Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Where to?”

  She gives the driver the address of the midtown garage where she parked her car.

  “The moon was full on March twentieth,” Neal says in her ear, “and on February twenty-first.”

  It was. She knew it was.

  Moonlight Sonata.

  Moonstruck.

  Goosebumps creep over her skin.

  “Do you think this is the Night Watchman again?” she asks Neal.

  “Could be. That, or a copycat. It was all over the press that the guy killed at night, during a full moon.”

  “What about the wrist watches? Or the red lipstick—see if you can find anything about the Night Watchman…using it to write messages.”

  She almost slipped about the victims being found with red lipstick smeared on their lips.

  But Reingold told her that it was classified information, and true to her word, she hasn’t told a soul.

  “I’m looking,” Neal tells her, as she watches buildings and cars and people flash by out the window of the cab.

  Lucinda herself has already searched the Internet repeatedly, looking for clues to past crimes with links to red lipstick or watches. She found nothing.

  Surely if the notorious Night Watchman had a lipstick fetish or left his victims with watches that were stopped at the time they died, she’d have found it.

  “You still there, Cin?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Nothing about red lipstick, but I got a bunch of hits about an ex FBI agent who’s writing a book on the case. His name’s Vic Shattuck.”

  “Can you find out how I can get in touch with him, please, Neal? But first, I need to know my options for getting to Denver.”

  “What? When are you going to Denver?”

  “Now.”

  Blondie’s out cold, lying in the back of the van with BOB’S CARPET CLEANING emblazoned on the side of it.

  He’d found it parked on a relatively secluded neighborhood driveway one morning a while back, and had been keeping an eye on it, noticing that no one ever seemed to use it during the day. The owner, who lives alone, works nine to five somewhere else, and uses the van for his part-time business at night and on the weekends.

  He figured no one would notice if he borrowed it for a little while. Nor would anyone think twice if they spotted a carpet cleaning van parked right in front of her townhouse with the doors wide open.

  Sure, there was a ten, maybe fifteen second window when he did risk being discovered as he approached Danielle Hendry at her front door, delivered his strategically placed blow to her skull, and tossed her into the van.

  In broad daylight, anyone could have seen.

  Yes, and it was all the more thrilling for him to drive away, confident that no one had.

  He hadn’t been sure he was going to like doing it this way—going to all the trouble of transporting her away from home. But once he decided to let his friends back east know where to look for him, he knew he had to shake things up a little.

  They’ll be expecting him to do what he had always done.

  They have no idea that he’s much too smart to be that predictable at this stage of the game.

  He takes a detour to the commuter lot where he parked his own car earlier, in convenient walking distance to the van owner’s driveway. At this time of morning, the lot is full, and there isn’t a soul to catch a glimpse of him transferring his human cargo from the back of the van to the trunk of his car.

  She’s dead weight, and he checks her pulse below her ear to make sure that she isn’t dead.

  No. Thank goodness. That wouldn’t be any fun at all.

  For the first time today, he gets a good look at her face and notes that she isn’t wearing lipstick.

  What a shame.

  “I’ll fix that for you soon, I promise,” he croons, before closing the trunk and leaving her there while he returns the van, knowing Bob will never be the wiser.

  “Frank, my name is Mary,” the heavy-set, jolly-looking woman on his doorstep announces. “It’s good to meet you.”

  He shakes her hand, but says nothing.

  What is there to say?

  It’s not good to meet her.

  It’s a nightmare to meet her, the woman sent by the hospice to help him die.

  They have other names for it—palliative care is one—but that’s what it comes down to. Why sugarcoat the truth?

  “Come on in.” He leads the way into the condo, conscious of his shuffling footsteps but unable to do anything about it.

  He tried to clean up the place this afternoon, in anticipation of his first visitor in months. But he was too exhausted to do much more than load the dishwasher and stack the newspapers on one end of the coffee table.

  “Do you want to be in the living room? Or at the kitchen table?”

  “Wherever you’re most comfortable, Frank.”

  Comfortable? Ha.

  Where he’s most comfortable is in his office down at the police station. But he hasn’t been there in a couple of weeks now, and this morning he was forced to announce that this is no temporary medical leave of absence. That he’s never going back.

  He sent the e-mail, signed off the computer, and has no intention of going back on. At least not anytime soon. He can’t bear the inevitable awkwardness, or, far worse, the pity.

  “We can sit in the living room,” he decides, and asks, just to show her that he’s no invalid—yet, anyway—“Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Double Grey Goose martini straight up, no olive.”

  Frank’s eyes widen.

  Mary laughs a booming laugh and jabs him with a chubby index finger. “Gotcha.”

  “Oh—good one.” He manages a smile.

  To his surprise, Mary’s little joke actually makes him feel better—unlike the overt cheer of the MRI nurse, whom he had the displeasure of seeing again the other day.

  But Mary isn’t here to kid around, he knows. She’s here to talk to him about what lies ahead. To discuss a DNR and getting his financial affairs in order and appointing a health care proxy—perhaps the trickiest part of the process, as Frank has yet to tell his family what’s going on.

  It just doesn’t seem appropriate to break the news over the phone.

  He supposes he’ll have to, since the kids have no plans to visit any time soon. He doesn’t intend to be a burden on them, though. On anyone.

  That’s why he agreed to hospice care, at Dr. Rubin’s urging.

  At yesterday’s appointment, he again pressed the oncologist to tell him how much time he has left. Again, the doctor punted. All he would say was that, statistically speaking, Frank’s odds of being here six months from now are about fifty-fifty.

  Numbers.

  Again.

  Frank’s thoughts automatically flip to the murder case he turned over to Dan Lambert.

  The FBI has been brought in, under the assumption that Carla Barakat’s death was the work of a serial killer.

  Just as Neal Bullard suspected in the first place.

  Frank supposes he owes him a phone call, one of these days. Just to clear the air. Settle affairs, as it were.

  But not today.

  “Well,” Mary says, “shall we get started?”

  It’s been a bad morning.

  It has been since everyone left, anyway: Mike and Tess headed for work and school; Lucinda on her way to Manhattan not long after.

  Left alone in the house with the baby, Cam had called her father to check in.

  Sometimes when she calls him, he’s surprisingly lucid.

  Not today.

  She couldn’t understand what he was saying, and she’s pretty sure it was mutual. When she promised to come visit him in a day or two, he said that would be good—then asked who she was.

  After hanging up the phone, she did her best to distract herself with housework, only to be interrupted by a premonition.

  She hasn’t had one in a while.

  The vision involved a stranger
, as they almost always do: this time, a pretty girl in her late teens, maybe college-aged.

  But she looked as though she had stepped out of an era long past. Her brunette hair was done up in an old-fashioned style—like something out of “I Love Lucy.” She had on a vintage-looking dress with shoulder pads, and dark red lipstick.

  Terrible, bloody things happened to the girl in the vision.

  As Cam, shaken, wrote down all the details in one of her marble notebooks, she wondered whether it was a true premonition. Or had she seen something that happened decades ago? If so, why now?

  And why does she feel such an odd sense of connection to the girl? Has she seen her before, maybe?

  Whatever the case, the experience left her unsettled and drained, as such visions always do. She’s spent the last couple of hours absently tidying the house and playing with the baby, and is about to feed her when the phone rings.

  She recognizes the number: Lucinda, calling from her cell phone.

  Cam’s first thought is that she must already have news from NYU.

  Then she looks at her watch and realizes Lucinda would have gotten to Manhattan less than an hour ago. Not enough time for her to have tracked down Professor William Zubin—particularly if she’d used the parking pass Mike had given her for a midtown garage, and taken the subway down from there.

  Maybe she’s still on the road, having car trouble or something.

  Cam picks up the phone. “Lucinda, where are you?”

  “In the car. I’m on my way to the airport.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I got a text message a little while ago with the longitude and latitude coordinates for Denver. That’s where I’m going.”

  “But…who sent the message?”

  “Neal is getting the number traced. I guess it’s from him.”

  Cam doesn’t have to ask whom. “Lucinda, you’re crazy to go running out there. That’s what this guy wants.”

  “I know, and I’d be crazy not to go out there. This is a chance to catch him, Cam. I’ve got to do whatever I can. It’s better than idly sitting around here waiting for something horrible to happen to someone.”

  Cam thinks of the girl in the strange vintage clothing and hairstyle. “You’re right. It is better. Just be careful.”

  Vic is sitting in a café nursing his third cup of coffee when his cell phone rings.

  The call is from his editor in New York. Oh, geez. He doesn’t feel like dealing with book business now, when he’s here in the middle of…

  Well, nothing, really.

  What else have you got to do?

  “Hello?”

  “Victor, it’s Janine.”

  “Hi, Janine. What’s up?”

  “I just got a call from someone wanting to get in touch with you, and I didn’t want to give out your number.”

  “Thank you, that’s appreciated.” He lifts his coffee to his mouth and asks, before taking a sip, “Who was it?”

  “I wrote down her information in case you want to call her back. Her name is…Let’s see. Lucinda Sloan.”

  “Lucinda Sloan,” he repeats, wondering why that name rings a bell.

  “She said to tell you to please, please call her back. She said it’s about the Night Watchman.”

  Vic promptly lowers the coffee cup, digs a pen out of his jacket pocket. “What’s the number?”

  Janine gives it to him, and he jots it on a slightly rumpled napkin.

  “Oh, and she said that if you’re going to call her, you should do it right away, because she’s on her way to the airport to catch a plane.”

  “Thanks, Janine.” He all but hangs up on her.

  He dials the number written on the napkin, processing the name through his brain like he’s feeding data into a search engine.

  Lucinda Sloan…Lucinda Sloan…

  Definitely familiar, but he can’t figure out why.

  She picks up on the first ring, sounding breathless. “Yes? Hello? Hello?”

  “Ms. Sloan? This is Victor Shattuck.”

  “Thank you for calling me back. Listen, I’m in the car so if I lose you, I’ll call you back, okay?”

  “Okay. Do we know each other?”

  “No. I’m contacting you because I know you’re writing a book about the Night Watchman murders. I’m a detective and I’m working on a case now that has some similarities, and…Look, let me just cut to the chase, because I’m about to drive through the Midtown Tunnel.”

  Midtown Tunnel. So she’s in New York.

  Lucinda Sloan—detective—New York. Still no connection.

  “This guy has been contacting me.”

  “Which guy?” He holds his breath.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s the Night Watchman. He’s been in my apartment, and he was monitoring my computer, and he planted my DNA at the scene of a murder…. It’s a long story, and complicated, and we should talk. But I’m about to fly to Denver because I—”

  “Denver?” he cuts in. “Why are you flying to Denver?”

  “Because that’s where he is.”

  “That’s where I am.” Victor Shattuck feels as though he’s just gotten the biggest break in his FBI career—until it hits him that he doesn’t have one anymore. “When do you land?”

  “Five o’clock your time. I’ll call you when I get there. Here comes the tunnel. I’m about to lose you.”

  “Which airline?”

  “United,” he hears, and then the connection is broken.

  “So I talked to Victor Shattuck,” Lucinda tells Neal over the phone, as she strides toward the terminal from the parking lot. Long term—which pretty much sums up her level of optimism that she’ll be promptly winging her way back home, case closed.

  “Good. What did he say?”

  “That he’s in Denver.”

  “No.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “What is he doing there?”

  “Same thing I am, I’m sure. Did you get an address from that phone number that sent the text message?”

  “We’re working on it. It’s registered to a woman in Los Angeles.”

  “A woman?” she echoes. “In Los Angeles?”

  “Yes, a woman, in Los Angeles, but anyone could have used the phone to send a text message.”

  “So it was stolen?”

  “Not reported to be. Anyway, we’ll track her down and—”

  “What about the phone? Where is it now? Can you have the signal tracked?”

  “Working on that, too. Call me when you land. Have a safe flight, Cin.”

  “I will.”

  It’s not the flight she’s worried about.

  Regaining consciousness, Danielle smells exhaust and mildew. Her skull throbbing with pain, she tries to open her eyes, but somehow, can’t. Then she realizes that they are open, and it’s pitch black, and the bed is vibrating.

  No—she isn’t in her bed; she feels thin, rough carpet against the side of her face. Bewildered, she tries to make sense of it.

  Is she in a car? A moving car? The trunk of a moving car? But how…?

  It comes back to her slowly.

  She overslept….

  She was leaving for work….

  She walked outside, heard an unfamiliar voice, turned, and saw the van sitting just steps away from the door….

  And then…

  Nothing.

  This can’t be happening. Not to me.

  Please let it just be a dream.

  Oh, God. Oh, God. The horror of it swirls around her, settles over her like a clammy tarp.

  Someone knocked her out, abducted her. It isn’t a dream.

  It’s a nightmare.

  And she’s not going to wake up.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Lucinda?”

  Startled to hear someone call her name as she walks into the Denver airport terminal from the gate, she looks around for a familiar face.

  There isn’t one.

  For a split second, she wonders if it’s him—
lying in wait for her here, about to ambush her.

  In the middle of a crowded airport, surrounded by security and even uniformed cops?

  Not likely.

  Spotting an older, unfamiliar man waving at her, she approaches hesitantly, looking around to make sure there are plenty of big, strong guys in the vicinity.

  “Lucinda Sloan.”

  “Yes.”

  “Victor Shattuck.”

  Relieved, she shakes his hand. “You came out here to meet me?”

  “I had time to kill. No pun intended.”

  She can’t help but smile at his wry expression.

  “How did you know it was me?” she asks him.

  “Like I said, I had time to kill. I looked you up on the Internet. You have an impressive record, Ms. Sloan. And as soon as I saw your photo, I knew why your name sounded so familiar. I saw you on television last year when you were looking into that old suicide case.”

  “You have a good memory.”

  “Goes with the territory. Did you find the information you were looking for back then?”

  “No.” Does she dare tell him that the suicide might be tied into this case as well?

  Not yet. Take it slowly.

  Former FBI or not, the man is a total stranger—and right now, her instincts are telling her not to trust anyone.

  “Did you check luggage?”

  She shakes her head and shows him the overnight bag she’d brought with her to Cam’s yesterday. “This is it. I left in a hurry.”

  “So did I.”

  “What brought you out here?”

  “He sent an e-mail from a hotel in Denver.”

  “And…?”

  “And the FBI is on it. I’m just an author these days, so I have no clue what they’ve found so far.”

  “How about you? Have you found anything yet?”

  “Working on it. I was at the hotel earlier. I’ve got a rental car. Come on.”

  “Where are we going? Back to the hotel?”

  “We could…but something tells me you might have a better idea.”

  She looks at him, wondering whether to trust him with the address Neal gave her when she called him right after she landed.

  “The police and the FBI will be there,” Neal told her. “They’ll be expecting you.”

  “As a potential witness, or as a psychic?”