In Dark Places

by Michael Prescott

  "Must've been one hell of a shot to the cranium," he said.

  "I'll live."

  "Probably. But, Doctordon't lie to me again. I don't like it."

  He led her inside the arcade before she could answer.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Brand couldn't figure out what the hell they were up to. It hadn't been easy following Wolper and Cameron when they left Parker Center. He'd been parked across the street from the building's underground garage, watching official and unofficial vehicles go in and out, when his beeper chirped with an SOS. Even so, he hadn't expected Cameron to be with Wolper, and he'd nearly missed seeing her in the passenger seat of Wolper's Mercury. He'd had to pull away from the curb to catch up with Wolper in the dense downtown traffic, staying two or three cars behind to avoid detection.

  He thought maybe Wolper was taking Cameron to the hospital or to her home. Instead the car wended into Hollywood, cruising the boulevard and doubling back, as if in search of something.

  Now the two of them had gone into a video arcade. Didn't make much sense, unless Cameron had decided that Justin Gray might be hanging out there. Gray was the target, after all. Cameron obviously hadn't seen or didn't remember who had knocked her out, so Gray was taking the blame.

  It was funny, in a waya serial killer getting pinned for a bum rap. As if the dumb son of a bitch didn't have enough on his resume already. And even if he was taken alive and swore up and down that he hadn't done it, who would believe him?

  Cameron had probably gotten it in her head that Gray would visit this arcade. She'd treated the guy and must think she had some kind of insight into his psyche.

  Personally, Brand didn't buy the idea that anybody could understand Justin Gray. Some people were just freaks, plain and simple. There was no more point in trying to understand them than there would be in analyzing the motivations of a school of piranha. That was how he looked at it, anyway.

  He shook his head, amused at himself as he locked up his Crown Victoria, parked down the street from Wolper's Mercury Sable. Look at him, Alan Brand, philosopher. Like he knew what the fuck he was talking about. And like any of it mattered anyhow.

  What mattered was getting Robin Cameron alone.

  It would be tricky. The problem was Wolper. He would be right at her side. Most likely the two of them wouldn't split upnot if they thought Gray might be in the vicinity.

  Well, maybe he could arrange a diversion, something to draw Wolper away, if only for a few minutes. Or maybe he would just get lucky. Hell, he was due.

  Brand approached the arcade, fingering the off-duty gun under his nylon windbreaker. A Beretta 9mm, identical to his duty pistol. He didn't believe in trying to adjust to a different weapon. In an emergency he would depend on instinct and reflex, and he needed a gun that felt like it was part of him, an extension of his own arm.

  Probably he wouldn't have to use the gun tonight. There were other ways of handling this situation. Above all, he had to be smart. He knew he wasn't the sharpest tack on the bulletin board. He'd never been a straight-A student, or even straight-B. He'd barely made it through community college, and he knew he wouldn't ever rise higher in the ranks.

  But he'd learned a thing or two about self-preservation. Survivalthat was what it was all about. On the streets you learned about survival, or you didn't last long.

  During his wait outside Parker Center, he had decided something. Whatever happened, he was going to survive this mess. He would do whatever was necessary. He was not going down.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Meg wished she smoked.

  If she did, maybe she'd have a lighter, some way to penetrate the total blackness around her. She should have taken up smoking and stayed away from Gabe. She'd made a poor choice of vices. Of course, she hadn't thought of Gabe as a vice. She'd thought of him as the love of her life, who would never betray her. Now it was as if she'd awakened from a dreama stupid, irrational dream.

  When he'd called her an immature kid, he'd been right. Only an immature kid could have made the mistakes she'd made.

  People always said you learned from your mistakes. But you couldn't learn much if your mistakes got you killed.

  She had to stop thinking that way, stay positive.

  Positive. Right. She was handcuffed to a metal railing in a lightless basement, waiting for a man she'd thought she loved to come back and murder her.

  Okay, he hadn't specifically said he was going to murder her. But it seemed like a really safe bet.

  Though she might not know his real name, she knew him. She knew his face. His amp; body. She knew he had been at the awards dinner for Robin. She knew he was a cop. She knew too much.

  Yesterday she'd wondered what it had been like for Justin Gray's victims, waiting in the back of his van, knowing they would die but not knowing when. Well, now she knew.

  Uselessly she rattled the handcuffs against the railing. Around her, in the dark, she heard rustling sounds. Small creatures, disturbed by the noise.

  "Bunny rabbits," she whispered, forcing a smile.

  She guessed there was some kind of justice to the way things had worked out. She'd broken every ethical rule her mom had drummed into her. She'd lied and gone sneaking around and had sex with a guy who was more than twice her age. And she'd thought she was so damn smart, so grown up, and that her mom, for all her brains and education, just didn't get it because she was too old to understand true love.

  But it turned out that what Gabe felt for her wasn't love at all, but some kind of pathological sickness, which her mom would have understood completely because she worked with crazies every day. She would have pegged Gabe as a psycho right from the start. She would have seen the insanity in him, which Meg had entirely missed.

  "So she's smart and I'm dumb," Meg whispered. "She's right and I'm wrong. Great. How does that help me get out of here?"

  It didn't, of course. Nothing would. She was trapped, and she couldn't get free, and her life was over at the age of fifteen_

  Footsteps.

  Upstairs.

  He was back.

  A wave of trembling shot through her like ice water. She tugged at the handcuffs, rattling the short chain again, chafing her wrist. A noise halfway between a moan and a wail started rising in her throat. She bit it back and waited.

  The footsteps came closer.

  She didn't want to think about what would come next, but she couldn't stop herself. Images ran through her head like movie clips. How many dramatized murders had she witnessed in the course of her life? A thousand? Ten thousand? It seemed as if every one of them was replaying itself in her memoryevery shooting and stabbing, every death by fire or water or torture, every gangland hit and serial-killer slaying, all the ways there were to die. Which would be her way?

  The footsteps stopped outside the cellar door.

  Looking up, she saw a dim seam of light limning the door frame.

  A flashlight. It must be dark outside by now. He needed a flashlight to find his way.

  The flood of images coursed faster. She saw herself strangled, smothered, beaten to death. She flinched from blows that hadn't yet come. She was crying again, new tears joining the tracks of dried salt on her cheeks.

  The door opened. The flashlight's glow was blinding after her long darkness. She had to look away.

  "Megan?" A man's voice. Not Gabe's. This was someone else.

  She was too startled to speak. The beam of the flashlight skittered around the room, illuminating the corners she'd never seen, the cinder-block walls and concrete floor, the stale rodent droppings and skeletons of mice and elaborate cobwebs and dust, before finding her at the bottom of the stairs.

  "It's okay, Meg." A gentle voice. "Everything's okay. I'm a police officer."

  She lifted her head into the glare. "Police?" she whispered.

  He set the flashlight on the landing, its beam dimly lighting the room. He came down the stairs, a big man in a business suit, moving slowly, as if wary of scaring her.
"That's right. I'm Detective Tomlinson."

  "Detective Tomlinson?" She was repeating the man's words like an idiot.

  "Right." He was nearly at the bottom of the staircase. "LAPD. Robbery-Homicide."

  "How'd you find me?"

  "Someone reported a suspicious car in the alley behind this factory. The vehicle matched one seen leaving your neighborhood at the time of your abduction. I checked it out."

  "Alone?"

  "We're a little shorthanded at the moment. There are a lot of people looking for youand for Gray."

  "Gray?"

  "Justin Gray. The serial killer."

  "He escaped?"

  Tomlinson had reached her now. The glow of the flashlight on the landing outlined one side of his face as he smiled down from his greater height. "This afternoon."

  That explained her mom's phone call, but it only made everything else more bewildering. Was it coincidence that Gabe had kidnapped her so soon after Justin Gray's escape? If it wasn't coincidence, then what was going on?

  "None of this makes sense," she whispered.

  "Don't try to sort it all out. You've been through a lot." He reached into the side pocket of his jacket. "Let me get those cuffs off, and we'll be out of here."

  He produced something from his pocket. A key. It must be a handcuff key. In the feeble light of the flash on the landing, she couldn't be sure.

  He reached for her. "I'll have that cuff unlocked in no time."

  Under any other circumstances she would have let him do it. But one thought stopped her.

  Gabe was a cop too.

  She took a step back. "Let me see it."

  "What?"

  "The handcuff key."

  He frowned, bewildered by her suspicion. "Sure, Meg. It's right here."

  He raised his hand slowlythen in a sudden motion thrust it forward, aiming at the bare skin of her right arm. She jerked away from him, and he missed her, his fist brushing her skin. She retreated as far as the handcuff chain would allow.

  She had seen the thing in his hand. Not a key.

  A syringe.

  "Gabe sent you"her voice was thick and raw"didn't he?"

  Tomlinson dropped the act. All at once he was a different man, his gentleness gone. "Gabe?" He chuckled. "Is that what he's calling himself?"

  "What's his real name? Who is he?"

  He ignored the question.

  "That son of a bitch," he said, "is going to get himself in trouble one of these days, tomcatting around. Then again"his gaze moved over her"for a sweet piece of ass like you, a man might be willing to risk some consequences."

  She stared at the syringe. The tube was filled with brownish liquid. "What is that stuff?"

  "You ever been high, sweet cheeks?" Tomlinson's eyes twinkled with something like merriment.

  "No."

  "Never? Not even pot?"

  "I don't do drugs."

  "I see. You're a good girl. All you do is suck cocks and spread your thighs." He grinned at her with evil amusement.

  She asked again, "What is it?"

  "Darling, what we got here"he held up the syringe, letting it catch the light"is good old horse. Hard candy. You know what I'm saying?"

  "No."

  He laughed. "You really are a babe in the woods. Heroin. That's what I've got. Highly illegal, class-A narcotic. Colombian smack, good stuff, very pure. It disappeared from an evidence room not long agoone gram, enough to send you on a real bad trip. A one-way trip, I'm sorry to say."

  She stared up into the hollows of his eyes, where the flashlight's glow didn't reach. "Why?"

  He ignored her. "See, I could shoot you, but this way there's no bullet to trace."

  She tried to back away, but she couldn't retreat any farther with the handcuffs pinning her down. He grasped her right arm.

  "Just stay still, Meg. This won't take long."

  He squirted a few drops of liquid from the syringe and aimed it at her bare arm.

  "You got nice blue veins. I'm gonna mainline this shit. That'll make it fast. Lights out in a hurry." He smiled at her in the half-light of the flashlight beam. "It's a shame I've gotta waste such high-quality stuff."

  The needle descended in a leisurely arc.

  "And wasting you," he added, "that's a real shame, too."

  Everything had slowed down. Her breath had stopped. Her vision had narrowed to a single point. She knew that she could let fear paralyze her, and then she would die, or she could fight and give herself a chance.

  With a shriek of rage she wrenched her arm to the side. He was gripping it tight, but her skin, slick with sweat, slid through his fingers, and she pulled free.

  He would expect her to draw back, huddle in fear. Instead she lunged at him, angling her hand downward, closing her fist over his crotch. She felt the soft sacks of his scrotum squishing between her fingers. She squeezed tight and twisted hard.

  His voice rose an octave. "Fuck!"

  He grabbed at her hand, a reflex action. She released his crotch and snatched the syringe away. She stabbed at his face. He dodged, not quite fast enough. The hypodermic punched into the side of his neck, her finger depressing the plunger, releasing a stream of brown fluid into his carotid artery.

  A noise like an animal's howl broke from his mouth. He tore away, leaving a bloody gash in his neck. He lifted his arm to strike at her, and then his face went red and his breathing was suddenly hoarse and shallow.

  Tomlinson fell to the floor and lay on his stomach, making crawling motions with his arms.

  "Can't see. Can't amp;"

  He couldn't speak anymore. He rose to one knee before collapsing in a shuddering pile. His respiration was quick and noisy and sounded strangely wet, as if his lungs were clogged.

  Meg stared at him, the empty syringe still in her hand. She thought she had probably killed him. The reality of it hit her like a slap, and then she was screaming for help, screaming uncontrollably, knowing that no one could hear.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The arcade was bedlam.

  With Wolper at her side, Robin maneuvered through the crashing noise, the tight squeeze of people, the stroboscopic glare of game machines. She hadn't been inside a place like this in years, and vaguely she'd been expecting pinball machines or close relatives of early video games like Frogger and Pac-Man. Instead she was surrounded by large screens filled with startlingly realistic action, enhanced by stereophonic sound effects at a painfully high volume. One game console displayed the view from a race car; another put its operator in a submarine; others re-created torchlit temples and jungle swamps. She saw karate kicks, balletic leaps ending in a blast of automatic weapons fire, wrestling moves that turned lethal with the sickening crunch of an adversary's neck. The enemies to be dispatched were sometimes aliens, dinosaurs, or ghouls, but most often they were human beings, ethnically neutral, indistinguishable from the good guys as far as she could tell. Maybe good versus evil wasn't the point anymore. Maybe there was no point.

  Ninety percent of the game players were teens and most of them were boys. They had the cold, expressionless stares she had seen around the slot machines in Vegas, and they stood hunched forward in concentration, their fingers moving on the joysticks with virtuoso rapidity, like skilled hands sounding stops on a flute. The kids were mostly black and Latino, affecting the baggy-pants gangsta style. She wondered what they would think if they knew that a serial killer might be hanging out here. Would they be scared, appalledor would they ask for his autograph? The girls he'd killed might be no more real to them than the animated figures being vaporized on their display screens. To them, Justin Gray might be the ultimate player.

  But the kids didn't matter right now. What she focused on were the rare adults in the crowd. They were all malesshe saw no females here older than nineteenand they were a curious mixture of overweight guys with bad complexions and gaunt, hollow-eyed men who looked like junkies.

  She didn't see Gray among them, but it was too soon to be sure. The arcade was
huge, branching off into alcoves and nooks and specially themed rooms, and the lighting was inconstant and distracting, and the crowd was jammed into every corner, every inch of floor space.

  She wondered how much time these people spent here, killing timelike the men crowded around the dogpit. Men like Brand. Maybe he'd been at the dogfights today.

  Or maybe he'd been in her office, killing more than time.

  Brand liked this place. It was raucous and crazy, and although no real action was going down, there was a strange excitement in watching the kids bent over video-game controls, matching their reflexes against a computer's speed. And it was noisy. That was good. Noise made good cover. If he did have to use his 9mm, the shot might go unheard.

  He circled along the perimeter of the room, scoping the layout, keeping Wolper and Cameron in sight. Although he was a generation older than most of the game players, he didn't stand out too badly. The dark windbreaker helped him blend inunlike Wolper's sport jacket over an open-collared dress shirt, or Cameron's buttoned-up blouse and stylish slacks. The two of them looked like nervous middle-class parents hunting down a truant teenager. Which wasn't far wrong, when you thought about it. Gray was the shrink's pet project, her baby, and he sure had gone missing today.

  A yell of frustration from a player a few feet away startled him. He glared at the kid, who was too absorbed in pummeling the machine to notice. When he looked across the room, his quarries were gone, lost in the crowd.

  He scanned the blur of faces and bodies, hoping to pick them out. He hoped they hadn't already left.

  There. Entering a side room, still together.

  They hadn't separated, which was a problem, but at least he still had Cameron in view.

  She wouldn't get away. That was a promise he'd made to himself. He might have fucked up most things in his forty-one years, failed in more ways than he could stand to remember, stalled out in his career, given up any chance at marriage or family, ended up in a sad little sweatbox of a house in a shit neighborhoodhe might have no future and no life, but tonight he had a mission to perform, and he wouldn't fail. No matter what, he was coming out of this a winner.