by Meg Gardiner
He rocked himself out of the car. He was in his midthirties, solidly built, wearing a jacket against the December chill. Inside, he bantered with the skinny teen behind the counter, a kid who had more pimples than he had whiskers in his I Can’t Believe It’s Not a Mustache.
The kid acted jumpy, avoiding the deputy’s eyes. Flicking a gaze at him, then glancing quickly away, as if touching a stove with his bare hand.
The deputy maintained a friendly posture, relaxed and alert. Your Neighborhood Protector. No way to know if the kid simply got anxious around cops or whether he came from a neighborhood where you didn’t act friendly toward the police. Or whether he had some other reason for feeling nervous. The kid’s anxiety was patent. But if you didn’t know any cops, didn’t have them in your life as family, friends, or neighbors, a lot of people got twitchy—even just serving an officer a cup of coffee.
Then the boy brought the big to-go cup, carrying it like it was nitroglycerin, and the deputy decided the kid was just new at the job.
The boy set it on the counter and flexed his hands and actually blew on his fingers. Hot. “Would you like anything with that? We got apple pies.”
The kid gestured toward the kitchen, like a French chef was back there sculpting treasures out of sugar and lard.
The deputy handed over two bucks for the coffee. “Nah. You eat the pies. You can use the calories more than I can. Keep the change.”
He lifted the coffee cup in a cheers motion and pushed through the doors from the shiny plastic interior to the chilly darkness outside.
He sipped, eyes sweeping the parking lot, the street, listening for revving engines or drunken voices raised in anger. But it was peaceful, lights flowing across the shiny asphalt, adding a watery festivity to the emptying night.
The coffee was good. One thing about McDonald’s—it was reliable. Everywhere you went, day or evening or midnight, the product could be counted on to give you exactly what you expected. He walked to the cruiser, realizing the coffee was indeed freaking hot. Jeez.
He was reaching for the driver’s door handle when the window fissured with a hard crack.
He dropped the coffee and ducked as he drew his weapon. Then he was in motion around the hood of the car, seeking cover behind the engine block, listening for further fire before he knelt by the front passenger tire, heart pistoning. He bent to his shoulder-mounted radio.
“Shot fired. Officer requires assistance.”
Crouched by the wheel, he heard the dispatcher calling for backup. The night had turned brighter by several orders of magnitude and he was breathing like he’d run an all-out sprint. He tried to see where the shot had come from.
No car speeding away. Nobody running. No movement in the shadows.
He had a clear view into the garishly lit interior of the McDonald’s. A single customer sat at a table, burger in one hand, phone in the other, chewing and reading. The pimply teen was wiping the counter. The kid had put earbuds in and was singing along with the tune that was bouncing through his head.
The deputy was sixty feet away. Between him and the door was an open expanse of asphalt. No cover. But the people inside were targets, and oblivious to the danger.
The kid behind the counter looked outside and saw him.
The boy stopped wiping the counter, hand on the rag, as if in suspended animation. The deputy’s radio spat at him. Multiple units in route.
The kid leaned forward, mouth opening, as though trying to believe he was really seeing what was in front of him. The deputy waved at him violently. Get back.
But the kid was yelling toward the kitchen, and jumping over the counter, running through tables and booths, his red shirttail hanging out, flapping. He skidded out the front door. And before the deputy could shout, the kid came running at him.
The deputy yelled, “Get inside.”
The kid stopped. “Dude, you okay?”
In the distance, the deputy heard sirens. He bolted from his crouch, charged across the parking lot, and grabbed the kid’s elbow. He pulled him inside, yelled at the customer to get down below the windows, shepherded him and the kid and the cooks to shelter in the kitchen. Flashing lights rose and reflected from the windows and counters and aluminum kitchen equipment.
He glared at the kid, and pointed a finger, wanting to reprimand him for his naivete and foolishness. What came out of his mouth was, “Thank you. Thank you, son. But if you follow me outside again, I’m going to have a heart attack. Then kick your ass for giving it to me.”
It was only when the parking lot filled with cruisers and uniforms and the block was locked down that the deputy walked back to his car.
The window had what looked like a bullet hole. It looked like nothing else.
But when he opened the driver’s door and examined the interior, he couldn’t find the spent round. There was no hole in the dash, the seats, the floor, the passenger door.
He replayed in his mind the moment when the window shattered. He heard the hard, flat crack of the glass breaking.
But now he couldn’t recall hearing gunfire. He bent to the window. Leaned inside the cruiser.
On the driver’s seat he found chunked safety glass and a chip of white debris the size of a molar.
Something had come out of the dark and cratered the window.
The deputy could have protested. He could have insisted that he’d truly been shot at. But he couldn’t. Because he knew.
This had happened before.
19
At a food truck around the corner from LAPD headquarters, Caitlin paid for her breakfast tacos. The morning was clear and brisk. The air felt velvety. Nearby, Rainey waited, steam rising from her coffee.
Their phones buzzed as the cook handed Caitlin a rustling paper bag.
“Thanks,” she told him.
Rainey read the text. “Emmerich. We need to deliver the profile to the task force today.”
“Then we’d better take a fresh run at the problem.”
The problem being that, despite the BAU team’s combined decades of investigatory experience, the Midnight Man’s mind and motivation remained elusive. They felt like they were tugging on clouds.
They walked up a broad sidewalk toward HQ. City Hall poked above the roofs of office buildings, chalk white.
“How should we categorize the UNSUB?” Caitlin said.
Rainey’s sunglasses burned with the rising sun. “He could be a visionary killer.”
“Don’t toy with me before breakfast.”
“Gotta start the ball rolling. He does scrawl eyes and claw marks, and declares, ‘I am the Legion of the Night.’”
Visionary killers were driven by apparitions or voices commanding them to murder. They believed they were compelled to act by Satan, microwaves, or as the Son of Sam long claimed, the neighbor’s dog. And, like the California man who thought that killing strangers would prevent earthquakes, visionary killers generally acted in the grip of a psychotic delusion. That eliminated the Midnight Man.
“Hedonistic?” Caitlin said.
Hedonistic killers murdered for lust, thrill, or material gain. Rainey considered it.
“A psychopath whose greed escalated to murder?” she said. “He is an experienced burglar. But it would imply he kills the adults in the house because they’re expendable obstacles to robbery.”
They paused at a crosswalk for a red light. Traffic guttered past. Simultaneously, they shook their heads. The light changed, and they crossed the street.
“And his desire to torment kids doesn’t fit,” Caitlin said.
“That suggests he’s a power-control killer.”
Caitlin thought about it. Power-control killers sought to dominate their victims.
“Given that many power-control killers are maltreated as children,” she said, “and made to feel weak and inadequate as adults, it
could fit with the Midnight Man’s apparent paranoia. But …”
She trailed off, searching for a precise way to frame a slippery thought. Rainey glanced over.
“… but it doesn’t square with his treatment of kids at the crime scene,” Caitlin said. “The McKinley twins—it fits like a glove in that case. Kicking in the bedroom door, looming over them as they hid in the closet, intoning his … creed at them—he absolutely intended to dominate and reduce them to abject fear. But in Monterey Park, he walked across a toddler’s bed. In Arcadia, he drew an eye on the forehead of an infant. Those scenes were full of terror, but for adults.”
Rainey nodded. “They’re a message to the rest of us.”
“When a killer expends energy sending a message to people who aren’t directly in front of him, it indicates that his motive isn’t simply power and control.” She turned her head to Rainey. “Is he mission-oriented?”
Palm trees went past along the curb. Skyscrapers toothpicked the blue sky.
“Mission-oriented killers act to rectify some perceived societal ill,” Rainey said. “To cleanse the world of people they loathe. Prostitutes. Gays.”
Sinners, Caitlin thought, recalling the Prophet and the Ghost. The Prophet had clothed his deadly crusade in a parody of poetic justice and called his lethal misanthropy righteous.
“If so, who’s the Midnight Man trying to eliminate?” Rainey said.
“I don’t know.”
“He’s killed across ethnic groups. It’s possible he’s racially motivated but absent substantive evidence, I think we need to keep that idea to one side.”
“I don’t want to ignore the possibility.”
“Gut feeling?” Rainey said. “He’s no more conscious of a racial component in choosing victims than he would be choosing a checkout lane at the grocery store by eyeballing the checker. It could be there, but it’s not what drives him hardest.”
“Families with kids,” Caitlin said. “Nuclear unit. The primal human group. But he says he’s above it. Outside it. Proclaiming himself ‘beyond good and evil’ suggests that he sees himself playing a cosmic role.”
Rainey drank her coffee. “It’s certainly grandiose. Declaring himself God. Or anointed by a deity.”
“Isn’t God the very definition of good?” Caitlin said. “Doesn’t God oppose evil? What could be beyond them both?”
“An asteroid.”
Caitlin shook her head. “I’m talking about people.”
“God isn’t human. God is holy,” Rainey said. “God is absolutely other. Awesome and terrifying.”
They weaved through foot traffic and rounded a corner to the LAPD complex, shining in the morning sun.
“Absolutely other?” Caitlin said. “Aren’t we supposed to be made in God’s image?”
“According to Abrahamic tradition. I grew up with altar calls in a Baptist church. When I say God, that’s what I mean,” Rainey said. “Not so other faiths. Have you heard of Kali? Hindu goddess of time, doomsday, and death. And a powerful symbol of motherly love.”
“You’ve been drinking coffee for hours, haven’t you?”
“May I tell you about our lord and savior, Dark Roast?”
Caitlin half laughed.
“Don’t fall prey to the idea that God is engaged in an eternal battle against a supernatural force called ‘evil.’ That’s heretical.” Rainey became thoughtful. “I know you’re talking about free will. Responsibility. Guilt. The Midnight Man says he’s past all that.”
“He’s lying. Claiming that he has a hall pass. That he’s exalted or exempt. No way.”
They crossed the plaza and headed in. Upstairs, crime scene photos were spread across the war room’s conference table. They set down their things. They hadn’t resolved any of the questions they’d been debating.
“We’ll discuss the neurobiology of psychopathy another time,” Rainey said. “Maybe the Midnight Man was born without a conscience. But even if his brain’s wired in a way that prevents him from feeling compassion, he’s legally and morally answerable for his actions. He’ll pay.”
She turned to the photos. Caitlin dropped her peacoat over a chair.
Rainey stilled, examining a photo, as something caught her eye. She opened her computer and pulled up the evidence inventory.
“Something interesting?” Caitlin said.
“Arcadia crime scene. Take a look at that photo.”
Caitlin picked it up. The photo showed the broken window in the Cathcarts’ living room.
“The UNSUB smashed the window, then reached inside to unlock it and gain access,” Rainey said. “Terrence Cathcart was in the kitchen making a sandwich. He’d only turned on a single under-cabinet light. He’d closed the swinging door between the kitchen and the living room, presumably to keep from waking Maya or the baby. From outside the window, the living room would have been dark. I don’t think the UNSUB saw the light. He didn’t know Cathcart was up. He didn’t expect anybody in the house to be awake. Didn’t think they’d hear the glass break.”
She scrolled through the evidence inventory. “Check what’s on the floor inside the window.”
Caitlin examined the photo. Morning light glinted off the jagged remains of the windowpane. Glass littered the sill and floor. Some shards were an inch long, some the size of a pizza slice.
It wasn’t immediately obvious to her what had caught Rainey’s attention. Hardwood floor. A Navajo rug. Baby shoes.
“Debris?” she finally said.
Rainey stopped scrolling. She read from the inventory. “‘Found on the floor of the house, inside the window that was broken to gain entry.’ Shards of glass and a ‘ceramic chip, one point two centimeter diameter.’” She pointed at the photo. “There.”
Caitlin could see it—a small irregularly shaped white object. It was about the size of a pinto bean.
“No other ceramics in the photo. In any of the photos. No broken plates or porcelain vases. Just that distinctive bit on the floor.” Rainey sat down, typed, and pulled up the forensic report. Her head tilted to one side. “The chip’s made of a heat-resistant aluminum oxide ceramic.”
Caitlin’s cop radar warmed up.
Rainey read on. “It’s from a spark plug.”
Caitlin leaned over her shoulder to scan the forensic report. “It’s a ninja rock.”
Rainey glanced up. “That a street term?”
Caitlin nodded. “Spark plug ceramic is harder than tempered glass. Broken chips—tiny, light, concealable—shatter car windows more easily than a hammer or crowbar.”
“He used it to break the Cathcarts’ living room window,” Rainey said.
“In a thief’s hands, ninja rocks are part of a burglary toolkit. Possession with intent is illegal in California.” Caitlin straightened. “Using one on the living room window would have been quick and easy. Ninja rocks hit more quietly than a hammer or a brick. Like tossing a pebble at a window to wake somebody up. Except the glass disintegrates.”
She examined the photo. “He’s so careful to collect all evidence from the scene. Was this a mistake?”
Rainey drummed her fingers on the table. “Yes. Because the homeowners confronted him and fought back.”
She turned. “He shatters the window with the ninja rock. Little white chip, the size of a tooth my kid puts under his pillow for the Tooth Fairy, fits in his pocket, right? And he plans to scoop it back up once he climbs inside. But despite the house being dark, somebody’s awake, and on his feet, and ready to protect his family.”
Rainey mimed the living room space. “The UNSUB is standing, maybe crouching, inside the window, on top of the broken glass and the ceramic chip. And Terrence Cathcart charges out of the kitchen. Young, fit, pumped up, and armed with a carving knife.”
“The killer’s instantly in the thick of a fight,” Caitlin said. “A fight he’s alw
ays avoided—until this moment.”
“He picks dark houses precisely to give himself an advantage over the homeowners. Entering an occupied dwelling where you don’t know the layout is a high risk for a home invader. But a late night, a dark house—he presumes he’ll have an unimpeded first shot.”
Keyes came through the door, windblown, his cheeks red.
Rainey positioned herself in front of the table, as if she was the intruder. Caitlin advanced toward her, hand out, playing Terrence Cathcart wielding the knife.
“The killer sees him.” Rainey raised her arm, making a finger gun. “Cathcart gets near. He’s shot in the middle of the living room at close range. He was charging.”
“And the gunshot rouses Maya Cathcart.” Caitlin paused. “This is like his other attacks, because shooting the man wakes up the woman. But this time, the killer isn’t standing at the foot of the bed to enjoy her confusion and terror. He’s on the far side of the house.”
“He’s in the living room, checking that Terrence Cathcart’s dead,” Rainey said.
“It gives Maya extra seconds.”
Keyes watched, absorbed by their discussion.
“Then here comes Maya down the hall, carrying her grandpop’s Winchester,” Rainey said.
Caitlin mimicked aiming a long gun. “Before the UNSUB can collect the ninja rock, he’s on the back foot, defending himself against her.”
Rainey nodded, energized, then drooped. “And that goddamn gun was too old.”
Caitlin lowered her arms. The awfulness of the scene could only be subsumed for a few seconds at a time.
“His script went awry,” she said. “It distracted him.”
“Maya faced him down and pulled the trigger. That overwhelmed his neural network, his memory, his planning, his cleanup scheme,” Rainey said. “I think she fried him so hard that he forgot to collect the ninja rock.”
“It’s our luck. And it’s a data point. But it means that if anybody fights back, it focuses him entirely on violence to the exclusion of all else. And the danger to potential victims increases.”
