Authors: Rick Mofina
65
New York City
N
o, this can’t be real!
Kate was rooted in shock.
The woman’s face—
Vanessa’s face
—was creased with terror. Her lips were moving,
like she’s praying
. Her upper body filled Kate’s monitor. At the bottom of the frame graphics of meters flashed while measuring her blood and heart rates; the level of carbon dioxide; the remaining amount of oxygen. A digital clock counted down the hours, minutes and seconds, left on Vanessa’s life.
Kate’s hands were trembling when she called 911.
“Police operator, what’s your emergency?”
“I need to report a woman buried alive in a coffin! She doesn’t have much time—”
“What is your name and location, ma’am?”
“Kate Page, 470 West 33rd Street, Newslead.”
“Where’s the woman buried, what’s the location?”
“I don’t know! It’s online with a live feed!”
“Online? Do you have a web address?”
“It’s—hang on—it’s ‘ScenesFromTheKillJar,’ all one word.”
The operator repeated it twice as Kate heard the rapid clicking of a keyboard.
“You’ve got to track it, find her!” Kate said. “She’s running out of time! I’m a reporter with Newslead. This is the Sorin Zurrn case. Someone called me two minutes ago, telling me about the live video. I think it’s Zurrn. Alert Detective Ed Brennan, with the Rampart police department, the FBI, the task force!”
“Stay on the line.”
“Hurry, she’s got three hours and fifty-five minutes left!”
Two night editors were drawn to Kate’s desk.
“What the hell? Is this real?” Brad Davis stared at her screen.
Kate nodded big nods, knowing that Davis, who handled copy from reporters in crisis spots around the world, had one of the quickest minds at Newslead. He turned to Phil Keelor, the junior editor.
“Call our twenty-four-hour IT people. We’re going to need all the help we can get,” Davis said. “I’ll call Chuck to alert the honchos. We’ve got to move fast.”
“Okay, Kate?” the operator said.
“Yes!”
“We’ve got people on the way to you.”
Within the first hour the newsroom had filled with uniformed NYPD officers, detectives, FBI agents and investigators from several other federal agencies. They’d set up quickly in the newsroom. They were monitoring Kate’s phone in case Zurrn called again. Someone had a trauma doctor on speakerphone. He was studying the meters that appeared to be connected to Vanessa. Kate could hear him.
“If those meters are genuine, her signs are way up. Her stress is causing her to use more oxygen, which could reduce her time. Her carbon dioxide level is three percent, if it climbs to four or higher, we’re in trouble. And you’ve got to hope that the box doesn’t collapse under the weight and pressure of all the dirt.”
Chuck, Reeka, along with executive editors Rhett Lerner and Dianne Watson arrived. Newslead’s chief legal counsel, Tischa Goldman, was on the line to advise them on releasing any information police may need to help locate Vanessa.
As word spread, other news staff arrived to offer help, but most everyone huddled in small groups at terminals transfixed by what was playing out before their eyes. Kate couldn’t stop trembling, or praying, as she watched the seconds blazing by.
Glimpsing at her framed photo of Grace, Kate called Nancy and told her what was happening.
“I know,” Nancy said, “it’s been on TV with a breaking news bulletin.”
Kate needed to know Grace was okay.
“I’ll go down and check on her,” Nancy said. Ten minutes later, she called back to say that Grace was fine.
As a precaution, Kate pulled one of the NYPD officers aside and requested that, given the fact Zurrn had called her, they send someone to her building to check on her daughter’s welfare.
When Kate returned to her desk, her line rang. She looked at an FBI agent wearing headphones and waited for him to nod before she answered.
“You’re seeing what’s happening online, Kate?” the caller asked.
It was Erich. Kate indicated to the agent that the caller was a friend.
“Yes, Zurrn called me.”
“He called?”
“We’re sure it was him. He wants the world to see him kill Vanessa.”
“He’s getting attention.”
“We’ve got the NYPD, the FBI and I don’t know how many others, trying to locate her. Tell me the truth, Erich, can we find her?”
He didn’t answer.
“Erich, will we find her?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“How good he really is at hiding his tracks.”
“That’s not what I need to hear right now.”
“You got people working on it. I’ll work on it and I’ll get my friends to work on it. Everyone’s trying to pinpoint the source of the feed and Vanessa’s location.”
“Hurry!”
As the first hour became the second, the press picked up the situation via social media. The
New York Times
, Reuters, NBC, CNN, the Associated Press and several other news organizations called Newslead for interviews.
“All our efforts are concentrated on the safety of Vanessa Page, whom we consider a member of the Newslead family,” Dianne Watson said in an issued statement.
Strained calm permeated the newsroom as the second hour passed with investigators working with other experts across the city and across the country. Several blocks south in Manhattan, near the Brooklyn Bridge, a team of analysts had been put on Vanessa’s case at the NYPD’s Real Time Crime Center, which was located in a windowless room on a midlevel floor of One Police Plaza. The team used every high-tech resource in trying to trace the live stream to Vanessa’s location.
The FBI, with experts in combating cyber-based terrorism, had activated cyber squads at the New York Field Office in FBI headquarters. They were also working with other federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and Homeland Security. They soon determined that the person who’d called Kate had used a disposable phone. The call had been made in the greater New York City area, but that was all they had so far.
In the urgent life-and-death effort to track the video feed to Vanessa, analysts had made emergency requests for data to several dozen service providers. The companies had twenty-four-hour hotlines with lawyers on duty. All cooperated immediately without requiring subpoenas or warrants.
“The challenge is,” an FBI agent explained, “our suspect has masked and encrypted the signal. It’s bouncing off satellites and towers all over Canada, Mexico and everywhere in the US. He’s even using Russian and Chinese-based IP addresses. It’s complex and it’s a fast-moving target.”
“So what do you do?” Lerner asked.
“We keep working, exercising different strategies.”
“We’ve got a little over two hours left.”
In a far corner, Reeka was lobbying Dianne and Chuck for Newslead to put out its own story.
“I don’t know,” Watson said, “there’s some ambiguity here.”
“The case is already public,” Reeka said. “We’ve already issued a statement. It’s news. We owe it to subscribers to cover it.”
Watson turned to Chuck. “What do you think?”
“All valid points. We’ll get someone other than Kate to do a straight-up news piece.”
At her desk, Kate stared at Vanessa’s image, her heart breaking again and again with each second that passed.
This can’t be real. It can’t be happening all over again.
First underwater, now underground, Vanessa was slipping away before her eyes.
Please, don’t let this happen again.
Kate pressed her hand tenderly to her monitor, aching to hold her little sister one last time.
Where are you?
A commotion rose across the newsroom among several FBI agents.
“New Jersey! Central New Jersey, north of Trenton!” someone shouted.
Kate stood and searched the crowd for meaning, her heart rising.
“They’ve isolated it to a location just outside of Hopewell, New Jersey!” someone else shouted to cheers.
Ellie Ridder, a Newslead reporter and Sal Perez, a photographer, rushed to Kate.
“That’s a ninety-minute drive, Kate,” Sal said. “Let’s go!”
66
New Jersey
D
arkness.
Vanessa had been devoured by absolute darkness.
The air was heavy. The suffocating stillness overwhelmed her. The only sound of life was the thumping blood rush in her ears from her beating heart.
Buried alive! I’ve been buried alive like Brittany!
Screaming sobs exploded from her.
Don’t let me die! Please, God, I don’t want to die here!
She kicked her feet and pounded her bound hands against her coffin’s lid before she realized it and stopped.
Stay calm! You’re using up air!
It took several jagged breaths before she got a semblance of control, sniffling and brushing at her tears. The air was hotter. She was sweating as she gradually slowed her breathing.
She didn’t know how much time had passed, how long she’d been entombed. She flinched when a light came on.
Blinking her eyes to adjust, she saw soft, blue-tinted LED lights directed at her and from behind her overhead. She gasped as the illumination defined her horrible claustrophobic space.
Midway down above her waist, suspended from the lid, she saw the line of small glowing screens with active level bars and numbers. Cables meandered from the monitors to the clips Carl had attached to her fingers. Farther down, at her feet, she saw the cylinder shape of the oxygen tank. In the row of screens, the one to the extreme right was the largest.
It came to life with text scrolling slowly.
“I hope you’re comfortable. The world is watching you, thousands of people, as each second ticks down. It’ll grow to millions around the planet, for this is a global death and viewers will be riveted. Especially since I’ve installed the meters to monitor your vital signs, the amount of oxygen remaining, and the clock, which is calibrated to my precise calculation on how much time you’ll have to live. Each one is identified for you. Remember, the more you panic, struggle or flutter, the more you’ll deplete your oxygen. You’re six feet down. The casket is steel, but it’s cheap steel and it’s possible it could be defeated by the tonnage of earth above you. It’s pointless to struggle against it. No one can hear you and no one will ever find you. I hope you’ll forgive me because I wanted to take you with me to my new base of operation to be part of my new collection. It’s going to be glorious. But you interfered and betrayed me and must suffer the penalty. I’ll miss you terribly. Of all my specimens, you were my favorite. Goodbye.”
Vanessa’s heart slammed against her rib cage. Her scream sent the level bars on the monitors soaring as tears blurred her eyes.
No, please no! Oh, God, somebody help me!
At that moment she detected a light sensation—
something moving
—atop her midsection, a gentle pressure.
What’s that?
She raised her head, then her hands to block the light directed at her, so she could better see. A curtain of fine dirt was leaking from the coffin lid at the seam between the upper and lower doors.
No! No, no, no!
Vanessa gasped and tried not to think but was suddenly haunted by the screams—the horrible screams—of all the girls Carl had killed before her.
Now it’s my turn! Now it’s me!
Her panicked mind reeled, pulled her back to another life, to a moment of absolute joy as she was enveloped by brilliant sunlight. She was floating and floating. She saw her mother—her real mother’s smiling face, then her father’s. Then she heard their laughter as she ran in the park with her big sister—
Kate!
Yes, her name was Kate!
Suddenly, the sunlight is gone, her parents are gone, and now Vanessa is underwater, cold, black rushing water, and Kate’s hand is pulling her...saving her...please save me, Kate!
A sharp metallic, crackling sound filled the casket.
Vanessa felt the vibration as a corner buckled.
More dirt was now trickling in at her feet and midsection.
The clock was showing that she had one hour and fifty minutes to live.
67
Hopewell, New Jersey
T
he gleaming white walls of the Lincoln Tunnel rushed by Kate’s front passenger window.
Sal Perez guided his Dodge Journey SUV under the Hudson River and into New Jersey. After passing through the tollgate and barreling south on I-95, he tossed a worn notebook to Ellie Ridder in the backseat.
He’d already passed her his two portable police scanners.
“Ellie, tune into the frequencies for the New Jersey State Police for the Troop C—they cover Mercer County, where Hopewell is.”
“I don’t see it.”
“Go to the
N
tab for New Jersey.”
Ellie snapped through pages while Kate checked online for updates and the minutes and seconds ticked down on Vanessa.
“Okay, got it!”
“Good, program them in like I showed you, then go online and get the frequency for Mercer County. You should get local paramedics, fire, everybody.”
Fear had numbed Kate’s fingertips as she watched her messages for news of a location. She took some comfort that she was with Perez and Ridder. Sal and Ellie both had reported in Iraq and Afghanistan, while at home they’d covered tornadoes, floods, wildfires and major shootings.
As they put miles behind them, the scanners crackled to life with dispatches of cross talk from emergency responders in and surrounding Hopewell. Sal pushed his SUV hard, weaving through traffic to pass news vans from New York.
“Looks like everybody’s headed to Hopewell,” Sal said after he’d passed the third one.
“It’s déjà vu,” Ellie said.
“What’d you mean?”
“Hopewell. You don’t know about Hopewell, New Jersey, Sal?”
“I’m drawing a blank.”
“You remember Charles Lindbergh, the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic?”
“Yeah.”
“Well in 1932, his baby boy was kidnapped from his home in Hopewell, New Jersey, for ransom. After Lindbergh paid fifty thousand, the baby’s body was found in a wooded area south of Hopewell. At that time, it was the biggest story in the world.”
“Oh, right. They executed the guy who did it.”
Ellie touched Kate’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry to bring this up, Kate.”
“It’s history. It’s true. I know that and I was thinking maybe Zurrn was trying to emulate the Lindbergh case. But none of this seems real to me right now—I’m sorry. Please go faster, Sal.”
The scanner’s transmissions concerned the positioning of work crews around the town. As Kate turned to the window to search the night, a loud ringing sounded in the SUV and Sal answered his hands-free phone, boosting the volume.
“It’s Chuck, how far are you from Hopewell, Sal?”
He glanced at his GPS.
“Twenty, twenty-five minutes, Chuck. What’ve you got?”
“Here’s the latest. They haven’t pinpointed the site but they believe they’re close to locking in. What they’re doing is using every local government crew, and every available contractor to trailer backhoes to the compass points surrounding Hopewell, to get ready to move. They’ve got a medical helicopter standing by and the trauma team at Viola Memorial in Newark is on alert. The medical experts said her signs are deteriorating and she’s down to thirty minutes.”
As the highway markers streaked under them and the miles passed, Kate clenched her eyes shut and whispered a prayer. It might’ve been five minutes, maybe longer, before Ellie shouted.
“They’ve got something!” She cranked the crackling dispatches.
“Yes,” Chuck said, “the FBI here are nodding! They’ve got a crew there and they’ve started digging!”
“Its north, about one and a half miles on Wertsville Road!” Ellie said.
Sal entered the information into his GPS and accelerated. Kate’s knuckles whitened as she clasped her hands together. Within ten minutes they were cutting through town. Sal threaded around other work crews, their lights flashing as they hauled equipment. Overhead the air vibrated with the thump of police and news helicopters.
“Oh, no!” Ellie held out a scanner. “Listen!”
“...got down about four feet—found an opened metal toolbox—he left some kind of transmission device inside and a note that says—‘Ha-ha! Try again! Ticktock!’...”
Kate’s heart sank.
Oh, God, oh, God, no!
The phone line to Chuck and the scanners crackled with a somber silence. Then there was soft background noise from Chuck’s end.
“They’re baffled here. They’ve just got a call from Detective Brennan in Rampart strongly suggesting the site could be in Montana.”
“Montana! What the—how does Brennan know that?” Kate was losing it. “What’s going on, Chuck?”
“No wait, Kate!” Chuck was optimistic. “Others here are still insisting that the signal’s coming from Hopewell.”
Kate’s cell phone rang.
“It’s Erich. My friends are following this online, Kate.”
“Where is she?”
“Hopewell—it’s Hopewell!”
Two New Jersey State Trooper cars shot by their SUV in the opposite direction, sirens wailing, lights wig-wagging.
“Did you see that?” Sal’s head whipped around. “Something’s up!”
“Another signal!” Ellie said. “South!”
“Yes!” Chuck said. “We’ve got it here! They’re saying the Hopewell-Princeton Road!”
Sal wheeled the SUV around. Above them the choppers banked south, as well. As the SUV’s motor growled Ellie relayed the radio dispatches.
“They’re pinpointing it, Sal. The area is one mile south from the road’s junction with 518. Old Mount Rose Road comes into play. I don’t believe this!”
“What?” Kate turned to Ellie. “What is it?”
“It’s the same spot where they found the Lindbergh baby!”
* * *
Backhoe contractor “Big Ben” Pickett, got his Case 590 into position at a patch of disturbed earth they’d identified as the site in the woods some forty yards from the road.
Pickett had moved fast when he got the call at home from the township and the background nearly two hours ago. Posting him on the south side was smart. They were practically on the site when they confirmed the location.
With some twenty-five years in the business, Pickett lived on his machine. He could open this hole up in about four minutes, “like digging into mashed potatoes,” he told the troopers. They were working with the FBI agent and firefighter waving him into position, while a state police K-9 unit barked at the ground.
Portable light towers were rolled in to illuminate the scene.
As he worked, Pickett was deaf to helicopters overhead, the sirens of arriving emergency vehicles and the growing stream of news media. Troopers stretched crime scene tape at the road to keep the press back.
Lights from the cameras glowed and flashed on Pickett.
His engine roared as his bucket bit into the soft earth, scooping out over a foot of dirt. Firefighters used ground-penetrating locators and probe poles, feeling for a container, before waving Pickett to remove another layer. The process was completed again and again, quickly, efficiently until the poles hit a solid object at the depth of nearly six feet.
Firefighters waved for Pickett to stop. Ladders were lowered and crews cleared off the dirt, revealing a casket with chains sealing the lid. Industrial bolt cutters and other high-powered rescue tools were passed to the firefighters, who immediately opened the lid and looked down.
Vanessa Page was inside, barely conscious.
She offered a weak smile.
Firefighters transferred her to a spine board, secured an oxygen mask to her face and initiated a flow stream before they hefted her from her grave to hurry her toward the open clamshell doors of the waiting medical helicopter.
* * *
Kate jumped from Sal’s SUV before he brought it to a stop and flew to the police line where other news people were gathered, recording events as they unfolded. News camera operators zoomed in tight on Vanessa’s rescue.
“She’s alive!” one of them shouted.
Unable to bear it, Kate lifted the tape and, before state troopers and deputies could react, ran to Vanessa.
Kate’s heart was nearly bursting as she ran over the rugged terrain to the clearing as rescuers carrying Vanessa neared the helicopter. The deafening beating of the rotors made it impossible to hear but couldn’t stop her from screaming Vanessa’s name.
The men carrying her were stunned when Kate appeared, shouting at the top of her lungs.
“I’m her sister! I’m her family!” Then taking Vanessa’s hand and shouting to her, “I’m your sister! Kate! I’m your family! You’re not alone anymore!” Kate squeezed Vanessa’s hand and then she felt her squeeze back, so hard.
They found each other’s eyes and peace in the roaring chaos.
Strong hands gripped Kate’s shoulders as deputies and troopers pulled her back and paramedics secured Vanessa, closed the chopper’s door and lifted off. Its blinking lights disappeared into the night.
As they escorted Kate back to the tape, she explained over and over who she was and why she did what she did.
“I’m her sister! I have to be with her!”
“We know who you are, Kate,” one of the troopers said. “They’re going to Viola in Newark. We’ll take you there now so you can be with her.”
At the tape, nearly fifty reporters and photographers blocked the path to the police vehicles. They jostled amid the crush as the pack demanded Kate give a statement.
She agreed.
Amid the glare and subdued confusion Kate battled to collect herself, with adrenaline coursing through her and her heart racing.
“I thank God, and everyone else who helped, that we found my sister alive. To the families who’ve lost loved ones in this horrible nightmare, you have our prayers. To Sorin Zurrn, it’s over for you because my sister fought back and stopped you. You lose. It’s time to surrender.”