Close Your Eyes Page 3

  Jo had seen a large group of people on the main floor of the station. “Get their names and contact info, and let them go. I doubt the killer stuck around for us to show up.”

  The supervisor nodded.

  “Do you have cameras inside the train?” she asked.

  The supervisor shook his head. “Only on the platforms and the entrances and exits to the stations.”

  “Can I see the footage?”

  EIGHT

  Ellen stopped a transit employee by thrusting her microphone in his face. “Ellen Sheehan from BN-24. Can you tell us who the victim is?”

  The officer looked like a deer caught in the headlights. “Um… I’m not sure. The FBI is on the scene.”

  “Do you know who’s in charge? Can you bring them to us for an interview?”

  “Um… I have to go,” he said and rushed away.

  Ellen looked over at Janie. She was also interviewing a transit employee. The employee was more than willing to speak to her. Janie had her hand on his elbow, and whenever she asked him a question, he answered her with a smile. It also helped that she was smiling too and was paying attention to his every word.

  Ellen seethed. Janie was a natural at getting interviews, but Ellen had to work at it.

  She had spent years covering frivolous stories, and when BN-24 was created, she jumped at the opportunity. There were only so many magic weight loss programs she could cover before she lost her mind.

  Ellen took care of how she looked, which meant she was careful with what she put in her body. She could not stand people who thought they could be skinny by taking a pill when they were still eating a large slice of chocolate cake each night.

  One woman swore that all she did was drink a glass of her weight loss powder, and for the rest of the day, she indulged to her heart’s delight. Ellen was so tempted to tell her off on the air by revealing she had seen the woman regularly working out at her local gym. And there was no way in hell the woman was drinking the green junk she was selling because in between workouts, the woman only drank water.

  Ellen felt that by interviewing such charlatans, she was complicit in selling their lies to the public. However, if she got a cut of the sales, then that was a different matter. And if people were so gullible and naïve to think that, without any sacrifice, they could look like a supermodel on TV, they deserved to have their money taken from them.

  A group of people emerged from the station entrance. Ellen grabbed a man with multiple piercings and said, “Ellen Sheehan from BN-24. Can you tell us what you saw inside? Did you see the victim?”

  The man shook his head. “I was at the front of the train, but I heard someone say the man walked in by himself and then collapsed on the seat.”

  “So, are you saying he was not murdered?”

  The pierced man looked confused.

  “Then why is the FBI involved?” Ellen added.

  He shrugged. “Maybe he was shot and then he collapsed on the seat.”

  Ellen pushed him aside and thrust the microphone in front of another person. He was dressed in a suit and looked annoyed. “They wouldn’t let us go, like we were guilty of something,” he said.

  “What did the FBI ask you?” Ellen said, seeing her chance for an interview.

  “I have to go. I’m already late for work. My boss is going to kill me.”

  The man pushed by her.

  Ellen looked over at Janie. She and the cameraman were already packing up. Janie had gotten her story. Ellen had nothing.

  Walt asked, “You want me to get a long shot of the scene?”

  “Sure, why not.”

  An old woman approached Ellen. She turned to her, her eyes gleaming with annoyance. “Can I help you?”

  “Are you Ellen Sheehan from BN-24?” the woman asked.

  “I am.”

  The woman smiled. “I’m a big fan of yours. I watch you on TV every day.”

  Ellen sighed. “Thank you.”

  “I was on the train with the dead man,” the woman added.

  Ellen’s eyes lit up. She nodded to Walt. He turned the camera on the woman. “This is Ellen Sheehan from BN-24. Can you describe what you saw on the train?”

  “Yes, I can,” the woman replied. “I was sitting near the man but I didn’t know he was dead. It was only when a woman screamed that I knew something was wrong. I turned and saw the man had his chin resting on his chest.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was white, and he had on a long coat, but I will tell you something you won’t believe.”

  “What?” Ellen eagerly asked.

  “The man’s hands were missing.”

  Ellen paused a moment. “Are you saying the man’s hands were cut off?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  Not another nut job, Ellen thought.

  The woman said, “That’s what made the other woman scream. She was staring at his missing hands.”

  Ellen’s eyes narrowed. “And you are certain you saw he had no hands?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, of course I did. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t say it. I’m not crazy, you know.”

  “Of course not,” Ellen said. “I just need to make sure for the viewers.” She gave the woman a reassuring smile and asked her a few more questions.

  After the interview, Ellen turned to Walt. “When the FBI holds their news conference, I’m going to confirm what the woman just told us. Make sure you get a shot of me asking this question, got it?”

  “Sure,” Walt said. That’s what I always do, he wanted to add but held his tongue. They recorded segments for the lead-up to the evening news. Ellen then stormed back to the news van.

  NINE

  The transit security office was located on the main platform of the station behind a two-way mirror.

  An attractive woman came up to the window and began fixing her makeup.

  The transit officers on duty gave each other a high five. “Best seats in the house,” one of them quipped.

  Jo did not find their antics amusing. In many ways, they were indulging in voyeurism, watching unsuspecting people go about their daily lives. But she knew there was no other way to monitor what was going on at each station.

  Safety was vital. Without security, people would be hesitant to take public transit. The Bridgeton Transit Authority was once a haven for crime. Drugs were easily transferred from passenger to passenger. Pickpockets moved from station to station. Criminals used the subway as their mode of escape. And to top it off, there were frequent instances of suicidal people coming to a station just to jump in front of an arriving train. The jumpers became so bad that BTA implemented a policy where no incident of suicide would be passed on to the media. They feared if people saw how common the problem was, they would be encouraged to jump as well.

  With the gag order in place, the jumpers went from four or five a week to one a week.

  The transit officers, along with regular employees, were trained to spot any signs of a would-be jumper. But more often than not, they were too late to stop a suicide.

  Jo and Supervisor Wilmont turned their attention to a row of computer monitors. Each screen showed the station from a different angle. “Our security offices in each station are all linked,” Wilmont said.

  Jo said, “Tammy Lynn McGuirre and her son got on at Chester Station. They confirmed the victim was already there when they sat down. This means he had to have been dropped off by someone at an earlier station. How long is the ride between stations?”

  “The trains run every two to three minutes during rush hour,” Wilmont said. “But outside of rush hour, it’s more like four to five minutes.”

  Jo thought about it. “If its non-rush hour, can you find out what time the train departed from its first stop?”

  “That’s easy,” Wilmont replied. He picked up a clipboard and scanned it. He flipped one page and then another. “It was Mike Schwartz’s shift, so Train 407 started its journey at Wellington Station.”
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  “Can you pull up the video for that train?” Jo asked Wilmont.

  “Sure.”

  The officer began typing on the keyboard. A few seconds later, he pointed at a screen.

  The camera was aimed at the subway platform. The sign on the station wall read Wellington. It was the first station on the east to west line. The clock on the screen told her it was thirty-five minutes before the body was discovered.

  “Mike’s pulling into the station now,” the supervisor said.

  The train arrived and came to a halt. The train doors opened, and passengers began getting on and off.

  “Can you pause that?” Jo said.

  The image froze.

  She looked closely, but none of the passengers fit the description of the victim.

  “Okay, run it.”

  The doors opened and the passengers got on. The train left the station.

  “Can we follow it?” Jo asked.

  The officer at the keyboard said, “We can get a visual on it at the next station.”

  The officer brought up the relevant footage of Train #407. Again, Jo examined the passengers waiting for the train, and again, she did not see the victim.

  The video moved from station to station. More passengers got on and got off.

  At one of the stations, a connecting one, a large group had gathered on the platform. Jo and the transit officers had to go through each angle of the platform to see if anyone matching the victim’s description entered. After reviewing the footage several times, they moved on.

  Jo was beginning to get the feeling they might have missed something. There was no other way for the victim to end up on the train without boarding at a station.

  When the train had left the yard, Schwartz had checked each compartment, and he confirmed the train was empty when he began his journey. If the train was not, he would have raised the alarm.

  No. The killer did not want the body to be found by a transit officer. BTA and the local police would have hidden the gruesome find from the public.

  The killer had chopped off the victim’s hands and carved a message on his chest. And the way the body was disguised as a regular passenger indicated the killer wanted an audience. The killer wanted the citizens of Bridgeton to know what he had done.

  The footage had moved on to other stations by the time Jo pointed at the monitor and shouted, “There!”

  The victim was clearly visible thanks to his trench coat. He was accompanied by another man who was wearing a jacket, a hoodie, and a baseball cap.

  He is shielding his identity, Jo thought.

  The two walked up to the edge of the platform.

  Jo narrowed her eyes. There was something odd about the way they walked. The left step of the man and right step of the victim were in unison, as if their legs were held together.

  When Jo looked closely, she could see the man’s arm was around the victim’s waist.

  He carried him aboard!

  The train pulled up, the doors opened, and the suspect and the victim boarded.

  “What station is that?” Jo asked.

  “Davenport,” Wilmont replied.

  The train exited the terminal, and the footage flipped to the next station: Broadview.

  When the doors opened, the man in the baseball cap got off and disappeared from view. The image flipped to another angle of the station. They watched as the man came up the stairs and then exited through the ticket booth.

  No one paid any attention to him. And why would they? Jo thought. He was just another person using public transit.

  “Do you have cameras outside?” Jo asked.

  The supervisor shook his head. “We don’t.”

  Jo gritted her teeth. She had just watched the killer walk away.

  TEN

  Rhodes spent the afternoon walking the streets of Bridgeton. He wanted to absorb the sights and sounds of the city.

  During his time in prison, he had read a lot of books. One of the books talked about places to settle down if someone decided to immigrate to the U.S.A. But Rhodes was not an immigrant. He was born and raised in America, but he had been locked away from society for ten years. He now felt like a stranger in his own country.

  He knew that once he got out of prison, he would either have to reclaim his life from before or start all over again from scratch somewhere else.

  There was no possible way Rhodes was returning to Newport. People still remembered him there. He was the police detective who had shot and killed a man in front a large group of people.

  His trial, although short, was the biggest news in Newport. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced immediately. This still did not stop the media from exploring all sorts of different scenarios. Some pundits argued he should be executed for what he did. Others argued he should be freed for killing a man who was ultimately found guilty of murdering a child.

  At the time, Rhodes did not care what they did to him. If you asked him, his life was over. His marriage had ended, and his career was forever tarnished. If they had given him the death penalty and executed him via lethal injection, he would have accepted his fate without a fight. But his state did not have the death penalty.

  The book had recommended Bridgeton as a great place to settle down for newcomers. Bridgeton got its name because it had the most bridges in the state. The city used to be an industrial hub, but during the 1970s, it lost a lot of its manufacturing jobs, leading to a mass exodus of residents.

  Seeing a crisis developing, the government at the time began promoting the city as a place to raise a family. The city lowered its taxes, borrowed money, and invested in infrastructure. This led to jobs being created in the financial sector, in healthcare, and in education.

  Bridgeton’s biggest employers were banks, insurance companies, hospitals, and schools. It had gone from a down-and-out city to a city where people were better off.

  However, as with any city with a large population, there was potential for crime. And Bridgeton was no different. There were regular incidents of shootings, vandalism, robberies, murders, and gang-related crimes. There were even hostage situations.

  The city was a perfect place for someone like Rhodes.

  As a former detective, he was wired for dealing with criminal activity. When he had picked up the newspaper at the gas station that morning, the stories he read were all crime-related. He was more interested in knowing about people on the other side of the law. They told a lot about a city.

  He hoped Bridgeton would be the place he could start a new life.

  He turned the corner and found himself in front of the Bridgeton Police Department.

  He froze.

  He was not sure why. He had not done anything wrong. He had not committed a crime. Why did he feel a knot in his stomach?

  Maybe it was because he was an ex-con. Maybe it was because he used to be a member of the law. Whatever the reason, he desperately wanted to get away.

  He turned around, took two steps forward, and stopped.

  He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

  I am not a criminal, he reminded himself. I’ve paid my debt to society. I shouldn’t be afraid to enter a police station.

  He turned around and entered.

  He was surprised to find the lobby empty. Perhaps it was because it was the middle of the day. Crime came alive at night.

  A man was standing by the front desk. He was talking animatedly with a female officer.

  Rhodes ignored them and headed to the other side of the lobby. He stopped in front of a bulletin board covered with papers. They were reward notices, wanted posters, and missing persons reports. There were too many to count.

  He began scanning them. There was a notice for a missing child, a description of a suspect in a fatal shooting, and a sketch of a rapist who had attacked women in Bridgeton’s downtown area.

  He scanned some more.

  Destruction of property. Grand larceny. Assault. You name it, it was on the board. Rhodes was more interested in the
unsolved murder cases, though. Victims of robberies can recover from the loss. Victims of assault will find a way to move on. But victims of murder could neither recover nor move on.

  There was also the reward money that caught his attention. Five thousand, ten thousand, and in some cases, even fifty thousand dollars for information that led to an arrest.

  Rhodes knew that if a case had a financial reward attached to it, it meant the police were no closer to solving the crime, which was why they were enticing the public with money to assist them in apprehending the suspect (or suspects).

  The man at the front desk got louder. “I want to speak to Detective Crowder now!”

  “Stay calm, sir,” the policewoman said.

  “I am calm,” the man replied. “My son was murdered two months ago, and so far, there have been no arrests. I want to speak to Detective Crowder.”

  “You can call him, sir. I can give you his number.”

  “I have his number and I’ve called him over a dozen times. He won’t call me back.”

  “I don’t know, maybe he’s busy.”

  “He shouldn’t be so busy he can’t give me an update on my son’s case.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. There is nothing I can do.”

  Another officer came over. “Is everything okay?”

  “No, it’s not,” the man said. “I want to speak to Detective Jay Crowder.”

  Rhodes quietly left the station. He was not interested in seeing the resolution of the little drama playing out in the lobby.

  ELEVEN

  Jo left the subway station. Instead of driving back to the FBI field office, she decided to stop at a fast food restaurant.

  She ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and a large soft drink. It was not a healthy meal, especially for someone with a heart condition, but Jo didn’t care. She had had a rough morning. A killer had walked into a busy station and left a dead body for the passengers to find. He was clearly playing a game. And he was willing to risk getting caught playing it.