by Meg Gardiner
Eyes gluey, she reached for her husband. Her hand found air. Terrence wasn’t in bed.
She squinted, blinking, to read the clock on the nightstand. 3:12 a.m. She listened. Heard nothing now. The house was dead quiet. Street was dead quiet. As it should be, this hour, this little neighborhood in Arcadia. Terrence must have gotten up, gone to the kitchen, bumped something. But that noise.
It sounded like a gunshot.
For the tiniest fraction of a second, she held still, thinking: Couldn’t be. I imagined it. Had to.
Then she thought: Amelia.
And Maya was out of bed, in her cami and panties, barefoot on the cold floor, rushing to the bedroom door, trying to hear past the thunder of blood in her ears. The baby’s room was down the hall. Her own closed bedroom door told her that Terrence had gotten up some time ago. Because the baby was crying? No. She wouldn’t have slept through Amelia’s cries. Terrence must have gone to get a snack or watch TV and shut the door to let her get some rest. New mothers didn’t get much rest. And she’d been dog tired.
Maya eased open the bedroom door. Her nerves felt covered in millipedes. The house was dark. Unusually dark, and she couldn’t parse it, until she realized that the streetlight on the corner was out. A thin milk of moonlight spread across the living room.
In that moonlight stood a shadow.
Man-shaped. Tall, hooded, hands hanging at its sides. Its back to her.
The shadow turned its head. In profile, Maya could see that it wore a hoodie with a ball cap beneath. It stared across the living room.
Maya saw, by the corner of the sofa, Terrence’s bare feet. Her husband was laid out on the floor. He wasn’t moving.
In the shadow’s hand, reflecting the moonlight, Maya saw the barrel of a gun.
Couldn’t be turned real. Gunshot. Here. Now. She choked on a moan. Terrence.
Amelia’s room was halfway down the hall, midway between her and the shadow. Maya could run, but the shadow could fire, and she wasn’t as fast as a bullet.
She eased her bedroom door shut. Backed up, eyes wide now, knowing she couldn’t make a sound, but she couldn’t tiptoe because tiptoeing would take too long.
She hurried to the closet and inched the squeaky door open. She reached and pawed. The Winchester 30.06 shotgun was on the top shelf.
She pulled it down, hands shaking. She didn’t turn on a light. Turn it on and for goddamned sure the shadow would know she was in here. She broke the breech of the gun and stared down the barrel. Turned it toward the window, the chalky moonlight. Inhaled. Empty.
The moan circled, deep in her throat. She reached into the closet again, fumbled on the high shelf, and found the box of shells. The cardboard was soft. How old were the shells? Five years? Ten? The Winchester had belonged to her grandfather, he brought it with him when he moved west from Texas after the war, he told her it had put food on his family’s table and kept drunken peckerwoods from harassing him on his own property and he hoped she’d never need it but damn, girl, don’t rely on anybody else for your life in the dark of the night. She’d fired it once, back when, and had kept it on the top shelf since Pap passed, and now, now, now …
Her hands shook as she grabbed shells from the box. A couple fell to the floor but she left them, kept loading, until she couldn’t wait any longer. She crossed the room and threw open the door even as she slammed the breech shut, barrel aimed straight down the hall, and it seemed darker, seemed endless dark. She stepped into the hallway and couldn’t see anything now, maybe tunnel vision. She put the stock of the Winchester to her shoulder and aimed down the hall but she couldn’t fire until she knew where he was and she had to block the intruder’s path to the nursery but couldn’t pull the trigger blindly. She hit a light switch.
The Midnight Man stood outside Amelia’s door. Motionless, silent, facing straight at her. He raised his head and the light hit his eyes. Maya gasped.
Not real, she thought. Not possible. This? Him? All those people?
He stared at her. The Winchester was heavy in her arms. She held it steady and pulled the trigger.
The old shotgun misfired.
The killer hissed.
No. Maya gaped at the Winchester in horror. In her peripheral vision, the shadow-made-flesh raised his handgun and charged down the hall at her. She flipped the shotgun around, grabbed the barrel and ran at him, raising it to club him, thinking, My baby.
He fired.
The blow, the blare, inflated into pain, solid, wall to wall. Maya keeled, knew she was going down, but the world seemed inside out, and her arms couldn’t control the shotgun anymore. The floor hit her hard in the back, the light on the hallway ceiling directly overhead, and all was agony. She saw the Midnight Man swim into sight above her, his face, his expression. She heard the baby crying. She gritted her teeth and reached up, to claw him, his face, bring him down to her, because he had a gun in his hand and if she could bring him down she could take him with her, wherever she was going. Take him with her and leave Amelia here. She reached for the Midnight Man as he stood over her. Gun in his right hand.
Knife in his left.
He dropped to his knees at her side, breathing hard. He extended the knife. Maya swiped her fingernails at his face. He jerked back, but not quick enough. Then he raised the gun one more time.
8
Under the rising sun, the medical examiner greeted the FBI team outside the Arcadia ranch house. The San Gabriel Mountains were etched in shadow behind it. Hundred-year-old palms towered over the roof. A jogging stroller was parked on the front porch.
The ME was a solid woman in her fifties, Doris Park, and if Caitlin had been asked to describe her from a checklist, she would have picked “Seen it all.”
Park warned, “It’s bad.”
The home of Maya and Terrence Cathcart was painted a happy yellow. The gardenias were sweet-smelling, rush hour traffic a distant whisper. Around the neighborhood, sprinklers misted neat lawns. Neighbors stood in knots, hands pressed to their mouths. The street was lined with police cars, an ambulance, and the medical examiner’s van. None of it affected the Cathcarts. Nothing would again.
Caitlin, Emmerich, and Rainey signed into the scene and ducked under the police tape. An Arcadia PD detective stepped out the front door. He handed them latex gloves and paper booties.
What a way to get dressed for work.
“This way.”
The house was sunlit and homey. Family photos covered the walls. A baby swing sat in the living room. Terrence Cathcart lay in front of the sofa, face up.
He was in his early thirties, athletic, African American, wearing Gap boxers and a gray Cal State Dominguez Hills T-shirt with a bullet hole in it. From the copious dark blood that soaked the shirt and floor, he’d been shot in the liver.
Caitlin peered around. Through the kitchen door, she saw a baby bottle standing in a pan of water on the stove. A half-prepared sandwich remained on a cutting board. Chicken, mustard, hunk of cheddar cheese.
The carving knife was in Terrence Cathcart’s hand.
Beyond his body, a living room window was broken. The screen had been removed from the outside. Shattered glass littered the floor inside below the windowsill.
Whatever had happened, Cathcart had enough time to recognize a threat and confront the intruder. He’d gone down trying to protect his family.
Emmerich was somber. “Mr. Cathcart was the first victim?”
“Evidently,” the Arcadia detective said.
He stepped aside to give them a view of the hallway. The FBI team silently took it in.
The young mother lay outside a door with a child’s name on it in colorful block letters. amelia. Caitlin forced herself not to react.
Maya Cathcart was in her late twenties, petite but strong. She had a runner’s legs. They were splayed awkwardly, the soles of her bare feet pale against he
r brown calves. A vintage shotgun—very old, maybe a family heirloom—lay beside her. Cathcart’s hand loosely gripped the barrel, as if she’d tried to use it to bludgeon her attacker.
Close quarters. Deadly, no room for error, no escape. And the young woman had fought to the end. She’d made a stand, outside her baby’s room, to her last breath.
The ME’s assistant was kneeling beside Maya’s body, bagging her hands in paper sacks.
Dr. Park approached. “There’s biological matter and blood under her fingernails. She may have scratched her assailant. We’ll send scrapings for DNA analysis.”
“Good.” Caitlin stared at the body. She couldn’t bear to look. Couldn’t look away.
Maya Cathcart had been shot once in the gut and twice in the face.
Caitlin forced herself to scan the hallway. She saw no ejected shotgun shells. No evidence markers. Maya apparently hadn’t been able to get off a shot. The killer had fired multiple times, but Caitlin saw no cartridge casings on the floor.
“He policed his brass again?” she said.
The Arcadia detective spoke in hushed tones, as though not to disturb Maya. “Four shots fired, no spent cartridges. Of course, he may have been firing a revolver.”
Caitlin pointed at a spot on the wall outside the baby’s door. “He was careful.”
A bloody palm print had been hastily wiped from the wall so it was unidentifiable. And a few feet from Maya’s body, near the living room, a square of hallway carpet had been cut out and removed. Roughly eighteen-by-eighteen inches.
The ME gestured at Maya. “Careful is one word for it.” She shook her head. “He pried the bullets out of her body with a tactical knife. And took them.”
And Caitlin lost the battle to turn away from Maya Cathcart’s face. Her breath snagged.
“He shot her through the eyes,” she said.
“Then gouged them out with the knife to retrieve the bullets.”
The ME’s voice sounded distant. Caitlin stared.
She heard Rainey ask, “The baby?”
The Arcadia detective said, “With Social Services. Grandparents are flying in from Seattle.” His voice was thin. “There’s something you should see.”
He called the police photographer over. The man approached, camera hanging from a strap around his neck. He clicked through shots he’d taken earlier and turned the viewscreen.
The photos showed the baby, Amelia, in the arms of a paramedic. She seemed about nine months old, eyes rimed with tears, soft curls stuck to her head. She appeared uninjured.
Rainey went incredibly still. “He drew an eye on her forehead in blood.”
Under the glare of the camera’s flash, the eye was clearly visible, covering the little girl’s entire forehead.
Caitlin stepped into the nursery. She halted.
Eyes were drawn all over the walls. Some in blood, some in ink.
Caitlin’s throat seemed to seize. Some eyes were the size of a fist. Some the size of a serving platter. Some, dozens, the size of a kiss. She stopped counting when she hit sixty.
Above the crib was written the word legion.
She needed air. She walked outside to the front yard. Emmerich joined her in the sunshine.
“You don’t need to say anything,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not. None of us are.”
She threw a glare at him. “In that case? It’s goddamn brutal.”
Rainey emerged from the house, moving slowly. She never moved fast unless the situation called for it, and then she hurtled. But she was walking as if through syrup. Her hands hung at her sides.
Emmerich normally would have asked for impressions, comments, analysis, but he seemed to regard this as a moment of intermission. Fresh out of the gate on a sun-drenched California morning, and their world was peppered with emotional shrapnel.
Rainey gazed back at the house. Her jaw was tight. “The Cathcarts did everything they were supposed to do. They committed. Married, stepped up, took responsibility, created a home. Cherished their child. Then this. No reason, no purpose, just destruction.”
Her gaze extended to the horizon.
Emmerich stared across the street at the clusters of neighbors rainbowed by lawn sprinklers. A news van turned the corner. An Arcadia police officer stepped into the road, hand out to stop them. The street, the crime scene, and the morning were simultaneously busy and empty, bright and broken.
Caitlin spoke quietly. “We’re missing too much. We’re not seeing his vision of the world.”
Slowly, Emmerich nodded. “If we’re going to profile this UNSUB, we have to travel LA as he does.”
Rainey said, “What do you propose?”
Caitlin took in the cloudless blue sky, fresh and cool with the winter morning sun. But the killer attacked a sleeping city and infested its dreams.
“He told us,” she said. “He’s the Midnight Man. We have to follow him into that world.”
A van from the County Coroner’s Office arrived. Two attendants pulled a gurney from the back. A black body bag was tightly rolled and strapped down on it. They walked past the agents to the front door of the house.
Emmerich watched them pass. “We’ll go tonight.”
9
They rode out at midnight. Bundled in her peacoat, Caitlin slid behind the wheel of the Suburban. Rainey and Emmerich climbed in, Caitlin cued a playlist, and they pulled out. Nine Inch Nails filled the SUV and they flowed through the city like a black-lacquered bullet.
Olympic Boulevard. Koreatown. Hancock Park. Traffic, streetlights, empty sidewalks. Highland Boulevard. West Hollywood. Neon, bars. La Cienega. Caitlin drove and absorbed the vibe. When the playlist hit “Ruiner,” Rainey cut a glance at her.
“Really? You think he’s pumping himself up with this?”
“He’s not listening to NPR,” Caitlin said.
West LA. Cramped apartment blocks, twenty-four-hour gyms, KFC. Westwood. Dazzling and busy, with UCLA students, holiday shoppers, and moviegoers lingering for late-night entertainment.
But as soon as they crossed Wilshire, the night deepened and traffic ebbed. The sleek high-rise condos disappeared behind them and they were virtually alone on Beverly Glen. They rolled uphill, crossed the peak of the Santa Monica Mountains via Coldwater Canyon, and cruised through the Valley.
By three a.m., winding their way through tract-house neighborhoods, the streets had emptied. Trees loomed. Streetlights were far between. The view tunneled to the beam of the headlights.
The sleeping city felt eerily lonely.
Droning along Mulholland, the dashboard lights turned Rainey’s face skeletal, and Caitlin got an unnerving sensation of dislocation. The roads were deserted. From the top of the hills, Los Angeles was brilliantly illuminated. But it felt distant.
Even when they dropped back downhill to Sunset, the well-lit blacktop felt abandoned. Caitlin cut down an alley behind expensive homes. Garbage cans flashed past, construction fencing, guardhouses to gated compounds. Lights were scarce. Flickers, fireflies.
“Approach the gate and the floods come on,” Rainey said. “CCTV. Doubt he goes through any entrance where he has to smile for the cameras.”
They emerged in Benedict Canyon and headed uphill past mansions with topiary gardens. “The Downward Spiral” throbbed from the stereo. Fifty-foot palm trees picket-fenced past, there, gone, there, gone. Nobody else was on the road.
“He drives to the scenes,” Caitlin said.
“Agreed,” Emmerich said. “Getting up these hills would take hours without wheels. And his range—it’s twenty-five miles east to Monterey Park. Thirty, thirty-five northeast to Arcadia. He’s not walking.”
“He has a vehicle. Or access to a vehicle. Or he steals cars and dumps them.”
The houses thinned out. Eucalyptus trees thickened, and coyote brush
grew wild along the shoulder of the road.
Privacy. Seclusion. That was what people paid for when they lived up here. Neighbors wouldn’t be close enough to hear a scream or a cry for help. Or perhaps even gunshots.
After ten minutes of climbing steep switchbacks, they rounded a final bend. Caitlin pulled over, killed the engine, and they got out.
The Peretti family’s house was dark. The wind scored through the trees with a heavy rush. Seed pods and dry leaves crunched beneath Caitlin’s boots. At the bottom of the driveway she paused.
The eucalyptuses chattered in the wind. Ivy covered the hillside behind the house. Across the street was a construction site, a tear-down that had been cleared to the slab.
Emmerich surveyed the hillside. “He drove and parked on this road. Not on an adjacent street. He didn’t come over that hilltop behind the house. The terrain and vegetation’s impossible.”
The night was clear. LA was mostly overwhelmed by light pollution, but here, near the crest of the hills, surrounded by chaparral and canyons and sleep-locked homes—with no streetlights or even Christmas lights visible at this time of night—stars broke through overhead, spangled, vibrating. Cold light.
On the ground, all was shadow. They walked up the curving driveway three abreast. The house came clearly into view.
Caitlin slowed. “He saw it from this vantage, I’m sure. He got this view of it before he broke in.”
“Agreed,” Emmerich said.
The house was a showplace. Meant to draw in light, provide expansive views, give a feeling of air and height. Above it all. Soaring.
The air felt close and black. The wind scoured her.
The house, designed to glow with light, was a shell.
It was an abattoir. The slaughterhouse where a family was destroyed. It loomed silent and dark.
A shiver racked her. Though Rainey and Emmerich stood close on either side of her, she felt almost existentially alone.
