Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  KILLING PATTERN

  When it’s over, he stands back to survey his handiwork.

  Almost.

  He reaches out with a gloved hand to adjust the sleeve of her pajama top, pulling it lower on her wrist.

  Better.

  He pushes back a few strands of her hair, the better to assess the frozen grimace on her mouth.

  Ah. Very nice, indeed.

  He pries open the corpse’s clenched right fingers. First, he slides the silver signet ring from the pinkie and puts it aside. Then he unzips the pocket of his down jacket and pulls out a plastic Ziploc bag. Painstakingly, he deposits the contents of the bag in the palm of her hand. Then he closes her fingers again to form a fist. Good. This was a last minute idea—a nice little twist to keep them all guessing. To let the almighty Lucinda Sloan know that she no longer has control over her own life.

  That he controls her now. He controls everything.

  And now, the grand finale.

  He takes out a tube of lipstick, uncaps it, gives it a twist, and pauses to admire the slanted, waxy tip. Then he runs it over the dead woman’s lips, staining them a scarlet shade to match the pool of blood in which she lies.

  Her gaping eyes seem to be fixed on his face now in vacant, terrified recognition, belying the fact that she never saw him coming. Not until the last moment.

  They never do….

  Books by Wendy Corsi Staub

  DEARLY BELOVED

  FADE TO BLACK

  ALL THE WAY HOME

  THE LAST TO KNOW

  IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

  SHE LOVES ME NOT

  KISS HER GOODBYE

  LULLABY AND GOODNIGHT

  THE FINAL VICTIM

  MOST LIKELY TO DIE

  DON’T SCREAM

  DYING BREATH

  DEAD BEFORE DARK

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  WENDY CORSI STAUB

  DEAD BEFORE DARK

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

  This book is dedicated to my dear friends

  Chris and Anita,

  Lucas and Gabriela,

  and to Mark, Morgan, and Brody,

  with love.

  With gratitude to William Rasmussen

  for his endless patience

  with my endless queries about FBI procedure.

  Any errors in that regard are my own—

  and Bill gets the credit for all that rings true.

  Bill, I couldn’t have done it without you.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part I: 5:40

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part II: 7:05

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Part III: 7:44

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Part IV: 8:26

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Part V: 10:24

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Attica, New York

  June

  They called him the Night Watchman.

  Back in the late sixties, he stole into women’s homes after dark on nights when the moon was full and they were alone. He slaughtered them—and always left an eerie calling card at the crime scene.

  The authorities never publicly revealed what it was.

  For over a year, the killer engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse with the local police and FBI, the press, and the jittery populations of cities he so sporadically struck beneath a full moon, claiming seemingly random female victims.

  No one ever did manage to figure out how or why he chose the women he killed.

  The only certainty was that he watched them closely in the days or weeks leading up to their deaths. Learned their routines. Knew precisely where and when to catch them alone at night, off guard and vulnerable.

  Out of the blue, the killing stopped.

  Months went by without a telltale murder. Then years.

  The Night Watchman Murders joined a long list of legendary unsolved American crimes, perhaps the most notorious since the Borden axe murders almost a century before.

  Unsolved? Of course Lizzie was guilty as hell. She was acquitted based only on the Victorian presumption that a homicidal monster couldn’t possibly dwell within a genteel lady.

  Back then, few suspected that pure evil was quite capable of lurking behind the most benign of facades.

  A hundred years later, as the Night Watchman went about his gruesome business undetected, even those who knew him best had yet to catch on. He—like others who would come after him: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer—was a monster masquerading as a gentleman.

  Unlike the others, though, he was never apprehended. Not for the Night Watchman murders, anyway.

  A theory came to light, when the bloodbath was so suddenly curtailed, that the killer had either died himself, or been jailed for another crime.

  As the decade drew to a close, the lingering public fascination with the Night Watchman faded and was finally eclipsed by interest in the elusive Zodiac Killer.

  Years went by, decades dawned and waned, the nineteen-hundreds gave way to a shiny new millennium.

  Once in a while, some unsolved crimes buff would turn the media spotlight on the Night Watchman.

  For the most part, though, he remained shrouded in shadow, and has to this day.

  Ah, well, the darkest night always gives way to dawn.

  He emerges into the hot glare of summer sunlight on what happens to be the longest day of the year.

  Fitting, isn’t it?

  He smiles at the final uniformed guard standing sentry over his path to freedom.

  The guard doesn’t smile back.

  They never have. They simply keep a joyless, steady vigil, scrutinizing the most mundane human activities, day in and day out, night in and night out.

  Night in and night out…

  Ha. No joy in it for prison guards, anyway.

  Street clothes are on his back for the first time in three and a half decades; bus fare home is stashed in his pocket…if he had a home to go to.

  Thirty-five years is a long time.

  But finding a place to live is the last thing on his mind as he walks toward the bus stop, free at last, with nightfall hours away.

  New York City

  August

  “Five minutes,” a cute twenty-something production assistant announces, sticking her short, chic haircut into the green room.

  Lucinda Sloan promptly pulls out a compact, snaps it open, and finds a stranger looking back at her.

  Oh, for the love of…

  The reflection shakes its head.

  Thanks to the morning show’s makeup artist, she’s wearing more makeup than usual.

  A lot more makeup.

  More makeup, quite possibly, than she’s ever worn in her life—or at least since her sixth grade coed dance at the Millwood Academy, a milestone occasion for which she also stuffed her bra with toilet paper. Twenty years later, that’s hardly necessary, but if it were, she wouldn’t bother. These days, she�
�s strictly a lip gloss and blue jeans kind of girl.

  But if Lucinda Sloan has learned anything at all in this forty-eight hour media feeding frenzy, it’s that pre-camera primping is de rigueur here in the big leagues. All national television news show guests are plopped into the hair and makeup chair, regardless of whether they’re a movie star or a run-of-the-mill psychic who just helped snag a notorious Jersey Shore serial killer.

  Though she belongs to the latter category, Lucinda looks, at the moment, like the former.

  It’s the lipstick. Definitely. Her mouth is slicked red, the very shade of fresh blood. Maybe that was the intent, given the macabre topic of her impending segment.

  Blood.

  Lucinda suppresses a shudder, remembering the gore she encountered at a secluded Monmouth County farmhouse just a few days ago. Thank God the only blood shed at the final crime scene belonged to the killer, slain by the cops to save the would-be victim’s life.

  Fourteen-year-old Tess Hastings is now laid up with a broken leg at home in Montclair. Her parents, Camden and Mike, have protected her from the press so far, but they’re here in the green room themselves.

  Mike, handsome in a suit, sits with a protective arm around his pregnant wife, as though someone is going to snatch her away. And no wonder, after their ordeal.

  Your family is safe now—the lunatic can’t hurt you, or anyone else, ever again, Lucinda wants to tell him.

  Trouble is, that wouldn’t help. Once you’ve encountered violent evil, you never feel safe in this world again.

  Who knows that better than Lucinda? Her life’s work has taken her to the darkest places imaginable, has shown her that human beings are capable of inflicting unspeakable cruelty.

  She learned long ago not to let any of it get to her—at least, not on the outside. She’s not about to spend her life looking over her shoulder.

  She’s a Sloan, after all.

  Generations before her have traditionally valued a stiff upper lip almost as much as they have their material possessions. Lucinda might have eschewed the trappings of wealth in her adult life, but when high pressure hits, her own facade is stolid as the stone mansion where she grew up.

  She sighs and snaps the compact closed.

  “Don’t worry…You look great.”

  The compliment—courtesy of Detective Randall Barakat—inspires an unwanted spark of satisfaction.

  “Thanks.” Feeling his eyes on her—and not about to return the gaze—she busies herself wiping imaginary lipstick off her teeth.

  An imminent live on-air interview is nerve-wracking enough. Sitting so close to Randy that she can smell his Tic-Tac breath takes that stress to a whole new level.

  The Hastings case brought them together again after three years…but only professionally.

  Randy’s married now, living seventy miles away from Philly on Long Beach Island, and Lucinda’s long over him.

  Not.

  But hey, she’s one hell of an actress.

  Randy, on the other hand, wouldn’t win any Oscars for his performance since their paths crossed again last month. Lucinda doesn’t have to be psychic to know that he, too, has unresolved feelings. But she wouldn’t tap that vein if it were made of gold.

  “Hey—what about me?” His voice conveniently barges into her thoughts.

  “Huh?”

  “What about me?” Randy repeats. “Do I look okay?”

  Reluctantly, she glances up at him.

  Black hair, blue eyes, dimples, bronzed skin. Yeah. He looks okay, and then some.

  “Lucinda, can I borrow your mirror for a second?” Camden Hastings asks, and Lucinda hands it over.

  Cam, an attractive olive-skinned brunette, has also been glammed up for the cameras. Her lipstick, though, is a subtle pearly pink.

  Lucinda should be wearing pink lipstick, too, or a nice summer peach shade, or—Hey! Here’s a thought: how about no lipstick at all?

  Wistful, Lucinda figures that right about now on an ordinary Monday morning, she’d be home wearing an old T-shirt, dishing up her usual breakfast: Cap’n Crunch or Frosted Flakes, coffee, and a can of Pepsi.

  Then again, the green room spread isn’t too shabby. She was able to snag two glazed donuts and a Pepsi before heading into the makeup chair for the works, from foundation to curled eyelashes.

  Next, she visited the hairstylist, who chattily tamed her auburn waves. Lucinda typically lets her hair hang down her back unfettered; it now nests sedately in a jeweled barrette at the nape of her neck.

  Her hair is behaving itself, and the lipstick hasn’t yet made its way onto her teeth, so she’s good to go. Not bad for a lip gloss and blue jeans kind of girl.

  Yeah, and she can’t wait to ditch the barrette, scrub her face, and stick this little black Chanel dress back in her spare closet. Way, way back, where it belongs, hanging beside the other relics of her society girl past. She’s kept only a few designer items; they come in handy for occasions like weddings, charity functions, funerals, lunch with her mother—only slightly more appealing than funerals—and national television appearances.

  This happens to be her fifth national television appearance in the last forty-eight hours, and in her entire life. She’s starting to get the hang of it, though.

  Her family isn’t.

  In Bitsy and Rudolph Sloan’s world, a woman’s only proper place in the newspapers is on the society pages—or the obituaries. Her parents were horrified to see their only child splashed all over the news. They’ve left several messages to let her know.

  “Do you ever pick up the phone for them?” Cam asked when her mother’s number popped up on her cell earlier.

  “Pretty much never.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  Cam’s reaction caught Lucinda off guard.

  It’s been years since she questioned her relationship—or lack thereof—with her parents. Years since she went from being a poor little love-deprived rich girl to a self-sufficient woman whose life is enriched by friends and work—a vocation that, ironically, led to the communication breakdown with her parents in the first place.

  “Tic Tac?”

  Randy again. He produces a plastic box, gives it a little shake.

  “No, thanks.” Lucinda can’t resist adding, as he pops yet another green pellet into his mouth, “I don’t want to go on TV with a green tongue.”

  “I have a green tongue?”

  “I’ve seen worse. But hey, your breath is minty fresh.”

  Cam returns the compact and checks her watch. “Hasn’t it been more than five minutes?”

  “Not even two.” Mike rubs circles in the small of her back. “Take a deep breath and relax.”

  “You make it sound so easy.”

  Cam has been looking at her watch repeatedly for the last twenty minutes—anxious, Lucinda knows, not to get the latest interview underway but to get it over with.

  With their daughter safe and sound, their recently troubled marriage back on track, and another baby on the way, the Hastings have no interest in being on TV. They wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for Ava Neary. It was Lucinda who alerted Cam that her older sister’s long-ago death might not have been a suicide after all.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have told her…or at least, not so soon after what happened to Tess.

  But Cam needed to know, after all these years of trying to reconcile her own turbulent past, that nineteen-year-old Ava didn’t jump from the top floor of a Manhattan building that long ago day. She was pushed to her death.

  Lucinda expected Cam to dispute—or at least question—that claim, based as it is on nothing more than a psychic vision of Ava struggling with a hooded figure before the fall. But Cam didn’t dispute it. Maybe deep down, she already suspected the truth.

  All this media attention over the serial killer is a golden opportunity to shed light on Ava’s case. Whoever took her life might still be out there. Someone, somewhere, might know something.

  The Hastings agreed to all thes
e interviews with the stipulation that Ava would be prominently featured—and that Tess would not.

  The press would have a field day if they knew that the rescued girl’s mother—like Lucinda—is a clairvoyant. But Cam’s abilities are under wraps, and it was officially Lucinda’s ESP that led the police to the killer. Only Lucinda, Mike, and Randy are aware that Cam was having visions of her daughter’s abduction long before it became a frightening reality.

  Lucinda returns the compact to her bag, a vintage Hermès Kelly—named after the late princess of Monaco who, like Lucinda herself, was a product of Philadelphia’s Main Line.

  First Hollywood, then a real-life Prince Charming, whisked Grace Kelly away from all that. Granted, her fairy-tale ending had a fatal postscript. But at least the dashing Rainier claimed her as his royal bride.

  Not so for Lucinda Sloan. Her would-be prince married Carla Karnecki, the proverbial truck stop waitress with a heart of gold.

  She was already Randy’s live-in fiancée back when Lucinda met him.

  Yet Lucinda felt an instant tug of attraction the moment they met and sensed that it was mutual, despite his being engaged.

  Of course she fought it. So did he.

  But working together day after day, night after night, under the most exhausting, heart-wrenching of circumstances, their emotions on edge…. Maybe it was inevitable that Lucinda and Randy would wind up in each other’s arms sooner or later.

  It only happened a few times, and they both hated themselves for it.

  Meanwhile, an oblivious Carla was blissfully planning the wedding, dutifully saving her tips for her dream house, and caring for her dying mother, Zelda.

  Randy wanted to break the engagement. Lucinda told him not to do it, not for her sake. She never really understood why she reacted that way, and she later regretted it, thinking of what might have been.