The Blue Ridge Project: A Dark Suspense Novel (The Project Book 1) (9 page)

“All right, some of you might have heard some things,” Captain Hugo Slade said. He was standing in front of the door of his office at the top of the Homicide room, looking out over the detectives seated there, a piece of paper in his hand.

“Yeah, but I promise, Cap, I won’t tell your wife!” Hynes shouted from his seat in the middle, and there was good-natured laughter. He turned and winked at Andrea, who was at the desk next to him. Cap unclipped his gun holster and tapped the butt of his gun once, and even more laughter followed. When they had finished, he continued.

“To be clear, these cops that are coming are not here to be babysat. A lot of them have proven themselves to be competent in their own towns and constituencies, so they are to be treated as such. What you will be teaching them is how things work here, in a major city, with major crimes.”

“Do we get to pick who we’re assigned?” Michaels asked. He sat back in his chair, his tie bundled up on his desk in front of him, coffee in a styrofoam cup in his hand.

“Glad you asked that, Detective. No, you do not.” There were a few groans around the room. “Since some of you are without partners, you will be assigned the new blood first. Michaels, you have got ...” Cap paused to look at the paper, “Richard Lyons, from the beautiful town of Whitebridge. The rest of you can check out your assigned partners here on the board.” He turned and pinned the paper to the corkboard beside his door. “Now, any questions?”

“Yeah, do we get instructor’s pay as well as our salary?” Michaels asked.

“Not a chance. Although I will allow for a policy of new bloods picking up the better part of the tab at the Well. Out of respect for the invaluable knowledge you animals will be giving them, of course.”

Approving laughter rang out through the office. Cap turned and went back to his office, and everyone returned to whatever they had been doing. Andrea looked up to see Michaels bent over Hynes’ desk.

“Hey, Hynes, sure you don’t wanna swap? My newbie for yours?”

“Get fucked, Michaels. There’s a reason nobody in the city will partner up with you. Besides, Nox is good police. She’d be wasted at your side.”

“Ha! I’ll take a country man over a rookie woman any day. Just thought it might be nice to have the smell of perfume in the car when we’re driving.” He leered at Andrea and winked. She threw a pen and hit him dead center in the forehead.

He stepped forward, his expression getting cloudy and his cheeks red. She stood up out of her chair and squared up to him, three inches shorter and about twenty kilos lighter. Hynes stood and put his hands between them, pushing Michaels back in the direction of his desk.

“Don’t mind that asshole,” Hynes said to Andrea, grinning.

“I don’t, don’t worry,” Andrea replied, giving Michaels the finger across the room.

The phone on Hynes’ desk made a rattling noise, the bell inside half broken. He reached over and picked it up.

“Hynes. Yeah. What’s the address?” He jotted down numbers and a street name on a pad and then hung up.

“Come on, Nox,” he said, “let’s go see what the city has for us today.”

*****

Andrea and Hynes stepped through the weeds and rubble to reach the yellow police tape that had been put up around the empty lot. They stepped under as the officer on the scene turned and walked toward them.

“Detectives,” he said, nodding to them both.

“Afternoon, Blake. What’s the occasion?” Hynes asked as the three of them walked over to what looked to Andrea like a pile of blankets, except for the strands of dirty blond hair that wound their way out from under the cloth.

“Young girl, looks like. Hard to tell with the blood,” Blake said. He squatted down and pulled back some of the blanket that covered the body. The face was a mess of blood and damaged tissue. The eyes were missing, the skin around them bruised and swollen from their removal. Blood covered most of the face, as well as the top of the shirt she was wearing. The shirt looked like it might have been white when she got it.

“Jesus,” Hynes said, and ran a hand over his mouth. He and Nox knelt down beside the body and pulled the rest of the blanket off.

“Doesn’t look like there’s any knife or bullet wounds. No bruising round the neck, either. What’s the betting that she died from whatever happened to her eyes?” Andrea asked.

“Fairly high. I’m sure the coroner will agree. Murder scene, or dumping ground?” Hynes asked.

Andrea looked around the area of the body, then around at the rest of the empty lot. There were the remains of a wall to one side, while the rest was rubble and broken glass interspersed with weeds and sharp grass. There were flashes of color, the leftovers of labels and beer cans. A smell of waste and neglect hung over the area. The surrounding buildings were vacant, a lot of them with blackened wooden boards instead of windows.

“Dumped here, I’d say. No blood around the body.”

“Yeah, I agree. Forensics won’t find shit here, either. Between the bums and the kids that come out here to party, I’d wager there’s DNA all over the place. I’ll get someone to come and pick up the body.” Hynes turned to Blake, who was still kneeling with them. “Any ID on her?”

Blake pulled a slim wallet out from his pocket and handed it to Hynes. He flipped it open and looked at the solitary card in there.

“Lorraine DeSaint. Twenty-one years of age. Shit on a bike.”

Blake rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, it’s a damned shame. You want me to hang on until the coroner gets here?”

Hynes shook his head. “No, you go on back to patrol. We’ll handle it from here. I’d get you to canvass the area, but I don’t think the rats would tell you much.”

Blake nodded and started the walk to his car. Hynes put the wallet in a clear plastic bag and called after him.

“No press, Blake. Anybody asks you for some juicy news, you keep this one to yourself.”

Blake nodded again. He went back to his car and pulled off back onto the road, the tires crunching over the stones and glass.

“Why no press?” Andrea asked.

“Well, firstly,” Hynes replied, handing Andrea the bagged wallet which she put in her pocket, “Blake has a habit of leaking certain information to journalists for a fee. Not one I’m very happy about, even though I can understand the man wanting to earn a bit on the side. So there’s that.”

“And secondly?”

Hynes pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and spoke to someone about getting the body picked up, giving thorough directions out to the empty lot. He hung up and looked at the girl’s body.

“Secondly,” he said, “I don’t want word getting out that we found her. If this guy thinks he got away with hiding her, he might be easier to track down. Any suspects we find might be a bit too sure of themselves, trip themselves up in a statement. Every advantage necessary, Nox.”

Andrea nodded, and looked back down at the prostrate body of Lorraine DeSaint. Lorraine stared up at the gray sky with eyes that were no longer there.

Driving back from his meeting with Line, Robert let his mind wander, and didn’t see the black car that began to follow him on the second half of his journey home until he was close to his street. He was waiting at a set of traffic lights for his turn to go, and saw the car and its driver in his rearview mirror. As soon as he turned around, the other driver’s hand came out of the window and indicated for him to pull over. There was nobody else on the road.

Robert felt a surge of panic in his stomach, his testicles ascending into his body. He took the envelope Line had given him and stuffed under his seat. He slowly turned left instead of the usual right and rolled along at a crawl. He glanced in the rearview and saw the hand out of the window again, this time with a gun in it.

Oh shit oh shit.
He juggled his options while keeping his eye on the reflection of the gun. Pull over and deal with a possible killer. Try and outrun him in his middle-aged jalopy, possibly crashing or getting arrested or both.

Robert pulled over and stopped.

He sat with both hands on the wheel, flexing and unflexing his grip. The man in the car behind got out and strolled toward Robert’s car door. He was wearing a black suit and tie, with dark shades and a closely cropped haircut. As he neared the car, Robert made out a small flag pin on the man’s lapel.

“Mr. Duncan,” the man said as he appeared at the window, and smiled like a wolf. Robert opened the window the rest of the way down. He could smell aftershave and mints coming off the man in the suit. There was no sign of the gun Robert had seen a minute before.

“Who’s asking?”

The man reached in his inside jacket pocket and Robert’s heart jumped into high gear. It only subsided a little when the man produced a wallet with a badge inside. Beside the badge was a small ID card with the man’s face and a set of initials denoting the government office he apparently worked for.

“Agent Gumb. Nice to finally meet you. I’ve read your work.” The man’s voice was jovial and smooth. It was the voice of a man totally in control of the situation.

Robert forced himself to smile. “Really? I didn’t think it would be something a man in your business would be interested in.”

“Oh, on the contrary, Robert. Can I call you Robert? You see, Rob, in my line of work, information is a key element. Same as yours.”

Robert cleared his throat.

“Except you can get things wrong,” Gumb continued, “and reputations can be ruined. You understand what I mean?”

Robert nodded, sweat forming on his upper brow even in the cold air coming in through the open window.

“You’ve been communicating with undesirable sorts, it seems. Don’t look so shocked, Rob. You’re an outspoken journalist dragging powerful people through the mud. Did you think nobody was monitoring you?”

Robert frowned, and a small flame of courage was lit in his chest. “That’s a violation of my rights, Agent Gumb. I’ve committed no crime by telling the truth. If I were to report this—”

“If you were to report this, you would be laughed out of the room. It’s the word of a radical freelance journalist who can’t get hired against that of a government body. You, with no proof of wrongdoing, and us, with the means to create proof. So just shut up and listen.” Gumb was still smiling, his eyes hidden behind the dark lenses of his glasses.

Robert sighed and nodded.

“If one of these cyber activists contacts you, you are to get in touch with me. Not the police, not anyone else, me. Any information they give you will be turned over to me in person. There will be no copies, no story on your website, nothing leaked to your peers. Understood?”

Gumb threw a business card in Robert’s lap. Robert looked down at it and then back up at Gumb.

“And if I don’t?”

Gumb’s grin widened. “If you don’t, we’ll be forced to take appropriate action. Against you, and the lovely Ms. Rush. I don’t fancy her chances in a federal prison, or yours, for that matter.”

“Prison? She hasn’t done anything! You leave her out of this!”

“Stealing classified information, aiding and abetting terrorists, these are serious crimes, Rob. Undermining trust in the government, the worst of all in my book. We can’t have that, can we?”

Robert stared ahead through the windshield. He could still see Gumb smiling from the corner of his eye.

“Glad we’re agreed then. You take care, Rob. Keep in touch.” With that Gumb walked back to his car. He sped off in the direction they had come from earlier.

Robert shook as he put his car into gear. His mind reeled as he played back his encounter, and the thought of what could be in the envelope burned in his mind.

*****

He got to the apartment a few minutes after leaving the scene of his conversation with Agent Gumb. It already felt like something out of a bad dream. The card with Gumb’s name and number was the only tangible evidence he had of it happening.

Taking the envelope from its hiding place, he went upstairs to find the apartment empty. Eliza still wasn't home, or maybe she had passed through while he had been out. Nothing had been cleaned up, and empty cartons and bottles still decorated the small apartment. He went to the window and looked out.

The street was empty. Dead flowers hung from a few windows across the street, and there were a couple of rusted bike frames that had been liberated of their wheels chained up along the sharp fence at street level. The street lamps that worked illuminated the tombstone gray brick that the buildings on this street were made of and the scorch marks from riots that happened decades before. He smelled the rot from the garbage bags stuffed in the kitchen and the ghost of vomit tinged with alcohol that came from the bathroom. His stomach was doing slow pirouettes and his fingers twitched. He took a deep breath and turned away.

Robert shut the open laptop on the kitchen table and closed the curtains, after he checked the window once more to see if Gumb had followed him home. Then he sat down on the couch, opened the envelope and spilled its contents onto the hardwood table.

He saw lists of phone numbers and times, a statement from a private bank and a photocopy of a driver’s license. There was also a sheet with texts, arranged in a way that looked like a conversation, with numbers denoting the sender and receiver.

All these were registered in the back of Robert’s mind, because the thing that stood out and took all of his attention was a large black-and-white photo. In it, there was the unmistakable face of Charles Frey, younger and sporting darker hair, and the faces of three young boys. Two of the faces were blurry, while one stood out in shocking detail. The boys were tied up to a horizontal bar that stretched the length of the picture, and Robert saw a segment of a leg, indicating that there were more people tied up outside of the frame. The boys were naked, with what looked like deep cuts to their upper bodies and faces.

Frey had a cruel-looking curved knife held up to the cheek of the boy in the middle. The boy was terrified, his eyes wide and glassy, his mouth open. His hair seemed matted and thick, and he looked underweight.

Frey’s face was a caricature of savage joy, the mouth open in a snarl.

Robert dropped the photo on the table and wiped his hands on his jeans. He stood up and paced between the wall and the table, stopping once to turn the photo facedown. He went to a pot that was perched on a shelf on top of a bookcase and took a cigarette and lighter out. Pulling back the curtain, he lit the cigarette and then opened the window, blowing out a stream of smoke with a loud exhalation. His hands were shaking as he raised the cigarette to his lips.

“Fuck,” he whispered to the empty room. “Holy fuck.”

He turned and looked at the table. The papers and the back of the photo seemed normal from a distance, like billions of other sheets of paper around the world. The danger was only apparent when observed up close, like a venomous animal.

After another cigarette, he sat back down and put the photo back into the envelope, then spread out the rest of the papers. First, he looked at the columns of phone numbers and corresponding times. It didn’t make much sense, until he looked at the top of the sheet with the texts on it. The outgoing call number matched the sending number, and the receiver appeared in the dialed numbers column repeatedly.

The texts were a back and forth of loosely coded messages. They referred to a testing event, as well as merchandise. The first couple of messages seemed to be organizing a meet up, while the ones a few hours later were about satisfactory results and a promise to do business again soon.

The first message had been signed off with one letter: “C.”

Robert wondered how a powerful man like Frey with such a public image could be so careless as to leave evidence, even as circumstantial as this was. The man would have to be so sure of not being caught that he didn’t even care anymore. The phone was probably a spare, used only for whatever sick thing Frey was involved in and kept powered off the rest of the time. Robert couldn’t even begin to imagine how Line had got his hands on this information.

The last sheet was the driver’s license copy. The name was Kevin Salsbury, but this name had a line drawn through it in pen. At the bottom of the page, there was a handwritten phone number and a different first name beside it: Don.

Robert sat and looked at the wall in front of him for a few minutes, his hands restless in his lap. He looked at the clock, wrote a note for Eliza, and then gathered up the remaining sheets to put back in the envelope. He then grabbed his jacket and headed out to find a public phone to call “Don.”