Until Dark

by Mariah Stewart

  The image on the screen switched back to Kendra’s sketch, and the reporter repeated the phone numbers to call if anyone thought they’d seen the man in the picture.

  Kendra clicked off the TV, wondering if anyone had called those numbers with reliable information. Had he been sighted? Identified? She had Adam’s cell phone number in her wallet. She could call.

  Then again, so could he . . .

  The sound of the car pulling into the drive drew Kendra’s attention as well as Lola’s, who knew the sound of that car and couldn’t get outside fast enough to greet her mistress.

  “Hey!” Kendra called from the top step. “How was your visit?”

  “Great.” Selena got out of the car and slid her sunglasses onto the top of her head. “The christening was fun, except that they had me seated at the table with my sister Christine, who has the worst case of self-congratulitis I’ve ever seen. She just can’t tell you frequently enough just how good she is, and at how many things she does, in fact, excel.”

  “Ah, yes,” Kendra nodded sympathetically, “there are few things more boring than listening to someone toot their own horn.”

  “I’ve had to put up with it all my life,” Selena grumbled. “We all thought she’d grow out of it. But how’s my doggie? How’s Lola?”

  Lola barked a greeting, jumped up to cover Selena’s face with a big slurp, then barked again.

  “Was she good?”

  “She was great,” Kendra answered honestly. “She’s wonderful company. I’m thinking I should get a dog myself.”

  “Did you ever have one?”

  “We always had dogs when I was growing up. My mother was never without one. Her last dog . . . the one she had . . . at the house in Princeton . . . died about two weeks before she did.” Kendra hadn’t thought about Job, her mother’s dog, in several years. “I didn’t realize how much I missed having one until I had Lola here for a few days.”

  “The local animal shelter always has wonderful dogs,” Selena noted.

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  Lola jumped at the side of the car.

  “Well, I guess that’s pretty clear.” Selena laughed. “Someone wants to go home.”

  “And I was starting to think she liked it here.”

  “You know what they say, there’s no place like home.” Selena gave Kendra a quick hug. “Thanks so much for letting her stay with you. I really appreciate it. Especially since, well, since this week.”

  “It was my pleasure,” Kendra said as she returned the hug. “I really enjoyed the company. Maybe I’ve been alone long enough here. Maybe it’s time to get a dog.”

  “Or a man.” Selena grinned as she started the car.

  “Oh, sure. Lots of them around.” Kendra laughed. “I think I’ll have better luck finding the right dog.”

  The sound of the ringing phone drifted through the open kitchen window.

  “I better get that. I’ll see you on Tuesday at Father Tim’s.”

  “Want me to pick you up?”

  “That’ll be great.” Kendra waved as she ran up the back steps. She caught the phone right as the answering machine picked up.

  “Hello?” she said, breathless from the sprint.

  There was just the faintest hint of music in the background.

  “Hello?” she repeated.

  When the silence continued, she hung up.

  “Grrrr.” She growled and headed back for the kitchen when the phone rang again.

  Tempted though she was to pound it with a hammer, she lifted the receiver.

  “Now listen up. I don’t think you’re the least bit—”

  “Kendra?”

  “Adam? Did you just call here and hang up?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Someone did.”

  “Wasn’t me. Maybe a wrong number?”

  “I guess. It’s happened several times this week, though.” She relaxed. “Tell me, how’s the investigation going? I was just wondering if you’d gotten any response at all to the sketch. Other than the usual ‘I think I saw this guy with Elvis at a bar on the outskirts of town the other night’ . . .”

  “Oh, there’s been a reaction, all right,” Adam said, his voice weary. “They found another body this morning in Newkirk—that’s near Lancaster. Everything fits, except the description of the last person she’d been seen with.”

  “What’s different?”

  “It seems our killer has shaved.”

  “Shaved? But he didn’t have a beard.”

  “No, but he did have a full head of hair.”

  “He shaved his head?”

  “Apparently so.” Adam paused, then asked, “Can you meet me at the police department here in Newkirk? Looks like your work might not be quite finished on this one.”

  “You can always computer generate—” she started, but he interrupted.

  “John wants you back on the case. He doesn’t believe a computer can capture the nuances of expression that you do. And neither do I.”

  “All right. It will take me a few hours to get there, though.”

  “I’ll be here,” Adam told her. “I won’t be going any place any time soon.”

  Chapter

  Nine

  “I should have paid more attention. I should have watched out for her. I should never have let her walk out the door with that man. . . .”

  Grace Tobin covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

  “There was no way you could have known.” Kendra rubbed the back of the woman’s shoulders to comfort her. She looked across the room to where Adam sat, and shrugged slightly. The witness had to get through this part—the grief, the self-recrimination—before she could give them any information at all. Only after Grace had built some emotional fences would she be able to recall the events clearly. Where she had pulled back from Adam, Kendra willingly stepped into the role of comforter and willing shoulder to facilitate the process.

  “He just seemed so nice, so sincere. Annie was taken with him from the minute she met him, I could tell.”

  Kendra handed Grace a tissue and asked, “How could you tell? What did he do to get her attention, do you remember?”

  “He was very quiet, very soft-spoken. Respectful, I’d say.” Grace sniffed. “He bought us both drinks and asked her to dance. . . . Annie loves to dance. She started taking lessons about two years ago, right after her divorce. It was the only thing she did for herself, you know? Everything else she did was for her kids.”

  At the thought of Annie’s two children, Grace burst into tears all over again.

  “What was his name, did he say?”

  “Jeff. He said his name was Jeff.”

  “Last name?”

  “If he gave one I didn’t hear it. I was busy talking to someone else when he came up to us. Then he and Annie started talking, and they moved to a table. They talked for a couple of hours. Actually, it looked as if she was doing most of the talking. A couple of times I looked over and he was nodding, like he was agreeing with something she said, you know the way you do when you’re interested in the conversation. . . .” Grace’s eyes spilled over once again.

  “Adam, perhaps you could get Grace a glass of water.” Kendra glanced in the direction of the kitchen. Due to the stress of the witnesses, they opted to interview her in her own home, hoping that the familiar surroundings would go a long way toward helping her to relax.

  It had seemed like a good idea at the time, Kendra thought wryly as she patted the sobbing woman on the back.

  From her seat on the sofa in Grace Tobin’s living room, Kendra could see straight across the street to Annie McGlynn’s town house, where media and law enforcement vehicles all but blocked off the street entirely. As Adam returned to the room with water for Grace, she nodded in the direction of the window. Her message received, Adam closed the blinds.

  “I guess Chris will take the kids now,” Grace hiccuped. “God knows what will happen to them.”

  “Chris?
”

  “Annie’s ex-husband.”

  “I take it you don’t care for him?” Adam commented as he sat on a chair facing the two women.

  “He ran around on her the entire time they were married. He never had time for the kids when she was alive.” She shook her head. “Annie did everything for those kids. She was the perfect mother.”

  “You mean, involved in their activities? Sports, school, that sort of thing?” Adam asked.

  “There was no part of their lives she didn’t care about. Annie had grown up in foster homes. She was determined that her kids would have every advantage she hadn’t had. Including a mother who was always there for them, a mother who always listened . . .” Grace accepted another tissue from Kendra. “She had never had anyone to pay attention to her, you know? So when I saw this guy sitting there, listening to her, being so respectful of her, I thought, ‘Wow, isn’t this great? Maybe Annie’s luck is finally changing.’ . . .”

  She hiccuped again.

  “Well, it changed all right.” Grace’s jaw tightened. “Shit, you just can never tell, can you? I mean, he was a guy anyone would be interested in. Good-looking, tall . . .”

  “How tall?” Kendra interrupted, trying to get to the business at hand. “As tall as Agent Stark?”

  “No, not quite. But I’m not a good judge of height, and besides, mostly he was sitting down, except for when he first approached us and later when they were dancing. Shit. He looked nothing like the picture on television.”

  “Then we’ll make a new picture, one that looks the way he does now.”

  “Then you think it’s the same man who killed those other women?” The question was directed to Adam.

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “The police report says that he was bald.” Kendra jumped in before Grace could ask questions of her own.

  Grace nodded. “But bald like he’d shaved, not like he’d lost his hair, you know what I mean? You know the difference? Like perfectly smooth.”

  “The shape of his head”—Kendra’s hands reached into her bag for her sketch pad and pencil—“more round than oval?”

  “Just . . . nice. Not too anything. Just . . . oh, maybe rounded, not pointy, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Like this?” Kendra’s fingers had floated over the paper. She turned the sketch pad to Grace.

  “A little less round maybe on the sides there . . . yes, like that.”

  “And his ears, what were they like? Did they protrude . . . ?”

  “Oh, no, they were pretty close to the side of his head, flat like . . . yes.” Grace nodded as Kendra moved closer to her so she could see the sketch as it was being made.

  “His jaw . . . the shape of his face . . .”

  Grace traced her finger on the paper. “Lean. I remember thinking he was lean . . . not just his face, but everything about him.”

  Adam’s cell phone rang, and he walked into the kitchen to avoid breaking the concentration of the victim or the artist. When he returned several minutes later, Kendra glanced his way.

  “That was Chief Rosello, Newkirk PD. He’s across the street.” Adam folded the phone and returned it to his pocket. “He was wondering when you’d have a sketch for him. They’re anxious to display the suspect’s new look to the media.”

  “I’m done, I think, unless Grace has something else to add?” Kendra handed Grace the sketch.

  “His eyes were a little darker, maybe. Maybe there were more lashes . . .”

  Kendra made the appropriate changes.

  “That’s better, yes.” Grace nodded confidently. “That’s him. That’s the man Annie met at the bar.”

  “Did you notice what time they left?”

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t even realize she’d left the bar until it was closing time and she was nowhere to be found.”

  “Was that unusual for her?”

  “Annie never left bars with a guy she didn’t know. Never. She just wouldn’t.” Grace shook her head sadly.

  “But she did this time.”

  “I don’t know that she meant to leave with him.” Grace frowned. “I mean, she might have just stepped outside with him, maybe, like if he was going to show her something.”

  “Like what?” Kendra stood. “What would she want to see badly enough that she would go outside with a stranger?”

  “Two weeks ago she met a guy with a Corvette at Huskers—that’s the bar we were at last night—and we both went outside to take a look. That was one sweet car,” Grace told them. “So maybe it was a car. Annie’s a real car freak, especially sports cars. She just loves sports cars.”

  Grace dabbed at her face, seemingly unaware that she still spoke of her friend in the present tense.

  “Whose car was that, do you know? The Corvette?”

  “Some guy from Harrisburg—no, I know what you’re thinking, but he looked nothing like this guy. Nothing at all. That guy was short, paunchy. The type of guy who needs a great car, if you catch my drift.”

  “If you think of anything, if you remember anything else, any distinguishing marks, anything at all, you can call me at this number, or you can call Agent Stark.” Kendra handed her a card.

  “Thanks, I will.” Grace sat the card next to Adam’s on the coffee table, then rose to walk her visitors to the door.

  “Ms. Tobin, could you think back to the night you and Annie went outside to look at the Corvette?” Adam turned as he reached the second step outside the Tobin town house. “This man, Jeff, was he there that night?”

  “Not that I remember,” she told him.

  “Anyone at all that you remember maybe paying attention to Annie? Anyone who was staring at her? Did you notice? Or did she maybe mention that someone was watching her?”

  “No, I’m sorry.” Grace shook her head. “If there was, she never mentioned it. And I didn’t notice. I’m sorry.”

  Grace Tobin’s attention was drawn to the scene across the street, where a tall thin woman was getting out of the police car that had just pulled up.

  “That’s Annie’s sister, Molly. Do you think it would be all right if I went over . . . ?”

  “We’ll walk you over, sure.” Adam reached a hand up to her from the step upon which he stood, waited while she checked her pocket for her keys, then closed the door behind her.

  “Thank you,” she whispered as she took his hand and walked with him and Kendra to the foot of Annie McGlynn’s driveway, where the media that had earlier gathered now descended upon them.

  “Would you mind taking her inside, Kendra?” Adam asked. “Then when you come back out, might be a good time for you to show off the new sketch and talk to the media.”

  “You got a good description?” Jim Rosello of the Newkirk, Pennsylvania, Police Department, called to Adam.

  “Good enough,” Adam nodded. “The witness is pretty sure of herself. Kendra’s sketch reflects that.”

  “You think she’ll be willing to show the sketch to the press herself, maybe say a few words about it? If she’s ready.”

  “She’s ready.” Adam turned to watch Kendra come down the front steps. She always managed to draw his attention. Always . . . no matter where he was, no matter what the circumstances.

  “Kendra,” he called to her.

  When she approached, her leather envelope tucked under her arm, Adam introduced her to Chief Rosello, adding, “The chief agrees that now is a good time to show off Jeff to the media.”

  “Jeff?” the chief asked.

  “That’s the name the suspect gave to Annie and Grace at the bar,” Kendra told him. “Which is probably not his real name, but maybe one he’s used before. It’s worth mentioning. And something else that might be worth mentioning,” she touched the chief’s arm as they walked in the direction of the yellow tape that cordoned off the media. “He might be driving a stolen sports car. At least temporarily.”

  Kendra faced the cameras like a pro, holding up both sketches to show the contrast.

  “At fir
st glance, they hardly appear to be the same man,” she told them before one of the reporters could make that observation on their own. “You can see how the hair, the glasses, the baseball cap, all combine to make the subject appear older than he looks in the more stripped-down, bald version of himself. There’s nothing for him to hide behind here.”

  “What are the chances that in the first sketch he was wearing a wig?” one of the television reporters asked.

  “Chief Rosello?” Kendra stepped back to allow him to respond.

  “He could have been,” Rosello agreed. “No one was really close enough to him to be able to make that distinction. And we have no way of knowing that he isn’t wearing a wig today. He’s not going to be easy to identify. He’s clever and he’s demonstrated that he will alter his appearance and very well may have again. Keep in mind that facial hair doesn’t take all that long to grow for some men. A week from now, he could be sporting a mustache. And now you’ve seen him with and without hair.”

  “Do you think it’ll be that long before he strikes again?” someone asked.

  “The FBI is steering the overall investigation,” Rosello turned to Adam, “so I think I’ll let Agent Stark respond to that.”

  Adam spoke with the press for almost ten minutes before he decided to pull the plug on the discussion. It still had not been determined how much information would be released to the public.

  Before stepping back from the microphone, Adam added, “One more thing. The suspect may be driving a sports car. He—”

  “What makes you think that?” the reporter closest to Adam’s right asked.

  “There’s a possibility that he might have used that as a lure to draw Annie McGlynn into the parking lot. He clearly watches his victims long enough to know their habits, what will draw their attention.”

  The press digested this bit of news silently before erupting with a barrage of questions.

  “Anything else pertaining to this particular case, you’ll have to go through Chief Rosello.” Adam waved aside the flood of questions.

  “Thanks,” the chief muttered under his breath as Adam escaped.