Dead Before Dark Page 9

He’s been setting the stage for months.

  Months?

  Years, really.

  All those years spent in a six by nine concrete cell, with nothing to do but think.

  And remember.

  And plan.

  He emerged from prison ripe for action…and then Lucinda Sloan popped up on his television set, with those red, red lips, and there was Ava Neary—Ava Neary!—and he knew it was meant to be.

  Why? Carla Barakat asked him, over and over, sobbing hysterically. Why are you doing this to me?

  The last two words were key.

  To me.

  She didn’t ask—as investigators had, all those years ago, when they were trying to determine whether he was competent to stand trial—why he felt the need to kill.

  She asked why he was killing her.

  Caught up in the pleasure of carrying out the long-planned execution, he didn’t bother to explain that she was no random victim. That he simply had no choice. She had to die in order to set the plan in motion.

  He probably should have told her.

  Even a condemned prisoner on death row is officially informed of the reason for his sentence. It’s only fair.

  Carla Barakat went to her death without realizing her sentence had been set the August day he—and the rest of the world—saw the unmistakable connection between her husband and Lucinda Sloan.

  Ah, well. He won’t make that mistake with the next one.

  He’ll tell her exactly why she has to die, if she asks.

  It’s only fair.

  But first, he has to find her.

  Hearing the rumble of the mail truck on the street, Vic hits Save, leans back from the keyboard, and stretches.

  Break time.

  He picks up his long-empty coffee cup and brings it to the kitchen, leaving it in the sink with the breakfast dishes. Today, he’ll try to empty the dishwasher and reload it before Kitty gets home. Yesterday, he lost track of time.

  “It’s okay,” she said, wiping waffle crumbs off the counter at seven o’clock last night, still wearing her suit and pumps from the office. “You’re on a deadline.”

  God, he loves his wife.

  She’s going to be so proud when his book comes out. His publisher is already talking about sending him on a book tour. Newspaper interviews, television appearances, store signings…

  That will be exciting.

  It would be even more exciting if he could do all of that as a hero, with the Night Watchman behind bars at last.

  For all he knows, the unsub is already there, or died thirty-five years ago.

  It would be nice to know.

  Nice?

  It would be the culmination of his life’s work, and one hell of an epilogue.

  Vic opens the front door as the red, white, and blue postal truck rolls toward his driveway. The yard and tree branches are blanketed in a feathery coating of white, the driveway marred by a pair of dusted-over tire tracks from Kitty’s car. He didn’t even notice that it had snowed.

  “Sorry it’s not shoveled,” he calls to Smitty, the mailman, as he heads up the walk carrying a bundle of letters. “Guess I’d better get to it.”

  “You’re a rich book author now,” Smitty replies with a grin. He, like everyone else in the world, saw the articles written about Vic and the Night Watchman case when the Associated Press picked up on the publisher’s press release. “Get someone else to do the dirty work.”

  Vic doesn’t tell him he has yet to receive the advance, and that it will hardly make him rich when he does get it.

  With any luck, though, the amended contract will be in today’s mail. His agent said she sent it to him for his signature before the long weekend.

  “How’s the book coming along?” Smitty asks, handing over the mail.

  “It’s coming along.” Vic breathes white puffs of frigid air.

  “Well, get back to it. See you later.”

  With a wave, Smitty is on his way. Vic shuts out the cold and carries the mail back toward the kitchen, stopping to turn up the thermostat.

  He probably shouldn’t, oil prices being what they are this winter.

  But who knows? Maybe, once the book comes out, he really will be a rich author. His agent is trying to negotiate movie rights.

  “It might be an easier sell if they’d caught the guy,” she told him. “Like Helter Skelter. But there’s a certain marketable mystique to this killer still being out there, walking among us. The guy who wrote about the Zodiac got a major movie deal out of it.”

  Wouldn’t that be something. Vic and Kitty have gotten a lot of mileage out of fantasizing about who might play them on film.

  “I think Brad Pitt should play you,” she told Vic, who snorted.

  “He’s too young.” He added dryly, “And not good-looking enough.”

  “He’s not playing you as you are now,” she pointed out. “He’s playing you in the past, when you were on the case. You were young then.”

  Right.

  Yet another reminder that nothing of note has happened on the case since.

  Vic couldn’t care less about marketable mystique. He doesn’t want to cash in on the fact that the killer might still be out there, walking among them.

  But when he said that to his agent, she told him to leave the business end of things to her.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, he pushes aside the dirty breakfast plates and utensils and goes through the mail.

  No contract today.

  There’s a brochure from Norwegian Cruise Lines, courtesy of Dave Gudlaug, who’s been trying to convince Vic that he and Kitty would love cruising.

  Vic said he’d think about it, but that was back before the book. Now he’s got better things to do than sail around, learning to salsa dance or playing bingo or eating at buffets or whatever it is that people do on cruises.

  He puts the brochure aside.

  Beneath it is a legal-sized white envelope addressed to VICTOR SHATTUCK, FBI AGENT.

  The label is typewritten and the envelope was postmarked in New York City, without a return address.

  Vic picks up a butter knife from the table, wipes the greasy toast crumbs from the blade, and uses it as a letter opener.

  He removes a single sheet of paper, unfolds it.

  Two words are written in the center of the page in what looks like red lipstick.

  I’M BACK.

  Chapter Five

  Huddled tearfully on the WELCOME mat, still clutching the Barakats’ newspapers, Lucinda has no idea how much time has passed before a squad car comes wailing up to the house.

  Probably only a few minutes, but it feels like hours since she called 911.

  The sea air seems infused with the stench of rotting flesh and her own vomit wafting up from the shrubs beside the steps. It has taken every ounce of her strength to stay here, waiting for the authorities.

  Now, thank God, they’re here. She wipes her eyes on her sleeve, vaguely recognizing one of the two uniformed officers who dash from the car.

  The male—who looks exactly like Harry Potter, minus the forehead lightning bolt—was around police headquarters last summer. Randy introduced him to Lucinda then, but she can’t remember his name.

  With him is a stocky blond female officer Lucinda’s never seen before. But now isn’t the time for introductions, or reintroductions.

  “Look in the bathroom,” Lucinda instructs them, then buries her face in a trembling hand as they hurry past her, into the house.

  Alone again, she forces herself to stay calm, to keep breathing, to stay here, on the scene.

  You can do this. You can see it through. You’ve done it before. So many times before.

  In her line of work, death scenes are inevitable.

  But she isn’t working. And this time, death has struck too close to home.

  Oh, Randy.

  He’s going to be devastated.

  How could this have happened?

  The thought that’s been flitting through her tra
umatized brain settles at last:

  What if this has something to do with that scrapbook filled with dead women?

  Did Carla’s killer leave it for Lucinda—and then snatch it away?

  And the signet ring she wrapped with care and locked in her glove compartment? Could it have been Carla’s after all? Covered in Carla’s blood?

  Lucinda darts a wary glance around at the yard, the neighboring houses, the street. Everything seems deserted.

  But that doesn’t mean he’s not here even now, watching her.

  He?

  It could be a she….

  No. It’s not.

  She doesn’t know how she’s so sure about that, but she is.

  Her own intuition?

  Or is it because of Maeve’s scary man?

  Maybe a bit of both.

  The door opens behind her, and she looks up to see the female officer step out of the house, looking green. The woman gulps some air.

  “Are you all right?” Lucinda asks.

  “Absolutely.” But when she rakes a hand through her stubbly blond hair, Lucinda sees that it’s shaking.

  She’s probably new on the force. Not used to dead bodies.

  Not like me.

  Yet, does one ever really get used to the smell of death? Or the sight of it?

  Thank God she didn’t have to see Carla. Not in person, anyway. It’s bad enough to have glimpsed the bloody scene in her vision.

  “Is she dead?” she asks the cop, but the words clog in her throat, barely emerging a whisper.

  “My partner’s trying to locate the next of kin.”

  Next of kin.

  Randy.

  She can’t speak.

  “I’m Sergeant Van Aken, ma’am, and I’m going to need some information from you.”

  Numb, Lucinda nods. Of course. She’s a witness.

  A witness who has no idea what’s going on.

  She watches the female officer stride to the squad car.

  Again, Lucinda thinks about the scrapbook, wonders if there can possibly be a connection.

  The scrapbook…the piece of paper…the ring…

  It doesn’t make sense…

  It does make sense….

  Oh, hell, she can’t even think straight.

  Sergeant Van Aken returns with a clipboard, her radio squawking at her hip. It’s her partner’s voice, Lucinda realizes, hearing Randy’s address. The officer inside the house is radioing for backup.

  “Got a 10-54 here,” he’s saying, and of course, Lucinda knows the code.

  10-54.

  Possible dead body.

  “Were you a friend of the victim’s, ma’am?”

  “I’m a friend…of her husband’s. Sort of. I mean, I know him.”

  Someone has to tell Randy, she thinks dully, and wonders who’s going to do it, and when, and how, as the officer writes down her name, address, age, and other statistics Lucinda is able to provide with robotic precision.

  Then Sergeant Van Aken asks, “So you drove all the way out here from Philadelphia…to visit?”

  Lucinda’s autopilot shuts off abruptly. She hesitates, conscious of the woman’s steely gaze fixed on her face.

  “I…I, um…”

  How the hell is she supposed to explain her presence here?

  Should she tell her about the ring, and the vision?

  But that’s so complicated.

  “Ms. Sloan?”

  “Yes, I came to see Randy,” she hears herself say—and immediately regrets it.

  Randy is in Lake Tahoe.

  If they check her phone records, they’ll see that she called him this morning, and it’ll be pretty obvious that she knew he wouldn’t be home.

  Why would they check my phone records, though? I’m not a suspect.

  She shifts her weight uneasily, realizing what Sergeant Van Aken is thinking.

  I need Randy here to set her straight. Or Neal. I don’t know how to answer these questions without making myself look suspicious.

  “What was the purpose for your visit here, Ms. Sloan?”

  “Just…to say hello.” Knowing enough not to elaborate, she bites down on her bottom lip and waits for the next question.

  “And you had a key to the house?”

  “No, I…” She looks up, sees the key still sticking out of the lock where she left it. “I found it under the doormat, I swear.”

  The officer, who had started to write that down, looks up sharply at her last words. “Why do you say that?”

  “What?”

  “‘I swear.’ It sounds like you’re trying to convince me that you found the key under the mat. Why wouldn’t I believe you?”

  “Because…I mean, a key under the mat?”

  “A lot of people hide keys under the mat.”

  “I know, that’s why…Never mind,” she mutters uneasily, and shifts a nervous gaze back toward the house, wishing Harry Potter would come out and vouch for her.

  If he even remembers her, that is.

  But of course he must. It’s not every day that a police psychic blows into town to help solve a missing persons case.

  “So, Ms. Sloan, let’s recap. You got here, you opened the door with the key, you went into the house, and then…what?”

  “Then I called 911.”

  “You found Mrs. Barakat and you called 911.”

  “No, I didn’t find her. I called 911, and then—”

  “Without seeing the victim?”

  She nods. “It smelled like…I mean, I knew, when I walked in. So I came back out, and I called.”

  The officer writes that down. “Just to be clear, then, you called without seeing Mrs. Barakat.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Watch it, Lucinda. Don’t get prickly. That won’t help, and she’s just doing her job.

  “And what, exactly, did you do while you were in the house?”

  “Nothing,” she says promptly. Defensively. “I was barely in the house. I didn’t get more than a step or two past the front door.”

  Sergeant Van Aken digests this. “Have you ever been in the house before?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Not in the past?”

  That’s what before means, isn’t it?

  “Never,” Lucinda bites out.

  “And not today.”

  “Never.”

  “Yet when Detective Lambert and I arrived, you told us to look in the bathroom. Correct?”

  Lucinda curses silently and fights the urge to close her eyes or look up at the sky, instead fastening her gaze on the police officer’s.

  “Yes,” she says simply, “that’s what I told you.”

  “And you knew this because…?”

  “Because I’m a psychic.”

  The woman waits, apparently, for a more acceptable answer—thinking Lucinda is some kind of wise ass.

  Happens all the time. But usually, the stakes aren’t this high.

  A gust of salty wet wind blows her long auburn curls across her face. As she rakes a restless hand through her hair she does her best not to look longingly at her car. She’s not going anywhere. She’s got to be here for Randy when he arrives. Forget their past, forget her vow to keep her distance. He’s going to need all the support he can get.

  Sergeant Van Aken clears her throat. “Ms. Sloan, I asked how you found the victim if you hadn’t been inside the house.”

  I know you did. And I answered you.

  She swallows the ache in her throat and repeats wearily, “I knew because I’m a psychic. Look, it’s true. You can ask your partner.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I met him,” she gestures at the house, “last summer. They know me on the force. Seriously, ask your partner—Detective Lambert, is it?—to come out here, or…You know what? Just ask Randy Barakat. He’ll explain.”

  Belatedly, she realizes the absurdity of that suggestion. Explaining Lucinda’s psychic abilities is going to be the last thing on Randy’s agenda when the Be
ach Haven police reach him.

  Poor Randy, she thinks again.

  Noting the suspicion in Sergeant Van Aken’s eyes, she thinks, And poor me.

  Sergeant Van Aken still looks a little pale, obviously not over what she found in the house.

  All at once, Lucinda realizes something.

  Fresh corpses don’t smell. It takes at least a day or two before putrefication starts to set in, bringing with it the stench of rotting flesh.

  But when she reached Randy this morning, he said he’d spoken to Carla last night.

  Obviously, he was lying.

  Why?

  Sitting in construction traffic outside Winslow, he turns on the radio to look for a local station, wondering if there will be any news on the discovery of a body in Beach Haven.

  Nothing but music.

  Music—that reminds him. He smiles, wondering whether Lucinda has found the little serenade he left on her iPod yet.

  Fat, wet snowflakes begin to plop onto the windshield.

  Pity, he thinks, as he flicks on the wipers, that he’s not headed for a warmer climate at this time of year.

  But there is no room for deviation in this plan. He’s painstakingly laid out every step in advance and of course knows exactly where, and when, he’ll make his next appearance.

  Soon enough—if she’s as smart as he thinks she is—so will Lucinda Sloan.

  That, for him, is the very best part.

  In fact, maybe he’ll make a little detour, now that he knows she’s not home. Give her another little clue to keep her guessing.

  Sooner or later, she’s bound to figure it out.

  And when she does, the fun will really begin.

  He laughs just thinking about it.

  Laughs good and long and hard, laughs until his sides hurt and the traffic begins to move again and he can barely see to drive.

  “Lucinda. Of course I remember you.” Summoned to the front steps by Sergeant Van Aken, Detective Dan Lambert nods. “You’re Randy’s friend.”

  “That’s what she told me,” Van Aken informs him, as yet another investigator, this one carrying photography equipment, hurries past them and into the house. “I just wanted to double-check, because—well, you know.”

  Yes. Lambert knows.

  And so does Lucinda, who was rapidly being made to feel like a suspect in the murder of Carla Barakat.