Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  “Still too soon,” he informs Danielle Hendry, who lies, bound and gagged, on the muddy ground.

  Relishing the terror in her eyes as she looks up at him, he taps the face of his watch.

  “You’ve got about ten minutes left. Do you have any last requests? I’ll be happy to oblige, if I can.”

  She grunts.

  He cups a hand behind his ear. “What’s that? You’ll have to enunciate, dear. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

  She writhes violently at his feet, spattering and smearing her pale yellow suit with even more mud.

  “You know what you look like?” he asks. “An overripe banana!”

  Delighted laughter bubbles out of him, mingling with the sound of the rushing water of a nearby stream rippling down the mountainside. The release feels good after all the long hours of self-restraint.

  She struggles on the ground, trying to roll away from him—as if she can actually go anywhere.

  He gives her a hard, sharp kick in the soft flesh between her hip bone and rib cage and is rewarded by a primal howl.

  Primal—primate, he thinks, and laughs even harder.

  “You sound like a wounded ape! Ape…banana. Get it?”

  The laughter pours out of him, loud and strong, echoing in the Colorado wilderness where there’s no one to hear it.

  Just as there will be no one to hear her screams when she dies, nine minutes from now, at precisely 7:44.

  Lucinda stands on the small balcony off Danielle Hendry’s bedroom, gazing at the fiery ball of orange sinking low in a glowing sky over the distant Rockies.

  Somewhere inside, Vic and Annabelle and the others are following up on the information Lucinda was able to give them.

  It wasn’t much to go on, though.

  She felt that Danielle had been abducted close to home, but not from inside the house—which was consistent with the fact that they’d found things undisturbed, no signs of a struggle.

  Yet when Lucinda walked through the house—through the kitchen, up the stairs, into the bedroom—she could feel him doing the same thing.

  “He was inside,” she told the agents.

  “Before he abducted her?”

  “No, earlier. She was abducted during the day. He was inside at night. In the dark. And she was here, too, in the house.”

  “Did he take her hostage?” Annabelle asked.

  “No. She didn’t know he was here.” Lucinda shuddered, remembering her own vision, back at home, of someone stealing into her bedroom while she was asleep.

  It was so chilling that she found it difficult to focus on Danielle Hendry, though she tried her best, for over an hour.

  There were framed photos around the house—of Danielle with friends, and with her college-aged sons.

  In all of them, Lucinda noted, she wore red lipstick.

  She pointed it out to the others, speculating that it might have been what captured the Night Watchman’s attention.

  Now, having stepped outside to get some fresh air and clear her head, she thinks again about what Victor Shattuck told her in the car.

  If the Night Watchman didn’t kill Ava Neary—or, for that matter, Sandra Wubner and the other so-called suicides—then why did he want Lucinda to think he did?

  He could be playing with her.

  Taunting her.

  SOLV IT AND IF YOU ARE WRIGHT YOU WILL FIND ME.

  It’s almost as if…

  Can he be giving them a clue to his own identity, rather than letting them know that he killed Ava and the others?

  Maybe he doesn’t want her to think he did it. Maybe he’s trying to tell her that in solving the mystery surrounding Ava’s death, she’ll unlock the key to the Night Watchman murders.

  As she watches the last sliver of sun disappear behind a distant peak, she hears a female scream so bloodcurdling that she spins around in horror, thinking it came from right beside her.

  There’s no one there.

  Beyond the French doors, which are ajar, she can see the others, can hear the murmur of their voices spilling out into the night.

  They obviously didn’t hear the scream.

  Okay.

  So it came from inside your head.

  And so, she realizes a moment later, as another sound reaches her ears, did that.

  He’s laughing, again.

  He’s killing, again.

  Right now.

  Where? Where is he?

  Is he with Danielle? Is he killing Danielle?

  Lucinda squeezes her eyes shut, desperately trying to focus, trying to see her, to see him, to hear more than just that heinous laughter.

  She has to get into his head.

  Who is dying, dammit? I need to see her. I need her name.

  Only one word comes to mind.

  Scarlet.

  The ground is soaked with Danielle Hendry’s blood.

  It’s likely to draw a good many creatures from their lairs now that night has fallen.

  He swings his flashlight beam over her face, admiring the fixed expression of terror in her eyes and the way the blood dribbling from the corner of her mouth is the precise shade of her lipstick.

  He used her own this time, having found it conveniently located in her purse. He even made her put it on herself, but her hand was shaking so badly that she made a real mess of things.

  He waited until she was dead to touch it up, and to fasten the watch around her wrist. Now everything is just right.

  It’s a pity to leave her here, where she won’t be found before the nocturnal animals come out to feed and destroy his tableau.

  “But leave you I must,” he tells her. “It’s time to move on.”

  “Is she finally asleep?” Mike looks up from the opening pitch of the baseball game as Cam walks into the master bedroom.

  “Which ‘she’?”

  “Grace. Isn’t she the one you were putting to bed?”

  “She went right down. Then I looked in on Tess. I’ve been in with her this whole time.”

  “Did you talk some sense into her?” Mike moves over and pats the spot next to him on the bed. He’s shed his jacket and tie but is still wearing the suit pants and dress shirt he’d had on when he walked in the door from work a half hour ago.

  Cam sits and pulls off her gold post earrings. “I mostly just listened while she talked.”

  “About him?”

  “About why he doesn’t love her anymore.”

  “Did you tell her that there is no such thing as love when you’re fourteen?”

  “She’s fifteen,” Cam reminds him, “and no, I didn’t say that, because I don’t believe it.”

  “I hate seeing her this way.” He unbuttons his cuff links.

  “So do I. Do you think I should make an appointment for her to talk to someone?”

  Mike looks at her. “Not yet. Give it another couple of days and if she doesn’t pull herself together, then we’ll see.” He shakes his head. “I still can’t believe she managed to get through being abducted by a maniac and seeing someone die right in front of her with no problem, but this little jerk breaks her heart and she falls apart.”

  “I’m wondering if everything is catching up with her now, though. Maybe this is a delayed reaction to all the stress of last summer. Speaking of which…”

  “Uh-oh.” In the process of stripping off his shirt, he looks up expectantly.

  “I’m going to talk to my sister’s old geology professor tomorrow in the city.”

  “Cam, you know I don’t—”

  “I have to do this, Mike.”

  “It could be dangerous.”

  “It won’t be. My gut feeling about him is that he had nothing to do with Ava’s death. Maybe it really was a suicide, who knows?”

  “Lucinda doesn’t seem to think so.”

  “Lucinda might be wrong.”

  “Do you think she is?”

  “I don’t know,” she admits. “But I am pretty sure that if this Dr. Zubin were dangerous
, I’d have a sense of it. And I don’t.”

  “You could be wrong.”

  “I rarely am,” she reminds him with a smile. “And anyway, I’m meeting him in a public place, at a Starbucks in the Village. Don’t worry.”

  “When tomorrow?”

  “Noon. Why?”

  “I’ll go with you.” He stands and tosses the shirt into the hamper.

  “You’ll be at work. How are you going to get away in the middle of the day? You’re lucky you got out of there at a decent hour tonight.”

  “I’ll work it out. There’s no way I’m letting you go talk to this guy alone.”

  “Because you have a sense that he might be dangerous?” she asks, rubbing her temples, thinking she’s starting to feel a little bit dizzy.

  “Because I don’t know what to think, and because you’re my wife and I love you.” Mike steps out of his dress pants and reaches for a wooden hanger.

  “But I’m sure I’ll be—”

  “I’m not taking any chances on my family, ever again. I’m coming with you, and that’s that. Okay?”

  She nods, watching him fold the pants onto the hanger, snap the dowel over the fold, hang the pants in the closet.

  “I’m going to go take a shower,” he tells her.

  “Um…I made dinner for us.”

  “Okay, I’ll be quick.”

  Cam leans back against the pillows as he leaves the room. She’s definitely dizzy, a telltale sign that she’s about to experience another premonition.

  Sure enough, closing her eyes, she again sees the girl with the old-fashioned hair and dress and lipstick. She’s crying, cowering as the tall figure of a man stands over her with a knife.

  He’s laughing, Cam realizes. Laughing hard, as if it’s all a big joke.

  But it isn’t.

  He brings the knife down, and the girl’s anguished scream mingles with his laughter, and Cam glimpses his face.

  Weathered-looking features, cold black eyes, and gray hair.

  Then the vision dissolves, leaving her to wonder, helplessly, who—and where—the girl is.

  “All right, ladies, let’s take it again from the top.”

  Still winded from the duet, Kelly Patterson crosses the stage to her mark.

  Christina Hazelwood, who’s playing Miss Adelaide, the second female lead, calls, “Wait a minute.”

  Watching Christina hurry down the steps and over to the piano to confer with Gary, the student director, Kelly mutters “Now what?”

  Hearing a snicker from the wings, she realizes that one of the male leads overheard her. Oops.

  “Hey, Kelly, what’s up? Did you upstage poor Christina again?” Julian Dodd—wearing a rakish grin and a Mariners’ cap backward over his wavy dark hair—wags his finger at her. “You know she’s the real star.”

  Kelly grins and rolls her eyes.

  Five minutes pass.

  Julian sits on the floor, cross-legged.

  Five more minutes pass, and Kelly joins him as the stagehands sneak off for a smoke break.

  “At this rate we’re going to be here all night,” Kelly says, watching Christina consulting so fervently with Gary over the script that you’d think this was Broadway, rather than a college production.

  Granted, U-Dub is no small-scale school. But still…

  “Got someplace better to be?”

  “My room. I’ve got to finish a paper for Modern American Lit.”

  “Yeah, well, showbiz ain’t easy, Doll,” Julian tells her in his best Sky Masterson accent.

  No, it ain’t.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have auditioned, on a whim, for the musical production. It’s not as if she’s set foot on a stage since her friends coaxed her to sing a Backstreet Boys song with them in a middle school talent show.

  But back in January, entering her second semester, feeling homesick for Spokane and lost on the vast campus, Kelly decided to take her parents’ advice. It might help to be a part of something—even if it was just a small chorus part in a musical.

  To her shock, she landed the plum lead role of Sarah Brown—coveted, and wrongly reported to have been sewn up, by campus diva Christina, a senior.

  It doesn’t take a casting director to see that vampy, campy Christina is perfect as Miss Adelaide, the hot box dancer. Kelly—a slight, brown-eyed brunette—may not be perfect as Sarah, but she’s doing her best. She enjoys being in the spotlight for the first time in her life, and it’s brought her out of her shell. People who never even knew she existed have been noticing her lately.

  “All right, Kelly, everyone, Christina would like to try blocking the scene in a different way,” Gary announces from the shadows in front of the stage.

  Julian groans aloud.

  Kelly groans inwardly.

  This is going to take forever. She’s going to be up all night finishing her paper.

  Oh, well. In a few weeks, she tells herself, it’ll all be worth it, when she’s standing on this stage in the spotlight before a live audience, singing “Marry the Man Today,” wearing Sarah Brown’s vintage 1950s dress and hairstyle and red lipstick.

  Chapter Twenty

  Watching the numbers on the digital clock on the hotel nightstand roll over from 5:59 to 6:00 in the glare of a too-bright bedside bulb, Lucinda realizes she’s not going to fall asleep.

  She’s been trying since she got into bed an hour and a half ago, her body aching with exhaustion and the relentless tension of a night spent waiting around for something to happen.

  Nothing had.

  No sign of Danielle Hendry, no leads, no communication from the Night Watchman.

  Just as she’s wondering whether to get up, or stay in bed and hope that sleep will overtake her, she hears the distinct rumbling sound that means her BlackBerry is about to start ringing.

  At this hour?

  Then she remembers that it’s a decent hour back on the East Coast, and no one—other than Neal and Cam—is aware she’s not there.

  She gets out of bed and fishes the ringing phone from her bag.

  It’s Randy.

  Again.

  He called Lucinda’s cell phone a few times last night, too, wondering why she hasn’t called back yet, wanting to know where she is. And worrying.

  “I can’t help it,” he said in the last message, late last night. “I’ll admit it. I’m worried that I haven’t heard from you. Look, maybe you’re still mad at me. That’s fine. Be mad. Just call and tell me you’re okay.”

  She didn’t call.

  But she did send him an e-mail that said simply, I’m fine, busy on an investigation, will explain all later.

  She can just imagine what he’d say if she told him the case involves staking out a serial killer halfway across the country, on the heels of the killer’s texting her from the phone of a woman who has now gone missing.

  She lets the call go into voice mail again. Partly because she’s just too exhausted to deal with a potentially emotional confrontation right now, and partly because she’s pretty sure her voice is all but gone by now. It was hoarse when she climbed into bed.

  Sleep would have helped, but it’s too late for that.

  She crosses to the window and parts the thick vinyl-backed curtains to see if it’s light out yet.

  No, but almost.

  The eastern skyline’s rectangular silhouettes sit against a blue-black backdrop streaked orange along the base.

  Remembering last night’s spectacular mountain sunset—and the chilling omen that came with it—Lucinda thinks about Danielle Hendry.

  The glowing rim of the sun appears in the distance—and that’s when it hits her.

  Walking out to the edge of the driveway on a gray morning amid the steady beeping of a truck in reverse, Neal glances down the street at the latest neighborhood construction zone.

  Two doors down, next door to Garland Fisher’s house, they’re putting in a massive two-story addition. What are they thinking? The old houses on the block sit close together on mo
dest lots just big enough for a patch of lawn, a few shrubs, and a driveway. Who needs that much house?

  Shaking his head, Neal picks up his newspaper and unfolds it to read the front page headlines, one of which involves a case he’d been working on. A guy who has a questionable source of income and whose name might as well be Pauly Walnuts disappears from his house in South Philly, and everyone around him—including his wife—denies mob ties. Everyone—including his wife—claims he probably ran off with a mistress.

  Now he turns up with a bullet through his temple, execution style. As far as Neal’s concerned, his friends and family are either seriously deluded, or bold-faced liars.

  “Morning, neighbor!”

  He looks up to see Garland Fisher waving through the open window of his car, pulling into his driveway beside a bank of forsythia in full bloom. He gets out, picks up his own newspaper, then looks over at the construction vehicles.

  “Crazy over there, isn’t it?” he calls to Neal.

  “It sure is. What are you doing out and about so early? Did all that noise wake you up?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Because it woke me, too.”

  “Should be some kind of ordinance against starting at that hour.”

  “There is,” Neal tells him, just as Erma sticks her head out the front door. Her hair is in the curlers she sleeps in, and she’s wearing her robe.

  “Neal! Lucinda’s on the phone! Oh, good morning, Garland.”

  “Morning, Erma,” he calls back, before saying to Neal, “Lucinda—I’ve met her. You didn’t tell me she was a psychic, though.”

  “Who did?”

  “Erma. Said she helps you solve cases. Does she ever, you know, get in contact with dead people?”

  Already on his way toward the door, Neal is struck by the odd question and turns back.

  “Dead people? Why?”

  “Seen it on TV—you know, those people who can talk to the dead. Was thinking maybe I could get someone to put me in touch with my wife.”

  At a loss for words, Neal simply shakes his head.

  “Oh, well. Worth a try. Have a good day, Neal.”

  “You, too.” He closes the door.