The Dark Corners of the Night

by Meg Gardiner

  “What color’s the sticker?”

  Hannah’s gaze stretched. Her lips pressed together. She regarded Caitlin fretfully. “I don’t know.”

  Caitlin eased off. She couldn’t force it.

  Then Hannah’s face cleared. “It had letters. A picture and letters.”

  “Keep seeing it.”

  “So did his sweatshirt.”

  That made Caitlin inhale. “The Midnight Man’s sweatshirt.”

  “I saw it when he ran across the lawn. I told you it was pressed flat against his chest from running fast, and in the wind. The sweatshirt was dark but had a logo. The logo was red. That’s why I didn’t think of it until now. The red blended with the black.”

  “It’s fine. Remembering now is great.”

  “The logo was—like an animal.” She paused, thoughtful. “Like a mascot.”

  “Excellent.” Caitlin tried not to let her excitement bowl the girl over. “Keep going.”

  Hannah squeezed her eyes shut. “Some of the letters were S-H.”

  “That’s what was on the sticker?”

  Hannah nodded. Then shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  Caitlin took a risk. “Picture yourself behind the wheel of the car. Staring out the windshield. The sticker is where?”

  “Bottom left.” No hesitation.

  Hannah’s face went distant again, but with intensity, not dreaminess. Caitlin worried that the girl was putting herself thoroughly into the point of view of the driver. Worried, because if Hannah followed that thread to its end point, she would spot the corollary to the fact that she had seen the Midnight Man. He had seen her.

  But she was concentrating. “The sticker. Some of the letters were S-H. I know it.” She nearly gasped. “That was what I saw when he was driving away. And it’s what he saw when he looked at the sticker, too. Because that’s how the letters looked on inside of the sticker. The back side.” She thought for a sharp moment. “From the front side it would be H-S.”

  HS. Caitlin froze.

  “What I saw from the back side looked like S-H-something-something. From the front, the sticker would say something-something-H-S.”

  A jolt ran through Caitlin. HS. A logo like a mascot, on a sweatshirt.

  Everything they had struggled to understand about the Midnight Man—everything that didn’t seem to fit—sharpened into focus.

  “High School?” she said.

  Hannah brightened. “Exactly. Like a school parking sticker. With its mascot on it.”

  Their profile of the killer was off. He wasn’t in his twenties.

  He was a teenager.

  24

  Caitlin’s mind fizzed like a road flare.

  As she sat across the desk from little Hannah Guillory, with the morning sun spangling the windows, everything Caitlin knew about the Midnight Man spit and blazed in phosphor-white images behind her eyes.

  High school.

  It seemed off the charts. A ruthless serial killer who was crazed with hormones, a teen’s oppositional defiance, and a belief in his own immortality. An annihilator who sat in math class.

  But everything about the Midnight Man was off the charts.

  Hannah observed her with sharp interest, then rubbed her eyes as if they were gritty.

  “You hanging in?” Caitlin said.

  Hannah nodded.

  “Hold on a minute. I’ll be back.”

  She crossed the room to Weisbach’s desk. “Jeep. With a parking sticker that features a high school mascot.”

  Weisbach spun on her chair. “Jesus.”

  “Be right back. I have to make a phone call.”

  Weisbach jumped to her feet and headed toward Hannah. Caitlin stepped into the hallway and called Emmerich.

  He picked up with the noise of a cavernous building echoing behind his voice. “Hendrix.”

  “I think our profile is off.”

  She ran through her suspicions—that the Midnight Man was much younger than they had imagined. The noise on Emmerich’s end caromed in her ear. He was at Washington Dulles Airport, waiting to board a flight to Los Angeles. He’d been home less than an hour before turning around and heading back to the terminal.

  “A teenager,” he said.

  Caitlin paced, waiting for his reaction, hoping he wouldn’t dismiss her reasoning.

  “Hold tight till I get there. We need a united front to present this theory.”

  She inhaled. “Safe travels.”

  She returned to the war room, her fingertips tingling.

  At the desk by the windows, Weisbach and Solis were leaning over Hannah. Detective Alvarez paced behind them. Hannah frowned at the desktop computer, hunched forward, concentrating. When Caitlin neared, she saw that the screen was covered with high school mascot logos.

  “Keep scrolling,” Solis said to her. “Tell us if anything looks familiar.”

  Hannah’s shoulders drooped.

  Caitlin approached with a confident smile. “How about breakfast first?”

  Hannah popped up like a puppy that had just heard the word walk. Solis and Weisbach acted less enthusiastic.

  “On me,” Caitlin said.

  The LAPD detectives hesitated. Caitlin maintained the sunny smile. Hannah scooted to the edge of the desk chair, eager, awaiting permission. Caitlin winked at her. The girl got up.

  Alvarez conceded. “On you sounds good.”

  Downstairs in the bustling cafeteria, the aroma of food perked Hannah up. She took a tray from a stack and turned hopefully to Caitlin.

  “Anything you want. Go for it,” Caitlin said.

  “Cool.”

  Hannah slid her tray along the line, eyes as round as quarters, investigating the food under the orange heat lamps, darting up and down the line to thoroughly examine the entire menu. She was wiry, and sparrow-quick. Caitlin suspected that she kept a million deep thoughts to herself as they swooped through her head. A canteen server smiled at Hannah and she nodded enthusiastically at pancakes, eggs, bacon, and sausage.

  As the girl filled her tray, Caitlin turned to Solis and Weisbach.

  “Thanks. I didn’t mean to bigfoot your interview with her. But she was starting to remind me of Oliver Twist peering into a bowl of gruel.”

  “Sure,” Solis said.

  “I know you’re running on less than empty,” Caitlin said. “And that you don’t want to waste a minute.”

  Weisbach grabbed a tray. “We don’t have a minute to waste. But we’re here now.”

  Caitlin tried an ingratiating smile. “I was pushing the kid too, until I stepped out for a moment and realized what I was doing.”

  Alvarez reached for a plate. “Jeep SUV. Dark blue or black. How many of those are licensed in California?” He raised a hand. “I know—it’s a start. It’s great. And Hendrix is right. We need a break before we turn on each other.”

  Solis, the bags under his eyes grayer than usual, grunted. “Tens of thousands of Jeeps are undoubtedly registered with the DMV. We’ll have the kid look at makes and models. And if the vehicle was stolen, the killer may have gotten sloppy wiping it down when he dumped it after fleeing the scene. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Weisbach asked the server for a helping of scrambled eggs. “We need to define our search parameters for high school mascots. Public, private, parochial schools …”

  Alvarez said, “You think the girl’s reliable? That’s a pretty specific bit of information to remember. She may have been trying to be ‘helpful.’”

  Caitlin moved along the line with them, piling her tray with fruit and yogurt. Then eggs, sausage, and a waffle. And French toast. In answer to Alvarez’s question she tipped her hand back and forth. Maybe, maybe not.

  “It’s possible,” she said. “But Hannah’s reaction was genuine surprise—a moment of illumination. No
t the kind of fakey enthusiasm some witnesses give you, and not a reluctant, ‘I guess so …’ You know what I’m talking about.”

  “I do. And she’s a little trooper, I’ll give you that. But she’s twelve.”

  “And she’ll last a while longer once she gets some calories into her. But not too long.”

  She turned to see if Hannah was still scooting back and forth, or whether she’d heaped her plate so heavily that she would struggle to carry it. The girl was no longer in line.

  “Where’d she go?”

  The others turned. The tables in the room were full. With adults. Detectives, support staff, officers in uniform. No Hannah.

  Caitlin left her tray on the rack and crossed the room, searching. Soon the detectives fanned out. Hannah’s tray sat on the rack in front of the juice bar.

  But she wasn’t in the canteen. She was gone.

  Weisbach stepped into the hall. Caitlin was right behind. No sign of the girl.

  “Could her mom have come back while we were talking?” Caitlin said. “Left with her?”

  “No. The desk downstairs would have called to let me know if Mrs. Guillory came in. She needs an escort to the war room.” Weisbach craned her head up and down the hall. “You check whether Hannah went back upstairs. I’ll see if she’s in the women’s room.”

  Caitlin ran up the stairs and ducked into the war room. Hannah wasn’t there. Nobody had seen the girl.

  Weisbach texted.

  ???

  Nothing

  Didn’t leave by the main exit—

  front desk didn’t let her out.

  That should have eased Caitlin’s swelling sense of concern. But it didn’t. She has to be here someplace. Where would a kid go?

  What the hell had happened to her?

  She didn’t think she was overreacting. Unless Hannah had freaked out and run, something untoward had happened. She texted Solis.

  Floor-by-floor search?

  Alvarez is starting at the top.

  I’ve notified people to hold her if they

  spot her attempting to leave.

  Going back to canteen to

  retrace her steps.

  She ran down the stairs and met Weisbach coming up the hall.

  Weisbach shook her head and led Caitlin back into the cafeteria. Hannah’s abandoned tray remained by the juice bar.

  The detective’s face, often anxious, now looked apprehensive. “How did we lose her?”

  “We didn’t consider the possibility that she might go anyplace while we were talking.” Stupidly. “How long has it been?”

  Weisbach checked her watch. “Ten minutes.”

  “Dammit.”

  Caitlin could run a mile and a half in ten minutes. She could drive twenty miles, with lights and sirens. She’d never realized how long, and gaping, ten minutes felt when a kid was abruptly gone.

  “I should have …” She ran her fingers through her hair. “Why would she just leave? She wouldn’t. Would she?”

  A young voice said, “Wouldn’t what?”

  Caitlin and Weisbach turned. Hannah was standing right behind them.

  “Where were you?” Weisbach said.

  Hannah’s face, open and baffled, turned wary. She stepped back and knotted her fingers together. “What’s the matter?”

  “You left without telling us,” Weisbach said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  Weisbach moved toward her, which only caused the girl to retreat another step.

  “I’m sorry.” Hannah’s face flushed pink. “The other detective said I should go with him.”

  “What other detective?”

  She pointed at the door. “The one who came in while we were in the line. He took me downstairs to talk.”

  “Who?”

  “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

  The girl’s voice broke. Weisbach brought herself up short.

  “Of course you didn’t.”

  Hannah’s chin was quavering. Weisbach put a gentle hand against her back, led her to a table, and sat down beside her. Caitlin took a seat across from them.

  “It’s okay,” Weisbach said. “We were just concerned.”

  Hannah wiped her eyes, trying to be surreptitious about it.

  “Who was the detective who asked to speak to you?”

  Weisbach spoke in a calming tone but shot Caitlin a glance. Something seemed amiss—to both of them.

  “I don’t know who it was,” Hannah said. “He didn’t tell me his name.”

  At the canteen door, Solis appeared, followed quickly by Alvarez. Their worry evaporated to relief, then confusion and annoyance—until they saw Hannah’s face. They walked over.

  Caitlin said, “Do you see the detective in here?”

  Hannah shook her head.

  “You didn’t recognize him from earlier, when you were upstairs?”

  Another shake.

  Weisbach said, “What did he look like?”

  “Dad age,” Hannah said. “Dressed up. In a nice jacket and jeans.”

  “White? Black? Asian?”

  “White and pale. His coat was blue. I didn’t see him before,” she said. “He had a lanyard and a name badge hanging from his neck. He was all official.”

  “But you didn’t get his name?” Weisbach said.

  “The badge was flipped around. All I could see was the back.”

  Hannah scrutinized the assembled detectives. From her face, it was clear she knew something wasn’t right.

  “What else?” Caitlin said.

  “He had a cellphone. He said to record our conversation. That it would make it my certified statement.”

  Solis inhaled and shifted. Shook his head. Pulled Weisbach and Caitlin away.

  “It wasn’t anybody on the task force.”

  Weisbach’s worry lines were deepening by the minute. “What if it wasn’t a cop at all?”

  “Cellphone to record their conversation? Jeans? Badge on a lanyard?” Solis said. “This ‘detective’ sounds like a tabloid journalist.”

  “Best case,” Weisbach said.

  “You thinking—”

  “Could be a conspiracy nut.”

  Caitlin frowned. “Or a serial killer groupie. Or a stalker.”

  Alvarez, from behind Weisbach’s shoulder, spoke quietly. “Or it could be him. The Midnight Man.”

  Solis’ shoulders lowered, as if sandbags had been draped across them.

  Weisbach’s mouth pursed like she’d bitten into a lemon. “Unlikely.”

  “But possible,” Solis said. “Hannah only glimpsed the perp’s face for a half a second, as he drove away. Dammit.”

  Caitlin held her tongue. For a second. “I have to disagree. It—”

  “Doesn’t fit the profile, yeah,” Alvarez said. “Screw the profile.”

  She really bit her tongue. “‘Dad age’ sounds a lot different from what both Hannah and the McKinley twins describe.”

  Solis glanced past her shoulder. “Hannah? What do you think?”

  The girl had squirreled around in her seat to listen in on their conversation. At Solis’ question, she blushed, caught out and flustered. “I don’t know.”

  “Did the detective look like the Midnight Man?”

  Her shoulders ratcheted up. “Kind of did. But not. Older and tireder. Maybe.”

  She glanced between them, seeking approval, or hoping to keep from being scolded again.

  The detectives turned toward each other. Sotto voce, Solis said, “Pull video from every camera in the building.”

  25

  Hannah’s mother took her home soon afterward. The girl first browsed through high school mascot logos, fruitlessly, and watched video from the building’s front desk, but couldn’t identify the man who claimed to b
e a detective. Her eyes turned glassy. Her mom, petite and fierce with a black ponytail swinging halfway down her back, clasped Hannah’s hand and marched her from the war room. Weisbach escorted them out, her flat-ironed cool masking her frustration.

  Watching them go, Caitlin scribbled her name and phone number on a Post-it and jogged after them. She caught them at the elevator and put the note in Hannah’s hand.

  “Just in case,” she said.

  Hannah held her gaze until the doors slid shut.

  Caitlin grabbed her gear, checked into the hotel, and headed to Bay Rise. The FBI team was inbound and would meet her there, to see firsthand the scene of the Midnight Man’s foiled attack.

  The South Bay neighborhood was bounded by freeways. Small houses bumped flanks and whitewashed garden walls bordered yards the size of a king bed. The boulevards were smattered with tire shops and noodle houses. The Guillorys’ home sat on a tidy street among dozens of tidy streets laid out in a grid like a silicon chip.

  Caitlin stopped eighty yards from their house, near the spot Hannah had said the Midnight Man parked his Jeep. She wanted the same view he’d had. She killed the Suburban’s ignition. The ticking engine cooled.

  The modest neighborhood would have been a smorgasbord laid out in front of him.

  The wide street was lined with parked cars, pickups, and boats on trailers. The Guillorys’ house sat squarely in the middle of the block, a hundred yards from the cross streets at either end. Up the way, a couple of boys shot hoops against a driveway backboard.

  Caitlin could hear the rush of the freeway, a quiet thrum beneath the day—the neighborhood’s background noise. To the south, the terrain ran flat to San Pedro, Long Beach, the ports, the ocean. The Palos Verdes Peninsula hovered toward the west, a blue-green vision. To the north, a hill protruded above the homes, brown with long grass. It was undeveloped except for billboards advertising liposuction and personal injury lawyers. Telephone and power lines crisscrossed the road. Streetlights were spaced every seventy yards or so.

  Soon, in the rearview mirror, Caitlin saw Emmerich and Rainey pull up in another Suburban. She climbed out and was walking toward them when Keyes rounded the corner and hopped out of a Lyft.