Blood Moon

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  He slowed and stopped on the sidewalk. He hadn’t properly been in a church since he was ten, but he was seized with the desire to confess.

  As he stood there in the shadows outside the building, he felt the darkness around him deepen. He was seized with the feeling that he was not alone. And in a heart-stopping moment he knew it was Cara, knew that she had followed him, that she had watched him with Rachel, that he’d finally crossed the line that would be his undoing.

  And in the moment, he didn’t care.

  He turned to face the darkness…

  And the air was shattered by the sound of a car roaring around a corner.

  He spun, reaching automatically for his weapon— until he saw it was a fleet car, a Crown Vic.

  The car skidded to a stop by the curb. The driver’s door opened, and Epps unfolded himself to standing.

  Roarke stared at him from across the hood of the car. “How did you know I was—”

  Epps shook his head. “Jones has been following you all night. The plan, remember?”

  Before Roarke could fully process what “all night” meant, Epps told him, “I hate it when you’re right.”

  And Roarke’s stomach plummeted.

  “Tell me.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  It was a family in Lake Arrowhead, in the San Bernardino Mountains, a couple hours east of Los Angeles. Arrowhead was an upscale resort town of about eleven thousand locals that had been popular with Hollywood celebrities back in the heyday of film noir and still drew a brisk tourist trade for skiing in the winter and for boating, hiking and fishing in the summer.

  “Slaughtered,” Singh said gently, her velvet voice somber with regret. “The whole family.”

  The team was gathered around the table in the conference room, pulled away from their beds. There was a dreary light outside the windows, now. Everyone was standing; they were all too wired to sit.

  Singh continued. “They died some time last night; the bodies weren’t discovered until this morning. The housekeeper came over early to drop off groceries for Thanksgiving before she left town, and found them.”

  There were faxed photos of the crime scene on the table in front of them. Heartbreaking photos.

  “The same as the others,” Singh explained as the agents looked down at the carnage. “Upper middle-class family, the Cavanaughs. Father a real estate agent in town. Mother owned an arts and crafts shop. Three children: two girls, fourteen and ten, and a thirteen-year old boy. All stabbed, and the father apparently dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.” She put an ironic emphasis on the word apparently. “A hunting rifle—”

  She fell silent as Reynolds stepped into the doorway. Everyone on the team froze. Reynolds locked eyes with Roarke, then he looked at Singh. “Go on,” he said.

  After a moment, she did. “The central heating in the house was turned off and the temperature has been in the twenties overnight and below forty today, which means the scene is fairly pristine.”

  Roarke felt a jolt of adrenaline. Before he could even say a word, Singh continued. “I’ve been monitoring all police reports in the state and have had an urgent bulletin out asking that all familicides be reported immediately. Providentially, a local deputy had seen the bulletin and reported the crime directly to us. Nothing has been released to the media yet. The initial thought was murder/suicide. But there is some question.”

  Roarke was almost lightheaded with their luck. FBI bulletins were far too often filed in the circular file or immediately buried by a dozen other notices on police station corkboards.

  “The full moon is still four days away,” Epps said.

  “Yes,” Roarke said. “We won’t know until we see.”

  But they all understood it was too similar to discount. Too close to the full moon to discount. And Roarke knew. It was the Reaper. He felt another paralyzing stab of guilt, unreasonable as it was, and had to force himself to focus on the present.

  Singh continued carefully. “Now, the scene is already in process. I am getting some pushback from the sheriff about how much access we will be allowed. However, I have persuaded him to allow us to view the scene.”

  Roarke didn’t even have to ask how she’d managed. Singh’s magic calm had worked wonders on him often enough.

  She permitted herself a small smile. “They are particularly interested in the lab resources we can offer. I promised… in essence, anything they need.”

  Beside Roarke, Epps breathed out. “Amazing, woman.” Roarke’s thoughts exactly. She was a goddess.

  Singh spoke as if she hadn’t heard. “My suggestion is that you leave immediately for the airport before they can change their minds. I will book you on the next flight down to Ontario and arrange for a car; it is just over an hour drive up into the mountains. I thought you would want Lam and Stotlemyre, so I’ve put in calls to them as well. I’ve informed them of the need to…”

  “Bend over,” Jones muttered.

  “Cooperate,” Singh said with a straight face.

  Reynolds waited until the team cleared out of the room to approach Roarke. He looked both pissed and guilty. Roarke willed himself into a state of calm. “I-told-you-so’s” were never in any way useful.

  The SAC spoke gruffly. “Take whoever you need. Find out what the hell this is. If it’s the guy, take him down.”

  “Thanks,” Roarke said, without rancor. “We will.” And as he turned away, the first thought in his head was that the person he most needed was the one person he couldn’t take.

  As they waited at the San Francisco airport for their flight, he called Snyder and quickly filled him in. “It’s a fresh crime scene. Can you come down?”

  There was a silence on the other end that seemed like more than an ordinary hesitation.

  “You can do this, Matthew,” the profiler said. “You always could.”

  “It’s not about that.” Roarke didn’t know if he was telling the truth about that or not. But he knew he was telling the truth about what he said next. “If we’re right, it’s another whole family massacred. No one person is enough against that. If this is the Reaper, we have to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

  There was a longer silence on the phone than Roarke would have liked, but finally Snyder spoke. “All right, Matthew. Go. Have Singh call me with the details and I’ll be down.”

  Roarke felt a surge of excitement, of purpose— and of sheer relief that he would not be alone.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Ontario International was a mid-sized airport servicing the densely populated bedroom communities in the inland valleys east of Los Angeles.

  Jones remained behind in the terminal to wait for Snyder, while Roarke, Epps, Lam and Stotlemyre picked up the cases that contained the crime techs’ portable laboratory and piled into the Jeep Singh had reserved for them for the hour drive up to the resort town. Epps drove, Roarke riding shotgun, Lam and Stotlemyre in the back seat, immediately spreading faxed photos of the crime scene out on the seat between them and commencing to argue like an old married couple.

  They passed through the valley cities of Rancho Cucamonga and Fontana, with stunning mountains and foothills looming beside the freeway. The valleys were notorious for trapping smog in the summer, but fall winds had cleaned out the skies. Spectacular banks of clouds layered the sky in white, gray and black, but the valleys were clear, and Roarke could see for miles, long vistas of palm trees and even orange groves.

  Epps turned off the freeway at the former base town of San Bernardino, onto a street that was a straight shot toward the mountains, a steeply climbing road of hairpin curves that provided breathtaking views of the valley and the unique desert/mountain mix of Southern California: bleak granite outcroppings and drought-stressed Western and Jeffrey pines, red-barked manzanita scrub tucked into the folds and curves of the earth. Hawks circled above and the valley was softly indistinct below, an industrial grid with patches of trees.

  “Hope no one gets carsick,” Epps muttered
as he twisted the wheel in another stomach-lurching spin.

  Roarke’s thoughts kept drifting back to Rachel, unbidden sexual flashbacks.

  She knew what she was doing, a cold voice said in his mind, but he knew it instantly for the lie it was. She has no idea what this is. How can she, when I don’t know myself?

  He had to stop his thoughts, force his mind back to the car, to the present. You’re going to have to self-flagellate later. You’ve got a killer to catch.

  The scrub brush gave way to tall pines and the view opened up onto the most encompassing view yet, ridge after ridge of jagged blue mountains framing the valley.

  “Daaaamn,” Epps said admiringly.

  Roarke had to agree. He knew people who lived in these mountains often commuted hours to work, even as far as L.A., and he’d always thought it insane. Now he wasn’t so sure.

  At the sweep of town that called itself Rim of the World they passed the high school that the Cavanaugh children now would never attend, and road signs to ski resorts.

  “Resort towns,” Roarke muttered in the front seat.

  Epps glanced his way.

  “Bishop, Reno, Blythe, Arrowhead… all the kill sites, they’re resort towns, tourist towns. Or near to them.” Except Arcata, he reminded himself. But maybe there’s something I’m overlooking there. “Mountains, desert. Skiing, spas…. what kind of business would service them?”

  Epps’ hands were tight on the steering wheel as he thought on it. “I get you. Some kind of traveling… service person. A low-level delivery kind of job. Something that would take the Reaper all over the state.”

  “Yeah. Like that.”

  “Ski supplies?”

  “Wouldn’t work for the desert.”

  “Skiing and boating?”

  Roarke considered. Boating… maybe, but… “Sports equipment salespeople tend to be jocks. Snyder’s profile of the Reaper is weirder than that, unkempt. The guy isn’t going to have people skills.”

  Epps frowned. “Not sales, then. Just straight delivery.”

  “Maybe.”

  They sunk into silence, staring out at granite cliffs, thinking.

  Past Rim of the World the ascent became more vertical; the agents all swallowed to equalize the pressure in their eardrums. Outside the car a cold mist set in. The drop-offs from the road were steeper and the pines thicker. Fog drifted across the highway. There were even a few patches of ice left over from an early snow, and one stretch of charred trees from a summer wildfire, a black and dead moonscape.

  The town of Lake Arrowhead was a definite cut above the scattered cabins they’d been passing so far, instantly and obviously more affluent. The car motored past art galleries, and shops of upscale home furnishings. Every other storefront had a realtor shingle. The fire station was startlingly massive, but it made sense. Fire season was brutal in these parched mountains.

  As they drove through, Roarke skimmed the demographics and details Singh had collected in a packet for him.

  Epps spoke beside him. “Nice…”

  Roarke looked up to see a stretch of blue between the trees. The lake was relatively small, about two miles by two miles, but strikingly scenic, azure and clear with a clean curve of shore, and private, for use by town property owners only. It was ringed by hotels, motels, bed-and-breakfasts, private cabins for rent, and lodges popular for business conferences. The town’s economy was almost entirely supported by tourism.

  Serious money had gone into the development of the town center beside the lake; the Village was a series of interconnected gazebos, boutiques, plazas, bandstands, bars and restaurants, and several huge parking lots around a central pavilion, all with a quaint alpine/deco style to the architecture: steepled roofs, whitewashed buildings with brown trim. Roarke saw there was even a small amusement park for the kids. It all looked vaguely familiar, probably due to the number of films that had been shot in the town and surrounding area over the years.

  There was no police department in the town iself. As an unincorporated community, it was serviced by the county sheriff’s department in Twin Peaks, about three miles out of town, a station of twenty sworn officers, three detectives, and five ranking officers, charged with patrolling an area of over 340 square miles of territory, including numerous mountain resort towns and the National Forest.

  Epps parked the Jeep in the drive of the tiny, angular concrete building set next to a log-cabin style Masonic lodge. Lam and Stotlemyre remained in the car as Roarke and Epps got out. “Kid gloves,” Roarke muttered, as they walked up to the glass doors. He knew he was the one who needed the reminder.

  Inside they were met by Lieutenant Tyson.

  “Appreciate your willingness to work with us,” Roarke told the lieutenant as they shook hands and followed him into his office, where all the men seated themselves stiffly. Tension was thick in the room. Tyson didn’t waste any time getting down to brass tacks.

  “Your Agent Singh said you believe this is not a murder/suicide. That you’ve seen this guy before,” he stated.

  Epps was as ever the perfect mediator, strong, serious, yet deferential. “We strongly suspect this is a multiple murder staged by a perp we’ve been pursuing.”

  “We understand you have some doubt about the murder/suicide angle,” Roarke added.

  Tyson looked at him, finally answered warily. “We have questions.”

  Epps jumped in. “We’re here to provide all the support and resources you can use, including our crime lab. We’ve got our best crime scene techs with us.”

  “Appreciate the offer,” Tyson said coolly. “But living in these mountains, it’s like being on an island. We know the locals, the players. You don’t. If there’s an outside perp, we can get this guy faster than you can.”

  Pushback, as Singh had warned. Roarke fought to keep impatience out of his voice. “If it is our guy, he’s long gone. He doesn’t stick around after his kills. His latest was just over two weeks ago. Another whole family. In Nevada.”

  Tyson’s eyes darkened at that last. Roarke knew exactly what he was thinking: it was a slow enough process to get files from other agencies in-state, never mind a different state altogether. He jumped to emphasize the point. “We can put you together with the key people in the Reno departments, expedite your investigation in whatever ways you need.”

  And then he played his best card. He stood and lay photos of the Reno crime scene down on the desk, the very worst shots. Tyson stood and moved reluctantly to look down at the images. His face didn’t change, but Roarke felt the temperature of the room drop.

  He sees it. It looks the same, he thought, with a rush of dread… and hope.

  He lowered his voice. “It’s your case, your collar, your trial. We’ll get DNA, any tests you need moved to the top of the list. But this guy likes killing on the full moon, and there’s one four days away, now. We just want to see what you’ve got.”

  The agents and the lieutenant looked at each other across the photos. Roarke held his breath, feeling lives in the balance.

  Finally Tyson nodded curtly. “We’ll take you over for a look.”

  The agents followed the lieutenant’s vehicle to the scene.

  The Cavanaughs had lived a few miles from the central village, down another twisting mountain road, in a neighborhood with views of the desert rather than the lake. It was a startling contrast to the green forest and blue water inside of the town, a stark and lonely landscape that Roarke found strangely preferable to the trees as he stared out through the car window over layers of hills slanting down to a vast desert valley. It is an island, he thought.

  The Cavanaugh house was three stories of river rock and pine, set back from the road, almost invisible to any casual passerby. Lieutenant Tyson had said the neighboring houses were vacant; the town generally emptied out for the Thanksgiving weekend. So far that fact had allowed the department to keep the news of the murders under wraps.

  Deputies were stationed around the perimeter of the house, guarding th
e scene.

  “It’s an army,” Lam said from the back seat, resignation in his voice. Roarke knew what he meant. The more first responders, the more chance of crucial evidence being destroyed.

  Stotlemyre leaned up in the seat to speak to Epps and Roarke as Epps parked the Jeep. “Here’s the plan. I’ll stay with the techs and work on them to let us assist.”

  “And I’ll tour the house with you,” Lam said, as if the two techs had talked it over between them, which Roarke knew that they hadn’t.

  Stotlemyre added, “The front threshold’s probably shot but hopefully the perp went in the side and we can get something off that porch. Don’t let anyone go near the side entry.”

  As the agents got out of the Jeep, one of the deputies stepped up to have all the men sign a security log. So far everything by the book.

  Lieutenant Tyson introduced the agents to Detective Aceves, the lead, and his partner Detective Lambert, then took his leave while the agents suited up in white coveralls, and pulled on latex gloves and paper booties in the driveway outside. Roarke slid his hands into the jumper’s pockets to further ensure he would touch nothing, and the other men followed suit.

  As they approached the house Roarke saw Lam looking over the uniformed deputies patrolling the perimeter and heard him mutter to Stotlemyre, “We need to get their shoes.”

  All of the men paused on the doorstep before they stepped through the door, a beat of silence. They all knew the moment for what it was: they were entering a tomb.

  Through the front door there was an entry hall with a flagstone floor. Inside, the living room featured a towering stone chimney and tall slanting windows showcasing the views. A gorgeous house, Roarke had to admit, superbly designed to capture all of the wild and haunting beauty of the wilderness setting. He could feel Epps, the taste master, nodding unconscious approval as the agents followed the detectives through the entry and took in the living room.

  There was no blood in this elegant living space or open cook’s kitchen; all the killing had been done in the bedrooms. And yet there was a darkness in the house. The rooms were refrigerator-cold but the smell of death was there in the chill, a coppery butcher shop stench under the holiday scent of spicy apple-cinnamon potpourri.