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

  Dino watched the dog as he slammed the car door shut. “Think he’s friendly?”

  “Who’s saying it’s a he? Let me see if it’s friendly. I love dogs. Don’t you?”

  “I like them, yeah.”

  Terry walked swiftly ahead of Dino toward where the dog lay.

  “Come here, buddy,” he said.

  The dog, wagging its tail even more intensely, sauntered over and sniffed Terry’s hand.

  Terry turned to Dino. “There’s your answer.” He patted the dog’s head. “And it is a boy.”

  After a few seconds, the dog lost interest in Terry and approached Dino with the same eagerness. He pet the dog a little before walking toward the house behind Terry. Dino readjusted his tie as Terry rang the doorbell.

  When no one answered, Terry rang it again. This time Dino heard the sound of light footsteps approaching.

  The small blonde woman who answered the door had a cordless telephone in one hand and was covering the receiver with another.

  She looked confused. “Yes?”

  “Ms. Sawyers?” Terry asked.

  She nodded.

  “We’re Detectives Cooper and Jackson from the Newark police department ma’am,” Dino said. “We’re here about your son, Daniel.”

  The woman’s expression changed from confusion to fear. She probably thinks her son’s dead, Dino thought.

  The woman spoke fast into the receiver. “I’ll have to call you back, Anne.” Then she gestured to Dino and Terry. “Please come in.” She held out her hand. “Which one of you is Cooper?”

  “That’s me, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Sawyers shook his hand firmly. She glanced at Terry. “You must be Detective Jackson?”

  Terry nodded, extending his hand.

  She shook it and then stepped aside to allow them to enter the house. Once inside, her mood shifted. They hadn’t even stepped out of the bright hallway and into the living room before she began shooting questions at them.

  Had they found Daniel? Was he alive? Did they know who took him?

  Dino told her carefully that they had found a deceased child about the same age Daniel would be today, but they weren’t sure that it was Daniel.

  Upon hearing the word ‘deceased’, Ms. Sawyers might have collapsed to the floor if Terry hadn’t reached out and caught her. With Dino’s help they sat her on the small sofa. She put the phone down.

  “My pills. Can you bring me one of them?” she said. “With a glass of water, please.”

  “All right, where are they?” said Terry diffidently.

  “On the top shelf in the kitchen, to the right of the sink,” she said. “Thank you.”

  Terry went into the kitchen and Dino spoke with Ms. Sawyers.

  “Are you certain that it’s Daniel?” she asked.

  “Ma’am, we can’t be certain unless you come with us to New Jersey to see if you can identify—”

  “You want me to identify the body. Did the boy have a scar on his forehead? Daniel had chickenpox the year before he disappeared, and he has a small scar on his forehead from it . . .”

  Terry entered the living room with a glass of water and one of the pills. He handed them to her.

  Dino eyed her curiously as she gulped the pill down with a sip of water. “They calm my nerves,” she explained.

  “Yonkers PD told us you’re married. Is your husband at work?” Terry asked, taking a seat next to Dino on the sofa opposite Ms. Sawyers.

  She nodded and then took another drink of water. “He’s away on a business trip. I used to work too, before Daniel went missing.”

  The detectives nodded in understanding. Dino reached into the pocket of his overcoat and removed a small notepad and pen. “We have some information from the Yonkers police, but we need you to tell us about Daniel. When you’re ready, of course.”

  Ms. Sawyers let out a deep sigh and closed her eyes. She opened them again and said, “I don’t know if I’m ready to. I always felt that something terrible had happened to him. You know, there was never a genuine suspect. Not one single lead. But you don’t know if it’s him now, do you? There’s still a chance that he’s alive, isn’t there?”

  Dino looked at Terry. They didn’t like to give too much hope to a potential victim’s family members for fear it might be used against them down the line. A complaint or lawsuit could emerge if that hope turned out to be false.

  “I’m sorry, but we can’t answer that, ma’am.”

  Ms. Sawyers looked at Terry in expectation. “We really can’t, I’m afraid,” he said.

  She sighed. “It’s all right, detectives. I understand.”

  Dino tucked the notepad and pen back into his pocket. “May we drive you back to New Jersey with us, to the medical examiner’s office? Is now a good time?”

  Ms. Sawyers nodded.

  “It may take a while,” Terry said. “Are you sure you don’t want to wait for your husband to come with you?”

  “No. It’s hard to talk about Daniel, but I’m ready to see if you found him,” she said. “It’s either now or never, detectives, trust me.”

  “We’ll arrange for a car to drive you back home once you’re finished,” Dino said.

  They waited for her to put on a jacket, get her purse, and let the dog into the house.

  Then she followed them outside to the Crown Victoria. Dino rode in the back so she could sit in the front with Terry during the forty-five-minute drive to the Essex county coroner’s office.

  * * *

  In the lower level of the coroner’s office, a young woman sat at the reception desk. Dino said to her, “We’re the detectives that are here to see Doctor Colburn.”

  “Hold on a second, I’ll page her.” She dialed a number and spoke into the receiver. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll tell them.”

  She hung up and looked at Dino. “She’s going to be a while. You can all have a seat if you’d like.” She smiled at Ms. Sawyers and gestured to the chairs behind them. Ms. Sawyers declined.

  Dino stood with Terry and Ms. Sawyers in silence. They wouldn’t sit if she didn’t.

  Appearing from behind a creaky wooden door, the medical examiner arrived sooner than Dino had expected. Doctor Colburn, an expert forensic pathologist, was a tall, intense-looking woman with coiffed white hair. She shook their hands and then asked Ms. Sawyers to wait in the reception area for a moment.

  “There’s something I want to show you two,” Colburn said to the detectives.

  Dino nodded at Ms. Sawyers, who had sat down. “Excuse us for a moment, ma’am.”

  He followed Doctor Colburn and Terry into the brightly lit autopsy room. The smell of the place, bleach and formaldehyde, had never been his favorite part of the job.

  Underneath a white sheet, he saw the outline of the boy’s body lying on top of a metal table. Doctor Colburn removed the sheet.

  “See this?” She indicated a small sliver along the boy’s bare abdomen.

  Both Dino and Terry stepped closer.

  “It looks like a scar from an incision,” Terry said.

  “Exactly,” Doctor Colburn replied. “This child does not have a spleen, detectives. It was removed for some reason. He died of a bacterial infection. The fact that he didn’t have a spleen could have exacerbated the recent infection. If he had been given antibiotics, his death may have been prevented.”

  “How long ago did he die?” Dino asked.

  “Two days, I’d say, tops. But the splenectomy was performed maybe as long as two years ago.”

  “So he probably isn’t the Sawyers boy,” Terry said.

  Doctor Colburn nodded. “Unless his mother has stated that her child had his spleen removed a few weeks before he disappeared.”

  “She didn’t mention it and it wasn’t in any of the files, but we’ll ask her,” Dino said. “Regardless, we should have her take a look at the body while she’s here. I don’t like putting anyone through unnecessary trauma, but we need to be sure.”

  Doctor Colburn covered the body
with the white sheet and Dino left the room with Terry.

  Terry whispered to him in the hallway. “Do you want me to tell her?”

  “I’ll do it this time. My turn.”

  Dino didn’t mind conveying good news, of course, although he still felt bad for Ms. Sawyers, since the revelation would most likely mean she wouldn’t have closure anytime soon. Maybe knowing that your child was deceased and being able to finally bury him after all those years was better than not knowing what happened to him at all.

  Ms. Sawyers looked at them expectantly as they approached the waiting room.

  She rose and inquired in a quavering voice, “Is everything all right? I didn’t know what was happening.”

  “The medical examiner wanted to talk to us about something. Sorry we kept you waiting. Ms. Sawyers, did Daniel by any chance have a surgical operation shortly before he went missing?”

  “No. Why are you asking me that?”

  “The boy in there most likely isn’t your son. According to the medical examiner, he had an operation two years ago, but we’d still like for you to look, just to be certain.”

  Her face seemed more relaxed. “All right,” she whispered.

  Dino escorted her to the autopsy room.

  Doctor Colburn stood next to the metal table and looked at Dino and Terry. Dino nodded, and she carefully removed the white sheet from the body.

  Ms. Sawyers glanced at the boy. “It’s not him.” She put her hand to her mouth.

  Dino stepped close to her. “Ms. Sawyers, are you sure?”

  She abruptly drew Dino into an embrace, murmuring, “It’s not him. It’s not him.”

  She gazed into Dino’s eyes. “There’s still hope, then, isn’t there?”

  Dino gently removed himself from her grasp. He smiled slightly.

  “We’re grateful you came all the way out here with us,” he said. “We’ll have a car ready to drive you home in a few minutes.”

  They watched as she left the building, following the beat cop who had been assigned to drive her home.

  “What was with the hug?” Terry asked Dino.

  “I think she was relieved he wasn’t her son.”

  “Do you think they’ll ever find him?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Well, it’s back to round one for us.”

  Dino nodded. “Come on, I want to talk with the examiner some more.”

  The medical examiner had left for lunch by the time they headed back into the autopsy room. But her assistant, a good-looking brunette woman in her early thirties, was pacing about. Terry was very much in love with his wife, but Dino was recently divorced.

  “Detective Cooper,” he said.

  He reached out to shake her hand but saw that she was wearing bloodstained examination gloves, and he retreated from the handshake.

  “Excuse me,” she said.

  She hastily removed the dirty gloves and tossed them into the trash receptacle in the corner of the room. Her face was flushed.

  “I’m Abigail Jordan, Doctor Colburn’s assistant, for this month anyway.”

  “Do you know when Doctor Colburn’s going to be back?” Terry asked.

  “To tell you the truth, since I don’t want you guys to waste your time, she usually takes a two-hour lunch ‘break,’ if you can call it that. She lives around the corner, so she goes back to her house and eats with her girlfriend. So I would say she should be back around . . . two thirty?”

  “I wish we had that kind of a break,” Dino said with a smile. “Maybe you can help us with a few questions?”

  A little reluctantly she said, “I’ll see if I can help you. Do you want to see the body again? Because I’m not sure if I should show it to you if Doctor Colburn isn’t around. She’s very peculiar about those sorts of things, if she finds out.”

  “No, that’s fine, we don’t need to view the body again,” Dino said. “But can we see the full medical report?”

  “Of course.” Abigail went over to a counter at the far left of the room and grabbed a manila folder.

  She handed it to Dino a little more slowly than was needed.

  “Thanks.”

  Terry took the report and read it out loud:

  “Rough age of victim: eight or nine years old. He was a little underweight, but no signs of obvious bodily harm except for a professional-looking incision on the victim’s abdomen. The victim’s spleen has been removed. Most likely from stage of scar tissue, the removal occurred two years ago. The contents of the stomach show that the victim had not eaten for at least twenty-four hours before his death. Tox screen is negative. There are no obvious signs of sexual abuse. The victim died from a bacterial infection, probably made worse by the absence of a spleen. Because of the condition of the body and the stage of decomposition, the victim likely died no more than two days ago. There’s other stuff, but it’s pretty much a repeat of what I already said.”

  “Has the press got wind of the story yet?” Dino wondered aloud.

  Abigail shrugged.

  “I don’t believe so, but they always seem to find out sooner or later,” Terry said.

  “We might want to feed it to them at some point, to see if it could get someone to call in. Someone out there has to know who he is, or maybe somebody saw something.”

  “You’re thinking the homeless people who hang around there saw something?”

  “The homeless or people who go down there to get high,” Dino said. “Somebody might’ve known he was out there — let’s find out if anybody saw him being put out there.”

  “We’ll take a ride to tent city now.”

  They thanked Abigail for her assistance, Dino accepting the fact that it would be inappropriate to ask for her phone number right now. He and Terry got into the Crown Victoria and drove onto Highway 86 to an overpass, underneath which a makeshift community had formed over the past few years.

  * * *

  Fires burned in large trash barrels, and temporary tents made of old plastic sheets had been put up alongside the overpass columns to create a semblance of privacy. ‘Tent city,’ as the media called it, was home to around fifty to a hundred people.

  “I can’t believe the city doesn’t shut this place down,” Terry muttered as he pulled over to the side of the busy highway. “These people should really be moved to shelters this time of the year. It’s too cold.”

  “The city has done that a few times, closed it down and brought them to shelters, but someone always ends up coming back and starting it up again.”

  Dino got out of the car, making sure his gun and Taser were secure and accessible — you could never be too sure in this part of the city. Sometimes people on the run used tent city as an intermediate stop when heading out of state.

  Some of the inhabitants scattered as the detectives approached the overpass. A few people stared at them. Most just went about their business, warming their hands over one of the fires, or playing cards. Some drank out of bottles in brown paper bags.

  Dino sniffed the cool, smoky air and searched for a welcoming face in the crowd. “We should talk to the tall fellow first, the guy by the trash-can fire over there, the one who keeps looking at us.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “No, but he looks like he might want to talk to us.”

  They walked over. The guy, who looked around sixty years old, stared at them with puffy blue eyes.

  “Cops,” he said.

  His white beard and generous gut made him look like an unkempt Santa Claus. He smelled pretty bad up close.

  “Hey, how did you know — because we’re wearing suits?” Terry joked.

  “Are you kidding me? I can spot cops from a mile away,” the man replied, revealing okay teeth, considering, but rank breath.

  “What’s your name, sir?” Dino asked him.

  “Tom, uh, Thomas. Why, am I in trouble? I don’t think I am.” He spoke as though he couldn’t remember whether he’d done something that would warrant the police showing up to question hi
m.

  “No. We’re hoping you could help us out with a few things. You look like the guy who’s in charge down here.”

  Tom beamed with pride. “What do you need?”

  “Have you or any of your friends here been around Beech Hills lately?” Terry asked.

  “Why?”

  Dino glanced at Terry and then spoke. “We found a deceased child, a boy, out there this morning, and we’re hoping one of you might’ve seen who dumped him there.”

  “A dead kid?” Tom shook his head. “What a shame.”

  “It is,” Terry said. “And that’s why we’re hoping one of you good citizens here might help us out a little.”

  Tom’s brow furrowed, as if he was trying hard to recall something.

  “Well, I haven’t been out there since the summer. Too damn cold. But that guy there,” he said, pointing in the opposite direction, “he buys dope regularly from that Johnson fella out there. You guys know Johnson, right, the big shot?”

  Dino nodded. He was well aware of Red Johnson. He’d arrested him twice while working narcotics a few years back.

  “So maybe he’s seen something,” Tom said. “I’ll go ask him for you.”

  Before Dino or Terry could stop Tom, he’d headed over to a pallid and scrawny young guy wearing ripped jeans, a hooded sweatshirt too big for him, and a baseball cap. Tom spoke to the young guy, who glanced over in the direction of the detectives. Then he ran out of the overpass.

  Dino gave chase with Terry following him. Dino had been a useful fullback in high school and was faster.

  “Police. Stop.”

  He chased the guy out to the side of the highway and wondered if he would try to run across the busy road. Terry caught up to them. The guy remained on the side of the road, glancing back and forth from the traffic to where Dino stood with Terry. It seemed like he was trying to decide if what he knew was worth risking his life for. He must have thought it wasn’t because he fell to his knees and held up his hands in surrender.

  “Why were you running from us?” Dino said to him. He put handcuffs on him and then read him his rights. Dino’s lungs burned from running and he coughed a little.

  “We asked you to stop. It’s an offense to run from the police,” Terry said.