Pitch Black (24 page)

Why, he couldn’t say.

Deep in thought, he stared down, removing the distraction of the water, wanting to imprint the scene in his head. Make it come to life.

Before it could, though, he saw a tiny red spot near his shoe. He crouched down close, not touching it. No more than the size of a pen’s tip, it must have been overlooked by the tech in his hurry to clear an area to take detectives to the roof.

Not blood, too light. Too waxy.

On his hands and knees, he bent closer, until his face nearly brushed the metal. He suddenly realized the tiny drop was actually the tip of a larger blob that had slipped through the grate. The material had solidified into a tiny icicle hanging from the floor beneath the elevator.

And it wasn’t merely waxy. It
was
wax. “Candles,” he murmured.

“What?”

He pointed to the spot. “Make sure you get this. I suspect it’s candle wax.”

Red candles. You romanced her, didn’t you, you son of a bitch
?

That was the opening. The one detail that allowed him to build the entire scenario in his head from that starting point.

He had romanced her.

They reached the top floor and the tech, visibly embarrassed, immediately descended on the spot of wax. He couldn’t risk grabbing it here; it could fall, and he was visibly anxious to go back down. “It’s all right,” he said, waving the man away as he stepped out.

A few feet away, another crime scene investigator was carefully bagging clothing. Yet another was on his hands and knees, outlining footprints left in the faint layer of construction dust. Even from here he saw they had been made from bare feet.

“Here’s where she took the dive,” one of them said, looking up at Alec and obviously recognizing him as a fed.

He nodded, but didn’t walk over. Instead, he stood his ground, still visualizing.

Taped hands. Blindfolded. Did she even try to fight you?

He doubted it. “Any signs of physical attack? Blood splatter?” he asked.

“Nothing so far inside the building,” one of the techs said. “There’s a splash zone outside, where she landed, like something you’d see at a water park.”

Grim visual.

“But in the elevator and up here? Not yet.”

Which just reinforced his belief that the Professor hadn’t physically tangled with her at all, either before he’d stripped her, or after she’d regained consciousness. The tox screen would be important on this one, especially because the unsub had used ketamine, a fast-acting drug, on the help-wanted victim.

He added that piece to the story puzzle in his mind, letting the scene roll out like a snippet of a movie. The operator came to meet some wonderful man in response to an e-mail. Maybe even a phone call, if the Professor was the one who had used Ryan Smith’s cell the previous night. Alec wouldn’t put it past the man to intentionally taunt authorities in that way.

She got into the elevator; the scene had been set. Candles. So romantic. Her guard down, she had consumed something. She lost consciousness. The Professor waited until she was down, stepped into the elevator, took her out, and got her ready.

You never even laid eyes on the man you came to meet, did you?

“How did he leave her clothing?” he asked the tech who had just bagged them. “Neatly piled, folded?”

“Yeah, very carefully,” the guy said, further cementing Alec’s image of what had happened. “Hose tucked into the shoes, underwear inside the dress. All neat and tidy. Which is pretty funny, since they had been cut off her.”

Check for cuts
. He wasn’t sure it would be possible, given the condition the body must be in, but he wanted to know. Had the Professor wounded her while cutting off her clothes? If she was conscious, she would have struggled; there would be signs, nicks.

But there had been no blood.
She wasn’t conscious
. She didn’t struggle. Any wounds would have been inflicted out of carelessness or for the unsub’s own pleasure.

The Professor was never careless.

Besides, the way he’d folded her things hinted at such restraint, such calmness.

You don’t hurt your victims, right? Your hands are totally clean.

Alec would lay money the woman didn’t have a mark on her from the knife. What the construction debris she’d hit on the ground had done to her, however, was another story.

“Think I’ll walk around a little,” he said, already looking past the technician.

“Sure. You know the drill.”

Of course he did. He remained on the periphery, stepping only into already cleared areas. He studied the cut edges of the security netting, the patterns of bare footprints in the dust, running in circles until a straight pair disappeared off the side of the building.

For the next hour, he lost himself in thought, staring at the clothes, the elevator, the footprints, the water, the shoreline. Not seeking evidence, but understanding. Reconstructing the crime in his head, he saw it so well. Yes, there were holes, gaps, but for the most part the picture was clear. The woman, the lure, the romantic touches, the drug, the trap, the terror, the fall.

The only thing unclear was the killer. Where had he been? Had he set this awful scene in motion, then blithely walked away, not even knowing whether his victim plummeted as he expected her to, or somehow survived by keeping calm and waiting for rescue?

He didn’t know. They had no way of knowing whether the Professor had watched his other victims die. Couldn’t be sure if he had stayed on that cold, snowy night, listening to the cries of those boys, until the earsplitting crack of breaking ice predicated their final plunge.

One thing he suspected: the Professor would not have remained on this roof until the very end. Someone could have seen the victim fall, cutting off his own escape from the building. That didn’t mean he hadn’t stayed close by to watch his morbid fantasy play out, waiting with bated breath for a pale form to tumble from the sky and a sharp scream to rend the night.

Alec needed to know. Needed to get inside the man’s head, figure out how he thought of his victims—as worthy of his attention to their final moments?

No, it didn’t sound like him.

But as vehicles of sheer entertainment? That seemed much more plausible.

Or as validation for his own theories—wanting to see the inevitable moment when his victims “failed” their tests? Another valid reason for him to watch.

So where would he go? How long would he stay? What vantage point would provide him with an adequate viewing area without exposing him to capture?

Not for the first time, he thought about what Sam had said the previous night. About that con man, Jimmy Flynt. The one who seemed to think like this unsub, viewed his victims the same way, even used the Internet to reach out to them and destroy their lives.

Also not for the first time, he realized talking to Flynt was a good idea. Which he was sure would please Sam. She wouldn’t be pleased, though, when she found out he was going without her.

Grabbing his phone, he speed-dialed back to the office and asked for Lily Fletcher.

“What’s up? Anything useful on the scene? Does it look like the Professor?”

Alec covered one ear with his hand, straining to hear her despite the whoosh of the wind flying through the open building. Stepping closer to the solid face of it, he found a little bit of a buffer zone and answered, “Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Listen, Lily, I need information on an inmate. James T. Flynt. He did time in a federal pen; now he’s in a Maryland lockup.”

“Hold on.” He heard a faint clicking—her keyboard. Within seconds, she said, “Got him.”

“Can you contact the prison or his attorney? Try to arrange a meeting? I want to talk to him.”

“About this case? Do you have a new lead?”

“Possibly. I think he might be of some help.”

“Sure thing.”

He hated to even concede the possibility, but time was of the essence. “Look, try not to use her name if you don’t have to, but if you get resistance from Flynt, see if Sam Dalton’s presence would make a difference in his attitude.”

“Ahh,” she said. “One of those types? Sleazy criminals who will spill their guts to a pretty face?”

“Something like that. The sooner the better, okay?”

“You got it. I’ll let you know as soon as I get it set up.”

“Thanks.”

He cut the connection and was about to drop the phone back in his pocket when he noticed the message symbol on the screen. Frowning, since he hadn’t even heard the thing ring, he dialed his voice mail, learning a call had come in about ten minutes ago.

“Alec, it’s Samantha Dalton.”

He muttered a curse, wishing he’d thought to set the phone on vibrate. Then he stepped even closer to the wall, listening intently.

“I . . . Oh, hell, I feel stupid for calling. It’s, uh . . . Something weird happened. At least, I thought it was just weird at first. Now, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s scary, instead.”

She went silent, amid background noise. Voices, the clank of dishes. Someone saying, “Samantha, get off the phone; we’ll lose our table!”

Then another voice. “Welcome to Raphael’s. Is your entire party here?”

“Sorry, I should go. I’m having lunch with my mom.” She hesitated, as if debating whether to continue, then mumbled, “Do me a favor, okay? Check my blog. There’s a new post, but I didn’t put it there. I thought it had been hijacked by spammers; they’ve targeted me before. It wasn’t even until after I left my place that I thought of another possibility.” Her voice shaking, a hint of fear so obvious it clutched at his insides, she added, “Can’t deny it has me a little rattled, considering last night.”

The call ended abruptly, with no good-bye.

His heart pounding, he punched a button to call her back and cursed when he got her voice mail, too. “It’s Alec; I just got your message,” he said. “Call me back as soon as you can.”

Disconnecting, he set the phone to both vibrate and ring.
Don’t panic. She sounded okay
.

He wasn’t panicked. He was just concerned. He wouldn’t relax until he knew what had put that note of fear in Sam’s voice.

Alec suddenly felt completely cut off. The elevator hadn’t returned—the crime scene technician, still smarting from missing the candle wax, was probably going over every millimeter of it. He was stuck hundreds of feet in the air when what he wanted was to drive straight to that restaurant, wherever it was, and see what had frightened Sam.

He dialed Lily again.

“Hey, I’m good, but I’m not a miracle worker. I called about setting up the meeting with Flynt, but I need more than ten minutes to get a response.”

“It’s not that. Are you at your desk?”

“Of course.”

“Do something for me, would you? Pull up Samantha Dalton’s Web page.”

“I checked it forty minutes ago. He hadn’t posted.”

“Humor me.”

This time, the clicking was more audible, since he was more sheltered from the wind. And he easily heard her when Fletcher murmured, “That’s new.”

“What?” he snapped. “Is it Darwin?”

“No, no. I guess Ms. Dalton has some kind of inside joke with her regulars or something. She put a new blog post up. Kind of unusual, too.”

Alec’s heart pounded. Sam had not done any such thing. “What does it say?”

“Just five words, in big, bold print. They take up the whole screen.”

“Read them to me,” he ordered.

“It’s not threatening or anything.”

He gritted his teeth. “Lily?”

Apologizing, she did as he asked. “It says, ‘What was in the box?’”

T
rying to maintain a smile
and a normal conversation, despite the nervousness rising higher with each passing minute, wasn’t the easiest thing Sam had ever done. Somehow, though, she pulled it off. With her shaking hands clasped together on the table, a steady supply of water in her dry mouth, and constant chatter from her mother and Tricia to cover up her silence, she honestly thought she conveyed an I’m-perfectly-fine attitude.

Not an I’m-freaking-out one.

She hadn’t freaked out at first. In fact, when she’d first logged on this morning, she’d been so relieved to find Darwin still had not responded to her blog post, she’d been almost complacent. A quick check of e-mail and of her site right before she walked out the door an hour later had been simply a matter of habit. So it hadn’t sunk in at first.

Oh, she’d noticed the fake blog post immediately, but, as she’d said in her message to Alec, it wasn’t the first time. It hadn’t happened often; usually the content management software she used for blogging was good enough to prevent such attacks. But spammers loved to target sites like hers, if only to show they could “get” the Spaminator.

Today’s annoyance, therefore, hadn’t been unusual enough to inspire panic. Already running late, she had figured she’d handle it when she got home from lunch.

The panic had come a few minutes later. Not wanting to deal with parking, she’d grabbed a cab, and while sitting in the backseat, idly staring at passing cars, she’d finally allowed herself to really think about the words that had filled the screen.

What was in the box?

Her heart had nearly stopped, though she’d called herself a fool. It was pure coincidence that someone would post such a thing less than twelve hours after Alec carried the boxed computer up to her place.

But what if it wasn’t?

Jesus. What if it wasn’t?

“Hello, Earth to Sam!”

She jerked when Tricia waved a heavily ringed, spangle-braceleted hand in front of her face. Tricia Scott wasn’t a typical real estate agent. No conservative blazers or Lincoln Continentals for her. The attractive redhead wore silky pantsuits in jungle patterns and drove a monster SUV when showing her clients around the city. She’d managed to survive the downturn in the market through sheer personality and verve. Sam had stayed with Tricia for a short time after she’d walked out on her marriage and credited her friend with keeping her sane.

“Sorry. Just deep in thought.”