White Night

Chapter 32

Please, there is something called White Night happening in a few days. It's big and dangerous. Please stop it.

What the hell?

Connors charged down the stairs to Sergeant Withers, ignoring the twinges in her leg.

"Withers, who brought this in?" She waved the small envelope in front of him.

"No idea, it didn't come through me."

The only person who'd been near her desk was Jay, but this wasn't from him. Jay would've used this as an excuse to get close to her.

She returned to the squad room.

"Saunders!" she shouted as she approached his desk.

"Connors, it's too early to collect on the bet—"

"Not now. You see anyone near my desk?"

"Just your boyfriend." He smirked.

"Grow up, Saunders, this is important. Someone left a tip-off on my desk and I need to know who it was."

His face straightened as he realized she was serious. "No one, just him, and the old lady and her friend came past."

Mrs. Weston left the note, but when? No, Maria. The shop assistant had been guarded during the death notification at the coffee shop, and Mrs. Weston had said that Maria was always hanging around when Nikolai was there.

Connors made the call for uniform to pick up Maria at the coffee shop, then showed the letter to Ross.

"We've got to find that second victim," she said.

It was the only thing bigger than a homicide: the potential for more homicides, ones she was now responsible for preventing. Ross checked in with the FBI and Homeland Security to see if they had anything relating to "White Night" on their radar while she looked at the facts of the case again.

Black truck, pliers in the outlet, and a victim not apparently connected to Weston or Nikolai. It had to be a construction worker, but all the workers had been accounted for. Everyone had either shown up for work or been cleared, and Garcia swore up and down that there was no one else, no illegals he was hiding, but Banner was checking into it just the same.

A thought clawed at her brain. What about someone who had shown up that day looking like crap, then left? She checked the computer and stared hard at the result on her screen.

The foreman Michael Tanner owned a black Chevy 2500+.

Ross returned. "Nothing on the FBI or Homeland radar for 'White Night.'"

"I was thinking about the second victim. They had to be connected to the site—"

"I thought the same," Ross jumped in.

"The foreman owns a black Chevy truck."

"And he made a purchase on his credit card the night of the shooting. I just received the security footage."

"Sorry? When were you planning to share that with me?" she asked.

"When I knew if it was anything worth sharing," he replied calmly.

"Detective Ross, we're partners. We keep each other in the loop on what we're working on, whether or not it pans out. We make connections quicker that way."

"Back at the 74th, we worked autonomously. It was more efficient."

"Well, welcome to the98th, Detective Ross." She spread her hands wide. "Here we work together."

"Look, I didn't mean—"

"Was there anything on the footage?"

Ross' eyes pierced through her attempted deflection. "Just Tanner entering the store and buying supplies, but the receipt was more interesting."

She raised her eyebrows at him, demanding he continue.

"Gauze, bandages, disinfectant, tape in significant quantities."

"Enough to patch up a gunshot wound?"

Ross nodded. "Maybe."

"Let's pay him a visit," she said, retrieving her jacket and car keys.

As she drove to the motel, Ross called to check on Maria.

"Maria's in the wind," he said, sliding his cell phone back into his overcoat as she steered the car through the streets of Crown Heights.

"Damn it!" She thumped the dashboard.

"The cab dropped Mrs. Weston at the coffee shop and Maria at the Kingston-Throop subway station."

"Family?"

"A sister in Jersey, local PD is going to check it out."

Banner had called in with an update on Tanner's financials and phone records—all clean, but that didn't mean he was.

Michael Tanner had an assault record. He'd broken a man's nose and shattered his eye socket. The victim had killed Tanner's mother in a car accident two years prior to the assault, so the judge cut him a break and called it a misdemeanor, but it didn't change the fact that Tanner was dangerous.

When they turned into the parking lot, there was no sign of Tanner's truck, but the desk clerk confirmed that he'd stayed there and gave them the keys to his room.

The room was a throwback to the eighties, a faux wood-grained radio alarm clock sitting on a Formica nightstand once white and now yellow with age.

The bed was made and the closets were empty. They'd missed him and there was nothing in the room to suggest that a gunshot victim had stayed there. The garbage had already been removed.

They both checked out the bathroom. Nothing visible to the naked eye, but she removed the small bottle of Luminol she kept in her pocket and sprayed it in the bathtub, nodding at Ross to turn out the lights.

The tub lit up in ghostly shapes, large blotches glowing spectrally, with more appearing as she sprayed the sink and floor. The room was radioactive. Too much blood for an innocent reason. She hoped Tanner had enough left to survive.

"We've got to find him now," Ross said.