Into the Black Nowhere

by Meg Gardiner

  She pressed a hand to her chest. “Jesus.”

  She couldn’t see much of his face. He touched the phone to his forehead like a gentleman tipping his hat. The headlights swept past and he returned to darkness.

  A flutter went through her stomach, like moths beating their wings. She needed to get past him to reach the stairs. She sensed that he was still looking at her.

  “Apartment four ninety-two,” he said.

  She nearly ignored him, but his voice had a note of authority. Like, legal authority.

  She frowned. “I don’t think the units in this building go up to four ninety-two.”

  He blinked. His eyes looked silvery in the moonlight. “You’re mistaken.”

  He raised his phone, giving her a glimpse of the screen. There was a text, yes, but she couldn’t read it. The moths in her belly beat their wings.

  She looked him in the eye. There was something. A note of . . .

  Want.

  Upstairs on the second-floor walkway, an apartment door opened. “Madison?”

  Patty Mays filled the doorway, cutting off most of the light. Her voice was iron.

  Madison said, “Mom, he’s looking for apartment—”

  “Get inside.”

  The man walked briskly away.

  Madison hurried up the stairs. Patty waited on the walkway, one side of her lit by the living room lights, feet planted wide, watching the man cross the parking lot. Madison ducked into the apartment. Patty followed and closed the door. Locked it. Dead bolted it.

  She stared at Madison. “What were you thinking?”

  “He was lost. I think he was a cop.” But her stomach fluttered.

  “I don’t care if you think he’s Dirty Harry come down from heaven. Devils walk in disguise.”

  Patty reached behind her back and pulled the Smith and Wesson .40 caliber revolver from the waistband of her yoga pants.

  Madison peered through the curtains. In the parking lot, the man passed beneath a streetlight and again faded into the shadows.

  The moths didn’t stop fluttering until his taillights disappeared down the road.

  Probably nothing, she thought.

  But another part of her said, Pay attention to the moths.

  7

  The morning broke cold and misty. At eight A.M., when the team rolled up to the Solace sheriff’s station, three news vans sat out front. In the station lobby, the first thing Caitlin saw were camera spotlights, bright on Chief Morales’s careworn face. He stood surrounded by reporters. Microphones jutted toward him.

  “We strongly suspect that the women who have disappeared since August were abducted by a single individual,” Morales said. “We want to assure the public that we’re taking every step possible to apprehend the perpetrator, to ascertain the whereabouts of the missing women, and return them to their families.”

  He didn’t say alive.

  “We ask women to take sensible precautions to guard their safety. Buddy up. Maintain awareness of your surroundings,” he said. “If something feels wrong, pay attention. That little voice, telling you that you’re in danger—listen to it. The life you save may be your own.”

  Morales didn’t suggest the women of Gideon County arm themselves. He didn’t have to.

  A reporter caught sight of Caitlin and her colleagues. It was the brunette in the red suit. She abandoned the chief and approached Rainey.

  “You’re the FBI?” she said.

  Rainey remained impassive. “We’re from the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, here to assist the Sheriff’s Office. Chief Morales will answer further questions.”

  But the microphones and cameras pivoted.

  A male reporter raised his hand. “Do you have any suspects?”

  “Does the FBI hold out any hope of finding the missing women alive?”

  The red suit raised her voice. “Is a serial killer committing these crimes?”

  Behind his rimless glasses, the expression on Chief Morales’s face was relieved but despondent. He gestured to Rainey: Your turn.

  • • •

  Brittany Leakins turned away from the television and bit her thumbnail. Not the kind of lunchtime news she wanted to hear. The light in her kitchen was pale and sharp. In the high chair, Tanner fussed.

  “Hush, little dude.”

  Brittany grabbed a damp dish towel and wiped baby carrots from Tanner’s face. He squirmed and kicked the footrest. She found his pacifier on the floor, fuzzy with crumbs and lint. She considered walking the six steps to rinse it under the kitchen faucet, then put it in her mouth, sucked it clean, and shoved it between Tanner’s lips. She hoisted him from the high chair and set him on her hip.

  “Come on, champ. Sleepy time.”

  Brittany figured if he went down, she’d have a good forty-five minutes to nap—maybe enough to return from the land of the zombies. Tanner was her beautiful little man, but if she didn’t get some sleep, she was going to end up crawling across the kitchen, barking like a dog.

  Speaking of which, where was Shiner?

  The television burbled, the news still talking about the missing women. Brittany’s stomach churned. This place was isolated—like Shana Kerber’s house. Twenty miles outside Solace, a spread Kevin had inherited from his grandparents. It sat on a hundred acres, land that was supposed to tide her young marriage through the years and decades to come. But those acres didn’t look like money to her right now. They looked bleak, and rife with secret places where kidnappers could hide.

  She pulled aside the curtains. On the yellow grass in the backyard sat a rusting swing set that wouldn’t do for Tanner, no, sir. She looked at the split rail fence and the fields beyond it, and at the woods that ran to the horizon. Dark and deep, that line from the Robert Frost poem they’d read in high school. Oaks and chaparral, Texas lilac and those endless tangled grasping branches of the cedars that covered the hills.

  She had let the dog out half an hour ago. He was nowhere to be seen.

  She opened the back door, and the chill caught her. The sky was pearly. She whistled.

  “Shiner.”

  On the television, a reporter stuck a microphone in the face of a black woman wearing a suit. Good Lord. The FBI was here.

  “Shiner.”

  The golden retriever could get through the split rail fence. They’d installed an electronic fence, but the shock it gave didn’t always stop him. He was a determined dog and couldn’t seem to comprehend cause and effect.

  She whistled again, and he loped happily out of the woods.

  She stepped onto the porch. “Shiner. Come here, you jailbreaker.”

  The dog crossed the field and clambered between the rails of the fence. He was muddy. And he’d picked up something on his travels. Retrievers—they brought stuff home. But this wasn’t a bird. It looked like a soggy newspaper. Maybe a fast-food bag.

  “You better not have been eating a moldy hamburger.” She shook her head. “Drop it.”

  The dog didn’t. Shiner trotted across the yard, tail wagging. He smelled like a pond. Brittany heard the television inside, the FBI woman. Something colder than the winter air fell through her.

  The thing in Shiner’s mouth was white, soaked through with red. But it wasn’t a fast-food bag.

  It was an old piece of cloth. Maybe an oil rag. A dishrag. Maybe that was red wine. Except she knew it wasn’t. Inside, the TV blared. The FBI woman looked severe, like she was warning them of the end of the world.

  “If you spot anything out of the ordinary, something that seems wrong, I urge you to contact the sheriff’s department. Anything that could relate to the missing victims. Discarded items of clothing. Shoes, purses . . .”

  Brittany took a step back and snapped her fingers. “Shiner. Drop it.”

  The dog let the cloth fall to the porch.

 
Brittany swallowed and clutched Tanner tight. “Shiner. Inside.”

  The dog ran into the kitchen. Brittany followed, bolted the door, and found her phone. In the background, the FBI agent’s voice cut the air. With shaky fingers, Brittany called 911.

  “I need the police. My dog just brought home half a shirt. And it’s covered in blood.”

  • • •

  The FBI Suburban swooped into the driveway at Brittany Leakins’s home like a fighter jet diving to the deck for a strafing run. At the wheel, Emmerich’s eyes had a hard gleam. He skidded to a stop behind two sheriff’s office SUVs and leaped out into blowing dust. Caitlin and Rainey followed. Outside the house, Detective Berg was pacing. A K-9 unit was unloading their dogs into the waning pink afternoon.

  Emmerich strode up to Berg. “Your dogs lead, we’ll follow.”

  Inside the house, a young woman rested a toddler on her jutting hip. Her lips were pressed white. Beyond the house were woods so dark they looked black.

  A K-9 officer clipped fifteen-foot leads to the harnesses of two bloodhounds. “Go find.”

  Without a sound, the bloodhounds turned, put their noses to the ground, and began hunting a scent trail. They zigzagged across the backyard, then took off toward the fence. Their handlers jogged behind, uniform jackets zipped to the throat, sunglasses reflecting the hard light.

  Heads low, the dogs clambered between the rails of the fence and cut a line across the field toward the trees. Berg and the FBI team followed.

  Caitlin had changed into brown combat trousers and Doc Martens. Her black Nike running jacket was zipped to the throat beneath an FBI windbreaker. Yellowed grass rustled beneath her feet as she crossed the field.

  From the photo she’d seen, the scrap of bloody white fabric the Leakins dog had dragged home was eighteen inches long by nine inches wide. The lab hadn’t yet analyzed the blood to determine whether it was human, but from the design and stitching, the fabric had undoubtedly been torn from a garment.

  A nightgown.

  When they entered the tree line, the temperature dropped. Caitlin and the others followed the K-9 officers in single file. The ground was rocky, the scrub and trees thick. Emmerich pushed branches aside without slowing. He glanced over his shoulder once. His expression said both Keep up and Everybody okay back there?

  They were a mile deep in the trees when the bloodhounds topped a hill and raced down the far side. Boots digging into dry soil, Caitlin sidestepped down the slope behind the K-9 officers. For a minute, she lost sight of the dogs. Then a mournful baying rolled across the woods.

  Caitlin emerged from the trees to the sound of rippling water. Beside the bank of a creek, the bloodhounds had stopped, tongues lolling. The K-9 officers commanded them to sit. One of the officers petted the dogs and said, “Good girls.”

  Caitlin stopped. They all did.

  Berg’s shoulders dropped.

  Emmerich blew out a breath. “I know you were hoping this wouldn’t be at the end of the trail. So were we.”

  They stood at the sandy edge of the creek. In front of them lay Shana Kerber.

  She was laid out on the soft earth, on her back, parallel to the stream. Her eyes were closed beneath gray-white lids. Her arms were crossed on her chest. She looked like Snow White awaiting the prince’s kiss.

  She was wearing a bloodstained white baby doll nightie. She lay in a circle of red-black dirt. Her jugular had been slashed.

  8

  The K-9 officers pulled the dogs back. Brusquely, Detective Berg told a uniformed deputy to set up a perimeter and control access to the hillside. The sun had fallen into the branches of the trees to the west, and shadows grayed the landscape. Standing back for the moment so as not to contaminate the scene or trample possible evidence, Caitlin and her team surveyed the tableau at the edge of the creek.

  “He took care to lay her out,” Rainey said. Her voice was calm, but when she wiped trail dust from her face, her hand was a fist. “He didn’t dump her.”

  Emmerich’s arms hung at his sides. “Posing a body as if at rest usually indicates undoing. But I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at here.”

  Undoing meant attempting to symbolically reverse a crime. A killer might cover a victim’s face. Wash the body. Tuck a blanket around the victim. It often indicated remorse.

  Caitlin said, “This wasn’t regret.”

  “It’s a display. A loving display,” Emmerich said.

  Berg snapped on a pair of latex gloves, descended to the bank of the creek, and knelt by Shana Kerber’s side to examine her body. He lifted her right hand from her chest.

  “Rigor’s passed already.” He set her hand back down, gently. “She’s been dead more than twenty-four hours. I’d say two days at least. Maybe longer if she’s been out in this cold the whole time.”

  Caitlin felt deflated. Shana had been killed before the FBI had hit the ground in Texas.

  Emmerich joined Berg beside the body. “That neck wound severed her carotid and windpipe. She was unconscious within seconds.”

  The water sighed through the creek. Berg carefully pulled back the woman’s blood-matted hair.

  “I’m not a forensic pathologist, but it looks to me like she also has a depressed skull fracture,” he said.

  Rainey scanned the creek side. Her gaze narrowed. “Emmerich. Detective.”

  Six feet upstream from the victim’s body, a photograph was stuck upright in the soft dirt of the bank.

  It was a Polaroid. Rainey and Caitlin descended the hill to get a better look.

  It was a photo of the victim—a close-up of her dead face. It had been snapped where she lay on the bank. The photo was positioned in line with her body, as if it were the prayer card of a grisly saint, watching over her.

  Noise roiled the hillside above them. An officer distantly shouted, “Stop!”

  A young man came charging down the hill. His eyes were bulging, his mouth wide.

  “Shana!”

  Berg jumped to his feet. “Brandon, no.”

  He ran toward the young man, arms spread, like he was going to corral a horse.

  Brandon Kerber barreled forward. “Shana—”

  Emmerich sprang after Berg toward the young man. Emmerich was deceptively lean—built like a wrestler, with muscles strung like wire. Together, he and Berg roped Brandon to a halt.

  The young man fought. He caught sight of the bank of the creek and went rigid. “No. No, no.”

  Berg turned him away from Shana’s body. “I’m sorry, son.”

  He nudged Brandon back up the slope, pressing him into the screen of the trees, where his wife’s corpse wouldn’t be visible. Caitlin clenched her jaw.

  Berg put a hand on Brandon’s shoulder and spoke in a low tone. “How’d you know where to find us?”

  “Brittany Leakins called. I didn’t believe it was true.”

  His shoulders were shaking, his breathing labored. Caitlin’s throat tightened.

  Emmerich, standing a foot from the young man, observed him without expression. But Caitlin knew that Emmerich was slamming down emotional shutters on Brandon’s pain. His dispassion wasn’t exactly a mask. But it was both protective and distancing, so he could continue doing his job clear-eyed. A skill she was still trying to master.

  Brandon shook his head. “It’s not her.”

  Berg pressed a hand to the young man’s chest. “Son, I’m sorry. It is. I recognize her.”

  “No.” Brandon tried to juke and slide around Berg.

  Emmerich blocked him. “Under extreme stress, our perceptions can go awry. Our minds protect us from what we’re seeing. Mr. Kerber. Sir. I’m sorry.”

  Brandon’s face and neck had flared crimson. “That’s not my wife. I can see that thing there. It’s wearing a white nightgown.”

  Berg raised a placating hand. “Brandon . . .”


  “She wore pink flannel pajamas,” Brandon said. “She doesn’t own a white nightgown.” He pointed at the body. “That’s not her.”

  9

  For a pleading, desperate moment, Brandon Kerber pointed at the body. “It’s not Shana.”

  “You positive?” Berg said.

  “Thousand percent.”

  Berg turned to the creek, consternated. Caitlin crouched to get a fresh view of the body.

  She wasn’t inured to violent death. Like most Americans, she had reached adulthood without ever seeing a corpse. But in her first week as an Alameda sheriff’s deputy, she’d rushed to a car crash, primed to aid the injured driver, only to find him halfway through the windshield.

  That’s what dead looks like, a ghostly voice had hissed. She called the meat wagon, set out flares, worked the scene, went home, and cried under the shower. After that, she learned to separate herself from the dead. She didn’t cry again.

  But she wasn’t hardened. Looking at the shell of a young life, she always felt a stab in the heart. And in this job, grief didn’t lurk—it swarmed. She now tried to dodge the creeping pain and analyze the scene with fresh eyes.

  On the bank of the creek, the dead woman’s face was aimed skyward. Her eyes were closed. Her lips were blue. But her blond hair, her features, her frame—and the fact that the trailing dogs had followed Shana’s scent straight to this creek—told Caitlin that Brandon was mistaken.

  He had stopped trying to force his way past Berg and Emmerich. He was waiting for them to agree with him. He pinned his gaze on the creek side. On the nightgown. He began to blink. Maybe at the sight of the wedding ring the dead woman wore, or her toenails, painted midnight blue.

  His voice rose half an octave. “No. It doesn’t look like her. And . . . it doesn’t have her tattoo.” He tapped his chest.

  Emmerich returned to the body. He bent and delicately pulled back the shoulder of the nightgown.

  Her skin was gray. The shadows were gray. The dirty four-inch strip of duct tape applied to her chest was gray. Exposed to the elements, and to wildlife predation, it had slipped. The tattoo was visible. The ink was black. Above the woman’s heart, in Celtic lettering, it read, Brandon.