Blood Moon

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  Roarke picked up the thought, with building excitement. “So we should concentrate on professions like truck driving that would take him to these particular locations, give him a familiarity with them. A truck route with regular stops in all three towns.”

  “And that would have allowed his path to cross with all three of the families.”

  A possibility… though as he thought it through, Roarke wasn’t sure he believed that someone as disordered as the Reaper would be to hold down even a truck-driving job.

  As if hearing his thought, Snyder spoke. “Remember that the Reaper had a significant cooling off period. These weren’t sprees. He went for six months at least between killings. That speaks to some level of control.”

  It made sense, although Roarke didn’t like to think it. A psychotic killer with that degree of control… a nightmare combination.

  “And usually you don’t see a killer traveling this kind of distance until he’s built up a history of successful kills. As confidence increases, the hunting zone will expand.”

  Roarke spoke aloud. “On the other hand, if the killer is psychotic, or thinks he has some special power or protection, that could also instill confidence, yes?”

  “Quite right,” Snyder agreed. “Another thing interests me here. This specific M.O., the massacres of entire families, is very unusual. Generally a family massacre involves an adult, most often the father, killing his own family and then himself.”

  Roarke considered this, and sensed the glimmering of an idea. “We were thinking in our group meeting that we could road trip to Arcata, hoping she would follow us and extrapolate from our stops that we were re-opening the Reaper case. But what if we found something closer to home?”

  “Found something?” Snyder asked with a hint of wariness.

  Roarke felt a superstitious chill even speaking it aloud. “Another massacre to investigate. Something recent. A family murder/suicide like you’re talking about.”

  From the silence on Snyder’s end, he knew his old mentor was feeling the same unease.

  “I see,” Snyder said slowly. “A family massacre that you would investigate as a new Reaper killing. Yes, I think so. I think that might exactly do the trick.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Haight Street eateries begin to open about the same time that she realizes she is hungry. She finds herself drawn to an Asian fusion restaurant, painted olive green with an enormous pink lotus flower design, and a whole wall of glass looking out on the street.

  Inside the scents are delicate and layered, but the food she cares nothing about. It is the window that draws her.

  She lets the tiny Asian hostess lead her to a perfect table beside the wall, and she sits and loses herself for some time, watching the parade of humanity through the glass, waiting for whatever the window has to offer.

  It is not long. Striding up the street, wobbing on too-high heels, comes a girl with blazing eyes, a feral intensity, a brash sexual confidence. Dark hair, huge gray eyes like rain. A beauty, despite the meth sores on her face and neck. And no more than sixteen, she is sure of it.

  Despite the November chill, the girl is dressed in a miniskirt and boots, and an open-collar sweater that falls off her thin and shapely shoulders, exposing an elaborate fairy tale of a tattoo on her back: a girl dancing in flames, trees and vines blooming with fiery flowers, a whole mythology inked into her flesh. The art scrolls up onto her neck, disappearing under her hair, a dangerous and illegal process requiring weeks, months, of pain.

  She is high, horribly high, moving back and forth across the street and talking loudly to every man and boy who passes, bumming cigarettes, spare-changing.

  Behind the window, Cara can see the mixed lust and revulsion on their faces.

  She is jostled from her thoughts as the birdlike Asian woman serves her, and she uses chopsticks on a delicate concoction of glazed sugar peas and shrimp and watches the girl outside the window, waiting.

  It doesn’t take long, either, until the pimp shows up, pale flesh over bone, with pirate boots and long shaggy black hair, a steampunk panderer. He puts an arm around the girl, pulls her out of the street and levers her down to sit on the curb with him, speaking into her hair and stroking her back. The drugs burn through his eyes and skin and Cara sees the entire scenario: the seduction and the beatings, the promises of a house together after “just a few more months” of tricks, the five other girls he is telling the same thing to while making hundreds of thousands a year off their bodies, turning them out, these girls, to be used by pedophiles night after night.

  The pimp stands and takes the burning girl by the hand, tugging, coaxing her up; then ordering, slapping her, pointing a finger. No more words. She will comply.

  He swaggers off down the street, leaving her.

  As Cara watches, the girl suddenly looks straight at her through the window, sees her gaze, her attention, as if the glass isn’t there at all. And in a manic flurry, she strides toward the restaurant, straight in through the door.

  The tiny manager at the counter is already running toward the girl to ward her away, but the girl strides straight to Cara’s table and snatches a shrimp off her plate with her fingers.

  “Do you mind?” she says, locking eyes with Cara with ultimate defiance and pops the shrimp into her mouth, sucking the sauce from it then swallowing, as if she is giving head.

  The manager is now shouting into a cell phone, certainly to the police, and the other patrons recoil, horrified, but Cara says quietly,“It’s all right,” and looks only at the girl.

  The blazing girl turns on her heel and strides out as abruptly as she entered.

  Cara watches from behind the wide plate glass window as the girl goes back out on the street, and collapses bonelessly onto the curb, her head between her knees.

  As the hostess hovers, apologizing, Cara asks for the check and a takeout box.

  Outisde on the street, she walks up behind the girl, who is motionless, slumped over on the curb, passed out, asleep, or possibly dead. But as Cara steps behind her, the girl jerks her head up and looks at her.

  Cara looks down at her, then stoops and sets the box of food on the curb beside her.

  They lock eyes, and Cara sees herself as if in a mirror.

  Then she turns and walks down the street.

  It does not take her long to find him again; those boots and that long black dreadlocked hair stand out even among the denizens of this strip. The pimp walks slowly ahead of her on the sidewalk, intent in conversation with a man of forty or so in jeans and denim jacket and cowboy boots, whose personal hygiene leaves much to be desired. She can feel the stench of him from six yards behind. The man nods greedily and reaches into his pocket as he walks, then slips something into the pimp’s pocket beside him. The pimp puts a friendly arm over his shoulder, steers him into an alleyway.

  She moves closer, sees their shadows darting obscenely on the bricks of the building.

  The pimp comes out of the alley on his own a few moments later, strolling loose- hipped down the street.

  She watches him get halfway down the block, then moves quickly into the alley. The narrow passageway is empty, but there are Dumpsters near the end.

  She walks deliberately toward the trash bins.

  On the other side of a bin, the man in cowboy boots stands against the wall. A young girl is on her knees in front of him, unbuckling the enormous buckle on his leather belt.

  The girl freezes as she hears the step behind her. The man looks up, startled.

  “I’ve got this,” Cara says aloud to the girl, and when the girl hesitates, she jerks her head to the side, dismissing her.

  The girl scrambles to her feet and scurries obediently away, down the alley toward the street.

  The john is staring at her open-mouthed, trying to process what has just gone on. “The fuck is this—” he starts, but she is stepping forward, her hands reaching for his belt, skillful fingers pulling the tongue loose from the buckle, unzipping his pants.
Already his face has gone mindless and slack in anticipation. She works his pants down, encasing his knees…

  He never sees it coming as she brings her hands up and slams both her fists against the sides of his neck. He staggers in pain, hobbled by his own trousers. She catches him by the hair and smashes his face into the brick wall, once, twice… she feels the warm blood on her hands, hears the crunch as his nose breaks and his mouth crushes to pulp. There is one muffled gag of pain, but the third slam knocks him out.

  She lets him drop and steps back, her breath coming ragged as she stares down at him, crumpled and bare-assed, blood streaming from his face.

  Her hand reaches for the razor in her pocket. But she cannot, must not. It is too much of a risk.

  She stares down at him, and takes a deep, centering breath.

  Not dead, not this time.

  But not likely to follow any teenage girls down alleys in the foreseeable future.

  She turns and walks, past the Dumpsters, toward the street. The work has just begun.

  Chapter Twelve

  Returning to the office, Roarke nearly collided with Jones while walking in through the door of the conference room. He absently snapped, “Taking that tail too literally, Jones.” Then he felt a surge of curiosity and turned back on the agent. “Did you—”

  “No sign of her,” said the younger agent.

  Roarke felt disappointment, and also inevitability. So she’d followed him on the road, but not in the city?

  Knowing what he did about Cara, he thought it entirely possible that the city was intolerable to her. On the other hand, it would be child’s play to lose yourself in this densely packed city, especially for someone so expert in disappearing. So she was here, but staying back?

  And doing what in the meantime?

  It was an uneasy thought.

  He took the seat at the head of the table, then instantly stood up again, as usual too edgy to sit. “We can’t expect Lindstrom to come to us without a reason. So we’re going to give her a reason. We’re going to find a case that we can use to make it look like we’re investigating another Reaper killing. A case that will make it seem as if the killer of her family has reemerged.”

  There was a stunned silence in the room. Then Jones and Epps overlapped each other. “How the hell are we going to do that?” “Fake a case, you mean?”

  “We look for a family massacre,” Roarke told them, and again felt a superstitious chill just saying it. He ignored it and pressed on. “A murder-suicide. Preferably in California, but any bordering state would work. If we mobilize to investigate, she’s going to think it’s because we think it’s the Reaper.”

  Jones wasn’t buying it at all. “That seems like a hell of a stretch.”

  “It’s not,” Roarke said flatly. “We know she’s watching. She’ll interpret it exactly as we want her to.” He turned to their researcher, and as always when looking at her directly was briefly startled by her exotic beauty. Then he spoke. “Singh, you need to find us a crime. A home invasion where the family is killed, or a murder-suicide — a parent killing a whole family.”

  Singh looked momentarily startled herself… and then Roarke could see her begin to process the why of it. He continued.

  “The bloodier the better, or if you can’t find something that fits, something close to it, with few details released to the public. We’ll let her imagine what exactly happened.” He felt like a prick, saying it, but it was the plan, it was the way. He looked over the room. Epps was no longer protesting. His eyes were distant, imagining the scenario. And Roarke knew he was not wrong.

  He focused back on Singh. “How long do you need to hunt this down?”

  “It should not take long to find a recent incident of this nature, if there is one to be found,” she answered in her musical voice. “Perhaps a half-hour break, and reconvene?”

  “Go. See what you can come up with.”

  “Yes, chief.” She rose instantly and moved for the door.

  Roarke looked at Epps and Jones. “Once Singh finds us a case, we’ll put on a show so Lindstrom knows where we’re going. And she’ll follow.”

  As he turned to leave, he couldn’t help seeing his agents’ faces, their looks of unease. He didn’t blame them. They were in the Twilight Zone, now, no question.

  He retreated to his office to think, and stood at the window, staring down through the glass at the hills of the city. She was there, somewhere. Waiting.

  He sensed a presence behind him, knew from the height and bulk and sheer power of that presence that it was Epps. Roarke turned, speaking before he even saw Epps in the door. “Am I crazy? You think she’ll buy this?”

  Epps stepped into the room, not too far. There was still a distance between them, and Roarke was sorry for that. “Buy it or not, she’ll follow. It’s about you. Whatever you do, she’ll follow you.”

  “Sure,” Roarke laughed shortly.

  “Positive,” Epps said. The two men looked at each other.

  “It’s about you,” Epps repeated, and suddenly the air between them was thick. “You sure you’re up for this, boss?” he said softly.

  Roarke wanted to answer, he owed Epps an answer. The man had been waiting long enough.

  And then he felt a cold, vast place open inside him. He had the urge to say no, no, not only was he not up for it, he had no idea what they were getting themselves into. He wanted to abandon the whole thing, before something horrific and inevitable came down on them.

  But at that moment Jones stuck his head in through the open door.

  “Singh’s got something,” he said.

  Roarke was used to thinking of Singh as a lake of depthless calm, but as the men joined her in the conference room she was practically bubbly.

  “This is clearly a perfect plan, as I have found a perfect case as our stalking horse,” she enthused. “I started with California. I am astonished by how many there are to choose from,” she said, suddenly transitioning to gravity. “This family massacre, or mass murder/suicide, or familicide, is a very prevalent occurrence in the U.S. Approximately ninety-five cases per year take place in the state of California alone: nearly two per week, almost always the father killing first his family, then himself. In my country of origin only the wife will be killed.”

  Roarke felt a twinge at her words, the matter-of-fact, grotesque reality of them. He suddenly wondered what Cara and Singh might have to say to each other, if ever they should meet. He saw Epps glance at him as if he might be thinking something similar.

  Singh continued. “The latest such crime in this state was a mere sixteen hours ago, in Fresno County. The father shot and killed his wife and three children, then turned the gun on himself. There was another three days ago in Antelope Valley: the bodies of an entire family, father, mother, three children, found burned in a car on the highway. Cause of death, gunshot wounds; the father’s was self-inflicted. And therein is the problem. The vast majority, ninety-two percent of these family slayings, are by gun, which is not useful for our purposes.”

  Roarke realized she was right. The Reaper’s signature, his particular turn-on, was the invasion of flesh, slashing and stabbing.

  Singh opened a file folder and removed a set of faxed photos, which she passed across the table to Roarke. “However, there was an instance two weeks ago in Nevada which could have been designed for us. A father stabbed his wife and three children to death and then cut his own throat. The crime was bloody, it was violent, it occurred in the family home, and it occurred just a few miles over the border, on the outskirts of Reno, practically in California.”

  Roarke looked down… at shots of hell. A woman lying prone on a bed in blood-soaked sheets, a man slumped in a desk chair with dark blood splashed on the walls behind him, and the unbearable images of children, half-in, half off their beds, slain in their bedrooms.

  He passed the photos to Epps, suppressing a shudder of revulsion even as he thought, She’s right. It’s perfect. And the thought was a wave of col
d.

  It was even within the geographical range of the Reaper’s massacres: two hundred fify miles from Bishop, three hundred thirty miles from Arcata.

  And a four-hour drive from San Francisco.

  “So it’s a road trip,” Epps said. His face was taut as he passed the photos to Jones.

  The younger agent also flinched as he shuffled through the images of carnage. But when he looked up, his face was composed — and skeptical. “How are we going to be sure she picks up on the trail? Send an email? Take out an ad?”

  Roarke knew where Jones was coming from. It did seem completely implausible. And yet he knew it wasn’t. “I’m going to have to put on a show,” he said. “I’ll park my car on the street outside the house and take a couple of trips down to pack up.”

  “Pop the hood, check the oil and water,” Epps suggested. “Eyeball the tires.”

  “Leave a map of Reno on the passenger seat,” Roarke added.

  He was highly aware of the flaws in the plan. It assumed that Cara would be there watching him every moment, which was unlikely, and if she were watching like that it also suggested they should simply continue to stake out his apartment and catch her that way.

  But then, nothing about Cara was simple.

  He looked at Epps. “She knows you, and you’re easy to spot. You come over, we pack the car. Transfer your things into my car, or vice-versa. We give her all the chances we can to get a look at what we’re doing.”

  “I don’t know,” Jones said.

  Roarke didn’t know how to explain it. “She figured out how to track me to San Diego. I never once saw her tailing me. If she’s around, she’ll follow.”

  “And if she doesn’t?”

  “If she doesn’t follow, it means she’s not tailing me, and we can drop this stakeout charade,” Roarke snapped. “It’s just an overnight trip. No huge loss.”

  “All right, when?” Epps asked.

  “Right now. This afternoon. Before traffic.” If they waited until rush hour, traffic would add three hours to the trip, easily. “We have a few hours to put on a show to get her interested, and then we get on the road.”