by Anne Frasier
ALSO BY ANNE FRASIER
The Elise Sandburg series
Play Dead
Stay Dead
Hush
Sleep Tight
Before I Wake
Pale Immortal
Garden of Darkness
Short stories
“Made of Stars”
“Max Under the Stars”
Anthologies
Deadly Treats
Once Upon a Crime
From the Indie Side
Discount Noir
Writes of Spring
The Lineup: Poems on Crime
Zero Plus Seven
Nonfiction (Theresa Weir)
The Orchard, a Memoir
The Man Who Left
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2015 Theresa Weir
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781503944183
ISBN-10: 1503944182
Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
He was hooked on death. No shame in that, Jeffrey Nightingale always told himself. At this point the body count was so high and his appetite for murder so strong that he’d lost track of how many lives he’d ended. One thing he did know—the more he killed, the more he wanted to kill.
Profilers called it escalation; Nightingale called it addiction to the quest for pleasure. Some people did crack or meth or heroin. He killed.
They made it so easy—the cops. Early on, Nightingale had learned to shift and change his MO. He wasn’t an idiot who adhered to the ritual and the pattern. Sure, he’d prefer it that way, but he took his drugs any way he could get them. If that meant switching things up to maintain his high, so what? The high was what counted. And another thing. When you’d been killing for so damn long, it got boring if you didn’t add some variety, if you didn’t experiment—because where was the buzz in doing the same kill over and over? He’d never understood that.
He kept ahead of investigators with false clues and by moving from city to city. Hell, they thought his kills were committed by several different guys. That cracked him up. But now winter had hit with a vengeance. He was sick of snow, and he’d decided to head south. Winter made everything harder, including murder.
The city he’d chosen as his next home wasn’t big, not by Philadelphia standards, anyway. It didn’t have a huge police force, had no substantial FBI presence. It would suit him for a while. Maybe a year, maybe two.
How many kills could he get in before they figured out the murders were connected? He was betting five or six. How many before they started getting the least bit close to catching him? That would never happen. He was too smart and had been in the business too long.
A pro didn’t approach this stuff blindly. He didn’t just pack up the car and head out. It took careful planning. It took fake IDs. It took a new persona. It took an in-depth study of the other team.
From his spot in the Philadelphia coffee shop, Nightingale clicked his laptop keys and pulled up an article he’d already read several times. A piece about a woman named Elise Sandburg who’d been made head detective of the Savannah Police Department. The article included a photo of her, taken in a cemetery that was apparently located right behind the police station. How cool was that? She was attractive, with straight dark hair that fell to her shoulders, and a direct, no-shit gaze, her arms across her chest, white shirt, black slacks, badge on her belt. Standing a little off to one side was a guy in a dark suit.
David Gould.
Since Nightingale was in a public place, he allowed himself only a slight smile. The detective’s name was one he recognized. He remembered every agent and cop who’d pursued him and failed. And it didn’t hurt that Gould was so handsome Nightingale got hard just looking at him.
The photo of the two detectives was like some movie poster or a promo for one of those stupid TV shows that was so popular.
But this wasn’t fiction.
In real life, what came first? The killer or the kill? Were people born to it? Or was it like a drug? One taste and, if you had an addictive personality, you were hooked? He’d read about that kind of instant addiction. And he’d damn well read about other killers. Everything he could get his hands on. He devoured profiler books, and he knew how to avoid the stereotypes. So with each move, he became a different person. A different profile for each city.
He didn’t discriminate. That helped. Sure, he had favorite victims. Who didn’t? His taste was for twenty-something, dark-haired males—younger versions of David Gould—but Nightingale was also what profilers liked to call an opportunistic killer. Those were harder to catch. And in order to play against type, he sometimes went for females. They weren’t his drug of choice—females were a little like smoking pot or drinking when you really wanted to mainline something awesome—but that was okay. He was all about keeping things positive.
And the great thing about his addiction? Other than basic expenses like rope and duct tape and plastic and whatever his chosen persona needed, it cost nothing.
Free. Not many addictions were free.
He closed his laptop, stuck it in his bag, and zipped the case. His chair scraped the wooden floor as he got to his feet.
He’d been coming to the hippie café for almost a year, working remotely at a job he could do from anywhere. Handy when it came to his true calling.
He’d miss this place.
“Meet your deadline?” the barista asked when he saw Nightingale heading out.
“Yep. Hit ‘Send’ a few minutes ago.”
Feeling sentimental, Nighting
ale dug into the back pocket of his jeans and pulled out his worn black billfold, opened it, and extracted a five-dollar bill. He tapped it into the tip jar and smiled at the young guy behind the counter.
God, how Nightingale would love to do him.
And by “do” him, he meant tie him up and make sweet love to him for a week or so before finally killing him and dumping his body.
But he wouldn’t.
The guy smiled. “Thanks, man.”
Thanks for not raping and murdering me, you generous bastard.
“You’re welcome.” Nightingale smiled back, and the smile was heavy with the unshared humor of the moment. “You’re very welcome,” he told the barista. I saved your life today and you don’t even know it.
Sometimes doing nothing was the biggest gift of all.
From a table behind him came the kind of conversation he loved, conversation that was in many ways the payoff, or at least part of the payoff. Kind of like the afterparty that followed a great show.
“Did you hear about the latest murder?” a woman was saying. And then, “I want to move. I want to get out of this town. We could have a serial killer living right next door, for all we know.”
Nightingale turned to see a middle-aged couple seated at a table, hugging their lattes, a newspaper with the dead-body headline between them, an incomplete crossword puzzle to one side. He was near enough to see that twelve down was still blank. Had the puzzle been too tough? Or were they just too dumb?
“Awful, isn’t it?” he asked. He knew how to play this. Years of watching sappy movies, then practicing facial expressions in front of the mirror, had made him a master of the perfect response.
The woman’s eyes locked on him. The horror of what she’d just read could be followed all the way to her marrow. He never got tired of that.
She shook her head. “Terrible.”
“I’m blowing this place,” he announced. This was another thing about him. He loved conversation. He loved engaging people. “Today,” he elaborated.
Her face opened up in a shared understanding of the seriousness of having such awful things going on so close to home—a situation her husband seemed unconcerned about. Right now he had his nose back in the crossword puzzle, a frown on his face, as the woman continued to stare at Nightingale, confusion replacing their brief bit of bonding. “But you aren’t the killer’s demographic,” she pointed out.
“Right,” he said. “But a crazy like that? Maybe he’ll change his demographic. And anyway, how many murders now? Six?” He shrugged. “I just don’t want to live in a town where this kind of thing has become commonplace. I’ve had enough.”
“Good for you.” She glanced at the man across the table. He was still ignoring them. Then she looked back at Nightingale—her partner in distress. “Good for you.”
Yeah, good for me.
He hitched his messenger bag over his shoulder and gave the woman a nod. At the door, he paused. “Twelve down is exsanguination.”
The guy finally reacted. He stared at the folded paper in his hand, then raised his pencil in a gesture of excitement. “You’re right! That was a tough one.”
Nightingale left the café. There was a whole big world out there.
Like Savannah, Georgia.
CHAPTER 2
Four months later . . .
Fifteen minutes after arriving at her office on the third floor of the Savannah Police Department, her coffee yet unsipped, breakfast just a pipe dream, head homicide detective Elise Sandburg received an alert about a dead body. She immediately put in a call to her partner.
“I’m five minutes out,” David Gould said. Through the phone, she could hear the sound of traffic. “Meet me in the parking lot.” He disconnected with no attempt at conversation.
Elise let out a sigh and headed down the hall to the elevator.
Six months had passed since they’d bonded over injuries suffered at the hands of the monster the press called “the Organ Thief.” For a brief time it seemed their relationship had smoothed and fallen into an easy camaraderie. Pals, friends, albeit cautious friends. Yes, there’d been that time, that one time . . . Like two teenagers, they’d almost gone all the way. Almost. But that was in the past. This new thing—and she was beginning to think that, with David, there would always be a new thing—had zero to do with “almost.”
David wasn’t happy unless he was stirring something up. Unless he was trying to get under her skin. Typically just annoying stuff or kind of funny stuff she might even admit she secretly enjoyed. But this new thing could only be considered betrayal.
Blatant, in-your-face betrayal. Of course he didn’t see it that way. And of course he thought she was making something out of nothing. But it was a lot more than nothing when your partner befriended the very person who’d ruined your life. The very person she’d taught herself to hate with the hatred of a thousand burning suns.
Her father, Jackson Sweet.
David had helped him find a place to stay. And now he was trying to help him find work. They’d even gone fishing together. Fishing!
Elise could have dealt with the job hunting and the housing. She might have begrudgingly done those things herself if David hadn’t stepped in first. But the fishing. Fishing was something you did with buddies, with good friends.
And not only that. It had also altered the relationship between Elise and David. It meant there was no more dropping by David’s apartment—not with the chance her father might be there. Not if it meant she might be sitting in the same seat her father had vacated minutes or hours earlier. That kind of presence lingered after a person was gone. Sometimes days, sometimes weeks. And sometimes it never went away. Why couldn’t David see that? Why didn’t he understand the level of his betrayal?
Caught up in this preoccupation with her homicide partner, Elise was hardly aware of taking the elevator to street level, hardly aware of pushing open the police department’s double doors, hardly aware of stepping outside.
A man shot off a bench and lunged at her.
All reaction and no thought, Elise slammed him against the trunk of a tree, her forearm to his throat as she pulled her gun and pressed it to his temple.
His hands shot up and he stammered, “I’m Jay Thomas Paul from the New York Times! New York Times!”
She stared at him a moment, gauging his fear—the dilated pupils behind hip glasses, the perspiration on his forehead.
She released him and slipped her Glock back into her shoulder holster, as he nervously watched her and rubbed his throat.
“Bad idea to startle a cop,” she said.
“I was excited to finally meet you. I’ve read about you. Heard about you. Sorry.”
That kind of comment raised the question: What had he heard? That she’d been left on a grave as an infant? That her dad had returned from the dead decades too late, after she no longer gave a damn?
Behind her, people who’d stopped to watch her initial overreaction moved on, toward the police station. The ones who worked there would probably report the incident to Major Hoffman, who would then feel inclined to ask if Elise needed to schedule an extra appointment with the department psychologist, along with a few days’ leave. And all the while Hoffman would wonder if it had been a mistake to give Elise the job of head homicide detective.
And all the while Elise would wonder the same thing.
Because, hell yeah, she was jumpy. It wasn’t this Jay Thomas Paul person’s fault. Her reaction simply underscored a problem she hadn’t yet gotten a handle on. Her psych evaluation, which she’d never seen, although she’d love to, probably said something about the psychological ramifications of being taken captive and tortured by a madman.
She’d done okay at first, after it was all over. But now she suspected post-traumatic stress disorder was kicking in. She hoped it would eventually kick its way back out. If not, she might have to step down as head of homicide.
“Sorry,” she told the man named Jay Thomas Paul.
He
gave her an almost shy smile and pulled out a business card. “That might be the most unusual meet I’ve ever had in this job.”
He was in his early forties, with curly dark hair a bit on the long side, a clean-shaven jaw, and a manner that felt casual and friendly—now that she was no longer trying to kill him. His overall vibe, combined with his multipocketed khaki vest, his jeans, and his sneakers, shouted “reporter”—a type she made a point of avoiding.
She slipped his card into her pocket. “Your name isn’t familiar,” she said. “Why are you here again?”
“From the New York Times. We’re doing a piece on you and your partner. I was told you’d been informed and had given your okay. I’m supposed to shadow you.”
She took note of the photo ID clipped to his breast pocket. Curly-haired guy smiling at the camera.
She had a vague recollection of Major Hoffman pulling her aside and giving her a pep talk about an interview. “Good for the department. Good for the city.” Something like that. Problem was, cops and reporters didn’t mix. Elise was sure there were ethical reporters out there—the kind who weren’t so obsessed with their own careers that they would risk blowing a case—but the ones cops tended to run into were barely a step above the paparazzi. And now, to have to play big sister to this guy . . . It didn’t sit well with her.
“I’m too busy today.” She turned and walked away.
He dogged her with all the determination of his occupation, matching her stride with a bouncy step that could only be described as boyish and enthused. It wasn’t hard for him to keep up since she was still in physical therapy for the injuries she’d sustained at the hands of the Organ Thief. At least she no longer needed a cane.
In the parking lot, Elise hit the fob on the key ring she’d been given at the checkout desk upon her arrival. An unmarked car answered, and she shot for it, Jay Thomas still glued to her side while she tried to think of ways to shake him. The easiest would be to simply get in the car and drive off. Yeah, that would work.
“I’m supposed to come along,” he insisted. “That’s what shadowing is. Spend the whole day with you. Well, actually weeks.”
