This series of murders, however, was different.
The victims were the cards.
A story was being told.
But what?
Dark drank another beer as he pored over the details on the cards. On the surface, the images appeared simple. One central image, many of them obvious. But the closer you looked, the more the smaller details jumped out at you.
The Hanged Man, for instance. The twelfth card in the Major Arcana, according to the guidebook. The scene could be considered ghastly, but the look on the man’s face was one of calm, of relaxation. A halo of light burned behind his innocent head. The implication was that this man was at peace.
So go ahead and speak to me, Hanged Man, Dark thought. I know what it’s like to be left dangling. Why are you so calm?
Dark went down to his basement and projected the Martin Green crime-scene photo on the wall again. Then he dragged an image of the Hanged Man card into the projection program. After doing a little resizing, Dark made the card image slightly opaque, then dragged it over the Martin Green image.
They matched.
Exactly.
From the crooks of his elbows to the position of his head (turned slightly to the right) to the precise angle of his bent left leg . . . everything matched, down to the centimeter. The killer had clearly obsessed over this card, committing every detail to memory, then sought to re-create it with the hanging body of Martin Green.
The killer was not just some creep using the tarot card for shock value, Dark thought. The killer had a deep connection with the symbolism and ritual of the cards. The killer respected the cards and chose them to make these grand gestures.
Jeb Paulson’s body position wouldn’t match, of course. But for a moment in time, as he was most likely forced to take that step off the roof, he did. Maybe the killer didn’t need others to see the moment. Maybe it was something the killer wanted to keep to himself and savor in his mind’s eye.
The three girls in the bar, however—they had the same attention to detail as the Martin Green murder. All of that effort to bind them and hang them and slice their throats and keep their cocktail glasses upright ... again, it showed a slavish devotion to the tarot.
But what was the killer trying to say?
Dark admitted that the answers he needed wouldn’t be in some Wikipedia page, or the instruction book from a pack of cards.
Then came a knock at Dark’s front door.
chapter 30
After recovering his Glock from its hiding spot under the floorboards, Dark paused at the entranceway to his basement lair, then made his way to front of his house. He slid along a wall cautiously. The door had one of those old-fashioned magnifying peepholes mounted in the middle, but Dark never used it. Peepholes made it too easy for someone on the other side to fix your position. And even though Dark had selected the door to be thick enough to withstand a point-blank shotgun blast, the peephole was merely glass. A bullet could smash through it easily. Good-bye, brain matter. Good-bye, everything.
So instead Dark looked through a peephole hidden on the left side of the door. This gave him a line of sight to a set of mirrors mounted on the porch roof. The mirrors revealed a familiar face.
Tom Riggins.
What the fuck was he doing here?
Dark took a moment to control his breathing. More knocking. A little louder this time. Tucking the Glock into the back of his jeans, Dark flipped the brass lock and opened the door.
A few minutes later Riggins was twisting the top from his bottle of microbrew. He strolled through the house as if he owned the place. That was the trick; you didn’t ask, you just moved. His Sig Sauer hung heavy on his belt, his shirt untucked. It had been a long flight, on top of an even longer day. Tuesday morning in Virginia, Tuesday evening in West Hollywood, gut churning the whole way. Riggins wished he could have sent somebody else. God, anybody else. But he knew it was up to him to read Dark. No one else could.
“You know what I saw on the way here from the airport?” Riggins asked.
Dark, who had already drained half of his beer, trailed behind him, trying to act casual. “No. What?”
“Mobile hookers. I thought they were an urban legend, but no. They’re real. Ladies of the night, driving down Sunset, looking for business. One tried to get me to pull over. Would have, too, if I wasn’t in such a rush to see you.”
“I’m touched. How do you know they were prostitutes?”
Riggins stopped, turned, and gestured with his bottle. “Well, either she was scratching the inside of her mouth with an invisible cucumber, or she was making an obscene gesture.”
“Maybe she just liked you.”
“Have you looked at me lately?”
“You look like you’ve lost weight.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
Riggins hadn’t laid eyes on Dark since he left Special Circs. On Dark’s last day there were no promises of calls, visits, or e-mails. Both knew their relationship—close as it was—existed solely within the context of the job.
The strange effect of this was that now, face-to-face again, it seemed like no time had passed at all. They picked up where they’d left off, as if they had just decided to meet up for beers after a four-month hiatus.
But as the banter flew back and forth, Riggins busied himself examining Dark’s house. From what Riggins could gather, Dark was keeping up the pretense of a “normal” life. Furniture from a big-box chain. Basic bachelor staples in the fridge. Some movie posters on the walls—some of Dark’s favorites from his teenage years: The Hitcher. To Live and Die in L.A. Dirty Harry. But that was just for show. Trivia shit.
And that was the problem. Where was the real Dark in this house? Where were the case files? The books on forensic science? His journals? His serial-killer book collection? Riggins didn’t even see a computer, which was like seeing the pope without a cross. It just didn’t happen.
Which meant Dark was hiding something. Hiding what he was really doing here, way out on the other side of the country.
Meanwhile Dark trailed behind Riggins, studying him. His ex-boss had walked right in, not giving Dark a chance to tell him it wasn’t a good time, or suggest they head to Barney’s Beanery for a beer or something. Riggins was a bulldog who wasn’t going to wait for an invitation. Beer in his hand; large, muscular frame strolling through the house. Like Riggins was nothing more than an old friend, out on the coast for a couple of laughs, checking out his buddy’s new place, maybe eyeing early retirement and looking for a new place to hang his hat.
Then again, that was the peculiar genius of Tom Riggins. He was very good at making you underestimate him. He looked like a guy who would knock back a basket of wings and a six of Bud with you at the corner bar, the kind of blood brother you spill your guts to, the kind who would help you move furniture. Riggins was a curious blend of menace and good-ol’-boy friendliness, which is how he had disarmed countless perps over the years. Just like he was trying to disarm Dark right now.
Riggins must have seen the photo on the Slab. Why else would he be here? But so far he hadn’t mentioned it. Dark knew it was better to wait him out. Sooner or later, Riggins would get to the point. Which might be as simple as a warning. Or might be as dramatic as an arrest.
After all, Dark had noticed a van parked outside that didn’t belong in this neighborhood.
“What’re you up to these days?” Riggins asked, pausing in the kitchen, leaning his large frame against a tiled counter. Not much in the way of food in here. Not that Dark was a gourmand—as he recalled, Sibby had been the one with taste in that department. Still, the kitchen looked more like a television studio set than something you actually used to cook or eat. Like it was for show.
“I’ve been teaching,” Dark said.
“Yeah. Heard about your gig with the kids at UCLA. How’s that working out for you? Got any celebrity kids in your class? Like one of those . . . what do they call them, the Jones Brothers?”
“I enjoy it, and no, not
that I know of.”
“Any promising Special Circs material?”
“These kids are twenty, Riggins.”
“You were that young once,” Riggins said. “In fact, I think you were just as young when we first met, isn’t that right?”
Dark drained the last of his beer, then held up the empty bottle, foam cascading down the neck. “Want another?”
Riggins stared at him—hard. “All right, fine. We could dance around your kitchen forever, but I’ll admit, my feet are getting tired. What are you really up to?”
Dark returned his glare. “Why don’t you just cut through the shit and tell me why you came all the way out to L.A. for a couple of beers? Considering that just a few days ago you wouldn’t even talk to me on the fucking phone.”
Riggins gestured to the tarot cards on the kitchen table. “Well for starters, you want to tell me about those?”
“Intellectual curiosity,” Dark said.
“Right. Professor Dark. I forgot.”
Riggins slammed his bottle down on the kitchen countertop.
“Look,” Riggins said. “I saw the photos online, and you know I did. You were in West Philly at the murder scene. Pretty sure you’ve been in Falls Church, too. What I want to know is, what the fuck do you think you’re doing? I thought you’d had enough of this manhunting stuff? Enough of the bureaucracy? I thought you wanted to reconnect with your daughter.”
Dark said nothing.
Riggins grunted. Okay. Fine. Don’t tell me. I’ll know soon enough, either way. And he would. Outside, Riggins’s field techs, on loan from the NSA, were busy sweeping the house and the dozen others in the immediate vicinity.
chapter 31
Riggins knew that if there was an upside to working with a suit supreme like Norman Wycoff, it was the access to his toy box. And the secretary of defense had a lot of shiny toys at his disposal. Such as an Econoline van full of state-of-the-art surveillance equipment, which was parked across the street from Dark’s house. This was NSA-level surveillance gear—able to pick up not only audio and video through concrete walls, but also to scan the hard drive of virtually any computer through foot-thick concrete walls. At such close range, the techs in that van would be able to lay Dark’s entire house bare.
If Dark was hiding anything, Riggins would find it.
And once his team confirmed that Dark had stuff he shouldn’t, Riggins could take Dark into custody with a clear conscience. Papers had been signed, agreements had been made. Dark would have to understand that, right? Besides, Riggins would honestly feel better with Dark somewhere safe. Maybe he needed to talk to somebody.
“Tell me how you got access to the crime scene,” Riggins said.
Dark just stared at him.
“I can’t figure it out. Not only do you have some kind of magical fucking access, but you were there even before anybody from my team could make it. Who tipped you off, Dark? What’s going on? Just talk to me, man. Set my mind at ease.”
Dark said nothing.
The cell in Riggins’s pocket buzzed. Exactly the sensation he didn’t want to feel. No doubt, the team in the van had found something. Would Dark fight him? If so, Riggins steeled himself for a long night. A man like Dark had to have more than one escape route. A gun, possibly two, stashed somewhere. Glock 22, .40 caliber. Dark’s favorite. A fast car—probably that cherry Mustang that Riggins saw parked out front, pointed on the downward slope. The cell buzzed again.
“Got to take this,” Riggins said, fishing the phone out of his pocket.
“No problem,” Dark said.
But it wasn’t the surveillance team outside. It was a text from Constance.
CALL ME NOW ... WE HAVE ANOTHER ONE
chapter 32
Dark was surprised when Riggins stood up, slid his phone into his pocket, drained the rest of his beer, and announced that he had to leave. Was this a ruse? Was Riggins trying to lure him to the front door so a team could cuff and hood him? This wasn’t the man’s style—but then again, these weren’t the usual circumstances. They were both in uncharted territory.
“I’ve got to go—but this isn’t over,” Riggins said. “You owe me some answers.”
Dark nodded, eyeballing the outside of his house. He looked for shadows. Noises—the scrape of a rubber sole on pavement. Tells of any kind. He knew he could outrun Riggins, make a break through the backyard. There might be a team out there, too, if Riggins was serious about this.
“Thanks for stopping by,” Dark said.
“Fuck you for making me worry about you,” Riggins said.
“You know, there’s an easy solution,” Dark said. “Don’t worry about me.”
Riggins gestured around the room. “Is this what you think Sibby would have wanted?”
“I don’t know, Riggins. She’s not here to tell me. Say hi to the team in the van for me. Anybody I know in there?”
Riggins grunted once, shoved his empty beer bottle into Dark’s hand, then left.
Inside the van, Riggins looked at the techs. They were hunched in front of the most sophisticated eavesdropping gear currently available. Riggins felt a little like Gene Hackman from The Conversation—that is to say, a stone-cold pro about to be fucked hard from every conceivable direction. The lead tech, a freelancer named Todd, lowered his headphones down to his shoulders and shook his head.
“Nothing,” Todd said.
“You can’t find anything?” Riggins asked.
“Far as we can tell, he’s totally clean,” Todd said. “No computer, anywhere. No security cameras. No cell phones. The guy doesn’t even have a television. Just a single landline, and we have that tapped. It’s like he’s living in 1980, or something.”
That didn’t make any sense to Riggins. Dark was security obsessed even before the Sqweegel nightmare. Why would he live in a place with absolutely no visible security measures? Was he trying to tempt the monster into attacking—kind of a “come and get me”? No. Dark was clearly hiding something. Maybe this place wasn’t really his house. Maybe it was a shell, and he was keeping his real shit elsewhere.
“Does he have any other property in California?” Riggins asked.
Todd said, “We checked. Nothing, other than an old address in Malibu, under his wife’s name. And the old foster family’s residence, but that’s been sold long ago.”
Riggins thought about it. “Hang on. The Slab photo showed Dark with a cell phone pressed to the side of his head.”
“Well, there’s no sign of cell phone activity here. That’s the easiest thing to trace, even if he pulled the battery, dumped the thing inside a bucket of water. We’d get a hit. Maybe it was disposable, and he tossed it?”
“Damnit.”
Riggins couldn’t spend any more time here. Constance was busy arranging him a flight from LAX to Myrtle Beach. There had been another freaky ritual slaying, and this time the target wasn’t just a bunch of MBA students. It was a fucking U.S. senator, stabbed to death in a high-class rub and tug somewhere near the beach. While he’d been dicking around here on the West Coast, this killer was gleefully making stops all up and down the eastern seaboard.
Wycoff would be up his ass about Steve Dark, but priorities were priorities. The killer first. Dark could wait.
chapter 33
After he was sure Riggins’s van had pulled away, Dark headed down into his basement lair to continue studying the crime scene evidence. A short while later Graysmith arrived, letting herself in the front door without a word.
“There’s been another one,” she said.
Before traveling out to join Dark in Philadelphia, Graysmith had made some modifications to his home security system—the one she’d called “Fisher-Price.”
“I gave it a security sweep,” she’d explained. “Now it will be like someone threw a lead blanket over your entire house. No one will know what you’re doing, who you’re calling, what Web sites you’re looking at—nothing. I won’t even be able to look.”
Somehow Dark
doubted that. Graysmith didn’t seem to be an explicit trust kind of person. But apparently her modifications had saved his ass, because Riggins had brought along a complete mobile surveillance team, which was a lot of manpower for a friendly couple of beers.
But Dark decided to worry about that later. “Tell me about the murder,” he said.
“U.S. Senator Sebastian Garner. Hardliner, conservative. Made a lot of headlines last year defending Wall Street, especially at a time when his constituents were begging him to punish them. Vietnam War hero. Family man. So it should come as no surprise that they found him at a sex spa in Myrtle Beach. Naked, and stabbed to death with ten daggers.”
Daggers. Dark immediately remembered the suit of tarot cards that were swords. Ten of them, plunged into a prone man’s back.
“Was this trip general knowledge?” Dark asked.
“No,” Graysmith said. “Far as the media knows, Garner was attending an economic think tank session in the area. I’m sure his handlers are scrambling as we speak, trying to fabricate some kind of chronic back pain that would give Garner a reason to be there. It won’t last, though. The facts are the facts. Somebody’s going to have a field day with this story.”
“Do we know anything about the daggers?”
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