The Devil Died at Midnight

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  It worked. He removed his hand from the handle on the car door. “How do you know about what Alex was writing?”

  “You first.”

  “Did Barb mention it to you?”

  “Like I said, Mr. Sinclair. You first.”

  “Alex told me about the book.”

  “When?” I asked.

  “Recently. Who told you?”

  “Barbara. Was it going to be her last book? Was she really planning to retire?”

  “Not just retire. Disappear.”

  “Why?”

  “For all the notoriety she chased, she’d finally reached a point where all she wanted was to live in peace, away from the public eye.”

  “Her final book must have been important to her then.”

  “It was. She wanted to go out with a bang. I warned her against doing anything without considering the repercussions, but she’s never been one to listen to what anyone else has to say.”

  “Repercussions? What was the book about?” I asked.

  He raised a brow. “You don’t know?”

  I shook my head. He opened the car door, stepped out, and wrapped his hand around the handle of the luggage bag the chauffer placed next to him.

  I slid across the seat, grabbing his arm for a second time today. “You know something. Something you’re not telling me. What is it?”

  “Sometimes it’s better not to reveal things. Once Pandora’s box is open, it’s far too late. I, for one, am glad the book was never published. I hope it never will be.”

  He glanced at the entrance to the airport.

  “Walking away won’t stop me from figuring out the truth,” I said.

  “I asked you before why you’re so interested in all of this. Why is it so important to you? And please, don’t give me the same misguided answer you gave me fifteen minutes ago. Try again. Try the truth this time.”

  The truth.

  This morning I’d asked myself the same question. I didn’t know Alexandra. Didn’t know her family. Wasn’t invested in her life. And yet, here I was, involved in it like we were close friends.

  “Well,” he added. “I haven’t got all day. Let’s hear it. Hurry up.”

  It was hard to know which story to tell. The easier of the two would have to suffice. “A couple years ago, I lost a colleague of mine. No, not just a colleague. A friend. A woman who meant a great deal to me.”

  There it was. Raw, honest, real truth all sliced up in tiny, agonizing pieces.

  He ducked his head back inside the car. “This woman. Who was she?”

  “My assistant. Her name was Clara.”

  I’d piqued his interest. “How did she die?”

  “She was killed.”

  “In what manner?”

  “She was murdered.”

  He frowned. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “No, I am,” I said. “Death strips life from us all eventually. I just wish it had come for me instead.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “Most days I do. For five years, death has followed me like a boomerang, always returning, but never for me. People enter my life. Bad things happen. I survive. They don’t.”

  “Why is your friend’s death on you?”

  “It’s a long story. You’ll miss your plane.”

  He let go of the suitcase, sat back inside the car. “Tell me.”

  “I’d just finished recording the opening segment of Murderous Minds, and the director called a late-night meeting. I sent Clara out for Chinese food. An hour went by, she didn’t come back, then two. No Clara. I got worried, called the police. They said I should wait a bit longer, that she probably just got stuck in traffic. But I just had this terrible feeling, you know, a deep burning inside my body that kept growing.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I borrowed one of the staffer’s cars, took the same route she would have taken, found my car on the side of the road about six miles away.”

  “And your friend, was she in it?”

  I shook my head. “The car was parked next to a sloped area that went down to the coast. When I didn’t see her inside, I hopped the ledge and walked about halfway down, using my cell phone as a light. When I found her, she’d been raped, stabbed, and left like a discarded piece of litter.”

  He placed a firm hand on my shoulder. “You couldn’t have known what would happen when you sent her on an errand that night. These things are unpredictable.”

  “You’re right. There was no way to know what would happen. There was a way I could have prevented it though. Clara looked like me. From behind, she’d even been mistaken for me on several occasions. In the dark, in my car, it would have been hard for the man following her to know the difference.”

  “What are you trying to say—she was being stalked ... or, I mean, you were being stalked, and the guy had actually intended to kill you instead?”

  I raised the sleeve of my shirt a few inches, exposing the gash on my arm. “I had a stalker, and I was too embarrassed to tell anyone. Maybe if I had, he would have been caught, and she’d still be alive.”

  “That’s quite a large scar. He did that to you?”

  I nodded. “About halfway into the first season of the show, he started leaving notes on my car. They were simple at first. Legible. Neat. He said he watched every episode, was my biggest fan, that kind of thing.”

  “And then?”

  “The notes took on a different tone. The writing changed. Instead of neat and legible, he wrote sharp words in all caps, said he dreamed about me, fantasized about us living together.”

  “How could you keep it to yourself and not tell anyone?”

  “I figured it came with the business. I became more aware, kept my eyes open, carried mace in my purse, a knife in my glove box. I parked near the brightest light in the parking garage whenever I had a late night. For a month, the notes stopped. Then one night, I was carrying a bag of groceries to my car. He grabbed me from behind. I dropped the bag, tried to fight him off. He shoved me up against the car, kissed me so hard he bruised my lips. I shoved him off me, then saw he was carrying a knife. I raised my arms in front of me, trying to protect myself, and he cut me. I screamed. A man parked nearby came to my rescue, but my attacker got away.”

  “How do you know the man who killed Clara and the man who stalked you is one and the same?”

  “He taped a note to the steering wheel. It said next time he was coming for me. The handwriting was analyzed. It matched the notes I’d received before.”

  “Did they ever catch the guy?”

  I turned away, and he had his answer. “Every time I look at this scar, I’m reminded of what he did to me, what he did to Clara, the debt I need to pay. A debt I’ll owe for the rest of my life.”

  The driver tapped Roland on the shoulder. “Sir, if you don’t go soon, you will miss your plane.”

  Roland turned to me. “I was going to say my driver will take you anywhere you want to go, but your driver seems antsy to do the same.”

  “What drive—” I turned, subjecting myself to Finch’s icy glare.

  “Judging by the look on your—” Roland started, but I interrupted.

  “Bodyguard.”

  He nodded. “Okay, your bodyguard’s face, you have some explaining to do. I’d venture to say you’ve learned from your mistake, Miss Jax. It would be a pity if something happened to you.”

  “How did you know he was here for me?”

  “I’m a writer too. It’s my job to notice my surroundings.”

  “Mr. Sinclair, I told you something private about my life, something intimate, something most people don’t know about me.”

  “And I appreciate you for it.”

  “Before you go, can’t you say something to help me find Alexandra’s killer? Where should I look? Whom should I talk to?”

  “Even if I gave you my opinion, you need to understand one thing about Alex. Her drive, her pushy nature to get the ‘story inside the story’ is what made her fa
mous. That same drive created enemies when people confided in her and she betrayed their trust.”

  I was right back to where I started with him, listening to the same gibberish he’d already told me.

  “Should I be focusing on the past or the present?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I didn’t believe him. Even in death, it seemed he was protecting her.

  I made one last attempt. “Who is the book about?”

  “Talk to her agent, Miss Jax. But before you do, remember what I told you before. Some things in life should remain private. Some things the world doesn’t need to know.”

  He placed his hand back on the handle of the suitcase, and I watched it roll away with him beside it. Our entire conversation wasted. As I slid out of the car, anger welled inside me.

  Anger at Roland.

  Anger at myself.

  Anger for sharing something so intimate about myself and getting nothing in return.

  CHAPTER 27

  Elias Pratt

  December 19, 1985

  It had been three months since Elias last saw Alexandra Weston. She’d requested visitation several times, and each time, he’d refused. Agreeing to see her meant answering her questions, playing her game instead of forcing her to play his. In truth, he wanted to see her, wanted to look into her wicked, cat-like eyes, force her to see herself as he did. And he was lonely. Maybe even depressed. Visits from his family were scarce these days, and when they did happen, all his mother did was cry. His father didn’t visit anymore. Almost everyone he knew treated him like he was already gone, even though he was still here, surviving.

  Funny how life took so little time to change.

  After three months of rejections, a desperate Alexandra had taken the time to pen him a letter. He expected it to be littered with pleas, begging him to give her another shot at telling his story. It wasn’t. In fact, the letter wasn’t a letter at all. It was a note. Short, simple, to the point. Her motives were clear. He had thirty days to accept a second meeting or her next book would be about serial killer Ted Bundy, a man she said was “the most famous and notorious serial killer of our time.”

  Ted Bundy.

  Maybe he was more famous than Elias.

  So what?

  Famous wasn’t everything.

  Besides, according to the rumor mill, an author named Ann something, a close Bundy friend and former coworker, had released a book on Bundy five years earlier. Alexandra didn’t strike him as a woman who would play second fiddle to another author who’d already published a similar book. The question now was this: Was he calling her bluff, or was she calling his?

  For the next two weeks Elias read Alexandra’s note again and again, unfolding it and refolding it until the paper had withered to almost nothing. He’d read it so many times it was ingrained in his mind—the words, the penmanship, the floral-and-spice perfumed smell of the paper. Alexandra’s smell. He longed for her face, for the opportunity to get another whiff of her, and to break her before she broke him.

  Alexandra walked toward Elias in the same way she had the first time they met, slow and sultry, grinning from ear to ear. The only difference was her attire, an unbuttoned jacket over a tight top and fitted, black trousers.

  “Good to finally see you again, Mr. Pratt,” she said when she sat down.

  “Miss Weston.”

  “It’s Mrs. now, but you can call me Alexandra if you like. How did it feel to receive a stay of execution last week?”

  “Same as any other day, I suppose. I spend twenty-three hours a day in my cell. Most days I think I’d prefer to be dead.”

  “Do you? Prefer to be dead?”

  “I’ll die either way, Alexandra. All my lawyer is doing is postponing the inevitable. If you ask me, it’s a waste of time.”

  She pulled out a white notebook, opened it, placed it on the table in front of her. For the next several minutes, he reminisced about his childhood. Occasionally she’d look up from jotting things down, smile, stare at him with those haunting eyes of hers that made him feel like she didn’t just see him, but saw the darkness lining his soul too, thick and black like a corn maze at night.

  After answering several mundane questions, she said, “Let’s recap what I have so far. You were raised in a home with both of your parents and two brothers, no sisters. Your parents are well known in this city, both of them hard-working, loving people. You didn’t endure abuse of any kind during your upbringing, not physical, verbal, or otherwise?”

  “That’s right.”

  “No childhood trauma either?”

  “Nope.”

  “Interesting.”

  He shrugged. “I guess. Boring might be a better word. Or safe.”

  “Tell me about the first robbery. What made you do it?”

  “I don’t really know. I was bored, I guess.”

  “You guess? You robbed almost two dozen houses in a single year. What started it? Where did you get the idea?”

  “The first house I robbed was done on a dare. My buddy James Hardy bet me a dollar I couldn’t get in and out of his neighbor’s house in less than ten minutes with a sack full of stolen items. I had to steal at least five things without getting caught to win the bet.”

  “Were you successful?”

  “I was out in six,” he said. “We had a laugh, and I figured even though it was a rush, it was all over.”

  “Why didn’t you stop?”

  “It was like an itch ... you know, an addiction I needed to scratch. I started dreaming about it at night, plotting during the day, wanting to push myself to go bigger, better than before. I passed by houses on my way home and fantasized about what it would be like to rob the places.”

  “Are you saying you only did it for the rush? You didn’t care about the stuff you took?”

  “I’m saying once I started, I couldn’t stop. I mean, maybe I could have. Who knows? I didn’t want to. If I robbed a sixty-thousand-dollar house one week, I robbed an eighty-thousand-dollar house the next.”

  “Most of the items you stole were never recovered. Where did you stash the things you took?”

  He leaned back in the chair. “Can’t tell you that.”

  “Why not? The items are of no use to you now.”

  He grinned. “Next question.”

  “You shot and killed your first victim, Henry Collins, during your fourteenth robbery. Why kill him and not the others you robbed before him?”

  “He woke up.”

  “Are you saying you wouldn’t have shot him if he remained asleep?”

  “Wouldn’t have had a reason to, so probably not.”

  “You were wearing a mask though. He couldn’t identify you. Why not just run, spare his life? He was in his late seventies. Too old to come after you, wasn’t he?”

  “For an old guy, Henry was a lot stronger than I thought he’d be. He attacked me, pulled the mask clean off my face. I went for my gun, a gun that belonged to my father. I’d taken it with me a few times before, but I never planned on using it. I didn’t think I’d have to. I mean, I never thought I’d be able to ...”

  “Pull the trigger.”

  He nodded.

  “But you did.”

  Elias hung his head. “I’m not proud of it. It was an ... I mean to say, I didn’t mean to do it. It just happened.”

  “What do you mean ‘it just happened’?”

  “I was holding the gun. He tried to grab it from me. I was trying to keep it away from him, and I must have squeezed the trigger. It went off. Shot him in the chest. Wasn’t anything I could do about it at that point. He slid off me, pressing his hand to his chest like he could stop the blood from gushing out of it. But it was just everywhere.”

  It was a lie, of course. Henry had never tried to take the gun from him. He’d just stood there, several feet from Elias, eyes wide, shocked he was being robbed. The old man hadn’t raised his voice, hadn’t yelled, hadn’t even tried to defend himself. The way Elias saw it, the old man wa
s weak and tired, too tired to defend his own home. He didn’t seem to care whether he lived or died, so Elias decided to help him out of his predicament. He aimed his gun and shot him.

  The moment was euphoric and life changing, everything he’d hoped it would be. After robbing thirteen other homes, stealing wasn’t fun like it was before. A part of him wanted more. A part of him begged for it. He didn’t know why, and he didn’t care. It was like he’d been freed from his box, and he wouldn’t let anyone put him back in again.

  The sound of Alexandra’s voice released him from the memory. “Mr. Pratt, if the murder of Henry Collins was actually an accident, why didn’t you admit it during your trial?”

  “I knew I’d be convicted for all I’ve done either way,” he said. “I didn’t see the point.”

  Alexandra stared at Elias like she was trying to decide whether to believe him. He smirked. He’d done it—the wheels in her mind were turning, convincing her the man she thought he was wasn’t who he was at all.

  “I’ve never heard anyone say what you just said.”

  “Say what?”

  “Take ownership like you just did. Most killers don’t care about what they’ve done. They’re proud of it. Even when they know they’re going to die. I mean, some of them have a come-to-Jesus moment in the eleventh hour, but they’re usually the desperate ones, those willing to do anything to be saved from execution. It’s ironic, you know? For all the lives they took without hesitation, they’re terrified of losing their own.”

  It was working. She’d separated him from the pack. Or so he thought.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “You killed a lot of people.”

  “I killed when I had to kill. Not out of a lust for it, and not because of a need I had to fill. I was faced with no other choice. I’m not like those other heartless animals. At least, I’d like to think I’m not.”

  “Why talk about it now? Why come clean with me?”

  “Being in here, locked up, alone with my thoughts day after day, I’ve had a lot of time to think about those I’ve hurt. Family members of the people I killed who deserve answers to their questions, deserve to understand it wasn’t personal. I’m hoping your book gives them the solace they need to move on. Closure, I guess. If it’s possible.”