Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  They’ve been dating since the ordeal last summer that brought them together.

  He’s a good kid, with the maturity to actually look Cam in the eye when she enters the room, and call her Mrs. Hastings.

  But Tess with a boyfriend—at fifteen—has taken some getting used to.

  At least she no longer goes to school with him. As committed as Cam and Mike were to public school, they opted to transfer her back to private last September. It wasn’t just because she’d had a falling out with several of her closest friends—or because they wanted to keep her away from her new boyfriend.

  But after all she’d gone through—from being abducted to breaking her leg to being the focus of all that media attention, even if she never appeared on-air herself—they concluded that a fresh start was in order.

  She didn’t return to the prestigious Cortland Acadamy not far from Montclair, where she’d gone to school through eighth grade.

  Instead, they’d sent her to an even more prestigious—but somehow, much lower key—all girls school in Manhattan. She joins Mike on his commute to the office every day. Rather than wait around for him after school, she takes the train back home again, and Cam picks her up at the station.

  Initially, they had set her up with a car service, desperate to keep her safe at any cost. But after a few weeks of that, Tess begged to be allowed to take public transportation.

  “All the kids do it, Mom,” she informed Cam, the holdout.

  Cam doubts that. But Mike thought some independence was a good idea, and so did the child psychiatrist Tess was still seeing back then, to help her process all that had happened.

  In the end, Cam relented. If Tess wants to be independent, the more power to her. After all she went through, they’re lucky she didn’t emerge a cowardly basket case. No one would blame her if she were.

  “What are you doing?” Tess asks now.

  “Where are you going?” she asks Tess in return, because it’s easier than explaining that she’s waiting to call Mike and tell him that something very strange—and frightening—showed up in the mail over the past few days. Which day, she hasn’t a clue.

  She hopes it won’t matter later.

  She hopes this is just another prank, sent by another loser belatedly coming out of the woodwork.

  “We’re going for a run,” Tess explains.

  Cam doesn’t have to ask who the other half of “we” is.

  “It’s freezing out, Tess.” Cam bends over to wipe the spattered coffee from the floor with the sleeve of her terry cloth robe, which is already covered in baby spit-up and going into the dirty clothes hamper, anyway.

  “The physical therapist said that running is good for my leg as long as I stretch before and after.”

  True enough.

  “You wanted me to get up early.”

  Also true, but…

  “You didn’t even eat breakfast.” And the world is full of crackpots. And some of them are dangerous.

  “You know you’re not supposed to eat right before you run, Mom.”

  She does know—not that she’s been doing much running lately.

  She probably should be.

  She has another twenty pounds of baby weight to shed. Apparently, it doesn’t come off without a struggle when one is pushing forty.

  When she said as much to Dr. Advani at the last checkup, the Ob-Gyn reminded Cam, “You’re only thirty-seven. Be patient. It’ll come off.”

  Maybe.

  Right now, she has other things to worry about.

  And having Tess out of the house for a while might be a good thing.

  “Go ahead,” she says. “Be careful.”

  “I’m always careful, Mom.”

  Yes, she is. Now. She learned the hard way.

  Cam listens to Tess leave, and the house settles again. Not a sound but the hum of the refrigerator in the next room and the mantel clock, ticking away the minutes.

  It’s still too early to call Mike…but not Lucinda.

  Cam dials her apartment and gets the voice mail.

  “Lucinda, it’s Cam. I…need to talk to you. Call me when you get this.”

  She hangs up, tries Lucinda’s cell. Voice mail again. She leaves the same message.

  Uneasy, she hangs up the phone and reaches into the pocket of her robe, making sure it’s still there, that she didn’t imagine it.

  No.

  Still there.

  A photocopy of Ava’s obituary—and block lettering scrawled across it:

  I KNOW WHAT HAPPINED TO HER. SOLV IT

  AND IF YOU ARE WRIGHT YOU WILL FIND ME.

  Yes, it could be yet another crank—yet another one who can’t spell very well, at that.

  But—call it a psychic impression, call it paranoia—something about this note feels different to Cam.

  Maybe it’s the timing—coming months after the media coverage of Ava’s case.

  Or maybe it’s the unsettling fact that the note wasn’t typewritten, or even done in ink.

  No, it appears to have been written—oddly enough—in red lipstick.

  Chapter Four

  The sky hangs low and bleak over Long Beach Island today; wisps of mist waft in the air like wraiths drifting about a midnight graveyard. Down beyond the dunes at the end of the block, the windswept sea reminds Lucinda of a child’s crayon scratch art: hints of purplish blue and greenish gray color barely visible beneath a black surface.

  Randy’s house, a low, gray-shingled ranch, gives off an air of desertion not unlike neighboring cottages that have been obviously abandoned for the winter.

  But here, there are signs of off-season life: storm windows. A shovel and a bucket of Ice Melt on the step beside the front door. Several newspapers wrapped in mud-spattered blue plastic bags sit ominously at the end of the driveway, behind a Toyota bearing a New Jersey license plate that reads RBNME.

  Obviously a vanity plate, but it takes a moment for Lucinda to find the presence of mind to decipher it.

  RBNME…?

  Oh.

  RBNME…

  As in R.B. ’n me…

  Randy Barakat and me.

  Carla’s car.

  Lucinda parks behind it.

  Randy, who once drove a Jeep with the top down and music blaring, drives a dark-colored sedan these days.

  Lucinda knows this because she’s ridden in it—but only on official business, when they were looking into the disappearances on Long Beach Island.

  Sitting beside him in the front seat last summer, with the radio playing—not blaring, but loud enough—and the windows rolled down and the salt air in her hair, she was sometimes tempted to close her eyes and pretend, just for an instant, that they were involved in something other than police work.

  But she never really let herself do it.

  Nor did she take Randy up on his invitation for her to come stay here with him and his wife, when she checked out of the less-than-comfortable Beach Haven bed and breakfast.

  “Don’t you think that would be a little awkward?” she asked him at the time.

  “For whom? Carla doesn’t know.”

  “For you,” she told him. “For me.”

  “I wouldn’t feel awkward at all,” he informed her.

  Ouch.

  Apparently, that meant he was over Lucinda.

  Or so she assumed at the time.

  Randy wrote down his address and home phone number for her before they parted ways the day he invited her to stay.

  “In case you change your mind,” he said.

  “I won’t,” she said, pocketing it anyway, and she didn’t.

  Not long after, though, she came to realize that she wasn’t the only one harboring old feelings. Nor was she the only one behaving herself despite them.

  What would she have done if Randy had thrown caution to the wind and made a pass at her?

  She doesn’t like to think about that.

  When she allows herself to, she concludes that she’s only human, and if he had made a
pass, she might not have resisted him.

  But he didn’t.

  Which, ironically, only makes him more attractive.

  Integrity.

  She respects that quality in a man. He’s not going to cheat on his wife. Good for him. Good for her. Good for Carla.

  Carla.

  Fighting the urge to back out of Randy’s driveway and speed back to Philadelphia, she turns off the engine and looks at Carla’s car.

  So she’s at home.

  Why hasn’t she answered the phone? Lucinda tried calling a few times from her BlackBerry as she drove out here, all but killing what’s left of the battery.

  Maybe Carla’s screening calls.

  Maybe she won’t answer the door, either.

  You have to at least try, Lucinda tells herself. You drove all this way. You have to make sure she’s okay.

  If she is, you have to warn her.

  And if she’s not…

  She shakes her head and grimly climbs out of the car. She stoops to pick up the newspapers and tucks them under her arm as she walks up to the door, head bent against a stiff northeasterly wind.

  This is crazy. What is she doing here?

  There’s no going back now, though. For all she knows, Carla is inside, watching her through the window.

  God, I hope so.

  She steps onto the black rubber mat with its nearly worn WELCOME stamp in white block letters.

  Taking a deep breath, she pushes the doorbell and waits for the reassuring sound of footsteps on the other side of the door.

  All is still. Too still. Eerily still.

  He followed her all the way to Manahawkin, stopping just short of the causeway leading to Long Beach Island.

  That’s where she was headed, though. He watched her car until it disappeared into the island mist.

  Incredible.

  His little test proved that it really does work like she said that day on television.

  Psychometry, it’s called. He’s been researching it.

  But he can’t say that he was much of a believer until now.

  Bravo. Very impressive, Lucinda.

  It will be interesting to see what else your magic powers tell you.

  With his binoculars trained on her kitchen window, he watched her find Carla Barakat’s blood-caked signet ring where he’d left it in her coffee pot, knowing she wouldn’t miss it there. The first thing Lucinda does every morning is attend to her caffeine addiction.

  She must have seen something when she touched that ring, or felt something, or whatever it is that happens when a psychic touches a dead person’s belonging.

  His first inkling that his experiment might have been a success was the look on her face when she held that ring with her eyes closed.

  Then she snapped into action.

  She made a quick phone call—to whom?—then threw on her clothes and headed for the door, leaving him barely enough time to scramble to follow her.

  Having anticipated that she might do just that, he had a rental car ready and waiting around the corner. He’d considered simply borrowing a vehicle from an unsuspecting owner to avoid the hassle and expense, but the last thing he needs is to be chased down by a cop on the lookout for a stolen plate.

  Personally, he doesn’t much care for surprises—pleasant, or otherwise.

  When it comes to surprising others, though, he’s in his element. What better feeling is there than to see all of his laborious manipulations come to fruition in an instant: wide-eyed shock blasting across a woman’s face when she realizes she’s not alone after all.

  Once, though, the tables were turned on him.

  He’ll never forget the night that his mother came walking in the door when she should have been at work, and found him washing Judy Steinberg’s blood from his hands.

  He didn’t hear Mother come in.

  “What have you done?” she began shrieking, out of nowhere.

  Regrettably, his reaction to that little surprise had cost his mother her life—and ultimately cost him thirty-five years of his.

  So, no, he doesn’t appreciate being blindsided by a woman. Not when he’s spent months of his time and energy planning and executing every intricate step, having anticipated every possible obstacle, every loophole.

  That’s the beauty of studying a woman’s routine the way he has Lucinda’s, and Carla’s, and others before them.

  Where once, so very long ago, he did it just for voyeuristic pleasure, now his surveillance is an important tool to be used in gaining total control. If he can anticipate a woman’s movements and reactions in any given situation on any given day, he can manipulate her like a human puppet oblivious to its own strings.

  Seeing Lucinda Sloan barreling toward Beach Haven on this ugly Tuesday morning has been enormously satisfying. Here is the proof that he’s gained the ultimate control over her, manipulating not just her surroundings and her movements, but her thoughts themselves.

  What lies ahead is going to be far more rewarding than he ever imagined.

  Lucinda rings the bell again, fearing that it’s too late.

  Dammit.

  Dammit, dammit, dammit.

  Lucinda rests her forehead against the Barakats’ front door, waiting in vain.

  You should have told Randy what was going on when you spoke to him earlier.

  She’d been about to, but she stopped herself.

  She couldn’t bring herself to do that to him. Not with him helpless, all the way on the other side of the country. He’s familiar enough with Lucinda and her visions to have been thrown into a panic if she called out of the blue to tell him she’d had one involving his wife.

  Come on. That’s not the only reason you didn’t tell him, and you know it.

  Okay.

  Maybe she was worried that he’d think she was making up stuff about Carla, because of her lingering feelings for him.

  Or, worse yet…

  Maybe she thought he’d believe the vision had been real, but that it had stemmed from her subconscious jealousy of his wife. From wishful thinking.

  Maybe I believed that, too.

  Did she really want something horrible to happen to Carla?

  Of course not.

  Not consciously, anyway.

  Riddled with more unaccustomed guilt, she didn’t call Neal to tell him about the disturbing vision, or that she was driving out here, or about the ring.

  Nor did she call the Long Beach Township Police Department to have them check on Carla. How could she? Randy’s colleagues there would have been on the phone to him in a heartbeat, telling them some woman was worried something might have happened to his wife.

  Whatever. Now I just need to make sure that Carla is okay, go home…and get myself into therapy.

  She never resorted to that in the past, but if her subconscious mind is killing off her ex-lover’s wife, she definitely needs help.

  Still, a dark cloud hangs over the Barakat residence like a funeral shroud, and Lucinda suspects that it has nothing to do with her and her forbidden feelings for Carla’s husband.

  She should leave.

  She should call the township police despite Randy’s connection to them.

  She should go home and call Neal and tell him about the strange signet ring.

  She should do a lot of things—story of her life—but she doesn’t.

  What Lucinda does is reach for the knob and turn it, tentatively.

  It’s locked, of course.

  After all that happened here in Beach Haven last summer, did she really expect anything different?

  Now what?

  At a loss, she looks around—then down at the worn WELCOME beneath her feet.

  Nah.

  After a moment, though, she stoops to lift the rubber corner.

  It would be so easy, too easy, if…

  There it is.

  Stunned, she pulls a house key from beneath the mat.

  After all that happened here in Beach Haven…?

  How cou
ld you let your guard down like this? she scolds Carla and Randy.

  Particularly Randy. He’s a cop. He worked the local case. He, of all people, knows that evil can dwell where you least expect it.

  As she puts the key into the lock, she sees a fleeting image of another hand turning it—a man’s hand, wearing a black glove.

  Trembling, Lucinda turns the key.

  Oh, Carla…please be okay. Please don’t be dead.

  Why did you hide the damned key under the doormat?

  The island has always been a safe place. And with last summer’s killer no longer on the loose, is it any wonder the locals have been lulled into a false sense of security?

  False?

  Can you really blame them?

  What are the chances that lightning will strike twice in the same place?

  Lucinda sucks in her breath and opens the door, then steps gingerly over the threshold.

  The house is warm, and still.

  This isn’t good.

  She can feel it.

  She exhales shakily, and when she breathes in again, she knows.

  The putrid miasma of death chokes the overheated air.

  Gagging, she hurtles herself back out into the cold, fumbling blindly in her pocket for her BlackBerry.

  As he follows the highway back west toward Philadelphia, his mind is on what lies ahead: packing and making the other necessary preparations for his trip.

  It’s time to take this show on the road.

  Still, he really was tempted to follow Lucinda the rest of the way out to the island.

  How he’d have loved to see her make an entrance on his carefully dressed scene, to hear her protesting her innocence, even as the police collect evidence that will indicate otherwise.

  But for now, much as he’d love to be there to watch the drama unfold from a nice, secluded seat in the wings, he has to keep his distance.

  He doesn’t dare take a chance. Not with the police and Lucinda the psychic on the scene. All it would take is for someone to spot him, and…

  Curtains for you, old boy.

  Wouldn’t that be a shame. After all the trouble he took with props…not to mention makeup.