In Dark Places

by Michael Prescott

  "Too late now." Robin composed her thoughts while the Saab idled at a stoplight. "The fact that he didn't know the girls personally was part of their appeal. It made it easier for him to objectify them, depersonalize them. He didn't want to see them as individual human beings. He wanted to see them as generic females. As femininity in the abstract. You with me?"

  "I'm hanging on every word."

  The light cycled to green. Robin glided through the intersection. "By killing them, he was finishing the job of dehumanization. He was"

  Meg finished. "Making them nonpersons."

  "Yes. Exactly."

  "Nonpersonslike him."

  Robin was pleased. "You could end up as a shrink yourself, you know that?"

  "No way. For me, it's either supermodel or research bio-chemist." She thought for a moment. "There's another way he's like the girls he killed. They were teenagers. So's he."

  "He's twenty-eight."

  "Not inside. Inside, he's still fifteen and probably all covered with pimples. That's why he's so obsessed with high school girls. He's still in high school. Emotionally, I mean. And I bet he always will be."

  Robin felt a flush of painful pride. "Sometimes you're so smart, it's scary."

  "I have a genius for a mother. Some of it had to rub off."

  "I think you'll outgenius me by a long way before long."

  "And Dan, too?"

  "He's only a genius at selling himself."

  "You believe that?"

  "When it comes to your father, I don't know what to believe."

  They reached Jamie's house on the outskirts of Westwood. Robin actually did pull up alongside a tree to hide the car.

  "Ten o'clock," she reminded Meg.

  "I got it. Jeez, you've got to get this car fixed tomorrow. It'll be, like, a total humiliation if anybody sees me in this thing."

  "You'll survive."

  "I'll never live it down. Make an appointment with a body shop, please?"

  "I aim to serve."

  "Cross your heart?"

  "You only get one of those per day."

  Meg nodded good-bye, then left the car and hurried up the walk to the bungalow's front door. Robin watched until she was safely inside, then pulled away, shaking her head.

  Total humiliation, Meg had said. And she'd meant it, too. To be embarrassed in front of her peers was the worst fate she could imagine.

  Nothing unusual about that. Her daughter had reached the stage of adolescence when the world centered on her.

  Every problem was a crisis. Every decision was a turning point. Image was all-important. Her personal life was cosmic in scope and significance, and the rest of the world had shriveled to an afterthought.

  This much was clear to Robin, not because she was a shrink, but because she had been fifteen herself not so very long agowell, on second thought, it had been twenty-four years, more than a lifetime in Meg's eyes. Still, she remembered. Remembered the clash of fear and excitement whenever she contemplated the future, guessing at the path she would take, the obstacles she would face, wondering if she had the courage to run the race, or if she would stumble and fall like most of the adults around her. Remembered the moods that came and went like flashes of summer lightning, fluctuations of emotional voltage she herself couldn't explain. Remembered how much everything matteredthe right hairstyle, right clothes, right friendsand how she'd hated herself for caring so deeply about things that were so shallow. There was a painful immediacy to every momentary feeling. Any ripple of disappointment or pleasure became a surge of grief or joy.

  Hormones explained some of it, but there was also the vertigo-inducing task of forming one's own character, the scary thrill of knowing that choices made now might echo down decades of regret.

  And yet, nearly all of it was unnecessary. That was the secret Robin wished she could impart to her daughter. But it was not a secret to be shared. It was a lesson to be learned.

  She wished she could hug Meg and say to her, Life is not so hard. It's usually about as hard as we make it. We can't plan it out. We have much less control than we think. Mostly, things just happen, and if there's a reason, we don't know it at the time. But we don't have to know. It's not our job to do more than we can do. Life doesn't give us more than we can handle.

  But if she said all that, Meg wouldn't hear. She wasn't ready to hear. She was fifteen.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Brand lived in a bungalow in Hollywood. There were some nice parts of Hollywood that the tourists never saw, but his neighborhood wasn't one of them. The bungalow dated back to the 1920s and was said to be in the Craftsman style, whatever the hell that meant. When he'd bought it, the porch had been festooned with hanging plants that blossomed garishly in the spring. The plants were all dead now, killed by neglect, but he'd left them in their hanging baskets anyway.

  He had made a few improvements to the place, but they were not of an aesthetic nature. He'd encircled the property with a perimeter fence, put bars on the windows, installed strong locks on the doors, and paid a monthly fee to a burglar alarm company. He would have liked to replace the carport with a garagehe didn't like leaving his car in plain sight, even if it was protected by the fence, and he especially didn't like leaving the carport empty, an advertisement that no one was home. But the expense was prohibitive. Anyway, in the ten years he'd lived here, he'd never been robbed, though most of his neighbors had.

  Inside, he had made a halfhearted try at decorating, but had given up when the house was only partially furnished.

  His rare visitors wrinkled their noses in a way indicative of a pervasive odor. If there was one, he was used to it.

  His fridge was empty. His music collection was a decade out of date. There weren't many books on his shelveshe was more of a magazine reader. Lately he was inclined to sit and watch TV, the volume turned up loud enough to almost drown out the low boom of rap music from next door. That was what he'd been doing for most of the night. Funny thinghe couldn't even remember what he had watched.

  At ten o'clock, impelled by a need to urinate, he wandered into the master bath. When he was done, he cranked the handle of the low-flow toilet and watched as it reluctantly emptied itself. He went on staring into the swirling water until the bowl had refilled. Finally he broke away, shaking his head.

  Things like that had been happening to him lately. He would be mesmerized by the sound of static on the radio or the repetitive trill of a bird. Once, someone's car alarm had gone off down the street and he had listened for what must have been fifteen minutes, fascinated by its steady monotonous clangor.

  What he needed was a drink. But he wasn't drinking, because he suspected that if he started to medicate himself with scotch, he would slide effortlessly into alcoholism. He didn't need that. He'd arrested enough boozehounds on the street. He was damned if he would become one of them.

  He sure needed something, though. There was probably another dogfight going on at Billy Turro's place, but even he wasn't reckless enough to venture into a dead-end street in Watts after dark. It was dicey enough just going there in the daytime. He always packed two weapons when he went, his off-duty 9mm and a snub-nosed.32 in an ankle holster. The.32 was lighter than the.38 left near Eddie Valdez's dead, outstretched hand, and it was street-legal, unlike the.38, which had been treated with acid to burn off the serial numbers. A throwdown, untraceable.

  Of course, the gun didn't need to be traced if he was going to spill everything to some damn shrink amp;

  He rubbed his head, wishing he could remember what he'd told her. Vaguely he recalled saying something about Valdez and the parking garage, but whether it was the truth or his cover story, he didn't know.

  He had a bad feeling, though. It was based mainly on the way she'd been looking at him after the session. Like she was trying too hard to act normal. Like she was sizing him up, taking his measure. Or measuring him for a prison jumpsuit, maybe.

  Jail would be a death sentence. Cops didn't survive hard time. If he went dow
n for Valdez, he was finished.

  There was a half-empty bottle of scotch in the cupboard over the kitchen sink. He almost surrendered to the temptation to open it. Instead he found himself reaching for the phone. He called a familiar number and let it ring until Evelyn answered. "It's me," he said without further identification. "You free tonight?"

  "Availableyes. Freenever."

  "You know what I mean. Come on over. And bring that thing."

  She arrived an hour later. She wore a raincoat and boots. When she opened the coat, she revealed black underwear. "Ta-da," she said with a smile.

  He fucked her without ceremony, starting on the living room floor and proceeding down the hall into the bedroom. He did her doggie style, like always, watching the tattooed butterfly between her shoulder blades flutter as her shoulder muscles flexed. She was maybe thirty-five, but she worked out and stayed trim, maintaining the body of a college girl. Not that Brand had had many college girls. He'd attended a community college at night, working a delivery job during the day, a schedule that had left little time for partying.

  Still, he liked to think of her as a college girl, one of those rich-bitch USC babes whose daddies gave them a Porsche for their eighteenth birthday. He thought about that as he turned her on her back and thrust his crotch into her face. She gave first-rate blow jobs. When he'd got his rocks off for a second time, he asked her about the thing.

  "I got it, tiger," she said in that half-seductive, half-amused voice of hers. She retrieved her coat and produced a dildo from the pocket. He used it on her, pushing in hard and deep, making her wet all over again. She let out the usual noises, which might've been an act, but he hoped not. For the finale, she put the dildo in her mouth and faked another suction job while her nimble hands massaged his cock. He came all over her fingers, and she laughed. "Three times in one nightyou're a stud."

  Afterward she smoked a joint she'd brought with her, which he declined to share.

  "You're a funny kind of cop," she said as she dressed to leave.

  "Who said I was a cop?"

  "I asked around."

  "I'm surprised you came back."

  "Your money's as good as anybody's."

  He paid her five hundred dollars, which she carefully folded and slipped into her boot.

  "I'll call you," he said for no reason as she left the house.

  "Anytime, tiger."

  He felt relaxed for the first time that day. He had problems, but they could be dealt with. He just had to figure out a plan. There was always a plan, always a way out. He would have to think, that's all.

  Just think.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Midnight, and a phone was ringing.

  Robin swam up out of sleep and groped for the phone on her nightstand, fumbling it off the cradle, pressing it to her ear. She heard a dial tone. Somewhere the ringing continued.

  Her cell phone. In her purse, on the bureau.

  She got up, blinking away the last tug of sleep, and found the phone. "Yes?"

  What she heard in reply was a recording. "You have a collect call from an inmate at a California Department of Corrections facility. The name of the inmate is amp;" The recorded voice was replaced by the inmate's voice saying, "Justin Gray." The recorded message continued. "If you wish to accept, press amp;"

  Robin needed a moment to process this information, then another moment to find the correct button on the lighted keypad.

  Justin Gray's voice crackled over the earpiece.

  "Yo, Doc Robin. How's tricks?"

  "Justin, why are you calling me?"

  "Why not? Always fun to shoot the breeze. Hope I didn't wake you."

  "Shouldn't you be in your cell at this hour?"

  "I'm in my cell at every hour. Got a jail phone in here. All the comforts of home. See, they gotta give me a phone, or my First Amendment rights would be violated. Us cons gotta have access to communication with the outside worldeven us ultra-bad boys in the high-power ward. Besides, this way the hacks don't gotta drag their sorry asses out of the control booth and escort me out of my cell. They don't like to mess with me. I'm a dangerous individual."

  "How did you get my cell phone number?"

  "It's on your business card. I swiped one from your office a while back."

  "You should be asleep."

  "I don't sleep much. Night's the best time for me. It's so quiet and dark. I can move in the shadows. Silence 'n' violence, babywhat I live for."

  "You're not moving in any shadows now, Justin."

  "Got that right. But I still don't sleep much. Bad dreams, you know."

  She was surprised to get a straightforward response. "Do you have bad dreams often?"

  "They come and go."

  "What do you dream about?"

  "The ones I killed. The girls."

  "What about them?"

  "How they must've suffered. And how, you know, now that I'm in here amp;"

  "Yes?"

  "I'll never get to do it again. Really pisses me off."

  She released a breath, angry at herself for having been suckered in. "Justin, I don't want you calling me."

  "That's the sort of thing that could hurt my feelings. Mess me up, do all kinds of serious psychological damage."

  "I'm serious. My patients call me to set up an emergency appointment, that's all. I don't do therapy over the phone."

  "Don't flatter yourself, college girl. I'm not calling you for help. Just checking in, saying hi. It's what friends do."

  "Not at midnight."

  "If you're sleepy, maybe I can chat with Meg instead. I bet she's a night owl. Her and me got along real good, that time we met."

  "Don't talk about her."

  "I don't know, Doc. She's a fine piece of snatch, all right."

  "Justin"

  "Hey, hey. Chill, Freud. Sorry if I offended. I guess it's wrong for me to be making crude remarks about a virginal young maiden. Except I got news for you, Doc. She ain't no virgin."

  "I don't need to hear this."

  "Hey, it's no bullshit. I can tell these things. Got a sixth sense about 'em."

  "She's not even dating," Robin snapped.

  "Not that you know about. I tell you true, Doc, these kids today start early. She's wettin' her whistle, all right. I bet she's gettin' more action than you."

  "Be quiet."

  "You think she's daisy fresh, never got her cherry popped? Fuck me, I can smell the jizz on her. She been doing the nasty, big-time. No surprise. She gets plenty of offers, for sure. Me, I'd like to bone her myself"

  "Shut up!" She took a breath, fighting for calm. "Did you call just to tell me this? What are you trying to do?"

  "Me? I'm just performing a public service. What can I say? It's my nature to help people."

  "Don't ever call me again. And I don't want to hear any more lies about Meg."

  "You got it, Doc. Just keep your eyes shut tight. See no evil, right?"

  "Stop it, Justin. Stop it."

  "If Meg gets tired of whoever's dicking her now, send her my way. I'll show her what a real man can do."

  Robin shut off the phone, then sat on the bed, shaking.

  She shouldn't let him get to her like that. He was playing games, sick mind games, the kind he'd played when he was still at large. Now he was safely caged, but he could still use a telephone, still find a way to inflict pain on the world.

  And she was trying to help him, make him better. She asked herself why.

  "Because he's dysfunctional," she whispered.

  Dysfunctional. Such a nice clinical term, so much more scientific and sanitized than other words she might have used. Words like soulless amp; malevolent amp; evil.

  How much did she really believe in evil? Justin Gray was evil by any reasonable definition. Yet she treated him as someone with a disorder, someone to be cured. Then was there no evil, only illness? No morality, only the interaction of dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine?

  She didn't know what she believed. She half suspecte
d she didn't want to believe in evil, didn't want it to be real, because then her father amp; she would have to label him as amp;

  She left the thought unfinished. The past wasn't the issue, anyway. It was the future that counted. A new method of treatment. Lowered rates of recidivism. A safer, saner society. Fewer victims. And an end to warehoused offenders, wasted lives.

  Robin lay back in bed and closed her eyes.

  New hope for people like her fatherand their families. New lives. For that, she would endure Gray's games. She would endure anything.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gray hung up, smiling, and climbed onto his rack, hands laced behind his head.

  Now that had been some good, clean fun.

  He'd never called the doc before, but tonight he was so goddamn jazzed, he had to work off his nervous tension somehow. And the best way to do it was with a little old-fashioned, ail-American mind fucking.

  That had been part of the sport all along. One of the best parts, always. He'd made it his trademark. He'd become known for the mind games he played on the parents of his victims.

  Hours after one of his girls was dead, he would call her folks, using a stolen cell phonea different phone each time. It had been fun, like making prank calls when he was a kid. Being drunk hadn't hurt. Typically he stayed wasted for a day or two after a kill, enjoying the buzz. And the conversations with the parents only made the high that much sweeter.

  He could remember every word.

  "I'm the one what took your baby girl, ma'am," he would say in a trailer-trash drawl. "And the thing is, I'm wondering if you had any preferencesy'know, as to where you'd like to pick her up."

  "You're letting her go?"

  "Oh, sorry. I meant where you want to pick up her body."

  "Oh, God, please, please don't, she's a good girl, she's all we have."

  "You're telling me you want the little bitch alive?"

  "Please amp;"

  " 'Cause I just assumed you were glad to be rid of her. No offense, but she's kind of a pain in the ass."

  "Don't hurt her."

  "Here I thought you'd be grateful to me for taking her off your hands. I was doing you a major favor. Now all of a sudden I'm the bad guy?"