The Dark Tide

As he was the head of Violent Crimes in town, this was his call. Mostly his department broke up spats at the high school, the occasional report of a break-in, marital rows. Dead bodies were rare up here in Greenwich.

Stock fraud was a lot more common.

At the bottom of the avenue, four local blue-and-whites had blocked off the busy commercial thoroughfare, their lights ablaze. Traffic was being routed into one lane. Hauck slowed, nodding to a couple of patrolmen he recognized. Freddy Muñoz, one of the detectives on his staff, came over as Hauck got out.

“You gotta be kidding, Freddy.” Hauck shook his head in disbelief. “Today of all days…”

The detective made a grim motion toward a covered mound in the middle of West Street, which intersected the Post Road and cut up to Railroad Avenue and I-95.

“It look like we’re kidding, LT?”

The patrol cars had parked in a way that formed sort of a protective circle around the body. An EMS truck had arrived, but the tech was standing around waiting for the regional medical team out of Farmington. Hauck knelt and peeled back the plastic tarp.

Christ! His cheeks puffed out a blast of air.

The guy was just a kid-twenty-two, twenty-three at most-white, wearing a brown work uniform, long red locks braided in cornrows in the ma

“You got a name?”

“Raymond. First name Abel. Middle name John. Went by AJ, his boss at the auto-customizing shop over there said. That’s where he worked.”

A young uniformed officer was standing nearby with a notepad. His nameplate read STASIO. Hauck assumed he’d been first on the scene.

“He was just off-shift,” Muñoz said. “Said he was going out to buy some smokes and make a call.” He pointed across the street. “Seems like he was headed into the diner over there.”

Hauck glanced over to a place he knew called the Fairfield Diner, an occasional police hangout. He’d grabbed a meal there a couple of times himself.

“What do we know about the car?”

Muñoz called over Officer Stasio, who looked about a month removed from training, and who read, a little nervously, from his spiral pad. “It appears like the hit-car was a white SUV, Lieutenant. It was traveling north up the Post Road and turned sharply onto West Street here… Ran into the vic just as he was crossing the street. We got two eyewitnesses who saw the whole thing.”

Stasio pointed to two men, one stocky, sport coat, mustached, sitting in the front seat of an open patrol car rubbing his hair. The other in a blue fleece top talking to another officer, somberly shaking his head. “We located one in the parking lot of the Arby’s over there. An ex-cop, it turns out. The other came from the bank across the street.”

The kid had put it together pretty good. “Good work, Stasio.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Hauck slowly raised himself up, his knees cracking. A parting gift from his football days.

He looked back at the rutted gray asphalt on West Street -the two extended streaks of rubber about twenty feet farther along than the victim’s cell phone and glasses. Skid marks. Well past the point of impact. Hauck sucked in an unpleasant breath, and his stomach shifted.

Son of a bitch hadn’t even tried to stop.

He looked over at Stasio. “You doin’ okay, son?” That this was the young officer’s first fatality was plainly written all over his face.

Stasio nodded back. “Yessir.”

“Never easy.” Hauck patted the young patrolman on the shoulder. “That’s true for any of us.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

Hauck pulled Muñoz aside. He guided his detective’s eye along the Post Road south, the route that the hit-car traveled, then in the direction of the tire marks on the pavement.

“Seeing what I’m seeing, Freddy?”

The detective nodded grimly. “Bastard never made a move to stop.”

“Yeah.” Hauck pulled out a latex glove from his jacket pocket and threaded it over his fingers.

“Okay.” He knelt back down to the inert body. “Let’s see what she says…”

Hauck lifted Abel Raymond’s torso just enough to remove a black wallet from the victim’s trouser pocket. A Florida driver’s license: Abel John Raymond. There was also a laminated photo ID from Seminole Junior College, dating back two years. Same bright-eyed grin as on the license, hair a little shorter. Maybe the kid had dropped out.

There was a MasterCard in his name, a card from Sears, others from Costco, ExxonMobil, Social Security. Forty-two dollars in cash. A ticket stub from the 1996 Orange Bowl. Florida State-Notre Dame. Hauck recalled the game. From out of the wallet’s divider he unfolded a snapshot of an attractive dark-haired woman who appeared to be in her twenties holding a young boy. Hauck handed it up to Muñoz.

“Doesn’t look like a sister.” The detective shrugged. The victim wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. “Girlfriend, maybe.”

They’d have to track down who it was.

“Someone’s not going to be very happy tonight.” Freddy Muñoz sighed.

Hauck tucked the photo back into the wallet and exhaled. “Long list, I’m afraid, Freddy.”

“It’s crazy, isn’t it, Lieutenant?” Muñoz shook his head. He was no longer talking about the accident. “You know my wife’s brother took in the 7:57 this morning. Got out just before it happened. My sister-in-law was going crazy. She couldn’t reach him till he got into the office. You roll over in bed for a few more minutes, get stuck at a light, miss your train… You know how lucky he is?”

Hauck thought of the list of names back on his desk, the nervous, hopeful voices of those who had called in about them. He glanced over to Stasio’s witnesses.

“C’mon, Freddy, let’s get an ID on that car.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hauck took the guy in the sport jacket, Freddy the North Face fleece.

Hauck’s turned out to be a retired cop from South Jersey, name of Phil Dietz. He claimed he was up here cold-canvassing for state-of-the-art security systems-“You know, ‘smart’ homes, thumbprint, ID sensors, that sort of thing”-which he’d been handling since turning in the badge three years before. He had just pulled into the Arby’s up the street to grab a sandwich when he saw the whole thing.

“He came down the street moving pretty good,” Dietz said. He was short, stocky, graying hair a little thin on top, with a thick mustache, and he moved his stubby hands excitedly. “I heard the engine pick up. He accelerated down the street and made this turn there.” He pointed toward the intersection of West Street and the Post Road. “SOB hit that kid without even touching the brakes. I didn’t see it until it was too late.”

“Can you give me a make on the car?” Hauck asked.

Dietz nodded. “It was a white late-model SUV. A Honda or an Acura, I think, something like that. I could look at some pictures. Plates were white, too-I think blue lettering, or maybe green.” He shook his head. “Too far away. My eyes aren’t what they were when I was on the job.” He jiggled a set of reading glasses in his breast pocket. “Now all I have to do is to be able to read POs.”

Hauck smiled, then made a notation on his pad. “Not local?”

Dietz shook his head. “No. Maybe New Hampshire or Massachusetts. Sorry, I couldn’t get a solid read. The bastard stopped for a second-after. I yelled, ‘Hey, you!’ and started to run down the hill. But he just took off up the road. I tried to grab a picture with my cell phone, but it happened too fast. He was gone.”

Dietz pointed up the hill, toward the heights of Railroad Avenue. West Street went into a curve as it bent past an open lot, an office building. Once you were up there, I-95 was only a minute or two away. Hauck knew they’d have to be lucky if anyone up there saw him.