The Dark Corners of the Night

by Meg Gardiner

  Her mom pressed the phone to her ear. “Police. I need the police immediately. A prowler’s breaking into our house.”

  Her dad ran to the doorway with the bat cocked. Pointed back at them. “Shut the door and lock it. Hannah!”

  He charged down the hallway.

  Lip quivering, Hannah slammed the door and turned the flimsy lock. Charlie’s cries grew piercing.

  The porch light came on. Outside, footsteps pounded.

  Hannah ran to the window.

  Her mom turned, phone to her ear. “No—Hannah, stop.”

  But Hannah was already at the window. Dad was out there somewhere. Was he chasing the Midnight Man? Was he okay? She pushed aside the curtains.

  She saw the shadow jump into an SUV.

  He started the engine and pulled away, staring back at the house. Straight at her.

  Then he was gone.

  Four minutes later, the police cars came screaming in.

  23

  The sun was breaking the eastern horizon, sharp and gold, when Caitlin arrived back in LA on the first flight from Oakland Saturday morning. The streets, the sidewalks, the park across from LAPD headquarters were all quiet, as if slowly stretching in the cool blue of the morning, before the bright day poured over them.

  The quiet contrasted with the news channels, talk radio, the papers, social media, the red chyrons that screamed from every television. family escapes midnight man in new attack. And the sense of calm lasted until Caitlin stepped into the war room.

  She walked off the elevator into a room striated with sharp light and fizzing with energy. The detectives she’d said goodbye to less than twenty-four hours earlier, who had been worn and bedraggled, were all there, and all of them were jacked.

  Solis was at his desk, phone to his ear, talking in rapid bursts, writing notes. Alvarez was in conference with the detectives from Arcadia. Weisbach, looking scrappy in jeans and a UCLA sweatshirt, her curls erupting from a ponytail, saw Caitlin from across the room and waved her over.

  “You’re quick,” Weisbach said.

  “I was close. Bay Area. The rest of the team is on their way.”

  She was glad she could make it here so quickly. And she felt lousy that once again her time with Sean—and Sadie and Michele, not to mention her own mother—had been cut short.

  Weisbach rocked up and down on her toes. “This is a break. Huge.” She tucked her arms under her armpits, like a coach on the sideline with time running out. “But just a break. Not the dam bursting.”

  Weisbach, like everyone else, was not just stoked but frustrated. Despite the 911 call, the killer had managed to elude them.

  “Patrol units tried to track his escape route from the Bay Rise neighborhood. But he crossed city limit boundaries and then 911 dispatch sectors. It screwed with communication and coordination. And he struck during a change of watch again,” Weisbach said. “Bad luck for us.”

  “Bad something,” Caitlin said.

  She was jacked, too—and angry. She had brooded all night, and during the flight down the coast. What Weisbach had just told her only amplified her anger.

  The UNSUB had outmaneuvered the police, seemingly by using their own procedures against them. 911 dispatch sectors. Who knew that, except obsessives and insiders?

  It cemented her suspicion that the killer was a cop’s son. To a cop’s daughter, it felt like the breach of a sacred trust.

  Every officer in the war room was running on adrenaline and fear and hope and pure devotion. Give them a glimpse of the UNSUB and they would dig until they dropped. The thought that the Midnight Man was the son of somebody who devoted himself to protecting the endangered public filled Caitlin’s throat with acid.

  She’d had tough times with her dad. The awful cases he brought home had broken him down. They’d drilled holes in the family. But even in her darkest moments, she had never thought of lashing out at the police or the public. Only at herself.

  Turning a cop’s knowledge against innocents, using police procedure to terrorize and kill? The acid taste burned her tongue.

  But she didn’t bring it up—not yet. Because, despite losing the killer on the back streets of LA, the task force was excited.

  They had a witness. A witness who saw the vehicle the killer was driving. Saw which way he went. Saw his face.

  She was sitting at a desk by the windows.

  “Her name’s Hannah Guillory,” Weisbach said.

  Hannah sat alone, feet dangling. She wore a Moana T-shirt and pink leggings and scarlet Chuck Taylor high-tops. Her brown hair was messily tucked behind her ears. She was sitting on her hands. She appeared not so much disoriented as drowsy.

  “Take it she didn’t get much sleep last night,” Caitlin said.

  Weisbach shrugged. “Patrol initially questioned her, and detectives from Harbor Division. When it became clear they were dealing with a new Midnight Man attack, they called me and Solis. We brought her in.”

  “She’s been here all night?”

  “A trooper, too.” Weisbach didn’t sound uncaring, but she wasn’t a softy either. “She’s been telling her story. And we’ve had her working with a sketch artist. And going through mug books and photos of vehicles. She described an SUV but can’t pinpoint the make or model.”

  Against the broad wall of windows, Hannah looked small.

  “She by herself?” Caitlin said. “Are her parents here?”

  “Her dad left twenty minutes ago—he’s a crane operator at the port and his shift starts at seven a.m. Her mom stepped out a few minutes ago with Hannah’s younger brother. The little boy’s done. Fried. A family friend’s coming to get him. Mrs. Guillory will be back shortly.”

  They walked to the desk. Hannah watched them approach.

  Weisbach said, “This is Agent Hendrix. She’s from the FBI.”

  Hannah gave Caitlin a considered look. She seemed to find her appearance unexpected, though Caitlin couldn’t tell for certain through the girl’s fatigue. Hannah appeared to be taking in the Saturday morning race-to-the-airport version of an FBI agent—the peacoat, jeans, and Doc Martens—against a pop culture image. She did glance at Caitlin’s hip, undoubtedly checking for the holstered gun. Everybody was in down-and-dirty mode this morning.

  “Call me Caitlin.” She pulled over a chair and sat. “Hannah. That’s a great name.”

  The girl had wide brown eyes. “It’s a palindrome.”

  “Cool. The same backwards as forwards.”

  From across the room, Solis beckoned Weisbach.

  “I’ll be back.” The ice-pick glance Weisbach gave Caitlin as she walked away said: Do some stuff here. Dig out information the rest of us haven’t.

  Caitlin took a second. She didn’t want to pounce, not on this kid.

  “You’ve been telling everybody the same story all night long, I hear.”

  “It’s important.”

  “It is. So I’m sorry if I’m going to ask you to go through everything again, if it’s boring or scary.”

  Hannah shifted. “It’s okay.”

  “Because when you tell it to me, I might hear some things the other detectives haven’t. I’m trained to listen for certain things they might not be. They’re the best, but I investigate cases from a different angle sometimes.”

  Hannah nodded.

  “You’d heard about the Midnight Man before last night, right?” Caitlin said.

  Hannah’s nod became vigorous. “We talk about him all the time at school.”

  “What about?”

  “How to defend our houses from him.”

  Hannah’s gaze dropped to the floor. Caitlin recalled what the forensic psychiatrist, Jo Beckett, had said about eyes—a straight-down gaze indicated unalloyed shame.

  “Did you think you could protect your house from him?” Caitlin said.

&
nbsp; Hannah’s shoulders rose as she took a breath. A half-shrug.

  “I could have written a list,” she said. “A checklist. All the doors and windows. Made sure they were locked.”

  She had stopped swinging her feet. Her red Chucks hung abjectly. “Because I didn’t think of the cat door. I was in bed when Silky came into my room and jumped up and nuzzled me, and he was cold, his nose and his fur were chilly, so I should have known he’d been outside.” Her bottom lip trembled. “If I’d made a checklist, the cat door would have been on it. Would have been locked.”

  Damn, this kid felt responsible for a lot.

  “The checklist sounds like a smart idea,” Caitlin said. “You and your family can work on it.” She offered a smile that felt melancholy.

  Hannah blinked, but kept looking down.

  “Hey.” Caitlin leaned both elbows on the desk. “I’m not throwing shade at you. Not making fun of your idea. It’s smart. Do it. But Hannah.”

  The girl looked to the side. Fearful.

  “It’s not your job to be the one who sees every problem before it happens,” Caitlin said. “That’s for grown-ups.”

  Caitlin sensed that Hannah was a quiet kid who didn’t know how courageous she was. And something else. That Hannah saw fine details others missed. Her recollection about the cat’s chilly fur, for instance.

  “Hannah, if I tell you something, will you promise to be cool?”

  Shrug.

  “You were freakin’ brave last night.”

  Hannah blinked again, seemingly surprised.

  “Freakin’ isn’t really the word I want to use, but you’re twelve, and I’m a federal agent,” Caitlin said.

  Hannah looked up.

  “You didn’t freeze. You took action. You helped your little brother. You warned your mom and dad.” In the nick of goddamn time, she held back. “Because of that, because of you, your family’s okay, and these detectives have some really important clues.”

  Hannah took a deep breath. She looked at Caitlin and didn’t turn away.

  “Can I ask you about what happened before you got up last night?” Caitlin said.

  “Okay.” Barely audible, but there was a flicker of interest, and openness.

  “Which way does your bedroom window face?”

  “The backyard.”

  “Did you have the curtains open?”

  Hannah hesitated. “I closed them when I got my pj’s on but after Mom told me good night and turned out the light, I got up and opened them.”

  “Why?”

  “So I could see what was outside.”

  She seemed to want to say something else. Caitlin nodded. Go on.

  “Sam Hernandez, from school, his parents take turns keeping watch all night. I thought I could maybe too.”

  A pang went through Caitlin. “What did you see?”

  “Not him.”

  “That’s valuable information,” Caitlin said.

  “It is?”

  “It confirms what the police think—that he came into the backyard through the gate on the other side of the house. He didn’t jump the fence and come across the lawn.”

  “Okay. Wow.”

  “When it’s nighttime, what can you usually see in the backyard?”

  Hannah thought for a moment. “The concrete of the patio. It’s pale. The swing set, because it’s metal. The trees are just shadows.”

  “Why can you see the concrete and metal?”

  “Because … the streetlight out front is tall enough that it shines over the roof into the yard.” She sounded surprised that she’d analyzed it.

  “Could you see the patio and swing set when you got up last night to go to the kitchen?” Caitlin said.

  Hannah’s gaze extended. “No.” Emotion filled her face, a mix of excitement and fear. She looked at Caitlin directly now. “It was super dark outside, but I didn’t notice until I got to the kitchen.”

  “Did you hear any sounds before you got up? Outside sounds.”

  “A dog barking. Up the street somewhere. The Gonzalezes have a cocker spaniel. I think it was him. He always barks at weird sounds in the distance.”

  “Good. Anything else?”

  “The freeway. At night, sometimes, after everybody’s asleep, I can hear traffic on the 110.”

  Caitlin nodded, encouraging her. She wanted Hannah to open herself to every sensation she’d felt in the early hours of the morning. It was a technique called cognitive interviewing. It helped a witness do more than simply recall events. It got them to relive the experience.

  Eyewitness testimony was notoriously unreliable, prone to gaps, confirmation bias, prejudice, and blind spots caused by terror. Cognitive interviewers talked to eyewitnesses in a way that could enhance their ability to retrieve memories of an event—without creating inaccurate accounts or confabulations. The technique focused on getting witnesses and victims to be aware of everything that took place, the entire context and environment of the crime. Sights, sounds, emotions, the weather—everything that could bring the scene fully and deeply alive in the witness’ memory.

  “What else did you hear?”

  “Wind. Silky purring, for a while, until he went to sleep.”

  Caitlin nodded. “What did you smell?”

  “The Christmas tree.” Hannah’s response was instant. “As soon as I walked into the living room. It made me feel … better. For a minute.” Her expression softened, and her gaze extended. “When I went in the kitchen I smelled coffee. Dad had put it in the coffeemaker for the morning.” She tilted her head. “The leftover étouffée when I opened the fridge door.” She closed her eyes. “Charlie’s breath.”

  Her jaw tightened, and her lip quivered again. She was there, back in the kitchen, holding her little brother for what was literally dear life.

  “Now move on, to your parents’ bedroom.” Caitlin’s voice was smooth and low. “What did you hear?”

  Hannah’s breathing rate increased. “Mom on the phone to 911. Charlie crying. Long, long cries. Scared cries. Dad running down the hall. Footsteps—” She paused, lips open. “Footsteps running, outside, on the grass and driveway.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Mom told me to keep away from the window, but I was so scared for Dad. The porch light came on, so I knew he was at the front door. And I heard footsteps, but they weren’t barefoot.” Her eyes widened. “They were shoes. If you’re barefoot, nobody can hear you running on the grass. So it had to be him. I knew it but didn’t know it. But I looked out the window …”

  She blinked. Stopped.

  In cognitive interviews, one technique to improve recall was to ask the interviewee to take a fresh vantage point on the scene—to mentally place themselves across a room, or a street, and describe what somebody standing there would have seen. To describe, sometimes, what the perpetrator would have seen from his vantage point.

  When Hannah stopped, Caitlin considered asking her to place herself in the point of view of the man she saw running across the lawn. Then Hannah seemed to submerge herself once again into the scene.

  “He was running. In a straight line, diagonally across the lawn. Fast. Not crazy out of control or scared, just sprinting,” Hannah said. “He was running fast enough that his sweatshirt was flat against his front and flapping behind him.”

  Caitlin nodded softly.

  “He crossed the lawn and kept going in that straight line across the street. That was when he faded out. The porch light doesn’t shine all the way across the street.”

  “His vehicle was parked on the opposite side of the street?”

  Hannah nodded. “Up where the streetlight is. The one that was out. So he wasn’t parked in front of our house.”

  “Can you estimate how far away? How many houses?”

  “Four houses to the streetlight
. So, there,” Hannah said, and her brow crinkled. “Police always say ‘vehicle.’ Why?”

  “Because there are lots of categories of motor vehicles.” This kid was sharp. And she loved words. Categories seemed appropriate. Don’t talk down to her. “Autos. Pickup trucks. Big rigs. Motorcycles. Station wagons. Until we can narrow down the description, we use the word that covers all of them. What did you see?”

  “The Midnight Man drove an SUV.”

  “Can you tell me what size it was?”

  “Not the biggest.” Her eyes widened, seemingly with a thought. “Not as big as the ones the FBI drives. On TV, I mean.”

  “Not as big as a Chevy Suburban.”

  Hannah shook her head. “It was a dark color. Blue or black.”

  “It went past the front of your house?”

  “Yes.” Something popped into her expression. “With the lights off.”

  “When it drove past your house, did the porch light reflect off the grille?”

  Hannah nearly jumped in her seat. “Jeep.”

  Caitlin’s breathing paused.

  The girl abruptly thrummed with energy. “It said Jeep. On the front. Above the grille.” She paused. “The name almost looks like a palindrome.”

  “Good.” Caitlin kept calm. She wanted to high-five the girl. “What else?”

  Hannah seemed temporarily caught by excitement, too present.

  “You were standing at the window in your mom and dad’s room, looking across the front lawn,” Caitlin said. “And the Jeep drove into the glow of the porch light.”

  “Heading from right to left. West,” Hannah said. “But in the middle of the road. Right up the center of the street.”

  “Think about the Jeep. Did you see anything else about it? Hubcaps? Dents? Scratches?”

  “It had a sticker on the windshield.”

  “Okay.”

  Fine details. Caitlin had been right. Presuming that Hannah wasn’t imagining or confabulating.

  “Where on the windshield? Can you see it?” Caitlin said.

  “On the side closest to where I’m standing. The driver’s side.”