The Dark Corners of the Night

by Meg Gardiner

  4

  A towering Christmas tree dominated the grandparents’ San Fernando Valley home. Its gleaming cheer was smothered by the airless grief in the living room. The grandmother sat on the edge of a wingback chair, a soggy tissue clenched in her fist. She hunched as if she’d been punched in the chest. But she watched Caitlin and Rainey with a black-powder stare, ready to fire on them if they asked questions she objected to. Caitlin couldn’t blame her.

  The children sat side by side on a sofa. Noah and Natalie McKinley were six-year-old twins. Brown hair, sturdy limbs, gleaming eyes. Silent.

  Caitlin assessed the kids’ emotional temperature, caught Rainey’s eye, and signaled: You lead. Rainey pulled a dining room chair next to the sofa and sat down, close but not crowding the children. Her tone was tender.

  “Tell me what you saw. What you heard.”

  Noah’s shoulders bunched inside his Batman T-shirt. He stared at the floor. A jet passed overhead on approach to Burbank Airport.

  “I know it’s scary to remember,” Rainey said. “But you were very brave. You helped your sister.”

  She glanced at the little girl. Natalie was holding a stuffed bear, squeezing it repeatedly, almost rhythmically. Trying to soothe herself, Caitlin thought.

  Softly she said, “You can tell Agent Rainey whatever you’re thinking about. Anything at all.”

  Noah eyed Rainey with something like suspicion, maybe disbelief. But Rainey’s gaze was direct and genuine. Caitlin knew her as forthright and incisive. Ex–Air Force, she was one of a rare number of female African American FBI special agents. Whether in the field or an interrogation room, she was commanding.

  And she was the mother of twin boys herself. Her way with kids was completely natural. Even at such a wrenching moment, she was calm, warm, and respectful. Caitlin hung back. She had a good rapport with children—she was close to Sean’s daughter—but she wasn’t a mother herself. She let Rainey attempt to work her empathetic magic.

  Rainey leaned her elbows on her knees, getting to eye level with the boy. “You got out of bed and went into the hall.”

  Noah looked at her. After a moment he dipped his chin. Yes.

  “Did you turn on any lights?”

  He shook his head. “I heard a noise.” His halting voice was little more than a whisper. “I got up and went into the hall and called to my mom and dad and …” He breathed. “Saw a shadow.”

  Rainey waited. After a few seconds, Noah went on.

  “A man,” he said.

  Progress. She held onto his gaze. “Can you tell me what the man looked like?”

  “Gigantic.”

  “Did you see his face?”

  Noah shook his head.

  “Did you see what he was wearing?”

  “No. It was dark.” He kneaded his fingers together. “He had a gun.”

  Across the room, the grandmother stifled a cry. She turned her head to the wall and squeezed the sodden tissue.

  “Did the man speak?” Rainey said.

  The boy’s chin trembled. He shook his head.

  “What happened then?” Rainey said.

  “I ran into Nat’s room.” Noah’s eyes shifted to his sister. She sat stone still beside him. “Nat was standing there. She was shaking.” He looked at Rainey. “I hugged her and thought we should climb out the window, but Mom and Dad were in their room and what if they needed help and …”

  The grandmother stood up, fist pressed to her lips. Caitlin understood her distress but didn’t want her to interrupt the boy’s story.

  Noah, however, seemed unaware of her. “Then Nat pulled me into the closet. I pushed the door shut and we got … we got small and tried to hide behind the toys because … because …”

  The tremor in his voice set a nerve ringing behind Caitlin’s eyes. He looked so fragile. Caitlin knew he had indeed been brave—he’d demonstrated a level of courage no kid should have to summon. And retelling it so freshly, to strangers, was a burden unfairly placed on his small shoulders.

  Christ in hell.

  Hunting serial predators was what Caitlin did. The more challenging and urgent the case, the more dangerous the UNSUB, the hotter her blood sang. The clearer her vision became. The wider awake she grew. The work was important. It kept people alive. It put killers in prison.

  And interviewing orphaned first graders sent an arrow through her. She inhaled and blinked and tried to lower the shields.

  Rainey’s tone was kind. “Noah, you’re safe. You can tell me, and it won’t make it happen again.”

  He turned to her, his eyes burning. “Then he kicked the bedroom door down. And we tried to not make any noise, tried to be like bats and blend into the dark but I heard him breathing and walking and he pulled open the closet door, pulled it open hard, and …” He stopped. “I heard his voice.”

  “He spoke to you?” Rainey said. “What did he say?”

  He shrugged.

  “What did his voice sound like?” Rainey said.

  “Man’s voice.”

  “Do you remember what he said?” Rainey asked.

  The boy nodded. In the hall, a clock ticked.

  The little girl, Natalie, was wringing her hands. She had dropped her stuffed bear.

  Caitlin knelt by the girl’s side and handed her the toy. It felt damp, perhaps from being held to Natalie’s face while the little girl sobbed.

  “Did you see him?” Caitlin said.

  The girl nodded tightly. She whispered, “Eyes.”

  “What about his eyes?”

  The child raised her hands, palms out. “Eyes were on his hands.”

  An electric shock seemed to run down Caitlin’s arms. She exchanged a sharp glance with Rainey.

  “What do you mean?” Caitlin said quietly.

  “He opened the closet door and saw us. He had gloves on but he pulled them off. And he had eyes on his hands.”

  “What did the eyes look like?”

  Natalie spread her fingers. “Big black eyes. Wide and scary.”

  Noah nodded. “He drew eyes on his palms. And he said …”

  The look in his own eyes lengthened to a thousand-yard stare. He seemed lost, back in the closet, trapped by the gunman who had killed his mom and dad.

  Caitlin leaned forward. “What did he say?”

  The boy’s lips seemed to move without volition, as if speaking in another voice. “‘I am the legion of the night.’”

  Jesus. His monotone sounded like an incantation. And beyond a six-year-old’s vocabulary.

  “You seem really sure that’s what he said.”

  “He made us say it back to him.”

  Caitlin fought a shudder.

  Rainey’s face went stark. “Did he say anything else?”

  Natalie’s voice was tiny. “‘I am beyond good and evil.’” She inhaled. “He made us say that back too.”

  Noah stared through Rainey now, to a moment somewhere beyond the room. “The darkness ate him. He wasn’t there anymore.”

  The grandmother stood frozen, her face as pale as the paint on the walls.

  “But his voice stayed,” Noah whispered. “It told us who he is. He’s the Midnight Man.”

  5

  The wind buffeted the Suburban as Rainey drove downtown, her expression tense and pensive. Unnerved by the McKinley twins, thoughts roiling, Caitlin silently flipped through local radio stations. “Jingle Bell Rock.” “Little Drummer Boy.” “Two more people shot to death in their bedroom …” “Run, Run, Rudolph.” “Nobody’s safe. This guy crawls through your window? You’d better have a gun.”

  I am the legion of the night.

  She turned the radio off. “I know we only landed three hours ago. We’re still gathering information. But this UNSUB’s like nothing I’ve ever dealt with.”

  They swept
through a curve past Dodger Stadium. She realized how she came off. Overmatched. Spooked.

  “That sounded dramatic,” she said.

  Rainey’s tone was grave. “That’s not drama, that’s your finely honed intuition telling you to freak. This guy’s off the chart.”

  Downtown Los Angeles came into view, an Emerald City cluster of skyscrapers, ruddy in the lowering light. Caitlin put down the sun visor. She’d been with the FBI for eighteen months, was officially still under Emmerich’s mentorship in the BAU, but had worked a slew of difficult, violent serial crimes. She was no longer a rookie. And this case chilled her.

  The UNSUB seemed less a man than an evil energy given human form. A shadow roaming loose under the glittering lights of LA, anonymous among thirteen million people, swooping in to kill at random.

  “This case is some WFS,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Weird Fucking Shit.”

  Rainey gave a low laugh.

  “Need to find a key to opening his head,” Caitlin said.

  “Just be ready for what pours out.”

  LAPD headquarters was a sleek stone and blue-glass complex across from LA’s iconic City Hall. Outside, flags buffeted and palm trees bent under the wind. The side of the building that faced Spring Street featured irregularly spaced windows, designed to thwart snipers. To Caitlin the place felt shiny and too new—cool lighting, flat-screens, sleek phones, and computers. She thought it still needed some breaking in. She had been born into Cop World, the daughter of a homicide detective, and even now felt most comfortable in the clamorous, grungy world of street policing. She was glad to see smudges on the doors of interview rooms.

  The LAPD and Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department had formed a joint task force to investigate these killings. Caitlin and Rainey found Emmerich upstairs in the Homicide Special Section, where a war room had been set up.

  Caitlin dropped her computer case on a conference table. Emmerich, standing across from her, lifted his head from a file.

  “The children?” he said.

  “Told us stuff to make your hair stand on end,” Rainey said.

  “More bizarre symbols,” Caitlin said. “And occult-style proclamations.”

  As Emmerich raised an eyebrow, Detective Dave Solis approached with another man.

  Gil Alvarez was the LA Sheriff’s lead investigator on the task force. He was sucking avidly on a toothpick. Smoker trying to quit, Caitlin thought. His jeans had a sharp crease ironed down the front. He looked like a kettle working to a boil.

  Alvarez shook hands. “Welcome to the arena.”

  He openly sized up the FBI team. He seemed to approve of Rainey’s straight back and direct gaze and the ease with which she wore her Glock 19M on her right hip. He gave Emmerich a longer once-over—maybe measuring the breadth of his shoulders and the force of his gaze. Alvarez’s glance at Caitlin was brief. It seemed to say, Baby agent.

  She hoped she was way off. She hoped her own radar needed calibrating, and that Alvarez’s intensity didn’t equal hotheadedness.

  She knew that three prides of lions had gathered in a single den.

  “Let’s go through the attacks chronologically,” Alvarez said. “Solis, you want to start?”

  Emmerich gave Caitlin and Rainey a cool glance. Bide your time. We’ll get to your report. Detective Solis rolled up the sleeves of his ice-white shirt, turned on a flat-screen TV that hung on the wall near the conference table, and put up crime scene photos.

  “Benedict Canyon,” he said.

  Caitlin had examined some of these photos already. But seeing them on the large screen gave the images extra weight and solemnity.

  The first photo showed a mansion. Ultramodern, plate glass windows, a steep driveway, laurels and eucalyptuses screening the precipitous hillside. Inside, the walls were supernova white. Or rather, they had been. Until the killer infiltrated the house like carbon monoxide, silent and invisible, and started shooting.

  In the cavernous master bedroom, Joel and Jessica Peretti had been killed as they lay spooning. Standing at the foot of the bed, the killer had put bullets in their heads from four feet away. A halo of blood spread across Jessica’s pillow like a saint’s starburst crown.

  “After shooting Mr. and Mrs. Peretti, the killer proceeded down a hall to their seven-year-old son’s room. He pushed the boy’s door open. The gunshots had already woken the kid up, and he saw a shadow in the doorway,” Solis said. “Standing there. Motionless, holding a handgun. The kid started crying. The killer disappeared.”

  “The killer knew the boy had seen him,” Caitlin said.

  “Kid was six feet away, howling in his face.”

  She didn’t think the UNSUB was surprised to find a child in the house. Did he want the boy to see him? Did he stand in the doorway to make sure the kid felt his presence, and knew he’d been … what? Spared? Taught a lesson? Destroyed?

  Detective Alvarez, sucking on his toothpick, put up photos from the second crime scene, in Monterey Park, a bedroom community east of downtown. A Spanish-style house on a suburban street. The kitchen window, its flimsy lock jimmied. James Chu, face down on his bed, dead.

  Alvarez approached the screen. “The first shot hit Mr. Chu below the ribcage.” He gestured at a dark entry wound on Chu’s bare back. “He made it to his elbows before the second shot hit him in the head.”

  Chu had been young and fit. On his nightstand a James S. A. Corey novel sat open. Nemesis Games. Caitlin had read it. Read the whole Expanse series. Chu never would.

  What a goddamned waste. Always.

  Next photo. Beth Lin sprawled on the floor, slumped against a dresser. Her hair waterfalled across her face. She was twenty-nine. She’d been shot in the heart.

  “Lin wore an engagement ring, half carat diamond. It’s missing. And Chu wore a simple silver ring on his right hand. The killer took that as well. Abrasions on his finger, postmortem.”

  Rainey leaned a hip on the conference table. “Did the killer think the couple was married? Or was he just stealing the jewelry he found within plain sight?”

  Alvarez clicked to a new photo. An SUV on the driveway. Its back window had a sticker—cartoon figures of a family. Dad, mom, little girl in a ballet tutu.

  “We presume he thought they were man and wife. Or that he doesn’t care.”

  Rainey said, “The child?”

  “Three years old. Unable to tell us anything useful,” Alvarez said. “After he shot her parents, the killer walked into her room. Climbed on the bed. Marched right past her. Stood on her pillow and wrote this on the wall above the headboard.”

  He clicked. A new picture came up. Written in black marker, two words.

  night mine

  Sharp letters, cramped, two feet tall. Caitlin knew it was her imagination, but the air in the war room seemed to taste coppery.

  “Where’s the little girl now?” she said.

  “With an aunt and uncle. They’re planning to adopt.” Alvarez turned his face to floor. “Brutal, yeah. At least she has family.”

  He sat down at the conference table. His knee jittered. “What kind of killer threatens kids he’s just orphaned?”

  Emmerich straightened a folder on the table in front of him. His Tag Heuer dive watch shone in the afternoon sunlight. Subtly, everyone’s attention was drawn to him.

  CJ Emmerich had twenty years with the Bureau. Atlanta, Las Vegas, New York. Major crimes. Bank robberies. Militias. He’d seen every grimy stain on the bottom of society’s shoes. He had a master’s in psychology and a JD from Duke Law School. And he’d spent the last eight years in the Behavioral Analysis Unit, pursuing child abductors, terrorists, and serial predators. He held his counsel close to the vest. His jokes were rare, and dry. When he joined the team for a beer after a hard day, he was companionable but reserved. His hair was too short to ever
let down. He captured serial killers.

  He scrutinized the crime scene photos on the television screen.

  “This killer is cutthroat but careful,” he said. “He enters homes surreptitiously. He kills the men first because he considers them the prime physical threat to him. And because killing the men petrifies the women. It stokes his ego.”

  Alvarez watched him closely. Detective Weisbach walked over from her desk.

  “He’s virtually undetectable, until he appears as if out of a nightmare.” Emmerich snapped his fingers. “Like that. He chooses houses that are completely dark, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Alvarez said. “The deputies who responded to the 911 call at the Chu-Lin house reported that there were no lights on. One thirty a.m.”

  “Christmas lights?”

  “No. Chu and Lin were Buddhist. Had a tabletop Christmas tree, couple feet tall, maybe for their daughter, but otherwise no decorations.” Alvarez removed the toothpick from his mouth. “Word gets around this guy picks out dark houses, we’ll have an area-wide contest to out-dazzle each other for the gaudiest Christmas display.”

  Weisbach said, “What does he get out of terrorizing the kids?”

  Emmerich studied the image on the television screen. The little girl’s bedroom, the words night mine scrawled above her bed.

  “I don’t know yet. But he’s escalating.” He gestured at the photos of the Benedict Canyon house. “In the first attack, the UNSUB shot the parents, then walked to the child’s room. He opened the door but didn’t go in.”

  “Afraid to?” Solis said. “Anxious to get away before the cops arrived?”

  “Hardly. He had no physical fear—he’d just gunned down the adults in the house. He’d eliminated the immediate threat to himself. He lingered. He felt confident.”

  Caitlin said, “It was the opposite of anxiety. It was release. A display of triumph.”

  “He stood in the child’s doorway. A figure of terror. Faceless, all-powerful.” Emmerich walked to the flat-screen. “Then, in Monterey Park, he crossed the threshold into the child’s room. He invaded her space, in a way that was both thoughtless and menacing. He climbed on her bed, trampling her most private—ideally safe—square of personal real estate. And he walked away acting as if he never noticed her presence. Of course, to the contrary, it was an almost ritualistic intrusion. A display. Meant to terrify a youngster barely old enough to talk.”