Edge of Midnight

36



“There’s a Walker’s Pharmacy in Green Cove Springs southwest of Jacksonville,” Eric said, closing his cell phone. He glanced at Mia from the driver’s side of the car. “Agent Vartran’s headed there now. If the pharmacist recognizes the man in the sketch, we may have him. Syringes don’t require a prescription in Florida, but if he bought them there, there’s a chance he’s also had prescriptions filled. They’ll have his personal information.”

“You didn’t have to bring me back.” Mia understood he was anxious to get to the location. “I could’ve taken Will’s car—”

“You’re still shaky and in no condition to drive. And I don’t want you out alone. A JSO deputy is taking Will to pick up the Porsche, and I’m delivering you to the safe house. Agent Vartran will handle things until I get there.”

He reached across the seat and briefly intertwined his fingers with hers.

“I thought you’d be angry with me.”

His profile was somber. “You put your own safety at stake. I couldn’t ask you to do that again. I wouldn’t put you at risk like that.”

“That’s why I took the decision out of your hands,” Mia replied softly. She thought of the grim photos of Karen Diambro’s remains. “He’s a malignancy. I couldn’t let another woman suffer and die, not if I could do something to help stop him.”

Eric frowned. “You’re brave, Mia. But the session could’ve gone very differently.”

She knew what he was thinking—her previous attempt that had sent her to the E.R. in cardiac and respiratory distress. It still surprised her that Dr. Wilhelm had caved in to her threat, and that she’d managed to get through the therapy without another serious complication. Lying on the gurney as she waited for the drug to take effect, she had missed the comfort of Eric’s presence. She hadn’t realized how much strength she’d drawn from him until he wasn’t there.

They headed into Jacksonville Beach, the late-afternoon sun a little lower in the sky. Mia gazed at the expanse of white-capped ocean as the car turned left onto the A1A.

“Was it bad?”

“I got lucky,” she murmured. She’d been there with The Collector—gagged, woozy, her wrists bound to the table. But somehow she’d managed to stay calm enough to look around for something useful. She recalled the pliers he’d placed on the table in front of her. If she had stayed in the memory even another minute, she might have had to relive his torture. The thought of it sickened her.

They drove onto the dead-end street and past the row of sun-worn beach houses. Mia saw the deputy squad car already parked in front of the bungalow. Eric pulled into the driveway and escorted her inside, closing the door behind them. As she waited at the entryway, he checked through the interior, making sure it was secure. When he returned, he walked to her and touched her face.

“If we get this bastard, it’s because of what you did. This could be the break we’ve been looking for.”

“Be careful,” she urged.

“I’d like the deputies to come inside with you. There may be some aftereffects from the drug—”

“I’m fine by myself,” she insisted. Mia felt the dull throb of a headache, something not uncommon following the therapy. But the dizziness she’d experienced earlier was gone. “I’d really like to have some privacy. I promise, I’m going to lie on the couch and watch television.”

He sighed in resignation. “Set the alarm behind me. Don’t turn it off for anyone except the deputies.”

Eric kissed her, a lingering touch of his lips to hers. Mia’s hand lay against his shirtfront. When she looked at him, she could see both tension and excitement on his face. Mia locked the door behind him, then set the security system using the keypad. Moving to the gap between the curtains, she watched through the window as he walked across the sand and grass lawn to the squad car. He talked to the deputies inside it—probably giving instructions—before getting into his own vehicle. She remained there, fading sunlight slanting through the pane, until he had driven away.

Alone now, arms crossed over her chest, Mia glanced around the room. She had no doubt it would be a long evening as she waited to hear for some word. There were things she could do, including a call to Will to apologize for pulling him into the fray, and another call to Grayson to explain her disappearance from the paper. Mentally, however, she just wasn’t up to it yet. Restless, she wandered to the sheet-draped couch. Dropping onto its cushions, she picked up the television remote.

As she listened to the six o’clock news, her gaze fell on the papers Eric had left on the coffee table. He’d done some work here, apparently, after the deputies had escorted her to the newspaper that morning. Mia picked up the top several sheets, which were on the letterhead of a temporary staffing agency in downtown Jacksonville. Eric had mentioned his theory that the killer might have been an outsource repairman who had worked on security cameras at the Bargain-Mart where Anna Lynn Gomez was abducted. Her eyes scanned the list, stopping at one particular last name. She’d seen it before.

She went into the bedroom and returned with the retired detective’s notepad, which she had brought with her from home. Mia flipped through the now-familiar pages until she found it.

It was probably a coincidence, even though the surname wasn’t all that common. Locating her cell phone inside her purse, she used it to call Eric.

“Everything okay?” he asked, answering.

“I’m fine. But I was looking at the list of workers from the temp agency. You left it here.” She pushed her hair behind one ear as she spoke, uncertain. “There’s a man on the list named Allan Levi. Detective Dugger’s notes mentioned that one of Joy Rourke’s caseworkers was a woman named Gladys Levi. I’m wondering if there could be a connection.”

“I’m still on my way to Green Cove Springs. I’ll call Agent Vartran and mention it.”

“It might not mean anything—”

“You never know,” Eric said seriously.

Once they’d ended their call, she looked again at the television screen. A female reporter stood in front of the tire store where Karen Diambro’s body had been found, doing a follow-up report. Mia half listened to the broadcast, her mind still on Gladys Levi. She was one of the people she had tried to make contact with, but she hadn’t been able to find a current address or phone number in Jacksonville.

Another realization took shape inside her head—undoubtedly a coincidence, although it was a chilling one.

Levi was an anagram for evil.

Cameron approached Eric as he exited his car across the street from Walker’s Pharmacy. The business was located on a downtown waterside square, in a one-story, stucco building with striped window awnings. Verdant shade trees lined the brick sidewalks.

“According to the assistant pharmacist on duty, the male in the sketch bears a resemblance to one of his customers.” Cam’s expression was triumphant. “And Mia was right—the son of a bitch’s name is Allan Levi. He picks up prescriptions for his mother.”

Eric felt nearly light-headed. They were so close. “Did he provide an address?”

“He looked it up in the customer database—although he wants to keep that off the record due to privacy laws.” He handed over a piece of paper with the pharmacy’s name and logo, the address written below it. “It’s in a rural area about thirty minutes from here. This is it, Eric.”

Cameron briefly clasped his shoulder.

A short distance away, the St. Johns River held glints of gold as the sun set over the water. People were fishing from a concrete pier rimmed by a park. Green Cove Springs lived up to its name—the place was like Mayberry, not at all a location where he expected to be closing in on The Collector. Eric pulled out his cell phone, his nerves taut.

“I’m calling for a warrant. Let’s go ahead and get backup out here.”

A violet dusk had fallen over the heavily wooded property. Law enforcement officers including a dozen federal agents were assembled at its border, preparing for a two-pronged attack. Cameron would lead the group entering the ranch house, while Eric’s team traveled through the woods in back of the property. Clad in a Kevlar vest like the others, he gave a signal and the dual squadrons swarmed.

“Allan Levi! Open up! FBI—we’ve got a warrant!”

Eric heard Cam’s barking order at the front door as he ran around the side of the house and toward the trees with his men. Flashlights marked their path as they traveled through the dense thicket behind the residence before emerging into a clearing. Eric felt his heart pumping. Everything here was as Mia had described—the concrete structure with a slab roof and single door, a makeshift gravel path that led up to the rural road. The steel skeletons of stripped cars stood at the forest’s edge.

Repeating Cameron’s command, he pounded on the building’s locked entrance. A thin shaft of light was visible along the bottom of the door. When there was no response, Eric kicked it twice before it crashed open. The team fanned cautiously inside with guns raised.

The room was unoccupied.

“Clear!” Holstering his weapon, Eric looked around, his throat dry. At first glance, it was a standard workshop with all the basic accoutrements—a long Peg-Board holding tools, a wooden workbench and metal-top table bearing a deep dent. The place appeared obsessively clean. But it was the other trappings that told the real story, like the sheeting protecting the walls and metal hooks that along with a chain or rope could be used as restraints. Again, things Mia had relayed in detail. The antiseptic odor of bleach was overpowering. A box air conditioner hummed in the far wall, its condensation dripping onto the concrete floor. He had an image of her inside this prison—injured, drugged and somehow managing to push the unit from the single window in order to escape.

“Agent?” a deputy asked.

Eric turned to see the cabinet that stood with doors open. There were plastic medicine vials—ten of them—lined up on the lower shelf. The realization of what they contained hit him like a punch.

Stepping closer, his eyes scanned the names printed neatly on the labels in red marker. The fifth one was marked with the name Rebecca. Despite the muggy heat and the weight of his vest, Eric felt a numbing coldness, the surrounding noise created by the other men fading from his ears. He had the presence of mind to ask for a pair of investigational gloves. He put them on and picked up the vial. Twisting off its cap, he spilled its contents carefully into his palm. Fingernails and two molars. Eric briefly closed his eyes. Tamping down the surge of raw emotion he felt, he placed the remains in the vial and returned it to the shelf. It was evidence now.

“Get a forensics team in here,” he said hoarsely, walking out. “I want the place sprayed down with Luminol.”

There was a reason for the half-dozen gallons of bleach in the room.

A field agent with a communications radio approached him. “Vartran’s requesting you at the house ASAP.”

“Is Levi up there?”

“No sign of him.”

Cursing under his breath, Eric sprinted back through the dark woods. He wondered where Levi was. As he came into the backyard a few moments later, lights glowed from inside the house. Winding through the crowd of law enforcement standing outside, he reached the rear porch and screened door that led into a kitchen. Eric paused in the threshold. Cameron was down on his haunches beside the body of an elderly woman. She lay in a congealing pool of blood, her housecoat soaked and her eyes beginning to cloud. A butcher knife protruded from her chest.

“Gladys Levi, I presume.”

Cameron looked up at him. “The body’s already in rigor mortis. I’m estimating she’s been dead about ten to twelve hours. And there’s two vics, actually.”

He indicated the other side of the table. Eric moved carefully around the blood pool, aware of the sickening, coppery scent that hung in the air. A small dog lay on its side next to a mobile oxygen canister, its tongue lolling out. Wall spatter and the condition of the body indicated it had been beaten to death.

“And you were worried you hadn’t set this guy off.” Cameron scratched his forehead with a gloved hand. “Agent Warren is in back. I sent the others into the yard to avoid scene contamination.”

Eric noticed the small counter television with a shattered glass screen. “I’m going to have a look at the rest of the house.”

Backing out of the kitchen, Eric entered the living room, which contained a chintz couch and damask curtains, doilies on end tables and Tiffany lamps. It was old-ladyish, if anything. Nothing to imply a monster lived here, other than the bodies in the kitchen.

At the end of the hallway, he found two bedrooms. The agent Cam had mentioned was in the more masculine one, already filing through items in the closet.

“Find anything?” Eric asked.

“Just your usual stuff so far.”

He went into the adjacent bedroom, the one that obviously belonged to Gladys Levi, with its feminine, floral bedspread and eyelet dust ruffle. Antique baby dolls sat against the pillows, chubby infants in ruffled sleeping gowns with delicate porcelain faces and full heads of hair. There were ten of them. Still wearing gloves, Eric picked one up. Its vivid blue eyes closed as he held the doll horizontally.

“I’ve got the M.E. on the way.” Cameron stood in the doorway, one hand on its frame. He nodded to the doll Eric held. “I guess the old lady collected them.”

“They were gifts from her son.”

“How do you know?”

He walked over to show Cameron. A portion of blond, human hair had been carefully braided in with the doll’s synthetic tresses. The shade and quality were different, although it was a close enough match. It was what he did with the victims’ hair he lopped off. An elderly woman’s degenerating vision might not even have noticed.

“Do you think the mother knew?” Cameron asked.

“That her son is a serial murderer? Maybe. I don’t know.” He thought of Gladys Levi lying in the kitchen. “Giving her the dolls might’ve been a passive-aggressive way to flaunt who he was in front of her. They obviously had issues.”

Rebecca’s hair had been blond, the same color as the doll he held.

They knew who The Collector was now. In the hunt, they were light-years ahead of where they’d been even that morning. But a hard wave of disappointment passed through him. They didn’t have the bastard, not yet.

He was still out there somewhere.