The Dark Corners of the Night

by Meg Gardiner

  “Absolutely. I can extrapolate from the target backcloth and environmental information. He’s never attacked under a full moon. Every kill site except the Benedict Canyon murders is within a ten-minute drive of a freeway. All the nights of the attacks have been dry,” he said. “Though LA’s mostly dry, so weather might prove irrelevant.”

  “Don’t count on it. Come on, Keyes—you lived here. In Southern California, people having heart attacks won’t go to the emergency room if it’s drizzling.” She thought for a moment, then spoke more seriously. “It might even be more than that. Santa Anas were blowing on the nights of two attacks.”

  “Good point. Remember what Raymond Chandler wrote: ‘On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks.’”

  She eyed him. “Chandler had it right.”

  Downtown LA came into view, skyscrapers sparkling in the cold December air.

  “I’m still cross-referencing the murder sites with bus routes and Metrolink stations.” Keyes ran a hand over his head. “And I need to factor in how close the crime scenes are to grocery stores, banks, and bars.”

  “You think he stops off for Oreos and twenties before grabbing a cocktail?” she said. “Or rather, cigs and a handful of singles before driving to the strip club?”

  “A buffer zone will contain all those places,” he said. “Where the killer shops, does his daily business, and relaxes. ‘Normal life.’ His off-hours, non-killing activities.”

  He stuck his hands in his sweatshirt pockets. “Five thousand murders go unsolved in the United States every year. The country probably has two thousand unidentified serial killers at large. Merely recognizing that a victim was murdered by a serial killer can be difficult.”

  The glitter of the downtown lights reflected from the hood of the SUV. “I have software that searches for statistical anomalies among ‘everyday’ murders, robberies, and assaults. It may separate the Midnight Man from the background noise so the BAU can home in on him. There is a pattern. And I’ll find it.”

  Caitlin pulled off the freeway. At the bottom of the off-ramp she stopped at a red light. The drop in exterior noise created a disquieting sense of aural vertigo. Waiting at an empty intersection in the paved heart of a massive city left her feeling as if she’d entered a distortion field. A zone between worlds, where she was out of place and unreachable.

  “Something about the absence of a law enforcement presence tonight is itching at my mind now,” she said. “I presume you’re checking how far each of the Midnight Man’s attacks have been from the nearest police or sheriff’s station. We also need to find out how far away the responding units were when the 911 calls came in. How long it took them to reach the scene.”

  “I can do that.”

  “I agree with you that his behavior’s not completely random. He’s not targeting neighborhoods haphazardly.” She drummed her fingers on the wheel. “At a minimum he’s situationally aware. He may plan in advance, study station locations. And …”

  A thought teased her, half-formed.

  “What?” Keyes said.

  “Shift schedules,” she said. “Find out if any attacks have happened during shift changes. You’ll have to check division by division because big outfits like the LAPD and LA Sheriff stagger shifts so the entire department is never in the middle of a changeover.”

  The itch, the teasing thought, grew stronger. “Cops are trained—I was trained—to consciously stay focused during the last half hour of your shift. To keep yourself from checking out mentally. But it’s psychologically impossible to do that every single time you ride out. You get tired or antsy. In the last quarter hour of a shift, you’re thinking about how to vector back to the station. You may take a direct route, instead of winding through back alleys or quiet residential streets.”

  “Which can leave safe neighborhoods even less likely to be patrolled than at other times.” Keyes sat up straighter. “I’ll have that information for you tomorrow.”

  “If anybody can pull this guy out of the data ether, you can, Keyes.”

  His eyes were nothing behind the red light reflecting off his glasses. “I appreciate that.”

  She meant it. Still, this killer’s freakishness set him apart. He seemed to exist in an eerie crack where algorithms strained to reach.

  The light turned green. She turned onto a vacant boulevard and headed for their hotel.

  15

  When Caitlin walked into the war room the next morning, sunlight reflected off silver tinsel somebody had draped on the flat-screen TV. It wriggled, centipede-like, under the heating vents. Caitlin set her computer case on the conference table and took a swallow of her Starbucks. It was eight thirty, and from the atmosphere, the LAPD detectives had been at work for hours.

  Weisbach, phone to her ear, was avidly writing notes. In her V-neck sweater and gray chinos, she resembled a dagger dressed in casual corporate wear. The menorah on her desk caught the sunlight. Spotting the FBI team, she finished her call, stood, and walked briskly toward them.

  Emmerich’s face turned inquisitive. “Got something?”

  Her holstered duty weapon rocked on her right hip. “Video.”

  Emmerich set down his coffee. Rainey exchanged a glance with Caitlin. Weisbach cued up a video on the flat-screen.

  “We obtained this from the construction company that’s building the house across the street from the Peretti crime scene in Benedict Canyon. Camera was a hundred twenty-five yards from the Perettis’ driveway. The time stamp’s been verified.”

  On screen, a still image showed the job site. The construction fencing. Trees along the street. The camera was mounted atop a construction shed on the driveway at the property. The black-and-white video captured about forty yards of the road. At a corner of the screen, the Peretti driveway was visible. The time stamp read 01:09 a.m.

  Static electricity seemed to thicken in the air. Caitlin shrugged off a shiver.

  Weisbach hit play. The clock in the corner of the video began running.

  “We had to manipulate the gain on the imagery to increase contrast.” Weisbach’s voice was low and urgent. “It’s skewed, but clear.”

  The clock ran. Five seconds, six. A squirrel popped up and hopped across the construction site’s driveway. With the gain turned up, the animal appeared blindingly, spookily white against the dark background. Eucalyptus leaves vibrated in the wind.

  In the corner of the screen, a figure appeared. Walking up the street toward the Peretti home.

  Almost as one, the FBI team drew a breath.

  It was him.

  Caitlin’s impression that the UNSUB, the elusive Midnight Man, didn’t fit within conventional boundaries, became abruptly, irrevocably amplified.

  His back was to the camera. When he reached the foot of the Peretti driveway, he stopped. Stood. Stared. The clock ran. For thirty-two seconds.

  He climbed the driveway and disappeared around the bend.

  “He’s inside for four minutes and thirty-nine seconds,” Weisbach said.

  They watched. At 01:15:22 a.m. he reappeared, coming down the driveway. Sauntering.

  There was no other word for it. The figure walked loose-limbed and relaxed down the Peretti family’s driveway into the empty road in the Santa Monica Mountains.

  He wore a brimmed cap and hoodie, and in the low-light exposure appeared like a photo negative. Blazing white against the low-resolution nighttime background. Head down. Strolling along the middle of the street. Playing with something in his hand.

  “Is that a phone?” Rainey said.

  Weisbach stared at the screen. “Maybe.”

  The figure continued to amble down the center of the road toward the camera.

  Rainey exhaled audibly. “I would call that a spring in his step. Good God.”

/>   Caitlin was enthralled and repulsed. The figure on screen had an unmistakable weightlessness in his stride. As if he was unburdened.

  “He acts like he just won the Powerball,” she said.

  Emmerich’s voice was low. “Postattack euphoria.”

  Rainey stepped closer to the screen. On the video, the figure twirled the device in his hand a couple more times, like an Old West gunfighter spinning his six-shooter. He stared at it. Then stuck it in the back pocket of his jeans.

  “Phone. Hundred percent,” Rainey said. “Unsurprising. But if he hangs onto it, and we can tie it to cell tower pings …”

  That was far down the line. That was putting together evidence for trial. Caitlin couldn’t tear her gaze from the screen.

  “What was he checking? The time? His step count for the day? Social media?” she said.

  For a few more seconds the figure on the video kept walking along the road toward the camera. Everybody gathered around the screen watched with quiet concentration.

  The LAPD was undoubtedly already working to estimate the UNSUB’s height, weight, identify his shoes—anything. From the distorted, low-resolution video, it was impossible to discern hair color or ethnicity.

  “The stride,” Emmerich said.

  Weisbach nodded. “No sway. Narrow hips. Male. Probably young.”

  Keyes came in. “I have software that can break it down further and provide a statistical probability as to the subject’s age.”

  Weisbach’s eyes didn’t deviate from the screen. “Do that.”

  The figure approached the nearest point on his pass-by. He was a heat map, and they couldn’t see his face.

  He passed from view and disappeared down the street, beyond the construction site. The leaves of the eucalyptus trees shivered as if in applause at his performance.

  “Can you play it again?” Caitlin said.

  Weisbach faced the TV. “Keep watching.”

  Caitlin straightened with curiosity. The video showed nothing except the empty construction site and vacant street. Twenty seconds passed.

  At the right corner of the screen, twin beams abruptly illuminated the road.

  “Headlights,” she said. “Goddamn. He did drive. That’s his vehicle.”

  For several seconds the beams stayed stationary. Then the light moved, rising, growing brighter. He was driving up the road toward the Peretti house. The street had an outlet at the top of the hill. But as the headlights crawled along the roadway, Caitlin became convinced that he wanted to pass by the Perettis’ so that he could enjoy a parting glimpse of the crime scene—to savor his destructive power over the people up the darkened driveway. To grab a last delicious rush of death.

  Caitlin pictured a map of the neighborhood. The car was heading north, uphill. From there it was a few curves to Benedict Canyon Drive, then a direct shot to Mulholland. Which could lead him anywhere. Hollywood. Santa Monica. The Valley.

  The headlights crept, the car not yet visible. Definitely taking his time. Come on, bastard. A few more yards, and the car would pull into camera range. Her heartbeat had picked up. Come on.

  The headlights halted. The unseen vehicle had stopped.

  “What?” Rainey said.

  The trees shivered in the wind. A second later, the construction fencing shook.

  “Oh, no,” Caitlin said.

  The video camera swerved, abruptly pointing at the ground. It jiggled wildly. And went black.

  “He scaled the fence, climbed on top of the shed, and ripped the camera out,” Caitlin said, half distraught, half in wonder.

  “He most certainly did.” Weisbach crossed her arms.

  “Were there signs posted outside the construction site, warning that it was under surveillance?”

  “Small one.”

  “And he was smart enough to stop before driving his vehicle into view of the camera. Damn.”

  Emmerich rubbed a thumb across his chin. “The camera was uploading to a server off site?”

  “Yes,” Weisbach said. “Which is why it took us this long to obtain it.”

  “It’s possible he thought he’d destroyed the recording itself,” Emmerich said. “But more likely he knew that the camera was linked to a recording system elsewhere. Was the construction shed broken into?”

  Weisbach shook her head. “No damage, no sign of attempted intrusion. No reports of theft. The camera was left on the roof of the shed, like it had merely fallen over.”

  Caitlin’s wonder turned to cold awe. “This is one thorough son of a bitch.”

  “You got that right.” Weisbach rewound the video. “But not thorough enough. We’ve got this image.”

  She stopped it with a clear view of the UNSUB walking down the middle of the road like he owned it. Owned the entire night. Caitlin stared at the image, trying to pull something, anything, out of the distorted pixels on the screen.

  Who are you?

  The figure didn’t answer. Told them nothing. All she could see was a flash from his raging eyes.

  16

  Just after noon, analysis of the Benedict Canyon video came back. By comparing the known width of the road, the degree of grade on the hill, the height of the camera atop the construction shed, and the distance from the lens to the centerline of the roadway, Keyes and the LAPD’s technical unit had extracted information about the UNSUB.

  Five foot eleven, maximum. Perhaps five ten, discounting the shoes—a so-far unidentified brand of athletic shoe—and the hoodie, which covered a baseball cap. Stride length 29.2 inches. Longish for someone of that height, walking at a seemingly unrushed pace.

  From the figure’s speed and medial-lateral gait control, the UNSUB was under forty. And, from the length of leg compared to the figure’s height, and the best estimate of the angle of the UNSUB’s femur relative to the hips and lower leg, a man.

  “Eliminated half the possible suspect pool, at least,” Weisbach said.

  Keyes opened his mouth to remark but caught the sardonic edge in her voice. Finding out that this serial murderer was not a man would have been a shock.

  Keyes said, “I’ll take another run at the video, see if I can draw out any information on what he’s wearing. It’s not like spraying luminol on a surface and seeing blood glow ultraviolet, but I may be able to manipulate the saturation and sharpen the contrast.”

  A still image from the video, blown up, was now tacked to a corkboard on a wall near the conference table.

  A second still image, of headlights shining on the road, sat on the table. Keyes picked it up. “I don’t want to give too much weight to this, but I think his behavior with the camera is significant. A data point for the geographic profile.”

  At the table, Caitlin was examining a map. She looked up. “How so?”

  “He didn’t want the vehicle captured on video. That’s why he ripped the camera down.” Keyes handed the still to her. “He left the camera on the roof. And he didn’t break into the shed to try to find the recording equipment. He knew the camera was uploading the video off-site.”

  She thought about it. “Experienced burglar.”

  “And I’m guessing he knows how poor most security cameras are. But that’s not my point. He thinks he’s anonymous. A shadow. There were no streetlights within two hundred yards of him. No security lights at the construction site. No motion-sensing lights. He wasn’t worried about himself being identified. Just the vehicle. Why?”

  Caitlin mulled it. “Because the rear license plate holder has lights to illuminate the plate number.”

  Keyes nodded, slowly.

  “He knew the camera would catch a clear view of the license plate.” She mentally cycled through the possibilities. “He could have disconnected the lights to darken the plate. But he didn’t. Why not?”

  “Because that would have put the vehicle in violation of the Ca
lifornia Vehicle Code. And drawn the eye of an observant cop.”

  “He didn’t want to get pulled over. He’s not just careful. He’s incredibly cautious.”

  “He’s no McVeigh, that’s for sure,” Keyes said.

  Timothy McVeigh, famously, had removed the license plates from the car he drove out of Oklahoma City after blowing up the Murrah Building. He had tried to anonymize the car. Instead, because driving without plates was illegal, the cops pulled him over. McVeigh never left custody again.

  “The UNSUB takes care to stay within the law on his way to and from the crime scenes,” Caitlin said.

  “And he wanted to drive out of the neighborhood by heading north to Mulholland.” Keyes began to pace. “That’s why he killed the camera. He could have kept the car off the video by pulling a U-turn and heading south down the canyon to Sunset. But he didn’t. That suggests his final destination was north. It suggests that in his mind, going south would have been an intolerable detour.”

  “And why would that be?” She pointedly raised an eyebrow.

  Keyes nearly jumped. “The police station and shift data. Hang on.”

  He ducked to his laptop, hit a key, and sent her a file. As soon as she opened it, she felt a queasy excitement.

  “Going south would have taken him toward the nearest police station. He was determined to avoid that. Damn.” She speed-read the rest of the file. Raised her head sharply. “Every attack?”

  He nodded. “All the murders took place within half an hour of shift changes at the nearest police or sheriff’s station. You were right.”

  She straightened. “He’s hyperconscious of law enforcement. He studies the cops. Us.”

  Keyes should have been gratified. Instead he seemed off balance.

  “What’s bothering you?” she said.

  “Everything,” he said. “Who the hell is this guy?”

  By the time the white sun advanced to slant directly through the windows, Caitlin stood before dozens of crime scene photos she had spread across the conference table. Shots of the homes attacked by the Midnight Man. The claw marks. The words. The eyes. Alongside those photos was a fresh map she’d printed, highlighting the location of every LAPD and Sheriff’s Department substation in the greater Los Angeles area.