Books |
Sunrise Highway
Peter Blauner
By
Published: Sep 04, 2018
Category:
Fiction
Thirteen-year-old Johnny Pius was killed in 1979 in a way that is remembered on Long Island even now: 6 rocks stuffed down his throat. Homicide police interrogated four neighborhood teenagers; after just a few hours, one confessed. The trials were swift, the convictions certain, the sentences long.
I read the New York Times article about the convictions and wondered how a kid could do that to the boy who sat directly in front of him at school without cracking. How cold would he have to be? I was then writing for The New York Times Magazine. To my surprise, it took only a day of interviewing and examining the evidence to conclude that the police had made a mistake — none of these kids killed Johnny Pius. Two years of reporting later, I was writing for New York Magazine, which published its first two-part murder story. [Part 1 of “Trouble Boys” is online. To read it, click here.]
Considered simply as drama, this story had everything. I tried to write it as a screenplay. Couldn’t crack it. Tried to solve the murder. Couldn’t. Moved on.
Peter Blauner was just starting out at New York when I was there. He went on to leave journalism for TV — he won Emmys for episodes he wrote for “Law & Order: SVU” and “Blue Bloods” — and write 8 novels, including “Slow Motion Riot,” winner of the Edgar Allan Poe award for best first novel from the Mystery Writers of America. But he didn’t forget the rocks. And he remembered two names. Jimmy Burke, a teenager who set his “friend” up in a minor crime shortly before the trial. Thomas Spota, the District Attorney who prosecuted the Pius trial.
Decades later, an amazing development: James Burke had become Chief of Police in Suffolk County, having been mentored by Thomas Spota. Burke was one of those out-of-control cops who should never have been allowed near a gun; for a grab bag of minor offenses, the $200,000-a-year Chief was sentenced to 46 months in jail. Spota resigned after he was indicted on federal charges of obstruction of justice in the investigation of Burke.
For Peter Blauner… light bulb!
Maybe there was — in fiction, anyway — a connection between the dead boy in the schoolyard and the young cop who “used to tell people that he wanted to become a cop so he could get away with breaking the law.” And maybe that cop, who was an enthusiast of prostitutes and drugs, was connected to a series of unsolved murders of prostitutes on the South Shore of Long Island.
And now we have “Sunrise Highway.” Early reviews have made a handy comparison: “the most memorable psychopath since Hannibel Lechter.” I say: more memorable than “Silence of the Lambs,” because for a woman there can be nothing more terrifying than being pulled over on a back road by a cop and realizing his grinning face is the last you will ever see.
But “Sunrise Highway” is not just a thrill ride. It’s also a study of a psychopath: a teenage shitbag sees police work as a career path to bigger, more monstrous crimes that will never be solved because he knows how to leave no trace, not that anyone would suspect him. And it’s a story of the system that enables that sicko and rewards him.
So score it this way: “Sunrise Highway” is a terrifying and infuriating reading experience that will spike your blood pressure for hundreds of pages. [To buy the book from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle edition, click here.]
“No spoilers” means I can only tell you the framework of the plot. The cop is Lourdes Robles, Brooklyn born, very much not of Long Island suburban culture. She’s more dedicated than most of her male colleagues, and in 2017, when she’s summoned to view the remains of a woman found “on an inlet dividing New York City on her side and Long Island on the other,” she sees the work of the serial killer who’s been leaving female bodies on Long Island’s southern shore. Another motivation: her sister is missing.
And then there’s Joey Tolliver. In 1977, when was 17, he strangled a 15-year-old girl. A cop suspects him. But he can avoid a murder charge. Tolliver testifies that he saw the star quarterback on the high school football team — a black kid, of course — leaving the murder scene. Perjury? That’s just his first crime. No, his second. There will be more. And he’ll kill anyone — even a cop — who comes close to unraveling his ongoing murders.
You want more? Here’s an excerpt. Then read the book.
