Dark Prophecy (18 page)

But things felt different now. Dark lit a smoke and thought about the events of the night. About how much Hilda had opened up inside of him, how much he’d been forced to confront. Then Dark smiled ruefully.

“You knew all along, didn’t you,” he said softly.

The grass stirred around her headstone.

“I know, I know . . . I refused to go. You pleaded with me to at least try it, and I acted like a stubborn ass. I was pretty good at that, wasn’t I?”

Sibby—if she was listening somewhere—declined to respond.

But it was true. Dark should have listened to her all of those years ago and followed her into that tarot shop. Maybe he would have taken a good look at his life a lot sooner. Maybe he could have saved himself a lot of suffering . . .

Dark flicked away his smoke and crouched down, touching the top of Sibby’s headstone. It felt warm from the sun.

“I’m sorry,” Dark whispered.

Sibby never liked what Dark used to do for a living. She was creeped out by all of the serial killer books in his apartment, and she never wanted to hear about old cases. But Sibby also knew that he was the best at what he did.

Dark looked at his wife’s name etched in the marble.

Had she nudged him into Hilda’s shop? Was she giving Dark the reassurance he couldn’t give himself?

If so, that was all Dark needed.

The knowledge that he could catch this killer without losing himself in the process.

chapter 39

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

 

 

By this point Riggins was working on practically zero sleep, so the last thing he needed to see was some dead senator’s flabby naked pale ass. Especially a senator like Garner. Riggins never liked him much when he was alive, and it was hard to work up sympathy for the man now that he’d been found butchered in some high-end “spa” in a resort town. The man looked like a chicken roll left out on a deli counter too long.

Yet, that was precisely what Constance was asking him to do—stare closely at the man’s ass.

“Stoop down so you can see this,” she said.

“Can’t you just tell me?” Riggins said. “This job’s given me enough psychological scars to last me a second lifetime.”

“Will you just stoop down and stop being a baby?”

So yeah, sure, Riggins stooped down. They had managed to clear the room of the local police for a few minutes, which was fortunate. They wouldn’t do their usual banter in front of anybody else. And the banter sometimes did a lot to keep their emotions in check, their heads clear. Constance took Riggins on a tour of the daggers, starting at the head, working its way down the senator’s spine, and ending in one of his tough old thighs. Of the ten blades, the first nine were buried in the senator’s body up to the hilt. The last one, in the thigh, had been rammed through a tarot card first—the Ten of Swords. You know, just in case they couldn’t figure out the reference, Riggins supposed.

“Look at the blade itself,” Constance said, wonder in her voice.

Above the blood-flecked card, you could see about an inch of the blade and the elaborate designs on the steel.

“I’m guessing that’s not Ginsu,” Riggins said.

“This isn’t something you pick up at any old occult shop. Look at the artistry, the detail.”

Of course Constance was right. The detail was intricate and elaborate as the tattoos on a Yakuza gangster. Clearly, their perp hadn’t gone rifling through a silverware drawer for the murder weapons. These were unusual, which was a good thing—because it meant they would be traceable. You want to kill someone and get away with it? Go to Target or Walmart. Don’t get cute with exotic knives or drugs like this killer did. The problem was, the killer didn’t seem to give a shit about being traceable. He—or she—had taken out six people in five days in four different cities. Given all of the time in the world, sure, they’d find out where these daggers were made. But in the meantime, this nutcase could take out a half dozen more people. From all indications, the killer was escalating. Three college girls in a dive bar is one thing; taking a stab at a U.S. senator, with a complete, armed, taxpayer-funded security detail, puts you in a whole new league.

Riggins pulled his face away from the senator’s corpse. “Who found him?” he asked.

“Nikki. Real name’s Louella Boxer. She says she stepped into the other room to prepare for their session, to
get into character
, as she explained, and someone walked in.”

“Could she give a description?”

“Sort of,” Constance said. “Boxer claims it was a woman, naked from the neck down. Olive skin, athletic build.”

“And what was from the neck up?”

“A gas mask. And that was the last thing Boxer remembers. When she woke up, she came screaming into the room and found the senator like this.”

“You know, I was turned on until the gas mask part,” Riggins said. “How long was she out?”

“She has no idea.”

“The killer’s using his fancy knockout shit again,” Riggins muttered. “What, did he find this stuff on sale? We need to have Banner check the tox screens for that military stuff he found in Paulson’s blood. See if we can trace it back to a military base somewhere.”

“You mean she,” Constance said.

Riggins nodded. “Gas mask and tits. Right. And I thought the freak in the full-body condom was strange.”

V

ten of wands

To watch Steve Dark’s personal tarot card reading,
please log in to
Level26.com
and
enter the code: wands.

T
ranscript from Flight 1015, private charter plane from Denver International Airport to Southwest Florida International Airport.

Confusion spread throughout the small cabin:

“What the hell is he talking about?”

“Is this somebody’s idea of a joke?”

“Did he just say
fate
?”

A few minutes ago, life had been pretty damned fantastic for the ten passengers of Flight 1015. They were headed to a corporate retreat on a secluded playground on the golden Fort Myers coast. On the official agenda: brainstorming the future of the company and reintegrating the core values of Westmire Investments. (Hey, it sounded good on paper.) On the unofficial agenda: sex, booze, coke, massages, more coke, and quite possibly an orgy, depending on the amount and quality of coke at hand.

Tiffany Adams had been to these “retreats” before, so she knew how they could run hot and cold. Sometimes, the newbies wanted to focus a little too much on work, which totally killed it for vets like Adams. Fortunately, this flight contained six vets (herself, Ian Malone, Honora Mouton, Warren McGee, Shauyi Shen, Corey Young) and only four newbies (Maryellen Douglas, Emily Dzundza, Christos Lopez, Luke Rand). The retreat could go either way, but Adams liked the odds. She also liked how the morning was unfolding. It was friggin’ seven in the morning, and already the kids were at it.

Emily Dzundza, she of the ample chest and blow-me lips, was already on her second bourbon—and she’d seemed like the biggest stick-in-the-mud. Maryellen Douglas was off somewhere with Warren, and Christos Lopez was holding forth on a recent bottle-service binge he’d gone on at his last company, racking up a $135,000 tab within a matter of hours. Atta boy. Just what Tiffany liked to hear.

When the pilot started talking about fastening their seat belts however, it made no sense. Crystal blue skies, no turbulence whatsoever, calm, flat brown flyover country beneath them. Was this a joke? No. Pilots didn’t joke. Not in the post-9/11 world.

But then, without warning, the horizon tilted violently, and the plane began to nose-dive. Drinks were spilled. More of her coworkers screamed. None of this made sense. You didn’t get this kind of crazy maneuvering on a commercial flight, let alone on a private luxury jet where the pilot’s job was to make the trip so smooth; none of them were supposed to realize they were even in the air.

Some pilots, however, were assholes on purpose. Maybe he didn’t like rich people. Tiffany wasn’t going to sit back and let this pilot fuck around with them. She should march up there, pound her fist on the door, and tell the pilot to knock this crap off.

And she intended to do so. Only now, suddenly, Tiffany felt lightheaded. Probably the sudden change in pressure. Goddamn this pilot. She wanted to knock his teeth in, but she also wanted to ease back into her seat, just for a minute. Just until her head cleared . . .

 

 

A bump woke her up. As did the breeze across her face.

A breeze . . . inside a jet?

Tiffany felt dizzy and nauseous. She saw that everyone else was still passed out in their leather seats. Nothing made sense. What, were they all drunk? Tiffany unbuckled her seat belt, stood up on shaky legs, and started to move toward the front of the plane. Ahead, weird, wild patterns of light and shadow danced across the tops of the empty seats and the door to the cockpit. The wind was stronger, as if the pilot had somehow cranked up the AC to full blast. A few steps later, Adams saw where the light and rushing wind was coming from.

The passenger door of the plane was open.

Oh, fuck me . . .

She grasped the tops of the seats closest to her and craned her neck to look outside. The tops of trees whizzed by, far too close to be real. This plane couldn’t be flying this close to the ground?

Getting closer with every second . . .

Tiffany swallowed hard, then propelled herself forward, aiming for the cockpit door. Don’t look outside, she told herself. Don’t even think about what’s going on out there. Get to the pilot. Ask him what the fuck is going on.

Once she reached the door, Tiffany pounded hard. She was going to open this door, FAA rules or not.

To her surprise, the door popped right open.

The next few seconds were a blur to Tiffany. She stepped into the cockpit to see a rush of green and brown filling the front windows, the array of instruments and flashing lights on the control panels, the empty pilots’ seats, chairs gently rocking back and forth, a pair of headphones dangling from the stick. And a playing card of some kind, jammed onto a metal switch.

Tiffany was about to yell when the plane hit the first tree and then her body was flung forward, into the instrument panel.

 

 

He watched the crash from the ground a few miles away. All of his meticulous planning had paid off. There was the exhilaration of the perfectly timed jump. The recovery of the ATV, hidden in the brush. And a few moments later the plane went down, all according to plan. The fireball was beautiful as it bloomed out of the lush, green mountains.

chapter 40

West Hollywood, California

 

 

Someone was already inside the basement lair by the time Dark returned home.

Probaby Graysmith. But Dark didn’t want to take any chances. He recovered his Glock 22 from its hiding place under the floor, unwrapping it from oily rags and tucking it in his back waistband.

After pressing the button that opened the hatch in the floor, Dark aimed his Glock down the entranceway.

“Lisa?”

Weapon still in hand, Dark descended the stairs. After all—fresh insights or not—paranoia was still his friend. Graysmith was probably just sitting down there, working. But she also might have a gun to her head, held by persons unknown. Or Graysmith might be the one holding the gun, and it would be pointed up at Dark—even though there were far easier ways for her to take control. In his efforts to secure his home, Dark realized he’d practically invited in the biggest security risk of all: a member of U.S. intelligence.

Graysmith looked up from the laptop on the autopsy table. No gun to her head. No weapon in her hand. She blinked.

“You keep wanting to shoot me,” she said. “I think there’s something Freudian at work here.”

Dark lowered the weapon, but didn’t put it down. Not just yet. “Make yourself at home, why don’t you.”

“Where have you been?”

“Out.”

“Not at Venice Beach, by chance?”

Dark said nothing.

“Hey, I’m just looking out for you,” Graysmith said. “My goal is to keep you safe. Besides, it’s not too difficult to track a man in a Mustang tooling around L.A. in the middle of the night. I still have some friends in LAPD surveillance.”