UNSUB

by Meg Gardiner

  Every single bird had the head of a doll.

  She tried to keep breathing.

  Doll heads jammed down over the birds’ own. Baby dolls. Plastic toys with clicky, blank eyes. Some with hair, some bald. Barbies, Bratz. Infants. Some pink and shiny, some fuzzed with black mold. Tiny mouths pursed as though seeking to suckle.

  One of them had a cell phone clamped between its teeth.

  “Sergeant,” Caitlin said. “Did San Joaquin find Ackerman’s phone?”

  “No.”

  “But his body—that word carved in his chest.”

  “‘Answer.’” Guthrie cut a glance at her. “Think somebody might call?”

  In the back pocket of her jeans, Caitlin’s own phone buzzed with an incoming text. She ignored it. Then her phone chimed with voice mail.

  Guthrie pulled gloves on. “Check it.”

  He edged down to the Sentra, tested the window, and snaked his hand through.

  Caitlin pulled out her phone and saw a crazy list of messages and missed calls. Texts from her mom and Sean. Calls from Sean. And a text from Deralynn Hobbs.

  You’re on camera.

  Cold sweat broke out on Caitlin’s back. She pressed CALL. Deralynn picked up immediately.

  “Detective, there’s a camera live streaming from that wrecked car. He’s watching. Everybody’s watching.”

  Caitlin glanced at the car. Guthrie was reaching into it, arm outstretched, trying to get the cell phone.

  The night tilted. The phone. The camera. The smell of gasoline.

  She yelled, “Sergeant—get out of there. Now.”

  Guthrie turned his head, alarmed. She ran down the slope, waving him back.

  In the doll’s mouth, the screen of the cell phone lit up with an incoming call.

  Guthrie yanked his arm out of the car. And with a white flash, the interior of the Sentra ignited.

  Yellow light bloomed. The birds, the dolls’ heads, abruptly turned flame lit, stark and bright. A blast of heat poured from the car. Guthrie threw himself back, arms raised in front of his face. Caitlin ran toward him.

  He waved her off. “Back.”

  Flames engulfed the interior of the car. As Guthrie spun away from it and pushed through the brush, the windows exploded. Glass spewed across his back. Fire shot from the windows, roiling with black smoke. Guthrie reached Caitlin and they scrambled up the hill.

  “You okay?” she said.

  He was coughing, his face was bright red, and glass spall littered his hair and jacket. “Fine.”

  “The phone,” she said. “It looked like the trigger.”

  “This was a goddamned IED.”

  In the darkening evening, the car in the bottom of the ravine was a small hell. The wings of the dead birds flared randomly. The doll heads melted. The car raged with flame and smoke.

  With a sharp bang, a tire exploded from the heat.

  Marston waved away the greasy, stinking smoke. “Sergeant, you all right?”

  Guthrie nodded.

  “I have a fire extinguisher in my unit.”

  He ran down the road. The heat of the fire was a rippling wall.

  Guthrie said, “He wanted us to approach the phone.”

  “He waited until we mentioned it to set the fire.” Caitlin raised her own phone to her ear. “Deralynn?”

  “Oh, my God. This is awful,” Deralynn said.

  “It’s still live?”

  “The camera fritzed out.”

  The flames rose higher, and smoke poured from beneath the car. Guthrie said, “It’s going up.”

  They retreated to the fire road. A second later a hard boom pounded the air, and a swirl of red flame and smoke rose over the lip of the ravine. Sparks littered the air. Heat radiated against Caitlin’s face. In the distance came the wail of sirens.

  Whatever had been in the car was gone.

  Guthrie shook his head. “He played us. The son of a bitch.”

  13

  The car blaze died under the blast of the firefighters’ hoses. After they extinguished the brush burning in the ravine, and pried open the car like a charred carcass, they rolled up their gear and climbed in the pumper truck and backed down the fire road. Caitlin approached the burned-out Sentra gingerly, flashlight scanning every inch of dirt, every millimeter of metal and glass. The entire scene was scorched, charred, exploded, wet, and stinking.

  Back at the entrance to Silver Creek Park, it was a scrum of news vans and lookie-loos. Starting with the high school boys’ initial approach to the car, every moment had been captured on video and posted online. That’s why the press was there, and the Internet was going crazy, and ghouls with a jones for the Prophet case were arriving like pilgrims, swarming the scene.

  The murder of Stuart Ackerman now involved perhaps three crime scenes: the ranch where his body was found, the storm drain behind Sequoia High School, and this ravine. Caitlin pointed her flashlight at the arrow protruding from the front tire of the car. That tire, already flat when the car caught fire, had melted.

  Guthrie came down the hill. He had removed his jacket and brushed most of the glass from his hair. “Once that arrow punctured the tire, Ackerman didn’t drive far. If that’s how the killer ambushed him, the initial crime scene is nearby.”

  Caitlin crept around the car in the burned brush. Both the hood and the trunk were up, pried open by the fire crew. Under the hood was a ruined engine. In the trunk was an exploded spare tire. She angled her Maglite at the car’s interior. It was a mess, a charnel, four hundred and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.

  There was no body.

  She felt immensely relieved and strangely uneasy. Maybe there was no second victim in the Ackerman slaying. Maybe this—the clue at the high school, the freakish setting with the car, the video—was all a mind job, meant to embarrass law enforcement and terrify the public. Or maybe the killer was still waiting for his moment to reveal another murder.

  Here we are now. Entertain us.

  “There’s something about this. It’s so . . .”

  “What?” Guthrie said.

  She stared at the car. Listened to the wind.

  “It’s so eager,” she said. “It’s . . . avid.”

  He eyed her, in much the same manner he’d appraised her the first night at the cornfield crime scene. “What do you mean?”

  “The Prophet was always relentless. He killed, and then he extended the . . . afterglow of the killing . . . by tormenting the families of his victims. Phoning, playing tapes. And taunting law enforcement. The messages to the media—that braggadocio—were about keeping himself in the spotlight, but also about whipping up fear.”

  Her Maglite rested on the half-burned face of a baby doll, one eye gone, one gleaming. “But . . . this is over the top.”

  “Serial murder is by definition over the top.”

  “This feels different,” she said, and checked herself.

  Who was she to expound on the nature of the Prophet? She was a homicide rookie standing in muck, with her boots and jeans blackened by soot.

  “Go on,” Guthrie said.

  In the deep cut of the ravine, cocooned by brush and oaks that climbed its slopes, under the cover of night, she felt safe to speak. She worked the thought around in her head, trying to put smoke into solid form and turn it into words.

  “He was originally so patient. Killing in March and April, basically once a year.”

  “Then he accelerated.”

  “Viciously. One murder on the spring equinox, three more a few weeks later,” she said. “Then he disappeared for twenty years.”

  “If he really stopped killing during that period,” Guthrie said.

  “True.” She thought another moment. “But this—his return, the two victims in the cornfield, the call to the family, the note to us, the second
killing not even seventy-two hours later, video to the media, and now this . . . spectacle. There’s no cooling-off period. It’s an explosion. It’s greedy.”

  “His glorious return. Bigger than ever. A stadium rock tour,” Guthrie said.

  “Maybe twenty years of pent-up rage is erupting in a burst of violence. But this . . .”

  She gestured at the car. “This takes the game to a new level. It’s even more narcissistic than his previous killings. This is all about showing off. It’s all about his superiority. He’s shoving it in our face, but bragging to the wider world. ‘Are you not entertained?’”

  “I’m not. Bread and circuses and death.”

  “He’s competing to top himself.” She mulled her next words. “Would the FBI update the killer’s psychological profile for us?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. “After twenty years, maybe.”

  “Because there’s something new this time around. Something worse. An open need, an element of . . .”

  “What?”

  “Frenzy.”

  14

  Caitlin spun the wheel and turned onto her street just after midnight. She ached with fatigue and stank of smoke and sweat and burned feathers and plastic. But she pulled into the driveway and something loosened in her chest. Sean’s Tundra pickup was parked there. The kitchen light was on.

  She locked her Highlander, went through the gate into the backyard, and trooped to the kitchen door. She fought with the wet laces of her boots and pried them off. In the morning she’d have to scrub out the stench with soap and a boot brush. She yanked off her socks and glanced around. It was dark and the yard was bordered by six-foot-tall red oleander. She didn’t know why she was checking for unwanted eyes, because nobody could see in. Unless they were hiding behind the garage or in the bushes or had a camera planted under the eaves.

  Shut down the paranoid voice. Just for the next few minutes.

  She unhooked her badge, removed her duty belt, took off her holster and SIG, and peeled off her jeans. They were filthy to the knees with soot and mud and combustion by-products. She fought them down to her ankles, kicked them off, and heard the door open behind her. She turned. Sean stood in the kitchen doorway, backlit by low light, watching.

  “Don’t let me stop you,” he said.

  Her shoulders dropped. His face was in silhouette, but his voice was patient. He wouldn’t push for details. He knew she’d tell him everything when she was ready.

  “Favor?” she said.

  He straightened. “Sure.”

  “Turn on the shower?”

  “You got it.”

  He headed into the house, throwing a look at her over his shoulder. She rewarded him by pulling her T-shirt over her head. Even though she felt chilled and filthy.

  A second later, Shadow burst through the open door, all paws and yips and glorious welcome.

  Caitlin crouched and let Shadow lick her face. Then she scooped up her dirty clothes, stuffed them in the washer, and padded through the house. The shower was going full blast.

  Sean stood outside the door. She gave him a look of abject gratitude. “Thank you.”

  As she passed him, he brushed the back of his hand along her arm. His expression was neutral—calm, but underlaid with curiosity and concern.

  Caitlin stripped off, climbed into the shower, and tilted her face up to meet the spray. It was stinging hot, a blessed welcome. She scrubbed away the soot and shampooed her hair, then stood under the needling water, leaning on her arms against the tile, until her skin turned pink.

  The scars stood out on her wrists and forearms. White and ribbed, parallel stripes, self-inflicted with a razor blade.

  She hadn’t cut herself since she was fifteen. She had tattooed her skin to swallow the slash marks. A coral snake wound around her left arm. A quote ran up her right:

  the whole sky

  Her ink was reclamation. But tonight the scars seemed to sting.

  When she turned off the tap the room was white with steam. She dried off and pulled on sweats and a cami. In the living room, Sean had lit a fire in the fireplace. Gary Clark Jr. was on the stereo. Caitlin dropped beside him on the sofa. Her mind was buzzing.

  “How did you find out about the video?” she said.

  “Another ATF agent. His daughter’s in high school. She saw it and told him.”

  He got his phone and showed her a link to a streaming site. She shook her head.

  “How’d this get traction? Somebody spread the word. High school kids?”

  “It was crawling in the social media underbrush by the time you reached the scene.”

  “Computer Forensics will try to trace the video’s source, but I don’t hold out much hope that we’ll get an IP address. This guy is too slick,” she said.

  “Who’s the woman who alerted you?”

  “Loopy amateur sleuth. Only now I’m thinking she isn’t so loopy. She was on it like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  Sean nodded at the kitchen. “You want ice cream? Calming music? Doggy downers?”

  “I’m good.”

  “You’re talking at the speed of sound. You need to slow down, flash.”

  She tipped her head back against the couch. She was still amped, but the frantic edge felt like it had been buffed down to mere excitement.

  “The bomb squad ran the scene?” Sean said.

  “With the dogs. Arson will get out there in the morning.”

  “You want me to look at the evidence from that car?”

  She and Sean talked often about their work, sometimes on a high, sometimes in sorrow. They were each other’s sounding board. They discussed tactics and politics. But neither of them had ever asked for help with a case. This would open a gate to something different.

  Cop to cop. Caitlin knew, in a hard and rational part of her brain, that straight female cops gravitated to men in the same line of work, at a sky-high rate. Conventional wisdom said: Socially, female police officers are screwed. Not many men are secure enough to date a woman who carries a gun and represents capital-A Authority. Date a civilian, you can expect it to melt down in less than a year.

  Caitlin thought the conventional wisdom sucked. At the same time, she couldn’t deny that Cop World spun around its own axis. Getting off night shift at six A.M. Telling a date about your workday—I arrested a repeat violent felon. I drove a hundred and thirty-five miles per hour down I-580. Some guys heard it, felt their masculinity threatened, and parachuted back to the regular world.

  Maybe it was inevitable: Here she was, with a cop. And not just any cop, but a fed. A special agent with an expertise in explosives.

  Sean had trained as a bomb squad expert with the FBI at Quantico, and with ATF’s Certified Explosive Specialist program. He dealt with C4 and ammonium nitrate, with fuses and timing mechanisms and everything that could destroy flesh and blood at thirty-four hundred feet per second. He spent his time tracking people who wanted to freelance fiery destruction. Narcos. Terrorists. Sovereign citizens and wannabe jihadis and corporate saboteurs.

  Tonight, if she showed him the photos of the burned-out Sentra, he would analyze the device that sent it up in flames. He might confirm her guess: that it was a Molotov cocktail, rigged to ignite when the phone rang.

  Sean knew his stuff. But Caitlin didn’t want to pull him into this. Not here. Not now. Job stays at the station.

  “Thank you. But no,” she said.

  “I’m not getting any rest until you put your mind at ease,” he said. “And I know you’ve heard my spiel about arsonists and bomb makers, and how they love to go after first responders.”

  She rested a hand on his thigh. Sean eyed her for a moment, his face half shadowed, hands hanging between his knees.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “Copacetic.”

  “I know you want to
keep it out. Close the door on it emotionally.”

  She stood up and headed to the kitchen. “We still have that tequila.”

  He caught up as she reached the bottle. “That’s not what we need.”

  He spun her around. For a second she held on to the tequila. Then she stepped into his embrace.

  He gave her a lingering kiss, looking her in the eye. Sean was big into doing things with his eyes open. He slipped his hand around her waist and walked backward, tugging her with him, sliding the strap of her cami off her shoulder. After a few steps she put her hands to his chest and pushed.

  “Go.”

  Her clothes hit the floor in the bedroom. Then she was pulling his work shirt off his shoulders and his T-shirt over his head. Sean tried to stop, to kick off his boots, his hands being otherwise engaged on her back, on her hips, running up her ribs. She kissed him and shoved him backward. He let himself fall onto the bed. She kicked the door closed. Her dog was asleep at the other end of the house, but she did not want to hear whimpers or barking coming from anybody besides her or her man.

  On the bed, Sean wrangled his boots off. Caitlin climbed on top of him and pressed his shoulders flat.

  “You first,” she said.

  With Sean Rawlins, sex was a full-contact sport. It was all his tension and excitement and enthusiasm and anxiety and goddamn gratefulness at being alive, pouring out in unfettered physicality. It was how he expressed himself, how he showed her who he was and what she meant to him. It was play and release and deep sharing.

  Which was everything that Caitlin struggled with.

  The bedroom was dark. Though she was sitting on top of him, working off his belt, Sean reached for the nightstand and turned on the lamp.

  “Too bright,” Caitlin said.

  He tossed his shirt at it. The room dimmed. Caitlin unzipped his jeans. “Blue plaid. My favorite fantasy.”

  She adored Sean for what he’d done for her. Not just in matching her intellectually, and respecting her mind, and making her laugh. Not just because he loved the same bad movies she did, and because he had a sense of humor, and smarts, and was an adult. But because Sean saw the walls she put up and had given her time. And then he had pounced, full force.