Night Terrors

by Dennis Palumbo

  “Yeah, luckily…” Alcott sniffed. “And..?”

  “There’s a small access shed up there, unlocked from the outside. Leads to those emergency stairs you followed him down.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, we saw the roof access. From the landing below.”

  Then Agent Green, who’d been standing at a discreet distance, cell phone to his ear, spoke up.

  “Sir, that door Barnes went out leads to a back alley. He pushed a trash dumpster up against it to block it.”

  A seething Alcott rubbed his cheeks with both hands. Then, as though just realizing that Green was still there, waiting attentively, he gave him a brisk, dismissive nod. The young agent was only too happy to pick up his cue and hurry out the door.

  “Jesus, what a screw-up.” Alcott looked off for a long moment, neck muscles like steel rods.

  Then, with a weary sigh, he turned to face the rest of us. Polk leaned sullenly against the sofa back, Lowrey standing a few feet away, arms folded. Claire Cobb, eyes blinking rapidly, was seated. Her palpable anxiety fed the tension already growing in the room.

  I stood by the picture window, looking out at the thin coating of silver a pale moon had spread over the silent, snow-bound city. It was one a.m.

  “I mean, we’ll find Agent Barnes,” Alcott suddenly added. “He can’t have gotten far, and we have the manpower to do the search. Especially when you add in the police.”

  Polk shook his head. “Maybe you didn’t get the memo, Agent Alcott. Keepin’ the killer’s next potential victims under wraps is the Bureau’s job. You’re the ones who let Barnes off his leash, not us. So you’re the ones who have to bring him in.”

  “I don’t care much for your tone, Sergeant.” Alcott sniffed again. Maybe he was coming down with a cold. “In case you didn’t get the memo, I’m running this joint FBI-police operation. And your chief promised the bureau total cooperation. Which means if I want to detail some local cops to help search for Agent Barnes, that’s exactly what’s gonna happen. Are we clear?”

  Eleanor answered for her partner. “Crystal, sir.”

  Polk gave her a dour look, but remained silent. Which Alcott noted. Suddenly, I saw the concern on the agent’s face that he’d overstepped. That he’d risked alienating the very people whose assistance he needed. Especially now, having to deal with the embarrassment of Barnes taking off.

  “Of course, Detectives,” Alcott said, reasonably, “I wouldn’t waste your talents on some broad-based search. I realize your primary task is working these murders, and apprehending the killer before he finds his next victim.”

  Eleanor added, “And we do have a lot of work to do before this morning’s meeting with Lt. Biegler and the assistant chief. We have to collate police reports from the various jurisdictions involved, get the ballistics test results, interview that witness to the prison guard’s murder who’s just come forward—”

  Polk stirred. “Not to mention reaching out to the highway patrol to get some help finding the car the killer was driving when he shot Judge Loftus. It’s the only one that hasn’t turned up yet.”

  “It probably will, Harry,” Eleanor said calmly. “Stolen, like the others. If the pattern holds.”

  Polk barely registered her.

  “And another thing.” He squinted at Alcott. “We don’t even have the FBI’s list of potential victims. Plus whatever you got on those fan letters our killer sent to John Jessup in prison. Fingerprints, forensics. Stuff like that. I mean, I hope we’ll be seein’ some of that interagency cooperation you were talkin’ about sometime soon.”

  “You will, Sergeant. I’ll assign Agent Green to assist you. Get you whatever we have. ASAP.”

  “You can’t give us somebody else? Hell, I got a sport coat older than he is.”

  “Nobody else I can spare. Live with it.”

  Polk looked like he was chewing the inside of his mouth. But he finally nodded.

  I cleared my throat. “Now that we’re all best friends again, I’d like to bring something up. Anybody but me wondering why the hell Agent Barnes gave us the slip?”

  Alcott frowned. “No idea. We’re providing protection against a possible attempt on his life. Doesn’t make sense. He’s much more vulnerable to the killer on the outside, away from the Bureau’s sphere of influence.”

  I took a measured step toward him.

  “Maybe, maybe not. At least from his point of view. I’ve only known Lyle Barnes a short time, but I’d guess he was feeling pretty constrained and useless, sequestered in some FBI safe house while a killer’s on the loose. Especially a killer who probably has him in his sights.”

  “But Barnes is FBI to his bones, Rinaldi. Been on the team his whole adult life. Lives and breathes procedure. Which means he’d know a search for him is an unnecessary strain on the bureau’s resources, a dangerous squandering of manpower during a critical investigation.”

  “I’d tend to agree…if he were still on the team. But he’s not. He’s retired. Not only that, he wasn’t even asked to consult on the case. Nor allowed to see the letters that John Jessup received in prison. The last guy he put away, for Christ’s sake. My read on Barnes is that he sees this as an insult.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Think about it. Barnes is the guy who nailed Jessup. The one most responsible for Jessup ending up behind bars, where he was later killed by a guard who just got a slap on the wrist. Now, Jessup’s one and only fan—who sent him letters in prison—is on the loose, gunning down those he feels are responsible for Jessup’s fate.”

  I took a breath. “You see my meaning? This is as personal for Barnes as it is for the killer. And there’s no way a man like Lyle Barnes is going to sit it out. Especially if he feels he’s been shunted aside by his own people. Hell, he was your best profiler, and he wasn’t given access to the letters. Allowed to build a profile. Even asked to offer his opinion. Instead, he was treated like any of the other potential victims.”

  Alcott considered this. “So you think Barnes is out there flying solo, trying to track down the killer?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he just wants some time to think. Figure out where he stands, what his next move should be.”

  Nobody spoke for a moment. Then, to my surprise, ADA Claire Cobb broke the silence.

  “I guess I understand him, too. Even here, with FBI protection, some part of me feels unsafe. Vulnerable.”

  She glanced down at the sling draped from her shoulder.

  “The killer tried to take me down once already. This guy, this avenging angel working through his goddam list…I don’t know, I get the feeling he’s pretty determined.”

  She looked over at me, eyes searching my face as if for confirmation. For support.

  I tried to give it to her. “I understand, Ms. Cobb. Believe me, I know what it’s like to know that somebody’s out there, hunting you.”

  Alcott snorted. “You two wanna share your feelings or whatever, use the other room. We’ve gotta get things in gear. The detectives have their work to do, and I have to coordinate the search for Barnes. Crazy son-of-a-bitch.”

  He no longer even pretended to hide his frustration, his barely contained rage.

  “Arrogant prick. I don’t care why the hell he snuck out on his own people. But I do know this: If he gets his ass killed on my watch, I’ll be buried so deep in shit I’ll never see daylight again.”

  “Tough break, all right,” Polk murmured, with a half-smile. Then he turned to me.

  “Well, Doc, looks like your new patient’s terminated therapy. I guess you can go home and get in your jammies.”

  Ignoring him, I looked over at Alcott.

  “It’s your call, but since the bureau’s cleared my schedule anyway, maybe I should stick around. If you do find Barnes, I’m still willing to try to help him. God knows, he needs it.”

  “What Agent Barnes needs i
s a pair of ankle irons and a keeper.” Alcott sighed heavily. “But you’re probably right. I just don’t want you underfoot, messing with my investigation. Do what Sergeant Polk here said. Go home, get some sleep, but keep your cell on. At all times.”

  “Maybe I’m not sleepy.”

  “Maybe that wasn’t a suggestion.”

  I regarded him cooly. “Really looking forward to working with you, Neal.”

  Claire Cobb rose from her seat. Her eyes were pale and moist behind her glasses as she regarded Alcott.

  “What about me? Do I just stay here?”

  Alcott scratched his chin. “In the hotel, yes. But I’ll get a female agent to bunk with you in another room. Here on the same floor, where we have teams patrolling the halls.” He tried to sound reassuring. “You’ll be quite safe, Ms. Cobb. I guarantee it.”

  Claire smiled grimly. “I’ve been around long enough to know there are no guarantees. Not in this life, anyway.”

  There wasn’t much Agent Alcott could say in response to that. So he didn’t say anything at all.

  Chapter Fourteen

  What the hell did I know about Agent Lyle Barnes?

  This thought occurred to me as Billy, our driver from earlier that night, drove me back down to Noah’s Ark so I could pick up my car. I could tell when I’d slid into the back seat in the Marriott parking lot that the young agent wasn’t too thrilled with this assignment, but we both knew there also wasn’t much he could do about it. Not as a junior G-man far down on the Bureau’s food chain.

  It took less than twenty minutes to drive through the empty, snow-plowed streets and arrive at Second Avenue. The bar had long since closed, and I imagined Noah snoring peacefully in his bed, spooning Charlene in the rooms they shared behind the kitchen. Yawning myself, I peered through the passenger side window at the unlit, low-slung saloon. Moored to thick railroad ties embedded at the embankment, the converted coal barge rolled and dipped silently on the black, sluggish waters of the Monogahela.

  Billy pulled the Lincoln to a stop where my Mustang—the sole car on the street—was parked, covered in a silken layer of frost. I thanked him as I got out, and received a “Hey” in reply.

  As I absently turned the key and let the engine warm up, I returned to my thoughts about Lyle Barnes. Though I’d been truthful with Neal Alcott about my interpretation of Barnes’ actions, I also realized—even as I explained my reasoning—that everything I said was mere conjecture. Not only had I just met the retired profiler, I hadn’t had the opportunity to fully explore his symptoms, or address the meaning his own diagnosis of night terrors meant to him.

  In other words, did he see his horrifying night visions as evidence of a weakness in his character, the beginning of a downward slide into emotional vulnerability? I certainly suspected as much. For a man as formerly vigorous in mind and body as Lyle Barnes, the fear of such a psychological collapse would be intolerable. Shameful.

  Utterly unacceptable.

  Which, I suddenly saw, might have also prompted his impulse to escape the FBI’s protection. His needing the help of a therapist for his night terrors was bad enough. Now, being guarded day and night by Alcott’s team, Barnes was reduced to victim status. Lumped in with retired prison guards and elderly trial judges and trembling female lawyers. Lumped in with the weak, the defenseless. Those whom he’d formerly fought to protect.

  I revved the Mustang’s engine a few times, watching in my rear view mirror while exhaust smoke billowed against the starless winter sky. As I pulled out into the street, I mused on what the combination of Barnes’ stern, self-reliant nature and his sleep-deprived, traumatized state might have created in his mind.

  Men like Lyle Barnes were doers. Whether motivated by reason, madness, patriotism, guilt, or merely some sudden impulse, such men—once triggered to act—acted.

  I drove across the Fort Pitt Bridge and then made the ascent up Mt. Washington, and home. But I barely registered the middle-last-century houses huddled between snow drifts along Grandview Avenue. Didn’t even see the barren trees, stark as giant stick figures against the saffron, downy slope of low hills. Didn’t even recognize, at first, my own house at the far end of the street, its feeble porch light glowing a soft, diffused yellow.

  My mind was elsewhere as I pulled into my driveway, wheels bumping against the twin furrows of banked, salt-pitted snow.

  Regardless of what had triggered Lyle Barnes, he’d followed the dictates of a lifetime’s impulse to act, and had acted. He was out there somewhere, I hoped sheltered from the night and the cold. Thinking, perhaps rationally, perhaps not. Maybe driven half-mad by lack of sleep and countless nights of horrifying, demonic visions and twenty years spent living in the minds of the most evil of men.

  What I did know—or at least believed—was this: Barnes was plotting a strategy, creating a scenario. Formulating a plan of action.

  Just as, somewhere else in this same night, the killer was also thinking, plotting. Formulating a plan of action.

  I shut off the engine and sat back in my seat.

  What, I wondered, would happen if the two should meet?

  Which one would survive?

  ***

  I showered, dressed in sweats and a long-sleeved Pitt t-shirt, and climbed under the covers.

  When I’d entered my house, I didn’t even stop to pick up the mail that had been shoved through the door slot and now littered the hardwood floor. Nor did I detour into the kitchen to make coffee for the following morning.

  The only thing I did was use my landline phone at the rolltop desk in the front room to check my voice mail messages. No patient calls, though this was to be expected.

  Thanks to Special Agent Neal Alcott, my patients were under the impression I was sick with the flu. Not that this would normally stop the most vulnerable of patients from trying to reach me, or at least leave a message. Which I’d always encouraged them to do. As I’d learned many years ago, being a therapist is a full-time job, regardless of one’s stated office hours.

  But, thankfully, things were quiet on that front. The only message was from Angela Villanova, my distant cousin and the department’s community liaison officer. Since she hadn’t called my cell or my home line, it was likely she was making a clinical referral. All she asked was that I call her in the morning.

  Angie Villanova was a brusque, bawdy, no-nonsense woman caught halfway between a traditional Italian upbringing and the urgent demands of feminism. Ten years my senior, she still often treated me as she did when my dad used to pay her to tutor me in high school math.

  The only downside to my relationship with Angie was the occasional Sunday meals I was forced to endure at her house. Though she was an excellent cook, not even her mother’s special “Tuscany recipe” sauce, ladled onto perfectly al dente rigatoni, was enough to make dinner with her bitter, bigoted husband Sonny tolerable.

  I put down the land line, hastily pushed thoughts of Sonny and his racist tirades out of my mind, and headed for the bedroom.

  ***

  An hour later, still awake and troubled by the long night’s events, I got out of bed.

  Stumbling into the kitchen, tiled walls bathed now in pre-dawn light, I managed to make coffee. Then I went into the front room and watched the early local TV news.

  The shooting death of Ohio judge Ralph Loftus was the lead story, with the breaking news that the car his killer apparently drove had been found. It was a blue SUV, stolen, with its plates removed. The car had been discovered, abandoned in a ditch in Mt. Lebanon by a Pitt grad student driving home from a party just after midnight last night. Police had investigated at the scene, after which the suspect vehicle was towed to the department impound, where it was turned over to the crime scene unit. According to a police spokesperson, the detectives involved proclaimed the discovery of the SUV a significant break in the case.

  I considered this. Re
gardless of how “significant” it might turn out to be, there was no doubt that Polk and Lowrey would be thrilled with the discovery. It meant that the shooter was sticking to his M.O., stealing vehicles to use in his murder attempts, then abandoning them.

  I’d learned from watching both detectives work that the more consistent and repetitive a pattern, the better the chances that the police could anticipate a criminal’s next move. Or, conversely, the more likely that they’d take note of a variation in the pattern.

  Patterns. And their variations. Part of the contours of a therapist’s world as well, I thought.

  While watching the rest of the broadcast, I realized that the authorities had so far managed to portray Judge Loftus’ murder as an isolated incident. There’d been no mention of the shooting of Earl Cranshaw in Steubenville, nor of the attempt on Claire Cobb’s life in Cleveland. And no reason there should have been, even though Ohio is just one state over from Pennsylvania. By definition, local news is concerned primarily with local matters.

  Just as well, I thought, sipping my cooling coffee. If it became known that the two out-of-state shootings were related to the Loftus murder, and that in each case the assailant used a different stolen vehicle, the notion of a planned, multistate killing spree would be irrisistable to the media. The story would break nationally, the Internet crime junkies would light up cyberspace, and the cops would be fielding hundreds of useless and distracting tips.

  More importantly, it might well drive the killer underground. Maybe to wait until the furor died down and the story went away. Until the police and FBI were preoccupied with fresh killers, fresher crimes.

  Only to begin once more his methodical checking off of the victims on his list…

  The thought just added to my restlessness. Exhausted, but still too wired to sleep, I went down to my basement gym to turn my unease into healthy sweat.

  Calling the pine-paneled, windowless room a gym was a bit of a stretch. It was a typical low-ceilinged, East Coast basement, lit by track lights, with a heavy bag, a weathered workout bench, and some free weights sharing space with storage boxes and old tools. But it had the grace of the familiar, the unchanging.