Fade to Black Read online

  “I have to see it, especially if you want my help.”

  “Of course we want your help,” Wyatt murmured,

  “and of course you can see it. If you’re really sure you want to.”

  “No, I don’t want to,” she admitted. She swallowed, her slender throat working with the effort, as if she’d scooped a handful of sand into her mouth. “I need to.”

  Dean continued to shake his head. “No.”

  She leaned over her desk, tension and heat rolling off her in waves, as if the mental barriers holding back her fury and anguish over Lisa’s murder would burst if she were pushed too hard. “What’s the matter? Afraid a small-town sheriff, a female one, can’t handle it? You should know I—”

  He interrupted her, putting one hand up, palm out. “That’s not it. To be frank, Sheriff Rhodes, that video is something nobody who actually knew Lisa Zimmerman should ever see if they can help it.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, and he saw the indignation leave her. He understood the reaction. She probably dealt with sexism on a daily basis. It was unfortunately commonplace in law enforcement.

  She remained silent, mollified. The tense hands unclenched and she sat back in her chair. She nodded slowly, conceding the point, acknowledging her rush to judgment.

  Calm and levelheaded, reasonable and intelligent. And incredibly sexy. God, where had this woman been all his life?

  Forcing that insane thought away, he muttered,“We’ve got more screen shots, if you need more verification.”

  “Agent Taggert, please listen.”

  Her serious tone told him she wasn’t just playing I-can-keep-up-with-the-boys-in-the-schoolyard, as if he’d ever for a moment thought she would. She offered him a small, rueful smile. Her expression held warmth for the first time since she’d greeted him in the lobby. Knowing how those tightly sealed boxes of emotion had to be screaming for release behind those green eyes, he could only do as she asked.

  “I appreciate your concern, and believe me, if it weren’t important, I wouldn’t press the issue. I can think of a thousand things I’d rather do than sit through what I suspect is probably going to be the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  Giving up had never been one of Dean’s strong suits, so he couldn’t help saying, “No probably about it. It’ll be worse than your darkest nightmare. This unsub—unknown subject—is among the sickest, most perverse killers I’ve ever seen. Why put yourself through this? Are you having second thoughts that it’s her?”

  “It’s her.”

  “Then why?” She sure wasn’t the type to get off on voy euristic violence. If he was wrong about that, then he’d learned nothing in his twelve years in law enforcement.

  Her answer took Dean completely by surprise. He’d been prepared for protestations that she had to be sure, for the family’s sake. That it was her job. What he didn’t expect was the answer he got.

  “I have to watch the film, Agent Taggert, because I think I might be able to tell you where Lisa Zimmerman died.”

  Stacey could probably have told the FBI agents sitting in her office where she thought Lisa had been killed without watching that horrific home movie of the slaughter. Considering she was now leaning over the bathroom sink, having puked her guts out one minute after the clip had ended, she almost wished she had.

  Almost.

  Her only solace was that there had been no audio accompaniment. If she’d had to hear Lisa’s anguished screams, she doubted she’d ever get their echoes out of her ears.

  But she’d needed to see it. Having a hunch based on the shimmer of something in the background of one of the original three pictures wasn’t enough. Not for a case like this. Not when Stacey was going to have to go tell Winnie Freed her daughter was dead.

  Another parent mourning another child. It was too much. She’d come here, back to Hope Valley, specifically because she never wanted to see such anguish again. Never wanted to witness the pain she’d seen in her last days as a state cop, when parent after parent had cried their grief for the children they’d sent off to school and never seen again.

  God, how could they possibly bear it? How would Winnie bear it?

  “Sheriff?” Someone knocked on the closed bathroom door. Fortunately, it wasn’t one of the two agents. The voice was female.

  “I’m okay, Connie.” She wet a paper towel, holding it to her forehead and her cheeks, trying desperately to get her heart to stop racing and her stomach to stop heaving.

  Finally, either because she’d gotten herself under control or because there was nothing left inside her to spew out in protest of what had been done to Lisa, Stacey rinsed her mouth out and left the bathroom. Reentering her office, she found the two men sitting where she’d left them.

  The agents looked up at her return, but didn’t rise to their feet in some antiquated show of courtesy. “I apologize for the interruption, gentlemen,” she murmured, returning to her seat.

  “We quite understand,” the supervisory special agent, Blackstone, said. “It’s not something any normal person would ever want to see.”

  He was stiff, dispassionate, his black suit starched and crisp despite the heat and humidity. Probably in his early forties, the man was almost too elegant to be in law enforcement. She suspected he kept a wall of formality and coolness around himself at all times. Even the way he sat, one leg crossed over the other, hands folded in his lap, displayed an almost visible disdain for any macho law enforcement posturing. Yet he was so intense and focused, she dared anyone to think the pose was at all feminine.

  “Are you all right?” a gruff voice asked. That was the other one—Special Agent Dean Taggert. And he was not stiff, dispassionate, and aloof. Definitely not cold, either. Not one tiny bit.

  “I’m fine.”

  From the moment they’d shaken hands in the vestibule, Stacey had been unable to help noticing the coiled strength of the man. While Blackstone was all calm, controlled professionalism, Taggert appeared tense and hard, wary and maybe even belligerent. Blackstone’s grip had been cool and smooth, Taggert’s powerful and rough. The older agent never looked around, appearing completely at ease and comfortable with his surroundings. The younger one never stopped checking things out, eyeing entrances and egresses, always on alert, edgy and ready for action. With his thick dark hair, flashing eyes so deep brown they were almost black, and strong-boned face, he looked almost too streetwise to be in the eminently professional FBI.

  The senior agent emanated authority. The junior one, pure physical excitement.

  “Here,” Taggert muttered, tossing a pack of mint-flavored gum toward her.

  Stacey caught it in midair.

  “Believe it or not, it helps get the taste of imaginary blood out of your mouth.”

  Perfect description. Watching Lisa’s final moments, she’d felt as if she were swallowing the horror whole. “Thanks.”

  She took a piece, hoping her stomach could handle the simple act of chewing, then pushed the pack across the desk toward its owner, watching him pocket it.

  “Want some water or something, too?” he asked, displaying concern that completely surprised her.

  “No, really, I’m okay.”

  Though as polite as his colleague, Special Agent Taggert’s gravelly voice, tight tone, the tension in his body, and the fire in his eyes told her the man wasn’t used to playing nice, to asking courteously and talking quietly.

  Right now, he watched her with an assessing stare. But there was also a hint of warm compassion. Understanding. It was as unexpected as it was genuine, just like the offer of the gum. Stacey found herself staring back at him for a brief moment, their eyes locking as they took silent measure of each other.

  “Did you find what you were looking for in the footage?” Blackstone asked, sounding courteous, yet not quite so . . . What was that tone in his colleague’s voice? Protectiveness, maybe. Yes, when she thought about it, the near-stranger had seemed almost protective of her. Such a novel thing. No
body had tried to protect her in years. She did a damn fine job of it herself, and part of her should have been offended.

  She wasn’t. She’d evaluate why later, when she didn’t have to look across her desk at those deep brown eyes.

  “Sheriff?” Blackstone prodded.

  Determined to get past the awkward moment of her sickness, she nodded and reached for her notepad. She’d jotted down specific moments of interest in the film. “You said this video was made public last April? About a month after she disappeared?”

  The senior agent nodded. “But we believe it had been made sometime prior to that, given the wintry appearance of the background location.”

  She thought about the scene, the stark, skeletal bareness of the trees. Then she recalled the early spring they’d enjoyed last year; her pollen allergies had been in high gear by the first week of April. The timing definitely fit. “I noticed that, too.”

  Blackstone folded his hands in his lap, saying nothing.

  “She left Dick’s Tavern, a hangout two miles outside of town, a little before two a.m. That night was the last full moon of the cycle. I remember because we’d had a really bad week, calls out to Dick’s every night. Around here the general consensus is that the crazies come out during the full moon, and they all end up at Dick’s. Most folks think Lisa ran off with one of them.”

  “Maybe she did,” Taggert muttered.

  “Maybe. But if so, she didn’t get far. Because she died within hours.”

  Both FBI agents watched her closely. Neither appeared surprised. Just interested.

  “There’s one moment when she’s looking directly up, when the camera panned up, too,” she explained, suddenly feeling weary. “Maybe the bastard wanted to see if there really was a God up there listening to her prayers. It’s only a split second, but I’m nearly certain the moon was full.”

  “Yes, we saw that,” Blackstone admitted. “We sent the tape for evaluation beyond what our office could handle, and I imagine they’ll verify it. But the fact that you caught something that appeared so briefly says a lot about your powers of observation.”

  Under other circumstances, she might feel pleased by the compliment. Now, though, her mind still awash with the visions of Lisa’s final moments, there was no room for anything positive.

  “To recap . . .” She ticked off the obvious points on her fingers. “We know she was last seen at close to two a.m. on the final night of the full moon in March. We know she was killed under a full moon. We know there were no buds on the trees, while if it had happened at the next full moon, there would have been. And we know the video went public in April.” It was simple deduction, really. “She had to have been killed the night she disappeared. It had to have happened somewhere close to here, since there would have been only a few hours between when she left the tavern and dawn, and there was no sign of morning on that video. With the time it took to grab her, get her somewhere entirely secluded, and do what he did, there wouldn’t have been time to drive too far out of the area.”

  Agent Taggert leaned forward in his chair. “You said you might know where she died, meaning you saw something else.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  They waited.

  “During the segments when your suspect zoomed out and panned the clearing, you can see a glint of silver through the branches of some of the trees, to Lisa’s left. I first spotted it in the third picture you showed me. You can see it better in the video.”

  Taggert opened the folder, glanced at it, then offered it to his colleague.

  “Brandon Cole, our IT specialist who’s been working on this, spotted the same glimmer,” said Blackstone. “But he couldn’t isolate it enough to identify it. It was too far away and too small. It could be a flash from the spotlights, a smudge on the cheap camera lens. Maybe even a reflection from one of the blades the perpetrator used.” He put the picture down. “It’s not a headlight or something, if that’s what you’re thinking. We considered that, but the height and dimensions don’t work. We’re hoping the final analysis of the footage will give us more to go on.”

  She wasn’t thinking vehicle. And the other explanations could be correct. But the first impression Stacey had had when she’d spotted it hadn’t been of any of those things; it had been of wire. Very thin, very sharp wire, looping on itself.

  Intuition. But she trusted her own intuition. She always had.

  “I think it might be razor wire. If you use Lisa’s position to gauge it, the image is about level with the tops of her hands.”

  She stood, demonstrating, raising her arms above her head, thrusting away the thought of Lisa being tied in this position. Actually, she needed to thrust away the thought of the Lisa she’d known, period, if she was going to be of any help in this investigation. She needed to think of her as only another victim. Nothing else.

  “I’m five-ten. Li—The victim was a good six inches shorter. The level of her hands would be right about the same height as the wire running across the top of a steel fence.”

  Blackstone immediately reopened the folder, and the two agents looked down to test her theory against the eight-by-tens. Stacey lowered her hands, tucked her shirt, which had slid up over her middle, back into her khakis, and returned to her seat. Why the hell she’d had to play Miss Show-and-Tell, she had no idea. Far from being eminently professional, she’d probably looked like some amateur detective solving bloodless murders on an old, pre-CSI TV show.

  “Damn, I think she’s right,” Taggert said. He looked up, caught her eye, and immediately leaped to the next conclusion. “Not many places need that kind of security. You know of a fence like this in the area?”

  Still not quite believing that Lisa could have been killed at a place she drove by practically every day, Stacey nodded. “I do. One of the locals, Warren Lee, has a farm outside of town. He’s a bit of a character.”

  Taggert stiffened. “Violent?”

  She considered it. “Possibly. He’s a survivalist type; I suspect he’s armed to the teeth out there.” Realizing why he’d asked, she almost immediately ruled out the agent’s unspoken supposition. She knew Warren well enough to fear that when he snapped he’d go out guns blazing. He didn’t have the patience, the calmness she’d seen in the video.

  “I don’t believe that was him on the tape, but it could have happened near his place. He has a huge spread. It’s fenced in, with razor wire across the top.”

  Agent Taggert immediately swung to face his boss. “Can we get a warrant?”

  Blackstone shook his head. “We’ve got nothing to justify one.”

  Stacey cleared her throat. “I didn’t mean I thought the crime occurred on Warren’s property. The way he guards his place, the only way it could have is if he did it, and I tell you, everything I know about the man says he didn’t. I think it’s more likely this happened on the other side of his fence. In which case, you can easily look around.”

  They both waited in tangible expectation.

  “Most of Warren’s land skirts along part of the Shenandoah National Park.”

  A quick grin appeared on Taggert’s face, as if he’d heard his first good news in days. “Federal property.”

  “Exactly,” she replied, thinking for a fleeting moment how much younger the man looked when he smiled. “No warrant required.”

  Chapter 4

  You’re ugly. You’re damaged. Who would want you?

  “Shut up,” he whispered, not even looking away from his computer screen. He’d heard the words too many times to feel anger or fear, and merely brushed them away like he would have a pesky fly.

  But the voice wouldn’t shut up. The voice never shut up. Awake or in his dreams, it taunted, it ridiculed, it bit with teeth as sharp as the incisors of a hound from hell. Only . . . he no longer felt the bite.

  Hideous. Evil. Nasty.

  “Go away; I’m busy.”

  It didn’t go away, so he reached for the volume button on the front of his laptop. He jabbed at it ruthlessly,
until his index finger bent backward and almost snapped. That might have been interesting, just to see how it would feel and how he handled the sensation. Better than most, he suspected. Better than any woman, that was for certain.

  Pain had interested him for a long time. How to take it, how to deliver it. He’d done some experimenting over the years—starting small, with rats or strays that wouldn’t be missed. And he’d found that when a creature was frightened enough, it almost didn’t even seem to notice when it was dying. Or maybe it was merely grateful for the release.

  Much like Lisa. And all the others.

  He himself hadn’t been tested that far yet, but he’d certainly experienced the acrid bitterness of terror and the cloying taste of physical agony. So he understood how some pain simply ceased to exist when a mind drifted to other places in the sheer, primal need for escape.

  Would it do so if the pain were self-inflicted? He’d often wondered.

  He pushed his finger against the button again. Hard, until the metal bit into his skin and left an indentation. The joint bent backward, the tip turning bright red, the knuckles ghostly white.

  He could snap it. Easily.

  “Not now,” he whispered. He was busy now. He could test that another time, as he’d tested the feel of fire licking the soles of his feet or blades scraping across his belly.

  Now there was only this. The sounds emerging from the fully enabled speakers grew louder, filling the room, filling his ears, filling his brain.

  Filling his soul.

  He relaxed in his chair, one world falling away, another spreading out before him, full of unexplored places and exciting opportunities.

  No hateful voices greeted him, and none followed. Just friends speaking their cyber chatter. Some people would listen and hear only gibberish. But he understood it perfectly, even without reading the flood of text messages that appeared the moment he arrived in the playground. Welcome, where have you been? Come see my latest project. Take me. Choose me. Hurt me.