Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Neal, it’s broad daylight, and I’m surrounded by people. Oh, and P.S., a lot of them are cops. What can possibly happen to me?”

  “Just be careful.”

  “Why? Did something else happen?”

  There was a telltale pause.

  “I’m on my way. I’ll talk to you when I get there.”

  “Did you remember to get my BlackBerry charger?”

  “Got it,” he said, and hung up before she could ask him anything else.

  Standing in Lucinda’s living room, Neal gazes out the window at the squad cars parked on the street below, wondering if Carla Barakat’s killer can see them too.

  Is he lurking somewhere nearby, keeping an eye on Lucinda’s place, waiting to strike again?

  Detective Lenny Rozyczka—Roz, as he’s known around the station—finishes yet another cell phone conversation, hangs up, and walks back over to Neal.

  “Sorry about all the interruptions. Crazy day.”

  “What’s going on?” Neal asks, not really caring.

  “They think they might have an ID on that John Doe from this morning.”

  “That’s good.” Neal had heard about the case earlier: an older male had been found over on South 18th Street, shot once through the head, apparent robbery victim. His wallet was, of course, missing.

  “Yeah. We’ve got a worried wife, Mary Lou Armano, who called to report her husband missing. His name’s Joe. He works as a bartender at a club over by Rittenhouse Square. Never came home last night. His description fits Doe: gray hair, brown eyes, medium build, bit of a gut.”

  It fits a lot of men, including Roz himself, Neal can’t help thinking.

  “Good,” he says again. “About this…” He sweeps a hand toward Lucinda’s bathroom down the hall, where a couple of officers are dusting for prints.

  “I’ll have them e-mail the photos right out to you, and you can access them when you get out to the island.”

  “What about—”

  “I’ll go get it. Hang on.”

  He steps away to talk to one of the investigators in the next room.

  Neal thinks about Frank Santiago, who’s leading the case in Beach Haven. He’s a good investigator. One of the best cops to come out of Neal’s class at the police academy all those years ago.

  Not exactly a friend, though. Their personalities didn’t mesh. Frank was arrogant, Neal thought. Swagger didn’t appeal to him.

  One stormy January night after class, Frank’s car wouldn’t start. Neal tried to give him a jump, but that didn’t work. He wound up driving Frank all the way home to Reading—over an hour in the opposite direction, but it took two because of the weather, and three back.

  “I owe you one,” Frank told Neal the next day. “I won’t forget it.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t let you.”

  He didn’t.

  Frank left Philadelphia soon after, landing in Atlantic City homicide. Neal kept track of him. After years in the gritty trenches, Frank is winding down his career in Beach Haven.

  Neal finally called in the favor a few years ago.

  “Are we even?” Frank asked, when the deal was done.

  “Hell, no. I’d say you owe me an even bigger favor now.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You just got yourself one hell of a good cop.”

  Randy Barakat.

  Neal hated to lose him, but he knew it was best that he move on, knew he’d better do it in a place that was far removed from Philadelphia—and Lucinda.

  “Here you go.” Roz is back. He hands over the manila envelope containing a photocopy of the sheet of paper found on Neal’s kitchen table. They’re keeping the original here, of course, as evidence.

  “Thanks, Roz. Keep me posted, will you?”

  “You bet. Drive safe.”

  Neal nods and heads out the door.

  The streetlights are flicking on when Lucinda sees the retired couple from down the street to the door, followed closely by a trio of guys from Randy’s summer softball league, then the white-collared priest from the local church.

  Finally shutting the door behind her, she realizes they’ve reached a welcome lull. The house is quiet at last. Probably not for long, though.

  In the kitchen, she rinses the last acrid bit of coffee from the bottom of the carafe and is refilling it, thinking again about Carla’s ring, when Randy comes up beside her.

  “How are you holding up?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “You look exhausted.”

  “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “Not fine.”

  “I know.” She turns off the tap. “Do you want to go lie down or something? If anyone shows up, I’ll tell them—”

  “No. Just—sit down. I want to talk to you.”

  Heart pounding, she sits. So does he.

  Something is up. Paranoia seeps in.

  Could he possibly be questioning her involvement in what happened here yesterday?

  Or is he going to acknowledge that he lied about speaking to Carla after she’d been killed?

  Unwilling to let him see her concern, Lucinda rests her chin in her hand and waits.

  Not for long, though. “There’s something you should know.”

  She nods.

  Randy curses as the doorbell rings yet again.

  “Do you want me to get that?” she asks, starting to push her chair back.

  “No.” He grasps her wrist. “Dammit. I want to tell you this.”

  “Okay. Tell me.”

  “Carla and I…”

  The doorbell again.

  Detective Lambert sticks his head in. “Want me to get it?”

  “I guess you have to,” Randy says tersely, eyes focused on Lucinda. “See if you can get rid of whoever it is, Dan.”

  Lambert nods, disappears.

  Fixated on Randy’s face, Lucinda coaxes softly, “Go ahead. I’m listening.”

  “Carla and I…We’ve been separated for a while. I moved out last September.”

  Chapter Eight

  Located on almost four hundred acres of picturesque woodland at the United States Marine Corps base forty miles southwest of Washington, D.C., the F.B.I. Academy complex looks for all the world like a secluded college campus.

  As Vic strides through the glass corridors connecting the buildings, he takes it as a positive sign that nothing has changed during his nearly eighteen-month absence. It’s almost as if he never left—aside from the fact that he can no longer come and go with a flash of official ID.

  For a good portion of Vic’s career, the Behavioral Science Unit was located in the bowels of the Academy. But they’ve since moved up in the world. By the time he left, Vic had a relatively spacious window office.

  He passes its closed door on the way to his destination, and feels only a mild pang of regret-tinged nostalgia. He has a feeling it would probably be much more pronounced were he still sitting around watching television day in and day out.

  But writing the book has captivated him in a way his FBI work once did. Apparently, the media attention has captivated the unsub as well.

  A secretary takes his coat, then ushers him into the meeting he scheduled yesterday morning, immediately after opening the mail.

  “Good to see you again, Vic.” Supervisory Special Agent Annabelle Wyatt stands and shakes his hand across her file-stacked desk. Funny—all those years he worked with her, Vic never noticed how much Annabelle reminds him of a much thinner Oprah, with the same dark beauty, the same authoritative demeanor.

  That’s because you’d never seen an episode of “Oprah” when you were working here. You had other things to do.

  As he does now.

  “I hear you’re keeping busy with your book,” Annabelle tells him, and he can’t tell by her tone whether she approves or disapproves of the project.

  He does know that it’s either one or the other, though. If he learned anything about Annabelle Wyatt when they were colleagues, it’s that she
has a strong opinion about everything, though she’ll usually keep it to herself.

  “I was told you had something to show me, Vic. Highly sensitive evidence.”

  “Yes.” He reaches into the pocket of his suit coat and removes the envelope, now encased in a plastic bag.

  She immediately puts on a pair of gloves, opens the envelope, removes the paper, and unfolds it.

  “The Night Watchman,” Annabelle says without hesitation. “Where did you get this?”

  “Yesterday’s mail.”

  “Who have you told?”

  “My wife. And you.”

  “Thank you, Vic. We’ll get right on it.”

  “Either he just committed a murder, or he’s about to. We need to start cross-referencing every homicide case we can find across the country that has a remotely similar M.O. to the Night Watchman cases we have on file. Check all the murders that happened when the moon was full.”

  Annabelle gives him a long, hard look. “We may do that, Vic.” Her emphasis on the first word is unmistakable, as it is on the next. “You’re retired now, remember? Go home and enjoy it.”

  He had anticipated her response, of course.

  Once you’re gone, you’re gone.

  It isn’t unheard of for the FBI to reach out to a retired agent to assist on a cold case, but that would be a matter of don’t call us, we’ll call you.

  Still, it stings just a little.

  “I’ve been up to my eyeballs in research on this guy for months now,” he reminds Annabelle. “If you need me to—”

  “We’ll call. Thanks, Vic.”

  This isn’t the first time Lucinda has been inside this small, windowless room in the Long Beach Township Police Headquarters.

  Six months later, it all comes rushing back to her.

  Tess Hastings had just gone missing, and Lucinda was here to tell the authorities about a vision she’d had—a vision she was certain involved Tess being thrown from a Manhattan rooftop.

  Of course it turned out to have been Ava, the look-alike aunt who had died decades before Tess was born.

  Tess was far from safe that night as Lucinda and Randy and the other detectives sat strategizing in this room. But she survived.

  Tonight, as on that August night, the mood is somber; yet there is no sense of urgency as they all take their seats around the big table.

  Like last time, files and papers and coffee cups litter the room.

  Unlike last time, Neal Bullard is present, waiting for them there when they arrive.

  He drove straight here when he got into town, then called Randy’s house and asked that the two of them meet him at headquarters. Lucinda welcomed the interruption, still reeling from Randy’s announcement that his marriage had been over for months now.

  Right after Randy dropped the bombshell, Lambert escorted Randy’s sister Julie into the kitchen. She was sobbing, and after a few minutes, Lucinda could tell that her emotions were setting Randy’s even more on edge. He left the room, and Lucinda did her best to calm Julie, who stayed for a good hour, pretty much crying inconsolably the whole time.

  By the time his sister left to go pick up their parents at the airport in Newark, the moment between Randy and Lucinda had passed.

  Just as well. She isn’t sure how to feel about what Randy told her.

  Even if she’d known long before now, she would hardly have been jumping for joy. The end of a marriage is no cause for celebration, regardless of the implications it might have had given Lucinda’s feelings for Randy.

  Now, with Carla’s death, she can’t relate to it on a personal level at all.

  No wonder the house felt so barren. No wonder she sensed an awkwardness when all those people offered Randy their condolences. No wonder they were intrigued by Lucinda’s presence.

  Knowing he had left Carla, they must have been suspicious about the nature of his relationship with Lucinda. They probably thought her being there was inappropriate.

  Who knows? Small town gossip travels fast. Maybe the locals somehow even knew that she and Randy were once more than friends.

  But that’s all we are now.

  The lead investigator, Frank Santiago, made it clear that she and Neal are in this meeting because they’re directly involved in the case. But he emphasized that they won’t be privy to the ongoing investigation. Not on this end, anyway.

  “How are you holding up?” someone asks Randy as they gather around the table.

  “I’m okay. Better, now that the shock is wearing off.”

  They all nod, and Lucinda wonders what they’re thinking.

  Does the fact that Randy and Carla were separated make the loss any easier for him to bear?

  Maybe.

  Already, he wasn’t planning on spending the rest of his life with Carla, so the impact on his day-to-day life will be lessened.

  Even so, her death is no less tragic within its own context. Her life was brutally taken.

  “I want you to know we’re going to put every resource we have into solving this crime.” Santiago, a tall, lean man with an aquiline nose and sharp-edged black goatee, leans forward, pressing his palms authoritatively on the table. “We’re going to get the son of a bitch who did this, Randy. I promise you.”

  The other law officers nod in mute agreement as Santiago breaks off to cough, wheezing with the effort.

  “Sorry,” he says, “I’ve had pneumonia this winter.”

  He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket to cover his mouth, and his eyes collide with Lucinda’s. Seized by the sudden impression that he isn’t well, and that it’s more complicated than pneumonia, she feels a flash of empathy for the man.

  Cancer, she realizes. Poor Frank. Does he even know?

  Looking away from her, he makes brief introductions of those seated around the table. When he reaches Lucinda, he says, “I’m sure some of you remember Lucinda Sloan, the psychic investigator who worked with our team last summer on the Pearson case.”

  “So you’re going to be working on this case, too?” one of the young uniforms asks.

  “If I’m needed.” Lucinda’s voice is thin, starting to rasp a little. That always happens to her when she’s tired. If she’s not careful, it’ll go into full blown laryngitis.

  She can feel Santiago’s black-eyed gaze on her, and doesn’t dare meet it.

  Last summer, when he was on the periphery of the Pearson and Hastings cases, she always sensed a disapproving vibe coming her way. It didn’t really bother her then—she’s used to territorial, skeptical, even chauvinistic investigators.

  She tries not to let it bother her now, either.

  Santiago, after another brief coughing bout, begins by telling them all what Lucinda had already guessed: the medical examiner had estimated that Carla had been dead for several days when she was found.

  “Lambert said you’re going to ID her, Randy.”

  “Yes.”

  Santiago peers at him with concern. “Do you want to have someone else do it?”

  “No.” Randy swallows hard. “I can do it.”

  “Okay. Lambert, drive him over to the morgue after this.”

  Santiago lays two sheets of paper side by side for everyone to see.

  “One of these was found by Ms. Sloan and Detective Bullard on Detective Bullard’s kitchen table Monday night. The other was bagged with one of the newspapers lying at the foot of the driveway, Randy. I realize the neighborhood is quiet at this time of year, but I’m still surprised that no one at least checked to make sure Carla was okay with all those papers piling up.”

  “But Carla never picked up the paper,” Randy responds. “I kept meaning to stop the subscription, since I was the one who paid for it and I was the only one who ever read it. She lets them pile up out there for days. She walks right by them to get into her car. If I didn’t stop by and get them, she’d dump them when she put out the cans on trash day.”

  Wheezing a little, Santiago rubs his beard. “Do these numbers mean anything to you?” />
  Randy shakes his head.

  “Anyone else?”

  Silence.

  Santiago looks pointedly at Neal, who clears his throat and turns to Lucinda.

  She feels her body instinctively clench, going into defensive mode.

  “I wanted to show you this first, privately,” Neal says, “but I didn’t get the chance.”

  “Show me what?” Her heart is pounding.

  He slides a blown-up photograph toward her. Everyone leans in to look.

  The picture was snapped looking into a mirror. Neal’s torso is visible in one corner, topped by a circle of flashbulb glare.

  The mirror is gilt-framed.

  Scrawled on the glass, in what looks like blood, are garish numerals:

  87.7

  41.9

  “This,” Neal announces to the room as renewed dread screeches through her mind, “is Lucinda’s bathroom mirror. I found it earlier when I stopped by her apartment back in Philadelphia.”

  “Is that…blood?” one of the officers asks.

  “Red lipstick.”

  Lucinda looks up just in time to see a look pass between Lambert and Van Aken, seated directly across from her. Shifting her gaze to Santiago, she notes that he’s shaking his head a little at Lambert and Van Aken, as if to warn them not to say anything.

  Anything…like what?

  She checks Randy’s reaction. He glances from the photo to Lucinda herself, wearing an expectant expression.

  “It wasn’t there when I left yesterday morning,” she manages to say—needlessly. “Someone must have gotten in again while I was gone.”

  “For what it’s worth, Cin,” Neal says, “there was no indication that someone broke in. Who’s had access to your keys?”

  “Besides you, you mean?” she quips humorlessly, knowing what Neal’s thinking.

  It could have been anyone, over time, because she had never changed the locks. A past tenant, a friend of a past tenant, an acquaintance of the landlord, one of the electricians or plumbers who came and went during the upgrades…

  It could have been Jimmy, too. He could have slipped her keys out of her bag and made a copy. He’s not the only one—but he’s certainly had ample opportunity.