Fade To Black

by Leslie Parrish

  “Sheriff? Nobody’s heard from her?”

  “Not a word.” Her throat tight with dread, she asked,

  “Do you know where Lisa Zimmerman is, Special Agent Taggert?”

  “No, I don’t know where she is.” There was another hesitation. “But I might be able to tell you what happened to her.”

  3

  Arriving in Hope Valley was like entering a 1950s TV show. Dean had heard of places like this; he just didn’t know they still existed. He’d been raised on the mean streets of Baltimore and now lived in D.C. He had never experienced towns with ice-cream parlors, free on-street parking, and community centers complete with signs for dances and bake sales.

  The main streets through downtown were lined with green trees that overhung the neatly swept sidewalks. Rather than antique shops and galleries designed to lure tourists on day-in-the-country outings, this place had normal businesses serving the people who lived here. A small grocery store was tucked between a bank and a pharmacy. A diner offered blue-plate lunch specials. Outside a barbershop stood an antique spinning pole that actually worked.

  There was no major shopping center in sight. Since leaving Front Royal, they’d passed only one weary, dilapidated strip mall with a Family Dollar as its anchor. Hope Valley truly appeared to be a self-contained little town that wasn’t merely an extension of some larger city’s urban sprawl.

  “Serial killer in a small town, much?” he muttered, talking more to himself than to Wyatt, who was driving the sedan.

  Dean had thought Wyatt would send him out with Mulrooney, but their team leader had insisted on driving out here to Nowhere, Virginia, with Dean this afternoon. As if he suspected, as did everyone else, that this case could be the key to bringing down the Reaper, whose crimes were the stuff nightmares and slasher movies were made of.

  “So you still believe the unsub’s actually from this area?” Wyatt asked.

  “Don’t you?”

  The man pulled into a parking place in front of a small, single-story building marked SHERIFF’S OFFICE. “If our theories are correct, that Lisa Zimmerman was his first victim, and that her killing might have been personal, then yes, I think it’s likely.”

  “The details fit. The physical description, identifying marks. We know the timing of her disappearance works, since Fletcher was able to determine within days when the murder occurred, given the lack of buds on the tree the vic was tied to.”

  A ghost of a smile crossed Wyatt’s mouth. They’d all been impressed by that one. Lily might be a quiet office type without much field experience, but she had a brain like a steel trap. Because even though Lisa Zimmerman had disappeared in early March, a month before the “freebie” video had gone up, that hadn’t meant she’d died right away. But the bare, sullen trees hinted she’d met the cold, steely blade very close to that time.

  “And,” Dean concluded, “the missing persons photo looks just like the woman on the tape.” To the untrained eye, it seemed irrefutable that Lisa Zimmerman had been their unidentified victim. Now they just had to get confirmation from someone who knew her.

  Dean stared out the window, wondering how the locals would react. The idea that the Reaper lived here in their small-town heaven would probably send most of them running for their basements.

  But it fit. If Lisa had, indeed, been the unsub’s first victim, it made complete sense that her killer was from here. And Dean wanted him. Badly.

  The murder had been hard to watch, but it hadn’t gone on as long as the others. The young woman had been tied to a tree, naked, with her arms extended above her. While the killer had been free with his blade, Brandon had estimated that she’d died within twenty minutes of the first cut.

  It had been brutal. But not quite as bad as some of the other victims, whose torture had lasted for hours. As Cole had said: There were different degrees of awful.

  “You said you had the feeling the sheriff personally knew the missing woman?”

  “Yeah.” Dean again looked around the town, all twelve inches of it. “I think so.”

  Sheriff Rhodes, whose young, strong-yet-feminine voice had surprised him for a moment on the phone yesterday, hadn’t given him any details about her relationship with Lisa Zimmerman, but he’d lay odds she’d had one.

  “Good thing we had Brandon capture some still frames,” Wyatt said. “I’d hate for anyone who knew Miss Zimmerman to have to actually watch that entire video.”

  “It’s hard enough to see it happen to a stranger.”

  “Fortunate that we didn’t have to get family members to ID any of the others. Or to make the pictures public in order to identify the victims,” Wyatt replied.

  “No kidding. Tipping off those Satan’s Playground bastards would have been suicide for the entire case. The unsub would have taken a deep dive straight into cyber hell and might never be found again.”

  They hadn’t needed personal identifications to determine who seven of the eight victims had been. There had been autopsy reports and police investigations to go on. Brandon had found the first; then they’d put names to six more. They had scoured reports and databases, matching unsolved murders to the videos. And in every other case, except the woman in the free preview, the victims’ bodies had already been found and ID’d.

  “Let’s hope this sheriff is as cooperative as the other agencies have been,” he said. Each murder had been stymieing the local police, so, for a change, none of them had minded the FBI’s intrusion. The cases were growing cold, some stretching back more than a year. Plus, they were unlike anything the small-town authorities had ever seen.

  If anybody had ever connected the killings, the FBI would likely have gotten involved long before now. But nobody had. The Reaper’s gimmick, auctioning off “means” but not victim, had helped him escape detection. There had been no common signature for anybody to stumble over. No similarity in the crimes, except that they were all unusually brutal. Or even in the victims, aside from the fact that they were all female and Caucasian. They ranged in age from seventeen to forty. Two were married, with kids, and three were young college students. A few had been sexually violated though not raped. Bodies had been dumped in wooded areas, a landfill, one in the bathroom of a rest stop. The crimes had been spread across four states, the only string tying them all together being a cyber one.

  Chilling to think the cases might never have been connected at all had Brandon Cole not stumbled into Satan’s Playground.

  “So, if the sheriff identifies Lisa Zimmerman as the Reaper’s first victim…?”

  Wyatt cut the engine, and heat invaded the interior of the sedan so fast it might have been piped in. “Then you’ll be sticking around Hope Valley for a while.”

  Exiting the car, Dean waited for a rusty Ford to wind its way down Main Street; then he crossed, Wyatt behind him. He entered the sheriff’s office, no being buzzed in, no metal detector, and glanced around. A trio of folding metal chairs stood in the empty waiting area.

  “Notice something strange?” Wyatt asked, sounding bemused.

  Dean nodded. Not only was there no security; there was nobody, period. The lobby was silent as a church during confession. And the glassed-in receptionist’s cubicle stood empty, the rolling chair pushed far away from the desk and turned, as if its occupant had hopped from it midslide.

  “Afternoon siesta?” he mumbled.

  As he began to wonder if they were going to have to go on a sheriff hunt, Dean suddenly heard raised voices coming from somewhere down a hallway marked, PRIVATE.

  “God damn it, Stacey, if you can’t use your job, give it to someone who will!”

  He and Wyatt exchanged a quick look. Both went on alert, as anyone would when it sounded as though a fellow law enforcement officer was being threatened.

  “When did it become my job to get you out of your own messes? It’s not my responsibility to keep you from getting fired,” a woman snapped back, crisp and in control. Her voice sounded calm, betraying none of the throbbing anger of the
male one that had preceded it. “You don’t want to lose your job? Then convince your boss you didn’t have anything to do with the cash shortage. Kiss his ass, whatever you have to do.”

  Listening, Dean realized he knew the voice of the woman. That confidence had impressed him yesterday on the phone, especially since the strong, authoritative tone did not entirely disguise a slightly husky, sexy quality. Sheriff Rhodes, he had already decided, was one cool customer. Which was probably a good thing, if this morning’s argument was anything to go by. She apparently faced some crazy demands in her job.

  “You can go talk to him; Dad would have. Threaten him, tell him you’ll start enforcing the no-parking zone behind the dealership. Damn it, you’re my sister; isn’t that supposed to be good for something?”

  Ahh. He got the picture. This wasn’t some random townie making demands. It was a loudmouthed brother trying to browbeat his sister. He waited, wondering how she’d handle it, knowing he would already have thrown that sorry-ass sibling out.

  “Get out of my office.” Good.

  “I’ve been patient, Tim. We all have. But everybody’s getting a little tired of your bullshit. All you’ve been doing is getting drunk and getting into trouble with Randy like you’re still a couple of teenagers. It’s time to grow up.” Her temper was building; he could hear the sharpness of it, strung tight like a wire. If he knew what was good for him, the brother really ought to get out while he still could. He sensed the sheriff would be a formidable opponent.

  “Go home, stop feeling sorry for yourself, and try to make this right.”

  The brother said something else, in a voice too low to hear, but the sheriff’s response was fully audible. With words as sharp and hard as chips of ice, she again ordered her brother out, adding, “Or else you’ll find out what a bitch I can be.”

  Ouch. If Dean ever called his own sister such a name, she’d bash him in the head.

  The sharp slam of an inside door was followed by two sets of footsteps. The first was the hurried click of shoes belonging to the missing receptionist, who raced into her oversize fish-bowl cubicle. She threw herself into her chair, as if to avoid being spotted by the man who’d been arguing with her boss. Dean had a sudden visual of the big-haired woman with her ear pressed to the keyhole. Not that it would need to be-that argument could have been heard on the street.

  The next footsteps, heavier and hard, belonged to a lean guy, probably in his mid-thirties, around Dean’s age, wearing ragged jeans and a T-shirt. His deep scowl was matched by angry red scars that ran from his neck all the way up his cheek and into his hairline.

  “The fuck you lookin’ at?” he snarled as he strode past Dean and Wyatt. He shoved the handle and pushed the door open, stalking outside without another word.

  The whole scene had taken less than a minute, but it left an aura of unease in the office. Wyatt straightened his tie, shifted his jacket, and finally cleared his throat.

  “Oh, my, I didn’t see you standing there,” the receptionist said. She must have thought Mr. Friendly’s parting remark had been addressed to her. “I’ll go get the sheriff.”

  Another female voice intruded. “No need.”

  Even before she introduced herself, Dean knew they were being greeted by Sheriff Rhodes. He’d been curious about her since they’d spoken yesterday afternoon, wondering how she would hold up if the team’s speculations were correct and a serial killer was living in her jurisdiction. Hearing her fight with her brother, he suspected the woman could seriously hold her own.

  Seeing her confirmed it.

  “Thanks for meeting with us. I’m Supervisory Special Agent Wyatt Blackstone,” Wyatt said as he showed the woman his badge. “This is Special Agent Dean Taggert.”

  While she checked out their IDs, Dean made a quick visual assessment of the sheriff.

  Probably in her early thirties, Stacey Rhodes didn’t come across as too young for her job. In fact, she wore her uniform as if she’d been born in it. She was tall, close to his six feet, with shoulders squared and posture military-straight. Her chin was up, her green eyes assessing, though not cold. Her reddish blond hair was pulled back too tightly to determine its length, but the style emphasized the determined jut of her jaw and the sculpted lines of her face. She exuded competence.

  Thank God. Before he’d picked up the phone to call here yesterday, he’d envisioned a turf battle with a blustering, small-minded, small-town bureaucrat who’d like the spotlight of an FBI investigation, but not the down-in-the-dirt work of one. Since Lisa Zimmerman was still officially a missing person, they could have encountered trouble. But he already suspected they wouldn’t. Nothing about Sheriff Rhodes indicated that she was someone who’d get belligerent or territorial at the expense of a murder investigation.

  “Special Agent Taggert.”The woman extended her hand after she’d shaken Wyatt’s. “We spoke yesterday?”

  “Yes, we did.” Clasping her hand in his for a brief shake, Dean noted the strength, expected, but also the softness of her skin. That was definitely unexpected.

  As was his sudden reaction to it, which came completely out of nowhere.

  Because while he’d been visually running down her qualifications for the job, he had obviously mentally processed something else-that she was very attractive. The brush of his hand against hers brought that realization home with a sharp jolt deep in his gut.

  Her fitted uniform appeared as uncomfortable for this weather as Dean’s suit, but she wore it well. Incredibly well. Damn, no wonder the woman carried herself with such professional dignity. Her attitude was sure to provide at least a momentary distraction from the tall, lithe body, with the full hips and slim waist emphasized by the khaki pants. Not to mention the prominent curves beneath her long-sleeved, button-up shirt.

  He wasn’t distracted anymore, though.

  Suddenly feeling the heat of the day even more than he had outside, Dean forced himself to ignore the soft, feminine form trying to hide beneath the stiff, starched clothes. He put his focus back where it belonged: strictly above her shoulders.

  That didn’t help much. Because despite the lack of a smile, her mouth was just a little too wide, her lips a little too lush for someone oozing such authority.

  So this is what instant attraction feels like.

  He hadn’t experienced it before, this sudden, heated awareness that made him incapable of putting two thoughts together. And frankly, he didn’t like it. Distractions caused problems and mistakes.

  Neither of which he could afford right now. Not when he was so busy trying to keep all the balls of his life up in the air. A new job on a probationary team, a new apartment courtesy of a lopsided divorce agreement… a new man being called Dad by his own son. Hell, he had so much on his plate he might as well call his life a Denny’s breakfast special.

  He nodded coolly and kept his expression impassive when the sheriff invited them to her office. And he kept his eyes glued to the back of her head rather than even considering watching the sway of her hips and the curve of her ass as she led them there.

  “Please have a seat,” Sheriff Rhodes said, gesturing toward two empty chairs opposite her desk. The office was neat, and despite the age of the furnishings, it was equipped with new-looking computer equipment. Not nearly up to CAT standards, but better than he’d have expected, given the fact that the sheriff’s department was housed in a building smaller than an average fast-food joint. “Would you like some coffee? Or something cold to drink?”

  “No, thank you,” Wyatt said, as Dean shook his head in refusal.

  “Okay.” The sheriff crossed her arms and eyed them both.

  For a second, he wondered if she would comment on the fight they’d heard-she had to have known they were there. But she didn’t, choosing to ignore it. “Tell me what you know about Lisa Zimmerman.” Her full mouth tightened. “Special Agent Taggert was a bit cryp tic on the phone yesterday.”

  Not used to being thwarted, this one. The instant realization, the way
her personality was revealing itself in her every gesture and word, almost made him smile. But Dean squelched the reaction. “Sorry. I didn’t want to tell you what we think happened to Lisa without giving you a chance to look at some photographs. We don’t know the identity of the woman in the pictures, or when or where they were taken. So it’s best for you to just look at them cold.”

  “Ever heard of e-mail attachments?”

  “These need to be seen in person,” he explained, taking no offense. He’d have been annoyed at the stalling, too. “Preferably by someone who has met Lisa.”

  She stiffened, preparing herself. “I’ve known her since she was a kid.”

  Damn. Good news for them, but it would make it harder for her if she’d known the victim for so long.

  Reaching into his briefcase, Dean drew out a few stills Brandon had isolated from the digital recording. The images weren’t the best, taken at night with an average-quality video camera. But that night had been a clear one, and the killer had been using some type of artificial lighting. He’d also zoomed in on his victim’s face, nice and tight, as well as pulling back to present the whole scene.

  The killer had wasted no effort in making his show more enjoyable for his audience. And he’d turned his camera away from absolutely nothing.

  Starting with the ones from the earliest part of the torture session, Dean spread three photos on the desk, turning them to face the sheriff. The victim’s eyes were closed in the first, her head slumped, her chin touching her chest. She’d been unconscious for the first few minutes of the film. Judging by the trickle of blood coming from the corner of her mouth, she’d been made that way by one or more sharp blows to the face and head.

  The next shot was more disturbing. The victim’s eyes were open, confusion and pain warring with terror in her expression. Seeing what she’d been seeing-the hooded figure, the moonlight glittering on the knife-anyone would have been the same.

  Anyone.

  He positioned the third picture, hoping this would be the last he’d have to show the woman sitting so stiffly, her posture revealing nothing, though every ounce of color had fallen from her cheeks. This was a full-length shot, showing the naked victim, conscious and aware, her face bleeding but her body still unblemished by the blade that was about to be visited upon her with such excruciating ferocity.