Into Darkness Read online

  It had to have been another “leak.”

  Shannon tried to sit up and the IV tube caught on the bed railing and pulled taut. She freed the tube and searched for the lever to raise the bed. Once she was elevated, she clicked the call button for a nurse.

  “You’re awake,” he said. Best-looking male nurse she’d ever seen, to get right down to it. But the appraisal was gone from her mind as fast as it had formed. He said, “How are you feeling?”

  “How is she? How is … the woman? Baldacci …”

  The nurse looked sorrowful. “I think you’ll be … I think someone is coming in to speak with you. They asked to be notified as soon as you were awake.” He came closer, studying her with compassionate eyes. “Any pain?”

  “Just tell me if someone died.”

  “Ma’am, I’m sorry. I’m not able to give you that information.”

  “Where am I? Are you able to tell me that?”

  “New York Presbyterian Hospital. This is a Level 1 adult trauma center. They almost sent you into Manhattan, to Weill Cornell – that’s where we have our burn unit. But your burns weren’t that bad. You got lucky.”

  Lucky.

  She wondered how lucky Jordan Baldacci was. Or if any of the other reporters had been injured. “Where’s my phone?” Her mouth felt wadded with cotton.

  “Your belongings are right over there, on that table. Though your service weapon has been locked in our safe. Don’t worry, it will be fine there.”

  She felt sleepy and fought against it. “Can I have a drink?”

  “Of course.” He took a plastic cup and filled it with ice water and handed it to her. He stepped back and watched her drink and put a finger against the cleft in his chin. Jet-black hair, short but wavy, full lips, olive skin. The guy looked like Jon Kortajarena, the Spanish-born male model.

  “What did you give me?” she asked the nurse.

  “You’re on painkillers and a mild sedative. Acetaminophen, diazepam.”

  Diazepam, she thought. No wonder she felt like ripping off his clothes. As a sedative, it tended to deregulate the libido a bit.

  “Your burns are first degree and some second degree. You were concussed when the blast threw you back, and you’ve got abrasions on your hands and arms.”

  “Lucky,” she whispered. The TV hung in the corner was dark, but as soon as mister male model nurse was gone, she’d be watching.

  Baldacci had to be dead. If not, she’d wake up wishing she was.

  The nurse smiled and said, “I’ll go let your people know you’re awake.”

  She turned her attention to the windows, the sky blocked by a hospital wing. “What time is it?”

  “It’s seven fifteen.” Perhaps realizing she could be disoriented, he added, “P.m.” Then he patted her leg. “Okay. I’ll be back.”

  He left and she continued looking out the window. She didn’t search for the remote, didn’t turn on the TV. She only stared and felt the unexpected tears slide sideways down her face, and wiped them away, and then cried harder.

  Mark Tyler walked into the room half an hour later. He looked more worried about liability than concerned for her well-being, but that was Tyler. Shannon knew he had his hands full. Running the resident agency meant he had six branches of the FBI under his roof, plus a small army of superiors and supervisors to answer to – from section chiefs all the way up to the Office of the Director.

  “Shit,” Tyler said.

  “I’m fine.”

  He clasped his hands together like a pallbearer might and kept himself a body length from the bed. “Bomb squad is saying it was an ANFO blasting agent. Ammonium nitrate with about five, six percent diesel fuel and some other additives. Homemade – basically, an IED. He used a couple of sticks of dynamite as a booster to ensure detonation. Could’ve used Tovex, but didn’t. This guy is old-school.”

  “Yeah. Really retro.” The medication still pumping, she was unusually sarcastic.

  “They said the detonator was triggered when the lid was opened; the fuse was set for a two-second delay. We’re tracing it all back, looking for sales of high-nitrogen fertilizer to get the ammonium nitrate, looking into mining, quarrying, construction and demolition for the dynamite.”

  “Construction and demolition all over,” she said. “Seems like Queens is one big renovation project.”

  “Yeah.” He watched her and she knew he was waiting for the question.

  For some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to ask it. Tyler knew and answered anyway. “She was alive for about a minute. There wasn’t much that anyone could do.”

  A silence formed, broken only by the beeping of her heart monitor, the murmur of voices in the hallway, beyond the closed door. “He took a risk,” Shannon said. “Don’t you think?”

  Tyler glanced at his watch, then met her gaze. “I mean, maybe. Yeah. Someone coming and throwing in a bag of trash. But that place, though – Salt and Pepper Food, Incorporated. That’s the business there on Fifty-Fourth with the three dumpsters–”

  “Everyone okay inside?”

  “No one was there. Three employees scheduled. Two out making a delivery – they do deli and restaurant paper products supply. The other was at lunch. The place was locked up. The dumpsters get picked up on Tuesdays and Fridays. So maybe he was lucky; maybe he did his research. He must’ve prompted the reporters, and she was the first to walk over.”

  “Not the first,” Shannon said.

  Tyler frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

  Shannon closed her eyes, cleared her throat, and tried to talk straight. “She was the only. She was the only one who went over. I saw her looking at her phone.”

  “Well, her phone is obliterated. But NYPD has the subpoena going in and they’ll get her call log. Her texts.”

  “The reporters admitted there was a leak,” Shannon said, eyes open again.

  Tyler was nodding. “And we traced that number back – three of them had it – and came up with a burner. Which, you know, we can get the carrier, and the stores that carry the brand, and we can pull video, look for a purchase. It’s a long shot. Like, a million-to-one. But we’ll play it out anyway.”

  She felt the emotion rising again. She blamed the medicine when the tears welled up.

  “Hey,” Tyler said, “I’m sorry, but I’ve gotta go. This whole thing … You know, you were the only FBI presence on the scene.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean this looks bad, Ames. This looks bad for the bureau. I’ve got a lot of cleaning up to do.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He just looked at her, then said, “All right. Well, this pretty much puts you out of things. I’ll be in touch.”

  Tyler left.

  Just when she thought she was in the clear, fresh hospital hell: a neuropathology specialist was checking her over. Mid-sixties, but looking fit in his blue scrubs, the specialist smiled down in that doctorly way she was coming to resent.

  She asked, “How bad is it?”

  “You’ll make a nice recovery – you’ll heal. But with some scarring. Some on your arms, a little on your face and neck. But I’d like to run another CAT scan and an MRI.”

  She felt a flutter in her chest. “Why?”

  “The initial CAT scan showed a subdural hematoma. Bleeding in your head. But sometimes the machine gets it wrong, sometimes the tech reads the data wrong. We’re going to look again. And the MRI will show us if there’s any other non-penetrating trauma. How is your side feeling?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “What looks like inflammation there, above your hip – to me, that says a lateral abdominal wall hematoma. It’s gradually expanding and collecting on the left side of your back, expanding inferiorly into the left gluteal region.”

  “You mean the pain in my ass.”

  His smile showed teeth. “I’m glad you have your humor. Yes, the pain in your ass. Quite likely, deep to the posterior layer of the thoracolumbar fascia, but that’s what th
e MRI will show us.” He paused, as if giving the medical jargon a chance to sink in. Then another customary smile. “Let’s get you looked at and we’ll take it from there. Okay? Could be some PT in your future, lots of bed rest.”

  I can’t rest. There’s a killer out there, and I think he’s just getting started.

  What she said was, “Thank you, Doctor.”

  When she woke again, it was out of black, dreamless sleep. She needed to pee. Carefully working the IV tube so it wouldn’t catch on the bed rail, she left the bed for the bathroom, shuffling her steps. She sat in the dark, and her urine hit the bowl. She had yet to look at herself in the mirror. This was fear more than vanity. Fear that what Tyler said was true and not a threat – she was going to be benched for the rest of this investigation.

  She wiped and flushed and rinsed her hands. There was enough light from the bright hospital room to see her face clearly in the bathroom mirror when she finally looked. A bandage covered her neck and jaw on the left side. She’d been told not to remove it, but undid the tape and pulled it back anyway to stare at the pink, twisted knots of skin there. She reaffixed the bandage and looked over the cuts and scrapes on her forearms, the serpentine burn snaking around her elbow, up to her triceps muscle.

  Without expecting it, she dropped to her knees and threw up in the toilet bowl.

  9

  Thursday

  Caldoza showed up with flowers. “Hey,” he said from the doorway. “Is this where they keep the heroes?”

  Corny, but she was happy to see a friendly face. He searched for a place to set the bouquet – a pretty arrangement of lavender asters, mini sunflowers and orange roses – and settled on the floor in the corner. He pulled a chair over to her bedside. She was sitting up and their eyes connected.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “I’m okay.”

  He waited to see if she was going to say more, and when she didn’t, he pulled something from his bag. “All right. Wait until you see this. Just came in this morning.”

  He showed her paperwork from Jordan Baldacci’s cell phone carrier. A list of texts. The last one, which had come in at eleven minutes past noon yesterday.

  Forbes isn’t the only one. I also took out some trash …

  Shannon looked up at Caldoza as her insides contracted. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Nope.” He reached around and tapped the right column of the page. “And it’s the same number. The same burner number that sent the texts to the press, tipping them off to the location of the body. That’s why they were there so fast. He wanted them there.”

  “Is she the only one?”

  Caldoza was nodding. “So far. Couple we haven’t gotten to yet, but yes – none of the other reporters from the scene got this text.”

  “He wanted her. Specifically her. I knew it.”

  Still bobbing his head, Caldoza said, “Looks that way.”

  It was two more hours before the second CAT scan showed no intracranial bleeding. At least that was something.

  But it was another hour before she could convince the specialist to release her, and forty-five minutes until they processed her and took her in a wheelchair to the front entrance, where Bufort waited in an unmarked.

  He saw her and got out. Eyeing the pot of flowers on her lap, he said, “Nice.”

  She tried to hide her efforts to get out of the wheelchair, but it was too late; Bufort was looking at her in a way that mixed compassion with fear of contamination. Not of sickness, but of weakness. So when he held out an arm for her, she ignored it, limped to the car and got in on her own. She had to lift her leg with her hands and physically heft it into the car behind her before shutting the door.

  When they were up to speed, threading through the Queens traffic, Bufort said, “You okay?”

  “I don’t know. Am I?”

  He gave her a look and said, “No one else got to Monica Forbes first. You were the first on that scene.”

  “I got lucky.”

  “You were the closest to … is that how you’re going to play this? Going to have a pity party?”

  “No.”

  He glanced at the flowers again. The orange container said Bee Well Soon, and three plastic bees on sticks jiggled amid the white daisies and leatherleaf fern.

  “Secret admirer?”

  “One of the NYPD detectives being nice. He probably got it in the hospital gift shop.”

  “Cute.”

  Bufort spoke with familiarity because they’d known each other almost a year now. He was in the National Crimes Branch, same as her. They answered to an assistant director out of the Manhattan field office and to Tyler, their supervisor at the resident agency. It seemed the FBI was always restructuring. The CCRSB – Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch – had been recently formed by the fusion of several smaller divisions, including the Criminal Investigation Division and the Critical Incident Response Group. But what it all meant was that Bufort, who focused on organized crime, was working out of the same resident agency as Shannon, for whom violent crime was the focus.

  And anyway, like she’d told Caldoza, you went where they put you, did what they asked. She’d worked in the financial crime and civil rights sections, too.

  “I’m not feeling sorry for myself,” she said to Bufort.

  “Good. Because, anyway – not that I have to tell you – but no one else was that close to Baldacci, were they?”

  Shannon made no response.

  “Thank you for not disagreeing,” Bufort said. He flipped on his blinker and made a lane change; they were drawing close to her home in Rego Park. “And anyway,” he said, “I mean, look at yourself. You practically caught fire putting her out.”

  Shannon was confused. “What?”

  A sideways glance from Bufort, like he was testing to see if she was full of shit. “When you jumped on her and tried to put out the flames. She was already a goner. I mean, I’ve seen the footage. No one else will see the footage – that shit is not going to air anywhere – Tyler made sure of that. But I saw it.” He waited, watching her, then said, “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”

  “I was thrown back …”

  “Yeah, thrown back, hit the ground, and you scrambled onto your feet a second later. Rushed over to the reporter … you really don’t remember?”

  The past twenty-four hours were a blur. She remembered a dream about drowning. Water so cold it burned …

  But that was about something else. Someone else.

  Bufort said, “Yeah, I guess maybe you might’ve blacked out, there. But, so, okay – yeah, you threw yourself on the reporter, managed to put out the flames. But she was all … I mean, there wasn’t much left to do. She was gone. And then so were you – passed out.” He pulled into the turnaround at her building’s entrance and stopped the car. “Okay. I’d offer to help you inside, but I saw the way you looked at me at the hospital.”

  “Sorry.” She grasped the door handle, then turned back to Bufort.

  Bufort said, “He wants you rested, better. He said forty-eight hours.”

  She felt relieved. Tyler wasn’t taking her off the case, just forcing her to pause. And maybe she could get around that, too.

  “Thanks, Charlie.”

  “All right.” He looked away.

  She opened the door and got out. Bufort hit the gas and Shannon stayed in the street a moment, feeling the heat, smelling the exhaust and asphalt. She looked up at her redbrick building. Like the Forbes family, she lived on the seventh floor of a seven-story building. No concierge here. An elevator that squeaked as it ascended and smelled like pancake syrup. An apartment with one bedroom, one bathroom, no kids. But a cat.

  “Hi, Jasper,” she said as the feline twisted around her ankles. She set the flowers down in the kitchen and picked up the cat. As usual, he tolerated her nuzzling only briefly before bounding away.

  She opened the door to her terrace and stepped out, took in the view and the air.
/>
  One way to look at the situation: it was good to be alive.

  A two-second delay. Shannon kept thinking about that. Standing in front of her open fridge, wearing only underwear and a tank top, drinking milk from the carton.

  Why two seconds? You open a dumpster lid, and two seconds gives you just enough time to look in, maybe see nothing, but get your head in a little closer for a better look …

  As far as patterns went, this one clearly broke free. Diaz and Forbes were both abducted and strangled, their bodies scrubbed down, all within twenty-four-hour time frames. Serial killers were almost always sexual sadists – but when they weren’t, there was still some kind of intimacy that came with an MO such as strangling. To strangle, you had to get close, had to touch. So while Diaz hadn’t been raped, she was strangled. And Forbes was strangled, too.

  But Jordan Baldacci had been killed at range, and in such a way that almost suggested another killer entirely. The only thing that linked her – she was another media person.

  And that was, of course, a strong link.

  It was on the news constantly. “Media under Attack.” There was something in the eyes of the men and women reporting on the story, a kind of personal engagement that might not have usually been there. This was their turf; these were their people. If they weren’t terrified yet, they were uneasy and getting scared.

  Shannon sat and watched with her leg and hip iced down, her cat stepping in and out of her lap. Her phone had filled up with text messages and voicemails, and she’d yet to respond.

  Forbes isn’t the only one, the killer had texted Baldacci. I also took out some trash …

  Shannon lingered over the choice of words. Obviously, the second sentence was a ploy to get Baldacci over to the dumpsters. Knowing she’d be on site – or at least, playing the short odds and risking it – the killer had lured her with simple bait. The first sentence suggested another victim, the second sentence that victim’s location. The twist, then, was that Baldacci became the victim.