Edge of Midnight (36 page)

“Gladys Levi, I presume.”

Cameron looked up at him. “The body’s already in rigor mortis. I’m estimating she’s been dead about ten to twelve hours. And there’s two vics, actually.”

He indicated the other side of the table. Eric moved carefully around the blood pool, aware of the sickening, coppery scent that hung in the air. A small dog lay on its side next to a mobile oxygen canister, its tongue lolling out. Wall spatter and the condition of the body indicated it had been beaten to death.

“And you were worried you hadn’t set this guy off.” Cameron scratched his forehead with a gloved hand. “Agent Warren is in back. I sent the others into the yard to avoid scene contamination.”

Eric noticed the small counter television with a shattered glass screen. “I’m going to have a look at the rest of the house.”

Backing out of the kitchen, Eric entered the living room, which contained a chintz couch and damask curtains, doilies on end tables and Tiffany lamps. It was old-ladyish, if anything. Nothing to imply a monster lived here, other than the bodies in the kitchen.

At the end of the hallway, he found two bedrooms. The agent Cam had mentioned was in the more masculine one, already filing through items in the closet.

“Find anything?” Eric asked.

“Just your usual stuff so far.”

He went into the adjacent bedroom, the one that obviously belonged to Gladys Levi, with its feminine, floral bedspread and eyelet dust ruffle. Antique baby dolls sat against the pillows, chubby infants in ruffled sleeping gowns with delicate porcelain faces and full heads of hair. There were ten of them. Still wearing gloves, Eric picked one up. Its vivid blue eyes closed as he held the doll horizontally.

“I’ve got the M.E. on the way.” Cameron stood in the doorway, one hand on its frame. He nodded to the doll Eric held. “I guess the old lady collected them.”

“They were gifts from her son.”

“How do you know?”

He walked over to show Cameron. A portion of blond, human hair had been carefully braided in with the doll’s synthetic tresses. The shade and quality were different, although it was a close enough match. It was what he did with the victims’ hair he lopped off. An elderly woman’s degenerating vision might not even have noticed.

“Do you think the mother knew?” Cameron asked.

“That her son is a serial murderer? Maybe. I don’t know.” He thought of Gladys Levi lying in the kitchen. “Giving her the dolls might’ve been a passive-aggressive way to flaunt who he was in front of her. They obviously had issues.”

Rebecca’s hair had been blond, the same color as the doll he held.

They knew who The Collector was now. In the hunt, they were light-years ahead of where they’d been even that morning. But a hard wave of disappointment passed through him. They didn’t have the bastard, not yet.

He was still out there somewhere.

37

E
ric watched from the doorway as forensics techs sprayed the workshop with Luminol, a chemical agent used to illuminate latent bloodstains. As they dimmed the lights, he felt his jaw clench at the telltale, glowing blue. The vinyl sheeting had protected only the walls. The amount of blood on the floor was shocking.

“Goddamned slaughterhouse,” one of the techs muttered.

The area around the drain in the room’s center was especially revealing. Levi had used a hose and bleach on the concrete after each kill, pushing the blood and water into the grate. A fluorescent cobalt hue practically pulsated around it.

“Get it on video,” Eric instructed somberly. He went back out into the clearing and took a deep breath of humid night air. A sedan with two FBI agents had been covertly stationed on the rural road, in case Levi returned. His vehicle was a black van with Clay County, Florida tags. It was currently missing from the property.

Eric didn’t know yet how Levi had escaped the DMV checks in Maryland and Virginia, but they had his license plate number and the make of his vehicle here. An APB had been issued. It was only a matter of time, unless he was driving around in another stolen car, his van ditched somewhere.

“Macfarlane, we need your sign-off,” another agent called to him.

He went over to an SUV with a raised back door. As lead over the investigation, chain of custody procedure required Eric to sign off on evidence seized and removed from the site. The vehicle held a number of items, already bagged and labeled. His eyes scanned the vials that contained fingernails and teeth, CDs with the audio recordings, the ten dolls taken from Gladys’s bedroom, as well as the knife that had been plunged into her heart. Inside the cinder-block building, it was likely the Luminol would reveal other objects used for torture and murder.

Eric thought of the mess inside the ranch house. For someone compulsively neat, Levi hadn’t attempted to conceal the bodies or clean up. That wasn’t his practice. It was another sign he was losing control.

He signed the evidence forms and then stepped to the edge of the clearing, away from the others where it wasn’t as noisy. In the rural area far removed from city lights, the night sky had darkened to an inky, starless black. Taking his cell phone from his pocket, he requested a patch-through to the deputies watching the beach house.

“What’s the status?” he asked the one who answered the call.

“All’s quiet here, Agent.”

He recognized the deep voice as belonging to the heavier of the two men who’d been assigned the evening duty. “When’s the last time you checked on her?”

“I knocked on the door about a half hour ago. Ms. Hale said she had a headache and was going to lie down for a while. We saw the lights go off in the bedroom a little after that.”

He checked his wristwatch. It was nearly 9:00 p.m. “Let her sleep another twenty minutes. Then go up and tell her I ordered you to stay inside with her. She’s going to argue, but do it anyway.”

“You got it, Agent.”

He closed the phone. Mia wouldn’t be happy about the intrusion, but the scene out here had spooked him and he wanted her in the deputies’ direct line of sight.

Cameron approached, carrying a padded envelope.

“Where was it?”

“Inside one of the drawers in the workbench.” He handed him the unsealed package. Like the others, it was addressed to Eric at the Jacksonville Bureau offices. Something Levi hadn’t yet had a chance to mail, apparently. He wondered if it contained the audio of Anna Lynn Gomez or Karen Diambro’s murder, or both.

“There’s something in it besides the recorder.” Cameron appeared tense. “Like I said, you really pissed him off with the psychological profile.”

Eric opened the envelope and took out the sheet of paper with its familiar, neat script.

You’re a dead man, Macfarlane. I’m going to enjoy making you suffer as much as I did your wife.

At the threat, he simply pressed his lips together. He placed the note back inside the envelope.

“More evidence,” he said tersely.

The bungalow sat like a moonlit seashell, the last in its row of run-down beach houses. From where Allan stood, hidden deep in the shadows of the unrented property, he could hear the tinkle of wind chimes on its porch.

A while ago, one of the deputies had gotten out of the squad car and knocked at the bungalow door. He had briefly glimpsed her sleek, dark hair as she spoke to the man, the sight of her whetting his appetite. Then she’d closed the door again and the deputy had returned to the unit. Jittery, Allan scrubbed a hand over his burning eyes.

The gun equipped with a silencer felt both heavy and thrilling in his hand.

He itched to sneak up on the squad car and take out both men, like the bad guy on a television show. But common sense told him his chances with such an approach were limited. He might get one before the other shot
him.
And Allan had no intention of dying tonight.

So he continued watching.

Tall pampas grass grew along the edge of the driveway, their white-fringed fronds waving at him in the night air. Nearby, the squad car’s powerful engine was running to keep the air-conditioning going in its interior. Allan leaned against the house’s siding, eyes narrowed, biding his time. He let his dark fantasies entertain him. And they were very dark. He could wait forever—Gladys was no longer his problem. A brief spark of grief ignited, then died out.

Another long stretch of time passed before the unit’s engine died. The driver’s side of the squad car opened again and one of the deputies emerged. Allan stood alert.

“Look, I’m starving,” the deputy said to the one still inside the car. Allan strained his ears to hear. “You go on in. I’m going to make a run to the convenience store around the corner first. You want anything?”

He couldn’t make out the response from the vehicle’s interior, but the one who had exited jogged off down the road.
They were going inside.
Allan felt his pulse speed up. With the two officers separated, this could be his best—and only—chance.

Although the cruiser’s interior light remained on, the other man hadn’t yet exited. The deputy’s head was bent, as if he were completing paperwork. Another sign this was meant to be.

Now or never.

Leaving the protection of the shadow of the house, Allan crept carefully across the dead-end street, gun poised and avoiding the reach of the streetlight. His blood coursed. He prayed the deputy remained engrossed in whatever he was doing. Reaching the hardy pampas grass, he ducked down behind it and waited.

Finally, the deputy got out and stretched. He was tall and beefy, with a blond crew cut. He lumbered over the sand and grass lawn, passing the metal sign that indicated the bungalow had a security system. Perspiring, his nerves thrumming, Allan stood from his hiding place and fell silently into step behind him. When the man went onto the porch, he quickly advanced. Sensing his presence, the deputy began to whirl, but the tip of the gun barrel pressing against the back of his head made him halt.

“If you want to live, you knock on the door and get her to open up,” Allan ordered in his ear, voice low. “Do it now.”

He jabbed the barrel hard for emphasis. He could feel the deputy quiver in his uniform. Thinking he had gone stupid with fear, he repeated,
“Do. It. Now.”

The deputy hesitated, then knocked. Head buzzing with excitement, Allan shrank down behind his larger form. It took a minute, but he saw the curtain move at the front of the house. There were four muted beeps as the alarm was turned off inside.

And then the door opened. He heard her voice.

“Everything’s still fine in here, Deputy. I—”

Mia stumbled backward as Allan shoved the man inside, keeping the barrel of the gun at the base of his skull. He felt a rush of power as he saw her eyes go wide and the blood drain from her face.

“You scream and he’s dead.” Allan kicked the door closed behind him.

He grinned at her.

Then he shot the deputy in the back of the head, anyway.