Hello, Darkness

by Sandra Brown

“We’re mainly interested in the photography,” Dean told him.

  “She said he was a camera freak,” Gavin said. “Lights, lenses, an elaborate setup. He posed her himself. Moved her around, you know, her arms and legs. Head. Everything.”

  “Could she have been exaggerating to impress you? Make you think of her as a model, like in Penthouse?”

  “It’s possible,” he replied. “But if she was exaggerating, she sure did her homework, because she knew a lot about it. She mentioned shutter speeds, stuff like that. Said he tinkered with gadgets to get each picture just right, and would get mad if she didn’t cooperate.”

  “He didn’t just fire off a few naughty snapshots,” Dean said to Curtis. “If you study the picture that Janey gave Gavin, you can tell it was taken by an amateur trying to be artistic.”

  “And you don’t think Armstrong is capable of that?”

  “Capable,” Dean said. “But if you’re out cheating on your wife, who is more than likely waiting up for you, do you take that much time with photography?”

  While Curtis was still mulling that over, he happened to glance beyond Dean’s shoulder. “What are you doing here?”

  Dean turned to see who had caused Curtis’s distraction and saw Officer Griggs coming toward them. The rookie’s grin dissolved under Curtis’s frown and tone of stern disapproval.

  “I . . . I was given the all clear, sir. Told it was okay to leave. But I was anxious to know if Armstrong had confessed, so instead—”

  “You left Paris out there alone?” Dean asked.

  “Well, sir, not—”

  “Who told you to leave?”

  “John Rondeau.”

  From the corner of his eye, Dean noticed Gavin’s reaction to the mention of Rondeau’s name. He reacted not with the expected dislike, but with alarm.

  “Gavin? What is it?” His son stared back at him, whey-faced. “Gavin?”

  “Dad . . .” The boy had to swallow hard before he could continue. “There’s something I’ve gotta tell you.”

  chapter 34

  Through the glass-block walls, the blue-white fluorescent lighting of the radio station’s lobby relieved the surrounding darkness, but only marginally. Downtown city lights were obliterated by hills. The moon was too slender to shed significant light. At this time of night, only an occasional car sped past on the narrow state highway. The nearest commercial building was a convenience store a half mile away, and it had closed at ten.

  From the vantage point of the FM 101.3 building, nothing was visible except hills dotted with cedar trees, limestone boulders, and an occasional herd of beef cattle. It was an ideal spot for the transmission tower that intermittently blinked its red lights as a warning to low-flying private aircraft.

  Rondeau dawdled beside his car until the taillights of Griggs’s patrol car disappeared behind a hill. He frowned with contempt for the officers driving away. Sure, he had wanted them to leave. But shouldn’t they have verified the order, which he told them had come straight from Curtis, rather than taking his word for it? That kind of carelessness was unacceptable. Tomorrow he would report them. It wouldn’t win him their regard, but one didn’t advance one’s career by making friends.

  He started toward the entrance, carrying with him the folder of information on Stan Crenshaw. It painted a disturbing portrait of a man whose dysfunctional family and personal insecurities had led to sexual malfeasances dating back to childhood, which were credible harbingers of Valentino’s aberrations.

  What offended Rondeau most, however, was the injustice it signified. Crenshaw had gotten away with his misconduct. His uncle had bought him out of every scrape. By doing so, Wilkins Crenshaw had slowly created a monster capable of kidnapping, raping, torturing, and murdering a lovely young woman.

  Because of his myopic focus on Brad Armstrong, Sergeant Curtis had dismissed the juicy contents of this folder. Initially Rondeau had taken offense at the snub, but it had actually worked to his advantage. Unwittingly, Curtis had handed him a golden opportunity to become everyone’s hero.

  Rather than press the buzzer, he knocked on the glass door.

  He didn’t have to wait long before getting his first look at the singularly unimpressive and unimposing Stan Crenshaw. He appeared out of a shadowed hallway off the lobby and approached the door warily, peering through the glass that, with the darkness beyond it, Rondeau knew would be reflecting like a mirror. Crenshaw did all but cup his hands around his eyes in order to see who had knocked.

  He assessed Rondeau with the condescension of the born rich, then looked beyond him toward the parking lot, where the squad car was conspicuously missing. “Where’re the policemen?”

  Rondeau, already tasting success, held up his badge.

  • • •

  “That, of course, was Johnny Mathis with his classic, ‘Misty.’ Definitely music to nuzzle by. I hope you have someone near you tonight as you listen to 101.3, classic love songs. This is Paris Gibson bringing you up to midnight with Melissa Manchester’s ‘I Don’t Know How to Love Him.’ The phone lines are open. Call me.”

  When the song began, she disengaged her mike. Two of her phone lines were blinking. She pressed one of the buttons, but got a dial tone. Mentally she apologized to the caller who obviously had given up on being answered.

  She pressed the second blinking light. “This is Paris.”

  “Hello, Paris.”

  Her heart actually stopped before a burst of adrenaline restarted it with the hard, fast pounding of a sprinter coming off the blocks. “Who is this?”

  “You know who it is.” His laugh was even more frightening than his whispery voice. “Your faithful fan Valentino.”

  Frantically she looked over her shoulder, hoping that perhaps Stan had silently rejoined her in the studio. She would have welcomed his sneaking up on her now. But she was alone in the room. “How—”

  “I know, I know, your boyfriend thinks he’s nabbed his culprit. His egotistical bungling would be comical if it weren’t so pathetic.” He laughed again, and it caused goose bumps to break out on her arms. “I’ve been a bad boy, haven’t I, Paris?”

  Her mouth had gone dry. Her heart continued to thump against her ribs and her pulse vibrated loudly against her eardrums. She ordered herself to calm down and think. She must alert Dean, Sergeant Curtis, Griggs outside, someone, that they had the wrong man in custody and that Valentino was still at large. But how?

  What was she thinking? She had a microphone at her fingertips! Hundreds of thousands of people were tuned in.

  But even as she reached for the mike switch, she reconsidered. Should she blurt out over the airwaves that the Austin PD had blundered? What if this call turned out to be a hoax, someone playing a cruel trick on her? What if she started a public panic?

  Better to keep him talking until she could figure out what to do. “On top of everything else, you’re a liar, Valentino. You moved up the deadline.”

  “That’s true. I have no honor.”

  “You killed Janey before giving me a chance to rescue her.”

  “Unfair, wasn’t it? But I never claimed to be honorable, Paris.”

  “Then why did you call me in the first place? If you intended to kill her all along, why set up this elaborate telephone campaign?”

  “To rock your world. And it worked, didn’t it? You feel positively rotten over your inability to save that slut’s life.”

  Paris refused to buy into his baiting. She’d been down that path, and Janey had died anyway. The only way she could redeem herself would be to identify this son of a bitch and see him brought to justice, and that couldn’t be done by arguing with him.

  She could dial Dean on her cell phone, but—damn!—it was in her office, in her handbag. Could she create a technical problem that would alert Stan? Soon the Manchester song would end. It was the last in a series. Dead air would bring Stan into the studio to see what the problem was.

  While she brainstormed, Valentino rambled. “She had to die, you
see, for fucking me over. She was a heartless bitch. I enjoyed watching her die slowly. I could tell when she realized that she would never get away from me. She knew she wasn’t going to survive.”

  “That must have been a real head trip for you.”

  “Oh, absolutely. Although it was actually heartrending the way her eyes silently pleaded with me to spare her life.”

  That statement made Paris forget her recent resolve not to be riled by anything he said. “You sick bastard.”

  “You think I’m sick?” he asked pleasantly. “I find that strange, Paris. I tortured and killed Janey, yes, but you tortured and killed your fiancé, didn’t you? Wasn’t it torture for him to learn about your unfaithfulness with his best friend? Do you think of yourself as sick?”

  “I didn’t drive Jack’s car into a bridge abutment, he did. The accident was his fault. He determined his fate, not me.”

  “That sounds like a rationalization,” he said in the reproving tone of a priest in the confessional. “I don’t see the difference between your sin and mine, except that your fiancé’s torture lasted much longer and he died much more slowly. Which makes you much crueler than me, doesn’t it? And that’s why you must be punished.

  “Would it be just to let you go on your merry way and live happily ever after with Malloy? I don’t think so,” he said in a nasty singsong. “That is not going to happen. You will never be together because you, Paris, are going to die. Tonight.”

  The line went dead. Instantly she reached for her hotline phone. No dial tone. Nothing. Silence. In quick succession, she tried all the phone lines, but to no avail. They were dead.

  Realization crept over her like an encroaching shadow. Either he had the access and ability to disable computerized telephone equipment from off the premises or—and this is what she feared—he had simply interrupted telephone service from inside the building.

  She shot from her stool. Yanking open the heavily padded door, she shouted down the dark corridor, “Stan!”

  The Manchester song was winding down. Racing back to the control board, she punched her mike button. “Hello, this is Paris Gibson.” Her voice sounded thin and high, not at all like her normal contralto. “This is not a—”

  The sound of a high-pitched alarm interrupted her.

  She swung her gaze toward the source. The sound was coming from the scanner, which recorded everything that went out over the air. You never knew it was there, really. The alarm only alerted you to an interruption in transmission.

  Terror seizing her, she punched her mike button repeatedly, but, like all the others on the board, it refused to light up.

  Again she lunged for the door. “Stan!” The echo of her scream seemed to chase her as she ran toward her office. Her handbag was where she’d left it on her desk, but it had been toppled onto its side. The contents had been spilled onto her desk. With shaking hands, she riffled through cosmetics, tissues, loose change, hoping to find her cell phone, but knowing it wouldn’t be there.

  It wasn’t.

  And something else was missing—her keys.

  Frantically she searched through the mail scattered across her desk and even dropped to her knees and looked beneath it, but she knew that both her key ring and her phone had been taken by the same individual who had cut the phone lines and shut down transmission. All lines of communication had been severed by the man who had killed Janey and had promised to kill her.

  Valentino.

  Her breathing was so harsh, she couldn’t hear anything else. She held it for several moments in order to listen. She crept to the open door of her office but hesitated at the threshold. The hallway, as always, was dim. Tonight the familiar darkness gave her no sense of security and comfort. It had a sinister quality, maybe because the building was as silent as a tomb.

  Where was Stan? Hadn’t he noticed that they weren’t broadcasting? If he had checked the studio and discovered she wasn’t there, why wasn’t he going through the building calling for her, checking to see what had happened?

  But even before her mind could completely form that question, it had arrived at the answer: Stan was unable to come and check on her.

  Valentino had dispatched him, possibly even before he had called her. He could have been in the building for quite some time before she’d know of it, sealed as she’d been inside the soundproof room.

  How had Valentino gotten past Griggs and Carson? Once he had, how had he opened the door to the building? A key was needed to unlock the dead bolt from either side. Had he persuaded Stan to open the door? How?

  Questions for which she had no answers.

  She was tempted to slam her office door, lock herself inside, and wait for help to arrive. Already, listeners all over the hill country would be wondering what had caused the station to go off the air. Dean might even know. Sergeant Curtis. Soon somebody would be rushing to her rescue.

  But in the meantime, she couldn’t hide herself in here. Griggs and Carson could be hurt. And Stan.

  She stepped out into the hallway. Putting her back to the wall so she could see in both directions, she inched along it, toward the front of the building. As she moved along the corridor, she turned off every light switch she passed. One distinct advantage she had over Valentino was knowing the layout of the building. She was accustomed to navigating it in semidarkness.

  Moving quickly, but as silently and cautiously as possible, she made her way toward the entrance. She approached each intersection of hallways with the fear of what awaited her around the corner, but when she turned the last one, the stretch of hall between her and the well-lighted lobby was clear. She raced down it and across the lobby, intent on launching herself against the door and pounding on the glass in order to get the attention of the policemen guarding her.

  But the squad car wasn’t there and the front door was bolted.

  With a soft cry, she backed away from the door until she came up against the receptionist’s desk. She rested against it to catch her breath and decide what to do.

  Suddenly her ankle was grabbed. She screamed.

  She looked down to see a man’s hand reaching from beneath the desk. But before she could even try to work herself free of his grasp, the fingers relaxed and the hand fell lifelessly to the grimy carpet.

  Stumbling over her own feet, she rounded the desk but drew up short when she saw the form lying facedown on the floor. She dropped to her knees and took the man by the shoulder, turning him over.

  John Rondeau groaned. His eyelids were fluttering but remained closed. He was bleeding profusely from a wound on his head.

  Gladness surged through her as she gasped his name. “John. Please, wake up. Please!” She slapped his cheek smartly, but he only groaned again, his head lolling to one side. He was unconscious.

  Just beyond the reach of his outstretched hand lay an official-looking file folder. She read the name typed on the identifying tab: Stanley Crenshaw.

  Her stomach dropped. “Oh my God.”

  Stan? It had been Stan all along?

  But why not? she reasoned. His ineptitude could be an excellent guise. He had the time and opportunity to commit the crimes. His days were free and so were his nights before and after her program. He had just enough technical knowledge to reroute telephone calls. He was an electronics and gadget junky. Surely among all his toys was camera equipment he could easily afford. He was attractive enough to lure a thrill-seeking teenager.

  And he had a lifetime’s worth of anger and resentment pent up, more than sufficient motivation to kill a woman who had spurned him. And with chilling clarity, Paris realized that just tonight she, too, had rejected him.

  “Help will be here soon,” she whispered to Rondeau. He didn’t respond. He’d slipped deeper into unconsciousness. The policeman was out of commission and she was on her own.

  But she wasn’t going to wait for Valentino to find her. She was going to find him.

  Quickly, she patted down Rondeau’s clothing. She didn’t know if computer
cops were armed or not, but she hoped so. She didn’t like guns, was revolted by the whole idea of guns, but she would use one if she had to in order to save her life.

  She exhaled her relief when she felt a bulge beneath his jacket. She flipped it back only to discover that the holster clipped to his belt was empty.

  Stan must have had the same idea. He was armed.

  After murmuring another assurance to Rondeau that he would be all right—which she hoped was true—she cautiously abandoned the false security of hiding behind the desk.

  As she left the lobby, she switched off the fluorescent lighting, although it occurred to her that Stan knew the building as well as she, so the darkness was no longer her exclusive advantage.

  Actually, she wasn’t going to hide any longer. She and Stan were in the building alone together, as they had been hundreds of nights before. She wasn’t going to play a childish cat-and-mouse game with him. If she went on the offensive and confronted him, she was confident she could talk to him long enough for rescue to arrive.

  The engineering room was empty, so was the men’s restroom and the snack room. All the offices, including her own, were deserted. Gradually she made her way to the very back of the building, where there was a large storeroom. The door to it was closed.

  The metal knob felt cold in her hand when she grasped it and pushed the door open. She was met by the dank smell of disuse and oldness. The room was cavernous, darker even than the rest of the building. The open doorway cast a wedge of light across the concrete floor, but it was so faint as to be negligible.

  Paris hesitated on the threshold until her eyes could adjust to this deeper darkness. When they did she noticed the walk-in closet where Lancy/Marvin’s custodial equipment and supplies were stored. The door to it was ajar. Listening intently, she was certain she heard the sound of breathing coming from inside it.

  “Stan, this is silly. Come on out. Stop this craziness before anyone else is hurt, including yourself.”

  Gathering all her courage, she entered the storeroom. “I know you’ve got a gun now, but I don’t believe you’ll shoot me. If you had wanted to kill me, you could have on any given night.”