Edge of Midnight

29



A clock in the shape of the sun hung on the wall of the bungalow’s kitchen. Eric glanced up at it as he heard a car pull into the crushed-shell driveway outside. Peering through the small, curtained window above the sink, he sighed. Mia was still asleep, so he went to catch Cameron before he knocked.

Cam carried the Sunday newspaper, which he tossed onto the table as he entered. Walt Rudner’s byline was beneath the front-page headline: Jax Serial Killer May Have Claimed Another Victim.

“It says a syringe was found at the scene matching the unsub’s M.O. We don’t have labs back on the contents yet and they’re reporting it,” he grumbled before heading into the kitchen.

Nor had the task force made an official statement yet, although a news briefing was scheduled for later in the day. Eric scanned the article, which gave Penney Niemen’s name as the deceased and listed the apartment building’s address. He thought of the deputies and forensics techs who had worked the scene. One of them had shared information about the syringe with Rudner, evidence that linked the unsub to last night’s death. He continued reading, his frown deepening as he reached the third paragraph.

Although an autopsy has yet to be conducted, a preliminary examination by the Duval County Medical Examiner’s office indicates the likelihood of foul play. An earlier victim, the only woman believed to have escaped the serial killer dubbed The Collector, resides at the same building where the suspicious death occurred, suggesting she may have been the intended target.

At least the article hadn’t given Mia’s name, maintaining some modicum of privacy.

“The building’s been all over the television this morning,” Cameron said as he returned with a mug of coffee from the kitchen. “I’m guessing you put Ms. Hale somewhere else for the night.”

Eric released a breath. He might as well tell him now. “She’s here, actually.”

Cameron’s gaze flicked to the bedroom’s closed door. “Then I’m going to assume you slept on the couch.”

“Let’s go out on the deck.” He didn’t want Mia overhearing their discussion. Stopping at the coffeemaker on the kitchen counter, he refilled his own mug he’d left next to the sink. A sliding glass door took up much of the room’s rear wall. Unlocking it, he pushed through the vertical blinds and went outside with Cameron behind him. It was still early, and the air outside was warm but not yet uncomfortable. A wood fence enclosed the small backyard, beyond which a few weathered beach houses could be seen on the posterior street.

“I want a watch put on her. We’ve got justification now. And I also want to use this place as a safe house,” Eric said.

Cameron leaned against the deck railing. “Why not just assign a detail to her apartment?”

“You’ve seen the building—it’s huge. The courtyard, verandas and staircases—there are too many places to hide and too many points of entry. It would take six or seven uniforms to properly secure it. This place is small and contained. We can put a single unit right out front.”

“And where will you be moving to?” he asked pointedly.

“I’ll be here with her at night. With the limited resources we have, it makes sense.”

Lips pressed together, Cameron looked over the yard with its mixture of grass and sand. In the far corner, a rope hammock hung between one of the fence posts and a scrubby grapefruit tree. “You never did have much of a poker face, Eric. How long have you been screwing her?”

Seagulls flew overhead, cawing as they headed to the ocean. His face heated. “It’s not like that.”

“You care about her.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “I do.”

The admission must have given Cameron pause, because for once he was without a rebuttal. Eric had an idea of what was on his mind, however.

“Look, before you start, I don’t need a lecture on protocol. It’s been drummed into my head since I was a rookie. ‘Don’t get involved—’”

“I don’t give a damn about protocol. I’m not your supervisor.” Cameron placed his mug on the railing. “And let’s set aside the fact that she’s a reporter—”

“She’s been taken off the investigation.”

“You’re my friend, Eric.” His concern appeared genuine. “This psychopath wants her. Last night proved it. What if he gets to her, too?”

Like Rebecca. Eric felt sick at the thought. “We’re not going to let that happen. She’s going to end up dead if she continues running around Jacksonville by herself. It’s by sheer luck she’s not the one lying on a slab in the M.E.’s freezer right now.”

Cameron checked his watch. “Speaking of, we’ve got the Niemen autopsy at eleven and the news briefing at two-thirty. They’re also going to want an update on the Karen Diambro abduction—not that we have anything new to tell them—as part of it. In the meantime, I’d like to go by the crime scene.”

Eric nodded. “We’ll take Mia with us. She’s going to need to pack some things. Afterward, I can have a deputy bring her back here and stay with her until we can make a more formal schedule.”

He glanced through the glass doors into the kitchen. Mia stood at the coffeemaker, her back to them, unaware of their presence. At least she was dressed. When Eric had left her in bed that morning, she’d been gloriously naked. He’d yearned to make love to her again, but he knew she needed to rest. Her sleep had been fitful last night, at best.

“Give me a few minutes to talk to her alone, all right?”

He left Cameron on the deck. Mia turned abruptly when she heard the door’s glass panel slide open, her face pale.

“I’m sorry.” He came into the kitchen, placing his mug on the counter. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“I didn’t know you were outside.” She held her own coffee mug in both hands, cupped between her palms. Faint, violet shadows smudged her eyes.

“I got milk,” he said. “In the fridge—”

“Is that Agent Vartran?” she asked, seeing Cameron, who had apparently taken the opportunity to make a call. He paced the deck’s cedar planking, his phone to his ear. A blush stained her cheeks, and Eric figured she was wondering how much the other agent knew about them.

“Yeah. We have some things to do. But we’re going by your apartment first.”

Misinterpreting, she set the mug on the counter. “Just give me a few minutes to pack up, all right?”

“Mia.” He gently caught her wrist, halting her retreat. “You don’t understand. I’m not…dropping you off. Agent Vartran and I think you need to stay here for a while. I’d like you to come with us and get some more of your things. Whatever you need.”

Her lips parted slightly as she looked at him. “For how long?”

“Until we catch this guy.” Eric went with her into the living area. “I’ll be with you at night. During the day or when the investigation calls me away, we’ll have a JSO squad car right outside.”

“Why can’t we do this at my apartment?”

“The unsub knows where you live. He can’t come after you again if he doesn’t know where to find you. Besides, resources are limited and it will take less men to protect you here than at your building.”

“Today’s Sunday. What about tomorrow? I have to go to work.”

“You may have to take some time off.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I won’t. I’m already in trouble with Grayson.”

“I’ll talk to him—”

“That’s not a good idea.” Mia rubbed a hand over her eyes. “The Courier’s considering more layoffs. I need to be there and be productive. After the investigation’s over, I have a life I’ll need to get back to. And I’ll need my job. If you haven’t heard, they’re hard to come by in the newspaper business these days.”

Stress was visible on her features. The past several weeks had been a disruption, he knew. It rankled him that Grayson Miller was putting additional pressure on her right now.

“We’ll figure something out, all right?” He stepped closer, sliding his hands over her arms in a consoling gesture. “Even if that means giving you an escort to and from work.”

She didn’t appear happy about the prospect.

“Do you trust me?” he asked in a low voice.

Mia gave a faint nod. Eric turned as he heard footsteps in the kitchen. Cameron came into the living area.

“Ms. Hale,” he said in somber greeting, then shifted his attention to Eric. “I just got off the phone with Scofield. She got a heads-up—Karen Diambro’s ex-husband is talking to the media. He’s complaining the task force isn’t doing enough to find her. The segment’s going to run on the evening news.”

He shook his head, irritated. “We’ve been busting our asses looking for her, with men working overtime. We’re doing all we can. I don’t know what else he expects.”

Eric released a breath, feeling the heavy weight of responsibility on his shoulders.

“He expects us to find her.”

Crime scene tape still cordoned off the apartment building’s courtyard, appearing out of place among its serene, gurgling fountain and stone benches. Two deputies, a male and female, remained stationed at the front to keep out the unauthorized. Flashing his shield at the officers, Eric placed a reassuring hand against the small of Mia’s back as they entered.

“I guess I don’t have to ask where the body was found,” Cameron commented under his breath. A cleanup crew was at work, one of them using a pressure washer at the base of the stairs to remove Penney Niemen’s blood from the concrete.

Eric noticed Mia had turned her head away from the scene.

“I’m going upstairs, if that’s okay,” she said.

He motioned to the female deputy. “Go with her, please.”

The cleanup crew halted their work long enough for Mia and the officer to slip carefully past them and climb the steps to her apartment. Concerned, Eric’s eyes followed them up to the landing.

“So tell me how this went down.”

Eric walked Cameron through the likely scenario of what had taken place, culminating in the deceased’s skull being repeatedly bashed against the concrete, based on the M.E.’s initial assessment. He pointed out the planter at the base of the staircase. “The syringe was found over there, the needle upright in the dirt like a dart. We figure it was lost in the struggle on the second-floor landing and ended up falling into the planter.”

Wearing sunglasses, Cameron glanced around the courtyard and building. “I see what you mean. There’s a dozen different places around here for someone to hide. It would take a platoon to seal it down.”

“There’s a set of staircases on the building’s rear, too. It’s basically a duplicate image of the front, although the courtyard in back has a swimming pool.”

“Nice place,” Cameron noted.

“Mia said the current owners renovated it from a single estate home into three units. It was built in the 1920s by a gangster who made a fortune bootlegging alcohol.”

“So the crime tradition continues.”

A media van pulled up across the street, at a respectable enough distance that it wouldn’t likely be chased away by the deputies on guard. The agents watched as a cameraman got out of the van’s side door and began setting up. A blonde female in a fuchsia suit, probably a reporter, accompanied him.

“Even if Ms. Hale isn’t staying here, the unsub won’t know that. We need to set up a watch,” Cameron mentioned. “What about last night? Did anyone survey the bystanders?”

“We circulated the most recent sketch to law enforcement on the scene.” Still, the place had been chaos, with cars passing by on the street and neighbors gathered in groups on the adjacent lawns. Eric had even gone into the crowd himself, searching for someone matching the unsub’s description.

A member of the cleanup crew went past, wearing earplugs attached to an iPod as he hummed along with his music. Carrying a trash bag, he was picking up refuse left behind by the emergency responders—foam coffee cups, cigarette butts and wrappers from medical supplies. Eric noticed the back of the man’s blue jumpsuit was emblazoned with a business logo and the name Bio-Clean, Inc.

“A civilian group?” he asked.

“It’s an outsource firm contracted by local law enforcement for crime scene cleanup. We use them—so do the JSO and local arms of the DEA and ATF, on occasion. It’s cheaper than keeping a crew on payroll and paying benefits. Of course, you big-timers at the VCU probably have your own people.”

Eric failed to respond to Cameron’s lighthearted dig. Instead, he was thinking of the Bargain-Mart where Anna Lynn Gomez had been abducted two weeks ago. Security cameras had caught her image in the store’s vestibule as she left with her purchase, but not outside the building. The store had admitted to a camera blind spot of approximately fifty feet to the left of the entrance—something some of its employees and technicians from the company that installed the CCTV system knew about. However, all of them had turned up clean.

“The Bargain-Mart,” Eric recounted. “When you ran background checks on employees at the company that put in the cameras, did you ask about outsourcers?”

“No,” Cameron said. “They knew it was an abduction investigation. They would’ve mentioned it if they used outside support.”

Still, he dug into his pocket for his cell phone. It was a long shot, Eric realized, but cable carriers and phone companies sometimes used service contractors to augment their full-time employees. What if the security company did, too?

A short time later, Cameron snapped the phone closed. “I got their answering service. Someone from management’s supposed to call me back.”

Another news van pulled up, this one daring to park against the curb directly in front of the building.

“I’ve got this,” Cam said. He walked away, shouting orders to the driver. Eric turned and went up the stairs. Once inside the apartment, he sent the female deputy back down. He found Mia in her office. She wasn’t packing, but instead stood staring out through the large window that overlooked the pool and patio below. Nearby, the outstretched branches of a live oak, heavy with Spanish moss, shaded the lawn.

“What’re you thinking about?” he asked, coming to stand behind her. He gently clasped her upper arms.

“Will and Justin had an oyster roast at the pool, just last month. They strung up paper lanterns and little white lights everywhere. They even hired an acoustic guitarist…” Mia shook her head, her tone reflective. “Penney was there. She brought a date. So much has changed since then.”

“We’re going to catch him, Mia. It’s only a matter of time.”

She turned to face him, her brown eyes haunted. “How many more women have to die before then? I’d like to try the memory-retrieval therapy again, Eric. Maybe I’ll remember something key. You said yourself you thought we were close. Let me do it for Penney—”

“You can’t. It’s gotten too dangerous.”

Her chin tilted up a fraction. “I’m willing to take the risk.”

He ran his fingers through her hair, his voice low. “I’m not. I’ll find another way.”

They held each other’s gaze until Mia’s cell phone rang inside the purse she’d laid on the desk, its ring tone a popular Maroon 5 melody. She went over to check it, frowning as she peered at the screen.

“It’s Grayson,” she said. “I need to take this.”

Eric left the room, giving her privacy to talk. He went into her bedroom, noticing that she’d at least put her laptop in its case and had her suitcase open on the bed’s goose down comforter. Like the rest of the apartment, her bedroom had a vintage style, with distressed wood furniture and a rustic, bronze chandelier hanging over the bed. The closet door was open, and he smiled faintly at the disarray of clothing, shoes and storage boxes inside. A night-light—a stained-glass butterfly in hues of soft purple and blue—was plugged into an electrical socket nearby. Thinking about what Mia had revealed to him last night after they’d made love, he took it from the wall. Carefully wrapping it in one of her T-shirts, he placed it in the suitcase’s side pocket.

“Everything okay?” he asked as she entered the room.

“Grayson overslept. He just now heard about what happened.”

She appeared anxious and sad. Swallowing a sigh, Eric tucked his hands inside his pockets. He hated that he was asking her to leave her home, but his gut told him it was necessary. She needed to be somewhere the unsub didn’t know about, out of his reach.

“If I stayed here, he might come back. You could have men outside, watching—”

“We will,” Eric stated. “But I still want you somewhere else.”

Although the front door of the apartment had been left open, someone rang the doorbell. Figuring it was Cameron, Eric said, “Go ahead and get packed, all right? If you forget something, I can send someone back for it.”

He went down the hallway and motioned the other agent inside.

“The general manager for the security company just called,” Cameron told him as he walked from the foyer. “He says they use only their own staff to install the systems. They’re thoroughly background-checked, as we already knew. But they have used freelance repairmen in the past when they were backlogged. Most of them came through a temp agency downtown. He apologized for not mentioning it earlier—he said it slipped his mind since it’s been well over a year since they needed any additional help. Business is down with the economy.”

The blind spot in the camera range at the Bargain-Mart niggled at him. It could have been just sheer luck, but there was a chance Anna Lynn Gomez’s abductor had known about it because he’d worked on the system at some point. “We’ll need to get the paperwork on whoever the agency sent out.”

“I’ll get on it,” Cameron said. He looked around the apartment. “She’s got good taste.”

Eric couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened here last night and how close Mia had come to being in the bastard’s grip once again. How much time had passed between his departure and her arrival home? He estimated no more than a half-hour and possibly much less.

Considering their shared past, he felt certain The Collector would take extra care in harming her.

If he got another chance.