Pitch Black

by Parrish, Leslie

  “It’s all right, and I’m sorry, too. I know how close you two are. I’m sure Tricia can be on her best behavior for one lunch. She does know better than to do anything inappropriate, doesn’t she? Nathan cannot afford to be seen in the midst of a scandal.”

  “Uncle Nate is a big boy,” Sam replied. Big and tough, with a reputation as one of the strictest judges in town. Scrupulously honest, but open to no bullshit, as criminals like Jimmy Flynt had learned. Nate had presided over Flynt’s state trial and had tried to dissuade Sam from talking to the man, being very protective of her. He might be a hanging judge on the bench, but she knew him as a quiet, loving pseudo-uncle.

  “I told him to meet us at eleven forty and no later. I know it’s early, but it’s such a popular spot, that was the only lunch reservation available. Tell Tricia the same thing, will you?”

  Sam had wondered more than once why Nate still put up with being bossed around by his late partner’s widow. There was only one explanation: She suspected he had feelings for her mother. The hope that she’d someday see him in that light and return the sentiment had to have been what kept the man coming around all these years, through other men, other marriages.

  He must truly love her. But her mother was too flighty to see him as anything more than the stodgy, reliable big-brother figure who’d hovered in the background for so very long.

  “I must run. Can’t wait to see you, honey!”

  “Me, too, Mom.”

  On most occasions, she didn’t mind seeing her family. Hers had always been a small one. Her grandmother’s death had made it even smaller, as had Sam’s divorce. So Nate’s and Tricia’s presence had become even more important, and she usually wanted nothing more than to share holidays and special events with them.

  Frankly, though, she’d rather skip today. Tomorrow, too. What was so great about turning thirty-one? Last year’s birthday—thirty, and two weeks divorced—had been bad enough. Now a whole year had gone by and she was no closer to being “back to normal” than she had been when hitting the big three-oh. She had begun to wonder if “back to normal” was overrated.

  It’s not.

  Hearing that voice in her head, she paused, gave it some thought, and suddenly realized her attitude had begun to change. Maybe because of Alec, who was certainly not overrated. Thinking about him, and about those unexpected moments they’d shared last night, she knew he was anything but.

  The nearly imperceptible quake in his voice when he’d told her about the shooting, the tenderness in his eyes when she’d told him about her marriage—they had done something to her, made something begin to thaw. So had their single kiss, which had left her more aware of herself as a woman than she’d been in a long time.

  It wasn’t just sex. She’d almost felt as if she could start coming to life again, begin the process of moving on.

  Sam smiled, letting the truth of it flood her. A return to warmth and vibrancy and sensuality was not overrated. In fact, for the first time in what seemed like forever, she was starting to look forward to rejoining the land of the living. Not fully yet, not with this awful investigation looming and a psycho talking to her. But beyond that, into the future. The long-term one that meant a return to the world she’d shut out.

  Moving on. What a simple concept. And what an exciting one.

  Throwing back the covers with a laugh, she greeted the day a lot more pleasantly than she had in a long time. After a quick shower, she picked out something to wear that would meet her mother’s conservative standards and Tricia’s outrageous ones.

  Venturing to the kitchen, she made some coffee, then sat at the table to jot some notes for the new book. By hand. It wasn’t until she had filled a page that she acknowledged what she had been doing: avoiding the living room, avoiding her desk. All so she could avoid the computer on her desk. Contrary to her daily routine, she had never even flipped the thing on, even though she’d hooked it back up last night.

  Within a half hour, she had the shakes, Internet withdrawal setting in so badly she was almost sweating. But she remained torn, wanting to check in, wanting just as much to stay checked out of the awful situation in which she had found herself.

  Coward. Just get it over with.

  Alec had called and left her a message while she was in the shower, saying Darwin had not posted to her message board overnight. But there was still that twinge of concern. Not to mention the awful possibility the psychopath would decide to try educating her by personal e-mail, rather than posting publicly.

  Yet she couldn’t steer clear of the cyber world forever. Bad enough the need to check her site, her regular blogs, and her e-mails; she also needed to look up the damn address of the restaurant. She hadn’t seen an actual hard copy of a phone book in a couple of years.

  So, with her heart somewhere in the vicinity of her larynx, she sat at her desk and flipped on her connection to the rest of the world, hoping one particularly vile part of it had not once again reached out and connected to her first.

  The team had caravanned up to Baltimore in three cars. Unfortunately, sometime during morning rush hour a tractor trailer had devoured a MINI Cooper on the beltway. Two northbound lanes and the shoulder were blocked, and a ride that had taken about an hour yesterday took almost three this morning.

  When they arrived at the scene, Alec noted the chaos. Uniformed officers from the city’s police department guarded the entrance. Somebody had gone through a whole lot of crime scene tape circling the fenced lot. Onlookers ranging from suit-wearing businessmen to dock-workers milled around on the street. Guys in hard hats clustered in small circles, wondering when they could return to work. Also wondering what she had looked like, you know, afterward.

  He could almost hear them.

  Stokes swung their car directly behind Wyatt’s, getting out quickly, her badge already in her hand. Alec followed suit, but moved more slowly.

  “Well?” she asked, impatience evident in her inflection.

  “Go ahead,” he said, waving her forward. He wasn’t really paying attention, already completely focused on following the path the victim—and possibly her killer—must have taken.

  He hadn’t circumnavigated the site, but judging by the severed chain on the ground and the residual fingerprint powder on the post, this was where the detectives believed the suspect and/or the victim had entered. He walked through, his gait slow. His footsteps crunched on the frozen dirt as he stepped past shards of woods and masonry nails. With every step, he pictured the scene, thinking the victim’s thoughts, thinking the unsub’s.

  He doubted the Professor had incapacitated the woman and brought her here against her will. Even late at night, anybody could have driven by; a late worker could have left one of the nearby businesses. This wasn’t like the woods or an enclosed warehouse, where he could knock out his victims and then position them.

  Lured her here, somehow. Fraudulent investment?

  No, she wasn’t the type. Nor would she have come here late at night for a job interview, like the warehouse victim.

  Personal, then.

  Come, it’ll be special. Wait until you see the view.

  He walked on, his head down, careful to avoid the marked evidence. Usable footprints would probably be doubtful, given the amount of activity on an average construction site. But he wasn’t about to make the forensics guys’ job any harder.

  The bits of information continued to churn in his brain, coming together like puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit and had to be repositioned. At some point, the entire puzzle would take shape, but for now, he simply played with the pieces.

  A thirty-eight-year-old operator. Lived with a roommate. Unmarried.

  A spinster? Maybe a dating-service scam?

  Reaching the exterior walls of the building, he heard Wyatt and the others talking to the local detectives. Again, he barely listened, continuing to move toward the core of the facility, to the construction elevator in which the victim must have risen to meet her doom. Mulrooney an
d Taggert watched him in visible curiosity, but Wyatt merely nodded as he passed.

  She’s anxious. Nervous. It’s night, off the beaten track. The top of the building? Are you sure it’s safe? I’m afraid.

  He reached the elevator. Inside, a tech continued to swab the grating, yawning widely as he went through the motions by rote. “You need to go up?”

  “When you’re through.”

  “I’ve cleared a zone to haul people up and down,” the other man said.

  “Find anything?”

  “Got some prints; ten to one says any that aren’t from the crew are from the victim.”

  He wouldn’t take that bet.

  “Stay in that area, okay?” the man said, pointing to a corner.

  Alec entered as directed, turning to stare out at the water through the side grates as they slowly ascended to the top of the building.

  Slow. It’s so high. Choppy water. Cold and black like a night sky without stars, falling away from my feet. Lights across the harbor? Far away. No one can see. All alone. Private.

  Perfect.

  The victim’s impression? Or the killer’s?

  The higher they went, the easier it was to see. Not just the panorama—the water, the shoreline, the ships—but the past. The crime.

  Come with me; I’ll show you the city as you’ve never seen it.

  She trusted him enough to trespass on a closed construction site.

  She’s willing but she’s nervous, excited. He keeps her calm. Earns her trust. How?

  He slowly turned in a complete circle, trying to imagine what she’d felt, what she’d thought as she had been drawn inexorably closer to that date with death.

  Did you ride up with her, calm her fears, then strike her into unconsciousness?

  That didn’t sound like their man. The Professor’s past crimes had an element of detachment. His letters claimed his hands—and conscience—were clear. He’d never killed anyone, never hurt them, just put them in situations to kill or hurt themselves. Like incapacitating the boys in a car accident before putting them out on that ice to fight for their lives. Impersonal.

  She rode up alone. He told her to come up to meet him and she did it.

  Why, he couldn’t say.

  Deep in thought, he stared down, removing the distraction of the water, wanting to imprint the scene in his head. Make it come to life.

  Before it could, though, he saw a tiny red spot near his shoe. He crouched down close, not touching it. No more than the size of a pen’s tip, it must have been overlooked by the tech in his hurry to clear an area to take detectives to the roof.

  Not blood; too light. Too waxy.

  On his hands and knees, he bent closer, until his face nearly brushed the metal. He suddenly realized the tiny drop was actually the tip of a larger blob that had slipped through the grate. The material had solidified into a tiny icicle hanging from the floor beneath the elevator.

  And it wasn’t merely waxy. It was wax. “Candles,” he murmured.

  “What?”

  He pointed to the spot. “Make sure you get this. I suspect it’s candle wax.”

  Red candles. You romanced her, didn’t you, you son of a bitch?

  That was the opening. The one detail that allowed him to build the entire scenario in his head from that starting point.

  He had romanced her.

  They reached the top floor and the tech, visibly embarrassed, immediately descended on the spot of wax. He couldn’t risk grabbing it here; it could fall, and he was probably eager to go back down. “It’s all right,” he said, waving the man away as he stepped out.

  A few feet away, another crime scene investigator was carefully bagging clothing. Yet another was on his hands and knees, outlining footprints left in the faint layer of construction dust. Even from here he saw they had been made from bare feet.

  “Here’s where she took the dive,” one of them said, looking up at Alec and obviously recognizing him as a fed.

  He nodded, but didn’t walk over. Instead, he stood his ground, still visualizing.

  Taped hands. Blindfolded. Did she even try to fight you?

  He doubted it. “Any signs of physical attack? Blood splatter?” he asked.

  “Nothing so far inside the building,” one of the techs said. “There’s a splash zone outside, where she landed, like something you’d see at a water park.”

  Grim visual.

  “But in the elevator and up here? Not yet.”

  Which just reinforced his belief that the Professor hadn’t physically tangled with her at all, either before he’d stripped her, or after she’d regained consciousness. The tox screen would be important on this one, especially because the unsub had used ketamine, a fast-acting drug, on the help-wanted victim.

  He added that piece to the story puzzle in his mind, letting the scene roll out like a snippet of a movie. The operator came to meet some wonderful man in response to an e-mail. Maybe even a phone call, if the Professor was the one who had used Ryan Smith’s cell the previous night. Alec wouldn’t put it past the man to intentionally taunt authorities in that way.

  She got into the elevator; the scene had been set. Candles. So romantic. Her guard down, she had consumed something. She lost consciousness. The Professor waited until she was down, stepped into the elevator, took her out, and got her ready.

  You never even laid eyes on the man you came to meet, did you?

  “How did he leave her clothing?” he asked the tech who had just bagged them. “Neatly piled, folded?”

  “Yeah, very carefully,” the guy said, further cementing Alec’s image of what had happened. “Hose tucked into the shoes, underwear inside the dress. All neat and tidy. Which is pretty funny, since they had been cut off her.”

  Check for cuts. He wasn’t sure it would be possible, given the condition the body must be in, but he wanted to know. Had the Professor wounded her while cutting off her clothes? If she was conscious, she would have struggled; there would be signs, nicks.

  But there had been no blood. She wasn’t conscious. She didn’t struggle. Any wounds would have been inflicted out of carelessness or for the unsub’s own pleasure.

  The Professor was never careless.

  Besides, the way he’d folded her things hinted at such restraint, such calmness.

  You don’t hurt your victims, right? Your hands are totally clean.

  Alec would lay money the woman didn’t have a mark on her from the knife. What the construction debris she’d hit on the ground had done to her, however, was another story.

  “Think I’ll walk around a little,” he said, already looking past the technician.

  “Sure. You know the drill.”

  Of course he did. He remained on the periphery, stepping only into already cleared areas. He studied the cut edges of the security netting, the patterns of bare footprints in the dust, running in circles until a straight pair disappeared off the side of the building.

  For the next hour, he lost himself in thought, staring at the clothes, the elevator, the footprints, the water, the shoreline. Not seeking evidence, but understanding. Reconstructing the crime in his head, he saw it so well. Yes, there were holes, gaps, but for the most part the picture was clear. The woman, the lure, the romantic touches, the drug, the trap, the terror, the fall.

  The only thing unclear was the killer. Where had he been? Had he set this awful scene in motion, then blithely walked away, not even knowing whether his victim plummeted as he expected her to, or somehow survived by keeping calm and waiting for rescue?

  He didn’t know. They had no way of knowing whether the Professor had watched his other victims die. Couldn’t be sure if he had stayed on that cold, snowy night, listening to the cries of those boys, until the earsplitting crack of breaking ice predicated their final plunge.

  One thing he suspected: The Professor would not have remained on this roof until the very end. Someone could have seen the victim fall, cutting off his own escape from the building. That didn’t
mean he hadn’t stayed close by to watch his morbid fantasy play out, waiting with bated breath for a pale form to tumble from the sky and a sharp scream to rend the night.

  Alec needed to know. Needed to get inside the man’s head, figure out how he thought of his victims—as worthy of his attention to their final moments?

  No, it didn’t sound like him.

  But as vehicles of sheer entertainment? That seemed much more plausible.

  Or as validation for his own theories—wanting to see the inevitable moment when his victims “failed” their tests? Another valid reason for him to watch.

  So where would he go? How long would he stay? What vantage point would provide him with an adequate viewing area without exposing him to capture?

  Not for the first time, he thought about what Sam had said the previous night. About that con man, Jimmy Flynt. The one who seemed to think like this unsub, viewed his victims the same way, even used the Internet to reach out to them and destroy their lives.

  Also not for the first time, he realized talking to Flynt was a good idea. Which he was sure would please Sam. She wouldn’t be pleased, though, when she found out he was going without her.

  Grabbing his phone, he speed-dialed back to the office and asked for Lily Fletcher.

  “What’s up? Anything useful on the scene? Does it look like the Professor?”

  Alec covered one ear with his hand, straining to hear her despite the whoosh of the wind flying through the open building. Stepping closer to the solid face of it, he found a little bit of a buffer zone and answered, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Listen, Lily, I need information on an inmate. James T. Flynt. He did time in a federal pen; now he’s in a Maryland lockup.”

  “Hold on.” He heard a faint clicking—her keyboard. Within seconds, she said, “Got him.”

  “Can you contact the prison or his attorney? Try to arrange a meeting? I want to talk to him.”

  “About this case? Do you have a new lead?”

  “Possibly. I think he might be of some help.”