Into the Black Nowhere

by Meg Gardiner

  “But?”

  “By the time the campus cops arrived, it was gone.”

  Caitlin’s phone pinged. It was a text from Emily Hart.

  I’m at Xi Zeta.

  Caitlin’s jaw slackened. “Jesus hell.”

  I know you wanted me to wait at the police station but I couldn’t do that when my sorority sisters are still at the house. Cops were pissed but I’m an adult. Xi Zeta is on lockdown and two officers are here.

  Emmerich turned. “Agent Hendrix?”

  “It’s Emily.”

  She explained the situation. Emmerich absorbed it, with the look of a father who had experienced his share of teenage surprises.

  “I’ll head to campus with these agents,” he said. “You and Rainey go to the sorority house.”

  He climbed into one of the Suburbans. The Portland agent tossed Rainey the keys to the second vehicle. Then Emmerich was off, racing for campus. Caitlin and Rainey threw their things in the other Suburban.

  Rainey jumped behind the wheel. Caitlin slammed the door and phoned Emily. No answer. She checked the GPS and sent a text.

  Leaving PDX. On our way to you. Stay on lockdown at the sorority house. ETA 45 min.

  Rainey put the pedal down.

  57

  Under lowering clouds, the Oregon night closed in early. An icy rain blew down the Willamette Valley. At Greenspring College in northwest Portland, Emmerich and the two Portland FBI agents wound their way along twisting, narrow roads. They pulled into the parking lot where the car stolen by Detrick in Lake Tahoe had been sighted. Two campus police cars waited for them, lights flashing.

  The campus was hilly, its buildings surrounded by tall stands of Douglas fir. Emmerich got out and sleet hit his face. He shook hands with the senior campus police officer.

  Her name tag read LEWIS. “We’re fanning out into quadrants to search for the stolen car.”

  The campus was designed around a series of pedestrian plazas. Under the streetlights, the parking lot was deserted—beyond what Emmerich would have expected from the weather alone.

  “We’ve activated the campus emergency alert system. Texts, e-mails, and recorded calls went out to all students that a dangerous suspect is at large. Those messages include the description and tag number of the stolen car. The library, labs, and especially student resident assistants have been alerted and are instructing students to shelter in place.”

  “Good.”

  Emmerich was pleased that Greenspring had a well-organized campus emergency plan. However, the need for college lockdown procedures drove a corkscrew ache through his chest. His own daughter was a sophomore at the University of Virginia.

  A police radio scratched to life in Lewis’s patrol car. She leaned in, spoke, and replaced the transmitter. Her face was alert.

  “Student just flagged down one of our units outside the science quad. Said he saw the stolen car pull into a parking lot.”

  “Is the car still there?” Emmerich said.

  “The student said the driver got out and headed into the Biology Department. White guy, looked like a trucker.”

  Emmerich scanned the parking lot. “We’ll need backup.”

  • • •

  The Xi Zeta sorority house was on Greek Row, a mile off the Greenspring campus. As the rain turned to sleet, clouds snuffed the sunset and afternoon sank to charcoal darkness. Emily Hart paced near the living room windows, watching the street for headlights. On the hillside, the Douglas firs swept back and forth in the wind. Her packed bag sat by the door.

  A Portland police cruiser was parked at the curb. An officer was at the wheel. His partner was in the kitchen, heating a cup of coffee.

  The house was an old colonial where thirty-six sorority sisters lived. It was tall and sturdy and to Emily it felt like a fortress. Dinner was on hold. The cook had been told to stay home. A couple of girls were foraging in the fridge for snacks. They made small talk with the young police officer. Their voices were subdued. Upstairs, Adele vied with SportsCenter. In the dining room, somebody was memorizing the periodic table. Normally, the house buzzed with energy. Tonight, the buzz felt anxious.

  Footsteps jogged down the front stairs. The housemother, Nina Grosjean, came into the room carrying her purse and coat. “What’s the latest?”

  Emily held up her phone. “The FBI agents are on their way.” She watched as Ms. Grosjean put on her coat. “You going to pick up Gabrielle?”

  “Yes. Triple A can’t get to the spot her car broke down as fast as I can. I don’t want her out there on the roadside.” But Ms. Grosjean looked torn. “Emily, if this weren’t an emergency . . .”

  “Go. Gabrielle’s out there alone. I’m fine,” Emily said. “There’s a cop in the kitchen, a police car parked fifty feet from the door, and the literal FBI is literally on its way to get me.” She squeezed Ms. Grosjean’s arm. “Thank you for letting me wait here.”

  Grosjean whipped a scarf around her neck. For a second, she softened. She was a no-nonsense person who regarded the house director job as equivalent to managing a small hotel for young adults. She patted Emily on the shoulder.

  “You’re a member of this sorority. Of course you’re welcome here.” She buttoned her coat. “Call me when the FBI arrives.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Emily said.

  Grosjean hurried into the kitchen. Her car was parked in the lot out back.

  The police officer set his coffee on the counter. “I’ll walk you outside.”

  Frigid air blew through the hallway until he shut the back door. Emily exhaled. She returned to the front window. The sleet was coming down harder.

  • • •

  On campus, Emmerich and the local agents drove behind the two Greenspring marked units, following them along a slippery road past the main quad to a parking lot outside the biology building. There they met up with another unit. Silent approach: no lights, no sirens. Beads of icy rain turned the view through the headlights white.

  The stolen vehicle was a nondescript gray Camry. It was the only car parked in the lot. Emmerich climbed out into the miserable sleet. Officer Lewis approached the Camry cautiously and shined her flashlight at it.

  Nobody was inside. Emmerich peered in, swiveling his own flashlight. The interior of the car looked clean. No belongings. No blood.

  “Key’s in the ignition,” he said.

  Lewis gave him a look. “Any possible reason we need to wait and get a warrant?”

  He shook his head. “Stolen car. Exigent circumstances.”

  Putting gloves on, he opened the door, removed the key, and walked back to the trunk. With apprehension, he opened it.

  It was empty.

  Lewis’s shoulder-mounted radio came to life. She bent her head to it, spoke, and straightened. “Portland police tactical unit has arrived.”

  The biology building was a three-story brick edifice that fronted the science quad. Emmerich tented a hand over his eyes to block the sleet that was blowing in his face. The lights in the building’s lobby were on, but only a couple of office windows were lit. The building looked dead.

  “Layout?” he said.

  Lewis pointed. “Lobby, branching hallways that lead all the way around the building and converge in the back. Elevators, stairs. At the rear exit there’s a set of steps down to a path that leads to the back of the quad.”

  “What’s behind the quad?”

  “The back exit leads to dorms and off-campus Greek houses. The biology building provides cover, and a shortcut, for anybody heading toward student housing.”

  “You lead,” Emmerich said.

  Lewis spoke again into her shoulder-mounted radio. Then said, “Behind me.”

  The campus cops and FBI approached the building in single file. They entered silently. The Biology Department office door was closed and locked. They advanced thr
ough the building in stacked formation.

  Office doors were shut. The officers’ rubber-soled shoes were quiet on the tile floor. They reached a corner. Lewis signaled them to hold, and peered around. She pulled back.

  She whispered. “He’s halfway down the hallway, walking toward the back of the building.”

  She leaned around the corner again and gave the Go signal. They moved and caught sight of the man walking away from them. He wore a red flannel shirt and a baseball cap. He disappeared around the next corner, heading for the rear exit.

  Lewis leaned again into her radio. “He’s coming.”

  They moved quickly along the hall. Stopped at the far corner. They heard the bar on an exterior door open. Lewis checked and signaled for them to advance. At the rear of the building was a small back lobby with plate-glass doors. The man in flannel was outside, jogging down the steps toward the dorms.

  Outside, positioned in the trees under cover of the night, the leader of the Portland police tactical unit yelled, “Freeze.”

  58

  Caitlin and Rainey wound their way through a hillside neighborhood outside campus. In the dimming evening, Rainey carefully navigated the slick road. The route to the sorority house took them up the back side of the hill from the college, along a series of switchbacks. The windshield wipers were collecting sloppy slush.

  Caitlin’s phone rang. As she pulled it from her pocket, she remembered with a pang that she hadn’t replied to Michele’s text message. Nicholas Keyes was calling from Quantico.

  “News?” she said.

  “Just got the artist’s sketch of the woman who aided Detrick when he was in jail. The one who smuggled the phone to him in his KFC.”

  Caitlin put the call on speaker.

  “With the hood, wig, and enormous sunglasses, she looks like the Unabomber,” Keyes said. “Not much help. But. But—I suspect it’s the same woman who’s in the Madden NFL–style video. The one who follows Detrick around the lobby of the movie theater in Solace before he kidnaps his victim. And the more I run that video, the more the data convinces me Detrick does not know she’s tailing him.”

  Caitlin and Rainey exchanged a glance. Rainey said, “Send the drawing.”

  “Thanks, Keyes.”

  “That’s not the only reason I’m calling,” he said. “Emily Hart’s social media has photos with her new sorority sisters at Xi Zeta. Presume Detrick knows.”

  “Portland police are on scene.” Caitlin checked the GPS. “We’re half a mile away.”

  Rainey slowed to round another switchback. Tense, Caitlin scanned the road and the forested hillside above the Willamette River.

  “Be careful,” Keyes said.

  • • •

  “Police. Don’t move.”

  Behind the biology building, the man in the flannel shirt stopped dead at the bottom of the steps. Guns drawn, the Portland police rushed from the shadows. Emmerich, the local FBI agents, and the campus cops burst through the back door into the sleet, weapons raised. They ran down the steps. Two Portland TAC officers threw the man to the ground.

  He landed facedown on the sidewalk with a dull thud. The beams of a dozen flashlights pinned him. The cops cuffed his wrists.

  Emmerich holstered his weapon, reached down, and rolled the man onto his back.

  Under the cold glare of the flashlights, the man’s pulse ticked in his neck. His eyes were shiny coins. Emmerich pulled off his baseball cap.

  It wasn’t Detrick.

  The man was white, doughy—and no older than twenty-two. As he lay on his shackled hands, his mouth went wide. He peered back and forth between Emmerich and the cops.

  “Don’t hurt me.”

  Emmerich backed up and peered around at the drenched, dismal night. The wet wind snuck beneath the collar of his coat.

  “What the hell’s going on?” the man said.

  Officer Lewis knelt at the man’s side. “Who are you?”

  “Kevin Reid.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Why were you in the biology building?”

  “The guy.”

  Emmerich said, “What guy?”

  “The guy gave me a hundred bucks to deliver an envelope to the biology office. I didn’t do anything wrong. All I did was slide the envelope under the office door.”

  Lewis turned the man on his side and pulled a wallet from his back pocket. Inside was a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill. She pulled out the man’s driver’s license.

  “Kevin Reid,” she said.

  On the sidewalk, Reid lay shuddering. “Delivering an envelope isn’t a crime. Don’t point your guns at me.”

  At Lewis’s nod, the cops holstered their weapons. Lewis pulled Reid to his feet. Her officers took him by the elbows and led him away for questioning. Emmerich scanned the dim, forested campus.

  Lewis’s breath wreathed the air. “What’s going on?”

  Emmerich felt deeply chilled. “A diversion. In Arizona, our agents arrested Detrick by following him to his target. He learned from that lesson. He pulled us off track.”

  Lewis said it. “So where the hell is he?”

  • • •

  When the doorbell rang at Xi Zeta, Emily was in the kitchen, downing a glass of milk. Through the back window, she could see the parking lot. Ms. Grosjean’s car was gone. The spot where it had been parked was a dark square of asphalt unmarked by the accumulating sleet. The cop hadn’t come back in. His footprints led around the house, out of sight.

  Emily set the glass in the sink and headed for the front door.

  In the living room, two of her sorority sisters jumped up from a sofa. Three others ran down the stairs and ducked into the front hall. Emily moved toward the door but they waved her back.

  “Nuh-unh,” said Julia Chan. “Stay.”

  Several of the young women formed a protective barrier around Emily. She felt like a rugby ball in the center of a scrum. Julia and her roommate, Hannah, nervously approached the door. It was heavy, solid wood. Julia, fists tight, peered through the peephole.

  “It’s a woman in a black suit.” She turned to Emily. “Holding up FBI credentials.”

  Relaxing, Emily said, “It’s fine.”

  The barrier let her through and she unlocked the door.

  “Special Agent Hendrix.”

  The woman on the porch lowered the badge wallet and pocketed the credentials. “Miss Hart.”

  Emily stepped aside and let her in. The woman was young, with reams of blond hair. She eyed the other girls.

  “I need to speak to Emily alone. Please go to your rooms and wait there. I’ll be up to interview you individually in a few minutes.”

  Curious and reluctant, the girls backed away. The blond turned to the man who had followed her inside. “Along with Special Agent in Charge Emmerich.”

  The man had dark hair and gray eyes. He closed and bolted the door.

  59

  Sleet streaked the windshield of the Suburban. Climbing toward the crest of the hill, Rainey edged around the final switchback. Amid tall firs, house lights became visible, fuzzy through the icy rain. Parked cars lined the narrow street. Nobody was out.

  Caitlin pointed up the block. “That’s it.”

  Rainey slowed to a crawl and lowered her head to peer through the accumulation on the windshield. The Xi Zeta house was a weathered colonial. Under its porch light the lawn was white with slush. A Portland police cruiser sat at the curb.

  At the house, the shades were up on the windows. Inside, in what looked like the living room, Emily was visible, wearing a dark blue hoodie, brown curls falling from a messy ponytail. Arms crossed, she spoke to somebody across the room, beyond their line of sight.

  “They didn’t pull down the blinds,” Rainey said.

&nb
sp; Whom was Emily was talking to? They drew closer to the house. A woman walked into view, her back to the window. Through the sleet, Caitlin could see that she had blond hair that fell below her shoulders. The housemother? No—she was too formally dressed. She wore a black suit and white blouse. Like a catering manager or hospital insurance coordinator. Or an FBI agent.

  “Hendrix,” Rainey said.

  She hit the high beams. Directly ahead, the parked police cruiser sat empty. The driver’s window was down, icy rain blowing into the car.

  Caitlin’s stomach tightened. “Christ.”

  In the house, the woman shook her finger at Emily. Talking to the girl over her shoulder, she walked to the front window and pulled down the blinds. For a fraction of a second, her face was visible.

  “Jesus, did you see her . . .”

  The woman’s shadow remained visible against the drawn blinds. She turned.

  She grabbed Emily by the arm and twisted her elbow behind her back.

  “They’re here,” Rainey said.

  The lights in the house went out.

  Caitlin jumped from the Suburban while it was still rolling.

  • • •

  Glock in hand, Caitlin ran across the front lawn in the icy rain. Behind her, the Suburban squealed to a stop. Its door slammed. Rainey’s footsteps pounded behind her.

  They rushed up the front steps of the sorority house and took positions on opposite sides of the door. Rainey grabbed the knob. Locked.

  She pulled her phone from her back pocket. The screen was lit with an incoming call. She answered, scanning the dark house and lawn, her eyes shining and intense.

  “Emmerich,” she said. “Detrick’s at the sorority house. No sign of the Portland police officers. We need backup.”

  Caitlin signaled that she would take the rear and raced around the side of the house. She ran into the shadows, sleet pricking her face. She heard Rainey smash a window to climb in the front.

  She nearly tripped over the man lying on the ground.

  It was a police officer. She crouched and put two fingers to his neck. Felt a pulse. He was breathing.