Broken Monsters (30 page)

It's Jen's
idea to release the footage with different cuts. Twenty-eight minutes for the aficionados, twelve minutes for the curious new converts, three minutes for the casual YouTuber, ten- and thirty-second chunks for the news channels, always with Jonno in frame or their captions over the images. Brand recognition. He can't wait to have a professional cameraman, a real producer, an editor.

Jonno looks straight to camera, his delivery super-serious. “This is what the City of Detroit doesn't want you to see.” He pauses for emphasis, grim. “I can't blame them. The images we're about to show you are graphic and disturbing.” Guaranteeing that no one is going to click away. But they let them wait.

Cue photograph of Daveyton grinning goofily in an oversize football helmet. Zoom out to reveal it's one of many photographs pinned up among flowers and balloons and cards and stuffed toys at the bus stop where he was killed. The camera lingers on a piece of cardboard that reads, “We miss you Davey,” in childish script, with handprints from his classmates.

“Daveyton Lafonte. Eleven years old. When he was six, he survived being shot in a gang fight. But death came back to claim him. He was abducted from this bus stop on his way home from school.”

 A shaky driving shot of the tunnel at night. Jen reassured him that it would make it look more real.

“Someone killed him and left his body here, like trash.”

Cue the crime-scene photographs, and a photo click sound effect, which Jonno thinks is cheesy as hell, but every click gets them closer to the scene. The cop cars blocking off the road, the graffiti on the tunnel wall, the shape of a child curled up on his side, indistinct. “The police reported that the body was found with animal remains. Whatever that means. Roadkill? A dead cat found in the vicinity?”

Cue panning shot of a newspaper headline that says “animal remains.”

“We didn't know what that meant. We didn't know the truth of how his body had been desecrated. Until
these
disturbing photographs were leaked by someone close to the investigation.” He uses all the right lingo that suggests concerned citizens, government cover-ups, the people's right to know.

Cut back to a close-up of Daveyton's face, eyes closed, serene. Slow zoom out to reveal his naked chest. Zoom out further to reveal the seam of fur creeping over his stomach, the length of the deer haunches. Full reveal: lingering on the unspeakable.

He speaks it anyway: “Daveyton was killed by a sick and twisted murderer. But merely killing a little boy wasn't enough for the Detroit Monster. No. He cut Daveyton Lafonte in half, and attached him to a fawn.”

“The rest of Daveyton's remains were discovered at the now infamous Dream House party, hidden among the art installations.”

Cut to the footage, recut so it looks more dramatic. They've included some of the weirder art, but they've also recontextualized the girl screaming in delight on the dance floor, among the images of people leaving the party. Quick cuts, tense close-ups, like the scene in
Jaws
when everyone is fleeing the beach.

“The police don't want you to know how bad this is. How deep it goes.”

Cut to the Tudor exterior of Miskwabic Pottery. A photograph of a group of students throwing pots on the wheels. The photograph turns to monochrome on everyone except for a cheerful middle-aged lady in an orange apron, who is holding up her hands to demonstrate the curve of a bowl.

“Pottery teacher Betty Spinks was covered in clay and baked to ash in the Miskwabic kiln, after the killer cut off her feet.”

Photographs of the kiln, looking creepy as hell, with singed bricks and a gaping interior. Generic ones he found online, because they wouldn't let them in to film, and his source wasn't able to get at those particular photographs.

“This is a twisted killer who is on the loose in Detroit right now… And the police don't want you to know about it.”

Shaky footage from the party. Detective Versado yelling at him. “What the hell do you think you're doing? Hand over that phone.”

“Why are they trying to cover it up? Why don't they want us to know what's happening in our own city? I'm Jonno Haim and I'll keep you up to date on the Detroit Monster as events unfold.”

This should
be the end of the story. Cops with guns and flak jackets, squad cars surrounding the house, the blue and red lights strobing the street.

They have checked the satellite photos and the street view, calculating the entrances and exits, every possible escape route out of the neighborhood. They have them all covered. Snipers have guns trained on the windows. Two police helicopters are circling overhead along with three news choppers, who got wind of something, hovering close by.

The excitable curator, Patrick Thorpe, is with them, standing back out of harm's way, briefing the entry teams. He's wearing a bulletproof vest and a helmet even though he's not going anywhere near the scene. They wouldn't have brought him, but they needed to move fast, and he was the only person who could brief them on the interior of the house. They need all the intel they can get, and he's already told them that Broom is a hoarder, that the inside is an obstacle course of newspaper stacks and heavy old furniture.

One of the news crews has a drone. Gabi's commandeered it to get a look in the windows upstairs, the quadrocopter buzzing around the house with its camera, but the technology is stymied by an older one: curtains.

Captain Miranda is standing out front with the megaphone, issuing the scripted demands. Come out, come out, wherever you are, Gabi thinks. Please make it easy. They're all wired into the same circuit board of tension.

There's no response. The front door, which has a dozen guns trained on it, does
not
crack open so that Broom can release Officer Jones and come out slowly, his hands on his head, as instructed. But he also doesn't burst out of the house with a semiautomatic blazing. And that's something. But her heart is a wild animal in her chest. All she can think about is Marcus Jones and how she's let him down.

“Going in,” Miranda confirms. Boyd stays with the team in front. Gabi goes through to the yard, because the back door will yield more easily, which means she can get in faster. The grass is dead, frosted with concrete dust and yellow patches marking where things used to stand. The curator said it was full of statues. She wonders where the hell they are now, how many of them are human. What are they even dealing with?

Gabi takes her place behind the huge officer with the battering ram. The worst job. The most vulnerable. No cop wants to be in a situation where you can't get your hands on your gun.

The instruction comes through clear on the radio and simultaneously, front and back, the teams swing the battering rams into the heavy doors. The wood resists the siege. It's old and sturdy, from the days when they built houses to last. But even history has to yield to force, especially when you know the weak points: the lock, the hinges. The wood splinters. Another officer wedges a crowbar under the lock and pops it out.

They drop the ram, draw their guns and swoop in, avenging angels. For Daveyton Lafonte and Betty Spinks and Sparkles and for themselves, so they never have to get that call about someone they love.

The kitchen to the right, the refrigerator yawning open, the living room to the left, heavy curtains pulled shut. Stairs leading up to the second floor.

The place stinks of damp and old paper. Sweaty feet in an old library. And blood. Splattered over the kitchen. In the basement, over a work table. A slaughterhouse. The carpets are discolored, like the yard, marked by things that have stood here long enough to leave their ghosts. Stains creep up the walls, damp and black mold. There are rat droppings. Silverfish and cockroaches scatter into the darkest corners. And hundreds of chalk doorways drawn everywhere, overlapping each other.

“We got a car,” a voice crackles over the radio. “In the garage. Blue station wagon. We're running plates on it.”

“Check if it's registered to Officer Marcus Jones,” Gabi says. “It might be his private vehicle.”

“Affirmative,” the voice comes back a moment later.

Gabi bites her tongue until she tastes blood. Her fault. She should have answered the phone. All this time, they were so damn close, all this time.

They fan out, cops spreading into every room. Pounding up the stairs. They call out the prescription warnings, about coming in, coming up, last chance, with your hands visible. Using Clayton's name like an invocation to summon him.

But every room is the same. Empty. No piles of newspaper, no furniture. Everything has been cleared out. Another vacant house, another day. It's all gone.

Including Clayton Broom. And Marcus Jones.

The aftermath
is a clusterfuck. The media has gone ballistic. They let the Detroit Monster get away, and a cop is missing, presumed dead. One of their own. Clayton Broom has disappeared and they have no idea where. They had to release his name and photograph officially, before the press did, so the department looks slightly less ragingly incompetent, and somehow the video blogger has gotten hold of crime-scene footage off
their
computers, and she's got what feels like the whole of the Internet trying to solve the case.

She knows it's over the moment she is summoned into Miranda's office and finds it full of important people. Honey-blond Jessica diMenna, someone from Internal Affairs, the Chief of Fucking Police. Boyd's there, too, sitting in a corner, staring down at his hands as if his chewed-up fingernails might reveal great truths.

“You must know why you're here,” Jessica says.

“Sure. Can we skip to the punch line so I can get back out there and find Officer Jones, who might still be alive?”

“We appreciate your dedication, Versado, but this has to be done by the book.” Joe Miranda picks up a sheet of paper. He reads it in a monotone without meeting her eyes. There's a lot of legal jargon. But the summary of it is that she's done here. She tunes out the reasons listed: the only one that matters to her is that she put an unqualified officer in danger, and now he's missing, probably dead.

Miranda finally gets to the end of the spiel. He takes a swig from the bottle of water on his desk and meets her eyes, ignoring their audience. “I'm sorry, Versado. Someone has to take the fall. We have to save face. You can still work it, we need everyone. But you're no longer in charge. We're putting Detectives Croff and Stricker on it, and we're bringing in the feds. There's an agent flying in tomorrow morning.”

“Permission to speak, sir.”

“You don't have to explain anything. This isn't a tribunal. You're a fine officer, you were in over your head.”

“I don't want to explain. I want to say that I'm not coming off this case. Not until I find Officer Jones.”

She walks out of his office to find Stricker and Croff already waiting outside, as if they've already been briefed. Luke reaches for her hand and then thinks better of it. “Gabi. You did everything right. It just wasn't fast enough. I'm sorry.”

Croff shrugs. “Hey, cheer up, Versado. They'll make it up to you down the line. And you got your kid to worry about. You can't be a good mom
and
a good cop.”

She gives him the finger, but as if to prove his point, she gets a text from Layla before she even gets back to her desk.

She phones her immediately. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine. It's just—” She's crying.

“Are you in danger, right now? This very second?”

“No.”

“Because someone else is. They might be dead. Because of me.” Because of you and your amazing timing with your teenage drama, she's tempted to lash out, but that's not true. It's all on Gabi.