Into the Black Nowhere

by Meg Gardiner

  She got the cat carrier from the hall closet and clicked her tongue until Zipper meowed and trotted out of the spare room. She shoved him inside, hissing, and loaded the carrier in the car before going back for her computer case and suitcase.

  She bumped the roller case over the threshold. Standing on the front step, she looked around. Another sunny Phoenix day that looked sharp and dry and barren. She locked the apartment door, fumbling with her keys, and her phone rang.

  580 area code. Rincon, OK.

  It was Aaron.

  Hand still on the keys in the door lock, she paused, both anxious and relieved. And, frankly, astonished at both those feelings.

  Until two weeks ago, she could not have imagined speaking to Aaron again. She had fled from college because she thought he was a psycho stalker. She’d moved to Arizona. She had hidden from him. But the psycho stalker, the man she had feared for years, was not Aaron. Not at all.

  Two weeks ago, when Kyle Detrick was arrested, her world shifted. Everything she thought she knew had been a lie. It felt like a massive scythe had swept over her past and cut it down, exposing a completely different landscape.

  So she’d called Aaron. Cleared the air. Filled in the blanks.

  Learning about the last seventeen years of his life—hearing about his years in the army, the awful story about how he’d lost his sight, finding out he had a wife—it had spun her around. She even had to admit that a part of her felt a pang when he told her he was happily married. His voice was the same. But sober, deeper, mature. She’d tried to convince herself to be pleased with what he told her. Learning the truth, and telling him she was sorry for suspecting him of something that wasn’t his fault—doing that had lifted a dark cloud.

  But now Kyle had escaped from jail. Aaron had to be as worried as she was. He had a little daughter . . . her heart caught in her chest.

  She put the phone to her ear. “Aaron.”

  Nothing. The call was connected; she heard noise on his end. Traffic.

  “Aaron? Hello?”

  She pulled the phone from her ear and checked the screen. The call was connected.

  As she studied the display, the phone vibrated and a second call came in. 804 number this time. Quantico, VA. The FBI.

  She said, “Aaron, hold on . . .”

  A shadow fell across the back of her shoulders. The air behind her cooled. She turned and in a split second saw a tall silhouette. A man, arms spread wide, as if offering an embrace. But his right hand held a tire iron, and it was swinging toward her, fast. The blow came blunt and massive on the side of her head, smashing her into the closed apartment door.

  50

  Caitlin hung up. Voice mail again. She couldn’t reach Lia Fox. At the counter in the diner on the Crying Call town square, coffee cups rattled. The waitress set down a bulging brown paper bag.

  “Here you go, sugar.”

  Caitlin dug cash from the pocket of her jeans. The bag was hot: two fried egg sandwiches, two large coffees, and the last apples from the bowl by the cash register. Outside, the sky was an aching blue, as if apologizing for having inflicted the blizzard on the town. People were digging out.

  The waitress stuck a pencil into her upswept ponytail. “You on your way out of town?”

  Caitlin handed over the cash. She mumbled nonresponsively. She didn’t need the locals to keep tabs on the comings and goings of the team. Detrick had already studied the area’s law enforcement methods too well.

  She did give the woman a smile. She needed coffee. She was sleep deprived. She didn’t want to think about Michele having wine with Sean.

  The waitress pinged open the register and whipped bills from the drawer. “You gonna find him?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  The waitress held out Caitlin’s change. Her face was flat. “Good.”

  Caitlin grabbed the bag. “Keep the change.”

  She pushed through the door into blindingly white snow, the entire world burning blue and white. Her breath wreathed the air. Rainey waited in their Suburban at the curb, keeping the car warm. Caitlin hopped into the SUV and put their breakfast on the center console.

  “Still no answer,” she said. “Lia called in sick to work but isn’t picking up at home. Hasn’t answered my texts or e-mails either.”

  “Think she’s deliberately gone dark?”

  “Possibly. But it doesn’t feel right.”

  Overhead, a state police helicopter buzzed across the square toward the peaks to the east. The Crying Call police and state troopers were combing the hills. They’d found no sign of Detrick. No vehicles had been reported stolen from the town. No homes had reported break-ins, though some far-flung mountain houses were vacation homes, empty during the week, and had yet to be searched.

  If Detrick had bivouacked in the open during a two-day blizzard, in a tweed jacket and jeans, he was dead. But Caitlin didn’t think he had bivouacked.

  Rainey pulled out, the snow crunching beneath their tires. The pileup had finally been cleared, but much of the snow had not. They were bound for the FBI’s Phoenix Field Office. Emmerich was at the Crying Call police station, helping coordinate the search for Detrick. He planned to meet her and Rainey in Phoenix. Caitlin figured he was resourceful and would get out of town via snowmobile, or by commandeering an elk.

  “We have a path out of here?” she said.

  Rainey crept up the street, the rear end of the SUV loose on the road surface. She nodded past the town square. “Them.”

  Ahead, a team of snowplows lined the shoulder of the highway, yellow hazard lights swirling. Rainey pulled up behind them and flashed the headlights. Caitlin smiled. An escort.

  The plows led them out of Crying Call at twenty miles an hour, spraying snow onto the shoulders of the road in great white arcs. After twelve slow miles, Caitlin tried again to reach Lia Fox.

  “Still no answer,” she said.

  Rainey had waited to eat until the road improved. Now she grabbed her cooling sandwich from the brown bag. “Call the Phoenix PD and ask for a drive-by.”

  It seemed an obsessive precaution, except it didn’t. The highway descended a long slope and they finally reached a stretch where snow was already cleared. Flashing her lights again as a thank-you, Rainey pulled around the plows and gunned it. Pine trees heavy with snow flashed past. Caitlin made the phone call.

  Twenty minutes after she’d put through the request, the Phoenix police phoned her back. She listened stonily. Ended the call.

  “Patrol unit drove by Lia’s apartment complex as requested. Her car was parked in its assigned parking slot outside her unit. She didn’t answer the door.”

  Rainey shot her a look. “They go in?”

  “Cat was in a carrier in the front seat of her car, moaning and clawing to get out. They found Lia’s keys in a flower bed. Manager let the officer in. Nobody was there.”

  It was two hundred miles south to Phoenix. Rainey jammed the remains of her sandwich back in the brown bag and pushed the speedometer to eighty-five.

  • • •

  When Caitlin and Rainey pulled into the Phoenix apartment complex, it was seventy-five degrees and the sun burned gold overhead. The cops wore short sleeves. Two police cruisers and an unmarked detective’s car were parked outside Lia Fox’s unit.

  Shedding their coats, Caitlin and Rainey strode up the sidewalk. Lia’s unit faced away from the street. Caitlin’s stomach was acid with anxiety.

  Rainey eyed the complex. “It would have been easy to grab her late on a weekday morning, when the school run was over and most of her neighbors were at work.”

  They showed their credentials and the uniforms led them inside.

  Rainey stopped inside the apartment door. “Yeah. She was about to bolt.”

  The hall closet was open, empty hangers on the rack. Photos on the walls were missing. Dust
marks and hooks were the only things left. It seemed indisputable that Lia had been grabbed as she prepared to skip town.

  Caitlin shook her head, frustrated. “Detrick got out of Crying Call on wheels. He didn’t walk out.”

  “Hitchhiked, stole a vehicle from a vacation home, something.”

  Rainey went to a side table. A few photos remained, tipped facedown, as if knocked over in Lia’s rush to get going.

  “How the hell did he find her?” Caitlin said.

  The Phoenix detective came in.

  Caitlin said, “Witnesses?”

  “We’re canvassing the complex. And we’ll pull video from surveillance cameras in the surrounding neighborhoods, see if we can find anything.”

  Rainey set the photos on the side table upright. “Hendrix.”

  She picked up one of the photos. It featured Lia and a lively teenage girl, hugging tightly, all smiles.

  The frame said: Happy Mother’s Day. Love, Emily.

  “She has a daughter,” Rainey said.

  “Jesus.” Caitlin’s shoulders dropped. “I knew she was hiding something. Not this.”

  Rainey’s chill dropped to subzero. “If Detrick finds out, he could go someplace primitive. We’ve got trouble.”

  51

  Psychopaths exhibit primitive envy. They don’t merely long for the object of their desire. They don’t merely resent people who have the thing they yearn for. If a psychopath can’t have what he wants, he’ll destroy it.

  Psychopaths, Caitlin had learned, devalued anything loving. Violent psychopaths killed what attracted them.

  “In Cold Blood,” Rainey said soberly, as they headed into the FBI’s Phoenix Division. “The killers shotgunned four people, basically because the victims were a happy family. They couldn’t stand the consuming envy they felt, so they exterminated them.”

  Detrick had been killing surrogates for Lia Fox, the object of his unbearable desire. For years, she’d been the primary target of his rage. But now, they had to presume he’d found out she had a daughter.

  “His craving to destroy won’t end with Lia,” Caitlin said.

  “He’ll try to kill everything she loves.”

  The Phoenix Division occupied a modern stone and blue-glass building behind an iron fence. Caitlin took a free desk, with a view of saguaro cactus, gleaming traffic, and a horizon serrated by brown mountains. She coordinated with Nicholas Keyes in Quantico to find Lia Fox’s daughter. Across the open-plan office, Rainey got on the phone with the Arizona State Police, reorienting the manhunt for Detrick. It had just significantly ramped up.

  Statement kill. The thought went through Caitlin like a steel blade.

  Emmerich arrived, still wearing his hiking boots. The sun, slanting through the windows, flashed against his eyes. “We just got two hits on earlier attacks Detrick may have carried out.”

  Rainey ended her phone call and walked over. Emmerich opened a screen.

  “Detrick’s DNA ties him to a sexual assault in Louisiana seven years ago. And to a Jane Doe found dead outside Laredo five years ago.”

  He brought up a morgue photo of the murdered woman. Young, Caucasian, drained of blood. Caitlin’s fingers tingled. Rainey let out a slow, audible breath.

  “She’s in the Polaroids,” Caitlin said.

  Emmerich nodded. “We’ll release that photo. Hopefully get an identification.”

  Confirmation—a link from physical evidence—should have been exciting. But with Detrick in the wind, a hollow silence settled over them.

  Emmerich checked his watch. “I have two hours before I fly to Oklahoma. Where are we?”

  Caitlin inhaled. “Lia Fox lives alone. She’s rented her unit for four years. The super says she’s never had a roommate, much less a daughter living in the apartment.”

  She handed him the photo of Lia with the teenage girl. “We’ll find her, but . . .”

  He studied the photo. It showed a rugged, windswept beach, with fir trees on a cliff in the background. “This was taken a long way from Phoenix. Maybe a vacation shot. Or maybe this girl lives out of state.”

  Caitlin nodded, tight-lipped.

  Emmerich handed the photo back. “Fox kept this from us. She went to some lengths to do so.”

  Caitlin felt her cheeks flush. She was thinking: Maybe the woman had good reasons.

  “Lia was terrified,” she said. “And I told her he wouldn’t find her.”

  “We’re working to uncover how he discovered her identity. Her name was not in any documents Detrick could have accessed when preparing for his court hearing. Nobody in our unit so much as spoke her name in Crying Call. We haven’t had a data breach. Yet, somehow, he not only made the connection but uncovered her home address.”

  “State police is in the loop,” Rainey said. “And I just had a quick call with Phoenix PD. One of Lia’s neighbors saw an unfamiliar car parked near Lia’s unit this morning. Blue, ‘Japanese make.’ Cops are pulling video from all CCTV cameras within a mile of the apartment complex.”

  “Good,” Emmerich said.

  That would all take time. Painstaking time. Caitlin ran her fingers through her hair.

  Emmerich turned to a large USGS topographical map of Arizona on the wall. “Grabbing Fox so soon after Aaron Gage was killed—but three states away?”

  “Yeah,” Rainey said. “How’s Detrick doing this?”

  Caitlin’s laptop sang. She returned to the desk. On-screen, from Quantico, was Nicholas Keyes.

  He was leaning close to the screen. He pushed his chunky frames up his nose.

  “Found your girl,” he said. “The daughter.”

  Caitlin’s voice jumped up a notch. “Where?”

  “Emily Erin Hart,” Keyes said. “Age seventeen. She’s a freshman at Greenspring College in Portland, Oregon.” He clicked keys. “Sending you her vital statistics now.”

  Caitlin opened the file. She saw the teenager from the Mother’s Day photo. Wavy brown hair, lively eyes, attitude to spare. Her college ID photo showed a beaming smile.

  “Thank you. Keyes, I don’t know how you did it, but thank you.”

  “Magic.” Keyes’s eyes flicked up. “Quick thing, before you go—remember the video from the Texas movie theater?”

  “Madden NFL.”

  “I told you the software was flagging strange artifacts on the video? I don’t know what to make of it, but I’ve run the simulation ninety times, and I’m sure. While the UNSUB was crossing the multiplex lobby, prepping to intercept the victim, somebody else in the crowd was watching the UNSUB.”

  “What?” Caitlin said.

  “There’s another figure in the video, only visible intermittently—shorter, looks like a woman—who the software indicates was positioning herself so she could always see the UNSUB.”

  “She got a colorful circle beneath her feet?”

  “Red. I’ll see what I can make of it,” Keyes said. “Hit me back when you need more.” He tapped the keyboard with the eraser of a pencil and cut the connection.

  Baffled but intrigued by Keyes’s news, Caitlin picked up the phone to call Portland.

  Emmerich said, “You’ll provide a script for Emily to follow . . .”

  “If Lia or Detrick contacts her. Absolutely.”

  Emmerich rapped the desk with his knuckles and headed across the room toward Rainey. Caitlin found the number for the Portland Police Bureau.

  • • •

  Caitlin spoke to the Portland police, then phoned Emily Hart. It took a few rings for the girl to pick up.

  “Yeah,” came a breathless teenage voice.

  Caitlin put it on speaker. “Emily Hart?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Special Agent Caitlin Hendrix, FBI.”

  The shocked silence on Emily’s end let Caitlin hear sports practice in the
background. Something outdoors. A whistle blew.

  “What? FBI? What?”

  Caitlin had learned to break bad news in the most matter-of-fact way possible. Especially on the phone, when you didn’t have the chance to physically hold someone’s attention. Say it plain. Then shut up. Make sure the other person understood. Listen to their responses.

  “Your mother is missing, Emily. We think she’s been abducted.”

  Emily’s voice turned sharp. “Oh, my God.”

  Shouts in the background. A cheer, and the sound of stampeding feet.

  “You’re sure?” Emily said.

  “Positive,” Caitlin said.

  Emily was out of breath. “Lia texted she was getting out of town. She said she’d explain once she was on the road. She sounded so . . . oh, my God. Afraid.”

  Another voice, a bright young soprano in the background, said, “Em? What’s wrong?”

  Emily covered the receiver. “Tell Coach I’ll be . . . oh, God.”

  Caitlin said, “Emily?”

  “This is not good,” Emily said. “Omigod.”

  “You call your mom Lia?” Caitlin said.

  “What? Lia. I do . . . oh, jeez.” She seemed to take a breath. “I . . . sorry, yeah. Lia’s my birth mom, I mean she’s my mom, but I was adopted and raised by my grandparents. Lia’s parents. I grew up thinking she was my older sister. I only found out Lia was my birth mother a couple years ago. High school.”

  That explained to Caitlin how Lia had managed to conceal a child from the FBI.

  Emily said, “She was young, not ready for a kid. She’d had a rough time, her boyfriend was . . .” She gasped. “Omigod, is this him? That guy?”

  Emmerich approached.

  Emily’s voice cracked. “I’m coming to Phoenix to help you. I can get there tomorrow.”

  Emmerich shook his head. On a notepad he wrote: Detrick may be counting on that. Lying in wait.