The Darkness to Come (23 page)

He gave his cell number, twice, and ended the call. He checked his watch. Ten minutes past nine o’clock. St. Louis was on Central Time. It was early enough in the evening for Thad to retrieve the message, and call him back that night.

All he could do now was wait.

Chapter 36

At nine o’clock, Dexter turned the key in the ignition.

By a quarter past the hour, the last few customers had left, and stylists began going home for the day. Dexter watched closely as they streamed out of the building, still running their mouths.

There was one stylist left. Had to be the co-owner, Tanisha. She’d been posed in the foreground of the group photo, beside his wife.

Another fifteen minutes later, Tanisha cut off the lights, came outside, and locked the doors. She was bundled up in a red ski jacket, and matching hat. She looked like a giant, juicy red popsicle.

The doors locked, she hoisted her purse over her shoulder and shuffled across the parking lot, feet probably aching from standing up all day. Dexter recalled his wife’s laments about spending her entire working day standing up, and how hard it was on her feet. He’d responded that she was fortunate that he allowed her to work at all, and that if she continued to complain, he would ban her from leaving the condo altogether.

Tanisha went to a black Mustang GT parked about ten yards away. The engine started with a throaty growl.

Dexter resolved that he was going to get a faster car, soon. He hoped that he could keep up with her.

As he shifted into Drive, she veered out of the parking lot like a NASCAR driver roaring out of the pit. Crazy bitch. He spun the wheel and mashed the gas pedal, pushing the Chevy’s old engine, struggling to keep from losing her.

Within a half-minute, Tanisha was swerving out of the shopping complex and onto the adjacent roadway, several hundred yards ahead of him. He cursed. He was going to lose her.

Fortunately, a red traffic light stopped her and allowed him to regain lost ground. About three cars separated them, a comfortable following distance.

When the light switched to green, he punched the gas.

But Tanisha resumed driving at a reasonable speed. He soon saw why: a Georgia state trooper was behind her. Saved by the cops.

They drove on Camp Creek Parkway for about four miles, and then she made a left. He tailed her from about three car lengths behind. The two-lane road wound up and down through uneven terrain, flanked by trees through which Dexter spotted numerous houses, like ships sailing a dark sea.

When she made a right turn into a subdivision of town houses, so did he.

Invisible.

He reached inside his jacket to caress the knife.

* * *

Home at last.

Tanisha pulled her Mustang into the one-car garage attached to her town house. With Rachel gone, she’d had to open the salon at seven o’clock that morning and work all day, handling her own as well as most of Rachel’s appointments, and close the shop, too. She was exhausted and her feet were killing her, and she was looking forward to getting inside and luxuriating in a hot bath with a cup of tea.

You owe me, girl
, she thought, thinking of Rachel.
Soon as you get back, I’m taking a day off and you can cover for
me
.

But when the heck was Rachel coming back? What was going on with her? She’d acted so strange when she’d called earlier, refusing to answer any of Tanisha’s questions, and then insisting that Tanisha give Joshua the box with the mysterious contents. Seeing how upset Joshua was about it all didn’t make Tanisha feel any better about the situation. The poor guy was falling to pieces.

To top matters off, Rachel had warned
her
to be careful. “You aren’t going to understand why I’m telling you this, but I want you to watch your back, girl,” Rachel had said. “Spend the next couple of nights with a girlfriend, if you can, or with family. It might not be safe for you to be alone right now. I have a strong feeling about it.”

Tanisha had pressed Rachel for an explanation. But Rachel only reiterated her advice again, and then changed the subject to Joshua and the box.

When Tanisha had spoken to Joshua at the salon, she hadn’t mentioned Rachel’s warning to him. He clearly had a lot on his mind, and she didn’t want to burden him with more baggage when he already was struggling to hold himself together.

 Besides, Rachel’s prediction didn’t frighten her. She knew her girl’s “strong feelings” about various matters frequently proved true. But Tanisha chose to put her trust in a higher power: the Lord.

She touched the crucifix she wore on her necklace, as if for reassurance, and pressed the button on the remote control clipped to the sun visor. Behind her, the sectional garage door clambered shut.

She went to the door that connected the garage to the house, unlocked it, and stepped inside the adjoining hallway. The security system beeped. At the control panel mounted on the wall near the door, she punched in the code to disengage the alarm.

She was about to go inside, when she remembered the purchases she’d made at Target, at lunchtime. Leaving the door open, she dropped her purse on the small table beside the doorway, returned to the car, and popped the trunk to retrieve the bags.

A musky odor drifted past her, as if a breeze had blown by. She wrinkled her nose. It smelled like a man.

But that was ridiculous. She was alone in the garage, and if anyone had been in her house, the alarm would have sounded upon a break-in.

She leaned into the trunk and sniffed. The odor could have issued from something stored inside. Lord knew she had a bad habit of leaving extra pairs of shoes in the trunk, and some of those kicks might have become super funky.

Although the smell she’d caught hadn’t seemed like ordinary, smelly shoe-funk. It was man-funk. Tanisha had grown up with a big brother, and was well-acquainted with the latter.

But no similar odors came from inside the trunk. She retrieved the shopping bags, closed the trunk’s lid. Sniffed again.

The smell had faded.

Perhaps it had never existed; Rachel’s creepy warnings might’ve caused her imagination to kick into overdrive, to concoct illusory, threatening odors. Although she was a devout Christian who regarded the Lord as her salvation and protector, she
was
a single woman who lived alone in an urban area, and she was not immune to the occasional anxieties that living on her own brought.

Inside the house, she locked the door and activated the security system again. Normally, she waited until she was about to retire to bed before she engaged the alarm . . . but with her nerves on edge, she decided to do it now. It helped her feel better.

She peeled out of her hat, jacket, and shoes, and stored them in the coat closet. As she shut the closet door, she realized that she hadn’t retrieved the day’s mail from the box out front.

Well, it would have to wait until tomorrow morning. She didn’t want to venture outside in the dark.

Rachel’s comments had really unnerved her. Her stomach was wound tight, like a spool of fishing line. She needed to relax, and key to doing that was confirming that everything in her house was okay.

She went through the first floor of the house, turning on lights. Nothing was amiss. She visited the second floor, and everything was fine there, too. She would have noticed if something had been out of place—when you lived alone, you were aware if the smallest object had been moved. But her home was as safe and comfy as ever.

See, girl, everything is fine. Have faith.

The tension ebbed out of her. In the kitchen, she prepared a cup of chamomile tea, brewing it in a big ceramic mug emblazoned with the name of her church, Elizabeth Baptist. She took the tea back upstairs with her.

In the master bathroom, she leaned over the garden tub, dropped the drain stopper, and turned on the hot water, tempering it with a trickle of cold. She shook in a dash of apple-cinnamon scented bath crystals. The fragrance brought to mind the holiday season, the promise of time spent with family and friends and the big, upcoming Christmas concert at her church, and the warm thoughts dispelled the last traces of the worries that had bedeviled her only a few minutes ago.

While water thundered into the bathtub, misting the air, she undressed. She averted her gaze from the tattoo of a former lover’s name that was inked on her thigh. She’d gotten that tattoo when she was in her early twenties, before she’d come to Christ and learned that she should treat her body as her temple, not as a cheap object meant to display some young fool’s name. Although the tattoo embarrassed her and she’d once considered having it removed by laser surgery, she’d decided to keep it as a constant reminder her of how far she had advanced in her spiritual journey, and how she should never stop striving to please Him.

The tub was nearly full. She twisted off the water, tested the temperature with her finger, and then climbed in. She stretched her legs out, took a sip of tea.

This was her favorite evening ritual. She would soak in the tub for up to an hour, sipping tea and letting the stress of the day drain out of her. Occasionally, she even fell asleep in the water.

She closed her eyes and tilted her head back against the wall. Breathed deeply.

The creaking of the bathroom door brought her eyes open. She bolted upright, water sloshing around her.

The door was halfway open, allowing her to see into the hallway. No one was out there.

Yet she asked, in a tremulous voice, “Who’s there?”

As she voiced the question, her hand went to her crucifix, gripped it tight.

No one answered. She was thinking that maybe the door had drifted open on its own, blown maybe by a draft traveling through the house—when that musky, male odor pierced her nostrils again, overpowering the apple-cinnamon fragrance steaming from the bathwater.

A black man appeared beside the tub. One second, he wasn’t there, and the next, he was, and Tanisha’s first thought was that he was an angel, for only a spiritual being could have materialized so suddenly—but then she saw his eyes, eyes that made her blood run cold even though she lay in a tub of hot water, and she knew that her immediate assumption was incorrect. This individual was not an angel, but the exact opposite, and she was in the worst trouble of her life.

Chapter 37

An hour later, Joshua’s phone hadn’t rung. Joshua figured Thad was probably an innocent business acquaintance of Rachel’s, and would listen to Joshua’s rambling, desperate message and believe Joshua was a nut job. He’d taken a wild shot in the dark by contacting Thad, and it was foolish to expect a pay-off.

Thinking that he ought to spend his time pursuing a better lead, Joshua logged onto the Internet to research Prescott Property Management.

The company had a comprehensive, professional-looking Web site. They had locations in Atlanta, Macon, and Savannah, with the primary office based downtown on Auburn Avenue. They managed properties throughout the state of Georgia, specializing in rental management of houses, condos, and vacation homes on Georgia’s barrier islands.

On the About Us, page, there was a photo of the president of the company, LaVosha Prescott. She was an attractive black woman in her thirties, with shoulder-length braids and a welcoming smile.

Joshua could not recall ever meeting her, seeing a picture of her, or hearing Rachel mention her name.

Yet Rachel had a business relationship with the company. They must have managed a property of hers. Why else would she have stored their number in her address book?

The place Rachel owned, wherever it was located, was where she’d gone. It was the only logical conclusion to draw from the available facts. She was staying in her hideaway.

He glanced at the profile of Dexter Bates. He thought about Rachel and their unborn child.

I’m going to find you, Rachel, whether you want me to or not
.
It’s too dangerous for you all alone out there.

Coco pawed Joshua’s leg, distracting him.

“What’s up, kid?”

Coco whined, tail wagging. Joshua noticed that her small food bowl was empty.

“My bad, Coco.” He rose from the kitchen table and retrieved the dog’s food from a sealed plastic container in the pantry. “I’ve been so busy I forgot to feed you.”

He dumped half a cup of kibble into the bowl. As he straightened, he had a line of sight from the kitchen into the two-story family room, where Rachel had hung so many pictures and pieces of artwork. A revelation rose in his mind, like a deep-water sea creature swimming upward to poke at the ocean’s surface . . . and then it plunged back into the murky depths of his subconscious.

He stood there, frozen, willing the thought to return. But the harder he strained for it, the farther it receded.

Coco was poised above her bowl, big eyes fixated on him, as if waiting for him to announce his great discovery.

“Never mind, it’s gone now,” he said. “Maybe it’ll come back.”

Chapter 38

In short order, Dexter got what he wanted from Tanisha: his wife’s home address. He cross-referenced the address Tanisha told him with the address for his wife that he’d found in Tanisha’s little black book in her kitchen drawer. He could not afford any errors at this critical stage of his mission. But the addresses matched.

“Thank you so much for everything.” He patted her on her pretty head. Her head drooped forward, as if she were contemplating her submerged navel.

Tanisha also had mentioned that his wife had vanished yesterday. That she’d gone on the run and no one knew where she could be found. It hadn’t surprised him—after he’d killed her aunt Betty, he’d expected her to run. He would find her, in due time. He wasn’t concerned.

After he’d gotten the information out of Tanisha, he’d had to kill her, naturally. Letting her live was not an option. She would have turned him in to the cops, and though he had the power to evade police detection, it would have made his work considerably more challenging.