Into the Black Nowhere

by Meg Gardiner

  “Sounds like Kyle. My roommate. Kyle Detrick.”

  Caitlin reexamined the photo. Kyle Detrick stood close to Lia, and there was no question in her mind that he wished he could stand closer. Beside him, Aaron Gage, gripping a bottle of Lone Star, seemed oblivious to the passion pouring from his friend.

  “Tell me about him,” Caitlin said.

  Gage held back a moment, seemingly analyzing the motive behind the question. When he spoke again, it was with a knowing reserve.

  “He was a psychology major. From back east—Florida. We roomed together for a semester. Until the fire.”

  “How’d you meet?”

  “I posted an ad for a roommate.”

  Rainey was shifting in her stylish boots, arms crossed. FBI agents never crossed their arms unless they had covering fire or were one hundred percent positive that the person they were talking to presented no threat. Or, Caitlin thought, when they were trying not to throttle a colleague. But she let Rainey stew. A new idea was taking form in her mind.

  “What was he like?” Caitlin said.

  Gage’s expression remained remote. “Normal guy. Bought beer for the apartment.”

  “Did you become friends?”

  The pause was more deliberate this time. “We got along. Hung out.”

  Outside, a pickup truck pulled up next to the Suburban.

  “That’ll be Ann and Maggie,” Gage said.

  The strawberry blond from the photo on the windowsill climbed out, hoisting a toddler on her hip.

  She set the child down, and the little girl ran after a bird. Ann Gage stared through the wide front window at the scene in the living room. She was small but looked strong. She looked ready to defend her husband and home against whatever intrusion was taking place.

  “Mr. Gage,” Caitlin said, “how did your roommate get along with Dahlia?”

  Gage paused a long time. He turned his head toward the sound of his daughter’s voice. He seemed torn between wanting the FBI gone and doing what it would take to get them to go.

  In a faraway tone, he said, “He liked to watch her.”

  Caitlin blinked to make sure she’d heard him correctly. “Surreptitiously?”

  Gage nodded. “This one time, I found the bathroom door partway open while she was taking a shower. I closed it, then noticed Kyle’s door was open too. He had a direct line of sight to the shower. I said, ‘What the hell?’ Kyle pretended it was coincidence, that he hadn’t seen anything. But . . .”

  Rainey dropped her arms to her sides. “Sergeant?”

  He ran a hand over his short hair. “I caught him another time, sniffing her nightgown.”

  Caitlin let the word hang in the air a second. “Can you describe it?”

  “The nightgown? Short. Low-cut. A sexy thing I gave Dahli. I was a dumb sophomore who wanted a sexy girlfriend. I think Kyle was too. But the sexy girlfriend he wanted was mine.”

  Ann Gage opened the door and came in. Her boots scuffed against the hardwood. Her glare was challenging.

  “Ladies.” She raised her chin. “I presume you’re not the IRS, here to personally deliver our tax refund.”

  Rainey said, “Mrs. Gage.”

  Aaron held out his hand to his wife. “Babe. The FBI is investigating those murders down in Solace.”

  “You thought it was Aaron?” Ann said.

  Their little girl, Maggie, popped through the door and skipped up to Gage. “Daddy!”

  He crouched and picked her up. “How’s my Tigger?”

  She giggled and began telling him about her trip to town. Ann stared at Caitlin and Rainey.

  Caitlin said, “Mr. Gage, may we take this photo with us?”

  Ann approached. “What’s that?”

  “Old news,” Gage said. “It’s all right. It may factor into their investigation.” He sensed his wife’s unease. “It could be important.”

  Caitlin removed the photo from the album. “Thank you, Mr. Gage. If we need anything else, we’ll be in touch.”

  She and Rainey headed out the door. Ann Gage shut it sharply behind them.

  19

  They barreled back down the interstate under a deepening blue twilight, with Rainey at the wheel. Before they hit the Red River, Caitlin got on the phone with Nicholas Keyes.

  “Detrick. D-E-T-R-I-C-K.” Caitlin had no middle name, no date of birth, no Social Security number or address, but Keyes would dig.

  “Got it,” Keyes said. “Full shopping list. Any extras?”

  “Rampart College records if you can get them.” Caitlin snapped a copy of the picnic photo and forwarded it. “Start by confirming whether Mr. Eyes-On is actually this guy.”

  Rainey pegged the speedometer at the limit. She drove with the calm sharpness honed by tactical driver training. Caitlin could imagine her porting her twins to tae kwon do. Rainey, she was sure, would never swerve to avoid a squirrel. But she would explain that small furry creatures could never outweigh children’s safety, and tell them she was sorry they’d had to hear that thump.

  “I’ll hit you back ASAP,” Keyes said.

  He ended the call. Caitlin phoned Emmerich.

  “Hendrix,” he said. “The interview?”

  Be candid. No point in hedging. And Emmerich, she’d learned, appreciated subtlety but hated weaseling.

  “Gage isn’t the UNSUB.”

  “That’s conclusive?” he said.

  “Yes. But we have a new lead.”

  She summarized the visit with Gage. “I think Lia Fox was stalked, but she’s mistaken about the stalker’s identity. I think it may have been this man Detrick. The cards she received were unsigned. Lia never saw who left the gifts on her porch, never saw the face of the stalker in the shadows across the street,” she said. “If Gage’s account is accurate, Detrick was at minimum a voyeur.”

  “Interesting,” Emmerich said. “Find him.”

  Sunset had come on. Trees flashed past, skeletal, branches fingering the orange horizon in the west. Caitlin ended the call and sat, thinking, as Rainey raced from the hills and across the muddy river into Texas, onto a windswept, endless plain.

  The headlights ate the concrete. The dashboard lights turned the SUV into a stark cavern, Rainey’s eyes shining as she stared through the windshield. Everything Caitlin had known—San Francisco, Berkeley, her little rented house in Rockridge, her friends and life—felt immensely distant.

  She picked up her phone again and placed a video call. When Sean answered, she said, “Hey, G-man.”

  Sean beamed. “Hey, G-woman. Why so serious?”

  Caitlin straightened and smiled but felt caught out.

  Sean turned his phone to give her a view of his surroundings. “Look who’s here.”

  He was at the front door of a cheery town house. The daylight was still golden in the East Bay. He was dropping off his young daughter, Sadie, at the home of his ex-wife, Michele Ferreira. The little girl hopped into view, dark hair in pigtails, brown eyes lively. She wore a Wonder Woman T-shirt and tiny tennis shoes with daisies on them.

  “Cat!” she squealed.

  “Hey, Roo.”

  Michele strolled along the hall, waving. Her hair was cut shorter than usual, spiked into a fauxhawk. She had on her raspberry-colored nurse’s scrubs.

  “Woman,” Michele said. “You look like you’re calling from a cave. Tell me Texas hasn’t retreated to the dark ages.”

  “It’s ahead of California, if you ask the sun, and everybody in the state,” Caitlin said.

  “Missed you at the hash on Sunday.”

  Michele and Caitlin were members of a running club, the Rockridge Ragers. They ran 5K twice a week. Caitlin knew it was surprising, and strange, that she and Sean’s ex had hit it off. She didn’t care. Not when she’d come so close to losing Sean at the hands of a killer. Not when Sadie
had come so close to losing her father. What mattered was that Sean was breathing, laughing, here. She couldn’t worry about any potential awkwardness with Michele.

  And running was a salve for whatever ached in Caitlin’s life. She missed those hours. Missed Michele’s openness and sense of humor.

  “We got half the group lost in the Berkeley Hills,” Michele said. “Only the smell of beer lured them out in the end.”

  Caitlin smiled but felt melancholy that she and Sean couldn’t talk privately. She cooed at Sadie’s teddy bear and blew Michele a kiss.

  Sean took the phone back. His face was a welcome sight. “You on the road?”

  “I-35, forty miles north of DFW.”

  He scanned her face, his smile tempered with concern. “We gotta get you out of those dark Bureau SUVs.”

  “It’s why I joined the FBI,” she said. “I won’t keep you. I’ll let you get back to Sadie.”

  “How about I come to Virginia in a couple of weeks?”

  “Yes.”

  She said it so eagerly that Sean laughed.

  “I’ll book flights tonight,” he said.

  “I love you.”

  “You should.” He smiled, comically, and said good-bye.

  She lowered her phone to her lap. It was warm in her hand. Outside, the night had deepened, but now she was humming. She became aware of Rainey beside her at the wheel. Her colleague was deadpan.

  “Out with it,” Caitlin said.

  Rainey continued staring at the road. Her eyes were large, observant, bright—as always. Her braids were drawn back into a twist. In profile, she looked like Lady Liberty on the hundred-dollar gold coin. If Lady Liberty kept a Glock in a Gore-Tex webbed holster on her hip.

  “Come on,” Caitlin said.

  Rainey took her time. “I know you went through hell with the Prophet.”

  Oh, boy, Caitlin thought. Here we go.

  “Did you join the Bureau to get as far from that case as possible?” Rainey said.

  “I took this job to make a difference.”

  “Honey.” The tires rang on the concrete. “Course you did. We all did. You can say you love it. You’re scared of it. You’re proud. You’re a badass bitch. Girl Scout with a twelve gauge. Reading psychopaths’ minds is your superpower.” She cut a glance Caitlin’s way. “You can dig it.”

  For a second, Caitlin gaped. Her mouth hung open.

  “But you did take a job three thousand miles from your boyfriend,” Rainey said. “It’s clear you have avoidance issues.”

  Caitlin pulled her coat tight around her. “I wish I did. I wouldn’t have encouraged you to start this conversation.”

  “You have a family history of estrangement from—”

  “Don’t say Daddy.”

  Rainey took a long bend at speed. “You’ve been sighing and staring out the window. That’s not just because of this case. Or job anxiety. And by the way, you’re doing fine.”

  Caitlin turned. Rainey glanced at her.

  “Kid, you’re solid,” she said.

  A knot loosened in Caitlin’s chest.

  “But don’t tell me you’re not lonely.” She nodded at Caitlin’s phone. “Your boyfriend heard it. Hell, that stuffed bear heard it.”

  “My mom probably heard it, so she’ll be calling any minute,” Caitlin said.

  “Just don’t put up more walls than necessary.”

  “Compartmentalizing—”

  “Is necessary,” Rainey said. “But if you barricade yourself against the people you love, you lose.”

  “I know that.”

  “Yeah? You’re best friends with your boyfriend’s ex. Tell me you haven’t hammered up some boards to keep both those relationships intact.”

  The road straightened. Caitlin said nothing.

  “Don’t isolate yourself. You’ll drive away your friends and lovers, and blunt your effectiveness in the field. Lose-lose.”

  “Did Emmerich tell you to work me over? Remind me to tap into my empathy?”

  “He’s not wrong. You have an uncanny sense of when people are lying, and what motivates them. You should develop that, not suppress it.”

  “Were you a shrink before you joined the Bureau?”

  “Air Force Psy Ops.”

  Caitlin laughed, hard and brief. “It all makes sense now.”

  Rainey didn’t smile, but lifted an eyebrow. She looked wry. “I like to know about the people I ride with.” She set her right hand on the gearshift. “Tell me about the round you took a few years back.”

  Caitlin couldn’t help giving her a look.

  “I saw the scar. Gym at the hotel,” Rainey said. “Left shoulder.”

  Caitlin hadn’t talked about it in years. “Bank robbery. My second year as an Alameda patrol officer. I got hit as I ran from my car to a staging point.” She flexed her shoulder. It felt fine. “The round missed my ballistic vest. But it also missed nerve bundles and the brachial artery. I was unlucky, but very lucky.”

  “No shit.”

  “It felt like a sting. Hot. I only realized I’d been hit when I reached the staging point.”

  Rainey looked thoughtful. “I know the feeling.”

  Now it was Caitlin’s turn to wonder whom she was riding with.

  “You were young,” Rainey said. “Of course you expected to escape. That kind of luck can convince you you’re immortal.”

  Caitlin touched her right arm, where the tattoo read, the whole sky. Rainey didn’t know about its meaning to her. It was a line from Rita Dove’s poem “Dawn Revisited.”

  The whole sky is yours

  to write on, blown open

  The phrase symbolized second chances—and the opportunity she had been given to choose life, after nearly killing herself at fifteen. The tattoo ran across the scars ridging her forearm, the ones she had etched over and over with a razor blade. A snake circled the scars on her left.

  She said, “Immortality’s a dangerous idea. I believe in the here and now.”

  Rainey’s lips pursed. A mile passed, the big American engine humming in the cold night. Rainey’s voice lightened.

  “Make some friends in Virginia. Get a hobby. Scrapbooking, or mixed martial arts.”

  “Needlepoint. I can embroider a pillow with badass bitch.”

  Rainey smiled, just a wisp. “Find time with your man, ASAP.”

  “On it.”

  “And you were right about this trip being a legitimate lead. Next stop, Kyle Detrick.”

  She put on music, Madama Butterfly, and turned it up. Opera flooded the car. She accelerated to seventy-five and drove into the night.

  20

  I found him.”

  Nicholas Keyes sounded like a hammer hitting a nail. On video, he stalked back and forth behind his Quantico desk. He was wired, his hair standing up like he’d stuck his finger in a socket. His skinny tie was askew, his sleeves unevenly rolled up. In the Virginia morning sun, his eyes looked like shiny marbles.

  “Detrick?” Caitlin said. “Where?”

  His smile was beyond electric. He pointed at the screen. “There. In Texas.”

  He sat down at his desk. “Kyle Alan Detrick, born Tallahassee, Florida, currently lives and works thirty miles up the interstate in Austin.”

  He sent photos. Caitlin’s nerves lit up.

  The first photo was a student ID from Rampart College. Detrick was indeed the man in Aaron Gage’s picnic snapshot, the guy wearing the New Found Glory T-shirt. The second photo was Detrick’s current Texas driver’s license. He was older by eighteen years, and, if anything, better-looking.

  Caitlin didn’t put much store in deciphering personality by driver’s license photos. But Kyle Detrick had a presence. His chin was up, his gray eyes vivid—yet opaque. She couldn’t tell whether he was trying to seduce the
camera or express disdain at having to visit the DMV. He was tan and sleek. His dark hair was cut just short of edgy. His dress shirt was as white as meringue.

  Keyes scrolled down his computer screen. “Age thirty-eight. He studied psychology at Rampart College but left without getting a degree.”

  “How long after the apartment fire?” Caitlin asked.

  “A few months.”

  Rainey walked up behind her. Keyes clicked to a new document.

  “No outstanding warrants, no arrest record in Gideon County, Travis County, Austin, Tallahassee, Harris County, Houston, nothing on ViCAP or NCIC,” he said.

  “He’s clean.”

  “And he works at Castle Bay Realty.”

  “He sells houses.” Caitlin stood. “We need to tell Emmerich.”

  Rainey headed for the door. “He went to the county medical examiner’s office. Call him. I’ll drive.”

  • • •

  The trip to Austin took them along a bruising section of I-35, under a pale skillet of sky. They passed beneath gigantic interchanges, five levels tall, where semis took turns at sixty miles per hour a hundred feet above them.

  “There aren’t this many freeway interchanges in Los Angeles, and LA is ten times the size of Austin,” Caitlin said. “Who got the concrete concession from the state?”

  “Austin’s one of the fastest-growing cities in the country,” Rainey said. “More than a million people in the metro. Named the best American city to live in by U.S. News & World Report, if you ever get a hankering for Longhorns football and Texas politics.”

  “I try not to hanker.”

  To the west, the forest-green outcroppings of the Hill Country came into view. Ten miles from downtown they got their first glimpse of the skyline. It was mostly new, mostly striving, bright and glassy and angular, clogged with cranes putting up even more skyscrapers.

  They crossed Lady Bird Lake and headed into the city center on Cesar Chavez. They passed sparkling high-end hotels and a tin-roofed barbecue shack and old bungalows repurposed into neon hipster bars. A billboard advertised: AUSTIN—THE LIVE MUSIC CAPITAL OF THE WORLD.

  “True,” Rainey said. “You can’t enter a single building in the city without hearing a guitar. I went into the women’s room at McDonald’s and a Texas swing band was playing Willie Nelson.”