Dark Prophecy Read online

  This time, however, it was difficult. Because on the table in front of him was the sawn-off doorknob of a colleague and a friend. First day on the job, Paulson had stuck his head in Banner’s lair and said: “Tell me everything about what you do.” This was remarkable. There were Special Circs staffers who’d gone a few years without even asking Banner’s first name. Paulson, meanwhile, had treated him like a forensics god. They’d hung out quite a bit, over sandwiches and beers. Sometimes talking shop, sometimes just joking around.

  Banner had been a guest in Paulson’s apartment. He’d kissed Paulson’s wife on the cheek and shook Paulson’s hand and said his good-byes, dinner was awesome, thanks so much for having me over and then he’d touched this very doorknob and closed the door behind him.

  Banner examined it now, carefully wiping a swab over its metal surface. From here, he would use a machine to separate the elements. Again, another puzzle to solve.

  But solve this, and Banner would be helping to find Jeb’s killer.

  He worked late into the night and almost didn’t hear Riggins enter the lab. “What’ve you got, Banner?”

  “A weaponized form of Datura stramonium.”

  Riggins stared at Banner, waiting him out. They went through this every time. It was almost a dance. Banner would tease, wait for Riggins to ask the question. This time Riggins didn’t take the bait.

  “Sorry,” Banner said, caving quickly. “It’s also called Jimson Weed, angel’s trumpet, or devil’s weed. Which is a weird contradiction, if you think about.”

  Riggins waited.

  Banner continued. “Ordinarily, it’s just alkaloid that’s absorbed through your mucous membranes. Some people smoke or eat it for the hallucinogenic-type effects. But the form on this doorknob is something I’ve never seen before. It can be absorbed through the skin, and it works within seconds, causing paralysis and cardiovascular collapse. Which explains why Jeb and the police officer were knocked out just by touching it.”

  “Is this crap difficult to find?”

  “In its natural state, no. But this stuff was definitely engineered.”

  “Who’d have access to something like this?”

  “Military, I guess. But you can’t rule out private labs or universities.”

  Riggins thought about it. Their killer had either brains or access—possibly both. “Did any of this stuff turn up at the Green house?”

  “No,” Banner said. “But something else did. A nasty aerosolized agent called Kolokol-1. A whiff of that stuff and you’re out in three seconds.”

  “It sounds familiar.”

  “Reportedly, the Russian Spetsnaz used it on Chechens back in 2002. It’s a derivative of the potent opiodids fentanyl, which is dissolved in halthane ...”

  But Riggins wasn’t paying attention. He muttered to himself, “Two different chemicals. Both used to knock out the victims. Why?”

  chapter 18

  Washington, D.C.

  Knack knew how to get important people on the phone. It wasn’t too difficult. You just made it sound like you’ve already called a thousand times before, that you had some insanely urgent business, and unless they connect you right this fucking second you’re going to totally. Lose. Your. Shit. It was a tone of voice Knack had perfected over the past few years.

  However, this tone didn’t seem to work at Special Circs. “I’ll transfer you to the press office,” a calm voice said.

  “No, no, honey, I don’t want the friggin’ press office, I want—”

  “Hold on. Your call is being transferred.”

  “Fuck.”

  Knack thumbed the END key. Press officers were absolutely useless to members of the press. He had to try something else.

  Wait. He had Paulson’s office number from the rental agreement. Some small part of him was disturbed to be calling a dead man’s phone number. Then again, that small part of him wasn’t the one on deadline. Knack punched in the number. The line rang twice, then there was a click. Yes! He was being transferred, just as he predicted. But to whom? The line clicked again.

  “Riggins.”

  Bingo.

  “Agent Riggins? Jon Knack from the Slab. Just one quick thing—”

  “Good-bye.”

  Knack had to act fast. He unleashed the next four words in a frenzied burst:

  “I know about Paulson.”

  There was pause on the line. Riggins was cracking the window open slightly. Knack leaped through it.

  “This is the second one, isn’t it? Look, I know Paulson was in Chapel Hill. He was investigating the Martin Green murder. Now he’s gone. You don’t think this is coincidence do you?”

  “No comment,” Riggins said.

  “Isn’t it highly unusual for a serial killer to be targeting law enforcement?”

  “No comment.”

  “Last time this happened was with Steve Dark, wasn’t it?”

  Knack heard a grumble. He’d hit a nerve there.

  “Honestly, Knack? Just between you and me?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shove it up your highly unusual ass.”

  Knack hadn’t expected Riggins to confirm anything. But his reaction said it all. There were many kinds of non-denial denials. He opened up his laptop and started writing his story. Now he had a serious update, with “confirmation” from sources deep inside Special Circs. Riggins hadn’t given any such thing, but he wouldn’t come out to deny it, either. Sometimes getting a source on the phone for a “no comment” was all you needed.

  Besides, Knack had Paulson at the scene of the first murder. Now Paulson was dead. It begged the questions: Was this a cover-up? Or the start of something big?

  chapter 19

  West Hollywood, California

  Dark opened his laptop. The Slab had a Paulson story online—posted just a few minutes ago.

  The update mentioned that Paulson had a wife—Stephanie Paulson (née West), twenty-four. An elementary school teacher who followed her sweetheart down from Philadelphia. She’d been in the process of applying for a job in the D.C. school district, where she thought she’d make the most difference. Knack painted Stephanie as a bright, selfless woman. Exactly the kind of person you’d have to be to put up with a partner working for Special Circs. They had been married exactly thirteen months. There was no quote from Stephanie, but Knack had been able to track down college friends via a social networking site who filled in the details.

  The piece teased the oddities of the crime scene—the fact that Paulson “may have” been found with a flower in his hand, and stepped off the roof of his own apartment building. “Police sources” claimed that there were no ligature marks, no bruises, no sign of coercion of any kind.

  Knack claimed to have a source “deep inside” Special Circs, which was troubling if true. Nobody in Special Circs ever talked to the press. If Riggins had ever caught an agent talking to a reporter, he’d have that agent skinned and salt-dipped before giving him the boot.

  Walking to his kitchen, Dark played around the pieces in his mind—trying to figure out what the killer was trying to say.

  Dark poured himself a glass of water and drank about half of it before he realized it tasted flat. Metallic. He didn’t want water. He dumped the rest in the sink and went to the fridge for a beer, twisted off the cap. He needed more details. Green’s murder—based on the photo that had accompanied Knack’s first story—had been elaborately staged. Presumably, the killer had plenty of time to conceive, arrange, then execute such a display. But was Paulson’s murder staged in a similar way?

  There was only one way he could find out.

  “Riggins.”

  “It’s me,” Dark said.

  There was a pained-sounding sigh, as if someone had perforated one of Riggins’s lungs with a piece of jagged glass.

  “Just one question,” Dark said. “You owe me that, at least.”

  “Let’s not do this. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but—”

  “Cut me a bre
ak. You know exactly why I’m calling.”

  “I don’t care why you’re calling. We’re through.”

  “Look, Riggins. I know I’m not supposed to be involved anymore. But maybe I can help. Unofficially. Just between you and me. This is friends and family, you know? I can’t get this case out of my mind, and I might as well do some good.”

  “No. You said you wanted out, well, you’re out. I shouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

  “Let me see the murder book on Paulson. I can help.”

  “You’re unbelievable.”

  “Okay, fine. Just answer a few quick things.”

  “You shouldn’t be thinking about this stuff at all. Why don’t you go out and enjoy some of that California sunshine you wanted so badly? In fact, why don’t you go spend some time with your daughter? She might appreciate seeing your face.”

  Riggins could turn ugly when he wanted to. He was either just being nasty to get him off the phone, or he was really trying to piss Dark off.

  “Riggins, come on.”

  “No discussing the case with outsiders. You’re an outsider. That’s the way you wanted it, right? Don’t call me. Enjoy the sunshine.”

  The line went dead.

  Dark thought about calling Constance, but quickly pushed the thought out of his head. His relationship with Riggins was one thing. Constance was another mess entirely.

  In the horrible months after Sibby’s murder, Constance had been there for him. But it was too much, too soon. First it was dinners. Then long sessions of just sitting there, filling the empty hours together. She tried to replace Sibby, thinking that she could bring Dark back from the brink just a little bit. Dark didn’t want a replacement for Sibby. He didn’t want anything at all, except to do his job.

  The thing was, Constance would probably open up the murder book for him. But that would open the door again. Dark was capable of many loathsome acts, but not that.

  Then it occurred to him—how to get those details. He picked up his wallet, pulled out a credit card.

  chapter 20

  Flight 1412, Los Angeles to D.C.

  Dark hadn’t flown since his last Special Circs mission. For close to five years, he’d been shuttled to all corners of the world at a moment’s notice. There were some days when his body clock was so scrambled he had a hard time telling dawn from dusk—and had to wait and watch the sun to see what it would do. Dark had grown to hate flying so much that when he pulled the plug, he rented a car and drove I-40 all the way to L.A., forty-seven hours straight, with stops only for gas and food.

  The move to L.A. put him closer to his daughter. L.A. was also a city Dark could lose himself in—a city he knew better than any other. A dozen cities stitched together by mountains and ribbons of asphalt and crime and sunshine and sex and dreams. A city he used to consider home.

  Now Dark was preparing to leave it again. He approached the LAX baggage check counter, slid his driver’s license into the slot, and waited. Entered the first three letters of his destination. Waited again. Then . . . nothing.

  Within seconds, two uniformed LAX security guards were flanking him. “Could you step to the side, Mr. Dark?”

  “Why?”

  “Just step to the side.”

  Half an hour later Dark was still sitting at a chipped conference room table in a stuffy, locked room. Nobody told him why he had been detained, but Dark figured it out for himself. Someone, probably Wycoff, had put him on a watch list. He tries to fly anywhere, alarm bells go off. Two uniformed guards escort him to a windowless room. Indefinitely.

  Finally, a man in a navy blue suit walked in, manila folder in his hand. An airline logo was embroidered on the breast pocket of his jacket.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “Did I miss my plane?” Dark asked, knowing full well that his flight to D.C. was long gone.

  “We’ll get to that.”

  The man walked around the table, pulled out a chair, but stopped short of sitting down.

  “I understand you’re a retired FBI agent?”

  Dark nodded.

  “Which field office?”

  “If you know I’m a former FBI agent,” Dark said, “then you’d already know.”

  The man nodded, then casually flipped open the manila folder and rifled through a few pages, raised his eyebrows a few times. After a while Dark realized who this guy was: a professional time waster. Someone to keep Dark on edge until the person who was really in charge showed up.

  So Dark shut down. Said nothing. Wondered how long this would take.

  Another forty-five minutes, as it turned out. After fifteen minutes of an awkward, one-sided interview, the time waster was summoned out of the room. When he returned a half hour later, Dark was told he was free to go. No apologies, no further comment. Dark stood up and walked out of the room. He passed through a series of winding hallways until he was back inside the main terminal.

  Where Lisa Graysmith was waiting for him.

  “Sorry that took so long,” she said. “Sometimes the wheels of Homeland Security turn more slowly than I’d like.”

  “Right,” Dark said. “I’m supposed to think you just sprung me.”

  “Yes. Because I did.”

  “You probably put me on a no-fly list to begin with.”

  Graysmith smirked. “Paranoid much?”

  Dark said nothing.

  She walked toward him and extended a flimsy airline packet. “Here. You’re on the next flight to D.C., nonstop, first class. I would have booked something private, but I didn’t want to waste any more of your time transporting you to another airport. Next time.”

  Dark looked down at the tickets in her hand. Part of him wanted to turn around and leave. Go back to his house. Finish painting his daughter’s bedroom. Finishing getting on with his life. You quit this bullshit, he told himself. So be a man and stay quit.

  Instead, he took the ticket from Graysmith’s hand. “This changes nothing,” Dark said.

  “Of course,” she replied.

  Dark tried to sleep on the flight, but that was a futile task. He hardly slept at home. Why would he be able to relax in a tin can 35,000 feet in the air? Dark thought about Graysmith. She claimed she could get him any details he wanted, access, everything. But he’d just spent the past five years under Wycoff’s thumb. He wasn’t eager to slip under someone else’s. So why was he doing this, flying across the country to investigate a murder? Why couldn’t he leave it to Riggins and the rest of Special Circs? What was wrong with him, anyway?

  Dark had no real answer for that.

  A few hours later, Dark was retrieving his small overnight bag from the overhead bin and making his way up the aisle. It was already evening. He hated the hours he lost going east.

  There, waiting in the terminal, was Constance Brielle.

  Constance thought she’d be immune to it by now.

  But there was that telltale sting, whenever she looked at Steve Dark. The body naturally adapts to negative stimuli, doesn’t it? You press a button and receive an electric shock often enough, eventually your body’s going to get the idea that hey, maybe you shouldn’t do that. Why couldn’t that be the case with Steve Dark?

  A call came from someone in Wycoff’s office; Dark’s name popped up on a watch list. Riggins had asked Constance to meet him at the airport.

  “If I go, I’m going to end up punching him in his fucking face,” Riggins had said.

  “What makes you think I won’t do the same?” Constance had asked.

  “I don’t,” Riggins said. “I’m hoping you’ll hit him harder, actually.”

  They joked with each other, in that usual grim Special Circs way, but the pain beneath was real. When Dark left, he’d abandoned both of them. Now he wanted back in? This day, of all days?

  But Constance knew better than to blur the line between personal crap and the job. The job was simple: She was to put Dark back on a plane to L.A. immediately. If he refused to go, then she’d arrest
him. And you know what? She probably would punch him in the face if he tried to resist. There she went again; blurring the line.

  Just get him out of here, Constance told herself.

  Dark walked right up to her. “I guess you’re here to ask me to go home.”

  “Not asking,” Constance said, holding up a paper ticket. “You’re on the late to Burbank by way of Phoenix.”

  “The government won’t even spring for nonstop to LAX?”

  “It’s the next available flight.”

  “You take it. Weather’s nice in L.A. this time of year. You won’t have to put up with the Santa Anas for another few weeks.”

  “Don’t make me do this, Steve.”

  “Don’t get in my way, Constance. This has nothing to do with you.”

  When he tried to move past her, Constance grabbed his wrist. Squeezed it tight. Pulled it in. Put her face close to his.

  “I know why you’re doing this. Riggins thinks you’re just trying to piss him off. But I know you better than that, Steve. You think history’s repeating itself.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Constance. Let go of me.”

  “Well, it’s not. We’ll get it under control. Go back to your life.”

  Dark sighed. For a moment, she thought he was giving up. Instead he twisted his hand and reversed the hold. A second later sharp pain was racing up Constance’s arm. She started to reach for her cuffs, but hesitated.

  “Besides, she’s not at the apartment anymore,” Constance said. “She’s under guard.”

  There was a moment of surprise on Dark’s face. You had to be quick to catch it. Constance knew she’d hit a nerve. Riggins thought this was about Dark feeling guilty—thinking Paulson had taken his place, and gotten himself killed for it. Constance knew better.

  “Stay out of my way,” Dark said.