Pitch Black (4 page)

Alec glanced over at Jackie Stokes, his new partner. For the past thirty minutes, since they’d left the office, he’d tried to keep his eyes down, focusing on the case file in his lap. Studying ugly crime scene photos was somehow easier than watching her weave the dark sedan through the afternoon D.C. traffic, narrowly missing other cars. And pedestrians. And a poodle whose owner had snatched it from certain death-by-government-vehicle.

Alec hoped she hadn’t seen him surreptitiously double-check his seat belt. He’d recently finished rehabbing his arm and shoulder after the shooting, and he didn’t particularly care to break any limbs, or his neck, in a car crash. “You planning to drive for NASCAR or something?” he muttered under his breath.

She pretended not to hear. “Why have I never heard of him?”

“He’s kept a pretty low profile.”

“A low-profile serial killer, huh?”

If there was such a thing.

“He’s been picky and methodical. Six kills in three years.”

“Including these latest two, plus the woman from the help-wanted ad?”

“Make that nine. He’s obviously accelerating.”

Maybe because he’d realized how easy it was to lure his victims via the Internet.

“Nine,” Jackie murmured, shaking her head.

Those nine lives had certainly meant a lot to the victims and their loved ones. But when compared to a Dahmer, a Bundy, or a Gacy, the number wasn’t too shocking. The crimes, however, had been. The Professor was one sick, malicious fuck.

“Nine murders but he’s the invisible man?”

“He’s never gone to the press, never tried for infamy. He simply does his thing, taunts the bureau occasionally, always in his condescending, arrogant way, and moves on. Sometimes he goes more than a year between victims, sometimes a few weeks.”

“Any particular location?”

“All in the mid-Atlantic region.”

“Sex of the victims?”

“Varies.” Before she could ask, he added, “And yes, that is unusual. We’ve got a lot on him, but we haven’t been able to determine a specific victim profile because the guy’s pretty indiscriminate in who he kills. Varying ages, races, sexes, economic backgrounds. He’s an equal opportunity bastard.”

“Why do they call him the Professor?”

Sensing Stokes wasn’t going to ease up on the questions until she’d gotten all the answers she wanted, Alec closed the file. Just his luck to draw the inquisitive talker for a partner.

Alec didn’t want conversation. He wanted to think, to go deep into unexplored fields of possibility in his mind, where every bit of information he had ever learned about the Professor had been taking root and sprouting. To get back inside the unsub’s head again, as he’d been trying so hard to do before getting sidelined by that damned woman and those twice-damned bullets.

“Lambert?” Stokes prodded. “The nickname?”

He sighed. “One of the first investigators started calling him that after a character on that old show
Gilligan’s Island
because of the intricate scenarios this guy uses to kill his victims. He specializes in setting people up to kill themselves while making sure they can’t possibly escape.”

“Like the boys.”

“Exactly. He didn’t hold them underwater to drown them; he put them on the ice and let it happen. One victim was decapitated in his own garage. The one Wyatt told us about, with the woman responding to the online job listing. You heard what he did to her.”

“Yeah. Sick. And he’d never used the Internet to lure his victims before?”

Alec shook his head. “Never. It is impressive if your boss really did figure out who he was dealing with last month. I was . . .” He had been about to say he was on medical leave, but didn’t want to open that issue up for questioning yet. “I wasn’t in the office at the time, but if the BAU had known there was another Professor case, I would have heard about it.”

Oh, would he ever.

“
Our
boss,” Stokes explained, “is better than anybody I’ve ever worked with. Or anybody you’ve ever worked with.” There was no slavish vehemence in her voice, no defensiveness. Just pure confidence. “So this change in his MO, using the Internet, does it mean anything?”

“I’m sure it means something,” he admitted. “Any change in the pattern can leave him vulnerable to mistakes he’d been careful not to make in the past.”

The timing of that change had been fortuitous. The killer had begun using the Web to lure his victims around the same time Alec had been on the verge of disciplinary action, possibly even of losing his job. Considering Alec knew more about the Professor than anyone else in the bureau, landing on Blackstone’s team had seemed a stroke of luck. Bullet holes in his body notwithstanding. But he already knew it was not luck at all. Wyatt Blackstone had known who he was up against before anyone else had figured it out and had moved Alec into place like a chess master positioning his knight.

That fascinated him, and Alec took no offense at the manipulation. He wanted to stay in the FBI. He wanted to nail the Professor. So, if anything, his respect for his new boss had gone up a notch once he’d figured everything out.

“Think he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty? Or doesn’t think he’s really a killer if he doesn’t pull a trigger or plunge a knife?”

Alec considered it. He had been considering it for a long time. He slowly shook his head. “I don’t think so. Deep down, my gut tells me, he’s trying to prove how much smarter he is than anyone else. That it’s easy for him to kill because he’s so brilliant, and each kill is an in-your-face taunt to prove it.”

“Yeah, real smart to commit murder.” Stokes frowned. “I don’t remember the Professor in
Gilligan’s Island
inventing wild scenarios. Maybe you guys should have called him MacGyver.”

“I didn’t call him anything,” Alec pointed out. “Besides, there was another reason for the name. He typically writes to the family after the crime. The messages are condescending and arrogant. Very literate. All on the same stationery, which was expensive but not easy to trace.”

Until he’d suddenly switched to e-mails.

“What else do you know about him?”

Having memorized the profile, since he’d contributed to it when he’d first been brought in after the Richmond killing, Alec quickly rattled off the details. “He’s highly organized. Above-average intelligence. Probably not involved in a relationship right now, but he might have been in the past. Likely a professional, an engineer, maybe a lawyer or a doctor.”

Stokes snorted. “Right. White male, in his thirties, and his mama didn’t love him? I asked what you
know
about him.”

He glanced at her through half-lowered lashes. “I take it you don’t think highly of profiling?”

Stokes shrugged. “I think profilers are a lot like those crime-solving psychics. They always look back and focus on the stuff they got right, like, ‘The missing person will be found near water,’ and they claim victory when the vic shows up a block from a fire hydrant.”

Alec chuckled despite himself. Stokes obviously had attitude. Her own personality, rather than any rumors she might have heard about him, had likely been behind her posturing when they’d first met at yesterday’s meeting. He relaxed in his seat, beginning to suspect he could actually like her, if only she’d stop talking so much. And perhaps not kill him in a car crash.

“Give me numbers and calculations over guesses and hypotheses any day.”

Her opinion wasn’t unique. Lots of people both in the bureau and out of it cast a skeptical eye at some of the work done by the BAU. Usually it was because they got caught up in the thriller novels and the serial-killer movies that romanticized the job of profiler until it became unrealistic. As if they were the crime-solving psychics she spoke of so disdainfully.

“Human beings often behave in patterns, like computer programs,” he replied. “Profilers keep track of the patterns and use them to their advantage. No magic. No psychic powers. It’s almost mathematical, really. Statistics and probability.”

“And a bunch of psychobabble. But math and computers I get.” The other agent’s frown eased. “Meaning I should be the one to talk to this Dalton woman. Her being into computers, too.”

They’d just exited the city and were on the beltway heading toward Baltimore to interview one Samantha Dalton. During yesterday’s examination of a computer belonging to one of the victims, the IT specialists had found communication between this Dalton woman and the teen. They’d e-mailed within hours of the boy’s death, and he and Stokes had been assigned to go interview the witness, some computer expert.

Stokes’s presence made sense, with her cyber crimes background. Alec’s? Not so much. He’d have been of more use going up to Wilmington and walking the crime scene. But toeing the line was what he was all about these days. Even though his tongue had nearly bled when he’d bitten on it to keep from arguing the issue with his new boss. He didn’t figure it would be a good thing to get fired his second day on the job.

“Why don’t we play it by ear,” he murmured.

The frown snapped back into place.

“I mean,” he calmly explained as he reopened the file and glanced at it, “let’s meet her before deciding how to proceed.”

“I bet with your looks you like playing good cop for the ladies.” If words could actually sneer, those would have.

Alec didn’t look up. His hand remained flat on the autopsy report in his lap. The only sign that her jab had hit home was a slight tightening in his fingers, the tips of which turned white. “Do you have a problem working with me?”

“Let’s say pretty boys in expensive suits make me itchy.”

Pretty boy. He’d been called worse. Rich dude. Hotshot. Maverick.

Thrill-seeking bastard
. That had been the one his ex-girlfriend had thrown at him when he’d refused her demands to quit the bureau in the days following the shooting.

Whatever. As long as Stokes wasn’t talking about Atlanta, and he suspected she was not, his new partner could think whatever the hell she wanted.

“Well, drivers who can’t keep all four tires on the road make me itchy, too.” He grabbed the dashboard as Stokes zipped around a tractor trailer doing seventy on the bumper-to-bumper beltway. “How about whoever lives for the rest of this ride gets to decide how to conduct the interview?”

For the first time since he’d set eyes on her, Stokes cracked a real smile. “Snarky, huh? Maybe you’re not just a pretty boy after all.” She put the pedal down, sending them hurtling off the 295 exit ramp at near warp speed. “I guess I’ll give you more than the week I predicted you’d last.”

“You keep driving like this,” Alec mumbled, taking no offense, “and I’ll be lucky to make it through the day.”

With a pencil
stuck behind her ear, reading glasses perched on her nose, and her fingers flying across her keyboard, the last thing Samantha Dalton wanted to do was answer the door. She’d finally hit her stride and her weekly Sam’s Rant column was flying out of her almost without thought.

So, of course some son of a bitch had to show up and interrupt her.

Knock-knock
. Harder now.

Having become a hermit since her divorce—at least, so her mother called her—she’d become adept at ignoring the odd salesman or nosy neighbor who dared to disregard the warning on her front door. But as the knocking continued, she mumbled, “Can’t you read?”

She’d put the Do Not Disturb sign up at noon, feeling optimistic that she’d spend the afternoon actually writing. Maybe she’d even do something as adventurous as get dressed in real clothes. Or—to the ultimate shock of everyone—actually go out.

It hadn’t happened. Instead, she’d surfed the day away, still wearing the sweats she’d donned after her shower. Somehow, since the moment a judge with emotionless eyes had signed a document ending her marriage, she hadn’t felt like Miss Get Up and Go. These days, Miss Got Up, Went, and Got Her Ass Handed Back to Her was content to stay right where she was.

Fortunately, the day hadn’t been totally wasted. She had found inspiration for tomorrow night’s column for her site, samthespaminator.com. But while researching, she’d also cruised blogs, played a few—okay, ten—hands of Spider Solitaire, and stumbled across stories here and tidbits there that grabbed her attention. Still, she’d finally gotten down to business and the piece was coming along nicely. At least, it had been until the arrival of the person at the door, whose voice brought her irritation level up a notch.

“Ma’am, please answer the door.”

Fat chance
. There was research to be done on a new phishing scheme targeting Facebook users. She had an interview to do for a tech blog. And she had about three dozen e-mails to answer. Not much time for chitchat. Not much time for life, even.

Yet she’d surfed away many of her working hours.

“Loser,” she muttered.

“Miss Dalton? We
really
need to talk to you,” the voice said.

If she had a real office, rather than working out of the living room of her Baltimore apartment, she might have been able to continue ignoring the intrusion. But as it was, she had no escape. So Sam saved her file, then trudged to the door.

Glancing through the peephole and seeing a man wearing a suit, she figured she was in for some soul saving or a high-end sales pitch. Or both. “What is it?” she snapped, yanking the door open.

The man had his hand raised, ready to knock again, and her first impression was that he had big hands. Big fists. Strong-looking fingers. Her second was that if door-to-door salesmen now looked like this, lots more women would be lining up to buy vacuum cleaners and magazine subscriptions. Female shoppers all over the world were probably clamoring for deliveries.

Not her, though. She wasn’t buying. Especially not from men who looked like him.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” the man said. “It’s quite important.”

The face was handsome—square jawed, strong featured, with heavily lashed eyes and hollowed cheeks. Handsome enough to put Sam’s guard up. She didn’t trust handsome men, not after Samuel Dalton Jr. Her ex had been movie-star gorgeous.

Sam and Sam. God, why hadn’t someone slapped her when she’d accepted his proposal?