Don't Look Away (Veronica Sloan) (9 page)

Eventually, realizing she’d been gone nearly the half-hour she’d said she would be, and not wanting a worried Daniels to come down here looking for her, she cast one final look around the scene then headed for the stairwell. She continued tucking away details in her brain, each fall of her foot on a step underscoring something she wanted to consider a little more. Tonight, when she was home, lying in her bed, all these impressions would mingle and take new shape in her mind and she would see if she could come up with any new, previously unconsidered ideas. She hadn’t jotted them down, not wanting even the scratch of pen on paper to interfere with the mental connection she was trying to make with Leanne. Besides, Ronnie was a visual person, she saw scenes and mentally photographed them, and would see them again and again, able to recall them with clarity long afterward. It was probably her greatest strength as an investigator.

Arriving at the main basement level, and remembering that soft, furtive sound from before, she hesitated before continuing. Something—a cop’s intuition maybe?—made her step back out into the corridor. All was quiet, as before. All dark, all deserted. She cast her flashlight toward the right and saw nothing but those two eerie green pools of light on the cement. Turning to glance to her left, the same. Just those Exit lights, like before.

Or...not.

Something was different.

Her heart picked up its pace in her chest, her body reacting to the change that had occurred on this floor in the twenty minutes she’d been downstairs.

She focused and counted the Exit lights again.

“Four,” she whispered.

Four lights. There were four pools of green between her and that far-away emergency exit.

A short time ago, there had been six.

Her blood surged in her veins as the implication hit her. Someone had disabled two of the lights, leaving a vast, sixty-foot swath of corridor bathed in utter blackness, as dark as the back side of the moon.

Ronnie reached for her belt, unfastened her holster and retrieved her weapon. Someone had been down here a short time ago, hiding in the shadows, remaining silent while she’d called out, waiting for her to move on. They could be here still. She shone her flashlight in that direction, craning to see. Her mag, though powerful, didn’t pierce the emptiness, and mainly served to spotlight her for anyone who might be watching from down there.

She considered flipping it off right away, then thought about the layout of the sub-basement level, wondering if this floor would be laid out the same way. Her attention focused on that long corridor, she backed toward the stairwell, hoping to see a breaker box, like the one she’d noted downstairs earlier. Finding it in the beam of her flashlight, she reached for the main breaker and flipped it.

Nothing. Shit.

Beginning to feel like she had been drawn into a trap, and knowing she needed backup, she retrieved her phone to call her partner.

No signal.

Damn it. The building was probably designed that way. Future employees would likely have access to a dedicated cellular network, but right now, here in the basement, she was completely jammed.

Up another tall flight of stairs and down another corridor, her partner sat waiting for her in an interview room. But this was no typical building, it was the White House and it was huge. It would take at least several minutes to get him and bring him back here to have him help her search this floor. But if the person who’d disabled the lights was still here, those several minutes would give him time to get away. There was another, smaller set of stairs at the other end of the building, plus the construction elevators, plus the main elevator shaft, plus the emergency exit. And those were just the egresses she knew about.

There was no good, reasonable excuse for anyone to be down here, messing with the lights. So she had to consider that the person sharing this darkness with her could have something to do with Leanne’s murder. She couldn’t just leave and give him the chance to escape. Besides, Daniels had said he was coming after her in thirty minutes. It had been at least that, so he’d probably be showing up any time now, anyway.

Thinking of one last option, she grabbed her hand-held microcomputer, wondering if she could get online. A few taps of the screen and…
Yes
! She dashed off an email to her partner, telling him to get his ass down here ASAP. Daniels was obsessive about checking the thing and she knew he’d be here within minutes, if he wasn’t already on his way. In the meantime, she’d wait, and watch, and listen, not proceeding further unless it became necessary.

She switched off her mag, then paused to let her eyes re-adjust. Stepping close to the corridor, but not into it, her Glock still at her side, she remained very still. A long moment of silence stretched before her.

It was broken by a sound as soft and small as a puppy’s whimper.

She tensed, tightening her grip on her weapon, casting a quick glance up the stairs, looking for her partner. No sign of him. Hell.

Another soft, vulnerable sound came from somewhere down in that dark corridor, this time a bit louder. It sounded like…a child. A crying child.

That was impossible, there couldn’t be any kids down here. But there could be somebody who was so badly injured they had strength to emit only the most pathetic cry for help.

She couldn’t wait any longer. If the psycho who’d killed Leanne Carr was down here with another victim, every second counted in saving that person’s life.

Stepping into the corridor, she called, “Detectives Sloan and Daniels, D.C.P.D., identify yourself!” It wouldn’t hurt for the mystery man to think she already had backup.

Not expecting a response, she wasn’t surprised not to receive one.

“Okay, have it your way,” she mumbled.

Moving down the hallway, she hugged the inside wall, away from the tiny bit of light cast by the Exit signs. She stepped quietly, on her toes, hoping to catch the unknown party off guard. Hopefully he’d think she and her partner were playing it safe, waiting for the perp to make some kind of move, give them some indication where he was. He wouldn’t expect her to be creeping toward him in the utter darkness, when he knew she had a flashlight.

She passed one green pool of light, kept walking, passed another. One more and she’d at last entered the cavern of blackness. The final sign was far in the distance. Between her and it? She had no idea.

Gauging her steps, she figured she’d just about reached the place where the first missing Exit sign would be. She looked for it, then looked down, seeing the tiniest gleam of something on the floor.
Broken plastic. He smashed them.

Assuming her opponent had destroyed the two that would most reveal him, she had to guess he might be about halfway between her and the next missing sign. She tightened her grip on her weapon, her eyes scanning the shadows, alert to every beam, every doorway that led into every dark, unfinished room off this hall.

Then she spotted one. An open door. The only open door in sight.

She crept toward it, raising her firearm, raising the flashlight. Stepping to the threshold of what would someday be some politico’s office, she paused, breathing silently, listening for any sound from within. Then, adrenaline surging, she flipped on the mag-light and barked, “Police, put your hands up.”

There was no rush of movement, no opponent awaiting her in the darkness.

But that didn’t mean the room was empty. She most definitely wasn’t alone in it.

Leanne Carr’s head sat right in the middle of the floor, staring sightlessly toward the doorway—toward Ronnie—as if she’d just been waiting for her to arrive. Her blood-matted hair was tangled around her ravaged face, her eyes open, her mouth gaping and filled with blood. She looked like a monstrous prop from a movie or a haunted house.

“Jesus.”

Shuddering once with revulsion, she stepped inside, playing the flashlight’s beam all over as quickly as she could to ascertain the room was empty and to avoid stepping on any evidence. There was absolutely nothing—no bloodstains, no weapons, certainly no killer. Just the gruesome remnants of a victim who had been a pretty woman thirty-six hours ago and was now a bloody ball of hair and torn-up flesh.

Well, at least she knew now what the psycho had been doing down here and why he’d chosen to work in the darkness. Why he had decided to play hide-and-seek with the head, drawing her to it with those doused lights, obviously knowing she would come investigate, she couldn’t say. And their theory that he’d taken the head specifically because he knew Leanne was an implantee would have to be reexamined…at least, as long as the O.E.P. device hadn’t been removed from the victim’s brain through her smashed skull.

God, she hoped it was there. Not just because she longed to solve this poor woman’s murder, but because she now felt personally invested. This prick had been playing games with her, taunting her, daring her to catch him. He might even have been watching her in the darkness, laughing as she moved toward him while he slipped out of her grasp.

Nailing him would be incredibly satisfying.

She was so focused on that, and on the best way to proceed with this new evidence, that she
almost
didn’t hear the assailant coming at her from behind.

Something gave him away—his movement through the very air, perhaps. Every cell in her body went on high alert. Reacting instinctively, she swung around, Glock coming up.

But before she had the chance to make out any more than a figure cloaked all in black rushing into the room, she felt something smash into the side of her head.

And then she saw nothing.

-#-

Daniels glanced at the clock again. It had been thirty-two minutes since Ronnie had gone off to do her get-into-the-head-of-a-killer thing. For most people, being two minutes late for anything was no big deal. For his partner, however, it was serious. She knew he’d be worrying, watching the clock. She wouldn’t keep him sweating like this intentionally.

So either something had happened to her, or she was on to something important and couldn’t give up the scent. Question was, which?

He clicked his pen. Shifted some papers. Glanced at the clock.

Three minutes.

“Damn it, Ron,” he muttered, knowing she would ream him if he stumbled down there and ruined some big, important moment of clarity. Also knowing there’d been a psychotic killer in this building yesterday and they had no idea who he was.

He didn’t want to piss her off by being overprotective. But he’d sooner lose an arm than even think about the person who’d killed Leanne Carr getting his filthy hands on Ronnie.

Four minutes.

He grabbed his phone, thinking to text her, then remembered the signal was spotty here in the building. Reaching for his handheld, instead, to send her an email, he tapped the screen and realized the damn thing had died. He’d forgotten to put it on the charger last night and it had run out of juice. Crap.

“Oh, you’re still here,” a voice said.

Daniels looked toward the door, seeing Bailey stick his head into the room. The young Secret Service agent looked tired, a little sweaty. The kid’s boss had been keeping him running around all day, but during every spare minute, Bailey had been hovering around them. The agent either had a serious case of hero worship for Ronnie, or he’d been assigned to babysit the unwanted D.C. cops and report back to his boss, Johansen, or his boss’s boss, SAIC Kilgore, on what they were doing. Probably both. Stinking little snitch.

“Murder investigations take a little time,” he finally replied.

Bailey grinned, trying to appear friendly, as if knowing he was interrupting but wanting to stick around and get more information anyway. “Everybody’s got to sleep sometime, though. Are you almost finished for the day?”

“Yeah. Almost.”

“Where’s your partner?”

He hesitated before answering. He and Ron didn’t always play by the rules and this kid’s boss would probably do anything he could to mess with them. Finding out they’d split up—against regulations—could play right into his hands.

“In the can,” he mumbled, rubbing his jaw and wondering how soon he could be hitting his favorite bar. Hopefully Ronnie would come walking up behind Bailey any second now, the two of them could get out of here and go back to the precinct, where she would sequester herself in a computer lab and he could call it a night.

“Huh, that’s funny. I just walked past there and the janitor asked if he could lock up for the night. He didn’t say anything about anybody being inside.”

Bailey eyed him. Mark held his stare, silently daring the agent to make something of it. The kid looked away first.

“So are you going to leave when she gets back?”

“Yep.”

“Did you have any luck today?”

Yeah, wouldn’t you like to know.
“We made some progress.”

“Really? Like what?”

“Can’t talk about it.”

“Oh.” Bailey hesitated, then added, “Leanne seemed like a nice woman. I hope you guys catch whoever did that to her.”

“We will,” Mark said, knowing his voice held absolutely no doubt. He and Ronnie were a great team on any case. With one like this, in which they were both already so invested, he knew neither of them would rest until the son of a bitch was caught.