by Lisa Gardner
In the beginning, that’s one of the things I’d loved most about him. A man’s man. Comfortable in a wood-paneled boardroom but also played a mean game of pickup hoops and thought nothing of taking his favorite .357 to light up the firing range.
When we were first dating, he’d taken me with him to his gun club. I’d stand, tucked into the solid embrace of his larger, stronger body, while he showed me how to position my hands on the grip of a relatively petite .22, how to sight down the barrel, home in on the bull’s-eye. The first few times, I missed the target completely, the sound of the gunshot startling me, causing me to flinch even with ear protection. I’d fire into the ground or, if I was very lucky, hit the lowest edge of the paper target.
Time and time again, Justin would patiently correct me, his voice a low rumble against the back of my neck as he leaned over and helped me level out my aim.
Sometimes we never made it home. We’d end up naked in the closet of the rifle range, or in the backseat of his SUV, still in the parking lot. He’d dig his fingers into my hips, urging me faster and harder, and I’d obey, out of my mind with gunpowder and lust and pure mind-blowing power.
Salt. Gunpowder. Oranges.
Justin excused himself to use the bathroom.
When he left, I rearranged the pasta on my plate so it would appear as if I’d eaten. Then I opened my purse and, under the cover of the table, doled out four white pills. I popped them as a single handful, chased down with half a glass of water.
Then I picked up my glass of champagne and steeled myself for the evening’s main event.
• • •
Justin drove us the five minutes home. He’d purchased the Boston town house pretty much the same day we’d confirmed that I was pregnant. From doctor’s office to real estate office. He brought me to see it after reaching a verbal agreement, the big-game hunter showing off his trophy. I probably should’ve been offended by his high-handedness. Instead, I’d walked through four and a half stories of gorgeous hardwood floors, soaring nine-foot ceilings, and intricate hand-carved moldings, and felt my jaw drop.
So this was what five million dollars bought you. Bright, sunlit rooms, a charming rooftop patio, not to mention an entire neighborhood of beautifully restored redbrick buildings, nestled shoulder to shoulder like long-lost friends.
The townhome was on treelined Marlborough Street, just blocks away from tony Newbury Street, not to mention walking distance to the Public Gardens. The kind of neighborhood where the poor people drove Saabs, the nannies spoke with French accents and the private school had an application process that started the baby’s first week of conception.
Justin gave me carte blanche. Furniture, art, draperies, carpets. Antiques, no antiques, interior decorator, no interior decorator. He didn’t care. Do whatever I had to do, spend whatever I had to spend, just make this our home.
So I did. Like that scene out of Pretty Woman, except it involved slathering painters and decorators and antique dealers, all plying their wares while I sat my pregnant bulk on various divans and with an elegant wave of my hand ordered a bit of this, a dash of that. Frankly, I’d had fun with it. Finally, a real-world application for my fine-art skills. I could not only fashion jewelry out of silver-infused clay. I could renovate a Boston brownstone.
We were giddy those days. Justin was working a major hydroelectric project. He’d helicopter in and out, literally, and I’d show off the latest progress on our home, while he rubbed my lower back and brushed back my hair to nuzzle the side of my neck.
Then Ashlyn. And joy, joy, joy. Happy, happy, happy. Justin beamed, snapped photos, showed off his precious baby girl to anyone who made eye contact. His crew filed into our Boston town house, muddy boots left in the gleaming foyer so a bunch of former Navy SEALs and ex-Marines could make googly eyes at our sleeping daughter in her pink-coated nursery. They swapped tips on diaper changing and proper swaddling, then set out to teach a newborn how to burp the ABCs.
Justin informed them their sons would never date his daughter. They accepted the news good-naturedly, then made googly eyes at me instead. I told them they could have whatever they wanted, as long as they’d change diapers at two a.m. This led to so many suggestive comments, Justin escorted his crew back out of the house.
But he was happy and I was happy and life was good.
That’s love, right? You laugh, you cry, you share midnight feedings and eventually, months later, you have really tender sex where you realize things are slightly different, but still fundamentally great. Justin showered me with jewelry, and I took up the requisite yoga while learning hideously expensive places to buy baby clothes. Sure, my husband was gone a lot, but I was never the kind of woman who was afraid of being alone. I had my daughter and soon Dina, who helped out so I could return to playing in my jewelry studio, where I fashioned and created and nurtured and glowed.
Now Justin slowed the Range Rover, starting the futile search for curbside parking. Our town house included a lower-level garage, a luxury nearly worth the property taxes, but of course Justin saved the space for me, leaving him to play the highly competitive game of street parking in downtown Boston.
He passed by our town house once and my gaze automatically went up to the third-story window, Ashlyn’s room. The window was dark, which surprised me because she was supposed to be staying in for the evening. Maybe she simply hadn’t bothered with the overhead light, sitting before the glow of her laptop instead. Fifteen-year-olds could spend hours like that, I’d been learning. Earbuds implanted, eyes glazed over, lips sealed tightly shut.
Justin found a space. A quick reverse, a short pull forward and he’d neatly tucked the Range Rover into place. He came around the front to get my door, and I let him.
Last few seconds now. My hands were clenched white-knuckled on my lap. I tried to force myself to breathe. In. Out. Simple as that. One step at a time, one moment after another.
Would he start by kissing me on the lips? Perhaps the spot he’d once discovered behind my ear? Or maybe we’d both simply strip, climb into bed, get it over with. Lights off, eyes squeezed shut. Maybe he’d be thinking about her the whole time. Maybe it shouldn’t matter. He was with me. I’d won. Kept my husband, the father of my child.
Door opened. My husband of eighteen years loomed before me. He held out his hand. And I followed him, out of the car, down the sidewalk, neither of us speaking a word.
• • •
Justin paused at the front door. He’d been on the verge of punching the code into the keypad, when he stopped, frowned, then shot a quick glance at me.
“She disarmed the system,” he muttered. “Left the door unsecured again.”
I glanced at the door’s keypad and saw what he meant. Justin had installed the system himself—not a mechanically controlled bolt lock, but an electronically controlled one. Punch in the right code, the system disarmed the locks and the door opened. No code, no entry.
The system had seemed to be an elegant solution to a teenage daughter who more often than not forgot her key. But for the system to work, it had to be armed, which was proving to be Ashlyn’s next challenge.
Justin tried the knob, and sure enough, the door opened soundlessly into the darkened foyer.
My turn to frown. “She could’ve at least left on a light.”
My stiletto heels clipped loudly as I crossed the foyer to flip on the overhead chandelier. No longer holding on to Justin’s arms, I didn’t walk as steadily. I wondered if he noticed. I wondered if he cared.
I made it to the wall panel. Flipped the first light switch. Nothing. I tried again, flipping up and down several times now. Nothing.
“Justin . . .” I started in puzzlement.
Just as I heard him say: “Libby . . .”
A funny popping sound, like a small-caliber gun exploding. Whizzing. Justin’s body suddenly arching. I watched, openmouthed, as he stood nearly on his tiptoes, back bowing, while a guttural sound of pain wrenched through his clenched teeth.
Then I saw the man.
Big. Bigger than my six-two, two-hundred-pound husband, who worked in the construction field. The massive black-clad figure loomed at the edge of the foyer, hand clutching a strange-looking pistol with a square-shaped barrel. Green confetti, I noted, almost hazily. Little pieces of bright green confetti, raining down on my hardwood foyer as my husband danced macabre and the faceless man took another step forward.
His finger released the trigger of the gun, and Justin stopped arching, sagging instead. My husband’s breath came out ragged, right before the big man hit the trigger again. Four, five, six times he made Justin’s entire body convulse while I stood there, openmouthed, arm outstretched as if that would stop the room from swaying.
I heard my husband say something, but I couldn’t understand it at first. Then it came to me. With a low, labored breath, Justin was ordering me to run.
I made it one step. Long enough to glance pleadingly at the darkened staircase. To pray my daughter was tucked safely inside her third-story bedroom, rocking out to her iPod, oblivious to the scene below.
Then the huge man twisted toward me. With a flick of his wrist, he ejected a square cartridge from the front end of what I now realized was a Taser. Then he leapt forward and planted the end of the barrel against the side of my leg. He pulled the trigger.
The contact point on my thigh immediately fired to painful, excruciating life. More burning flesh. Screaming. Probably my own.
I was aware of two things: my own acute pain and the whites of my attacker’s eyes. Mask, I realized faintly. A black ski mask that obliterated his mouth, his nose, his face. Until he was no longer a man, but a faceless monster with white, white eyes stepping straight out of my nightmares into my own home.
Then Justin lurched awkwardly forward, windmilling his arms as he rained feeble blows on the larger man’s back. The black-masked figure turned slightly and, with some kind of karate chop, caught Justin in the throat.
My husband made a terrible gurgling sound and went down.
My left leg gave out. I went down as well. Then rolled over and vomited champagne.
My last thought, through the pain and the burning and the panic and the fear . . . Don’t let him find Ashlyn. Don’t let him find Ashlyn.
Except then I heard her. High-pitched. Terrified. “Daddy. Mommy. Daddy!”
In my last second of consciousness, I managed to turn my head. I saw two more black forms, one on either side of my daughter’s twisting body, as they dragged her down the stairs.
Briefly, our gazes met.
I love you, I tried to say.
But the words wouldn’t come out.
The black-masked figure raised his Taser again. Calmly inserted a fresh cartridge. Took aim. Fired.
My fifteen-year-old daughter started to scream.
Pain has a flavor.
The question is what does it taste like to you?
#1 New York Times bestselling author
Lisa Gardner
is back with another thriller.
Read on for a preview of
FEAR NOTHING
Available in hardcover from Dutton in January 2014
everywhere books and ebooks are sold.
Hello, darkness, my old friend. . . .
The body was gone, but not the smell. This kind of scene, Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren knew, would hold the stench of blood for weeks, even months to come. The crime scene techs had removed the top mattress but still . . . Blood had a life of its own. Once freed from its human vessel, it could seep into drywall, slip behind wooden trim, pool between floorboards. If the landlord ever wanted to rent this unit again, it would involve a total gut of the master bedroom. Not to mention the neighbors moving far, far away and never saying a word.
Twenty-eight-year-old Tara Blythe used to have approximately 4.7 liters of blood pumping through her veins. Now most of it stained this grim, shadowy space.
I’ve come to talk with you again. . . .
The call had come in shortly after nine a.m. Good friend Midge Roberts had grown concerned when Tara hadn’t answered the knocks on her front door or the texts to her cell phone. Tara was the responsible kind. Didn’t oversleep, didn’t run off with a cute bartender, and didn’t come down with the flu without providing a heads-up to her best bud, who picked her up promptly at seven thirty each weekday morning for their commute to a local accounting firm.
Midge had contacted a few more friends. All agreed no one had heard from Tara since ten the night before. Midge gave in to instinct, summoned the landlord.
Who finally agreed to open the door. Then vomited all over the upstairs hall upon making the find.
Midge hadn’t come up the stairs. Midge had stood in the foyer of the narrow duplex, and, as she’d reported to D.D.’s squadmate Phil, she’d known. Just known. Probably, even from that distance, she’d caught the first unmistakable whiff of drying blood.
Hello, darkness, my old friend. . . .
Upon arrival, the scene had immediately struck D.D. with its marked contrasts. The young, female victim, sprawled spread-eagle on her own bed, staring up at the ceiling with sightless blue eyes. Pretty features nearly peaceful, shoulder-length brown hair pooling softly upon a stark white pillow.
Except then, from the neck down . . .
Skin peeled off in thin, curling ribbons. D.D. had heard of such things. At eleven this morning, she had gotten to see them firsthand. A young woman flayed in her own bed. With a bottle of champagne on her nightstand, and a single red rose placed across her bloody abdomen.
I’ve come to talk with you again. . . .
Next to the bottle of champagne, Phil had discovered a pair of handcuffs. The kind purchased in high-end sex shops and fur-lined for a willing partner’s comfort. Taking in the cuffs, the sparkling wine, the red rose . . .
Lovers’ tryst gone awry, Phil had theorized. Or, given the level of violence, a jilted boyfriend’s final act of vengeance. Tara had broken up with some sorry sucker, and last night, sorry sucker had returned to prove once and for all who was in charge.
But D.D. hadn’t been on board. Yes, there were handcuffs, but not on the victim’s wrists. Yes, there was uncorked champagne, but not a single glass for drinking. Finally, sure, there was the rose, but not in a florist’s wrap for gifting.
The scene felt too . . . deliberate to her. Not a crime of passion or a falling-out between consenting adults. But a carefully staged production that involved months, years, maybe even a lifetime of careful planning and consideration.
In D.D.’s opinion, they weren’t just looking at a crime scene. They were looking at a killer’s deepest, darkest fantasy.
And while this might be the first scene they were investigating, a homicide this heavily ritualized was probably not the last.
Hello, darkness, my old friend. . . .
D.D.’s squad, the crime techs, the ME’s office, not to mention of a plethora of other investigators had spent six hours working the scene. They’d documented, dusted, diagramed, and discussed until the sun had set, dinner commute was on, and stomachs were growling, not to mention tempers flaring. As lead detective, D.D. had finally sent everyone home with orders to refresh, then regroup. Tomorrow was another day, when they could search federal databases for other homicides matching this description, while building the profiles of their victim and killer. Plenty to do, many angles to investigate. Now get some rest.
Everyone had listened. Except, of course, D.D.
It was nearly ten o’clock now. She should be returning home. Kissing her husband hello. Checking in on her three-year-old son, already tucked into bed at this late hour. Working on her own good night’s sleep.
But she couldn’t do it. Some instinct—question? Insight?—had driven her back to this tragic space in this too quiet duplex. For most of the day, she and her fellow detectives had stood here and debated what they saw. Now she stood with the lights out, in the middle of a blood-scented ro
om, and waited for what she could feel.
I’ve come to talk with you again. . . .
Tara Blythe had already been dead before the killer had made his first cut. That much they could tell from the lack of anguish stamped onto her pale face. The victim had died relatively easily. Then, most likely as her heart had emitted a final few pumps, the killer had delivered his first downward slash across her right flank.
Meaning murder hadn’t been about the victim’s pain, but about . . .
Presentation? Staging? The ritual itself? A killer with a compulsion to skin. Maybe started with small animals or family pets; then, when that still wasn’t enough, the fantasy refused to abate. . . .
The ME would check for hesitation marks, if determining jagged edges was even possible, given the mounds of thin, curling skin. Check for vaginal bruising, swab for semen.
But once again, D.D. had a nagging sense of discomfort. Those elements were the things a criminal investigator could see. And deep inside, D.D. already suspected that was the wrong track. Indulging, in fact, in exactly what the killer wanted them to do.
Why stage things just so, if not to manipulate your audience into seeing exactly what you wanted them to see?
Then it came to her. The thought she’d had in the back of her head. The first and foremost question worth pursuing and the reason she now stood in the dark, her vision deliberately obscured: Why set a scene?
A sound. The duplex’s front door, easing carefully open? A creak of the stair riser as a heavy foot found the first step? The groan of a floorboard just down the hall?
A sound. She heard a sound, and that quickly, Sergeant Detective D. D. Warren realized something she should’ve figured out fifteen minutes ago. That song, the tune she’d been humming by Simon and Garfunkel without really even being aware of it . . . That song wasn’t coming from solely inside her head.