This Dark Place: A Detective Kelly Moore Novel

by Claire Kittridge

  49

  The area around the Albert Bridge was quiet by city standards. Small sedans with daytrippers and tall vans making deliveries crossed back and forth sporadically over the Thames. A businessman, wearing a long overcoat despite the heat, walked past Kelly as she stood in the shadow of a neo-classical column looking at the north riverbank. The building that had once been a grand hall now housed showy corporate offices. A young couple with their arms around each other’s shoulders crossed the road. The sky had turned a miraculously deep shade of blue, and recent rains had churned the river waters into a quickly moving brown torrent.

  Kelly checked the time on her phone. In less than an hour, Dunne and Donaghue would arrive on foot. Armed officers in plainclothes had taken up positions on the south side of the bridge; near the meeting spot, across the street, down the steps leading from the footpath to the water’s edge. Kelly and Joshi would stay at a distance, out of sight. The killer surely knew what they looked like after the Fish & Coal building attack.

  As Kelly was holding her phone, a message appeared on the screen. The number was unknown. Kelly had to read the words twice before comprehending: I HAVE THE PERSON YOU HAVE BEEN LOOKING FOR.

  Kelly’s heart started to race. Another trap? A tip about Graham Dalton? Or a real link to Cass, the only person I’ve ever truly been looking for?

  She looked up from her phone. Office workers and tourists with rolled-up sleeves and sweaters draped over their shoulders strolled leisurely by. Collateral damage.

  BAXTER THEATRE. 30 MINUTES. IF YOU DO NOT SHOW, I AM PULLING THE TRIGGER. COME ALONE. FOR CASS.

  A floating sensation filled Kelly’s body and for a second, she was looking down on herself, the bridge, and the river from above.

  Without another thought, she went quickly up the steps to Queen Street Place, turned left, and walked deeper into the city without looking back.

  Even if she had wanted to call in for backup, surely it wouldn’t come in time. Frame had assigned her a purely advisory role. Dunne had focused limited resources on Donaghue’s meeting with Graham Dalton. She knew it could be another trap, a diversion from the bridge. She wouldn’t let it stop the operation. If it turned out to be nothing, there would be no harm done. She would be on full alert, nothing like the Fish & Coal incident. She would be alone, light on her feet. And if it really was Cass, she couldn’t afford to let the opportunity go.

  Within moments, she had broken into a steady trot, weaving her way through the midday traffic. Kelly tightened her fists at her sides and clenched her jaw, fighting the desire to scream.

  50

  Alert, every nerve on fire, she pulled out her phone to place herself on the map and check the time. The screen was dark. She shook the phone and pressed the reboot button. Dead. She clenched her teeth and fought the reflex to throw the phone under the wheels of a passing bus. It couldn’t have been more than twenty-five minutes since she left the bridge. Sweat pooled in the small of her back and she brushed her hair off her neck, crossed hastily at the light, passing a gaggle of office workers who walked at an ungodly slow pace. She scanned the cityscape with a focus she’d rarely felt, every sense alive, the sound of traffic like an ocean and Cass’s face before her, long hair blowing in the salt air. She got her bearings, then slipped quickly down Fulham Road and ran the last three blocks, pulled by a rage and determination she’d never felt. Pulled by the conviction that she could stop him. She could stop him and she could make him pay. Bring him down at last for all the pain and all the grief.

  Outside the theater, Kelly cleared the perimeter, walking in a circle, noting the exits. She reached reflexively for the pistol that hadn’t been on her hip since she left New York.

  Students stood outside the building smoking and chatting in the unseasonably warm weather, their open, naïve faces chilled her to the bone—the things that happened right under their noses, the risks everyone took in living. There were no side doors unlocked, so she would have to enter from the front. Not ideal. The only windows were on the second and third floors. And there was no climbing up if she wanted to be inconspicuous.

  She opened a glass door at the front of the building and slid in silently. If there were any students around, they must have been in the basement practice rooms or classes. It had that empty, haunted feeling theaters had—the feeling of someone lurking off stage. Every play is a set up—an audience waiting to be surprised by the things about to be set in motion. She was determined there’d be no surprises for her. There had been enough surprises for a lifetime.

  The main lobby was dim, diffuse daylight filtering in through the entrance. A display case built into the far wall housed glossy photographs and tarnished brass trophies.

  Kelly stopped to catch her breath. It could be a ruse, nothing inside the theater, an intentional distraction to keep her tied up in another part of town, keep her away from the meeting place at the bridge. It could be the stupidest thing she had done in her life to go into this darkness alone without her gun. But there was no turning back. She pulled open the wide entry door and moved sideways along the wall of the theater, keeping still, her back against the velvet lined wall, her ears ringing from the silence of the space, her eyes adjusting to the dark.

  If this was a diversion she would make him pay for that too.

  The rows of seats before her were lit only by the red glow of the exit signs. She took a few silent steps along the aisle at the far right. Every nerve in her body was on high alert, but she could sense no movement in the theater.

  A squeak, the smallest noise, like a board giving under someone’s weight, made her freeze. Then with a click her face was flooded with a blinding white light.

  She blinked back against the heat on her face and dove down and out of the glare behind a row of seats.

  Lying motionless, listening.

  Kelly lay on her belly and scanned between the rows for the source of the light. It was a spotlight mounted high on a side wall.

  Another squeak and then a sudden movement on the stage. A large white screen was lowering slowly from the ceiling. From her sheltered position on the ground, Kelly watched the screen descend. Her attention was clear and sharp.

  This was no diversion, she had been called here purposefully. The spotlight still shone across the aisle in front of her. In one swift motion, she darted to the back wall and crouched there, close to the exit doors.

  The left side of the screen lit abruptly, the right side remained dark. On the left, a video projection showed a man bound to a chair, gagged, holding a gun to his own head. Kelly recognized professor Donaghue. There would be no meeting at the bridge. The professor’s eyes shone wide with panic on the screen. The gun was an old service revolver that Kelly recognized instantly—a Thirty-Eight Special, the same model that killed Priscilla Ames.

  This wasn’t the only gun. At the edge of the frame, Kelly could see a leather-gloved hand pointing a 9mm Glock at Donaghue.

  Kelly kept her back pressed against the wall and reached for the handle of the door, but then a loud voice boomed through the sound system, echoing in the hollow space.

  “Stand up and walk into the light.”

  Kelly stayed still. She watched the Glock on the screen jerk up toward Donaghue’s head

  “Pull the trigger,” the voice commanded.

  Kelly watched Donaghue shut his eyes tightly, his hand shaking as he pulled the trigger of the weapon. The click of the empty chamber echoed through the theater. Tears and sweat streamed down Professor Donaghue’s red face.

  “If you step into the light, Ms. Moore, I will let the professor pull the trigger again. Maybe he will survive. If you don’t show yourself, I will shoot, and there will be no second chance.”

  “Keep talking,” she whispered. The voice was confident and booming with an accent she recognized as local. But she couldn’t place it yet. She had no sympathy for Donaghue, but he didn’t deserve to die.

  Who was he? Where was he?

  She realized that the kil
ler could be anywhere in the building, or in a completely different place controlling the video feed remotely.

  Kelly stood up slowly. She walked down the aisle and into the spotlight, adjusting to the glare, keeping her eyes fixed on the screen at the front of the theater.

  With a flash, her own image appeared on the right half of the screen next to Donaghue. Kelly’s face looked calm and focused. She took comfort in her own expression, which seemed oblivious to the risks she was taking—steady, giving nothing away.

  “Move into the middle of the theater.”

  Kelly walked from the side aisle to the middle of the theater, where there was a break in the rows. The spotlight was now directly at her side; on the screen, half of her face was cast in deep shadow. She faced the stage and tried to quiet her racing mind, scanned, looking for anything, places to run to for shelter. She considered anything that might be used as a weapon. There were ropes backstage for certain, props that might be used for blunt force if she could get to them, a trap door no doubt in the center of the stage, a catwalk. She looked to the various points where a person could enter the theater. If only she could get backstage, back into the maze of curtains and props, ropes and circuit breakers, dressing rooms, she’d have half a chance. She saw the camera at the base of the stage, its electronic eye trained directly on her.

  Kelly had no weapon. Her phone was dead. Sweat ran along the side of her face and she closed her eyes against the white light. Not a single person knew that she was at the theater. Rodgers and Joshi might have noticed her disappearance, but they would be waiting for Donaghue and ‘Graham Dalton’ to show up at the bridge. Cass’s face flashed again in her mind. She had imagined their reunion so many times, the moment when they would be together again. She had always thought that reunion would be in the world of the living. But maybe she had been wrong.

  51

  Kelly stared at the screen for some indication of where Donaghue and the killer were. The image was cropped close around the professor’s seated body, behind him were slivers of darkness on either side.

  “What do you want?” she said. She saw her lips move on the screen, but she didn’t know whether she could be heard.

  “Only to be left alone, detective. But you won’t cooperate. And this is where it ends.”

  They could hear her. The room was miked.

  “Understood,” she said.

  If she could keep him talking, if she could make her way to the stage, she would find a way out.

  Kelly’s gaze narrowed on the screen again. One of the first lessons Chief Delancey had taught her was to observe every detail. Even the most trivial things you didn’t think worth noting might be critically important. On one of her first cases, he had looked at her notes and then back up at her. “Inside or outside?” Delancey had asked.

  Kelly could remember how annoyed she’d been. There were details in the notes that indicated that the victim was indoors. “Never assume,” Delancey told her. Kelly had dutifully done as he said.

  Kelly looked closely at the screen again. The light was cold, artificial. A room with no windows. They could be at Donaghue’s house, the thick curtains drawn shut; or it could be a studio on the campus. A black box. They could be downstairs in another part of the building.

  “What do you want?” Kelly said, louder this time, more confident.

  “I want to have some fun,” the voice taunted. “Is that too much to ask?” She saw him raise the Glock again. Donaghue began crying, the front of his pants wet with a spreading stain, he was muttering what she thought must be a prayer.

  “It’s your turn or it’s mine,” the voice said, and Donaghue gritted his teeth and pulled the trigger. The click of the empty chamber resonated and he screamed out a guttural animal noise in relief. “Please please please,” he whispered. “Please just let me go.”

  He turned his head sideways, still holding the gun to his temple, and in that moment, Kelly saw that the space behind him wasn’t entirely dark. For an instant, she saw something glint in the top corner of the screen. There was a glass surface behind Donaghue. A window with nothing behind it. And in its reflection, Kelly saw the oversized lens of a film projector. They were right there in the projection booth above her. She kept her face neutral, trying not to show a look of recognition or hope. He was a voyeur, she knew, attuned to the slightest changes in emotion, because he could barely feel his own.

  “Walk to the front of the stage,” the voice commanded.

  Kelly hesitated, made her face show just the slightest flicker of fear, hoping to give him the charge that might make him lose his concentration. She knew it was fear he loved, fear he fed upon—fear that drew him out and made him act reckless.

  “Now!” the voice commanded, and she could hear the slight thrill creeping in, changing his breathing.

  Kelly walked to edge of the stage and the heat of the spotlight burned down upon her. She resisted the urge to turn and look up at the projection booth. Her face filled the right half of the screen and she knew how vulnerable she was, directly in the sights of the killer, with her back to him, providing an easy target. It was only his twisted voyeuristic pleasure that was keeping her and Donaghue alive. Drawing the killer out further, she reached up and covered her face with her hand as if she couldn’t bear to watch. She could hear him breathing now, there was no mistaking it, the pleasure he got in directing them, in terrorizing them. She had to make him think she was terrified.

  “The brave Kelly Moore,” he taunted. “Put your hand down,” he said and she made herself whimper. “Uncover your eyes,” he commanded. “Or I swear I’ll put a bullet in his head right now.” His breathing was ragged and she could hear through his words that a smile was spreading across his face. “You’re going to see it all.”

  52

  Kelly dropped her hand from her face “Alright,” She said, “Alright. Wait. Listen. I… You said I should come here for Cass.” At this point she was practically certain he had lured her with the hope of her sister to cause pain. But there was no way to know.

  “I did,” the voice practically purred. “Because you’ve always wanted to find out what happened to her.”

  And now there was no false emotion on her face. The rage and fear and sorrow and disgust were her own.

  She heard his voice soften into a languid rasp, speaking more to himself than her or Donaghue. “There it is,” he said, and his voice was fainter and constricted, his breathing heavy. She could picture him there in the booth—gun in one hand in front of a pathetic cowering man, covered in sweat and tears and piss. She imagined him, lost in the love of the pain he was causing, believing he was powerful and unseen, but the sound of his voice had changed as though he had thrown his head back. She imagined him lost in pleasure, his eyes closed.

  All at once, she vaulted up onto the stage, ran to the circuit breaker, the Frankenstein switch that Donaghue had shown her on that first day. She slammed it down with all her weight. Two shots rang out as the theater was plunged into darkness and she stumbled forward, a searing pain burning in her shoulder.

  Next it was nothing but noise. Scuffling and clanging coming from the projection booth and a door slamming shut. Feet clanking down metal stairs.

  Ignoring the pain, she ran blindly in the direction of the stage door, slamming into it with her body and reeling headlong into a dark hallway. She crashed into the wall opposite the door, groaning as a spike of pain shot from her shoulder down her back, then stood and felt her way along the wall, hoping she was headed in the direction of the back exit. The sound of footsteps bounding across the hollow boards of the stage made her freeze. Then she heard the creak of the door and in darkness a body rushed past her. She heard the smack of hands on the metal bar of the exit. Then, through the flood of daylight that streamed in from the far end of the hall, a tall figure slipped from darkness into light.

  53

  Kelly shielded her eyes with her hand, trying to fight the glare of the sun, but there was no one in sight. No on
e running. The exit had opened onto a large lawn edged with bushes, bisected by a diagonal path and a row of benches.

  Clusters of students sat on the grass and gathered, many wearing costumes or paint-spattered pants, seemingly oblivious to a killer running through their midst.

  Kelly didn’t realize how badly she was bleeding from her shoulder until she approached a group of students and watched their faces turn to horror.

  “Did you see a man come out that door?” she said, breathing heavily and pointing in the direction she had come.

  A girl with a cigarette looked up at her and spoke. “We’ve been out here practicing our lines. Haven’t been looking around for anything.” She spoke with a broad London accent that Kelly could barely understand.

  The girl glanced at Kelly’s shoulder. “You alright there, ma’am? Is that blood?”

  Kelly pulled out her badge and held it up.

  “Police business, I need a telephone. Now.” The girl handed over her iPhone, and Kelly called, pausing once to wipe blood from the screen.

  “Active shooter at London School of Art and Drama,” she said. “One possible fatality in the projection booth of the Baxter theatre, and an officer wounded.”

  Now the girls’ faces were pale with fear.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Kelly said. “What is the lockdown protocol for your school?”

  “I…” Before the girl could say, people began pouring out of the front doors of the building. The Frankenstein switch had worked, knocking out the power, and now students and teachers were leaving the classrooms and practice spaces because of the blackout.

  This was not good. There was a man with at least one gun, possibly two, roaming somewhere outside the school, and crowds of students leaving the building in a state of confusion. Kelly scanned the crowd again. He was a watcher, he would be somewhere he could take all of this in, where he could see the pain he was causing. She looked up to the roof of the theater, did a quick scan of the trees on the quad. She prayed he had left campus. Because now there were so many targets, just sitting there in the sun.