Dark Prophecy

by Anthony E. Zuiker

  The killer hadn’t worried about making a mess. He wasn’t a Black Dahlia-style surgeon/slasher, eager to drain his victims of blood then lovingly washing and scrubbing the corpse. No, this killer was more concerned with the scene he was creating.

  The cocktail glasses, Dark thought. They’re holding them upright. Would have been far easier to string them up without having to worry about the glasses. Hell, it would have been easier to snap their necks and move on. What did the glasses signify? Why fill them with the victims’ blood? Why target three girls at once? Why not just one?

  Killers made choices. Every choice meant something.

  Dark pulled out his cell phone, opened the camera app, looked at the screen. Wait. The angle was wrong. Dark took a step back, then over, positioning himself behind the victim in a pink dress. Now the match was perfect, down to the color of ropes. When viewed at the proper angle, they blended into the background. The three victims almost appeared to be alive, lifting their three drinks in a mock celebration of cheer.

  Three.

  The number wedged itself in Dark’s brain and refused to be shaken loose. The number was the key to this scene. He knew it. Why three?

  Dark snapped some quick photos on his phone, but didn’t go overboard. Unless Graysmith was bullshitting him, he’d have complete access to the Philly PD’s forensics reports anyway. Dark had to admit there was a certain exhilaration knowing that he wouldn’t have to catalogue this stuff himself. He was free to stay focused on the big picture—to figure out what these crime scenes were saying.

  And who was saying it.

  The lead investigator, Lankford, stopped him on the way. “Agent Dark? We have something.”

  Lankford brought him around to a tiny office off the main bar. There was a small black-and-white video monitor, cued up and ready. The setup was crude—VHS recorder, black-and-white camera. But it was better than nothing.

  “Look at this. We think we got the son of the bitch.”

  Lankford pressed PLAY. The image on screen showed a lone male, longish hair, making his way back toward the restrooms. “He never comes out. The girls were already in there.”

  “Did it capture his image earlier?”

  “Still checking, but it looks like he was sitting in the camera’s blind spot at the bar. We’re going to be grilling everybody about who was sitting where, and when. I’m sure we’ll have a description within a few hours. I’ll make sure you get it to your contact.”

  “Thanks,” Dark said.

  Lankford looked to the side, then back at Dark. “Look, I know I’m not supposed to ask—but who the hell are you with, anyway? And why the interest in this?”

  “That’s a good question,” Dark said. “I wish I could give you an answer.”

  Lankford nodded slightly. “Fair enough.”

  Dark asked if he could spend some time with this videotape—it could help him fix on the scene. The investigator said he didn’t see a problem with that. Especially with the kind of credentials he was holding.

  Though he hadn’t slept at all during the past twenty-three hours, Dark settled in to examine the footage. This killer was probably too smart to show his face, but there were plenty of other ways to identify someone. He hit the REWIND button.

  “We have him.”

  The voice jolted Dark from his reverie. For the past two hours he’d watched the videotaped bar footage, repeatedly, to the point where the real world faded away and Dark felt like he was actually sitting inside the bar. He could smell the cigarette smoke—outlawed, but nobody was going to say shit to anybody. He could hear the soul music on the jukebox. He could feel the ancient stool groaning under his weight; the condensation rings of the beer on the bar top.

  And he watched the same man leave his seat at the bar and walk back to the ladies’ room, again—

  And again.

  And again.

  How long did you plan this?

  You had to have planned this. The ropes, the locked door, the quick, methodical way you took them out, bang bang bang, until they were yours.

  Was it this bar, or was it the women?

  How long had you been watching them? Who were they to you?

  Why three of them? Were they snubbing you? Did they flick their hair, turn their pretty noses up at you? Tease you with the way their sleek dresses hung to their curves?

  Why did you keep the three cocktail glasses in their hands? Are you trying to tell us they were lushes, that they deserved this?

  The voice behind Dark had brought him back to reality. Which was just as well. He couldn’t hang around here forever. The clock was ticking; Special Circs could be on the scene at any moment.

  “His name’s Jason Beckerman. Construction worker up from Baltimore,” Lankford said. “We put it together from a bunch of patrons. Someone chatted him up about union stuff. Another identified a tattoo, and someone else noticed what he was wearing. Didn’t take long.”

  “Is he in custody?” Dark asked.

  “Yeah. We found him sleeping it off in his apartment. No sign of the clothes he’d been wearing in the bar. Wherever they are, they’ve gotta be soaked with blood, so no wonder he ditched them. The techs are going through the apartment now, and he’s being grilled in the box down at the station. You want to observe?”

  Dark nodded. “Let’s go.”

  chapter 24

  Johnny Knack stood outside the sports bar, cold wind whipping at his body, wondering if the tip was real or somebody’s idea of a joke.

  The tipster claimed to be a member of the Philly PD’s homicide squad, and was a fan of his work. (Lie #1, right there. The tipster wouldn’t be doing this unless it benefited him somehow.) He said that he’d been called to the scene of a weird triple homicide that he thought was just like the killings Knack had been writing about. (Lie #2, most likely. The tipster was trying to sound working-class, loquacious. Homicide cops considered themselves neither.)

  So either somebody was tipping him off for real, or this was somebody fucking with him. The caller ID pinpointed the caller’s location as Philly. And so far, other details had been right—the name of the bar, the approximate time of the attack. Still, Knack had this feeling he was being played.

  He’d driven up I-95 from D.C. and immediately started working the fringes—neighbors, people hanging on the scene. After a while he had enough to file a question-mark piece to his editor at the Slab: “Has Green’s killer struck again?” Nobody, however, would speak to him on the record. It was all guesswork and innuendo. So he held off filing. At least until he got something resembling an official peg to hang everything on.

  Knack also needed a handle for this guy. All of the cool serial killers had names. The BTK Killer. The Beltway Sniper. The Hillside Stranglers. Sometimes the easy names came from the location. But this guy was hopping all the hell over the place. And if it was the same killer, he was also changing up his methods something fierce. Torture one dude. Push the next off a roof. Then take out three girls at once. Couldn’t he stick to one method, like most serial killers?

  A while later Knack saw someone bleary-eyed tumble out of the front of the bar, led by someone who was no doubt Philly homicide.

  Now who was this mystery man? Jeans, button-down shirt. Based on the reactions from the uniformed officers who watched him go—Knack knew he wasn’t Philly PD. Knack pulled out his phone, snapped a series of photos. The guy looked naggingly familiar. Then again, Knack had seen so many faces over the years, he tended to think everybody looked familiar.

  When Knack holed up in a coffee shop to cobble together an update, he called up the photo on his cell. Maybe that mystery guy was someone important. Maybe another Special Circs guy.

  Knack studied the images, then hit an image search engine. Not Google or commercial ones. The Slab subscribed to a big news-agency photo pool. Knack typed: SPECIAL CIRCS AGENT. Approximately 0.347 seconds later, Knack realized that holy shit he’d just been looking at the most famous Special Circs agent of all.

>   His name: Steve Dark.

  Five years ago, his wife, Sibby, had been abducted, tortured, then finally murdered by a contortionist freak who dressed up in a body condom, hiding under people’s beds before he emerged in the middle of the night, and then had fun with your sleeping body. Later it turned out that this contortionist—“Sqweegel,” the Feds called him—had been obsessed with Dark, taunting him in the days before the murder.

  Rumor: Sibby Dark had a baby while held in the maniac’s basement lair.

  Rumor: In retaliation, Dark snuffed Sqweegel, but Special Circs covered it up.

  Not a hint of this appeared in the mainstream press. This material was relegated to a bunch of serial-killer-fan Web sites, the most active being Level26.com. There was a ton of chatter about Dark, and even more so, Sqweegel. Like Elvis, ol’ Sqweegs was believed to be alive, curled up in someone’s attic, waiting to take his bloody revenge. The more rabid conspiracy theorists believed Sqweegel had even once struck in Rome, poisoning dozens of people and leaving behind one of his telltale suits . . . only this time, in black.

  No matter what, Steve Dark being involved made this case all the more interesting. Especially because of the most recent set of rumors:

  That Dark had been forced out of Special Circs.

  Knack had to get into that crime scene and figure out what the fuck was really going on. But first, he pulled out his phone. Time to file another update . . .

  chapter 25

  Jason Beckerman stuck to his story. He said he’d come home around eight P.M. and cracked open a few cold ones—blowing off steam after a long weekend of work. But he hadn’t gone near any bar in West Philly. He’d stayed in his room and passed out early. “I was in my cups, I admit that much,” Beckerman said. “But is that a crime? C’mon, guys. I just want to go back to my room and sleep. I’ve got work tomorrow. No rest for the perpetually laid off. If you’re lucky enough to get work, you go to work.”

  No, Beckerman didn’t see any girls. Christ, that would be all he needed. His wife, Rayanne, would strangle him if he fucked around on her with some little college bitches.

  Now Beckerman just wanted to sleep everything off. It was his only day off—he had an early-morning shift the very next day. He complained that his hangover wasn’t worth the few measly beers he’d sucked down the night before. “My head’s Goddamned killing me.”

  “Does it check out?” Dark asked. He stood with Lankford in a room adjacent to the box. A row of video monitors showed the inside of the room at three angles.

  “A neighbor saw him coming home a little after eight P.M., just like he said. But then another neighbor swore it was more like nine.”

  “How about the job? Is he really working construction?” Dark said.

  “Yeah. Beckerman’s on a crew working on a building downtown. Lives in Baltimore, but took a cheap room here six months ago for the gig—work had dried up there. Everything checks.”

  “Think he could have done it?” Dark asked.

  “Sure. He’s strong enough. Grumpy enough. Clearly, he’s not a card-carrying feminist. But there’s one thing missing.”

  “Motive.”

  “Right. Nothing at all to tie him to those women. Yet, eyewitnesses place him there at the scene—one of the victims, Katherine Hale, walked up to the bar, talked to him about something, then quickly walked away. Nobody caught the exchange. But could you piss off somebody that fast that he kills you and your girlfriends, then strings your bodies up in the bathroom like you’re freshly killed game?”

  “Not likely,” Dark said.

  They stood and watched Beckerman for a while as he told his story again, and again. The interrogator was good. He was patient, yet exacting when it came to details. He had an icy calm. Beckerman looked hungover and desperate for a nap. His only request was a Diet Coke, to stop his head from throbbing. “I don’t deserve this kind of headache, man.”

  Lankford looked over at Dark. “Think he’s your guy?”

  “My guy?”

  “Yeah. Whoever you’re here for.”

  But Dark was already somewhere else in his mind, turning Beckerman’s words through his head. Something struck Dark as odd. How had Beckerman said it? I was in my cups, I admit that much. An old-fashioned way of saying drunk. Beckerman probably heard his old man say it, so he grew up saying it. In my cups.

  The girls were holding three cups.

  “Shit,” Dark muttered.

  Lankford turned. “What is it?”

  “I need to borrow your computer.”

  Minutes later Dark typed THREE OF CUPS into Lankford’s browser. An image popped up—the exact match to the image he’d snapped on his phone. Dark cursed under his breath and typed in more search terms: HANGED MAN. THE FOOL.

  Tarot cards.

  The killer was staging his scenes like tarot cards.

  chapter 26

  Quantico, Virginia

  Riggins’s cell buzzed: WYCOFF. Fantastic. Just what he needed.

  “Are you ignoring my e-mail on purpose?” the secretary of defense barked.

  Oh, that Wycoff could be a charmer. Riggins sighed and tapped through until his e-mail box emerged from the tangle of files and boxes on his computer screen. Sure enough, Wycoff had sent an e-mail, marked URGENT with three exclamation points next to his name. Gee, guess this was important. The e-mail included a link to a Slab column. The headline:

  RETIRED MANHUNTER BACK ON JOB

  TO AVENGE HIS PROTÉGÉ!

  Byline: Johnny Knack—the fuckhead reporter who’d called him the other day. And below that: the image of Steve Dark, cell phone pressed to his ear, clearly leaving the scene of the triple homicide in Philly! Riggins didn’t want to believe it, but the image didn’t lie. That was Dark all right. Familiar look on his face—the look of a manhunter, deep in thought, blocking everything else out except for one thing: the crime scene. It was a look Riggins had seen a hundred times on Dark’s face.

  “Fuck me,” Riggins muttered to himself.

  “So tell me,” Wycoff said. “What was your boy doing in Philadelphia?”

  “I have no idea. It’s a free country, though.”

  Wycoff ignored the comment. “When you said Dark was out, you swore he would stay out. He can’t just come and go to crime scenes as he pleases.”

  “I’ll look into this, but it’s probably bullshit, and you know it.”

  “Bullshit?” Wycoff asked. “I’m looking at his picture online right now. What, you telling me he has a twin brother running around somewhere? Who just happens to be near the scene of a triple homicide?”

  The thought had crossed his mind, actually. Riggins was the only man alive who knew the secrets of Dark’s family tree. Every last twisted, rotted root of it.

  “This is on you, Tom,” Wycoff said. “I’d like you to personally take care of it.”

  “What do you mean, take care of it? Am I supposed to have Dark followed?”

  “Hey, I’m doing you a favor here, coming to you first. Either you take care of it, or I know some people who’d be more than glad to do it.”

  The words sparked an instant association in Riggins’s mind. Wycoff’s secret goon squad—off-the-books killers who dressed in black and had a thing for needles. He’d stared them down more than once. Riggins almost hated them more than the monsters he chased. At least monsters were clearly on the side of evil. These fuckers, these faceless black ops jackoffs, they did their creepy killing in the name of the U.S. government, and probably received handsome pensions for it.

  “I’ll talk to him,” Riggins said, then threw his phone on the desk. Why was Dark sticking his nose in this? And how the hell had he made it to the scene in Philly so quickly? Maybe he had someone on the inside here at Special Circs, still helping him out? Wouldn’t be the first time.

  Riggins sighed, resigning himself to the unpleasant task ahead. Dark had always been stubborn as fuck—even as a punk kid cop. Dark had spent a year sending application after application to Special Cir
cs, but received rejection after rejection.

  One day he showed up to ask Riggins about it. Riggins tried to puncture his balloon quickly, save him the grief, telling him that the job would eat him alive. Go out, fall in love, get married, have a kid, he’d told him. Have a life.

  Dark had refused to accept that answer. I want to catch serials, Riggins, he’d said. I want to catch the best of the worst. I want this.

  A man like Dark just couldn’t turn off the “manhunter” part of his brain like a light switch. No matter how much he insists otherwise. From the moment Dark supposedly “quit”, Riggins knew this day would come. He just didn’t know it would be so soon.

  He picked up the phone and chartered himself a flight to L.A. Five years ago, he’d flown to L.A. to bring Steve Dark out of early retirement. Now Riggins was headed back to L.A. to make sure he stayed retired.

  chapter 27

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  “Stop busting my balls, Knack. You know I can’t say anything.”

  Knack leaned against Lankford’s door frame. “Come on, Lee. Why was Steve Dark here?”

  Lankford shook his head. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”