The Highway (A Benny Steel and Marisa Tulli Novel - Book 1) Read online

  His left eardrum cracked then burned, on fire, as if someone had jabbed at the delicate center with the sharp point of a pencil. The heat dashed across his temples, blurring his vision. He gripped his scalp, kicked out his legs, and squirmed in his seat. His spine trembled. His head throbbed, tingling over his forehead and down to his neck. He squeezed his eyes shut and scrunched his face together, the pain unbearable—the pressure as if someone was holding a blowtorch to his scalp, melting raw layers of skin until it was sore. His eyesight faded black, and his head bobbled—lights out.

  Gunpowder clouded the warm air, its scent like a wildfire. The car alarm beeped and inadvertently cried out for help; its sharp whistle got louder by the second! And louder!

  Suddenly, a brief wind gust washed away the gunpowder, and the car alarm echoed for the final time.

  Thomas Hitchy expired.

  The darkness of the night froze, the scent of fresh blood rising from the ground. The man with a plan carefully reached into the car and pulled out one of Hitchy’s cell phones from the dashboard.

  Hitchy’s face leaned forward and then smashed hard against the steering wheel. Specks of blood splattered all over the interior—the windshield, seats, and dashboard. The blood streaked his hair and gushed from a circle that once was his left temple and oozed over his lifeless eyeballs and down his cheeks—clicked against the floor mat in rhythm like the tick of a clock.

  The man with a plan sucked the crisp air into his lungs. Tires rumbled above. He observed his kill, proud and relieved—a burden lifted from his shoulders. Time stood still. His master plan had been executed. He scurried away, scratching rocks on the ground. His footsteps echoed under the highway and followed him out until he disappeared into the darkness of the night.

  2

  Benjamin Steel sat on his sofa, wearing a pair of navy blue sweat pants, white socks, and a faded, stretched-out Phillies t-shirt. A remote control dangled from his right hand, the left draped over his stomach. The seven o’clock morning news concluded with smiles from the anchors and the theme music from FOX Philadelphia.

  Steel squeezed his thumb against the controller’s rubber buttons and flipped through channels. “Ah, what to watch, what to watch, big decision here.” He yawned, flipped some more, and watched as the screen changed colors, flickering in and out, before coming across The Shawshank Redemption. A wise voiceover from Morgan Freeman burst through the speakers. He thought of watching it but kept searching after realizing he wasn’t in the mood and didn’t have two and a half hours to spend on a movie he’d seen close to ten times. He settled on a rerun of The Sopranos given that he was a huge James Gandolfini fan and saddened by his passing and left it on just as the opening credits rolled, viewing Tony cut his steering wheel and pull up to his driveway. Steel bobbed his head, mouthed the words “got yourself a gun,” and hummed the deep base until the theme music ended.

  “Great show, what a great show.”

  Folgers coffee dripped into a pot in his kitchen, just one room over, and the aroma of its dark roast blended with the cinnamon he’d added to the water before pouring it into the machine. He cherished his one off day from work and usually spent it in his house watching movies, reading, or thinking and worrying about things that didn’t matter. Of late, he’d been evaluating his personal life and the direction it was going in. His career was progressing the way he’d envisioned it, but the social aspect was a different story. His loneliness left a dull ache in the pit of his stomach as if a tennis ball continually circled near his belly button. Life was bullshit, but he’d live it. What other choice did he have? He’d decided years ago that suicide wasn’t an option for him, but he had entertained it for a while, no doubt about that. But no use complaining. Who’d listen? He’d heard it said before that life sucks and then you die. The person who invented that statement must’ve followed him around on a daily basis. Things just didn’t seem right in his life, but he’d tough it out, survive; that was the best he could do.

  He had been born and raised and now lived in a modest home, simple and comfortable, in a small cul-de-sac in Northeast Philadelphia. And he had no plans of leaving. The neighborhood had changed since his high school days. Many of his neighbors he’d known as children had moved years prior—mainly out to suburbs, mostly Bucks County. He could count, on one hand, the people he had grown up with who still lived there. It’d all begun in the Eighties. The white population had done the moving, and Hispanic and other recent immigrants had filled the gaps. Steel, a history fanatic, studied the trends and changes throughout not only his city but many others across the country. Change fascinated him. He didn’t view it as a racial thing, as many in the neighborhood did, but more of an economic issue. The sons and daughters of third-, fourth-, or fifth-generation European immigrants—the white blue-collar workers and laborers who’d had a stronghold on his neighborhood for a long time, the grandchildren of many World War II veterans who had purchased homes in that area with benefits from the GI Bill—were graduating from college and moving away to live white-collar lives with two-car garages and picket fences.

  The factories that had once powered Philadelphia’s labor force, especially during the Industrial Revolution and then somewhat up until the 1980s, had all but closed in the surrounding areas, and jobs were scarce in his small area. So newly arriving immigrants flocked to his neighborhood because the rent was cheap and the commute was convenient to downtown Philly; they attempted to start new lives with a new opportunity in America. Steel couldn’t care less about a white picket fence or a two-car garage in the suburbs. To him, it was a forty-five-minute commute both ways, each day, and more housework. He liked close neighbors, convenience stores in walking distance of his home, and the fast-paced lifestyle. He liked the city. The fact that the people who lived on either side of him didn’t speak English or weren’t the same race as him didn’t matter. Race had never bothered him. He didn’t care what color a person was or where they came from, but only who they were underneath their shell. He’d compare race to a box of Kellogg’s Fruit Loops—all different colors but the same from within.

  The ten houses on his block all looked the same—two-story high with a red brick façade. Each had a narrow lawn next to its front steps. Some neighbors kept the grass trimmed, but not all did, and each had a small concrete driveway for one parking space directly attached to the right side of their home.

  His home read “bachelor pad” the second someone glanced at the interior. The kitchen hadn’t been remodeled in over twenty years, and the worn-out wooden table and cabinets showed it with chips and dings that couldn’t be repaired. The living room had a worn cloth sofa, a small end table, a dual book and movie stand that stretched ceiling-high, and a 1990s model Sony 50-inch projection TV that weighed hundreds of pounds. His bathroom was lined with green and yellow tile and had a small shower—he considered himself lucky if he made it out of the cramped space with only one bruise on each elbow. Old carpets covered the floors in the two bedrooms and smelled of dust in the summer heat. He’d bought that house “as is” five years prior, just five blocks from the home he’d grown up in, and had planned to remodel but never got around to it. He didn’t give a shit for now, as long as it had a bed and shower. That was perfect for him since he lived alone. Things could change, but for now, it worked.

  The first scene of The Sopranos episode popped up on the screen, and he laughed as Tony yelled at Dr. Melfi. His cell phone rang but low and muffled somewhere, and he couldn’t find it with a few eye-sweeps across his living room. Where’s it at? he thought. I can never find this thing. He ran his hands over the couch, scraped hard crumbs from a pizza he’d eaten on it the previous night, and after some more scrapes and rings, the cold plastic grazed his knuckles. He fumbled it before his voice cracked as he spoke, trying to adjust to being awake, “Hello.”

  “Steel.”

  “Morning, Lieutenant.”

  “We need you on today, another homicide. A body under 95 by the park
, near the office. Can you make it there?” the lieutenant detective said, but his tone implied a statement rather than a question.

  “It’s not my day off or anything, but I’ll head there for my lieutenant,” Steel said. “Another homicide?”

  “Hard to believe, but yeah. I’m running out of detectives to send here. I appreciate the solid work you’re doing for me,” the lieutenant said, offsetting Steel’s sarcasm.

  “No problem. I’ll head right over.”

  Steel ended the call and jumped up. He sniffed at the coffee aroma in the air and dug his fingernails into his scalp. “Every fuckin’ time I’m off.” He quickly shook off that statement, not even knowing why he’d said it. Those words were as good as hot air because he knew he’d rather be nowhere else but on the scene.

  3

  Steel stepped outside and took in the quintessential June morning. The birds sang to one another. The shade blanketed one side of the street, and the sunlight bathed the other. Steel’s neighbors had half-smiles on their faces even though they were headed to work. Only a beautiful summer morning could do that. The only downside was the humidity; it could suffocate someone if he or she stayed out in it long enough.

  Steel locked the door behind him and headed for his car. Instantly, sweat dampened his white dress shirt. After getting in and starting the ignition, he flinched as an advertisement commercial cut through the radio speakers. The sudden noise stunned his eardrums. He twisted the volume knob to just above a background noise, but voices still cut in and out. Anthony Gargano from WIP, a local sports talk radio station, debated the Phillies’ game the previous night and the Eagles’ offseason moves with angry callers. Steel left it on, not wanting to listen to a local news station because he didn’t want to hear any more about the crime wave brewing in Philly. He knew it existed and needed to get stopped, so sports talk radio remained on. Besides, he’d heard enough about it on the television that morning. If he didn’t think of something else besides crime, he’d drive himself nuts. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to remember Gargano’s nickname before he pulled off. The Cuz, he thought. That’s what they call him. The Cuz explained a situational baseball move to a caller from the game the previous night, and Steel talked over the two and said, “Right on, Cuz. Tell him.”

  He backed out of his driveway, hooked a few right turns, and veered onto I-95. The radio noise faded out, so he split his first two fingers and turned the dial until it completely silenced. Time for his favorite station: his own thoughts. A car dropped back, and the driver waved at him. Steel floored the gas pedal, merged into the left lane, and soared a few miles over the speed limit.

  He drove, glanced at either side of the highway for a few seconds at a time, taking in the sights—the skyline, rectangular billboards for colleges or strip clubs, rooftops of row homes, and tall, pointy church steeples. But his thoughts comforted him most. Born an introvert, at times he’d seem elusive to others. Communicating with people took an enormous amount of effort for him, so as a child he had learned to occupy himself. He could sit for hours and just think as entertainment.

  He cruised on I-95 for twenty minutes, fighting some traffic, cursing under his breath at honking horns, and pondering life, before heading to the crime scene under the highway. Off the exit, he rode up a few blocks and parked roughly fifty feet away. The image reminded him of a set from an old Dirty Harry movie. Yellow caution tape swayed in an uneven square around the area where the crime had taken place. Crime scene investigators mingled and collected evidence. Trucks and cars zipped across the highway above, and their speed swirled wind gusts underneath, the noise constant and slow. Shrubs of wild bushes and grass popped out of cracks in the concrete.

  Steel adjusted his rearview mirror and checked his appearance. His full head of brown hair waved back with precision, and his razor deserved an A+ for the job it had done on his stubbly facial hair that morning. He clenched his jaw and ran a finger over the bone, patted an extra flap of skin dangling from his chin. Gotta lose that, he thought. He grabbed his wallet off the dashboard and shoved it into an interior pocket of his suit jacket and then sipped his stainless steel travel coffee mug before dropping it back into the cup holder in the center console. The sun beat down right into his eyes and burned as he left the car. The humidity smacked his face; it was hot.

  He strode over to the scene and held out his arms in front of himself, bent slightly at the elbow, using his hands as a buffer between reporters and camera crews rushing over at the sight of him. The media didn’t move until he forced them to by continuing his stride and separating the crowd with his forearms, pushing his way through. Some shouted questions that he couldn’t yet answer.

  Somehow, he escaped the madness and approached two young patrol officers guarding the roped-off crime scene. Each stood with his thumbs on his belt loops, dressed in uniform—blue button-down shirt, a black tie, black slacks, black police cap, and shiny black shoes. Steel figured them to be rookies; veterans’ shoes never looked that shiny. Rookies’ uniforms were always neater than seasoned officers, and Steel figured it was before they realized that cop-life in the real world wasn’t like a drama series on TV or that cameras weren’t following their every action.

  He looked beyond the two officers, glanced at the scene, and frowned at the filth under the highway. Graffiti gang symbols and slang written in spray-painted bubble letters decorated the walls. Shards of glass from broken beer bottles were scattered everywhere, and old blankets were spread out on the concrete, for the homeless, he figured. Stale, sour urine hung in the warm air and turned his stomach over every time he inhaled. Crime scene investigators and technicians, gloves over their hands, examined the vehicle and body and carefully placed evidence into clear bags. They snapped several photos, lighting up the shaded area under the highway that the powerful sun couldn’t penetrate.

  One of the young policemen asked Steel for identification. He grabbed at his wallet in his suit jacket and flashed them his credentials. Both nodded, and the other said, “Morning, Detective Steel.”

  “What’s up, guys?”

  Steel had a reputation on the force and knew it. Others viewed him as a hard-nosed, strong-willed, hot-headed up-and-comer but also as a closer—a man who either solved cases or almost ended up in a mental institution trying. He always obsessed over things, even during childhood; it was in his nature. With ten years’ experience on the force, he studied his craft all the time—sometimes too much.

  “How long have you two been out here?” Steel asked.

  One of the officers cleared his throat. “About an hour.”

  Steel shifted his eyes to the other guy. Definitely a rookie, he thought. The man’s eyes darted. He seemed excited and scared at the same time. Probably his first murder scene. Steel opened his mouth to speak but stopped after hearing a voice from behind.

  “Benny Steel,” a man called out in the distance.

  Steel hurried over to the member of the forensics team and extended his hand. “Jimmy, what do we have here?”

  “Homicide.” Jimmy snapped his head back at the vehicle and twisted a finger in its direction. “Or suicide…they’re determining that now. Looks like a homicide from the entry wound, but we’re not exactly sure yet. And they didn’t find the gun, so homicide is more likely. Body’s been here since last night, it seems like.”

  “Who is it?”

  “White male in his thirties.”

  “They didn’t ID him yet?”

  “Yeah, they have. Check with Tony for his name. He had a wallet on him and at least an ounce of cocaine.”

  “All right. Take it easy, pal,” Steel said.

  “You too, Steel.”

  Another member of the forensics team backed up, and Steel sidestepped him, then squatted and angled his head toward the car. He inched over some more, dodging broken glass, still squatting for a better angle. His eyes captured the sight of a man hunched over. Dried blood was lumped through his hair and plast
ered to his face, and his head was carefully positioned against the steering wheel. An old buddy of Steel’s, Tony Retti, the lead crime scene investigator, crept up to the car, scribbling notes. Steel would recognize that short, round man and his salt-and-pepper hair anywhere.

  “Hey…‘Tony bag a donuts.’”

  Tony chuckled, faintly, as though he didn’t want to be inappropriate at a crime scene. “Oh, Benny Steel.”

  They shook hands.

  Like Steel, Tony had a reputation on the force; he was known as an old-school, tough cop. Their personalities were similar—quiet but also smart and courageous when needed. Tony had transferred from New York to the Philadelphia Police Department years ago. He had been born in Brooklyn. As a teen, he’d hung around with the wrong crowd and often gotten into trouble, mostly kid shit—street fights, stealing bikes, pranks on the adults in the neighborhood—until one day turned his life around. When he’d been about sixteen years old, he’d messed with the wrong group, which had already had a beef with his friends, and had nearly been beaten to death. After that, he’d wised up fast and joined the force at eighteen. Now sixty, he’d been a patrol officer, an undercover narcotics agent, a detective, a lieutenant detective, and a sergeant and had even taken classes at night to become a crime scene investigator, eventually working his way up to lead crime scene investigator. He had a wife, three kids, and was a stand-up, hardworking guy who didn’t pull any punches. It went without saying that Steel had an enormous amount of respect for him.

  “What do we got here, Tone?”

  “Thirty-three-year-old male.” Tony looked down at a yellow legal pad, jotted on it with a blue BIC pen fastened between his hairy knuckles and chubby fingers, and then glanced up at Steel. “Thomas Hitchy. That’s the name I’ve got here, Steel.”

  Steel arched an eyebrow. “Hitchy?”