Dark Pursuit

by Brandilyn Collins

  Where was a fabric store?

  I snatched up a phone book and checked its yellow pages. Found a shop about five miles away. I hurried to my car and headed for it, feeling antsy and compelled and oddly out of place in my own neighborhood. Here was this store now so essential to my very life, on a street I’d driven countless times—and I’d never even noticed it before.

  How strange I felt going inside. Like everyone was looking at me, wondering what in the world I was doing there.

  I wandered the aisles, trying to take it slow, appear normal, while my mind revved like an overpowered engine. My nerves tingled as I looked at all that cloth, thinking no, no, wrong, wrong. I saw cotton and polyester, all kinds of colors. Some designs with stripes, even green ones. But nothing other than the black silk would do.

  It wasn’t there. That whole store, with hundreds of different designs, offering everything some seamstresscould ever want. Except the one cloth that I wanted. Needed.

  The urge overpowered me, possessed me. I went home and paced the rooms, unnerved and having no idea what to do.

  I found myself at the computer. All that evening I searched online for the fabric. I scoured dozens of sites, thousands of designs. The longer I looked the more desperate I became. The fabric obsessed me, taunted me, and I still didn’t know why.

  And suddenly—there it was.

  Black silk. Green stripes.

  “Ah!” My hand flew up from the keyboard and pressed hard against the screen. My heart beat in my throat. I wanted to climb inside the monitor, curl up with that bolt of fabric. Feel it, hear the swish of it, smell it.

  I was going mad.

  I ordered five yards. Express delivery.

  The next two days are a blur. My life felt on hold, the world stopped on its axis, waiting for the cloth to arrive.

  When it came I tore into the package, shaking, petrified at what was happening to me yet helpless to stop it. At first sight of the fabric I froze, overwhelmed at being in its presence. I reached out to touch it, afraid, so afraid it would be less than my imaginings.

  The cloth was silky. Cool. Utterly mesmerizing.

  I balled up a corner of it and pressed it to my nose. It had a tangy, vaguely sharp smell I hadn’t expected. Exotic. Heady.

  My legs trembled.

  I unwrapped all five yards from the bolt and gathered them to my chest.

  That night I slept with the cloth.

  I told myself the next day I would be back to normal. Whatever this … thing was, it couldn’t last. I would toss the cloth in a dumpster. A few days later I’d be laughing at my own idiocy.

  Morning dawned. Time came to leave for work.

  I couldn’t leave the cloth.

  I cut a piece of it and slipped it in my pocket.

  Throughout the day whenever I was alone I pulled it out, felt it, smelled it. Luxuriated in it.

  What was happening to me?

  That night I cut a bigger piece. A strip about ten inches wide, running the fabric’s width of three feet. I laid it out across the kitchen table and stared at it.

  This was it. What I had longed for.

  Cut this way, the fabric vibrated heat. For a minute I had the crazy idea it would self-ignite, burn up right before my eyes.

  The piece seemed too big to keep in my pocket. The next morning I folded it carefully and placed it in the glove compartment of my car.

  There it called to me. All day as I worked. And the next, and the next. Wooing me but keeping its secrets.

  One day—soon, I hoped, or I would go completely insane—it would answer my questions.

  It would tell me why.

  eighteen

  Kaitlan pulled into her carport and shut off the engine. Her brain had stayed numb all the way home. She’d driven like a total robot.

  The engine ticked as she got out of the car, purse in hand. She glanced around, half expecting Craig to jump out at her. But there was no sign of him.

  Wait! If Craig was here when she’d gotten home around three o’clock, where had he left his car?

  Kaitlan froze.

  A narrow private road formed the Jensons’ east property line, leading to three houses about a half mile down. Craig could have parked there, out of Kaitlan’s sight. But then how would he have gotten his victim here?

  Grandfather hadn’t mentioned Craig’s vehicle at all. Hadn’t he thought of it?

  Kaitlan’s hope soared. This was huge. If Craig had been here when she arrived unexpectedly, where was his car?

  Why hadn’t she thought of this before? It was so obvious.

  If her grandfather missed it—what else had he missed? He couldn’t even possibly know if Craig was the killer.

  But if he wasn’t, wouldn’t the body still be on her bed? Then what would she do?

  Kaitlan tried the door. Locked. As it should be.

  She pulled the key from her purse and inserted it. Pushed open the door. For a moment she stood there, listening. Feeling.

  She stepped into the kitchen, her body turning to lead. Whatever she found in the next sixty seconds was going to change her life. Either she would become the most desperate actress on earth or the most desperate fugitive.

  Kaitlan put her purse on the table. She took a deep breath and turned around. Walked to the doorway into the living room.

  Everything looked in perfect order.

  The red throw blanket—draped over the couch. Her lamp sat on its end table. The coffee table and magazines—all as she’d left them this morning.

  Panic and disbelief punched her in the stomach. She sagged against the doorway, face in her hands. Maybe she was crazy. Maybe she’d come home, nauseated and tired, and imagined the whole —

  Craig’s pen. She’d left it on the kitchen table.

  Kaitlan whirled around. It wasn’t there.

  She strode back to her purse and picked it up. No pen underneath.

  With a cry she dropped the purse and ran for the bedroom. She swiveled around its angled entrance.

  Her bed was empty. Coverlet smoothed, pillows at the top. No strangled woman, no black fabric with green stripes.

  The memory of the smell hit her—the flowery perfume mixed with urine. She lifted her face and sniffed.

  No scent remained.

  In a half-daze Kaitlan sidled to her bed and ran her hand across the coverlet where the woman’s hips had lain.

  Dry.

  She placed her palms on the mattress, leaned over and breathed in. The faint smell of urine wafted up her nose.

  Kaitlan jerked up and stumbled two steps backward. She stood, hands clenched, air stuttering in her throat, as panic rappelled down her spine. She wasn’t crazy. That woman had been here.

  And so had Craig.

  Kaitlan turned toward the sliding glass door, her focus landing on the carpet. The footprint. He’d forgotten to clean it up.

  She stared at it, visualizing Craig’s flurry of activity as he restored the apartment, his fear of being caught. Or had he been methodical, so confident he could control her that he hadn’t bothered with the print?

  Maybe he thought she was too dumb to notice it.

  She couldn’t believe this.

  She had to believe it.

  Margaret. She and Kaitlan’s grandfather would be waiting to hear what happened.

  Kaitlan hurried back to the kitchen. She fumbled in her purse for her cell phone. With shaking fingers she dialed the unlisted number she’d never forgotten.

  “Kaitlan?” Margaret’s voice pinched.

  “She’s gone.” Kaitlan’s tone sounded flat. “Everything’s in place.”

  Margaret sucked in a breath. The sound chilled Kaitlan’s blood. It was a sound squeezed by fear.

  Her grandfather had been right. Craig was a killer. Now her life depended on what she did next.

  You play your charade, he’ ll play his.

  Kaitlan’s eyes bounced to the clock on the kitchen wall. Ten after six. Craig would arrive in twenty minutes.


  This was insane.

  “Gotta go, Margaret. I’ll call you tonight when I get back home.”

  “I’ll be praying for you.”

  “Thanks. I believe in that.”

  She snapped the phone shut and dropped it in her purse. With a deep breath, Kaitlan swiveled toward the bathroom to make herself presentable for her boyfriend—a man who had killed three women.

  nineteen

  He was right. Darell knew it. He was right!

  Perched in his office chair, back erect, he stared at his monitor. But his mind barely registered the empty page that had once taunted him so. The angst of the past year, that gut-churning fear of a career in the dust—now stunningly behind him. The freedom he felt! How true the saying—one didn’t know how heavy the burden until it was gone. His fingers weren’t flying over the keys just yet. But the story would come as this true-life trauma unfolded. He need only wait and watch.

  And catch this killer.

  Darell crossed his arms and focused out the window. The straggly end of an oak branch pushed against the edge of the glass, its leaves trembling in the breeze. He narrowed his eyes, listening to the scratch of wood. Skreek, skreek. A nerve-whittling sound. One he might use in a dark and threatening climactic scene …

  Why did Craig Barlow kill?

  Darell pondered that. His gaze returned to the white of the screen—and in that second, out of nowhere, the shock of reality hit.

  This wasn’t a novel. This was real.

  Kaitlan wasn’t a character, she was his granddaughter. Her boyfriend had killed three women. And he—who knew the criminal mind—had forced her right back to the man.

  What was he thinking?

  Fear curdled Darell’s blood. He sagged back in his chair, palms pressed against his chest. Air clogged his throat like mud.

  He had sent his only granddaughter off to die.

  How was he supposed to protect her from here? As if he could guide an aberrant criminal mind from afar.

  Dread encased Darell in a blanket of metal. He put a hand to his sweating forehead. How had he allowed this to happen? Just this morning a mere fictional murderer had outwitted him. Oh, to have that back as his only problem.

  Darell fumbled for his cane and pulled to his feet. “Margaret!” He thudded across the office. “Marrrgaarettt!”

  The door flew open and she rushed in. “What? What is it?”

  “I need …” His arm flailed. He could barely breathe. “I need Kaitlan’s cell number. Have to call her, tell her to get out of that apartment—now!”

  “It’s too late, D. It’s six-forty. He picked her up ten minutes ago.”

  No. Darell shook his head until his brain rattled. “No. Not too late. We have to reach her. We have to get her out of there.”

  Margaret’s cheeks paled. “Come on now, let’s get you to your chair.” She nudged him back toward the desk.

  No, no rest in the chair. He had to move, do something!

  But his body betrayed him. Sickness oozed through Darell’s limbs. Like an old man he allowed himself to be propelled to the desk. He half fell into his seat, beaten and worn. Dropped his head into his hands.

  “Listen to me.” Margaret knelt down, pushing her face close to his. Her words came in short breaths. “You are going to help Kaitlan. You can do this, D. I believe in you.” She squeezed his wrists. “You were right about the empty apartment, weren’t you? Saw straight into that crazed mind. You started this; now you have to finish it.”

  Darell felt stripped to the soul. “But she’s with him right now. She might already be dead.”

  “No. You read him right. He’s playing the game he started. We have time to figure this out. ”

  “But I—”

  Margaret made a furious sound in her throat. She grabbed Darell’s shoulders and shook him. He ogled her in dull surprise. “Listen to me, Darell Brooke. You can’t afford to lose yourself in confusion now. You have no right. This isn’t about you anymore. You sent Kaitlan back there. You’re in this now, and you have to finish it!”

  The words sank into Darell. Down … down until they took hold.

  He sat back, spent. Blinking rapidly.

  Margaret was right. He had to do this.

  Darell cleared his throat. He searched within himself for the King of Suspense. What would that man do?

  “I need more data,” he said. “I need to know about the other two murders.”

  Relief fluttered across Margaret’s face. “We can look up news stories online.”

  “You’ll help?”

  “Of course.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  Margaret stood up and backed away a few steps, still watching him—as if he might collapse any minute.

  He straightened his shoulders. What did she think he was—some flighty invalid?

  Darell turned to look at his computer monitor. The white page stared at him.

  In all the novels he’d finished, he’d known the story’s ending from the very first page. He just wasn’t always quite sure how to get there. Same with Kaitlan’s story, right? He knew the ending: Craig was caught. Solidly. Irrevocably. Darell just hadn’t figured out how to make that happen yet.

  But it would come.

  It would come.

  “Kaitlan promised to call when she gets back home,” Margaret said.

  That could be hours from now. If she made it home safely at all.

  Darell’s stomach growled.

  He focused on the clock. Six-forty-five. Dinner was late.

  “You ever going to feed me, woman?”

  She blinked then almost smiled. “It’s ready. Come on into the kitchen.”

  Darell shuffled out behind her, following the smell of baked chicken and rice. Something about that comforting scent got his mind chugging again.

  This latest victim needed to be discovered. Immediately. Two victims may not be enough to connect every dot as to what commonalities they shared—and which were important. Three would be much more effective.

  Besides, they needed to tie Craig to this third body.

  Darell entered the kitchen and settled himself in his chair. Margaret filled a plate.

  He’d been right about the body. He’d been right.

  Darell ate without tasting, thinking of Craig. Those thoughts soon drifted to plot points … and characters … and his lagging manuscript.

  Why did Leland Hugh kill?

  UNTITLED MS.

  twenty

  Deep in the night Leland Hugh walks the town.

  Darkness is his ally.

  In movies and in books the dark has been unworthily portrayed. Unpredictable, ferocious, protector of evil and ugliness. The hour of vampires and witches and goblins. Hider of sins.

  The velvet blackness drapes soft on the back of Hugh’s neck.

  This night the pavement sheens from recentrain. Lamp post light glides across asphalt as he passes, a ghost galleon in a shallow sea.

  Although the air is warm, Hugh detects a whisper of coming autumn.

  He traverses the central downtown street, nerves thrumming to the music of its silence. Twelve hours ago shoppers and lunchers filled these blocks, fiercely intent on their useless errands and gossip of the absurd. Their absence fills Hugh with a quiet joy. He entertains the thought of himself as sole survivor of the town, an unbridled and brilliant founder of new beginnings.

  The world according to Leland Hugh.

  He reaches an intersection and swerves diagonally to the opposite curb.

  His footsteps strike without noise. This is an art he has perfected. Fear may be unleashed through the shriek of power, but nothing is as terrifying as soundless dread.

  On the other side of the street he approaches the coffee shop where he first saw tonight’s victim. He pauses, peering into the café’s shadows. Round wood tables and straight-backed chairs speak of the day-timers who fill the place, the bustling chrome galley now polished and sparse. At the far table—there—she sat two days ago, leani
ng over a latte in deep conversation with a girlfriend. She was black-haired, slender-shouldered, a small silver locket around her neck. Full pink-glossed lips. A trace of their color pressed into the tip of the straw protruding from her drink.

  His eyes riveted, fascinated, to that tinted plastic. To the piece of her it had claimed as its own.

  When his gaze lifted to her face, she glanced up and caught his stare. Her eyelids flickered, mouth curving slightly before she looked away.

  Feeble female, mistaking his attention as admiration.

  Hugh smiles as he turns from the window.

  Her name is Mariah. Not surprising to Hugh, she works at a dress boutique catering to the wealthier of clientele over on Second Avenue. Mariah is twenty-eight and single. She lives a mere three blocks from where Hugh now walks. Alone—in a single-bedroom apartment on the ground floor of a three-story building. Yesterday he slipped through her place while she was at work, quiet and efficient, leaving nothing to hint of his exploration.

  Her bedroom is pink. Hugh finds that highly appropriate.

  At the next curb he veers right. Two blocks to go.

  The familiar electricity in his veins powers on.

  Were it not for

  Somewhere in the recesses

  A new and strange premonition rises in his

  At sight of her place Hugh stops. Something is wrong.

  He

  twenty-one

  Wrapped in cellophane, the half dozen red roses lay on the passenger seat of Craig Barlow’s convertible Mustang.

  The engine roared to life. Craig backed out of his designated space at the apartment complex. Rolling through the parking lot with the car top down, he caught the scent of grilling steaks.

  He wasn’t the least bit hungry.

  His nerves still teemed with crawling insects. Anger, disbelief, and defense twitched along his limbs, just below the surface. Look at him wrong and he’d explode.

  It would take every ounce of willpower he possessed to make it through his sister’s party.

  Containment. This was now about containment.

  Craig pulled onto the street, and the cellophane crunched in the wind.

  He had bought the flowers during his lunch hour. He’d never given Kaitlan flowers before. Figured it was time.