Fear the Dark (11 page)

“I can't speak for the universe.”

Miranda gave him a look.

“But if I could, it would probably be in clichés. What doesn't destroy us makes us stronger, for instance. You're stronger for what you've been through, as brutally painful as some of it has been. So am I. So is every member of the team.”

Steadily, she said, “Yeah, but sometimes, if things get really bad, people do get destroyed.”

“We didn't see that.”

“We saw the possibility.”

He was silent.

“We saw darkness, Noah. A darkness neither of us has ever seen before. What if they aren't strong enough to fight that?”

“They have to be,” he said simply.

She half shook her head. “We've been incredibly lucky as a unit; if our agents weren't psychics, half of them would be dead.”

“Not half,” he objected.

Miranda couldn't manage a smile. “I just . . . I have a bad feeling about this one. Over and above what we saw. That maybe our luck has finally run out.”

“You know I don't believe in luck.”

“I know. Still.”

“You want to go down there, don't you?”

“I think . . . we need to be closer than we are. Not in town, not visible, but nearby.”

“And if he senses us?”

That did conjure a smile. “If he senses us, love, he pretty much has to be that ‘perfect psychic' you've been waiting for. And if he's that, if darkness instead of light got your perfect psychic, then we have to fight him with everything we've got. And much better to meet him on our terms than on his.”

“You've got a point.” He paused. “Then again, he could just be your garden-variety psycho with one of our tools in his toolbox. Or something like one of our tools. Something more than telepathy.”

“Either way, I think we need to be closer. Not because Luke and the others can't handle themselves, but because of what we saw. I don't know how they're going to handle
that
. Do you?”

“No,” Bishop admitted. “I don't. Especially Luke. He's good at finding people. Not good at losing them.”

—

ROBBIE AND DANTE
did their best to help Jonah and his officers as they went about the grim task of looking for evidence on and around the body of their fallen comrade, but they quickly discovered that their best was simply to keep their distance and keep a respectful silence.

“Sorry,” Jonah said as he paused briefly near them. “They don't really blame you, it's just . . .”

“It's okay,” Robbie said, keeping her voice low and matter-of-fact.
“We get it. Nobody died until we came to town, at least that they know of. They've needed somebody to blame for weeks. We can take it.”

Jonah frowned. “It's irrational, and in their right minds they know it. Once her—once Annie is taken to the morgue at the clinic and Dr. Calder gets started on the post, I'm calling a meeting at the station. Probably best if you two don't come.”

Dante was nodding, but Robbie said, “Don't be too hard on them, okay? They need time to process what's happened. So do you.”

“Yeah. My head gets that.” He continued on.

Robbie sighed. “Why do I get the feeling he's blaming himself for Annie's murder?”

“You're not reading him?”

“Are you kidding? After this maniac got into my head before, I closed up tight as a drum. I don't want to read
anybody
.”

“Listen, it was you who told me that's not healthy.”

“Over the long term, it isn't,” she replied. “But it's night, his favorite time to hunt, and I'm betting he's close enough to watch this. This is the show he's been denied so far. A spellbound audience for his work. And I really hope he isn't realizing it.”

“I don't like the sound of that.”

“No, me either. If he decides he likes this show more than his abracadabra abductions, we're really in trouble. Does he want to stay mysterious and watch the town slowly tear itself apart? Or would he rather do this again and watch it happen faster?”

“You think that'll happen? Destroy the town?”

Robbie waited while two cops with set expressions walked past them without a glance, then said, “It's already happening. When people
disappear, those left behind can hope. But with every day that passes and he isn't caught, there isn't even a decent lead, and more people disappear, hope turns in on itself. Maybe the cops aren't working hard enough? Let's blame them. The FBI should be able to find people, right? Let's blame them. Or maybe . . . maybe it's somebody they know. Neighbor suspects neighbor. Friend suspects friend. Spouses suspect each other.” Robbie paused, then finished, “Murdered bodies start turning up, and muttered questions and deflected blame won't be enough for these people. Things will start to get loud and ugly.”

“That does not sound fun.”

“No. It won't be. Not for anyone.” Robbie sighed. “Small towns depend on community more than cities do. Neighbor helping neighbor. Everybody coming together in a crisis. But this . . . it's been weeks and they feel helpless. After this murder, helpless is going to turn to angry.”

“Great.”

They were standing near the opening of the taped-off alley, which gave them a clear view into the tent where Annie Duncan lay as well as a good look at how much more active the downtown area had become, and not just with cops.

They were certainly frightened of the predator hunting among them, but this, this brutally murdered officer, was the first tangible evidence the people of Serenity could actually see. Even if all they
saw
was a small white tent with grim-faced CSU and other officers moving about, as well as the coroner, who had gone into the tent for a while but now waited patiently, expressionless, leaning back against the tailgate of an old black hearse with a magnetic
CORONER
sign clapped to each of the front doors.

Dante said, “They really weren't prepared for all this, were they?” He looked around at the yellow
POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS
tape, behind which were gathered a goodly number of Serenity's citizens—excepting children, presumably left home with at least one frightened adult behind a locked door.

It was after midnight, but the downtown area was brightly lit, by streetlamps turned up to full wattage and storefront lights on as well. The downtown Diner had even reopened, offering coffee and sandwiches to the working cops.

“Nobody's prepared for this,” Robbie said. “They read about evil in a book or see it on TV or a movie screen. And if they're very unlucky, something bad done by evil will happen to someone they know—which is more than close enough. Nobody wants to see evil up close and personal. Except us.”

“I don't really want to
see
evil,” Dante confessed.

“You know what I mean. We hunt evil. Professionally. We go out looking for the monsters other people wish didn't exist.”

Dante eyed her. “You're a glass-half-empty sort of person, aren't you?”

“Only at murder scenes.” She shifted restlessly, frowning. “Dammit, I feel so helpless doing nothing.”

“I don't think any of these cops want us helping,” Dante reminded her.

“No, but—” She saw Jonah coming back from wherever he'd been and stepped out to meet him. “Hey. I don't think our being here is doing anyone any good,” she told him, keeping her voice low. “If you'll post officers at each end of this alley and keep it taped off for later, Dante and I will go back to the command center and start working
through whatever information we've gotten so far. I know there was a delay in getting Bishop's info from Quantico, including enhanced video from the security cameras, but we should have that by now, as well as more files from your people.”

Jonah nodded, and before she could bring it up, he said, “I'll go myself to Annie's desk and gather up everything she'd been working on, and bring it over as well. If you're right that she had some kind of realization, surely one of us will see it.”

“I hope so,” Robbie replied, adding, “Jonah . . . he's probably watching all this.”

The chief's expression didn't change. “That crossed my mind. But I'm reasonably sure he'd notice if I sent out my photographer to get shots of the crowd.”

“I'm sure too. But just standing here, we've had a good chance to look around. Most of these businesses have some kind of camera or cameras covering their entrances and even the parking spaces in front; please tell me they aren't dummy cameras.”

He swore under his breath. “I should have thought of that. No, there used to be a lot of dummy cameras along Main, but not since people began disappearing. Everything is wide-angle to cover as much territory as possible. Sarah and I have reviewed footage after every disappearance, just to be sure. I'll have her pull the tapes and put in new ones to keep running. She'll bring what we have so far to the command center.”

“We'll be
there.”

Sarah Waters delivered the promised security tapes less than half an hour later and elected to stay at the command center and help the agents. She had, of course, put herself back on duty as soon as Annie Duncan's murder was discovered, which meant she'd gotten next to no sleep.

Still, Dante reflected, she seemed to wear the same bright-eyed, brisk, unrumpled look that Robbie always managed—and just as effortlessly.

Dante wanted a shave and a shower. And he wouldn't have minded a nap. He also suspected he looked decidedly rumpled but refused to ask and have that confirmed.

“I can review the security tapes, since I know most everybody in Serenity,” Sarah said, “but until we can narrow things down so I have some idea of
who
to look for, it seems fairly useless.”

“Yeah,” Dante said. “There was no camera covering that alley,
front or back, we checked. If he's on the recent security tapes, blending in with the crowd of townsfolk watching, we'd never know it. Not yet, at least.”

Robbie looked at the piles of folders on their round table and sighed. “Who was it that said we'd be a paperless society shortly after computers came along?”

“I don't know,” Sarah said, “but he was obviously an idiot. Even when we
do
store information on a computer, we always have hard-copy backups. Always. Boxes and boxes of files in the basement.”

Robbie nodded. “For the zombie apocalypse. I'm the same way about my books. Buy the e-versions for my tablet, but always buy a hardcover or paperback copy as well, for the shelves.”

“You're weird,” Dante told her without looking up from his computer station.

“Yeah, yeah. Come the zombie apocalypse, you'll be at my house looking for something to read by candlelight. Bring wine.”

“Come the zombie apocalypse, I'll probably be looking for guns and food,” Dante said. And then he looked up to frown at her. “How did you pull me into that?”

“It's a gift. Sarah, did you have a chance to eat before coming back on duty?”

“Yeah. I even managed a nap, though I don't think Jonah believes that.”

Robbie sat down at the table, pulling the top dozen files off a fairly tall stack. “He's looking pretty haggard. Normal for him?”

“It's become a familiar look these last weeks,” Sarah said frankly as she sat and reached for files. “But before then . . . no. He's a good chief, a good cop, and he works hard to do right by the people in this
town. But he also knows how to delegate, and knows he needs rest to function at his best. Least he did. Until the teenagers vanished, and all this started.”

“He wanted to believe it was a stranger, didn't he?”

Sarah paused in studying her topmost file and frowned. “You know, I'm not sure. I think maybe he knew all along that it was somebody here in Serenity. He's the kind of cop who knows
why
people do the things they do, if you know what I mean.”

“A natural profiler,” Robbie said.

“I'd say so. It's been minor things until this started. Something got stolen, he knew whose door to knock on. Kids causing trouble at the high school, he seemed able to sit them down and talk to them—and whatever he said, it stuck.”

“What other kinds of crime have you guys had to deal with?” Robbie asked.

“Usual. Vandalism, petty theft, a few domestic disturbances over the years. Nothing like this. Nothing even close to this.”

In the same casual voice, Robbie said, “When the teenagers disappeared, that was weird about the car doors and footprints.” Jonah had of course filled them in hours before on the other “oddities” of the various disappearances.

“Very weird,” Sarah said with some feeling. “You don't know how much I'm hoping you guys can explain it—with or without psychic trimmings.”

“How do you feel about psychics?” Robbie asked.

“Total believer,” Sarah replied calmly and without hesitation. “Born and raised. My grandmother had the sight, and the whole family paid attention whenever she had something to say. And it was none
of that vague you'll-meet-a-dark-man bullshit either. Very specific. I came home from college once—went to UC Berkeley in California, so I didn't get home often—and she told me flat-out to stop dating the guy I'd had only a couple of dates with. She'd never seen him, and I hadn't mentioned him, even though I liked him. But she was adamant. ‘Stop. Do not see him again.'”

She had Dante's attention now as well, both feds listening intently.

“I asked why, of course.”

“What did she say?” Robbie asked.

Sarah looked at Robbie. “She said, ‘He's a killer. He will kill at least a dozen young women before the police find the evidence they need to put him away.'”

—

HE HATED THE
blood. The way it smelled, the way it felt on his clothing, his skin.

He hadn't realized there would be so much blood.

But she'd surprised him in what he'd thought would be a safe place, what with the curfew and all. As close as he dared get to the feds' makeshift command center.

So he could touch the telepath's mind.

Play with it a bit.

He didn't need touch or even line of sight, but he did need to be close enough. He wasn't sure exactly what his limits were, since this wonderful ability was fairly new to him, but he had sensed her when he'd reached the alley, so that had been close enough.

Until Annie Duncan picked the alley as a shortcut.

He couldn't believe she'd done that. Couldn't believe she hadn't even worn her gun.

Stupid bitch deserved to die.

But he hadn't liked killing her. Too messy. And not part of his plan.

He stood in the shower for a long, long time as soon as he got home, soaping his body again and again, using the hottest water he could stand. It hurt some of the scars still not completely healed, but he didn't mind pain. If he'd minded pain, he'd probably be dead or addicted to painkillers by now.

He was neither.

The pain had only made him stronger.

And given him The Gift.

A Gift he intended to use to its fullest. After all, why else had he been singled out?

That was one of the things he'd wanted to discover in touching the mind of the telepath: how she had received her gift. But that information, that memory, had been buried deep, and he hadn't been able to find the event that must have changed her life.

Not yet, at least.

He'd have to try again.

But he'd have to be even more careful now. Even more cautious in what he did, how he moved. Cops went insane when one of their own was murdered, he knew that. They'd be out in force every night, and they wouldn't hesitate to start shooting if a shadow moved the wrong fucking way.

The darkness that had been his friend could become his enemy, if he wasn't careful.

But he wasn't done yet. He still needed to figure the telepath out. And that other one, the odd one who had somehow reached into Annie Duncan's dead mind and found too many details of her death.

That was . . . strange. Unnerving. That was a kind of Mind Trick he didn't understand. And didn't like.

There should be rules, after all. Even about Mind Tricks.

Especially about Mind Tricks.

He soaped up his body one last time, finally sure he had rid himself of the stink of blood and death.

There were plans to be made.

And he was running out of time.

—

“WOW,” ROBBIE SAID.
“I gather she was right.”

“Was she ever. I was majoring in law enforcement, so remaining silent about something like that really went against the grain. I asked her if I could stop it, alert the police, do
something
, but she said some things had to happen just the way they happened. This was one of them. Nothing I could do to change the outcome.”

Robbie and Dante exchanged glances.

“What?” Sarah asked. “Don't believe me?”

“Oh, we believe you,” Robbie said immediately. “It was the other thing you said your grandmother said. That some things have to happen just the way they happen. It's sort of the mantra of the Special Crimes Unit.”

“You mean you deal with that kind of shit all the time?”

“Yeah. Not fun.”

“Frustrating, I call it. And not a little bit scary when it comes to
killers. One of the girls on my campus who was killed about two months later was a friend. She was his third victim, first college student. I never knew she was dating him, so I never got the chance to warn her. And I would have, no matter what Gran said. But . . . The police got close once or twice, but it was still almost two years before they caught that bastard.”

“Please tell me he was convicted,” Robbie begged.

“Of ten counts of first-degree aggravated murder and aggravated assault. They couldn't prove he killed the first two victims, but the police were sure, and I think they convinced the families at least enough to give them some peace. In any case, he was arrested, charged, and with his guilt being a foregone conclusion, everybody agreed to a plea deal that locks him up forever and a day.”

“Not long enough to bring any of his victims back, but better than a death penalty.”

“I agree,” Sarah said. “Even if the system was working smoothly, which it most definitely is not, with the death penalty you get months, even years, of appeals, and after all that a few brief minutes of a needle or a gas chamber or the chair or whatever—and it's done.” She paused, adding, “I always thought killers should be locked away in tiny cells with nothing to do but think about their crimes until they die.”

“I agree,” Robbie said.

“I'm not arguing,” Dante said, but absently, his attention back on his computer.

Robbie looked at him with a frown. “You sound preoccupied. What are you doing?”

“Reviewing the security videos from the courtyard where Luna
Lang vanished—and the ones inside the Tyler house. Tyler really did get a top-notch security system: great outside cameras, and inside cameras covering all the common spaces and every single bedroom doorway—but the inside cameras are programmed to be on only from eleven
P.M.
to six in the morning, unless someone changes the programming. Outside, twenty-four-seven. And the outside cameras cover all the windows as well as the doors. Outside lighting is excellent, and on a timer from dusk to dawn.”

“That's certainly extensive,” Robbie said. “If not a little paranoid. But given what happened . . . Did the FBI lab do a good job of enhancing the videos?”

“Tyler's system is digital, so much clearer than your usual security cameras to begin with. The ones in the apartment complex courtyard were your garden-variety middle-grade cameras, slightly out of focus and grainy. The lab improved them considerably.”

He still sounded preoccupied. Robbie looked at Sarah, then said to him, “Dante? What is it?”

“Mmmm.”

“Dante, use your words.”

He looked at her rather blankly for a moment, then said, “You know the woo-woo stuff with car doors being open but photographed as closed, and footprints being visible but photographed as not being there at all?”

Robbie groaned. “Don't tell me we have more useless information from those recordings.”

“No,” Dante said. “Not useless. I think. But I'm damned if I can figure out what I'm looking at.”

Robbie and Sarah immediately left their files and came to peer
over his shoulders at the computer screen. He was using a split screen, and rewound both videos so he could start them at the right point. Then he started the tape on the left side of his screen, at normal speed.

They saw Luna Lang, the young, attractive wife and mother, dressed casually in jeans with her hair tied by a ribbon at the nape of her neck. She was walking briskly along the courtyard walkway to go to her neighbor's condo. Everything about her looked utterly and completely normal.

Then normal stopped.

She stopped. Very abruptly. There was no sign of anyone else. No movement. And for several moments, she just stood there, her back to the camera. Then she turned and suddenly looked directly up at the camera. Her face was expressionless.

Like the face of a doll.

“Anybody else just feel a chill?” Sarah murmured.

“Oh, yeah,” Robbie responded, her gaze fixed on the screen.

Luna Lang moved quickly toward the camera, a visual that was disconcerting in and of itself. It was well above her head, and it was also obvious that she stood on something, though what was difficult to tell. But as they watched, she slowly changed the angle of the camera. Still wearing absolutely no expression, eyes blank.

She apparently got down from whatever she'd been standing on, disappearing from that camera's range for a few seconds. But then she reappeared on a second camera, which showed her holding a lightweight metallic outdoor chair.

Seconds later, she was adjusting that camera as well, moving it slightly, slowly. There was a quick glimpse of her as she got down and moved the chair.

And then nothing.

Sarah swore under her breath. “There wasn't a blind spot. Not until she moved those cameras. How could we have missed that? How could the security guards have missed it?”

Dante answered readily, even though he still sounded a bit preoccupied. “On the original video there was some static, just a few seconds of it, not uncommon enough to worry the guards at the time. And one section of that walkway looks pretty much like any other section. But once Mrs. Lang disappeared . . . that's why Jonah had it sent out for enhancement. This is what the enhancement uncovered.”

The two women exchanged looks, and it was Robbie who said steadily, “He was controlling her. Somehow, he controlled her, made her change the angle of those cameras. Maybe even made her come to him.”