“Lucy,” he whispers.
“Do you know who was there with her?”
“My brother-in-law—her brother, Ryan. Is he . . . ?”
“He was injured pretty badly.” The detective’s expression is somber. “He’s on his way to the hospital.”
“And . . . my wife?” Jeremy braces himself for what’s coming.
I’m not ready to hear it.
He closes his eyes, knowing he’ll never be ready to hear it.
He had everything.
So much to lose . . .
“She lost a lot of blood, but we got there in time.”
A sob escapes Jeremy’s throat. “She’s alive?”
“Hell, yes, she’s alive. She told us right where to find the baby.”
“Lucy.” He laughs through his tears. “Lucy’s . . . she’s always telling people what to do.”
“What I want to know is, how did you know to find him here?” Detective Meade asks.
Jeremy shakes his head in wonder.
“I guess I just . . . I decided it was time I started praying.”
Yawning, Meade pushes back his chair at last, the case paperwork wrapped up—for the time being, anyway.
Caroline Quinn was DOA, but Lucy Cavalon, Ryan Walsh, and Lucy’s infant son are all stabilized. Jeremy is at children’s hospital with his child. Born at thirty-four weeks, the kid is amazingly sturdy.
And the doctors who were working on Lucy said that she had already been in the early stages of labor. He’d have been a preemie anyway.
But it should never have happened like this. Never.
If Meade had gotten there a split second later . . .
But he made it. Thanks to Lucy, who managed to stay conscious throughout the barbaric procedure Caroline performed on her, listening to her ranting and raving.
Apparently, she thought the baby was the Messiah, here to save the world.
Meade shakes his head.
Ordinarily, it would be his duty to notify the next of kin. Perhaps someday, Marin Quinn will officially have to be told.
But not now. Not on Christmas. Not in her condition.
He’ll leave the final decision up to her doctors, and Nurse Wendy, and Jeremy.
Brandewyne appears at Meade’s desk, pulling on her coat, an unlit cigarette ready in her hand. “I’ll walk down with you, if you’re ready, Omar.”
“Sure.”
Together, they make their way through the office.
“Merry Christmas, guys,” Alden calls as they pass his desk. “Great work.”
“Merry Christmas,” they call back in unison.
“Jinx.” Brandewyne punches Meade in the arm.
He sighs inwardly and holds the stairwell door open for her. He thinks about saying, Ladies first, but really, that doesn’t quite apply here.
“You know,” Brandewyne says through a yawn, “when I was a little girl I always knew Christmas Eve was the longest night of the year.”
“December twenty-first is the longest night of the year. Not the twenty-fourth.”
“I’m not talking about science. I’m talking about the way it feels when you’re a kid, waiting for Santa. But I have to say, none of those long Christmas Eves were anywhere near as long as last night was.”
“I have to say you’re right.”
“I want to go home and sleep for a week.” She yawns again.
“Are you sure about that?”
“Well . . . maybe two weeks. Why?”
“Because I was going to ask you if you wanted to come to my mother’s in Staten Island with me and Dante.”
“You were?”
He wasn’t. But for some reason, it popped out.
“What if your mother thinks I’m your girlfriend?”
“She won’t.” Trust me.
“I hope not. Because I have a boyfriend.”
“You do?”
“Yeah. His name’s Kenny. He’s stationed in Guam. We’ve been together for three years—a long-distance relationship.”
“I never knew that.”
“You never asked.”
Meade tilts his head, contemplating that.
“Please tell me you weren’t thinking of asking me out.”
“I wasn’t,” he promises her truthfully. “So . . . Staten Island?”
“You got it. As long as we’re not bringing your mother a vacuum cleaner with a bow on it.”
He grins, holding the door for her.
“Ladies first,” he says, and follows her out into the glare of morning sun on fresh Christmas snow.
“Lucy . . .”
The voice is far away.
“Lucy?”
She opens her eyes.
The light is so bright.
Jeremy. Sweet Jeremy, smiling at her with tears in his eyes. Why?
“Hi,” he says softly.
“Hi.” She manages to lift her hand to his cheek, brushing away a tear. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just . . .” He shakes his head, wipes his eyes with his sleeve. “You’re going to be all right.”
“Of course I am.”
“And Ryan is, too.”
Ryan . . . what is he talking about?
Confused, she lets her eyes close.
She’s sleepy, and the darkness is peaceful.
Jeremy is still talking.
“The baby . . . he’s beautiful, Goose.”
“The baby,” she murmurs, wondering if she’s dreaming. “Yes.”
“He’s strong. Really strong. Just like his mommy.”
Strong. Yes.
She forces her eyes open again. She’s strong. She is.
Jeremy is there again, or maybe still there, holding a little box. “This is your Christmas present.”
“Christmas . . .”
“It’s today. We’ll celebrate when you come home,” Jeremy tells her. “You and the baby. Here, look.”
He lifts the top of the box and pulls out a delicate gold chain with an oval locket.
“Beautiful,” she murmurs.
“I’ll put it on you, but first . . .” He pries open the locket’s hinged face and holds it close to her. “Do you see him?”
There’s a picture.
A baby.
She wasn’t dreaming.
“Yes,” she tells Jeremy. “I see him.”
“That’s our son.”
“Our son,” she echoes in wonder, taking in every detail of his tiny face. “When can I hold him?”
“He’s so little. He’s in the neonatal ICU. I haven’t held him yet, either, but they said we can. Soon.”
“I want to see him.” She swallows hard, and it hurts. Everything hurts.
“You will, Lu. You’ll see him, and you’ll hold him. You’re his mom.”
“He needs a name,” she tells Jeremy. “Our son.”
“I know, and I was thinking . . .” He clears his throat. “I know we haven’t even talked about names yet. And you might have a strong idea yourself . . .”
“Hey,” she manages, and he grins.
“Admit it, Goose. You’ve been known to have a strong idea or two in your day.”
It hurts to smile, but she does. “What are you thinking? Names . . .”
“Michael.”
“Michael.” She contemplates it. “After Miguel?”
“Yes. And for Mike Fantoni, the detective who—”
“I know,” she whispers, reaching for Jeremy’s hand. She finds it. Squeezes it.
So many tragedies in their lives. But now it’s time to look ahead.
“And you know,” Jeremy goes on, “Michael is an angel.”
“Yes. Michael Walsh Cavalon. I love it.”
“Michael Wa
lsh Cavalon?” her husband echoes.
“Michael Walsh Cavalon.”
Jeremy kisses her gently on the forehead. “So it shall be.”
And so it was.
Keep reading for a sneak peek of
NIGHTCRAWLER
Coming 2012 from
Wendy Corsi Staub
and Avon Books
September 10, 2001
Quantico, Virginia
6:35 P.M.
Case closed.
Vic Shattuck clicks the mouse and the Southside Strangler file—the one that forced him to spend the better part of August in the rainy Midwest tracking a serial killer—disappears from the screen.
If only it were that easy to make it all go away in real life.
“If you let it, this stuff will eat you up inside like cancer,” Vic’s FBI colleague Dave Gudlaug told him early in his career, and he was right.
Now Dave, who a few years ago reached the Bureau’s mandatory retirement age, spends his time traveling with his wife. He claims he doesn’t miss the work.
“Believe me, you’ll be ready to put it all behind you, too, when the time comes,” he promised Vic.
Maybe, but with his own retirement seven years away, Vic is in no hurry to move on. Sure, it might be nice to spend uninterrupted days and nights with Kitty, but somehow he suspects that he’ll never be truly free of the cases he’s handled—not even those that are solved. For now, as a profiler with the Behavioral Science Unit, he can at least do his part to rid the world of violent offenders.
“You’re still here, Shattuck?”
He looks up to see Special Agent Annabelle Wyatt. With her long legs, almond-shaped dark eyes, and flawless ebony skin, she looks like a supermodel—and acts like one of the guys.
Not in a let’s-hang-out-and-have-a-few-laughs way; in a let’s-cut-the-bullshit-and-get-down-to-business way.
She briskly hands Vic a folder. “Take a look at this and let me know what you think.”
“Now?”
She clears her throat. “It’s not urgent, but . . .”
Yeah, right. With Annabelle, everything is urgent.
“Unless you were leaving . . .” She pauses, obviously waiting for him to tell her that he’ll take care of it before he goes.
“I was.”
Without even glancing at the file, Vic puts it on top of his in-box. The day’s been long enough and he’s more than ready to head home.
Kitty is out at her book club tonight, but that’s okay with him. She called earlier to say she was leaving a macaroni and cheese casserole in the oven. The homemade kind, with melted cheddar and buttery breadcrumb topping.
Better yet, both his favorite hometown teams—the New York Yankees and the New York Giants—are playing tonight. Vic can hardly wait to hit the couch with a fork in one hand and the TV remote control in the other.
“All right.” Annabelle turns to leave, then turns back. “Oh, I heard about Chicago. Nice work. You got him.”
“You mean her.”
Annabelle shrugs. “How about it?”
“It. Yeah, that works.”
Over the course of Vic’s career, he hasn’t seen many true cases of MPD—Multiple Personality Disorder—but this was one of them.
The elusive Southside Strangler turned out to be a woman named Edie . . . who happened to live inside a suburban single dad named Calvin Granger.
Last June, Granger had helplessly watched his young daughter drown in a fierce Lake Michigan undertow. Unable to swim, he was incapable of saving her.
Weeks later, mired in frustration and anguish and the brunt of his grieving ex-wife’s fury, he picked up a hooker. That was not unusual behavior for him. What happened after that was.
The woman’s nude, mutilated body was found just after dawn in Washington Park, electrical cable wrapped around her neck. A few days later, another corpse turned up in the park. And then a third.
Streetwalking and violent crime go hand in hand; the Southside’s slain hookers were, sadly, business as usual for the jaded cops assigned to that particular case.
For urban reporters as well. Chicago was in the midst of a series of flash floods this summer; the historic weather eclipsed the coverage of the Southside Strangler in the local press. That, in retrospect, was probably a very good thing. The media spotlight tends to feed a killer’s ego—and his bloodlust.
Only when the Strangler claimed a fourth victim—an upper-middle-class mother of three living a respectable lifestyle—did the case become front page news. That was when the cops called in the FBI.
For Vic, every lost life carries equal weight. Even now, when he thinks of the heartbroken parents he met in Chicago, parents who lost their daughters twice: first to drugs and the streets, and, ultimately, to the monster who murdered them.
The monster, like most killers, had once been a victim himself.
It was a textbook case: Granger had been severely abused—essentially tortured—as a child. The MPD was, in essence, a coping mechanism. As an adult, he suffered occasional, inexplicable episodes of amnesia, particularly during times of overwhelming stress.
He genuinely seemed to have no memory of anything “he” had said or done while Edie or one of the other, nonviolent alters—alternative personalities—were in control of him.
“By the way,” Annabelle cuts into Vic’s thoughts, “I hear birthday wishes are in order.”
Surprised, he tells her, “Actually, it was last month—while I was in Chicago.”
“Ah, so your party was belated, then.”
His party. This past Saturday night, Kitty surprised him by assembling over two dozen guests—family, friends, colleagues—at his favorite restaurant near Dupont Circle.
Feeling a little guilty that Annabelle wasn’t invited, he informs her, “I wouldn’t call it a party. It was more like . . . it was just dinner, really. My wife planned it.”
But then, even if Vic himself had been in charge of the guest list, Supervisory Special Agent Wyatt would not have been on it.
Some of his colleagues are also personal friends. She isn’t one of them.
It’s not that he has anything against no-nonsense women. Hell, he married one.
And he respects Annabelle just as much as—or maybe even more than—anyone else here. He just doesn’t necessarily like her much—and he suspects the feeling is mutual.
“I hear that it was an enjoyable evening,” she tells him with a crisp nod, and he wonders if she’s wistful. She doesn’t sound it—or look it. But for the first time, it occurs to Vic that her apparent social isolation might not always be by choice.
He shifts his weight in his chair. “It’s my wife’s thing, really. Kitty’s big on celebrations. I mean, she’ll go all out for any occasion. Years ago, she actually threw a party when she potty-trained the twins.”
As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he wants to take them back—and not just because mere seconds ago he was insisting that Saturday night was not a party.
Annabelle isn’t the kind of person with whom you discuss children, much less potty-training them. She doesn’t have a family, but if she did, Vic is certain she’d keep the details—particularly, the bathroom details—to herself.
Well, too bad. I’m a family man.
After Annabelle bids him a stiff good night and disappears down the corridor, Vic shifts his gaze to the framed photos on his desk. One is of him and Kitty on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary last year; the other, more recent, shows Vic with all four of the kids at the high school graduation last June of his twin daughters.
The girls left for college a few weeks ago. He and Kitty are empty-nesters now—well, Kitty pretty much rules the roost, as she likes to say, since Vic is gone so often.
“So which is it—a nest or a roost?” he asked her the other day.
&
nbsp; She dryly replied, “Neither. It’s a coop, and you’ve been trying to fly it for years, but you just keep right on finding your way back, don’t you.”
She was teasing, of course. No one supports Vic’s career as wholeheartedly as Kitty does, no matter how many nights it’s taken him away from home over the years. It was her idea in the first place that he put aside his planned career as a psychiatrist in favor of the FBI.
All because of the Night Watchman.
Ah, the one that got away.
It’s been almost thirty years since the series of murders terrorized New York and captivated a young, local college psych major.
“Back when I first met him, Vic was obsessed with unsolved murders,” Kitty announced on Saturday night when she stood up to toast him at his birthday dinner, “and since then he’s done an incredible job solving hundreds of them.”
True—with one notable exception.
The Night Watchman disappeared into the shadows years ago when the New York killings stopped abruptly.
Vic would like to think he’s no longer alive.
If by chance he is, then he’s almost certainly been sidelined by illness or incarceration for some unrelated crime.
After all, while there are exceptions to every rule, most serial killers don’t just stop. Everything Vic has learned over the years about their habits indicates that once something triggers a person to cross the fine line that divides disturbed human beings from cunning predators, he’s compelled to keep feeding his dark fantasies until, God willing, something—or someone—stops him.
In a perfect world, Vic is that someone.
But then, a perfect world wouldn’t be full of disturbed people who are, at any given moment, teetering on the brink of reality.
Typically, all it takes is a single life stressor to push one over the edge. It can be any devastating event, really—a car accident, job loss, bankruptcy, a terminal diagnosis, a child’s drowning . . .
Stressors like those can create considerable challenges for a mentally healthy person. But when fate inflicts that kind of pressure on someone who’s already dangerously unbalanced . . . well, that’s how killers are born.
Though Vic has encountered more than one homicidal maniac whose spree began with a wife’s infidelity, the triggering crisis doesn’t necessarily have to hit close to home. Even a natural disaster can be prime breeding ground.
Hell to Pay Page 29