The Girl With No Name

Chapter Forty-Four

The Flats was an area at the southernmost point of Denton. It was a barren tract of land between the interstate and the nearby branch of the Susquehanna River with only one access road, which was flooded several times a year. For decades, developers had tried to build on the area, but their projects were almost always abandoned after the third or fourth time the access road flooded. A nightclub had lasted a few months, and then a few years later it was converted to a movie theater which lasted only a bit longer. Then someone had had the grand idea to build luxury apartments. The half-built six-story apartment building stood like a dresser with no drawers across from the old movie theater.

Although the casino was not a done deal, Eric Dunn had already received permits to start building a hotel on the site, and construction equipment and building supplies had been deposited alongside the apartment building. Josie saw a backhoe and an excavator as well as a large flatbed truck with a telehandler in its bed to lift workers and equipment from the ground to the middle stories of the building. Some supplies had started being lifted by crane into the open top floors of the building. She could see from the ground that several pallets of timber, steel girders, metal HVAC piping and a couple of air conditioning units had also been moved to the top floor. She didn’t see any workers, however, and wondered if Dunn was having trouble securing contractors after the building collapse fiasco in Philadelphia. Or perhaps his track record of unsafe sites and not paying his workers was finally holding him back.

Dunn and his four men stood around the outside of a black Yukon which was parked next to the building. Dunn looked up, then pointed at various pieces of equipment, talking animatedly but out of earshot of Josie and Noah. They parked several yards away from the Yukon and got out. As they walked toward the men, Josie felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention. For a moment, she wondered if one, or all of them, would pull weapons. There was something lawless about this unfinished place, and Dunn was a loose cannon. Josie had called in two patrol vehicles, together with Gretchen, to sit at the mouth of the access road, should they need backup, just to be safe.

Dunn stopped speaking and smirked at her as they drew closer, his gaze roving up and down her body, groping her with his eyes. He said, “What are you doing here? This is private property.”

Josie flashed her badge. “I’m the chief of police. You’re standing in my jurisdiction, and we need to talk.”

Dunn folded his arms across his chest and tipped his chin in Noah’s direction. “Tell you what, I’ll have my secretary call your secretary, how’s that?”

“Watch it,” Noah said.

Dunn laughed. “How about if I watch the two of you turn around, get back in your car, and leave? If you have something to discuss with me, you can call my lawyers.”

“Or you can cut the shit right now, stop hiding behind your lawyers, and tell us where Misty Derossi’s baby and Luke Creighton are,” Josie snapped.

Dunn narrowed his eyes at her. He appraised her for a few seconds before saying, “You’re a spunky little thing, aren’t you?” He turned to Noah. “I bet she’s fun in the sack, huh?”

In her peripheral vision, Josie could see Noah’s face turning fire engine red. She shook her head to keep him from speaking and addressed Dunn. “Stop wasting my time. You want to stand here all day seeing how many dumb things you can think of to say or do you want to get down to business?”

She thought she heard the beginnings of a muffled laugh from one of Dunn’s men, but it was quickly cut off. Josie stared him down. He said, “What do you want?”

“You know goddamn well what I want. I’ve got two high-profile missing persons in this city right now—a baby and a state trooper—and all the evidence leads to you. So here I am. Now, how are we going to handle this?”

“All the evidence, huh? What evidence is that? A couple of my former employees turning up dead in your city?”

“More than a couple.”

Josie pulled out her cell phone and swiped to the driver’s license photos that Deputy Phillips had sent her of the men on the church floor. “These guys are dead too. Gunshot wounds. Found them holed up in an abandoned church outside of Fairfield. I’m guessing you don’t know them either.”

Something in his eyes changed. Josie swore she saw a flicker of surprise, or panic—or both? He collected himself quickly, swallowing and looking up from her cell phone to meet her eyes. “I don’t know them. I’m not sure why you’ve become fixated on me, but I have nothing to do with your missing persons cases. I’m trying to get a casino built. That’s it. Maybe I need to talk to Tara about you.”

Josie ignored the threat. “What went wrong?”

He smiled to cover the look of puzzlement that came over his face. “It’s your city council, some of them don’t think it’s a good idea to have a casino—”

“Not with your casino. What went wrong with the baby? The cradle wasn’t used,” Josie said. “Your three goons couldn’t keep an infant alive for more than a few hours?”

“I don’t know—”

“How about Luke? Your men are dead, and he’s gone. So either you had him killed or someone else killed your men and then took him. Which is it? Who would want what’s yours?”

Dunn clamped his mouth shut, a muscle in his cheek twitching. Josie pushed on. “Maybe it’s one of your former employees. There sure are a lot of them running around this area lately. Maybe one of them got pissed at you and decided to screw up your plans—whatever the hell those were. Or are we talking about something else? Maybe somebody who lost someone in the building collapse in Philadelphia? You know, the one that killed all those people?”

He pointed a finger at her. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I?” Josie pressed. “Isn’t making people disappear your specialty? Are you getting a taste of your own medicine? Or is there something you want to tell me? Like, where I can find my missing persons.”

He stabbed the air with his finger. “Now you listen to me, you bitch—”

His words were swallowed up by a loud groan from overhead, followed by noises Josie couldn’t fully process—what sounded like a rumbling then a screech. Noah threw his body into hers, knocking her to the ground. Her left shoulder hit hard, and an involuntary cry ripped from her throat. From the dirt, Josie watched a series of pipes fall from the top floor of the building, like giant straws scattering haphazardly. One hit the roof of the Yukon with a clang, denting it nearly in half. One by one, Dunn’s men went down, crushed or impaled by the falling pipes. There seemed no end to the number of them. Dunn himself stood frozen in place, his mouth wide open, staring up at the top floor of the building, watching them fall. Josie pushed Noah off her and scrambled to her feet. Noah’s hands snagged her ankle just as she was about to sprint toward Dunn. She fell again, landing on top of Noah and rolling off him, away from the falling pipes. There was another sonic groan and then the flooring of the sixth story, where the piping had been, bowed and off tumbled the heavy square of an air conditioning unit.

“No!” Josie screamed.

She kicked Noah away and started crawling toward Dunn, but it was too late. The air conditioning unit fell faster than the pipes but made almost no sound other than the crunching of bone as it landed on Dunn, knocking him over and crushing his lower body.

“No!” Josie screamed again. On her feet once more, she clambered over to him, kneeling beside him. He stared up at her, his eyes wide with shock. The behemoth air conditioning unit had pinned him from the pelvis down. Not just pinned him, Josie realized as she had a closer look, but driven his lower body into the ground. She fought back the vomit that rose in the back of her throat. Touching Dunn’s shoulder, she hovered over his face. “Where are they?” she spat.

His shocked stare morphed into a look of fear and pleading. He blinked and opened his mouth as though to speak but nothing came out.

Josie heard sirens and was vaguely aware of flashing police lights approaching. Noah was behind her. “Boss!”

“Where are they?” Josie shouted at Dunn. “Goddamn it. What did you do with them? Victor Derossi and Luke Creighton. Where are they?”

Noah’s hand grasped her shoulder. “Boss, get away from there.”

She reached both hands down and pushed against the unit, but it was like trying to move a continent with her hands. “Help me,” she said over her shoulder. “Help me!” Then to Dunn, “Where are Luke and the baby?”

“Boss,” Noah said. “You can’t help him. Come on. We don’t know what else is up there. It looks like that whole floor might collapse.”

“Where are Luke and the baby?” Josie shouted, leaning over Dunn’s face again.

She saw him go, like the coil inside a lightbulb fades; the flicker of life in his eyes dimmed until there was nothing left but empty glass orbs. “No!” Josie shrieked. “Where are they?”

Noah scooped both hands under her arms and dragged her away. She struggled against him, legs kicking. A pallet of lumber slid into view on the top story of the building where the flooring had sagged to a V shape. It tumbled off the building, breaking apart in mid-air, boards flying everywhere. Josie’s body stopped struggling. Noah took one final lunge, throwing both of them behind their vehicle as the boards started to ricochet in every direction. They heard several smacks as some of the boards landed on the hood of the car they had arrived in. Behind them, the two patrol cars and Gretchen in her Chevy Cruze pulled up. They raced out of their vehicles, positioning themselves behind open doors with their weapons drawn, as though they were in a standoff.

Noah stood up and waved toward them. “Stand down,” he said. “There’s no one left.”

Josie let him help her up. She stared at the destruction from behind the vehicle, disbelieving. Her other officers holstered their weapons and walked over.

“What the hell just happened?” Gretchen asked.

“They’re dead,” Josie croaked. “They’re all dead.”