Pitch Black

by Parrish, Leslie

  “We haven’t directly engaged him,” he said, an edge of irritation in his voice. He wasn’t the type who enjoyed being questioned or corrected.

  She ignored him. “So we’d need to come up with a reason for him to seek us out. Something to draw his attention to us, over all the other kids using the site.” Many of whom were probably perverts trolling for victims themselves. At least, so thought the pessimist in her.

  “Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Which brings me to my point.”

  “What?”

  “I checked out the Peter Pan story, read the book looking for an opening.”

  Probably the first book he had cracked open since his last college English class.

  “Yesterday, when I heard Cole call you Tiger Lily, it all sorta clicked.”

  She immediately followed. “That name might interest him enough to say hello. As long as we’re not too obvious about casting the bait. For instance, if I post on a board he has never commented on as Peter Pan, he might not immediately suspect a setup.”

  “Right.”

  The idea wasn’t a bad one. No, she still didn’t see a real seven- or eight-year-old boy wanting other “big” kids to think he was into Peter Pan. However, girls might still enjoy picturing themselves as fairies like Tinker Bell, or Indian princesses like Tiger Lily.

  “Wait,” she said, suddenly realizing what she had overlooked. “Lovesprettyboys is into boys. Most sexual abusers are pretty discriminating in their predilections.”

  “I know.” Anspaugh fidgeted. “But it might work anyway, if he’s just trying to get in with any kid right now, hoping it’ll lead to the right type.”

  She wondered if he truly believed his own spiel. Or if he had already decided this Peter Pan was not Lovesprettyboys, but wanted Lily’s help and figured she’d offer it more readily if she had a personal stake in the case.

  Believing he had to manipulate her into wanting to catch a scum who preyed on children, boys or girls, said a lot more about Anspaugh than it did about her. None of it good.

  Still, she would help, no question about it. If by chance this Peter Pan was the same monster she’d become obsessed with finding five months ago, when she’d first entered Satan’s Playground, all the better.

  “If he responds to Tiger Lily and shows serious interest in her, we’ll know we’re dealing with someone else,” she murmured, rubbing her temple as she thought it out. “If, on the other hand, he responds and shows interest in the younger brother Tiger Lily complains about . . .”

  Anspaugh barked an approving laugh. “I like the way you think, Fletcher. What a waste, you working for Blackstone.”

  Her tone frigid, she bit out, “Another crack about Wyatt Blackstone and you can find somebody else to help you. Got it?”

  He fell silent, visibly shocked by her words and the way she’d said them.

  She couldn’t believe the man hadn’t noticed her loyalty to her boss by now. Wyatt had given her the opportunity to do something she truly needed to do—help solve violent crimes—in the one way she was skilled to do it: via her computer expertise. Nobody else would have given her the chance, especially not fresh off her family tragedy.

  She owed him. She respected him. Furthermore, she liked him. He might leave her tongue-tied half the time, and he might intimidate her with those intense good looks, but she couldn’t deny she enjoyed being around him. She almost felt safe with Wyatt. At least, as safe as she ever felt these days.

  “I had a couple of friends, good agents, who got caught up in his shit.”

  “If they were good agents, they wouldn’t have been tampering with evidence.”

  His scowl said she’d scored a hit. She hadn’t intended to. She merely wanted him to stop blaming the one person who’d had the guts to do something about the lawlessness he’d seen inside the bureau and place the blame where it belonged: on the lawbreakers.

  “You don’t know that—”

  She cut him off. “I don’t want to hear about it, okay? It’s not my fight, and it’s not yours either. Just so we understand each other.” Giving him a pointed stare, she added, “It’s been a long day and I want to go home. Are we finished?”

  With a tight frown, he got out of her way. “Call me tomorrow,” he said, before she could get in, “so we can set this up.”

  Lily nodded. Then, without another word, she slipped into the driver’s seat and shut the door. Not even waiting for the engine to warm up, as she always did, she backed up and drove away, leaving him standing there, watching her as she departed.

  Chapter 5

  Ever since he’d spoken with Sam Dalton on the phone yesterday morning, Alec had struggled to keep the woman off his mind. Not too hard during the day, when the investigation had been first and foremost.

  Nighttime was a different story.

  Sleep had proved difficult, and he’d found himself replaying their conversation, wishing he’d been less belligerent. It bothered him that she’d formed an opinion of him as some kind of overbearing he-man because he’d instinctively rebelled against the idea of her being ogled by a sleaze like Flynt. Bothered him so much he barely slept, shutting his eyes only at around four a.m., which caused him to oversleep Thursday.

  Fortunately, he lived in a condo in northern Virginia and had commuted down to Quantico when he was with the BAU, so he had been well positioned for the transfer into the city. The drive was shorter in mileage now. Still, the traffic lengthened it to twice what it should be, and there was no way he was going to be on time.

  It was a typical morning, roads choked with cars whose bumpers all but kissed. The bridges groaned under the weight of stopped vehicles. Idle drivers familiar with the city’s history had uncomfortable flashbacks of the Air Florida plane hitting the one at Fourteenth Street on a cold day like this. Thick clouds of steam rose from the grates above the Metro, and every few minutes a stream of humanity emerged from the top of the stairs at each station, surging out into the workday. Quite a change from the warm, Southern city where he’d grown up and had been expected to stay.

  Frankly, even with the scars from the bullets, he wouldn’t change a thing. The idea of showing up every morning for the past ten years at the firm his grandfather had started and his father now ran made him queasy. Handling divorces for socialites who lunched with his mother wasn’t his idea of a good job. Another reason to be grateful to Wyatt Blackstone.

  Arriving at the Black CATs’ suite, he entered his own dingy office and flipped on the light. It flickered overhead, providing just enough weak illumination to showcase the cracks in the floor, the flecks of mildew on the walls, and the water stain on the ceiling.

  And yet Alec found himself smiling. It wasn’t the slick, glossy office he’d had at the BAU. But it also came without the formality, weight, and competitiveness of that division. He’d been with Blackstone’s CAT for only a few days, yet he’d already noted the intense loyalty of the people who worked for the man and the cohesive-ness of the unit.

  As soon as he set his leather briefcase on the battered desk he’d been assigned, his new partner entered the office. “You’re late. I was beginning to wonder if you were coming back.”

  “Was there any doubt?”

  “There was some question about whether you’d show up at all on Tuesday, after you got a taste of what you were in for on your first day. It’s lightened up every day since.” She glanced at the clock. “But when we hit eight ten without seeing your pretty face, I had to wonder.”

  Jackie’s curiosity had been restrained for most of the week. Obviously her restraint had run out. “Why wouldn’t I come back?”

  “Kind of slumming, aren’t you? I mean, you being a BAU hotshot and all.”

  “If you know anything about me, you know I wore out my welcome with the BAU.”

  “Yeah, got your ass shot last summer, right when we needed your help nailing that psycho Reaper.”

  Alec frowned, not liking the reminder. Not merely about the shooting—hell, the scars and occasi
onal twinge of pain wouldn’t let him forget it. But he didn’t like to think he might have been in any way responsible for delaying the capture of the murderer, Seth Covey, who’d killed several innocent victims for the viewing pleasure of a bunch of sickos on an Internet site called Satan’s Playground.

  As if seeing the self-recrimination he couldn’t hide, Jackie grudgingly admitted, “Worked out okay, though. Taggert and the local sheriff were able to save the last victim; no others were killed between when you got shot and Covey offed himself.”

  Funny, being consoled by the hard-ass FBI agent, who wore her attitude on her face. Then again, she’d mentioned having a couple of kids. Apparently that maternal instinct extended to her colleagues. If it existed. Which, considering his own mother, who put the frigid in the term ice queen, he couldn’t confirm or deny.

  “I was poking around online as soon as I got in, checking into some stuff. I found something you ought to see.”

  “Oh?”

  Jackie handed him a sheet of paper, a screen shot from an Internet page. Glancing at it, he recognized the name of the site immediately. He flinched, wondering if she somehow knew he’d spent the past two nights thinking about Samantha Dalton.

  “I wanted to go back and read the post she mentioned to us the other day, about responding to online classified listings. But this new one popped up right away. It’s her latest piece, went live last night. I think we touched a nerve with our online vigilante.”

  Alec scanned the headline and the opening of what looked like a blog post. “Oh, no.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me she didn’t reveal anything important.”

  “Nothing about the case, or us going to see her. It’s a generic rant expounding on the physical dangers of using the Internet, that you risk not only your identity but actually your life. A plea to people to wise up and see the craziness of interacting with someone they met online.”

  He nodded, glad he hadn’t misread Mrs. Dalton completely. She hadn’t looked like the type who would go back on her word, but she’d flat out stated she was a journalist at heart.

  “Go ahead and read it for yourself,” Jackie said.

  Leaning on the edge of his desk, he did. As his new partner claimed, it was pretty general. But there was an unmistakable undertone, a righteous anger underscoring her words. Maybe because he’d read her book, and had met her, he was able to filter what she said through an internal voice that sounded a lot like Sam Dalton’s.

  And what he heard told a story.

  He’d known she was wounded by the news of Ryan Smith’s death. This, however, went deeper. She was angry. Personally angry. Her emotion shone through every line, and he suddenly wondered whether there was more to that anger than her tenuous connection to a murder victim.

  What had happened in her life to make her choose to do what she did? Her book had come out almost a year ago, but, according to her bio, she had been running her site for three. Without compensation, he suspected, since she described herself as a former journalist who had decided to begin her own grassroots campaign.

  The journalism part he’d confirmed. Last night’s quick Google search had turned up her byline, under a hyphenated name, on some articles four or five years back. It had also turned up in a few society articles, but he hadn’t read them. That felt too personal for professional research.

  But no Internet search was going to tell him why she’d quit her job. Why she’d started writing a free blog when she could never have anticipated it going viral and landing her a book deal and a spot on the best-seller list.

  So what had set her off? Call it curiosity, or the profiler’s need to understand what made people tick, but he found himself wanting to know why she stayed in her tiny apartment living on Diet Coke and candy bars. Why she hid behind that Mrs. when she’d later mentioned having an ex. Why she worked in her pajamas, refused to answer her door, and interacted with the living mainly via cyber communication. Why she’d made it her mission to save people from their own mistakes.

  “Now,” Jackie said, seeing he had finished reading, “take a look at this.”

  He hadn’t even realized she’d been holding another sheet of paper.

  “These are comments posted last night after her blog went up.”

  There were a lot, and they’d begun shortly after midnight. Apparently avid fans waited for her weekly article and pounced right on it as soon as it went live.

  The first several were “attagirl” posts from people who were probably her regulars. Then he got to the sixth one, posted at twelve forty a.m. He read it, and then read it again, this time aloud. “ ‘ My dear Samantha, you must know some people simply deserve what they get. What folly it would be to try to save everyone. Why do you even want to try?’ ”

  The post was signed Darwin.

  His senses started to tingle, the way they had when he’d read the e-mails Monday in the conference room. The wording was formal, ostentatious. The message cold and reprehensible.

  “Condescending,” he murmured.

  “Arrogant and literate,” Jackie said. “Like someone out to prove how much smarter he is than everyone else.”

  It took a second; then he remembered what he’d said about the Professor in the car the other day, using exactly those words. “You really think he’s posting on a public message board?” he asked, trying to wrap his mind around the possibility.

  “You’re the expert. Would the Professor do it?”

  Alec considered it. Just because the killer had never reached out to the press didn’t mean he lacked the narcissistic need to be recognized. Many serial killers had done the same, wanting to evade capture, yet also, somehow, wanting their work to be acknowledged. Admired, even. And interacting with someone who worked to educate people about the very scams he was using to lure his victims—well, it made sense, in a twisted way.

  “Yes,” he finally replied, frowning as the implications washed over him. “I think he might. We’ve already noticed other graphic changes in the past few months. He’s accelerating, less downtime between kills. He’s changed his MO in how he lures his victims. Why not reach out and try to engage someone in cyberspace? Someone who’s familiar with the kinds of things he’s doing, perhaps even someone he wants to educate?”

  Not just someone, though. Samantha Dalton. They were talking about the woman he’d been thinking about nonstop since he’d met her.

  “It’s thin,” he said, shaking his head, torn between the thrill of a lead and his concern over a woman he barely knew.

  “Supermodel thin. But keep reading. He posted two more times before six a.m. Got wordier each time, pompous blowhard,” Jackie said, pointing to comments farther down the page. “I didn’t even begin to suspect until I read his third message. I guess you saw it quicker because you know him better.”

  Alec read the second comment, left about an hour after the first. A little stronger in the wording, every bit as blasé about his fellow man as the first. Then he read the third. In an instant, he zoned in on exactly what Jackie was talking about. “Damn.”

  “Yeah.”

  They were definitely onto something. It seemed crazy that this guy could end up in their lap within a couple of days of their meeting with Sam. Then again, their visit to the woman had provided the catalyst for her blog post—which had apparently stirred the Professor enough to draw him out of hiding. Circular motion.

  Alec quickly zoomed through the rest of the pages, looking for any response from Samantha, but saw none. It was perhaps because of her lack of response that this Darwin kept coming back. He seemed to want to know she’d read his words. Validation, almost, of his ideas. But she hadn’t given it to him. Most likely, she’d been in bed asleep.

  This morning, though, she would sign on and almost certainly give him what he was asking for. Acknowledgment. Considering how upset she’d been by Ryan’s murder, especially judging by the rant she’d written, that acknowledgment would probably be very strongly worded. And could rea
lly tick off the man she was addressing.

  If this Darwin was the Professor, he’d be the last person anybody should ever tick off.

  “We need to talk to her before she posts anything back to him.” He heard the urgency in his own voice and wondered whether Jackie did, too.

  Jackie nodded. “No kidding. I’ve already tried calling but got no answer, e-mailed but got no response. So I guess we’re taking another road trip.” She reached into her pocket, pulled out her car keys, and gave him an evil smile. “I’ll drive.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t have breakfast,” he muttered as he followed her out into the corridor. But instead of heading for the exit, he glanced toward a partially open door. “Fletcher and Cole’s office, right? And they’re the computer geniuses on the team?”

  She realized where he was headed. “I wonder if they can track him from these posts.”

  “I’m not the cyber crimes nerd,” he said, hiding a slight smile as he remembered Sam Dalton’s words. “Can they?”

  She nodded once. “It’s possible.”

  “So let’s bring in the rest of the team and go at this together,” he said, the entire concept tasting strange, since he was used to a more cutthroat environment. Strange, but good.

  Cole and Fletcher, however, weren’t in their office. A quick visit to Blackstone’s told them why. “They left a few minutes ago, going to see what kind of computer forensics they can get from the local PD investigating the help-wanted murder.” Wyatt handed back the screen-shot printouts. “But you can start working on the IP, can’t you, Jackie?”

  “Yeah. But we still need to get to Mrs. Dalton and make sure she doesn’t respond to him.”

  “At least, not until we decide how we want her to respond,” Alec interjected.

  Wyatt stared at him, nodding once to indicate his thoughts had gone in the same direction. “Very well, then. Jackie stays here and works on identifying where those posts came from. Alec, you’ll have to go up to Baltimore and convince Mrs. Dalton to remain silent for the time being. We’ll keep trying to reach her on the phone to make sure she stays offline.”