Fear the Dark

by Kay Hooper

  Dante said, “I doubt the town council complains.”

  Jonah grunted. “They’re nervous as hell and want me to hire on more officers. But not locally. I’m not putting inexperienced people on the payroll, not at a time like this. I’ve put a call out to a few police chiefs and sheriffs I trust, asking if they can spare an officer or two for what I hope is no more than a few weeks at most, at double pay.”

  Sarah frowned at him. “Am I getting double pay?”

  “Yes. And we should have another dozen officers here by tomorrow—I mean Friday. The town will foot the bill to put them up at the hotel for the duration. At least then we’ll have enough manpower to fill all three shifts with experienced personnel, and everybody will get some decent rest.”

  Jonah looked at his second’s continued frown and sighed. “Yes, I know I need to rest. If you swear to me you got some sleep—”

  “I swear. I slept at least three hours, and you know for me that’s as good as eight.”

  “Okay. Then I’ll leave you all to start going over all the files. I’ll go home and get a few hours’ sleep, and be back late morning.”

  “Make it noon,” Sarah suggested. “I’ll be fine until then. Plus, Lucas and Samantha will probably be back here by then.” She looked at the two feds, adding, “And the three of us will probably be more than ready to crash for a few hours.”

  “Works for me,” Robbie said. “Good night, Jonah.”

  He smiled faintly, but took the hint. “Do me a favor, and all of you stay here, together, at least until it gets light. Call me immediately if anything changes, or you find something we need to act on without delay. Got it?”

  “Got it,” Dante said. “Good night, Jonah.”

  Jonah managed another smile, then lifted a hand and left their makeshift command center.

  “There goes one tired man,” Dante said.

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “But he’s got better sense than to waste any off time not actually resting. He’ll sleep. Now—how are we going to go through all these damned files in some kind of logical, reasonable way? We need a system.”

  In the end, they came up with an easy system. Each file folder had a sticky note attached, and whether it was one of the cops or one of the agents, once it was studied, that person made a note of having done so, along with time and date, on the note. They also each kept legal pads, jotting down any notes they felt might be important or need to be further investigated.

  By the time they were done, Robbie had said, “Each file will have been studied by a cop and a fed.”

  And, hopefully, they’d have various notes to study, and be able to narrow down the amount of paperwork on the table. They were, after all, starting with files of anyone they could link in any way with any of the victims. The second step, assuming they found no solid connection, would be to separate out the files of all adult men roughly between the ages of thirty and fifty. It was an arbitrary age range, Robbie had confessed, adding that when Luke and Sam returned, they might be able to narrow it more because they were far more experienced profilers.

  Dante said, “What happens if we find nothing that raises a red flag in any of our minds in any of the files?”

  “Let’s not borrow trouble,” Sarah begged. “I just want to stay busy and focused so I’m not worrying about whether that bastard is trying to worm his way into my mind again.”

  “Awful as it feels,” Robbie told her, “at least we can be pretty sure now that nobody disappeared into thin air, that footprints didn’t magically vanish when photographed and car doors didn’t shut on their own. Everything was stage-managed to look more eerie and . . . otherworldly . . . than it actually was. At best a distraction for us. At worst a calculated move to further spook an already shaken town.”

  Sarah let out a sigh. “It’s too late now, but in the morning, either Jonah or I need to go see Mildred Bates. The neighbor with the cast. She was watching that morning, the whole time Jonah and I were there, and while Tim was there with me. As many times as I’ve cursed those binoculars of hers, she may actually have seen something helpful.”

  Robbie pursed her lips. “But it wouldn’t be anything obvious, because otherwise she would have called one of you. Right?”

  Sarah nodded. “Trust me, she doesn’t hesitate to call the station if she thinks anything’s going on. Which makes me feel pretty certain that if the bastard was actually out there, he stayed out of sight in the vegetation down below the bank. Still, she might have seen something she didn’t think was important at the time, or since then.”

  “Any information could help us,” Dante noted. “It’s not like we’ve got a whole hell of a lot to go on so far.”

  Sarah went to get the file box Jonah had filled from Annie’s desk and brought it back to the conference table, sitting down in a chair with a fair amount of clear table space in front of her. “So we really don’t have any kind of a profile on this guy yet?”

  Dante said, “If you mean the white male, age range, occupation sort of stuff that usually helps make up a profile—no, not really. Not reliably. That’s why we’re at least initially working with a really wide age range. We can guess he’s white only because all the missings are and it’s the majority demographic for Serenity. And it’s a guess, if an educated one, that he’s probably in his thirties or forties, maybe even older, because he’s been too patient and too clever to be younger.”

  Robbie sat down at the conference table as well, continuing, “In a small town like this, we’re bound to have way too many overlaps when it comes to victimology: same church, same doctor, same bank, shop at the same stores, kids go to the same schools—that sort of thing. So that doesn’t really help. But he picked these people, he went out of his way and to considerable trouble to abduct these people, these particular people, for a reason, and that’s what we have to look for. Somewhere, somehow, there’s a specific connection between the missing people that will lead us to the man who abducted them.”

  —

  NESSA WASN’T EXACTLY sure what had happened. She’d gotten up to get a drink, she knew that. But then . . . then there was a time she didn’t remember. And now she was here.

  In the dark.

  Nessa had always feared the dark. Always. It was why her daddy had made sure she never had to walk through a dark house to get to the kitchen for the chilled water she usually wanted in the middle of the night. Her mama had said there was water in her bathroom, after all, and Daddy was spoiling her, but not in that voice that said she really meant it.

  There were perks to being an only child.

  But none of those were going to help her now, here. Wherever here was.

  She was afraid of the dark, but Nessa was old enough to know there were worse things, so she made herself squash the fear, made herself not think about it. She could do that, she knew.

  At least for a while.

  But . . . it was really dark. It was so dark she couldn’t see so much as a sliver of light, a pinpoint of light, anywhere at all. It smelled . . . musty. Like a basement. Or a freshly dug hole in the woods. And there was something else too, a smell she recognized but couldn’t quite place.

  She was beginning to feel things physically, as if her body were slowly waking, but it wasn’t awake yet. So everything she felt was sort of distant, hazy, uncertain.

  She thought she was sitting in a chair. Not a comfortable chair either, not one with padding or cushions. More like a wooden kitchen chair, hard and unyielding.

  What she was not, was tied to it.

  Or restrained in any way she could feel.

  Without trying to move, Nessa considered that almost idly. She’d thought she was tied somehow, because once before, she had nearly woken up, and had been sure she couldn’t move.

  Now she thought she was a little more awake than she had been before, and she was just as sure she could move. She didn’t know h
ow she was sure, because she hadn’t tried yet, but she was very sure she could move now.

  But . . . move where? Her eyes were open, had been open awhile now, and the dark wasn’t getting any lighter the way it normally did after you were in it for a while, and kept your eyes open. It was dark and she had no idea where she was or which direction she should move in so she could escape this place.

  Then Nessa heard something. An odd, soft little sound that made a chill skitter up and down her spine.

  Somebody else was breathing.

  Close.

  She wasn’t alone here.

  —

  SARAH SIGHED. “WE’VE already studied the files on the missings, and even though you’re right about that overlap, nothing stands out as something connecting them. I don’t want to sound like a defeatist, but I’m afraid we’ll find the same load of nothing in these files.”

  Dante said a bit tentatively, “Once we’ve cleared—as well as we can—the people closest to the missings, then concentrating on males in our wide age range makes sense. If nothing else, we should be able to get a more complete sense of what’s normal, average. That should help us to notice something that isn’t normal or average, something that might not otherwise stick out.”

  Robbie was nodding. “Like you said, Sarah, we’ve gone through the files of the missings, specifically, once already, and nothing stood out. To any of us. We even had all the names run through national databases via Quantico, and everything looks normal, average. No wants, no warrants, nothing unusual. Just your average people in your average small town. So we take a few steps back to look at the larger picture. And that means going through the files on every adult male in the town of Serenity—and in outlying areas. Sarah, your people made a good start, but we’ll need them to keep canvassing, especially the outlying areas of town, pretty much at first light.”

  Sarah nodded, “I’m betting Jonah already has the duty list drawn up. Everybody will be working, especially now that we know reinforcements will be here soon. And, believe me, after what happened to Annie, every officer in the department wants to be the one to find her killer.”

  Dante looked a little troubled. “No offense, but we don’t want lynching parties out there.”

  “No offense taken. We don’t have a huge force, but the officers we do have are well trained, observant, and rational. And Jonah was talking to them when I left to come here with Annie’s files. He’s not one to stand for hotheads, never has been. He was making it plain that if anybody draws their gun, it better be because there was no other choice. You don’t have to worry. They’ll do their job, and they’ll do it well.”

  Dante nodded, visibly relieved. “It’s just that we’ve seen the mood of small towns change drastically with something like the murder of an officer. Bad gets worse in a hurry.”

  “I’ve seen it too. So has Jonah. We won’t let that happen here.”

  “Good enough.”

  Sarah frowned, her mind shifting to other questions. “We’re sure it’s a man?”

  Dante looked at her steadily. “You, Robbie, and Samantha are the only ones of us we can be sure touched, in some way, the mind of this bastard. What does your gut tell you?”

  “Male,” Sarah said immediately, while Robbie nodded agreement.

  “Not sure why in my case,” Robbie added. “There really wasn’t a sense of personality. In fact, for most of it I wasn’t aware of a presence at all. Just that confusion of memories that didn’t mesh.”

  “Because he was just testing you,” Dante guessed. “Unlike with Sarah, he didn’t need you to remember something that didn’t happen. Also why he didn’t threaten you, I bet. He didn’t, right?”

  “No.” Robbie frowned. “The first time I was even really aware of him was when I sort of snapped back—and I saw Officer Duncan stagger out onto the sidewalk. I knew her killer was behind her, in that alley, and I knew he was the one who had been rearranging my memories. But it was knowledge, not a sense of him. Maybe just a cop’s knowledge that you can’t move more than a few steps, if that, with your throat cut.” She looked at Dante. “When Sam gets back here, we really need to know everything she saw and felt when she touched Officer Duncan. And I mean everything. She may have the best sense of the killer, even if she didn’t see him.”

  “Because she touched the memories of a dead woman.” Sarah shivered visibly. “I thought my gran could be creepy at times with what she knew, but that beats anything I’ve ever heard.”

  “It’s unsettling to watch. Even to think about,” Robbie agreed. “The FBI has a lot of scientific types on the payroll, including a whole slew of medical doctors, and they study us regularly. What Sam can do is, so far as we know, unique. None of our telepaths have been able to do it, and if mediums like Dante see or sense the dead, that’s a whole different thing.”

  “A dead person’s brain has energy,” Sarah said, almost as if she wanted to listen to how it sounded out loud. It obviously sounded creepy, because she shivered again. “Damn.”

  Robbie shrugged. “I don’t really understand the science of it—except for a physics lesson Bishop has drilled into all of us: Energy can’t be destroyed, only transformed.”

  Sarah looked at her with lifted brows.

  “Death doesn’t destroy the energy in the brain. That’s all our thoughts are, electrical impulses. Synapses firing—or whatever the hell is going on in there. We are creatures of electrical energy, more or less. That electricity doesn’t stop because the heart does, because the lungs are no longer drawing in oxygen. That’s why true brain death, the complete lack of electrical impulses in the brain, is one of the standards used to declare certain death. From what I’ve been told, the brain’s energy, especially in cases of violent death, lingers from a few moments up to as much as half an hour. I dunno, maybe it takes that long for the brain to realize the body is already dead.”

  “Oh, jeez, that’s even creepier,” Sarah told her.

  “Stick with us and you’ll get creeped out plenty,” Dante murmured.

  “Something to look forward to,” Sarah said. “Or not. I say we get busy with these files. It would be nice to be able to show some progress before the others get back.”

  “I hear that,” Robbie said, and opened a file.

  —

  THE SOUND OF breathing so close to her in the darkness kept Nessa frozen for a long, long time. She even held her breath, as long as she could, though all that did was convince her that there was more than one person nearby.

  Breathing.

  Not a sound of movement. Nobody talking. Just the soft, whispery sounds of breathing.

  Wait . . . is it the missing people?

  And if it is . . . did I get taken too?

  That was more terrifying than even the darkness. Because some of the missing people had been missing for weeks, and nobody had been able to find them. Half the town had gone out on searches to help the police, but nobody had been found. Mr. Sully and his dogs had gone out almost every day, until even the dogs looked thin and discouraged, and Chief Riggs had ordered it stopped.

  They’d keep looking, he had told them. But it would be the police, and the FBI agents coming to help—

  Wait. I know Chief Riggs told Mr. Sully to rest his dogs. And I know he talked to everybody crowded into the school gym that day, just a few days after that man was taken at the theater.

  But . . . he didn’t say anything about FBI agents then.

  Did he?

  As scared as she was, Nessa had the notion that getting her memories straight was terribly important. It mattered somehow, and not just to her.

  There had been that meeting . . . and all the adults had been frightened, holding tight to their children. She’d thought her daddy’s grip would turn her fingers white. And the adults had asked what they could do, how they could be safe when even the police didn’t know who was taking
people away, or even how.

  Chief Riggs had told people not to buy more guns, Nessa remembered that. If they had guns and knew how to use them, fine, that was for home protection, but he didn’t want people carrying their guns around, and he didn’t want anyone getting a gun unless they took the police training course he insisted on before people bought guns. And right now his people were too busy to be teaching those courses.

  Besides, having a gun wouldn’t have kept anyone from being taken, that was what he’d said. Staying home at night was what they should do. If they had dogs, make sure the dogs were inside with them. Keep their porch lights or other yard lights on all night long, maybe even install some motion-sensor lights so if anybody came into their yards, the lights would come on. Make sure their doors and windows were locked, and an alarm would sound if the glass was broken.

  Nobody had said that the people who were taken had not been taken from their homes. She thought they were afraid to say it. Because they wanted to believe home was safe.

  She wanted to believe home was safe.

  Nessa knew that her daddy, like so many others, had bought an even better security system than they’d had before. She didn’t much like cameras inside the house, and her mama hadn’t either, but her daddy had said safety was more important and it wasn’t like he was putting cameras in bedrooms or bathrooms.

  Yes. Yes, she remembered all that. Was sure of all that.

  She was sure that her mama had taken her to school rather than let her take the bus like before. And picked her up. Lots of mamas and daddies had been doing that, and the teachers had made sure who was picking them up and checked their names off on the lists on their clipboards. The teachers had even talked to them about being careful where they should have been safe, about the buddy system and not being alone, not even in school.

  Nessa had done just as she’d been told. Because it was scary, people just being taken like that. Even though no kids had been taken, it was scary.