No. That wasn’t it.
Something
happened before—Sarge barking, Paulson reaching for the door, hoping he made it back before Stephanie fell asleep.
Oh God.
Stephanie.
“What do you want?” Paulson asked. “Do you want to talk to me? Is that it? You have something to say in private?”
“Keep walking.”
“You know, I’m going to run out of roof soon.”
“Stop when you reach the edge,” the voice said. “I want to show you something, Agent Paulson.”
“And if I don’t?”
“I’ll shoot you and then go downstairs and pay a visit to Stephanie.”
Right at that moment Paulson’s blood jumped. He wanted to turn around and just obliterate this bastard for daring to threaten his wife. He’d take a bullet—or three or four if he had to, he didn’t care. Paulson needed to stop this fucker
now
before he found himself completely helpless. At his mercy. Unable to save Stephanie.
But that wasn’t how a Special Circs agent was supposed to behave. You don’t corner the monster. You draw him out. Paulson cursed himself. He was smarter than this. He was letting this asshole push his buttons.
So instead Paulson stepped toward the ledge. As he looked down his stomach fluttered. He’d never been a fan of heights. In fact, he pretty much avoided them whenever possible. But if he was forced,
could
he jump? There was a balcony ledge about ten feet to the right. He’d be falling too fast to grab the railing. But if he gave himself a slight running leap, even a step or two might do it . . .
“What did you want to show me?” Paulson asked.
“Reach into your robe pocket.”
Paulson froze. He didn’t remember wearing a robe. He looked down to discover he was wearing someone else’s clothes. Oh Jesus. What the hell had happened? Who’d done this to him? He’d been out, just walking his dog. The last thing he remembered telling Stephanie was that he’d be right back. How long had he been gone? Stephanie must be sick with worry by now.
Unless this same bastard had gotten to her first . . .
“Do it. Now.”
“Okay, okay,” Paulson said.
Paulson reached in, preparing for the worst. He felt something hard and rubbery that felt like a plastic wire and immediately his brain screamed
bomb
.
But no—there was something soft and fluttery at the end of the wire. He carefully pinched the wire between his fingers and felt something jab into his thumb pad. By the time he pulled it from his pocket, Paulson knew what the object was.
A white rose.
This set off worse alarm bells than the notion of a
bomb
. It meant his attacker was staging something. He wanted Paulson to hold this rose. Dressed in a robe. On the edge of a roof. All at once, at an instinctual level, he knew who was behind him. Of all the dumb newbie mistakes to make, letting a killer trace you back to your own home! Paulson yelled and turned and—
Something hard shoved him in the back of his right thigh.
His balance was off. Paulson tumbled off the edge. Reached out wildly for something—
anything
. It wasn’t until a second later that he was able to scream.
chapter 12
UCLA—Westwood, California
Monday classes were over and Dark had killed enough time with the forensics trades—
The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology
,
Science & Justice
, the
International Journal of Legal Medicine
, the
Forensic Science Review
—in the campus library. Blake had turned out to be a no-show; Dark supposed her research paper would somehow be completed without his vital input. It was time to go home.
Dark made his way to the parking garage via the Janss Steps, named for the brothers who sold the land to the university. They were iconic; MLK and JFK once held rallies on these steps. But every time Dark descended them, he couldn’t help but think: This would be the perfect place for a murder—something right out of Hitchcock. A slow, desperate tumble you were unable to stop, arms flailing, unforgiving slabs of concrete rushing forward to smash into your spinning body. Sure, it would be in broad daylight, but that was the beauty of it. Too many potential suspects and any potential witnesses were too focused on their own steps to pay much attention to what was happening around them.
There you go again, Dark thought. Murder on your mind. Always. Can’t you just walk down a flight of stairs or watch a college student carve a side of roast beef without your thoughts turning to murder?
About halfway down, a voice called out to him. “Agent Dark?”
Dark turned, instinctively reaching for the Glock that wasn’t there. Standing a few steps above him was a woman. She wasn’t dressed like a student, and her clothes were too expensive-looking for a faculty member’s. Her bright eyes had a look of bemusement in them.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not here to attack you. Is there somewhere we can talk?”
Dark shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
The woman’s eyes turned hard and flat. “Don’t I look the slightest bit familiar to you, Agent Dark? My name is Lisa Graysmith.”
The name was familiar, but Dark couldn’t place it. She must have caught him trying, because she quickly added: “You knew my younger sister.”
It took Dark another few moments, but then he got it. Graysmith—Julie. Sixteen years old. Captured, tortured, and eventually left to die by a monster Special Circs called “Body Double.” This killer’s modus operandi was to impersonate someone in the victim’s life, temporarily lulling the victim into a false sense of security. A friend, maybe a family member. His disguises were never perfect. They relied too much on broad strokes—a hair style, a mannerism. The victims—usually teenagers, sometimes children—never believed the ruse for more than a few seconds. But that was all Body Double—aka Brian Russell Day—needed.
Julie Graysmith had been his final victim. Dark and the Special Circs team caught him soon after, trying to slip into a crowd at Union Station in D.C. They forced him to reveal Julie’s location. But the team was unable to reach her in time.
“I never met her,” Dark said.
“I think you knew her more intimately than anybody,” Graysmith said, descending the steps. “You tried to save her—and more importantly, you caught her killer. I wanted the chance to thank you.”
Dark considered this for a moment. If this woman really was the sister of a victim, she didn’t deserve a brush-off. Sometimes the best thing you could do for a grieving family member was simply listen. But grieving relatives sometimes wanted answers you couldn’t give. Or they wanted to drag you into some kind of legal action.
Then again, Dark wasn’t with Special Circs anymore. There was only so far this woman could drag him.
“There’s a place nearby,” he said.
Graysmith offered to drive. Dark agreed. It would give him the opportunity to look at her car, which turned out to be a spotless BMW. A high-end rental—he saw the telltale bar code in the windshield, which the agency used to check vehicles in and out of the lot. Once inside the brewpub, the woman claiming to be “Lisa Graysmith” ordered an iced tea. Dark asked for a draft beer. A row of flat-screen TVs displayed sports-highlights shows.
“Thank you for the beer.”
Graysmith said, “You left Special Circs in June.”
Dark looked at her. Not many people knew about Special Circs, let alone the comings and goings of its agents. The press covered Brian Russell Day’s arrest, but never mentioned his nickname nor Special Circs’s involvement. Officially, it was the FBI who caught him. Day was awaiting execution in Washington.
Dark sipped his beer, saying nothing.
“You don’t have to be coy with me, Agent Dark,” Graysmith said. “After that son of a bitch was arrested, I wanted to learn everything I could about the man who caught him. I asked around about you.”
“Who did you ask?”
“Let’s put it this way. We’ve probably passed each other in the hall a few times in the last five years.”
Was Graysmith trying to tell him she worked for the Defense Department? That she knew about Wycoff, and his secret control of Special Circs?
She leaned forward, placed her fingertips on Dark’s hand. “I also know about Wycoff ’s little eight-pound indiscretion.”
Dark took his hand away, picked up his beer, had another swallow. Now she was showing off. Almost nobody knew about Wycoff’s illegitimate child. Or its connection to the Sqweegel murders.
“You’re giving me peeks at your hand,” Dark said, “but I don’t even know what game we’re playing. If you want something, go ahead and ask. If you’re trying to draw something out of me, just ask. Other than that, we can finish our drinks and then we can go.”
“You caught Day. You’ve caught many monsters over the years. You’re the best at what you do, and you’ve stopped. I don’t know why, but I think it’s a mistake.”
“Thank you for your concern,” Dark said.
“That’s not good enough. You can’t quit now.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think serial killers are like cancer. If you can catch them early enough, you save lives.”
“The FBI does that, Ms. Graysmith.”
“Not like you. That’s why you left, isn’t it? They moved too slow for you, muddled in bureaucracy. They didn’t trust your gut—even after all of this time. They kept you playing by their rules, and as a result, lots of innocent people died.”
“That was nice. Do you mind if I write that down?”
Graysmith leaned back and smiled. “You’re not taking me seriously, and why would you? I’m just some woman you met on the steps at UCLA.”
“Not just some woman,” Dark said. “You’re quite attractive.”
“I thought about the various ways I might approach you. I had all kinds of dramatic scenarios built up in my mind.”
“Did you.”
“I thought you’d appreciate the direct approach most of all. I suppose I was wrong.”
“There’s nothing direct about this approach, Ms. Graysmith.”
“Then here it is. I want to give you the tools you need to catch budding serial killers. Funding, equipment, access—everything. You report to no one. Not even me. That’s my offer.”
An “offer” that was too good to be true. For all Dark knew, she could be someone Wycoff sent to trap him. Coax him out of retirement just long enough to arrest him.
“No thanks,” Dark said. “I’m busy teaching and working on my house.”
Graysmith’s eyes narrowed slightly, but she quickly recovered. “You’re testing me. You want me to come up with some kind of proof that I’m serious, is that it?”
“You don’t have to do anything. I’m just going to sit here and finish my beer.”
Graysmith smiled, then made her way around the table. She touched Dark’s shoulder, squeezing it gently. “See you later.”
A few minutes after she left, Dark drained the rest of his beer, then used a napkin to carefully pick up Graysmith’s iced-tea glass by the bottom. He dumped a half-glass worth of iced tea into his pint glass, shaking it a few times. Then he pulled a plastic baggie out of his bag—he always carried a few around, out of habit—and tucked the glass into the bag.
What troubled Dark was not Graysmith’s offer. It was that he had a hard time reading her
at all
. Clearly, she was as good at reading people as Dark. She sidestepped all of the major tells. She skimmed along on the surface, like an insect on a pond. Dark had no doubt she’d show up later. When she did, he’d be ready.
chapter 13
First, Dark made sure he wasn’t followed. That meant an insanely circuitous route up Westwood to Sunset to Coldwater Canyon Drive, through Studio City, back up to Mulholland, then a few shortcuts he knew that led him back down to West Hollywood. If anyone had managed to follow him, well then they deserved to be parked up his ass. After easing the car into his driveway and double-checking the locks, Dark disengaged the security system and recovered his Glock 22 from his hiding spot in the living room. The mag was still full.
Downstairs in his basement lair, Dark pulled the murder book on Brian Russell Day. He fed Julie Graysmith’s social into his database, then pulled up family info. Turns out there was one sibling: an older sister.
Alisa.
Or: “Lisa.”
Dark clicked on her social and found that her records were sealed—by order of the Department of Defense. Interesting.
Fortunately, Dark had left himself a backdoor when he worked with some of Wycoff’s lackeys a few years ago. He didn’t abuse it, which was probably why no one had noticed it yet. Some files popped up. Not much—which meant the bulk of it was probably buried deep, and not even on a computer server anywhere.
But from what Dark could gather, Lisa Graysmith was a member of an organization with ties to DARPA—the defense department’s so-called “out there” research division. Got a crazy defense idea dream and a billion dollars? DARPA will figure out a way to make it work. Or come close enough. Dark had read a piece the other day concerning DARPA’s efforts to turn soldiers’ waste products into tank fuel.
What did she do for DARPA? And what did she mean by “help”?
Dark hated the skullduggery. Five years ago, when Wycoff had started blackmailing him into an endless series of “favors,” the government had supplied a babysitter named Brenda Condor to look after Dark’s daughter, Sibby. Dark hated leaving his little girl in the hands of a stranger, whose allegiance was represented by a set of paper credentials (easily faked) and a phone call from Wycoff. But what choice did he have? It wasn’t as if Dark could pack a diaper bag and bring his infant daughter on an international manhunt.
As it turned out, “Brenda Condor” was more than a babysitter. Wycoff had hired her to keep close tabs on Dark, which meant worming her way into his personal life. Fucking him, being the shoulder he could cry on, whatever it took to keep him together. Dark was an asset; Brenda Condor his handler.