Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

“Too much homework.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sure you’re learning some great stuff.”

  “Not really.”

  “Here you go, Tess.” Cam hands her a packet of index cards.

  “Thanks.”

  She and Lucinda watch Tess slouch away.

  “What’s going on with her?” Lucinda asks as Cam settles herself on the couch again.

  “She’s been really depressed lately. Not eating, not sleeping, her grades are down….”

  “Does it have something to do with what happened last summer?”

  “No, nothing like that. Her boyfriend broke up with her.”

  “Wow. It looks like she’s taking it pretty hard.”

  “You have no idea.” Cam shakes her head. “Nothing Mike or I say or do seems to help. I’m really getting worried. All she does is sit in her room and cry. If it doesn’t get better soon, I’m going to take her to see someone again.”

  “You mean back to the shrink? Isn’t that a little extreme for a broken heart?”

  “I don’t know…. I’m worried.”

  It isn’t that Cam thinks her daughter might be suicidal. Not really.

  But if there’s any chance Tess is going through something more than ordinary breakup depression, Cam needs to know.

  And if suicidal tendencies run in families, Cam needs to know whether Ava really did take her own life when she was just a few years older than Tess.

  “Let’s get back to this geology professor thing,” she tells Lucinda.

  “Right. The first thing we need to do is find this Bill Zubin. And when we do—”

  “I already did.”

  “You found him? Where?”

  Handing Lucinda a couple of sheets of paper, Cam tells her, “I’ve been searching for him online ever since I called you earlier, and I printed all this off the Internet right before you got here.”

  She watches Lucinda scan the first piece, an article about Dr. William James Zubin, retired from the NYU faculty back in 1999, conducting geological research in a remote part of Antarctica.

  “He’s in Antarctica?” Lucinda looks up, shaking her head. “Antarctica is one hell of an alibi, Cam.”

  “He wasn’t there when my sister was killed, he was—”

  “No, I meant for Jaime Dobiak, and Carla.”

  Oh. Right.

  Cam hasn’t lost sight of the reality that whoever killed her sister might also be responsible for the rash of recent murders. But for her, the mission is a personal one—made all the more meaningful after seeing Tess spiral into a deep depression these last few weeks.

  “But the article is old,” Cam points out. “I think he’s back in New York. Look at the next page. It was just a few weeks ago.”

  “He gave a talk at the Museum of Natural History.”

  “Yes, and check out what I found in the Manhattan white pages.”

  Lucinda flips to the last sheet of paper and looks over the directory listing for W.J. Zubin, on East Seventh Street.

  “Are you sure this is him?”

  “Probably. It’s in the Village near NYU, and anyway, how many W.J. Zubins can there be in New York?”

  “It’s a big city, but…I bet you’re right. Who have you told about this?”

  “Just Mike.” He’s up in the master bedroom, watching the Yankees game and keeping an eye on Grace.

  “What does he think?”

  “He thinks I should turn the whole thing over to the police and forget about it. I’ve been trying to tell him all along that the police don’t seem to care, and that if we don’t look into this, nobody else will.”

  “You’re right about that. Okay, let’s write down what we know about him from reading Ava’s letters.” Lucinda opens her bag and pulls out a notebook and pen.

  She begins to scribble down the basics.

  “We know that Ava was starting to feel like he was using her,” Cam contributes. “We know she told at least one person—Bernice—about what was going on.”

  “Right, and she might have told her friends at school, too.”

  “I don’t think so. I heard from a couple of the closest ones last August, and no one mentioned it. The thing is, Bernice did say she thought Ava had ended the affair before she died—but it doesn’t say anything about that in the letter. She must have told her that over the phone.”

  “All it says in the last letter is that she was thinking about taking Bernice’s advice and talking to someone in the school counseling office about it.”

  “Maybe she told the professor the same thing,” Cam suggests, “and maybe he got worried that she was going to get him into trouble with his wife, or—I don’t know, blackmail him? Maybe he realized he’d lose his job if it got out, so he…”

  “Threw her off a rooftop?” Lucinda looks up from her notes, and they stare at each other for a long moment.

  “Stranger things have happened,” Cam tells her.

  “What about the other girls? Sandra Wubner and Elizabeth Johnson?”

  “As far as I can tell, Zubin wasn’t ever on the faculty at Buff State. And I still haven’t been able to track down any more information about Elizabeth.”

  Lucinda shakes her head. “I wish I remembered more than just those two names from the scrapbook.”

  “I’ve been trying to research newspaper archives from that era to find other young female suicide victims, but it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. But at least I found Zubin.”

  “You know what? I was planning to go to the city tomorrow anyway to visit a friend of mine. Before I do that, I’ll go over to that address and look him up.”

  “What will you do if you find him?”

  “I’ll see what my instincts tell me about him, and we’ll take it from there.”

  She paces across the living room of her apartment as the phone rings in her ear, hoping he’ll pick up.

  Yet when he does—with a wary “Hello?”—she immediately wishes she hadn’t called. He’s never going to admit to anything.

  “Ethan, it’s Danielle Hendry.”

  “I know.”

  “I need you to stop, Ethan.”

  There’s a moment of silence. “Stop what?”

  “You know. The phone calls, the tailing me in your car, and now leaving me this crazy kids’ book that makes no sense whatso—”

  “What?!”

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Oh, come on,” she says impatiently. “You know.”

  Don’t you?

  Fresh doubt slithers into Danielle’s mind.

  “I’m talking about the package you left on my doorstep. It was wrapped in brown paper, and my name was written on it in some kind of red greasepaint, and—”

  “Danielle, I don’t know what’s going on with you,” Ethan says, “but whatever it is, I promise you that I have nothing to do with it.”

  “You’re saying you haven’t been calling me and hanging up? Following me?”

  “No! Why would I do that?”

  “You tell me.”

  There’s a pause. When he speaks again, his voice is kind—which is somehow more insulting than if he were sarcastic or even irritated.

  “We only went out a couple of times. You really need to move on, Danielle. I have.”

  “Really? Because it doesn’t seem that way to me!”

  Even as she lashes out at him, she can hear an echo of her ex-husband, Ron, saying in disgust, “Oh, here we go. For Pete’s sake, Danielle, don’t you ever get tired of making a scene?”

  Yes, she got tired of it. That’s why they’re divorced.

  But Ethan isn’t Ron, and she’s not going to make a scene.

  “You know what?” she says abruptly. “I have to go. Just forget I called.”

  “Believe me, I will.”

  Danielle disconnects the call, curses, and tosses the phone toward the couch across the room. She misses, and it lands on the floor. She leaves it there
.

  Walking back into the kitchen, where she opened the package she found on the doorstep, she wonders if maybe Ethan didn’t leave it. Maybe it’s some kind of joke, played by one of the neighbors, like the overgrown frat boy type a few doors down.

  But if it’s a joke, I don’t get it.

  Or maybe there was an invitation tucked into the pages of the book—like, to a baby shower or kiddie party or something. There are a lot of young families in the townhouse community.

  She picks up the book and turns it so that the pages flutter face down as she holds the covers.

  Nothing falls out.

  Maybe there’s a message written inside. She checked before, but not all the way through.

  With a sigh, she begins reading.

  Goodnight, Moon…

  Vic’s progress on the manuscript, which almost seemed to write itself for the first few months he worked on it, has all but ground to a screeching halt.

  In recent weeks, he’s plodded his way through to the final chapter…three times.

  He was set to begin a fourth try this evening after dinner, with Kitty’s encouragement.

  “You’ll get it right,” she said, like she still believes in him.

  But he’s not so sure he will, and he’s not so sure she should.

  He’s been sitting at the computer for a good six hours already, but he isn’t working on the book, because no matter how he approaches the damned thing, it doesn’t feel finished.

  That’s because it isn’t.

  There’s only one way to create a satisfying final chapter: by apprehending the Night Watchman after all these years.

  Vic is certain the communication he received last month was from the elusive serial killer—and that Jaime Dobiak is one in a new crop of victims.

  But if the FBI is on board with that theory, they’re not admitting it to Vic—and they haven’t let on to the press, either.

  Every day, Vic scours the Internet looking for new murders, new clues, to no avail.

  It seems as if the killer has gone underground again.

  But Vic’s profile tells him he won’t stay there for long this time.

  The fact that he’s made direct contact tells Vic he’s far more daring these days. He won’t be able to stay silent—or inactive—for very long.

  Serial killers typically don’t just stop.

  They keep killing until they themselves die or are caught or taken into custody for an unrelated crime.

  That, Vic suspects, might be the key.

  He’s been combing newspaper archives for every arrest that took place in the metropolitan northeastern corridor from D.C. to Boston at the end of 1969 and beginning of 1970, during the weeks following the murder of Judy Steinberg, the Night Watchman’s last known victim.

  Not misdemeanor arrests, but major crimes that would have brought an extended prison sentence.

  He’d be willing to bet that the unsub might be found somewhere among them, though weeding through the data is a time-consuming, painstaking process. Once he’s identified suspects who became incarcerated in the late 1960s, he’ll check prison records to narrow the field to those who were recently released.

  And by then, we’ll all be dead of old age.

  Hearing an e-mail click in, he removes his fingers from the keyboard and laces them at the nape of his neck, stretching.

  At this late hour, it’s probably just an advertisement, or spam. Still, he welcomes the intrusion, any excuse to take a break—or maybe even call it a night.

  The e-mail is from an unfamiliar address, one that sets Vic’s heart pounding.

  The screen name is nightwatchman.

  That doesn’t mean it’s from him, he reminds himself. The whole world knows you’re writing a book about the guy.

  But when Vic opens the e-mail, he suspects this might be the real thing.

  Full moon on the rise.

  That’s all.

  Full moon—as if Vic didn’t know.

  He’s been dreading it for a month.

  With good reason, by the looks of this e-mail.

  But there’s still time.

  The full moon isn’t until tomorrow.

  For some reason, Lucinda had expected that she might sleep better tonight, away from home.

  But it’s three in the morning, and she’s lying in the Hastingses’ guest room, still wide awake, staring at the pattern in the stucco ceiling.

  She can’t stop thinking—not about Ava Neary or Jaime Dobiak or Carla Barakat—but about Randy.

  About how she all but hung up on him earlier, just because she couldn’t deal with the fact that he was concerned about her.

  Maybe that’s not such a bad thing, having someone in your life who cares. Maybe it’s time for her to stop—

  She hears a bedroom door open and close and footsteps tiptoe down the hall.

  It’s probably Cam, going to check on the baby.

  But the footsteps move past the nursery, past the bathroom, too, creaking down the stairs.

  Lucinda gets out of bed, pulls her Princeton sweatshirt over her head to ward off the wee-hour chill, and opens the door. Peering out into the hall, she sees that all the bedroom doors are closed. A faint glow of light is coming from somewhere downstairs.

  Not daring to turn on a light, she hurriedly makes her way through the shadows and descends the stairs.

  On the first floor, she follows the source of the glow to the kitchen, expecting to find Cam there.

  But it’s Tess who sits at the table, in a long-sleeved thermal T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms, stirring something in a mug.

  She looks up, startled, when Lucinda quietly utters her name.

  “Oh…hi.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Yeah, I just couldn’t sleep.” Tess shrugs. “I thought maybe some tea would be good. It’s chamomile. Want some?”

  “I’d rather have chocolate. Do you think your mother has any stashed away?”

  “Top shelf in the pantry, behind the cereal boxes.”

  Lucinda finds a bag of miniature Kit Kat bars. “Perfect. Want some?”

  Tess hesitates.

  “Chocolate helps, Tess.”

  “Helps what?”

  “Everything. Catch.” Lucinda tosses her a candy bar, grabs a couple more, puts the bag away, and joins her at the table.

  “Did my mother tell you what happened to me?”

  “You mean the breakup?”

  “He totally dumped me.”

  “She told me. I’m sorry. It’s hard.”

  “You have no idea.” Tess glumly takes a bite of chocolate.

  Lucinda debates the wisdom of telling her that she does, indeed, have some idea. That she’s been through her share of teenaged breakups.

  But, thinking back, she realizes that she never was the one who got dumped. She always got herself out before that could happen.

  Including with Randy, last time.

  If she hadn’t been so quick to pull back, if she had let him break his engagement for her sake, they’d have been together all these years.

  Or not.

  You weren’t ready for that back then. You weren’t ready to take a chance. And even if you had been, you probably would have lost him anyway, and then where would you be?

  Exactly where I am now.

  “What?” Tess asks.

  She blinks. “Did I say something?”

  “No, but you have this look on your face like…I don’t know, like you just remembered something.”

  No. It’s more that she just realized something.

  She shrugs. “Want another Kit Kat?”

  “I guess, but it’s not really helping.”

  “I’m sorry. Give it time.”

  “I wish I could be like you,” Tess says abruptly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know—a psychic. My mom told me that’s what you do.”

  Clearly, Cam didn’t tell her daughter that she herself is similarly gifted. />
  “Why do you wish you were a psychic, Tess?”

  “Because I would have known right from the start that I was going to get dumped, and I would have protected myself.”

  “How?”

  “By not falling in love.”

  “But then you would have missed out.”

  “Yeah, on getting dumped.”

  “No. On falling in love.”

  “So? Better safe than sorry.”

  “Sometimes,” Lucinda tells her, “you can be safe and sorry.”

  Unlike Lucinda Sloan, Danielle Hendry doesn’t sleep with the lights on.

  Her bedroom is pitch black, other than the glowing digits of the clock on the nightstand.

  Luckily, he has a pen light attached to the key ring where he keeps her duplicate key—along with Lucinda Sloan’s, Carla Barakat’s, and Jaime Dobiak’s. Comes in handy for these late-night missions.

  He moves stealthily to the bed and shines the light on her.

  She’s huddled beneath the quilt, snoring softly; blond hair strewn across the pillow is all that’s visible of her.

  He arcs the beam over to the bedside clock.

  Reaching out with a gloved finger, he turns off the alarm.

  “Sleep tight,” he barely whispers, and leaves her to prowl back down the stairs and through the first floor of the townhouse, having familiarized himself with the layout on earlier visits.

  He was struck, each time, by how bland the place is, compared to Lucinda Sloan’s apartment. White walls, beige carpet, stock cabinets, generic-looking furniture.

  He had assumed, when he first spotted Danielle at a light rail stop back in March, that her home would have as much pizzazz as she does; she’s a flashy blonde, heels and hose and hair spray every time he’s caught sight of her. And, of course, red lipstick.

  Just like Scarlet.

  Coming here tonight wasn’t originally on his agenda, but then the brainstorm struck and he knew what he had to do. It was perfect.

  He creeps into the kitchen and shines his pen light along the white laminate countertop between the microwave and the ceramic crock full of cooking utensils she doesn’t bother to use, existing mainly on yogurt and Lean Cuisines, as far as he can tell.

  Aha. Her BlackBerry is there, attached to a charger she leaves plugged into the outlet, just as it is every night.

  Like Lucinda, Danielle is a creature of habit. Only he doesn’t find most of hers nearly as captivating.