The Dark Corners of the Night

by Meg Gardiner

“Sean Rawlins. You waited three hours to tell me this? Where is she? If you say you left her in your rental car, I’ll place you under arrest.”

  “She’s with my sister in Los Feliz. Getting to hang with her cousins for a couple of days.”

  “Days.”

  “I forgot to tell you. I’m staying in Southern California through the weekend.”

  “Double bastard. You let me think I had only one morning with you.”

  “You said you wanted a workout.” He gave her a preposterously shiny smile. “Now get going, because I’m caffeine-deficient. And Sadie’s waiting for us to pick her up.”

  Caitlin threw off the covers. “Then I must primp myself for Miss Rawlins. Out of the way, cowboy.”

  In-N-Out wasn’t gourmet. But it was the best meal Caitlin had eaten in months.

  The fast-food stop on Sunset overlooked the sludgy river of late morning LA traffic. Cheeseburgers and fries, coffee cups, and toys were spread across the booth’s tabletop. At the counter, the crowd moved quickly. Some to-go customers took their lunches and began eating even before they reached the exit, unwrapping burgers and lunging for them with their mouths as they pushed the door open with their rear ends. Outside, cars and trucks inched toward the drive-through in a constant stream, like communicants at mass.

  Sadie knelt on the bench seat, elbows on the table. Her soft hair had developed a curl. Her brown eyes, guileless and inquisitive, took in everything around her. Four years old, she was effervescent and unguarded.

  She picked up a toy. “This one is Triceratops.”

  A year earlier Sadie had been into My Little Pony. As a kid herself, Caitlin had been into Power Rangers and Police Officer Barbie. For Sadie’s sake she had trained in the fine art of styling Little Pony manes—and now the kid was into dinosaurs. The tabletop featured a prehistoric panorama.

  Sadie pointed to one with wings. “This is Lolly. She’s a Pteranodon. P-T-E-R-A-N-O-D-O-N.”

  “Wow,” Caitlin said.

  Sean leaned back, coffee in hand, and stretched an arm across the back of the booth. “She learned that from the Dino Songs album. Play it ten thousand times, you’ll learn it too.”

  Sadie picked up a fearsome critter with tiny arms. “Tyrannosaurus rex. That means tyrant lizard. Her name is Cheeto and she’s very gentle. You can pet her.”

  Caitlin ran an index finger down the T-rex’s back. Sadie growled and made Cheeto leap at Caitlin.

  Caitlin pretended to yell. A whisper-howl. “She’s wild.”

  “Of course. She’s the queen of the predators.”

  Sadie set Cheeto down. Her brow furrowed.

  “She won’t hurt you. None of them can really hurt you,” she said.

  “That’s reassuring.”

  “They’re little and pretend. Not like bears or a bomb.”

  Caitlin’s breath caught. She flashed Sean a glance. He kept his face absolutely flat, but emotion shifted behind his eyes.

  Sadie stuck a french fry into a splotch of ketchup. “A bomb hurt my mom.”

  “I know, sweetie,” Caitlin said.

  “That’s why she was in the hospital. Her face was all scabby.” Sadie ran her small fingers over the side of her own face. “She had operations. And her legs got broken. They were hung up on strings from the ceiling. She was in the hospital until summer and that’s why my grandma came to stay with me and Daddy.”

  Caitlin had seen Sadie numerous times since the bombing, but until now, the little girl had avoided speaking about her mother’s injuries. Michele had skated on the edge between life and death, and while Sadie hadn’t been told how close it was, she knew that her mommy was very sick, and that every adult in her life was desperate with worry. Sadie was too young to understand what death meant. But she felt it when fear saturated her world.

  With Michele home, her survival assured, Sadie seemed secure enough to talk. Caitlin thought it was a positive step.

  “Lots of times my grandma stays with us now,” Sadie said. “Mommy needs help. But I’m a big girl.”

  “And strong, like Cheeto,” Caitlin said.

  Sean briefly shut his eyes, then reached across the table and squeezed Caitlin’s hand. He stroked Sadie’s hair and kissed the top of her head.

  At moments like this, Caitlin felt ashamed at her lingering anxieties over Sean’s feelings for Michele. They’d been divorced for years. They both used the word amicable. Caitlin had never sensed any nostalgia for the marriage, had never seen any rekindled desire for Michele in Sean’s eyes. Just stinging self-reproach that he and his college sweetheart couldn’t make it work. Disappointment in himself for failing.

  Of course, he and Michele had worked out a new relationship. By necessity. Distant at first, things had thawed in the last year, becoming friendlier—fond, even. That was a good thing, Caitlin reminded herself. Warmth was better than war.

  Caitlin didn’t think Sean was cheating on her. Not for a second. Still, she could never forget that Michele and Sean had something that she and Sean didn’t. They had a family. And how Sean related to his family was out of her hands.

  She dug her nails into her palm. Let it go.

  Sadie stabbed more fries into the ketchup. She ate them heartily. Her gaze was earnest. “You can hold Cheeto, Cat. She likes you.”

  Caitlin wrapped the T-rex tight in her palm. And so my Grinch heart grows three sizes this day. “Thanks.”

  Sadie leaned across the table and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Think how big a T-rex poop was. Enormous.”

  She popped back to her seat, both hands pressed over her mouth, stifling laughter.

  With that, Sean’s shoulders relaxed. He squeezed Caitlin’s hand and smiled, rolling his eyes.

  As they left the restaurant, Caitlin’s phone pinged. An email from Emmerich. Subject: Cathcart autopsy reports.

  She replied, On my way in. Will read ASAP.

  Sadie said, “Are you having dinner with us, Cat?”

  “Hope so.”

  Sadie didn’t hold her arms out, but simply jumped into Caitlin’s embrace. “You better.”

  Her hug was artless and loving. Caitlin kissed the girl’s cheek. Be happy, she thought. Be carefree. Let all evil stay away from you forevermore.

  12

  On the playground at Bay Rise Elementary School, kids huddled at recess. The sun was white, the December sky crayon blue from horizon to horizon. Noise rolled across the playground. Kickball, foursquare, the third graders on the swings, soaring higher with every pump.

  The sixth graders stood in a knot near the tetherball poles. Talking about the Midnight Man.

  “He’s a demon,” Sam Hernandez said. “I heard my mom talking with Father Ortiz after church.”

  “Like a devil, for real?” Caleb Barnes said. “I don’t believe it.”

  Sam bounced a ball. “Totally real. The demon possesses a person and takes over. The person becomes like an evil puppet. Haven’t you heard of exorcists?”

  Caleb grabbed the ball on the upward bounce. “That’s in movies. Not the real world.”

  “Ask Father Ortiz. They have exorcists in the real world. Exorcists are priests and they throw holy water on the person and they vomit like a swimming pool of puke and the holy water burns their skin. The priests pray and show crucifixes and they drive the demon out.”

  “Where does the demon go?” Caleb said.

  Sam grabbed the ball back. “Into another dimension. Or into somebody else.”

  Madison Little bit her thumbnail. “That’s not what I heard. He takes kids with him after he kills their parents.”

  Sam and Caleb frowned. “Really?”

  “Then he eats their hearts,” she said.

  “No way.”

  “Gross.”

  “Then I need one of those cop vests,” Caleb said. “So he can�
�t stab through it. Keep him from cutting mine out.”

  Olivia Chang kicked at a pebble. “I heard my mom and dad talking about how to protect our house.”

  Nervous eyes turned to her. Overhead, seagulls wheeled and screeched. The school was in the South Bay, a few miles from the Port of Los Angeles.

  “They were talking about how to keep the Midnight Man out,” Olivia said. “They won’t even let me open the front door. They have to do it, then lock it again right away.”

  Madison continued biting at her thumbnail. “Our house is getting a burglar alarm. Dad said he never wanted one because they’re superexpensive, but now nothing is too expensive. The killer knows how to break into houses, but no place has had a burglar alarm go off. The alarm would scare him away. Or at least wake us all up.”

  Sam shook his head. “Your house is safe.”

  “Why?” Madison said.

  “Because it’s just your dad and you and your sisters. The Midnight Man only kills people where it’s a dad and a mom.”

  Madison’s face flushed. “Really? Because who knows for sure?” She peeped at the kickball game. “So Jonah’s safe, because he has two moms?”

  “If he is,” Sam said, “maybe we should all move in with him.”

  Logan Hanson said, “Security systems cost more than my mom earns in a month. My dad put burglar bars on the windows.” There were nods among the group. Logan said, “I think we should add heat-sensing cameras.”

  “Like in Predator?” Madison said.

  “Your dad let you watch Predator?” Olivia said.

  The entire group gawked at her. Sam said, “We’ve all watched Predator.”

  Olivia seemed baffled, maybe a little embarrassed.

  Hannah Guillory stayed quiet, listening to it all. The group was clustered in a circle. In the distance, a boy scrambled on top of the monkey bars and stood up. Quickly a teacher called out, telling him to climb off. The teacher strode across the playground, waving at the kid. No standing on top. That was the rule. That was to keep them safe. Too risky. Get down.

  Hannah blinked at the sun. Her breath blew out in cold fog.

  Keep them safe.

  Bay Rise Elementary regularly held active-shooter drills. The teachers locked the classroom door and had them practice staying perfectly silent while they walked from their desks to the closets at the back of the room, ducking low when they passed the door because the top half of it was glass. They all climbed in the closets, squished, and Ms. Manabe shut the doors tight, and they stood there in the dark, not being perfectly silent, because Caleb and Sam could never stop snickering, and Olivia hated the dark, and Hannah got itchy standing so close to everybody for even only two minutes, and she knew they’d never keep perfectly silent or any kind of silent if it was real. If they had to stay inside for hours. Climbing out classroom windows would be smarter, she thought—should be every school’s evacuation plan. But at Bay Rise they couldn’t do that, they had to hide in the closets because the windows in the classroom were up by the ceiling, and to climb out they’d have to stack the desks and chairs and scramble over each other’s backs and shoulders. But if an active shooter passed the classroom door and saw empty desks inside and high windows, he would know there was only one place everybody was hiding. And the glass in the door wasn’t bulletproof.

  The seagulls screeched and swooped onto the playground and battled over a dropped granola bar. They hopped and flapped and tore at it, each trying to get the whole thing.

  Hannah turned away.

  Active-shooter drills were terrifying. But a shooter was somebody you could see coming. When it happened, at least you had time to do something.

  The Midnight Man just appeared, out of the dark.

  Caleb held out his hands and Sam tossed him the ball. He said, “I’d put Legos on the floor inside all our windows so he’ll hurt himself stepping on them if he’s barefoot.”

  Hannah thought of her mom and dad and her little brother, Charlie, and felt blank.

  If the Midnight Man materialized in your bedroom, what could a kid really do? Her hands felt cold.

  13

  In the war room, Caitlin sat at the conference table typing up her notes on the overnight ride-out. The building’s unevenly spaced western windows provided a view across Spring Street, and she could glimpse the sturdy Art Deco façade of the old Los Angeles Times building. Around the room’s open-plan floor, TVs played on mute, showing news feeds. She tried to ignore them. Otherwise it became an addiction. Feed. The word didn’t just mean what was pouring out. It was what the people watching it felt an overwhelming need to do.

  But she couldn’t help noting that at least twice an hour, every channel cycled through the story, in bold red letters: midnight man kills again. News coverage was ramping up. And fear in Los Angeles was intensifying. The city was itchy. And when a city itched with nerves because a killer was loose, the city bled.

  She reread her notes. Across the room, a slender figure appeared in the doorway. He paused and peered around.

  Caitlin’s smile was spontaneous. She waved.

  Nicholas Keyes raised his chin in greeting and headed toward her. He had a duffel over one shoulder and computer case over the other. Hands in the front pockets of his skinny jeans. His stride was a near lope. The young analyst was stop-sign tall, with Warby Parker frames, brown curls that flopped into his eyes, and an eager energy.

  She stood to greet him. “Keyes. In person, on the West Coast.”

  “Hey. This our base camp?” He dropped the duffel beside the conference table and surveyed the windows. “Sniper baffling. Clever. Sunny spot for such dark work.”

  “Glad you’re here. Welcome back to California.”

  He half-smiled. “I love the smell of hydrocarbons in the morning. Smells like childhood.”

  At his desk, Detective Solis ended a phone call, smoothed his perfectly ironed white shirt, and came toward them with his hand extended.

  Keyes shook. “Homicide Special Section. I’ll try to live up to the standards your reputation demands.”

  Solis smiled in Caitlin’s direction. “I like this guy.”

  It was a toss-off comment, but he was assessing Keyes to see if he was being obsequious.

  “Keyes doesn’t shine people on,” she said. “He snarks, but he doesn’t schmooze.”

  Keyes looked as if he could get knocked over by a floor fan running at low speed. He was the youngest member of their BAU unit, and with his checked button-down shirt and cheap Gap blazer, appeared like a youngster playing adult.

  But Caitlin knew he had an analytical mind that only came with a rare confluence of inborn brilliance and years of intense study.

  Detective Weisbach came over, her small frame almost vibrating with intensity. “Mr. Keyes.”

  “Nick.”

  Keyes was happy to leave it at that. Caitlin would have liked to proclaim, It’s Doctor Keyes. But Keyes had told her what he thought of PhDs who demanded to be addressed as Doctor: they were hopeless narcissists.

  He was hardly the only person at the FBI with a doctorate, especially within the BAU. His was in mathematics. Before joining the Bureau as a technical analyst, he had worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena.

  He unpacked his computer and notebooks and a camera. Weisbach propped her hands on her hips.

  “What do you need to get started on the geographic profile?” she said.

  He booted up the laptop. “Link to that big-screen TV.”

  Emmerich came through the door of the war room, talking to Rainey. At the sight of Keyes—on scene and already in action—his face brightened. Action was what they needed. Insight. Progress. A profile. An ID and an arrest.

  Rainey approached the table. “Privyet.”

  “Tovarishch.” He gave her a mock salute.

  Russian. They must have binge-wat
ched The Americans. Emmerich clapped Keyes on the back.

  “I’m ready to roll,” Keyes said, focused on his laptop.

  He hit a key. On the flat-screen TV, a map of the Los Angeles Basin appeared.

  He walked to the screen. “Quick refresh on geographic profiling. It analyzes spatial patterns produced by the UNSUB’s hunting behavior and the sites he’s targeted. From that we can build a map of a serial killer’s hunting ground and predict where he lives.”

  The Sheriff’s detective, Alvarez, strolled over. His toothpick was back today. With him came a detective from the Arcadia Police Department, newly detailed to the task force. His jaw was screwed tight with apparent stress.

  “By target sites I mean locations where the UNSUB encounters the victim. Where he attacks. Where he kills. Where he dumps bodies. When you analyze all of those together, patterns emerge. Add the killer’s hunting method and we can model how he chooses crime sites, which places he avoids, and where he goes to ground.”

  Keyes typed on his computer. Four red dots appeared on the flat-screen.

  “The Midnight Man’s kill sites.” He gestured at the screen. “In this case, the victim encounter site, attack site, murder site, and dump sites are all apparently the same place—the victims’ homes.” His shoulders rose. “Data-wise, it’s unfortunate. If this UNSUB spread out his work, we’d have better information to analyze.”

  “His work,” Alvarez said. “That’s a sick way to put it.”

  Keyes’ expression was frank. “It’s most likely how the killer thinks of what he’s doing.”

  Caitlin felt a flutter, momentary queasiness. Plenty of cops talked about what serial killers did in exactly those terms. They simply didn’t admit it, except late at night in the back of a dim cop bar. Her father had talked that way, he belatedly confessed—with shame.

  Keyes showed no such compunction, because he wasn’t speaking in terms of needing the killer to keep working.

  “Because the Midnight Man attacks, kills, and leaves his victims in place, the primary crime scene is—as far as we know—the only crime scene. It means I have to get out to each location and collect as much data for interpretation and analysis as I possibly can.”