Edge of Midnight

35



He couldn’t believe what he saw.

Allan jammed the van’s gear into Park and cut the engine. The door to the cinder-block building hung open like a broken jaw. Forgetting the Venti-size latte he’d picked up on his way home, he launched himself from the driver’s side and hurried across the gravel in the early-morning light.

Someone had trespassed while he’d been out during the evening.

Entering, his heart pounding, he saw the overhead light had been left on. He’d been violated, but by whom? Lupita? Those low-life, teenage thugs who lived nearby? They had been caught breaking into property before. He looked around hastily, checking for some sign of disturbance. Missing tools. Overturned furniture. But nothing appeared out of place. His throat tightened with anxiety as his gaze moved to the previously padlocked cabinet. Open. Breathing hard, Allan swung its doors wide. The vials containing his treasures remained inside. All still lined up perfectly, an exact half inch between each of them. None was missing, but someone had seen them.

Someone had been here.

A red haze clouded his vision. The monster he’d barely been managing to keep tamped down emerged. Bellowing his outrage, he picked up a metal stool, beating it against the table before finally flinging it against the wall. It smacked the plastic sheeting and crashed to the floor.

Panting with exertion, he worked to rein in the anger that had been bubbling within him ever since Macfarlane had ridiculed him on television, painted him as a pathetic loser in front of the whole city. And now this. It was too much. Too much. His eyes swung around the unoccupied room. He yearned for someone to take his fury out on, but there was no one now. Not anymore.

Calm down. Allan drew in several deep breaths and tried to think rationally about the problem at hand.

If the intruder had seen something of concern, wouldn’t they have called the police? Wouldn’t flashing blue lights have met him as he turned onto the gravel road? He looked objectively around the room again, trying to see it through another person’s eyes. He was neat and thorough with his cleanups. The jugs of bleach lined up on the shelf were a common household item. And the hooks in the walls and ceiling could be purely functional, couldn’t they? Perhaps whoever had been snooping in the cabinet had been looking for something else, the vials’ labels and contents falling beneath his or her notice.

He’d gotten lucky before.

Probably kids, he told himself. Looking for weed or alcohol.

Allan remained long enough to take a complete inventory and make sure nothing was gone. His copies of the digital recordings were still there, too, burned on CDs and hidden in a drawer of the workbench. Then turning off the light and locking the door, he took the path through the woods to the house, irritated by the birds chirping overhead in morning song.

He couldn’t leave this place even for a few hours without everything going to hell.

The stench of cigarettes was noticeable as soon as he reached the screened door that led into the kitchen. Gladys sat at the table in her frayed housecoat, an ashtray in front of her littered with butts. She didn’t even try to hide it. Her oxygen canister was parked at her side, as was her damned Chihuahua, who growled and bared his teeth at Allan’s entrance.

He wanted to punt-kick the mangy mutt into next week. Instead, he snatched the lit cigarette she held and extinguished it in the ashtray, then dumped the lot of it into the sink and ran water over it. “We’ve talked about this. Repeatedly. No smoking.”

She merely stared at him with her faded blue eyes and drooping mouth, her lopsided expression somehow more defiant than usual. Her skin appeared chalky-white and dry as parchment. Behind her, the television on the counter was on and turned for once to a morning news program.

“Have you seen anyone lurking around here, Mother? Lupita or those horrible Larkin boys?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I woke up at five and you weren’t here. Where’ve you been?”

Where he’d been was Jacksonville Beach, watching the bungalow the idiotic deputies had practically led him to from the covert of an unrented property across the street. He had spent hours there—had seen Macfarlane himself go inside the house where she’d been hidden. He had been trying to plot out some kind of fail-proof plan to take her. As daylight had begun to seep into the sky, he’d come home to get some sleep and attend to Gladys’s needs. He would set up camp again tonight and wait for his opportunity to prove just how far from a loser he was.

“I had a morning pickup. A television set—”

“You’re a liar,” Gladys spat, surprising him. “Just like your miserable father.”

He saw it then. The extra set of keys to the building he kept in a drawer in his bedroom. They lay on the table next to her teacup. The keys to the cabinet’s padlock were on the same ring. Allan went cold.

“Your wickedness comes from his side, not mine.” She shook a gnarled finger, her thin voice rising. “You’ve been on the television! I tried to tell myself that drawing wasn’t you. But now I know what you’ve been doing out in those woods. All these years…I’ve prayed for that sickness to be out of you!”

Blood pounded in his ears. Gladys? How had she gotten all the way down to his workshop? She couldn’t have walked, could she? He remembered her car, an old Plymouth she let Lupita use to run errands. With the housekeeper’s departure, it had been returned and now sat in the carport. It infuriated him that after all this time, she chose now to watch something besides televangelists.

“You promised me after that little girl.” A betrayed sob escaped her. She shook her head and pressed her fingers over her wrinkled mouth. “What you did to her… I kept your filthy secret because you were my son! We prayed and you swore you’d never do it again! Shame!”

Allan wished Gladys had a mute button like the television set. She was starting to screech.

“You’ve got the devil inside you, just like your father! Lucifer!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he attempted, face hot. “Your medication has you confused—”

“Those vials.” She took a phlegmy, anguished breath, wheezing. “I saw them. They’ve got women’s names on them! Their fingernails, their teeth—it makes me sick! I won’t hide your sin this time!”

Closing his eyes, Allan rubbed a hand over his face. He could feel Puddles under the table, cautiously sniffing his pants leg. This couldn’t be happening. He tried to shut out her accusing shrieks.

“Be quiet, Mother,” he warned under his breath. He needed silence to think. Gladys was a shut-in, an invalid. He could cancel the phone service and sell her car. She wouldn’t be able to tell anyone…

“You’re a perversion! Bound for hell!”

She began praying aloud, beseeching God to cast the devil out of him. To make him a real man instead of a weak, pitiful child of the dark. Her entreaty went on and on until it evolved into a self-pitying monologue. The burden He had placed on her by giving her such a wretched, miserable son. Allan’s face grew hot and he began to shake.

I won’t lose control. I won’t lose control.

“I should’ve never had you! Should’ve turned you in for what you did to that orphan girl! But you were my child! My yoke to bear!” She pumped her fist against her bony chest. “I was glad when you were gone! No one asked you back here!”

As she continued her caterwauling, Allan drove his fingernails into his palms until his skin began to bleed. A tsunami of rage washed over him. How dare she. If she didn’t shut up he wouldn’t be able to contain it. He could feel it moving inside him.

The monster clawed to get out.

It was midafternoon by the time Eric returned to the FBI building in Baymeadows. He’d been out with another agent, following up on the leads still trickling in through the hotline—including a suspicious, dark-haired male who’d been reported loitering around a girls’ softball team practice at the University of North Florida. The man had been peculiar and Eric figured he might end up being someone else’s problem eventually, but he wasn’t their unsub. They did run him off the campus, however.

“We heard back from the Maryland and Virginia DMVs,” Cameron told him, sitting at his desk as Eric entered the third-floor office. They’d split up earlier, with Cam leading a recanvassing of the area where Karen Diambro’s body had been found the day before. “None of the temp agency’s workers are showing licenses in those states.”

It was a disappointment. The absence didn’t completely rule out the names on the list—the unsub could’ve been unregistered there or had a license under an alias—but it greatly lessened the probability. Eric draped his suit coat over the back of a chair, taking some relief from the heat in the building’s air-conditioning. “Let’s still run the full background checks.”

“I’ve already got someone on it, but it might take a few days to get through all thirty-six names.” Cameron added cynically, “Oh, yeah, some guy turned himself in to the JSO a little while ago, claiming to be The Collector. He vaguely matches the physical profile, but Boyet and Scofield are dubious since he doesn’t seem to know any confidential details of the case. They’re contacting hospitals to see if he’s been under psychological care.”

While it wasn’t unusual for someone unstable to admit to high-profile murders as a way of getting attention, it did add to the static that made it harder to isolate the real contenders. Eric felt a growing frustration. It seemed as though they’d been through a maze of dead ends. And despite the press conference he had hoped would incite the unsub, there hadn’t been so much as a blip on the radar. Sitting down at the desk adjacent to Cameron’s to check his email on the computer, his cell phone rang. The name that appeared on its screen worried him. He answered.

“Agent Macfarlane, it’s Will Dvorak.”

Will was supposed to see Mia at the newspaper before flying back to Chicago. Eric asked, “Is everything all right?”

“I don’t want to alarm you,” he said carefully. “But Mia isn’t here at the Courier. She left of her own volition, apparently. She’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“She took my car.”

Eric rubbed his forehead. “You need to explain yourself.”

“We’d just finished lunch and I stepped out to return a call to my agent. When I got back, she’d disappeared along with my car keys. She left a note apologizing and telling me there was somewhere important she had to go—”

“Did she say where?”

“No. She promised she isn’t in any kind of trouble and that there’s no need to send a posse out after her. I went to the parking garage to try to stop her but she’d already taken off. She isn’t answering her cell, either.”

Already, Eric was moving toward the door, irritated and worried at the same time. Cameron gave him a look, his interest piqued.

“How long ago?”

“I’m guessing about forty minutes.”

He didn’t try to control the censure in his voice. “You waited that long to call me?”

Will sounded nervous. “The call with my agent went long, and then after I realized she was gone I spent a while trying to reach her by phone. She’s my friend, Agent Macfarlane. She asked that I not alert you at all, but I couldn’t do that. I thought it best to call.”

“You should’ve called me right away,” he said flatly, walking down the corridor. “If you hear from her, you let me know immediately.”

Eric ended the call. Cameron caught up to him as he waited for the elevator.

“What’s going on?”

“Mia took off from the newspaper.”

He raised his eyebrows, surprised. “Why?”

“She said there was something she had to do.” He had a growing certainty about where she’d gone, and he didn’t like the idea of it. In fact, he’d specifically refused her request on more than one occasion. But Mia had been adamant about wanting to help in any way she could. Eric thought back to that morning. She’d seemed pensive, but he’d chalked it up to the early hour and the stress of being taken out of her routine. He hadn’t read more into it than that.

“Find out about this guy the JSO is holding, all right?” he said as the elevator doors slid open and he stepped on. They’d be negligent not to look into it, but he knew in his gut The Collector wasn’t going to just turn himself in.

Cameron nodded. “Do you know where she is?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

His concern grew as the elevator plummeted to the lobby. Surely Wilhelm wouldn’t conduct another therapy session with Mia, especially when he himself had warned against it for her own safety. Walking briskly across the heated parking lot to his car, he tried to reach Mia by cell phone. Like Will, he got her voice mail. He called Dr. Wilhelm’s office next as he pulled from the complex, but there was no answer there, either.

The Naval Air Station wasn’t too far from Baymeadows. Traveling above the posted speed limit, he took the bridge over the water, heading west. He arrived at the base twenty minutes later and used his DOJ shield to gain access from the guards at the front. Upon reaching the single-story building that housed Dr. Wilhelm’s office, he felt a flood of relief. Will Dvorak’s Porsche convertible was parked outside.

At least he’d found her. At least she was here and not somewhere in the city, roaming around alone. Damn it, Mia. Shaking his head, he emerged from the sedan. He appreciated her bravery, if not her disobedience.

Eric jogged up to the building. Inside, however, he found Dr. Wilhelm’s office door locked. The interior lights also appeared to be off. He knocked loudly but there was no response.

She went into a fight-or-flight reaction she couldn’t come down from, causing the hyperventilation and prolonged spike in her BP. If it went on any longer she could’ve had a heart attack.

He raked a hand through his hair. What if Mia had somehow managed to persuade the doctor into putting her under again and she’d suffered another reaction? He recalled carrying her across the parking lot to the naval hospital’s E.R. as she struggled to breathe.

Eric dashed back outside and to the hospital entrance, feeling an uneasy déjà vu. The E.R. was busy, filled with naval servicemen and families, as well as medical staff moving about in scrubs. Upon flashing his shield and explaining who he was looking for, a nurse working the front desk paged Dr. Wilhelm. Unsure if he was even there, Eric paced the area, waiting to see if the psychiatrist emerged. Five minutes later, he caught sight of him coming down the corridor.

“Don’t tell me you let her talk you into doing it again,” Eric ground out, advancing.

“A private word, Agent?”

The two men stepped into a quieter alcove off the main hallway.

“I didn’t have much choice,” Dr. Wilhelm said, stone-faced. “Ms. Hale called me and threatened to run a feature article on my work and her involvement with it unless I cooperated. Even with her signed waiver, I would come under considerable scrutiny for practicing on a civilian, something even your father’s clout wouldn’t be able to defuse. As you know, the drug hasn’t been cleared for—”

“She’s bluffing,” Eric interjected. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“I couldn’t take that chance. I’m sorry. I took every precaution, including moving her to the E.R. beforehand.”

“She’s already been under?” Eric’s jaw hardened. “How is she?”

“I’ll take you to her.” Wilhelm touched his shoulder, guiding him from the alcove and down the hallway. “She experienced another blood pressure surge, but we were able to manage it better this time with the proper resources in place.”

Eric felt his own pulse rise as he followed Dr. Wilhelm into a private, windowless exam room. Mia lay on a gurney, hands folded over her stomach and her eyes closed. She was receiving oxygen, and he could see the shallow rise and fall of her chest. A heart monitor was also hooked up beside the bed, its leads traveling underneath her blouse. He swallowed tightly. She appeared to be asleep, but the dark veil of her lashes fluttered open as he came to stand next to her. Looking up at him, her soft brown eyes filled with tears. With a tense sigh, he smoothed her hair back from her face, his upset dissipating. Now wasn’t the time for a scolding. Instead, he murmured her name.

“Did you tell him?” she asked Dr. Wilhelm, her head rising faintly from the pillow.

“I thought I’d let you.”

Eric touched her cheek, wiping away a tear with the pad of his thumb. She seemed jittery. “Just relax, all right? Tell me what?”

“I went back to the cinder-block room…I saw something this time, Eric.” Her voice trembled. “Syringes in a white bag.”

He felt the hair on the back of his neck rise.

“The print on the bag said Walker’s Pharmacy.”