BODY IN THE BOX a gripping crime thriller full of twists Read online

  BODY IN THE BOX

  A gripping crime thriller full of twists

  E.R. FALLON

  First published 2016

  Joffe Books, London

  www.joffebooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is American English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this.

  ©E.R. Fallon

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  A woman’s body is found floating in a sultry Florida mangrove. She has no ID and there is no indication of cause of death.

  Who is she?

  Who killed her?

  Everyone has dark secrets that will be revealed.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  CHARACTER LIST

  Chapter One

  Inside of Lulu’s Luncheonette, Detective Dino Cooper dug into the pocket of his overcoat, and handed the cashier a crumpled five-dollar bill. The cashier, a freckled teenager on the threshold of womanhood, rolled her eyes as she smoothed out the bill.

  Dino merely shrugged. He thought about explaining to her how he was a cop and therefore always in hurry. Smooth bills never crossed his mind as being important. But he stood in silence, turning his head every once in a while to gaze around at the patrons who were arriving in packs by the minute, because everyone knew that Lulu’s had the cheapest and best breakfast in the city of Newark.

  Most of them were bundled up in down jackets, hats, scarves, and gloves, and were still recovering from the record blizzard that had recently left the state of New Jersey covered with four feet of snow. Dino’s cell phone vibrated. Terry Jackson, his partner, who was double-parked in front of Lulu’s at that very moment and waiting for him to bring their second cup of coffee of the day, was nagging him back to their car.

  “Miss, can I get my change, please?”

  The cash register drawer let out a loud ding as it popped open. The cashier shoved Dino’s five in place, and then counted out two dollars and seventy-six cents in change. She thrust the bills and change toward Dino.

  He looked back as he left and half expected to see the cashier sticking her tongue out at him, or flipping him the bird.

  Outside, Dino balanced the two cups of coffee with one hand while he opened the passenger side door of the Ford Crown Victoria. He slid into the seat to find Terry speaking into the two-way radio.

  Dino knew from the look on his partner’s face that they wouldn’t have time to actually drink the coffee.

  He nudged Terry’s shoulder. “What’s the call?”

  Terry spoke into the receiver. “Ten-four.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “A dead kid,” Terry replied, with a shake of his head.

  Terry took the car out of park and quickly merged into the street, which was congested with morning work traffic.

  “Where?”

  “Beech Hills.”

  “Near the old factory?”

  Terry switched on the siren. “Yeah.”

  “Shit, and I thought it was just winos and hookers there these days,” Dino remarked over the deafening noise of the siren.

  “Looks like that’s not the case today.”

  “Did someone call it in?”

  “Yeah. Said there was a child’s body, and then they hung up.” Terry picked up speed.

  The Diamond Ladies Shoe factory, which had closed in the summer of 1984, stood among two other vacant factory buildings as a striking symbol of a city whose pride had long been lost. Dino’s mother had worked on the floor of the shoe factory when he was a child. The second Friday of every month, she came home with a bonus employee gift of whatever style of ladies’ pumps weren’t going out to retail stores that month.

  After the factory shut down, it became a popular place for teenagers to drink and smoke dope. They’d hurled so many bricks and rocks through the large glass windows that now there was nothing left to smash. They had stopped coming to the area once it became too unsafe even for rebellious teenagers, and it started attracting prostitutes, dealers, and addicts. There were no CCTV cameras there to record their activity.

  These days, nobody really lived in Beech Hills, except for a couple of homeless people who sometimes camped out in the sparse woods, but it wasn’t the right time of year for them. Too cold. Outside of Beech Hills was Greenwood, a typical middle-class neighborhood with well-maintained split-level ranch homes. To the right of that was Marks Hill, the lower-middle-class neighborhood where Dino had grown up in a row house. Marks Hill had St. Ann’s, the Catholic church where his mother still went to mass every Sunday morning.

  Dino had managed to get a couple of sips as Terry drove, but the coffee was cold by the time they arrived at the scene.

  Terry nudged his shoulder. “Hey, when do you think they’re going to turn this place into a bunch of yuppie condos?”

  Dino half smiled. “Any day now, I’m sure of it.”

  Terry pulled up behind a police cruiser parked alongside a road that years of wear and little repair had left cracked in places. He shut off the engine and placed the keys in his pocket.

  “Do you think I’ll need a coat out there?”

  “That depends,” Dino said. “If you’re a damn polar bear, probably not. Otherwise, I’d sure as hell wear it.”

  Terry smiled and reached for his coat. They walked over to the two uniformed patrol officers who had arrived before them.

  “What do you have here today, fellas?” Terry asked the two officers.

  The taller one, the younger of the two, came forward. He choked up a little as he spoke.

  “It’s a dead kid, detective, a very young boy,” he said. “I radioed in the county coroner’s office, they should be here in a couple of—”

  “You must be a rookie — calling the coroner is my job,” Terry said. “This is the first time you’ve seen a dead body?”

  The officer nodded. “I’m sorry, detective—”

  Terry cut him off. “It’s fine, just don’t do it again.” He turned to Dino. “Let’s get forensics in here ASAP. It’s about time they got some work. Too bad it ended up being this poor child, though.”

  Dino nodded as he removed his cell phone from his pocket. He glanced over at the patrol officers. “Where’s the body?”

  The shorter officer pointed to a large, old
cardboard box with a faded Maytag logo printed on the side, which had once contained somebody’s prized household washing machine.

  Dino said, “There’s so much trash inside this damn city that they could’ve taken that thing from anywhere and put the body inside.”

  The box was closer to the road than the woods, where the ground was littered with old soda bottles, empty drug bags, and discarded newspapers gradually turning yellow with age. The front of the box had been ripped off unevenly. Dino withdrew a pair of examination gloves from the pocket of his overcoat and knelt down beside the box.

  The boy had brown hair and appeared to be no more than eight or nine years old. His head rested on an old pillow. He was clothed in a pair of navy blue pajamas with large white buttons. The body was well preserved, and though it was a cold time of year, Dino figured that the child had probably been dumped recently.

  Dino looked away. It wasn’t that it was the first time he had seen a dead child, it was probably his third or fourth time, but the fact that this particular child had been dropped on the side of a rarely used road, as casually as a piece of trash, bothered him greatly.

  Terry paced back and forth, thinking. “Do you think he was left out here alive and froze to death?” he said.

  “Possibly, but I get the feeling that he died somewhere else and was dumped here. This isn’t the worst I’ve seen in this place, but Christ, just the thought of dumping a little kid in his PJs on the side of the road in this weather is enough to make you sick.”

  “Do you think he died of natural causes and somebody panicked, or do you think he was murdered?”

  Dino shrugged and stared down at the body. “There are no marks of strangulation on his neck, and no bruises or blood elsewhere on his body that I can see. But he just as likely could’ve frozen to death out here, and that’s murder. We’ll have to see what the medical examiner concludes.”

  Dino gently pulled back the boy’s lips and looked at his teeth. They appeared straight and clean.

  “He’s got nearly perfect teeth.”

  “Maybe he’s from Greenwood?” Terry said.

  “Maybe.”

  A member of the forensics team arrived to take pictures.

  “How are you doing today, Cooper?” he asked. “Heard it’s a bad one.”

  “It sure as hell is, Frank.”

  The forensics team collected evidence with tweezers, placing hairs and loose string into tiny vials and putting a rusty Coca Cola can in a clear plastic bag. They continued to search for additional evidence in and around the woods, but found little else save for some gum wrappers.

  Dino watched them work for a while, and then asked Terry, “Are you into this stuff?”

  “What, forensics?”

  Dino nodded.

  “It’s interesting,” Terry said.

  “It is sort of interesting.”

  Terry smirked. “Come on, you don’t just think it’s ‘sort of’ interesting. I can tell by the look on your face that you’re really into it.”

  Dino shrugged and changed the subject. “Where did this boy come from? I mean, I’m from Marks Hill and my teeth have always been all right. Once the coroner picks him up, we’ll check to see if there are any reports of children missing in the area within the last few days, and even farther back than that. Let’s look to see if there are any reports for the past couple of months.”

  Terry gestured toward the unmistakable sleek black van of the Essex county coroner’s office, just pulling up.

  Two women stepped out, both wearing navy blue jackets and meticulously pressed white pants, with shiny black shoes.

  “What do we have today?” one of them asked the detectives.

  “A deceased child, I’m afraid,” Dino replied.

  The women shook their heads.

  They wheeled a gurney over to where Dino and Terry stood, and, after seeking the forensics team’s permission, carefully removed the small body from the cardboard box. The body seemed even smaller lying on the large gurney underneath a white sheet.

  “Tough luck, right?” Terry said. The coroner’s assistants fastened the straps, and placed the gurney into the back of the van. “Did you see the boy’s face?”

  Dino nodded slowly. The boy’s face had been very pale. His closed eyes had made it look like he was sleeping. “It’s a damn shame.”

  He brushed past the two uniformed officers standing watch, back to the now empty box, which had a yellow evidence marker next to it, and dusted it for fingerprints.

  “When you’re done, we’ll take it back with us, put it in storage,” Frank said.

  “We might want to come in and take another look at it, if that’s okay.”

  “You got it.”

  Dino and Terry got back in the Crown Victoria.

  Dino sat silently in the passenger seat and gazed out the windshield toward Marks Hill.

  “Everything okay?” Terry asked him. “Besides what we just saw back there.”

  “Yeah, I’m a little tired, that’s all.”

  Something about that child had been familiar to Dino. He looked like somebody he had known growing up, but he couldn’t give a name to the image of the face stuck in his head.

  “Jake Riley,” he whispered to himself.

  “What?”

  “The boy we just saw looks like Jake Riley.”

  “Who is Jake Riley?”

  “He was this kid I knew when I was growing up. He lived across the street from me for a few years. The kid in the box looks like him.”

  “Do you think he’s his son or something?”

  Dino shook his head. “No. Jake Riley disappeared when we were kids. He was kidnapped or something, they never found him.”

  “How old was he?”

  “It’s hard for me to remember off the bat, but I think he was eight or nine. I was ten, I remember that.”

  “Maybe we should check it out when we get back. It could be connected.”

  Dino shook his head. “Nah, that was years ago. I’m sure it’s a coincidence. I was just thinking out loud, that’s all.”

  * * *

  The South precinct had served Newark for well over seventy-five years, with a hundred officers and detectives working there at any given point in time. Dino and Terry were two of the most respected veterans in the vicinity. Over the years, they had watched in disgust as guys they had known since the academy became greedy and got the boot for taking handouts.

  Terry parked the car in one of the spaces reserved for the homicide squad. “Do you want to grab some lunch?”

  “Yeah. We should phone it in, though, so we can get working on this case.”

  They went into the station. Captain Peters waved them over and voiced his concern that there could be a child killer on the loose — that once the press got wind of the story, citizens would be calling in to complain that the cops weren’t doing enough to catch the guy.

  “We’re working on it,” Dino assured him.

  “You better be.”

  “What’s his problem?” Terry said.

  Dino shrugged. “There’s always pressure from the top. You know how it is. A dead child — nobody wants to hear that kind of a story.”

  Dino knew that the captain’s wife had died last year and he was raising their three kids on his own. His temper was short.

  Terry took off his overcoat and suit jacket and sat down at his desk. He yawned as he typed on his keyboard and stared at the screen.

  “When’s the last time you slept?” Dino asked him.

  “Oh, you know me, Cooper, I’m a vampire, I don’t sleep.”

  Dino chuckled.

  Terry picked up his phone then hit a key in frustration. “The network’s running slow again.”

  Dino searched the missing persons’ database for a male, brown-haired, white child missing within a fifty-mile radius in the past month. When the search came up empty, he expanded it to one hundred miles and up to two years ago. He tapped his fingers on his desk as the page slowly loa
ded.

  “Got one.”

  “Hold on a second.” Terry covered the phone receiver with his hand. “I’m ordering lunch. You got what?”

  “A match on the description. The photo looks a little like our kid.”

  “Lunch is going to have to wait.” Terry hung up.

  Dino looked at the screen again and read out loud: “Yonkers, New York. Seven-year-old white male. Name: Daniel Sawyers. Eye color: green. Hair: brown. Last seen two years ago on December twenty-fourth.”

  Terry looked at him. “Christmas Eve? Where was he missing from?”

  “A Westchester mall. Went shopping with his mom. She claims she turned away for a second, and he was gone when she turned back. We’re going to Yonkers. You’re driving.”

  Terry smirked. “Don’t I always drive?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll call into Yonkers and let them know we’re coming in.”

  “This Sawyers kid went missing two years ago. Do you think it’s even possible it’s him we found?”

  “Maybe he was held somewhere. We’ll have to talk to the parents. See if they can ID him. Even if it turns out to be a dead end, we don’t have anything else at the moment, so we might as well work it. You know how the captain gets with a child murder case. If we don’t get the hell out of here soon, he’s going to be over here asking us what’s taking so long.”

  Dino picked up the phone and dialed the Yonkers Police Department.

  * * *

  Terry pulled the car into the driveway of a two-level stucco house wedged tightly between two other identical homes, in a quiet suburb. A new-looking Jeep was parked ahead. Lying leisurely on the front lawn was an overweight golden retriever, who thumped its tail against the frozen grass and appeared oblivious to the fact that it was thirty degrees outside.

  Dino eyed the dog. “Are you sure this is it?”

  “One thirty-four Rose Hill Drive,” Terry said. “Yeah, this is it. Yonkers PD told us to go right ahead and talk to her, no problem. Truthfully, I think the crew here is frustrated with the entire thing. They still have no leads.”