UNSUB

by Meg Gardiner

  In her bedroom she cleared her SIG and set it on the dresser. She shucked off her clothes and showered away the eau de meth head and the knots in her shoulders. She was pulling on clean jeans and a T-shirt when she heard a knock on the front door and a key turning in the lock.

  She leaned around the doorway and saw Sean Rawlins walking down the hall toward her. She exhaled.

  Sean had just come off surveillance, but he didn’t take his eyes off of her. His stride was long and slow, boots clocking on the floor. His dark hair was windblown. His brown eyes were intense. His great-great-grandfather had ridden with the Chiricahua Apache into the Sierra Madre, and Caitlin thought of that look as Sean’s raider stare. The take-no-shit look he gave to suspects and car salesmen. She thought he was the best-looking thing she’d ever seen.

  The stare turned to a smile. He held up a bottle of tequila.

  She laughed, took the bottle, and tossed back a swallow. Her chest heated. She blew out a breath.

  “Perfect.”

  She didn’t drink during the week—holidays, Warriors’ championships, and shots fired excepted.

  “There’s more,” he said.

  “Better be.”

  He pulled her along the hall to the kitchen. On the counter sat a brown paper bag from a neighborhood taqueria.

  “Praise Jesus,” Caitlin said.

  They didn’t bother with plates but stood at the kitchen island bent over their tacos, spilling pico de gallo.

  “There’s something else,” he said.

  “Did I win the lotto?”

  “You made the news.”

  His voice, usually cool, took on an edge. He pulled up a video on his phone.

  “Last thing I expected to see you carrying out of a crank house was a baby,” he said.

  “You never know what’s behind door number three.”

  The screen went bright, the late news, and yeah, there she was.

  Maybe the Narcotics Task Force had alerted the media about the raid. Maybe reports of gunfire had brought them out. She forgot the food and watched herself at a weird remove.

  Coming out the front door of the crank house, cradling a squalling infant. On-screen, she blinked as though caught by surprise. She had been.

  When she’d rounded the doorway into the upstairs bedroom at the raid house, she had been that close to firing. She could still feel the pressure of her finger on the trigger as she shouted at the room—and stopped dead.

  Seeing the baby, only a few months old, trying to kick her way out from under the ratty blanket heaped on the floor. Window wide, cold air heaving in. Little fists clenched by her red face, chubby legs bicycling. Caitlin had holstered her gun and scooped her up. Stunned.

  Just like she looked on the video. Under control, she’d told Rios. Like hell.

  “For a little thing, she had a ton of fight in her. I hope that’s a good sign,” she said.

  “Always,” Sean said. “Whether you’re twenty inches or five foot ten.”

  She gave him an appreciative look, shut off the phone, and caught a view of herself in the window. Eyes too hot. She grabbed the tequila bottle and poured another shot. It burned less than the first.

  She wound an arm around Sean’s waist and nodded at the ATF badge that hung on a chain around his neck.

  “Off the clock,” she said.

  He pulled it over his head and set it on the counter. Then he picked her up and set her on the counter too. She pulled him close. He smelled like soap and the outdoors.

  “You got more to bring me tonight?” she said.

  He smiled, and it looked like a wicked promise. She laughed. The remnants of her stress evaporated. She kissed him. Then wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed him some more. He ran his fingers into her hair, tilted her head back, and kissed her neck.

  Headlights swept past the window. She slid off the counter, hanging on to him, and reached to close the shutters. A car door slammed.

  They paused. Turned to the window. Outside, an Alameda County sheriff’s car had pulled to the curb.

  They looked at each other. A cop car was never a good sign, not even at a cop’s house. A heavy knock sounded.

  She opened the door to the cold night.

  The plainclothes officer who stood there looked like so many older cops who hung on to the job until somebody told them it was time to retire. Jowls and a slouch. His grim expression said that something was seriously wrong.

  “Detective Hendrix. I need you to come with me.”

  * * *

  The drive took a long, portentous hour, out of the city and into the dark countryside. Neither of them spoke. The headlights swept across empty fields until they rounded a bend into a frenzied bubble of red and blue. The stretch of highway where the car finally stopped was desolate. The flashing lights illuminated cornfields. A police helicopter hovered overhead. A dozen cops were in motion on the ground.

  Caitlin stepped out into a cold wind. Here, the night sky was clear. Two steps from the car she could feel the tension hanging thick in the air.

  She recognized the man waiting for her at the edge of the road. Backlit by swinging flashlights, coat flapping in the downwash from the helicopter, Senior Homicide Sergeant Joe Guthrie watched her approach. Hands at his sides. Breath steaming the air. Lean and sharp, with deep-set dark eyes, he had the wiry alertness of a fox. He was known as a methodical investigator who patiently probed for weaknesses and, when he found them, ripped your throat out.

  He watched her carefully as she walked toward him. Measuring her. She took a deep breath and returned his steady gaze.

  “There’s something you need to see,” he said.

  Caitlin understood what that something almost certainly was. She signed the crime scene log-in sheet and steeled herself. She had seen bodies before, in the autopsy suite and in the wreckage of head-on collisions and on grimy kitchen floors, a husband bleeding out from a knife wound while his wife fought against the handcuffs, screaming, He deserved it, the cocksucker. Death came in numberless forms, and she could deal with all of them.

  They pushed through rustling cornstalks until they came to a small clearing. The searchlight from the helicopter swept overhead. Guthrie stepped aside to show her what lay at the center of the clearing.

  It was a young woman. Her skin was paper white, her hair matted red with dried blood. She had been strangled.

  The bullwhip that had choked the life out of her was twisted tightly around her neck. Red lash marks welted her arms and face, furious stripes. Her blouse, shredded by the whip, lay open, exposing the symbol pounded into her chest with shining nails.

  Caitlin turned away and doubled over. She caught herself and stayed there for a long time, her hands on her knees, her eyes closed. She had to will herself to breathe.

  “Detective,” Guthrie said.

  His voice came to her as if she were down a hundred-foot well. The night smelled of dirt and iron.

  It’s impossible, she told herself. But she felt every nightmare she’d ever had, roaring to life at once. He disappeared years ago. Decades.

  She opened her eyes and turned to see it. To prove to herself that it was real. That same symbol, pounded into another victim’s flesh. His symbol. His madness.

  The Prophet.

  The victim’s face was dusty and streaked from dried tears. The thin trails of blood that ran from the nails meant she was still alive when they were pounded into her. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.

  Caitlin peered into the woman’s dead eyes. Flat blue. She could feel Guthrie standing right behind her. He was watching her closely. Watching her reaction. She shut her eyes so she wouldn’t see the victim’s face, but an aftereffect imprinted it on her retinas. Her throat closed and light-headed sorrow swooped through her. She fought it down. All of it, until she could finally speak. />
  “Where’s the other body?”

  “Look, we don’t know it’s him,” Guthrie said. “It could be a copycat.”

  “Did he phone the family?”

  “That’s how we knew where to find her.”

  Lock it down, she thought. Don’t think about her family right now. Deal with the scene.

  But she couldn’t. It was all coming back to her, everything she knew about the Prophet. The way he’d take two victims at a time and pose them in grotesque scenes, like mannequins in display windows from hell. The way he’d etch his signature into their flesh: the ancient sign for Mercury, messenger of the gods, guide to the underworld. He sliced it into one victim with a box cutter and poured liquid mercury into the wound.

  “Where’s the note?” she said.

  Guthrie hesitated.

  “There was always a note,” she said.

  Guthrie called to a nearby officer, who brought an evidence bag. The officer held it up for Caitlin. Behind the thick red sealing strip, inside the clear plastic, was a single sheet of white paper. Caitlin read the handwritten message.

  All these years you thought I was gone. But

  hell and heaven turn and turn again.

  Angels fall, the messenger descends,

  your insolence is harrowed, defiance ends. You

  wail in fury, but the

  Equinox delivers pain. It batters like a

  hurricane. Tremble now—you cannot hide.

  She read it slowly, twice, forcing the words to stop jumping in her vision. The wind chilled her. But the Equinox delivers pain.

  It was him.

  “This week is the start of spring. The vernal equinox,” she said.

  Anyone who lived in the Bay Area between 1993 and 1998 knew what that meant, because it was a story played out on the front page of every newspaper, at the top of every news hour.

  Eleven murders, all unsolved.

  An UNSUB: the unknown subject who would come to be called the Prophet. He made women stay home instead of going out alone. He made parents bring their children in before it got dark, and keep them inside.

  For five years, one of the biggest metropolitan areas in the country lived in fear, dreading the next news bulletin. Waiting for the Prophet’s next victim.

  Until he disappeared.

  You cannot hide. Caitlin read the note again, feeling the glare of every officer in the cornfield. They were all watching her.

  “The second victim,” she said.

  “That’s why we have the chopper here. But we haven’t found anyone.”

  From the road, another detective beckoned Guthrie. A car had pulled up, a reporter. A man with lank gray hair was trying to get around the deputies and reach the scene. Guthrie tramped away, head down, without saying anything else.

  Caitlin stared at the cornfield. Her breath frosted the night air, catching the beam of swinging flashlights. The stalks rustled as the helicopter made another sweep.

  She ran the lines of the note through her head. Turn and turn again. She peered at the long furrow of black earth between the rows of corn. Insolence is harrowed. The plowed groove ran to a vanishing point and beyond into darkness.

  She took her Maglite from her belt. Rubber bands from her jeans pocket. She slipped them around the toes of her boots to identify her footsteps. Feet silent on the soft earth, she followed the furrow. Slowly. Step by step, directing the beam of the flashlight ahead of her, checking each inch of the ground for footprints and signs of disturbance. Finally calming her breathing, she listened to the night. All voices were behind her. Ahead were wind and cornstalks scraping.

  At the end of the row, she paused. Which way?

  She could head toward the highway or into the field. If this was a game, how had the Prophet designed it?

  He loved to test and taunt. He was both a blunt, bloody ax and a needle-sharp stick. She could imagine him dropping a victim’s body on the centerline of a rural highway. It would be brazen and grotesque—one of his favorite styles. But if he’d done that, even at two A.M., the swarm of sheriff’s vehicles and the crisscrossing helicopter would have discovered it.

  And a harrow had prepared this ground. She rounded the corner to the next furrow, heading deeper into the field.

  Where the furrow ended she turned again, deeper still into the corn. The voices of the detectives and uniforms, the scritching of police radios, the whine of the chopper’s engine, receded. The rustling dark rose around her.

  Then, at the far end of that row, her flashlight caught a glint on the dirt. She went completely still. Tried to be sure she was actually seeing it.

  A trail of silvery liquid drew an arrow around the corner to the next furrow.

  It gleamed under her Maglite. Definite. The liquid lay on the earth without soaking in, without even seeming to touch it. Under the beam of her flashlight it was a shifting, squirming mirror. Quicksilver. Mercury.

  “Guthrie.” Drawing her weapon, she turned the corner and pushed through the cornstalks.

  The second victim lay ahead. Dried blood caked the silver nails pounded into his chest.

  Heavily, shoving cornstalks aside, Guthrie came running. He lunged into view beside her and stopped short.

  He let out a huh, hard and involuntary. He stared for a long moment, then shouted for the forensic techs.

  “You read through the code in his message,” he said to her.

  She nodded. She couldn’t drag her gaze from the young man sprawled on the ground.

  “Is this really him? Is it even possible?” Guthrie said.

  Anything’s possible with the Prophet. She stared at the victim’s face. Head thrown back. Arms cast wide, a posture of crucifixion. A fearsome angel was tattooed on his forearm.

  “I wish it wasn’t,” she said.

  Guthrie stared at the victim for a long time. When he spoke, his words seemed reluctant. “I need to talk to your father.”

  “No.” It sounded more abrupt than she wanted.

  “It’s important.”

  “It’s a bad idea. Leave him out of this.”

  “It would be helpful if you came along.”

  She shook her head. “Talking to him won’t help. Taking me along won’t help. Forget it.”

  “We’re going to talk to him with or without you. With you would be better.”

  The wind lifted her hair. The dark seemed to hiss at her.

  Guthrie turned to face her. “Your father was the lead investigator. His partner is dead. There’s nobody else.”

  3

  Guthrie’s car rolled through Oakland on an empty freeway, headlights spearing the darkness, tires droning a litany in Caitlin’s ears: No, no, no. Gray smudged the eastern horizon. A bulging folder lay on the backseat. Caitlin knew what was inside. She’d seen it before.

  “This case.” Guthrie drove with one hand and rubbed his jaw with the other. “Twenty years dormant. Talk about cold.”

  Caitlin hunched against the doorframe, absorbing the blast of the heater. Guthrie, she thought, was trying hard to guilt her into helping him with this expedition.

  He glanced at her. “Most of the witnesses are dead. Half the evidence is gone.”

  “Lost? Stolen?”

  “People took souvenirs. Sick, but not surprising.”

  Her shock lasted only a few seconds. Of course people took souvenirs. A serial killer of the Prophet’s . . . what should she call it? Stature? Enormity? People wanted a piece of him. They wanted to touch a live wire and feel the power coursing through it. Without getting burned.

  She felt queasy, down to her bones.

  The cornfield crime scene was in an unincorporated area of the county. That’s why the call had fallen to the Alameda Sheriff’s Office.

  That was his method. Always had been. The Prophet was cunning and know
ledgeable. Like that other infamous local killer, the Zodiac, he murdered at locations spread across the Bay Area. That meant multiple law enforcement agencies became involved. Each with its own turf to guard, its own reputation at stake. Communication had been haphazard. Evidence and lines of inquiry were hoarded or forgotten and never shared. There was not a master file on the Prophet, because half a dozen police and sheriff’s departments had each run their own investigations. The huge workload, the pressure, and rivalries all led to mistakes.

  Not a copycat.

  Guthrie glanced at her. “What was that?”

  “I think it’s him.”

  His gaze lingered, before the bay swept into view, the Bay Bridge graceful and curving, its soaring towers lit white against the predawn sky. Beyond it, San Francisco’s skyscrapers climbed the hills and reflected in gold on the black water.

  They don’t know, Caitlin thought. This city’s nightmare has come back, and they don’t know.

  The sun broke over the horizon as they crossed the bridge. They headed south to Potrero Hill, through sharply slanting streets crowded with apartment buildings and clapboard Victorian houses. With every block they drove, the dwellings looked more rickety, less tended. A few people were already walking toward the bus stop, hands jammed deep in their coat pockets.

  Guthrie rounded a corner and Caitlin pointed. “Up there on the right.”

  They pulled to the curb in front of a boardinghouse painted a sickly seafoam green. It was a gingerbread Victorian that would have been worth a fortune in this gentrifying part of San Francisco, if not for the peeling paint and overflowing trash cans. The street slanted sharply toward the waters of the bay, which were whitecapped and burnished in the rising sun.

  The view was spectacular. But it was a universe away from the tidy ranch home in Walnut Creek where she’d grown up. Guthrie, thankfully, said not a word.

  Inside the house, at a bay window that burned with the morning sun, a figure watched them, obscured by the glare. By the time they climbed the steps, the heavy front door opened.