In Dark Places

by Michael Prescott

  How did locks work, anyway? She'd never even thought about it. Something about tumblersor was that only the kind of locks they had on safes?

  She was a moron. She didn't know the simplest practical thing. She had spent her time learning history and English lit when she should have been teaching herself street skills, survival skills. It was her mom's fault. If Robin hadn't sent her to that private school amp;

  "Yeah, blame her," she whispered. "Real mature."

  She struggled with the lock for what seemed like a long time. One thing was clear: The TV shows had lied. It was not easy to pick a lock. It was, as far as she could tell, impossibleat least without the right tools.

  Finally she gave up. Her efforts had failed. She couldn't find a handcuff key in the detective's clothes, and she couldn't pick the lock. She couldn't do anything except wait for Tomlinson to regain consciousness and kill her, or for Gabe to come back and kill her, or for some other bad guy to drop by and kill her.

  The bottom line was that she was going to die. She had delayed her execution for a short time, but it was coming, and she was out of options. She would die in the factory, a dead place suitable for the dead.

  Gabe had to get rid of her. And he was no angel. She knew that now. She knew how he'd used her. She knew how stupid she had been. She knew it alltoo late.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Gray circled the office building in the dark, his headlights off, only the parking lights shining. If there were cops staking out the place in a slickback, he needed to know it now, before he tried going inside.

  Inside. He shook his head. Fuck, he must be a candidate for the puzzle factory to be even thinking about pulling this shit. Here he was, having just eluded the police back on the boulevard, and what was he doing to celebrate? He was cruising the corner where Doc Robin had her office, so he could commit a little after-hours B 'n' E.

  Nuts. That's what it was. He wondered about himself sometimes. The people who thought he was crazy for killing high school girls had gotten it all wrong. There was nothing crazy about some good old-fashioned all-American blood sport. But what he was doing now, risking his freedom for a look in the doc's office amp; that was crazy, no two ways about it.

  He was going to do it, though. Hell, he'd already decided. If he changed his mind, it would be like backing down from a fight.

  He saw no black-and-whites in the neighborhood. No TV trucks either. He'd been worried that the newspeople might be hanging out here, but they'd gone. When he arrived, he'd seen the last couple of news vans hightailing it out of the area like they had a hot tip.

  Where to stash his car was a problem. Couldn't leave it too close to the building. If any cops came along and saw it there, they'd know he was inside for sure. On the other hand, he couldn't park too far away. Might need to make a quick escape. Suppose there was an undercover car in the vicinity. He hadn't spotted any action like that, and he was pretty sure he could sniff a stakeout, but there was a chance someone was waiting for him to return to the scene. If so, he would have to run for it, and his wheels had to be close.

  He compromised by parking the Firebird in the alley beside the building. He eased the car against a brick wall, maneuvering it behind a trash bin. The car was invisible from the street. Unless a patrol unit went down the alley itself, there was no way his ride would be spotted.

  He left the car unlocked with the key in the ignition, ready to roll. Nobody was going to steal the fucking thing in the next ten minutes, and ten minutes was all the time he planned to spend inside the office building.

  With the deputy's gun stuffed in his waistband, he headed out of the alley and crouched by the fence that surrounded the parking lot. He took a minute to suss out the area. If any watchers had eyeballed him driving into the alley, he would expect them to be moving in on him now. He saw no movement, heard no footsteps. More important, he got no sense of trouble. Sensing itthat was a street thing, a knack he'd picked up somewhere along the line. He knew when the boys in blue were around. It wasn't like the short hairs stood up or anything. He just knew.

  He was willing to bet they weren't around now.

  The fence was gated and locked at night, but it was more for show than anything else. There was no concertina wire on top, and any homeboy worth his spit could climb the thing without breaking a sweat. Gray went up and over, then quickly advanced, sticking close to the building's rear wall.

  The parking lot was empty, the building dark. A few lights burned in the upper windows, but none on the ground floor. He guessed that the place had been emptied out so The Man could do his Sherlock thing, collecting hairs and fibers and all that happy crap. These days cop work was more like fuckin' brain science, and there was something deeply wrong about that. The bad guys didn't use no lasers or microscopes, and the lawmen shouldn't, either. Ought to be a level playing field.

  Brain science was the doc's turf. She was smart. Finding him at the arcade, now, that was friggin' genius. How the fuck could she have known he'd go there, when he didn't half know it himself? It was creepy, almost like she could read his damn mind even without plugging him into her machine.

  He reached the back door and looked around. Still no movement. No shouts of "Freeze, police!" No lights snapping on, no Sam Brownes jingling with handcuffs and keys and batons and guns and Mace and rover radios.

  The door was locked. He'd been expecting that, although optimistically he'd thought the door might be left unlocked at night because of the false security provided by the fence. He'd also hoped that even if there was a lock, it might be one of those corner-hardware-store varieties that he could defeat with his trusty screwdriver. No such luck. It was a nice solid dead bolt. With the right tools he might've tackled it, but he didn't have no tools so he had to go in another way.

  It was no big thing. The ground-floor windows were unbarred. Leaving them that way was a risk in this part of town, but he guessed the egghead yuppies who rented these cubbyholes didn't want to sit staring at iron bars all day. Besides, the fence and the dead-bolted door probably made them feel nice and safe.

  He picked a window at random, punched in the pane with his elbow, cleared away the clinging shards, and climbed through. He checked his back. The parking lot was still dark and quiet. If there were any bozos with badges around here, they were asleep on the job.

  The office he'd entered was filled with computers and stacks of paperan accounting firm or something. He made his way through the dark suite to the door and eased it open. The hall was empty. He saw no surveillance cameras. Easy pickings. He ought to come back sometime and rip off this place.

  Doc Robin's office, on the opposite side of the corridor, was a few doors down. No problem spotting it. It was the one festooned with yellow tape warning POLICE CRIME SCENEDO NOT CROSS. He ripped down the tape and tossed it aside. The door's simple spring latch was no problem. He shimmed it open, using the doc's own credit card. Poetic freaking irony.

  Inside the waiting room, he shut the door and turned on the overhead light.

  There was blood on the carpet where Gomer Pyle had bled out like a stuck pig. Stuck pigthat was a good one. The sound of his own laughter was startling in the stillness.

  He went into the main room, the inner sanctum, the theater of cruelty, Dr. Cameron's House of Pain. The lab where he ran through mind mazes like a trained rat earning his cheese.

  In here he left the lights off. It was always possible the LAPD was watching the windows. Anyway, he didn't need much light to find the file cabinet next to the desk.

  Reading the files was a different proposition. He thought about carrying stacks of them into the other room, but that would take too long. He solved the problem by rooting around on the floor by the mind-fucking machine till he found the flashlight pen Doc Robin had dropped when she took that hit to the noggin. The light still worked. He was surprised the bag-and-tag brigade hadn't snapped it upbut now that he thought about it, he realized that most likely there hadn't been any of that nerd-squad action here
, after all. The lawmen already knew who their suspect was. They didn't need hairs and fibers and fingerprints. They'd got him made, and the doc sure as shit hadn't said anything to change their minds.

  It got him pissed all over againbeing set up, framed, played like an amateur. He was a bona fide, genuine A-l prime, government-certified serial killer, for Christ's sake. You didn't fuck around with a serial killer. It showed a lack of respect. And when you disrespected Justin Hanover Gray, you got payback.

  He opened the top drawer of the file cabinet and beamed the penlight inside. One of Doc Robin's patients had fucked with him. The dude's name was in here someplace.

  He started flipping through the manila folders in alphabetical order, checking each patient. The doc had said the guy was a cop who'd killed somebody. That ought to narrow it down.

  There were no likely candidates in the As. He started on the Bs. Somebody named Baroneanother con like Gray, but he wasn't no killer, just a rapist. Then there was a Berman, a paying customer with some problem called panic disorder, which Gray figured was a fancy way of saying the dude was a wuss. Billings, Jonathan. Blackmore, Katherine. Blythe, William. Brand, Alan amp;

  Brand. That was the slick motherfucker who was playing this game.

  He met all the criteria. He was her patient. He was a cop. And he'd killed a man.

  Justifiable homicide in the line of duty, according to the official investigation. Gray figured that was bullshit. He didn't put any stock in what one cop said about another cop. All of them were busy covering for themselves and the department. They would never drop a dime on their buddy. Gray felt no resentment about that. Hell, he even admired them for it. They took care of their own.

  He memorized Brand's address before replacing the file in the drawer. He'd already overstayed his welcome. Time to get back to his Firebird and pay a social call on his new friend.

  Gray left the office. The door could not be locked without a key, so he just closed it, loosely reattaching the crime-scene tape. No point in advertising his visit.

  He went down the hall to the outside door and cranked the handle, but the door wouldn't open. It was one of those locks that were key-operated on both sides. You needed a key to get out of the building. Goddamn fire hazard was what it was. He'd just have to go out through the window he'd used when he came in.

  From an intersecting corridor came footsteps, rapid, closing.

  He took a step toward the doc's office, but he didn't think he could hide in time to avoid being spotted. And the other office, the one with the busted window, was even farther away.

  The stairwell. That was the ticket.

  He stepped inside, careful to hold the door open a few inches so it wouldn't clang shut.

  The footsteps rat-tatted closer. Now there were voices. A guy saying, "You really think this will work?" and some woman saying, "I can't be sure. It might."

  Not just some woman. That was old Doc Robin herself.

  Gray pursed his lips. Damn, he kept running into that bitch.

  He was suddenly glad he hadn't taken refuge in the doc's office. She was headed there for sure.

  "MBI can be helpful in recovering memories," she was saying. "If I relive the attack, I may be able to identify the assailant."

  "Can you be sure the memory is accurate?"

  "I don't know."

  "Then this is just a big waste of time, isn't it?"

  "If you have better things to do, don't let me keep you."

  "Okay, okay, I'm only playing the role of skeptic."

  "It suits you."

  Sounded like the doc planned to tweak her memories with her brain machineall so she could remember who clocked her. Gray thought it would've been a lot easier if she'd just trusted him, but it seemed she wasn't the trusting kind.

  He wasn't too thrilled about how things at the arcade had ended. He was pretty sure the doc had kept him talking just to buy time till her police buddies showed up. It was a betrayal, and he didn't like betrayals. He had half a mind to step out of the stairwell and pop her and her boyfriend right now.

  Problem was, he recognized the guy's voice too. It was the cop who'd yelled, "Police, freeze," or whatever Jack Lord bullshit he'd been barking. That guy wasn't likely to go down easy. He'd pull out his piece and start busting caps, and all of a sudden the hallway would be the OK Corral. Gray didn't think too highly of his chances in that kind of engagement. He stayed hidden.

  The footsteps stopped. "Look at this." The doc's voice. "Door was left unlocked."

  "Careless."

  "Damn stupid."

  The cop laughed. "You can't spell slapdash without LAPD."

  Gray had to admit, he kind of liked that one.

  When the voices had receded and the door had closed, Gray emerged from the stairwell. He went quickly down the hall to the accountant's office or whatever it was. He hoisted himself through the window, retraced his steps to the fence, and then it was up and over and back to the alley. He cranked the Firebird's engine and reversed into the street.

  Alan Brand lived in Hollywood. Gray could be there in twenty minutes.

  It was impolite to drop in without calling ahead, but he was sure the sarge would understand.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Robin flicked on the overhead light in her office and took a look around. Her computers, left running after the attack, had powered down automatically to standby mode after an hour of inactivity. The MBI appliance was on the floor where Gray must have tossed it after unbuckling himself from the chair. She was glad the police hadn't confiscated the unit. She only hoped it hadn't been damaged in the fall.

  "There's a kitchenette to your left," she told Wolper as she picked up the appliance. "You can fix yourself a cup of coffee if you like."

  "I'd rather just get started."

  "So would I, but the preparations may take a while."

  Behind her, he entered the kitchen area. The small TV in the kitchen clicked on, and an announcer's voice told viewers to stay tuned for the ten-o'clock news.

  She hadn't realized it was so late. Meg had been missing for nearly six hours.

  Sitting in her swivel chair, she awakened the computers and turned on the appliance. She would have to run the diagnostics program to be sure that the ferromagnetic coils were working and were in the proper alignment. The program would take about fifteen minutes.

  While it ran, she scrounged around on the floor for the two headset transceivers. The one she'd worn was all right, but Gray's headset had been broken when he had cast it aside. She had no replacement. She and Wolper would just have to talk over the loud clicking of the coils.

  The electrodes attached to Gray's body had also been strewn everywhere in a tangle of wires. She swept them aside. There was no point in wearing the electrodes anyway. Wolper wouldn't be able to decipher the readouts.

  On the TV news, the top story was under way: the ongoing manhunt for serial killer Justin Hanover Gray. Her name and Meg's had been kept out of the report. Gray was said to have attacked a psychiatrist working with him, killed a deputy, and kidnapped a teenage girl whose photo had been provided to the media.

  She tuned out the news and considered the challenge of recovering her memory of the attack.

  She was suffering from traumatic retrograde amnesia. No one really understood how memory worked, but most theories assumed that short-term memory had to be processed by the hippocampus, part of the brain's medial temporal lobe. A sudden shock to the brain, such as the blunt trauma that had produced her concussion, seemed to disrupt the electrical activity in the hippocampus and somehow prevented the short-term memory from being transferred to long-term storage. The memory most likely to be lost was that of the trauma itself.

  The question was whether or not the memory still existed. If it did, and the problem was one of retrieval, then the MBI procedure might bring it to the surface in the same way that it liberated long-suppressed memories of childhood abuse and other traumas. But if the memory was simply gone, then nothing
could reclaim it.

  She was reasonably optimistic about retrieval. Most victims of concussion eventually recovered some memories of the event. How these memories were stored and how they were regained were two of the countless mysteries of the brain. Some experts postulated a dual storage mechanisma kind of backup memory system that kept working even when the hippocampus failed. Other experts believed that hippocampal processing was only delayed by trauma, not prevented, and that even a short-term memory remained intact somewhere in the temporal lobe, ready to be consolidated into long-term storage when normal memory function resumed.

  Nobody knew. When it came to the brain, what was known was vastly outweighed by what was unknown.

  She decided to boost the output of the coils affecting both temporal lobesthe left, which processed memories of names and words, and the right, which handled memories of faces and other visual information. A strong low-frequency magnetic field over those areas would inhibit their activity and perhaps allow the relevant neural mechanisms to settle down and begin functioning normally after the agitation of the trauma.

  The TV report was wrapping up as a reporter, live at the Hollywood cul-de-sac, repeated word of the failed pursuit. In midsentence he went silent. Wolper had turned off the set. He emerged from the kitchenette, carrying a mug of coffee.

  "Hammond must be just loving this," he said.

  His jocular tone infuriated her. "I don't give a damn about your office politics." She took a breath. That hadn't been smart or fair. "Sorry. I'm just amp; all wound up."

  He came closer. "Do you really think you should be doing this right now?"

  "I have to do this. Right now."

  "Will it work?"

  She sighed. This was the fourth or fifth time he'd asked. "I don't know. Let me work out the technical stuff, okay?"

  Wolper drifted away. Robin concentrated on reprogramming the appliance's parameters. When she was finished, she checked the diagnostic results. All fifty-two coils were functioning normally. She exhaled a breath of relief.