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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

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.