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

The guy breathed heavily and nodded. “I know, I’m sorry.”

  Dino searched the guy’s pockets. “What’s your name?”

  “Stan.”

  Dino found a switchblade in the guy’s jeans. “What do you need this for, Stan?”

  “Ever walk around here at night? It’s dangerous. I need protection.”

  Dino and Terry led him down to the Crown Victoria.

  “You’re going to have to come back to the station with us,” Dino said. “Running from the cops. You have some explaining to do.”

  * * *

  Inside the interrogation room Dino saw Stan was shaking all over. He offered him a Pepsi. Probably needs a fix, Dino thought.

  “Stan, why did you run from us?” Dino asked.

  Stan stared at the table. He shrugged.

  “Did you dump that body?”

  Stan suddenly looked up at Dino and spoke. “I don’t know anything about that dead boy.”

  “Who said anything about a dead boy?” Terry said.

  “Tom said it. Tom from tent city said you were looking for something about a dead boy.”

  “You saw who left him, is that why you ran?” Dino said.

  “No,” Stan shouted. He began to stand up. Dino motioned for him to remain seated.

  “I think you did,” he said. “And I think you’re afraid. What did you see?”

  “I’m not afraid,” Stan replied. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “Bull.” Terry slapped the table, making Stan jump.

  “I . . .”

  “Come on,” Dino yelled.

  “I don’t want to say nothing to you. Don’t I get a lawyer or something?”

  Terry rolled his eyes and muttered to Dino. “How do you want to handle it?”

  “If we get him a lawyer, we’ll never get it out of him,” Dino said quietly. “We keep going.”

  “Are you sure? It’s caused us a lot of trouble in the past.”

  “If it’ll help us find who dumped that poor kid, then I’m sure.”

  They turned their attention back to Stan, who was now gulping down his soda. He finished it and put the can down.

  “Do you want another one?” Terry held the empty can in the air and shook it.

  Stan nodded slowly, as if he thought Terry might be pulling a fast one on him.

  With Terry gone, Dino watched Stan chew on his fingernails.

  “That’s a bad habit,” he commented.

  Stan paused his chewing. “I used to smoke, which was worse.”

  Dino chuckled. “Maybe you need to get some Nicorette gum. That stuff worked wonders for me.”

  Stan continued biting his nails.

  “Why did you have a knife on you?” Dino asked.

  “I already told you why. Am I going to get it back when I leave here?”

  “No. You can’t carry a switchblade in New Jersey. Where did you buy it from?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “How convenient.”

  Stan sighed. “I liked that knife.”

  “That’s too bad for you.”

  Terry returned and sat down next to Stan.

  “Tell us, what did you see?” Dino said.

  Stan seemed to dislike being in such close proximity. He breathed heavily while opening his soda, and took a quick sip.

  “Last Sunday,” he began, “I was down at Beech Hills, looking to buy some smack. It was dark out so I couldn’t see much ahead of me. I figured I was the only one out there at that time of the day.”

  “What time were you there?” Terry asked.

  “Uh, I can’t remember.”

  “Think,” Dino said.

  “It had to be around three o’clock in the morning,” Stan replied after a moment. “Anyways, I wasn’t alone. I got closer to that factory, and there was a car parked at the side of the road.”

  “Who was in the car?” Terry asked.

  “Some lady, I think.” Stan sighed. “And, no, I’d never seen her before.”

  “And you ran from us because you didn’t want us to find out that you were buying drugs?” Dino asked.

  Stan nodded, and Terry shook his head.

  “Go on,” Dino said. “Finish telling us.”

  “The lady, she gets out of the car with this thing that looks like a damn coffin. I freak out, run into the bushes. I only came out again after I heard her start the engine and take off. Then I start to run like hell out of there, figuring my dealer had already left because I’d been hiding for so long. I nearly tripped over what she’d left there.”

  “You tripped over the box?”

  “Yeah, whatever the hell it was.”

  “Did you look inside it?” Terry asked.

  Stan shifted in his chair and then nodded.

  “What did you see?” said Dino.

  “It was really dark out, like I said, but I saw a kid.”

  “Was he alive?” Terry asked.

  Stan shook his head. “No. And I did check to see if he was breathing. I was a paramedic in the Army a while back so I know how to do that.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell anyone he was there?”

  Stan shook his head.

  “He could’ve been alive,” Dino said.

  Stan shook his head. “No. He was dead, as cold as a sheet of damn ice.”

  “Did you see the car’s license plate?” Terry asked. “The state? Any of the numbers?”

  Stan cleared his throat, and then took another sip of soda. “Nope.”

  “How about the type of car?”

  Stan closed his eyes and appeared to be trying hard to think. Dino asked himself how much of the guy’s brain had been fried by drugs, and wondered if they could believe any of this.

  “It was big and new-looking. It looked like it cost a lot of money,” Stan finally said. “My sister’s always watching MTV. I’ve seen cars like it in the rap videos.”

  “What, like a Cadillac SUV?” Dino said.

  “Yeah, like that.” Stan appeared relieved that he was able to actually remember something clearly. “Like a Cadillac SUV.”

  The detectives looked at each other. Was Stan just going along with what Dino had said?

  “You’re not going to ask my dealer about me, are you? I don’t want him knowing I talked to the cops.”

  “Ask Johnson about you?”

  Stan looked worried that Dino knew his dealer’s name.

  “We know everyone, Stan,” Terry said.

  “But we won’t ask Johnson unless we need to.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re going to have to tell us more,” Dino said.

  “Come on, man, what the hell else do you need from me? It was dark out there. I couldn’t see a lot.”

  “What did this lady you say you saw look like?” Terry asked. “Was she white? Black? Skinny? Fat? Tall? Short? Average? Did she look young? Old? What color was her hair?”

  Stan leaned back into his chair. “This chair isn’t very comfortable. I want another one before I say anything else.”

  “It’s more comfortable than a cell.”

  Dino rose and leaned against the gray wall of the interrogation room, looking at the back of Stan’s head. He suddenly felt like leaving the room, just taking off and not giving anyone an explanation. He wondered what Terry would think of that, if he suddenly took off from the job and the whole damn city and didn’t say a word to anyone beforehand. Maybe he was tired of everything. Sure, sometimes he thought that way. But he always stayed because he cared about the victims and wanted them to get justice. Terry tilted his head toward him questioningly. Dino turned his attention back to Stan.

  “What did she look like?”

  “Where’s my chair?”

  “That’s the only one you’re going to get,” Terry said.

  Stan started to act jumpy and talked faster. “She wasn’t old.”

  “And?” Dino said.

  “She was sort of skinny, but not too skinny because I could s
till see some big tits on her.”

  Dino laughed. “And?”

  “I don’t remember nothing else.”

  “Was she white?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Do you know her?” Terry asked.

  Stan shrugged.

  “You do, or you don’t?”

  Stan looked back at Dino. “She might’ve looked familiar. I don’t really know. I couldn’t see much. Can I leave now? There’s no lawyer here for me.”

  Terry looked over at Dino, who nodded. They had no evidence to hold him on, and they were pushing their luck. For now, Stan was merely a potential witness.

  “You can go,” Terry said. “But you better not leave town. We might need to talk with you again.”

  Dino escorted Stan out of the station, and handed him his card.

  “If you remember anything else, anything, you give me a call, understand?”

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

  Dino doubted Stan would call him.

  Terry was at his desk when Dino returned. Dino noticed him staring at the framed photo of his wife and son. Terry probably missed his family, having not seen them in over twenty-four hours, ever since they got the call about the boy’s body after having just spent the night tying up the loose ends of a case involving a wife who’d shot her husband to death and gone on the run. They were supposed to have headed home after they’d finished typing up the last of the reports for the husband and wife case to officially close the month-long investigation. They had solved that case, not as quickly as Dino had wanted, but they’d caught the murdering wife out in Las Vegas, and she was now awaiting trial. But the new case was different. A child was dead. No detective wanted to go home when they had a case like that. They wanted justice served fast.

  “Big tits and a Cadillac. Quite a dream girl,” Dino said to no one in particular.

  Terry turned around and smiled at him.

  “So, what do you think?” Dino said.

  “I think Stan’s telling the truth. What do you think?”

  “I agree. He was only out there looking to score.”

  Terry picked up his phone. “I’m going to see how Tulia is.”

  “I hope Jimmy and her are doing well. I’ll go get us some fresh coffee.”

  Terry nodded thanks.

  Dino grabbed his coat and left the station. He walked three blocks south before turning around and settling on the deli he sometimes went to, because it was cold out and he didn’t feel like walking anymore. That was something he had always liked about working an urban beat. Sure, it was more crime heavy than the suburbs, but he could get out of the station and walk when he wanted to.

  The warmth he had expected to feel upon entering the deli wasn’t there. The deli was so cold that Dino figured they must have shut off the heat. The old man and woman who owned the deli always seemed to get the temperatures inside their store wrong. In the summer it felt like they hardly used the air conditioning, and in the wintertime the place, and the coffee, was always lukewarm at best. But no matter how much Dino and Terry griped to each other about the deli’s coffee and stale bagels, sometimes they couldn’t bring themselves to go anywhere else. After ten years, it had become a habit, much like they had gotten used to each other.

  Chapter Two

  Tulia was in the kitchen, bent over the oven, when Terry grabbed her backside.

  “Hey!” she called out, and then quickly turned around and smiled at him.

  “Hi, sugar,” Terry said.

  “I was wondering when you would finally be home.”

  Terry peered inside the oven. “What are you baking? It smells really good.”

  “Oatmeal cookies.”

  Terry made a face. “Sounds healthy.”

  “Why, were you expecting chocolate chip?”

  Terry smiled at her.

  “I have an idea,” she said. “Why don’t you bake some? I have to make a few batches. You can do it in the morning before you leave for work. You usually leave later than I do. I need them for tomorrow night.”

  Was she being sarcastic? When Terry realized she wasn’t, he said, “I probably won’t have enough time.”

  Tulia’s lips pursed in the way that Terry knew meant she was upset.

  “What’s so important about tomorrow night?” he asked.

  Tulia looked at him as though she couldn’t believe he had forgotten. He had.

  “Parent-teacher conferences, remember?” she said. “We’re one of the families who offered to help make the refreshments, or have you forgotten about that also?”

  “I’m so sorry, sweetheart, but I don’t think I’ll be able to make it.”

  “What else is new?”

  “Tulia, you know how much I want to go. But I can’t. I have to work. I’m sorry, but you know how it goes. We have a new case, one involving a boy who was found dead. Tomorrow night we have to do a stakeout.”

  Tulia’s face softened. “That’s terrible. I know you can’t talk to me about it, but who would do such a thing?”

  * * *

  Dino had told Terry to go home to see his wife and son, but Dino had stayed at the station. There was no waiting at home for him.

  The results of the deceased child’s fingerprints had come in from the crime lab and they hadn’t matched any set in the national database. Not even partial prints were found on the cardboard box itself. Whoever had left the boy had worn gloves.

  He quietly sat at his desk for most of the night, thinking about the person that had initially called about the body. Stan had insisted that he wasn’t the one who made the call, and Dino believed him. The 911 operator had said that the voice sounded “feminine,” and, after listening to the tape, Dino agreed. Stan’s voice was deep and coarse, not at all feminine.

  He theorized that maybe the woman who Stan described as having dumped the body might have been the one who called it in.

  But what if a kid had made the call? A girl, or perhaps a boy. Sometimes young boys sounded like girls. It could be a teenager whose voice hadn’t broken.

  “I’ll call the Star-Ledger,” Dino said to himself.

  The janitor, who had been sweeping the hallway, poked his head in the doorway, surprised that someone was still there.

  “Long day,” Dino offered in explanation.

  The janitor didn’t reply and returned to sweeping.

  Even though it was very early in the morning, Dino called Tommy Monahan, whom he had known since they were boys. Tommy wrote for the Star-Ledger. Dino would ask him to write an article about it with a plea for the caller to come forward. In exchange, Dino would give him some information that hadn’t been disclosed to the press. That was always how it went — Tommy helped Dino, and Dino helped Tommy.

  They had known each other since that boy disappeared when they were growing up in Marks Hill. In high school they played on the football team for two seasons, until Tommy was kicked out for getting drunk before games more than once. Tommy was a lot wilder than Dino, and it showed in his reporting style.

  When Tommy answered, he told Dino he preferred not to talk over the phone. He was paranoid that he was being wiretapped ever since he’d written a story about the death of a local prostitute being connected to a high-ranking guy in the mayor’s cabinet.

  Dino laughed at his paranoia, but then admitted that it might be true, and they agreed to meet at Lulu’s Luncheonette at seven that morning.

  * * *

  Tommy was sitting in a booth near the back when Dino arrived. He waved to Dino.

  Dino took off his coat. “Is today your off day?” he commented as he took a seat across from Tommy.

  Tommy chuckled. “I enjoy not having to come to work in a suit.”

  Dino looked down at the suit he wore and laughed. “How are you? I didn’t get a chance to ask you on the phone.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  “Is this thing with the mayor serious?”

  Tommy shrugged and drank his coffee.

  “If
you ever need my help, let me know and I’m here for you,” Dino said. “If there’s one thing I really hate, it’s corrupt politicians.”

  “I appreciate that.” Tommy changed the subject. “How are you doing?”

  Tommy knew better than to ask about Dino’s ex-wife.

  “I’m good.”

  “Do you want to see a menu?” Tommy slid his menu toward Dino. “The waitress already dropped this off. For some reason, she wouldn’t let me have two. You’re a little late.”

  Dino reached for the menu. “I know, sorry.”

  “Tough night?”

  Dino nodded. He got the waitress’s attention. Dino pointed at Tommy’s coffee and smiled at her.

  “Is she the one who wouldn’t give you two menus?” Dino asked Tommy.

  “No, it was a younger one.”

  The waitress arrived at the booth with a cup of coffee for Dino and a refill for Tommy.

  “Are you going to get something to eat?” Dino asked Tommy.

  The waitress tapped her pen against her pad as she waited. The sound got to Dino’s head. She was older than him, put together nicely, with her hair done up, and wore bright pink lipstick.

  Tommy shook his head. “Nah, I’m not hungry.”

  “I’ve hardly eaten the past few days.” Dino turned toward the waitress and smiled. “Can I get a three-egg omelet with a side of fries?”

  The waitress wrote his order down then she collected the menu and headed toward the kitchen.

  “I can’t believe they only gave us one menu,” Dino said.

  Tommy smiled. “What do you expect from a place that serves steak for three ninety-nine?”

  Dino laughed. “Can’t you ever be serious, Tommy?”

  Tommy shook his head. “What fun would that be?”

  Dino sipped his coffee. “So, are you going to help me out or what?”

  “Are you going to help me out?

  “Yeah, I have some stuff I could give you.”

  “Tell me what you need me to do,” Tommy said.

  “Hey, remember that kid, you know, Jake Riley?”

  “The boy who went missing when we were kids?”

  Dino nodded. “I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately.”

  “Why?”

  “This case I’m on right now, it just makes me wonder what the hell happened to that boy.”

  “He’s probably dead,” Tommy said. “What case are you on now?”