Dead Before Dark

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  I miss you, Lucinda.

  But I’m sure I’ll see you soon.

  A burst of laughter escapes him. He clasps a hand over his mouth and stands frozen, listening.

  Did she hear?

  All is still above.

  But he’s not taking any chances. Swiftly, he grabs what he came for and slips out the door, disappearing into the night beneath the light of a moon that’s almost full.

  Back in the lamplit guest room, feeling slightly sick from too much chocolate, Lucinda climbs into bed. She can only hope Tess is doing the same thing in her room down the hall, poor kid.

  Wondering what time it is, Lucinda looks around the room for a clock. There isn’t one.

  It’s too early to call Randy, that’s for sure. No matter how tempting it is to connect with him on the heels of her conversation with heartbroken Tess.

  Not that Lucinda is planning to tell him she’s realized she’s willing to take a chance on an actual relationship with him.

  It’s still too soon for that.

  But hearing his voice right now wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

  She fishes in her bag for her BlackBerry to check the time.

  Definitely too early.

  Leaning back against the pillows again, she closes her eyes, willing sleep to come. Her throat is starting to burn from exhaustion, and she can’t afford to lose her voice when she’s headed to Manhattan in the morning to see what she can find out about William Zubin.

  No—don’t think about that now. Don’t think about anything upsetting.

  The trouble is, she can’t think of anything, at this point, that’s not.

  So she does her best not to think at all, focusing instead on deep breathing, the way she does when she’s trying to conjure a psychic vision on the job.

  When at last sleep overtakes her, she dreams.

  At first, it’s the puzzle dream—the puzzle is almost done, and there’s a missing piece, and she’s looking for it.

  Then she’s in a big, deserted factory of some sort, looking everywhere for the puzzle piece, but she can’t find it because it’s pitch black.

  Somewhere along the way, the dream shifts gears again the way dreams have a way of doing, and someone is chasing her through the factory, but she doesn’t know whom. She keeps trying to scream for help but her voice is gone.

  At last she rounds a corner and sees a big round beam of light up ahead.

  Moonlight, she thinks at first—knowing, with that omniscient dream logic, that the moon is full.

  But there are no windows in the factory, and she sees that it isn’t the moon at all.

  She can make out the silhouette of a man, holding a flashlight.

  It’s the night watchman, she realizes.

  She bolts toward him, blinded by the beam, certain she’s about to be saved.

  Just before she reaches the man, he turns the light to illuminate something he’s holding in his other hand.

  A butcher knife, dripping with blood.

  He starts to laugh, that horrible, crazy laugh that’s been haunting her by day now echoing through her nightmare.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Walking into the lobby of the sprawling downtown Denver hotel, Vic finds himself surrounded by conventioneers wearing vinyl badge holders advertising some type of marketing conference.

  How easy it would have been for the unsub to blend into this crowd, perhaps even borrowing a conference badge just long enough to work his way into the business center and send Vic that e-mail from one of the hotel’s public use computers.

  But the Night Watchman isn’t a legitimate guest here, not even under an assumed name—of that, Vic is certain. His risks, so far, have been much too calculated for that.

  Vic makes his way to the business center and finds the double glass doors locked, with a hotel security guard outside.

  “Sorry, sir, the center is closed right now,” the guard tells him.

  “Why is that?”

  “Repairs,” the guard says tersely.

  Uh huh. Vic can see Annabelle Wyatt inside, along with several other agents.

  Maybe he should let her know he’s here. Just in case…

  Just in case she wants to remind you—again—that you’re retired, and she doesn’t need or want your help?

  It’s not that he’d blame her, or would expect any other response from the Bureau.

  It’s just…ironic, that the predator he spent so many years trying to catch would reappear only now that it’s too late for Vic to be a part of the investigation.

  Well, then, why are you here?

  Because, clearly, the Night Watchman wants him to be. That e-mail he sent from this hotel was no reckless mistake. He had to know that Vic would trace it and come running; had to know, too, that Vic would be obligated to turn it over to the FBI and that they, too, would be here in a heartbeat.

  But it’s not as though the guy is going to appear out of nowhere to say, “You’re probably wondering why I’ve called you all here today….”

  “Sir? If you need to use a computer, there’s one at the bellman’s desk,” the security guard tells him.

  In other words, get moving, bub.

  “Thanks.” Vic walks away.

  He has no idea where he’s going, but it isn’t the bellman’s desk.

  “Randy?”

  In the midst of examining an online bank account as part of the check fraud investigation, he looks up to see Dan Lambert in the doorway.

  “What’s wrong, Dan?”

  “What makes you think something’s wrong?”

  “The look on your face. Don’t ever play poker. You’d lose your shirt.”

  “I have, and I have.” Dan walks into the office and closes the door behind him. “Got a minute?”

  “Yeah.”

  Randy closes out the computer screen. For a split second, he worries that this is about Lucinda—that something’s happened to her.

  But she’s not on the island or even in Philly, so why would Dan be the first to know?

  And anyway, she’d called Randy just an hour ago.

  Seeing it was her, he hadn’t picked up, still stung by the way she’d lashed out at him last night when he was only trying to help.

  She left him a message that she was leaving Cam’s and headed for New York.

  “I want to talk to you, Randy. I’m really sorry I hung up on you last night. I just didn’t want you to worry about me.”

  Too bad, he’d thought, hearing it.

  That’s what you do when you care about someone. You worry about them.

  He hasn’t called her back.

  “I just talked to Frank.”

  “Yeah? When’s he coming back?”

  “He isn’t.” Dan sits in the chair beside the desk. “He’s dying, Randy.”

  I knew that, Randy realizes, even as the words catch him off guard. He’s surprised, yet somewhere deep down inside he had realized something was seriously wrong back when Lucinda asked him about Frank’s health. At the time, he was too caught up in Carla’s death to give much thought to anything else.

  Yes, he had asked Frank how he was. Frank had said fine, other than pneumonia. Again, Randy’d had a twinge of misgiving, wondering if it was something more—but he didn’t press the issue.

  “It’s stage IV lung cancer,” Dan tells him.

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “I got an e-mail. I tried to call, but he’s not picking up.”

  “Maybe he’s still in the hospital.”

  “I called. He was released yesterday.”

  “And what? Sent home to die?”

  Dan shakes his head. “I guess so. And the worst of it is, he’s all alone. His kids are all far away—and they don’t spend much time with him as far as I know. I’ve always had the impression they blame him for the divorce.”

  “I’ve always had the impression Frank blames himself, too. He told me, when Carla and I split up, not to make the same mistake he did, or I’d wind u
p like him—alone, with regrets.”

  Randy didn’t tell Frank that it was the marriage that had been a mistake. It was the marriage that had left him feeling alone, with regrets.

  “I just remembered something,” he tells Dan, sitting up and reaching for the phone.

  “What?”

  Not what—whom.

  “I have to make a phone call, Dan.”

  If you see something, say something.

  Gazing at the poster plastered above the window of a downtown Number 6 local—courtesy of New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority and Homeland Security—Lucinda can’t help but think, with a hefty slice of irony, of Bitsy Sloan.

  The slogan brings to mind all those years, growing up, that Lucinda would see something—something no one else could see—and say something, much to her mother’s mortification.

  People would react any number of ways, depending on the vision she’d shared. Sometimes, with shocked recognition of some personal detail Lucinda couldn’t have possibly known, they’d start asking questions. Questions her mother refused to let her answer, of course.

  Mostly, though, those to whom she described her visions were confused, and looked to Bitsy Sloan, who would nervously laugh it off.

  “Lucinda is always making up little stories in her head,” she would explain with forced affection, as if she considered her daughter’s so-called creativity a charming quirk of character rather than a ticket to the looney bin.

  God forbid Mother bring her to a child psychiatrist who might actually diagnose a distasteful flaw in the sole heiress to the Sloan fortune.

  If you see something, please don’t say anything.

  That was Mother’s credo.

  Lucinda learned, eventually, temporarily—for the sake of survival in the stone mansion—to live with it.

  And when at last she left the stone mansion, she learned not only to trust her visions but to channel them into her own unique brand of Sloan philanthropy.

  If you see something, don’t just say something. Do something.

  She hasn’t seen her mother since the day of their curtailed brunch. Nor has she called—but maybe she should, one of these days.

  Her mother isn’t getting any younger.

  No, she isn’t getting more tolerant, or easygoing, either.

  Bitsy Sloan is who she’s always been.

  And so am I, only…

  Lucinda watched Cam this morning as she nursed and bathed and cuddled little Grace, then as she kissed a bleary-eyed Tess good-bye and sent her out the door to school. For the first time, she found herself wondering what it would be like to have children of her own.

  She found the concept both terrifying and intriguing. And she wondered what kind of mother she would be.

  Nothing like my own mother was the first thing that popped into her head.

  Then it struck her that a young Bitsy Sloan, when imagining what her future daughter might be like, probably hadn’t envisioned one like Lucinda, either.

  I am who I am.

  She is who she is.

  Yeah. Maybe she’ll call her mother, one of these days.

  The subway pulls into the Astor Place station, and Lucinda disembarks with a horde of other passengers, many of whom appear to be NYU students headed for late morning classes.

  She emerges onto the street. Spring is in the air today: sunshine, and a comfortable breeze blowing off the nearby East River.

  As she looks around to get her bearings, she hears her phone beep, indicating that a new voice mail came in while she was underground. She pulls the phone from her pocket and examines the screen. There’s not just a voice mail; there’s a text message, too, from an unfamiliar number.

  Voice mail first—because she knows who it’s from.

  “Lucinda, it’s Randy. I’ve been thinking about you—not worrying, thinking, okay? Call me when you get this.”

  She will call him—but not now, from the street in Manhattan.

  She opens the text message.

  Reading it, she realizes that the nightmare has begun again, just as she’d known it would.

  Danielle awakens to the ringing of the telephone—and a bedroom splashed with too much sunlight sneaking in through the cracked blinds.

  Groggy, she fumbles for the phone on the bedside table. “Hello?”

  “Danielle! Are you all right?”

  “Alicia?” She rubs the sleep from her eyes. “What’s going on?”

  “I just found out you weren’t here, and I was worried.”

  “Here…Where?”

  “Work! H.R. said you didn’t call in sick. After what you told me last night about, you know, that guy Ethan stalking you, I thought I’d better check on you.”

  Ethan…?

  Stalking…?

  Oh! That’s right.

  It comes back to her.

  She talked to Ethan last night, after she found that book, Goodnight Moon, on her doorstep. After determining there was no message or invitation within the pages, she poured herself a glass of wine and tried to watch TV for a while to unwind. A little later, still vaguely uneasy, she took an Ambien before bed. A pharmacist’s label on the orange prescription bottle warns that you’re not supposed to combine the medication with alcohol, but she knows from experience that it’s not going to hurt her. Not just one pill, after just one glass of wine; it was her own personal sleep prescription back during the stressful post-divorce days.

  Works every time.

  Maybe too well, she realizes, glancing at the clock and startled to see that it’s past ten.

  “So are you sick?” Alicia is asking.

  “No, but I must have forgotten to set the alarm last night. Tell them I’m on my way, okay?”

  She’s already out of bed, heading toward the adjoining bathroom.

  Ten minutes later, showered and dressed in a pale yellow spring suit, she hurriedly throws mascara, eyeliner, and lipstick into her bag to apply on the commuter train. Then she shoves her feet into a pair of heels, dashes down the stairs, and hurries into the kitchen to grab her BlackBerry.

  It isn’t there.

  Momentarily taken aback, she eyes the black charger cord dangling empty from the kitchen outlet where she always keeps it. Then she remembers how discombobulated she was when she got home last night, because of the package. She apparently forgot to plug in her BlackBerry. It must still be in her bag.

  She’s good to go.

  She all but runs out the front door, but takes the time to be doubly sure it’s locked behind her.

  You can’t be too careful, Danielle Hendry thinks, just before she hears the voice directly behind her.

  “Oh, dear, it looks like someone overslept.”

  Then the laughter begins.

  104.5

  39.4

  Lucinda stares at the text message.

  Jaime Dobiak’s bedside radio had been tuned to 104.5.

  She’d known it was no accident.

  And that magazine…

  All this time, she’s been wondering about the strange trade journal found on Jaime Dobiak’s nightstand. Was a girl who subscribed to Cosmopolitan and Glamour also interested in social history? Or had the killer left it there as a clue?

  The latter.

  She should have checked last night, when she’d seen that Meanderings magazine on her coffee table and it had occurred to her.

  19.04

  Volume 19. Issue 4.

  Journal of Social History, Summer 2006, Volume 39, issue 4.

  She can see it so clearly; even now. 39.4.

  How could I have missed it?

  Lucinda reaches Neal on the first try, pressing the phone hard against her ear and sticking her finger in the other one to drown out the sirens racing down the Bowery.

  “Lucinda, where are you?”

  “On the street in New York. Where are you? Are you near a computer?”

  “I’m at my desk. What do you need?”

  “I just got a text message from a numbe
r I don’t recognize.”

  “What’s the area code? I’ll check it.”

  “No, wait, first check these numbers against a longitude and latitude chart. 104.5 and 39.4. That’s all that was in the message.”

  He curses under his breath. “Just the numbers?”

  “Yes.”

  He asks her to repeat them. “All right, I’m looking them up. Hang on.”

  She looks around the bustling street, suddenly feeling vulnerable out in the open like this.

  What if he’s here somewhere, lost in the crowd, watching her?

  She pulls her sunglasses from her bag and puts them on.

  Oh, great. Great disguise. He’ll never find you now.

  “I’ve got it,” Neal announces in her ear. “It’s Denver.”

  “Denver.” She immediately steps onto the curb, facing oncoming traffic, and starts looking for a vacant cab. “He’s moved on again.”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Something’s going to happen there, and it’s going to be today.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty much. Last night, I had this crazy dream, about a bloody knife and a night watchman and the moon was full—the moon is going to be full tonight, I checked when I got up, and—”

  “Wait a minute. What did you say?”

  “I said I had a dream about the full moon and a bloody knife….”

  “And a night watchman?”

  “Yes, a—” All at once, the phrase slams into her. “Oh my God, Neal.”

  “There was a serial killer, years ago—”

  “I know. Everyone knows.”

  Not a night watchman.

  The Night Watchman: a transient serial killer who snuck into random victims’ homes in the night and stabbed them to death. He was never caught.

  “He struck on nights when the moon was full,” Neal tells her.

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Positive. I studied that case. It was early in my career, and I remember—”

  “Neal, check the dates,” she cuts in hurriedly. “Jaime died on March twentieth, and Carla was about a month earlier.”

  “I know, I know, I’m checking….”

  A yellow cab pulls up beside Lucinda. She opens the back door, hops in.