publicly pissed on your story and the Sentinel today. You were wrong. We have to swallow that and move on.”

“I was not wrong. And I can’t give up my source.”

“Think about what you’re risking. Your job is hanging by a thread, Gannon. You’ve got about twenty-nine minutes to think it over.”

Gannon didn’t call.

He took a hot shower, dressed and got into his car.

Freeway traffic was light as he glided along Interstate 90.

He left the interstate and got on Genesee. As he headed into the heart of the city, Buffalo’s skyline rose before him: the HSBC Center, the Rand Building and City Hall.

He found himself at the Sentinel’s loading docks, an area bordered by a chain-link fence that trapped stray papers and flyers. The air smelled of newsprint and exhaust as trucks and vans performed a marshaling ballet in and out of the ten bays, laden with damp copies of the first edition.

He was watching an act in the swan song of the newspaper industry, an industry in which he’d invested everything.

But he was not giving up.

He parked and went to the gate. Holding up a dollar bill, he flagged down a van departing for its route.

“Sell me a copy?”

The driver had a scar on his cheek. He snatched Gannon’s buck then reached to his passenger seat, grunted and handed him a fresh copy of the Buffalo Sentinel.

The retraction was there on the front page, framed in a shaded box with a different font. He scanned, “Sentinel offers its apology …”

“Uncorroborated information …”

“Erroneous reporting …”

“Taken action …”

“Suspended …” The words landed like punches until he heard a clank down the street at a row of newspaper boxes.

A carrier was loading a box for the Buffalo News. Gannon went over and bought a paper. The News had clobbered him with their front-page coverage, giving him his comeuppance in a column under the headline:

The Pulitzer Finalist Who Got It Wrong

The item pontificated about the journalistic failing of rushing to be first at the expense of getting it right. Gannon lowered the papers, like flags of defeat.

What happened?

Less than twenty-four hours ago he owned the news in this town. Now his world was collapsing.

He nearly vanished in the dust that swirled around him as the delivery trucks thundered by. A cold wind kicked up from Lake Erie and he retreated to his car and drove away, traveling back through his life.

Being a reporter was all he’d ever wanted to be.

He was a blue-collar kid. His mother worked long hours as a waitress, while his father worked hard shifts in a factory on the lakeshore that made rope. Both of them were newspaper readers, a trait they’d passed on to him.

Enthralled by life’s daily dramas, he read the Buffalo Evening News and the Buffalo Courier-Express. And when the Courier-Express folded, he read the Sentinel, which rose from its ashes.

And he dreamed about seeing his own stories in print.

When his parents worked late, his big sister, Cora, would take him to the library and get him books by Jack London, Stephen Crane and Ernest Hemingway.

“This is what a future reporter should be reading, Jackie,” she’d said.

Cora was five years older than him and nurtured his dream. She convinced their parents to buy him a secondhand computer and encouraged him to write. They were as close as any brother and sister could be. But their age difference would have a bearing on their relationship and eventually Cora grew apart from him and her family.

She changed.

It hit him the night police brought her home after she’d got drunk with friends who’d stolen a car. She’d grown into a different person, one who argued constantly with Mom and Dad. So many nights were filled with screaming, slamming doors, heart-breaking silence and tears. Cora started taking drugs, which led to more arguments until the day she ran away.

All she’d left was a note saying she could no longer stand living under “their fascist rules.”

She was seventeen.

Friends told his parents Cora had gone to California with an older guy who was a heroin addict. When his father got an address, he flew to San Francisco and looked for Cora.

It was all in vain.

They never saw her again.

They hired private detectives, flew to cities when they had tips. It was futile. He ached for her to come home.

Then his anguish turned to anger for what Cora had done. Later, there were times he’d search for her on online databases. He even asked police friends to do whatever they could.

Not much came of it.

Cora was out of their lives.

Or dead.

Accept it and leave the past in the past, he’d always told himself.

Miles and time swept by as he searched the night for answers.

He drove through older neighborhoods; the best and the worst of Buffalo. Here were the abandoned factories, the shut-up mills and forgotten stores, reaching from the wasteland of the rust belt like a death grasp. And here were the new bohemian communities that resurrected historic, near-dead buildings and revived the never-say-die attitude of Buffalo.

After Cora left, he’d worked brutal summer shifts on assembly lines in Buffalo factories to put himself through college because his parents had spent nearly all they had looking for her.

When he found time, he reported for the campus paper, and freelanced articles to the Sentinel and the News.

All the while, he yearned to escape Buffalo for New York City and a job with a big news outlet. After he graduated from college, he worked at small weeklies then landed an internship with the Buffalo Sentinel. Impressed by his determination, the paper gave him a full-time reporting job.

The Sentinel would be his stepping stone out of Buffalo.

Then, while dispatched to cover a shooting in Ohio, he’d met Lisa Newsome, a reporter with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She was a sharp-witted, brilliant writer. He remembered the way her hair curtained over her eye when she wrote the stories she’d cared about.

She told him that she’d fallen for his edgy charm and “that Matt Damon thing you got going in the looks department.” She wanted him to move to Cleveland and work at the Plain Dealer, or she’d offered to move to Buffalo because she yearned to have kids and settle down.

He didn’t, so they broke it off and Gannon threw all he had into his reporting.

Two years back, his talent was tested when a charter jet en route to Moscow from Chicago plunged into Lake Erie a quarter mile off Buffalo’s shoreline. Some two hundred people died.

While the world press speculated that the cause was terrorism, Gannon found a Russian-speaking man in the Sentinel‘s mail room. They worked the phones and the Internet, locating the pilot’s brother who was living in St. Petersburg, Russia. Turned out the brother had received the last e-mail the pilot had sent but refused to share it. “Think of the dead, their families deserve to know the answer. Think of the dead, their ghosts will haunt you,” Gannon and the Russian-speaking Sentinel worker kept telling the brother before convincing him to give them the final e-mail. It detailed the pilot’s plan to commit suicide by crashing his jet because his wife had left him for a woman.

The story was picked up around the world.

It led to Gannon’s Pulitzer nomination. He didn’t win the prize, but he got a job offer in New York City with the World Press Alliance, the global wire service.

His dream had come true.

Then fate intervened.

About a week after the offer came, his mother and father were driving to see an old friend about another tip they’d had about Cora’s location. Even though she’d be close to forty years old, Gannon’s mother and father refused to give up searching for her.

“She may have children, we have a right to find her,” his mother said.

They never made it. A construction worker who’d spent the afternoon in a bar slammed into their car.

They both died instantly.

Gannon blamed Cora.

It was a horrible time.

Gannon was in no shape to do anything and declined the New York offer. Why didn’t he leave afterward? Maybe he stuck around to be closer to the memory of his parents. Maybe he thought Cora would miraculously appear. Even now, he didn’t know. It didn’t matter. In the end, the New York job never materialized.

So where did he go from here?

He eased his Pontiac Vibe to a stop at the edge of a park alongside Ellicott Creek. As the Vibe’s engine ticked, he sat behind the wheel staring into the night.

Everything he was, everything he dreamed of, was on the line.

In his heart he knew he was not wrong on his reporting of Detective Karl Styebeck’s link to Bernice Hogan’s murder. Call it fate, destiny or a cosmic force, but something had guided him to that meeting-room door that day at Clarence Barracks and pointed to Styebeck.

But all he had left were more unanswered questions about the case.

There was only one thing he could do now.

He reached to the floor behind the passenger seat for his lantern flashlight. It had a new six-volt battery and an intense-focus beam. The light was strong.

He left his car and headed for the woods. If he was going to search for more answers, the shallow grave where they’d found Bernice Hogan’s corpse was the place to start.




16


Jolene Peller’s body swayed rhythmically to the low drumming of big wheels rolling at high speed.

As she floated in and out of consciousness, she tried to seize upon a way to claw out of the darkness.

She needed to think. Think of what she knew.

Her prison—or tomb—whatever it was, was still moving.

She knew she’d been abducted.

But who had done this? And why?

Someone had bound her hands, gagged her and imprisoned her. She had muzzy memories—or was it a dream?—of someone removing her gag, feeding her bread, chocolate bars, giving her water. Giving her a plastic bucket for a toilet, ordering her to relieve herself. There was tissue, but her hands remained bound with tape.

Mercifully the bucket had a lid.

Then she was forced to swallow capsules.

Drugs?

Someone was keeping her alive.

Like a captured animal.

Who? Who was doing this and what was he going to do to her?

Or had he already done something to her while she was unconscious?

The image made her retch. She swallowed. Please no. Jolene pushed back her tears.

Please.

What did he do to Bernice?

Jolene had no concept of where she was, or how long she’d been here. She was wearing the same clothes she’d worn when she tried to help Bernice.

She wanted to shower, to cleanse herself of this foul, stinking nightmare.

She knew by the steady drone that she was still moving. Maybe this was her chance to do something.

But what?

She was gagged. Her hands were bound, but not her legs or ankles. She was free to move, but she was blind in the absolute darkness. Maybe her abductor was watching her now with some sort of high-tech equipment? Maybe if he saw that she was awake he’d come to her?

To do what?

Jolene’s breathing quickened.

She was so scared. She whispered a prayer.

Stay calm.

Using her fingertips, she felt in her pockets for her cell phone. It was gone.

Take it easy.

She steeled herself then probed the soft pad. Feeling its indentations, quilting and seams, she concluded that it was a mattress.

Single-size.

Pushed against a wall.

Jolene drew herself into a sitting position. She was woozy. She waited and breathed slowly. Then she ran her fingers over the walls. They were solid wood with a rough pitted surface. At times, she felt the steel hardware of a hinge-and-bolt assembly. Felt the line of a door frame. But it was shut up so tight, no light, or hope, leaked through. At times she felt the head of a nail or screw protruding from the wall.

It was familiar.

In high school, when she was a part-time supermarket cashier, she’d helped inventory all the departments, even the warehouse. The big storage containers and trailers smelled like this and had the same rough surface.

They were heavy, insulated, sound-absorbing walls, like those in a cooler. It was not refrigerated but it was cold. Near her were old blankets that smelled as if they’d been used for horses.

Jolene stood.

Waves of dizziness rolled over her and she steadied herself against the wall, waiting for them to subside.

She raised her restrained hands above her head, felt nothing but air.

Then carefully, starting with the nearest wall, she began inching her way around the boundary of her prison, steadying herself against the to-and-fro motion as she felt for a latch, a light switch, a door, a window, anything.





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