Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Suddenly spotting her face in the sea of faces coming toward him, he realizes he almost missed her, and no wonder. This is Lucinda as he’s never seen her.

  Unaware that anyone’s watching, she’s let down her defenses for the first time since he’s known her. Ordinarily, her commanding presence makes her stick out in a crowd; tonight, she’s lost herself in one, intentionally or not. She walks slowly, shoulders hunched as though she’s cold—or afraid—making her look smaller than she is.

  Not just smaller. Vulnerable.

  She glances around as she walks, as though she’s searching for someone—not for Randy, of course; she doesn’t expect him to be here. For a moment, he wonders if she arranged for someone else to meet her. Then she draws closer, and he sees that her expression isn’t one of anticipation, but apprehension.

  He hurries toward her, wanting to let her know that she isn’t alone. That he’s with her, and he’ll take care of her.

  “Lucinda!”

  She freezes, darts a glance in his direction. He waves, watches her face register shock, and relief.

  As she hurries toward him, he realizes he can’t say any of the things he was about to. The vulnerable Lucinda he glimpsed just a moment ago has vanished, replaced by a woman who stands tall, radiating strength. A woman who clearly doesn’t need—or want—anyone to take care of her.

  So.

  Her boyfriend decided to surprise her at the airport, did he?

  Leaning against a pole behind an open newspaper, he watches the couple embrace.

  She looks thrilled.

  Personally, he’s never cared for surprises—not unless he’s the one planning them.

  He must always, always be the one in control.

  And you always have been.

  Even back in September, 1971, when a tense situation spiraled into utter chaos for the other two thousand-odd inmates at Attica prison.

  Control amid chaos. That was the key.

  He seized the opportunity to do what had to be done.

  When the uprising was over, over forty men lay dead, inmates and correctional personnel.

  As far as the rest of the world was concerned, all were casualties of the bloodiest clash in prison history.

  He alone knows that one among them was not.

  After hanging up with Lucinda, Vic presses a speed dial key to connect to a number he’d erased from the phone’s memory a while back, never imagining he’d need it again.

  Funny how things work out.

  “Annabelle Wyatt.”

  “I told her.”

  “How did she take it?”

  “In stride. She’s a tough cookie. I told her we’ll do everything possible to keep her safe, but not to let on that she knows what’s going on.”

  “Good. You didn’t give her any classified information, did you?”

  He sighs inwardly. “No. I didn’t.”

  “Remember. She’s not a part of this investigation.”

  And you’re lucky you are.

  Annabelle doesn’t say it, but the message comes through to Vic, loud and clear.

  “I’ll be clearing the decks here and flying to Philadelphia as soon as possible,” she says crisply. “You do the same.”

  “Absolutely.”

  But only after a quick detour to see his wife.

  In the old days, he was used to all the travel, used to being apart from Kitty for weeks at a time. Not anymore.

  When this case is resolved, he’ll be ready for retirement at last, and this time, there will be no wistful backward glances.

  “All right, Vic. Good work.”

  “Did you determine whether anything else found at the scene was significant?”

  “It’s hard to tell. We’re working on it. This is all classified, got it?”

  Meaning, don’t tell Lucinda.

  “Got it.”

  “The soda can tab has probably been there for a while. The plastic clip might have flown off the victim’s head. The strands that were caught in it look like a match to her hair. We’ll do DNA testing on it, of course. The coin was foreign. A krone.”

  “A krone! From Norway!”

  “Yes. A krone. Why? Does that mean something to you?”

  “Henrik Ibsen was from Norway.”

  There’s a moment of silence as she digests that.

  “So you’re thinking…”

  “Norway, Annabelle. That’s where he’s going. Not Philadelphia. He was trying to throw us off his trail. He’s going to Norway.”

  “We don’t know that for sure.”

  “No. But I’d say there’s a pretty good chance.”

  “We’ll start looking into it. And remember. This is classified.”

  Classified.

  He can’t tell Lucinda.

  But if the Watchman is headed overseas, it looks like she might be safe, for now, after all.

  Lucinda prolongs the hug, keeping her face safely buried against Randy’s shoulder until she’s certain she’s regained her composure.

  She probably shouldn’t be so damned glad to see him but the truth is, after what Vic just told her on the phone, she was feeling shell-shocked and alone in the world.

  Then, miraculously, there was Randy—just what she needed, though she hadn’t realized it until she saw him.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks, finally daring to pull back and look up at him.

  “Surprising you.”

  “How did you know—”

  “Shh, don’t talk. You barely have a voice. How did I know which flight you were on? You told me you were landing at 10:30. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”

  “You’re amazing.”

  “Well, I am a detective,” he says with fake modesty.

  “No, I mean—that you’re here. I’m so glad to see you.”

  Oops. That just popped out. Should she have admitted that she’s glad to see him, even after he told her he loved her?

  Probably not—considering that she has no idea how she feels about the revelation. It’s not something she’s spent a whole lot of time thinking about in the last twenty-four hours—or will be able to think about in the weeks ahead, now that she’s the Night Watchman’s next target.

  Vic said they’ll be laying a trap for him, and that they’ll keep her safe.

  Lucinda just wishes she could believe that.

  A knock on the door jars Vic’s attention away from the laptop screen.

  “Housekeeping,” a male voice calls.

  Irritated by the interruption, he goes over to the door.

  Opening it, he realizes belatedly that he should have checked through the peephole, just to make sure it really is housekeeping.

  A man stands there beside a cart loaded with towels, sheets, toiletries.

  He has gray hair.

  “You want turndown?” he asks in broken English.

  “No, thanks.”

  The guy reaches into his pocket.

  Vic immediately goes for his gun—then sees that the man is holding out a couple of chocolate pillow mints.

  “Oh—thank you.” Blindly removing a couple of bills from his pocket instead of his weapon, as if the money were what he’d been going for in the first place, Vic thrusts it into the man’s hand.

  Oops—one of the bills is a ten.

  Grateful he didn’t shoot the guy, Vic can’t help but smile at his delighted expression.

  “Oh, thank you, sir, thank you! Thank you very much! Here!” He reaches into his pocket again, and this time, pulls out a big handful of chocolate mints. “For you. Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome.” Watching him trundle off down the hall with the housekeeping cart, Vic is momentarily amused, and glad to have made the guy’s night.

  Then he turns back to the computer screen, where he’s researching Norway.

  Otherwise known as the Land of the Midnight Sun.

  “The worst part,” Cam tells Mike, curled up beside him on the chintz sofa in the sunroom, “is that we’ll probab
ly never know whether he killed my sister and the others. There’s no way to prove that anyone was even on the roof with Ava the night she died, and Lucinda said the figure was hooded in her vision, so she didn’t get a look at his face.”

  “I’d say there’s enough circumstantial evidence to assume he did it, though.”

  “No, I know. I just wish there were proof.” Cam leans her head against his shoulder and yawns.

  “At least the police said they’ll look into it.”

  “Right, but unless they come up with a long lost signed confession in Stockman’s handwriting, I don’t see what good it’s going to do.” She yawns again.

  “You should go to bed,” Mike tells her. “It’s been a long day.”

  It has, what with digesting the truth about Stockman, enduring the visit with her father, and hearing from Lucinda that two more people were murdered last night. When Cam went online to read the Seattle newspaper’s account of the victims, she was stunned to recognize Kelly Patterson in a photo of her and Julian Dodd snapped during their performance in Guys and Dolls.

  Kelly was the girl Cam has been seeing in her visions.

  If only she had known…

  But how could you have known?

  Exhausted, she stands and stretches. “Are you coming up, Mike?”

  “I’m going to stay here for a few minutes and check the score on the game.”

  “Isn’t it over?”

  “Didn’t start till ten. They’re playing on the West Coast tonight.” He reaches for the remote.

  “And here I thought you were being so noble, spending the whole night playing Scrabble with me and Tess instead of watching baseball.”

  “I was being noble. I was trying to take your mind off everything. And it worked—for a while. Until you lost.”

  “Yeah, well, you try to win with an x when you can’t use it to spell s-e-x.”

  Mike snickers. “You could have. It’s not like Tess has never heard of it.”

  “True. I just hope she isn’t thinking about doing it.”

  Mike covers his ears. “Stop that. Go away.”

  With a yawn, she picks up their empty tea mugs and starts toward the kitchen. In the doorway, she turns back. “Mike?”

  “Yeah?”

  “There’s just one thing that’s bothering me.”

  “You mean besides our fifteen-year-old daughter and s-e-x?” He’s already flipping channels.

  “I’m being serious here.”

  “So am I.”

  “Mike.”

  He looks up and sees the look on her face. “Okay. What is it?”

  “Someone sent me that note wanting me to make the connection between Sheila Wright and my sister. Before he died, Andrew Stockman must have told someone what he did. That person is out there somewhere—and he knows what happened to Ava.”

  He decides not to follow Lucinda Sloan as she leaves the airport with Randy Barakat. No reason to, really.

  He knows what he came to find out: that she’s already aware that she’s next.

  Fear was vivid on her face when she walked through the airport, before she spotted Barakat and put on the fake bravado.

  She’s a sitting duck.

  But she’s smart.

  She’ll try to escape.

  He’s smarter.

  He won’t let her.

  “Vic. Did I wake you?”

  “Yes.” Dazed, he sits up in bed, turns on the lamp, sees that it’s three in the morning. “What’s going on, Annabelle?”

  “We’ve got a match on those old prints.”

  PART V

  10:24

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “I still don’t understand why the FBI didn’t just put this Eugene Fox on ‘America’s Most Wanted,’” Cam tells Lucinda as they stroll through the Reading Terminal Market with little Grace in a baby carriage, a federal agent trailing discreetly behind.

  “He was on the wanted lists after he violated parole last fall,” Lucinda tells her around a mouthful of apple dumpling she bought at the Amish stand down the way, “but no one realized he was the Night Watchman for all those years he was in prison, so it wasn’t necessarily a big deal. Parole violators are a dime a dozen.”

  “The whole story is unbelievable.”

  Lucinda couldn’t agree more.

  It’s been three weeks since Vic told her they’d matched the fingerprints found in Ricky Parker’s—a.k.a. Scarlet’s—Bronx apartment to Eugene Fox, a mild-mannered young man who lived across the hall with his mother.

  Born on September 14, 1950, Fox had led a low-key life before and after, with one exception: as a little boy, he’d been holding his father’s hand when a stray bullet hit him during a botched holdup. The father died right there on the sidewalk in front of his son.

  Something like that will scar a kid for life.

  Eugene and his mother moved from the Bronx to Yonkers not long after Parker’s death, which was, of course, officially unsolved. Eugene worked as an elementary school custodian, kept to himself, took care of his mother.

  Until, in November of 1969, he was arrested for killing her.

  “How sure is the FBI that this Fox guy is the Night Watchman?”

  “Let’s put it this way. The date he killed his mother coincides exactly with the murder of Judy Steinberg, the Watchman’s last known murder.”

  Neither law enforcement nor the press made a connection between Eugene Fox in Yonkers and Judy Steinberg less than thirty miles—yet a world—away, on Long Island.

  “Why didn’t the FBI make this information public, then, when they got the fingerprint match?”

  Lucinda had wondered the same thing, at first.

  Now she tells Cam what Vic and Annabelle told her.

  “They don’t want him to know they’re onto him. They’re almost positive he’s going to lay low until June eighteenth. They know when and where he’s going to strike. This is their chance to get him.”

  “And put your life at risk in the process.”

  Lucinda doesn’t reply, spooning the last of the dumpling and rich cream into her mouth, then tossing the plastic bowl into a trash can.

  She wasn’t really hungry—hasn’t been, lately. But you don’t come to the market, with its dozens of food stalls, without indulging. So she did—to show Cam, and the agents, and him, if by chance he’s watching, that she’s just fine.

  “Lucinda, I’m worried about you.”

  “It’s fine. Trust me, I’ve got so much security right now that whenever I leave my apartment I feel like the president.”

  “Why do you leave at all? If I were you, I’d hole up until they catch the guy.”

  “No way am I going to be a prisoner in my apartment for almost a month,” Lucinda says staunchly. “If there’s anything I know for sure, it’s that this guy doesn’t strike in broad daylight in public places. And anyway, the FBI wants me to go about my business as usual, in case he’s watching.”

  “Do you think he is?”

  Lucinda hesitates, then admits it. “Yes. I can feel him sometimes.”

  “Now?”

  “No. Not now.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “No. But sometimes I just sense that he’s nearby. You know what I mean.”

  Cam nods. She, alone, knows what Lucinda means.

  “Aren’t you terrified?”

  “Now? No. Like I said, we know when, where, and how he’s going to make his move. And these guys are with me all the time.”

  “You’re willing to trust them with your life.”

  “They’re the FBI, Cam.”

  That doesn’t answer the question—but it’s the best she can offer.

  “This is your life, Lucinda. And I don’t want anything to happen to you now that everything has finally fallen into place.”

  Lucinda can’t help but smile. “Oh, sure, it would have been fine for something to happen to me before, when I was lonely and single. But now that Randy and I are…well, whatever we are�
�”

  She has yet to put a label on whatever it is they’ve been doing since she got home from Seattle.

  “Dating,” Cam tells her with a firm nod, then checks her watch. “For that matter, so is Tess, and it’s getting late.”

  “Late? I feel like you just got here!”

  “That was almost two hours ago. It’s three o’clock, and I don’t want to hit rush hour traffic. I’ve really got to get going home.”

  “So Tess is dating again? She and Mr. Wonderful got back together, then?”

  “No, I think she’s actually getting over him. This is someone new. His name is Chad, and he invited her to his junior prom. She’s been practicing walking around the house in the shoes she was going to wear, but they’re giving her blisters so I promised I’d take her to look for a new pair tonight.”

  “Wow, that’s nice of you. My mother would have told me to get out the Band-Aids and suck it up.”

  Her mother.

  She’s been meaning to call Bitsy before…well, before tomorrow. Since she got back from Seattle, she hasn’t had a chance.

  Who are you kidding? You’ve had plenty of chances.

  But maybe it’s better this way. One less person to have to lie to.

  “I’m so glad to see Tess smiling again,” Cam says, “that I’d buy her Manolo Blahniks if I didn’t think they’d hurt her feet worse. Anyway, the prom is tomorrow night.”

  “They’re having a prom on Friday the thirteenth?”

  “I know, crazy, isn’t it? But I didn’t want to say anything about it to Tess. I don’t think she’s noticed the date. Anyway, she’s had enough bad luck.”

  She’s not the only one, Lucinda thinks grimly.

  They make their way toward the exit. Lucinda finds herself scanning the crowd, just in case.

  She’s seen a photo of Eugene Fox, taken just before he was released from prison last June.

  She made it a point to memorize his features: weathered face, gray hair—and the coldest, hardest black stare she’s ever seen in her life.

  She wants to believe she’d know him if she ever saw him again, but the truth is, he looks like thousands of other middle-aged men.

  She’d recognize those stony dark eyes anywhere, but the rest of him would be easy enough to disguise simply by gaining or losing weight, dying, shaving, or growing his hair, adding a beard or mustache….