Where Evil Waits (32 page)

Thursday, October 20, 11:52 p.m.

Prince William Forest Park, Triangle, Virginia

T
HE
S
ANDMAN STOOD ON
the boardwalk outside an old pyrite mine, awaiting the man who was about to die. A minion, a nobody, but a risk nonetheless. As a rule, the Sandman didn’t favor using minions but occasionally, it was wise to put distance between himself and a particular act. Hence, this lonely midnight appointment and the Smith & Wesson in his pocket, equipped with an Osprey ACP silencer. A mundane kill—cleanup. Not something he could take credit for in the long run. But moments from now, the risk would be ameliorated.

A movement caught his eye. The minion hiked up the path, a lanky shred of a man with nervous tics, a man who might have been mistaken for a junkie if not for the white lab coat and high-security clearance badge he sported by day. In truth, he was a brilliant medical researcher at the University of Maryland, with a wife and three teenagers,
the oldest of whom had a well-developed entrepreneurial bent. His methamphetamines business had boomed in an otherwise bleak economy.

Men who love their children are easily manipulated. Men with secrets are easily destroyed. The minion was both.

The Sandman looked around—no one, not at this hour. The minion slowed his steps for the last thirty feet, then stopped in front of the mouth of the old mine. Once, decades ago, fool’s gold had been mined here.

Fitting.

“Dr. Bartholomew.” The Sandman stepped out. “Do you have the pictures?”

“Christ,” Bartholomew said. “Where did you come from?”

“Answer me.”

“Of course I have them. That was part of the deal, wasn’t it?” He squinted through the darkness, as if something didn’t look quite right. The Sandman tugged his hat down an inch. “Show me,” he ordered.

The little man’s gaze darted around the park. He looked like a nervous ferret. “What about the money?”

“Pictures first. You didn’t really think it would be otherwise, did you?”

Bartholomew cursed, then pulled a folded set of papers from beneath his coat. The Sandman took them, his heart standing still as he unfolded the pages and shed light on the photos with his cell phone. The nape of his neck prickled.

“Oh,” he breathed. “The redhead.” Her face was turned away, but he knew who she was. He’d offered the minion the choice of two women—one a spindle-thin brunette and this one, a curvaceous redhead. Both were hookers who worked the same block just inside the beltway. He
didn’t know their real names, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he had gotten to know their habits, established that they were competitors not friends, and identified either one as an easy mark. The only thing Bartholomew had to do was ask one of them for an hour of service and take her to a motel, knock her out with a dose of gamma-hydroxybutyrate in a drink, then move her to the cabin and bind her wrists and ankles to the bedposts in readiness for the Sandman.

Bartholomew shifted from foot to foot. He was
vibrating
. “What are you going to do with her?”

Things you can’t imagine
. “She’s a hooker,” the Sandman said. “What do you think I’m going to do with her?”

“And for that, you needed someone to give her a date-rape drug and tie her up? Leave her there for two fucking days?”

A carnal leer blossomed. “It’s all the rage these days—domination and submission. You ought to try it sometime. The helplessness makes them… eager.” He bent close, a man sharing a profound secret with a buddy. “It’s like nothing you’ve ever imagined.”

“Jesus God. You’re a sick sonofabitch.”

“And you, Doctor, a party to my madness. All because your son needs for you to pay off a judge.”

Bartholomew held out his hand. “The money. Goddamn it, give me the money.”

The Sandman folded the pages and tucked them inside his coat. He reached into the deep pocket, ostensibly for the money, and pulled out the .45 instead. The minion gasped and staggered back a step. Fool.

“Wait… Wha—”

Fwp.
The silencer gulped down the shot, and the bullet hit him square in the chest. The minion dropped, his
throat making a sucking sound, blood trickling from his open mouth.

The Sandman unscrewed the silencer and tucked the gun back into his pocket. Cleanup done. Risk ameliorated.

Now, for the redhead.

He walked past the mouth of the pyrite mine, back up the boardwalk, and out of the park, his thrift-shop running shoes pinching his feet. His left foot hurt—a holdover from a childhood injury—and on top of that, he’d have blisters before the night was finished. But it was worth it, even hiking the two miles back to his car, which he’d left in the parking lot of an all-night Walmart. Just before he emerged from the trees, he paused—in case someone saw him getting into his car—and stripped off the booties he’d worn over his shoes. He stuffed them into his pocket, then picked at the scotch tape between his eyes until he found an edge.
Rrripp
. He tore the tape from his left eyebrow, wadded it into a ball the size of a pea, and ripped the second strip from his second eyebrow. He winced. Christ, how did women do that—pluck their eyebrows? Still, he didn’t want to risk leaving something as telling as an eyebrow or footprint at a crime scene. The FBI deserved a better challenge than that.

The Sandman swung by a trash can and flicked the tiny balls of tape inside, then climbed in his car, the minion forgotten and the redhead filling his mind. He had no interest in sex with a hooker—not bound or unbound, conscious or unconscious, dead or alive. His only interest was in her body and what message he might send with it. A little taunt for the star of the FBI’s Multiple Murders Unit.

A gift from the Sandman.

Monday, November 19, 7:15 a.m.

Horseshoe Island, South Carolina

F
ASTER
.

Alayna Mann ran, her soles pounding imprints in the sand. To her right, a giant dog loped along with his tongue lolling to one side and seawater dripping from long tufts of fur. To her left, dawn inched closer to the horizon. It wouldn’t be long until the entire beach was bathed in light.

Farther.

Her lungs dragged in loads of salt air. She didn’t know how far she’d run—three, maybe four miles north and now back again—but even with the silhouette of the beach house coming back into view and her limbs loose with exhaustion, she didn’t want to stop and face the quiet solitude of the house. Out here, with the waves crashing in her ears, she couldn’t hear Chelsea calling to her.

Please… Don’t let him take me…

She ran faster, panting, trying to leave the cries in the wind. She passed a rickety pier with a lantern swaying in the wind, then veered out around a mountain of craggy rocks, and by the time she cleared them, the sun had peeked over the water. The sky grew red, and Layna frowned. What was the saying?
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight; red sky in the morning, sailor’s take warning.

It figured. She’d left the bitter chill of a Chicago November for the sunny beach of South Carolina, and here she was running in a dawn that would make a sailor quail.

She slowed, the coppery taste of exertion in the back of her throat. The house stood about a hundred yards ahead like a postcard photo—an isolated stretch of beach with a massive, three-story home perched just across the dune. From a distance, it looked stately and elegant, the kind of house that would sport a giant crystal chandelier in the foyer and Italian mosaic tile on the fireplace.

Up close, it was no such thing.

She slowed to a walk, her breaths coming hard. The dog seemed grateful, not bothering to sniff the beach anymore but plodding along in the surf. Layna spared a thought to wonder how long it had been since he’d been out of a cage long enough to run, then patted her leg and angled toward the house. He followed until they passed the remnants of an elaborate sandcastle someone had constructed too close to the water, the eastern-most turrets and walls now slipping into the sea one wave at a time.

Layna sighed and sank into the sand. The dog sniffed the foam around the lower edges of the castle, and she marveled at his demeanor. From the moment the attendant at the county pound had walked him into the lobby—just twenty-four hours ago—he’d seemed eager to embark on
whatever journey awaited. Without knowing Layna from Adam and having no idea where she would take him. Knowing only that no matter what lay in store, it had to be better than where he’d been.

A lesson there to be sure, Layna realized, but she wasn’t a dog. She couldn’t forget everything she’d left behind just because there was something new to sniff. Not to mention the fact that for her, no one had stepped forward with a hundred bucks and a pocket of treats, signing on a dotted line to proclaim, “You don’t have to worry about anything anymore; I’ll take care of you now.”

A curse passed her lips. For God’s sake, that’s not what she wanted.

The dog worked his way to the other side of the castle, pouncing on a wave and sneezing from the spray of saltwater. He stuck his nose back in the sand, deeper. Sneezed again.

“Come on,” Layna said, getting up, but he ignored her and began to dig, throwing great hunks of wet sand into the ocean behind him. He whined in excitement.

“Hey, you.” She’d have to give him a name soon. She walked around the remaining castle turrets and put her hand on his collar, trying to pull him back. He pounced in the foam, splattering Layna. “Oh, no you don’t,” she said, tugging at his collar. “I’ll be the alpha in this relationship. Come on.”

The dog lunged for the castle, pulling Layna to one knee. Icy water exploded into her face, and she tried to get her feet back under her as the dog took giant swipes at the beach with his paws, digging. He worked against the waves, going deeper every time the water receded, sticking his nose down to try to grab at whatever was there. Layna staggered to her feet, wiped the salt from her eyes,
and squinted at the dent he’d managed to make in the sand.

She frowned. Something there. Another wave washed up, higher, and when the water pulled back into the sea, it left something poking from the sand—pale and smooth, like a row of sea-washed pebbles. A finger of worry tapped at Layna’s mind but she bent closer, the dog scooping giant divots of wet sand behind him. He unearthed two more pebbles, white on one side and dark red on the other—

Horror struck. Layna staggered back. Oh God, oh God, oh God. She forced herself to wait through another wave, but her breaths went shallow. In the next moment, the foam took a layer of sand and left five rounded pebbles lined up, large-to-small.

Toes.

Layna screamed. She stumbled backward, and the dog began to bark, as if proud she finally got it. He dove at the toes in between every surge of water, engaging in a strange sort of tug-of-war with the sea. The waves kept coming, each one a few inches higher than the last, each dragging another batch of sand from the castle walls and leaving pools of foam swirling in the grooves and—yes… a woman’s foot lodged in the sand.

Layna hugged her waist, fighting back the urge to vomit. She turned around and around, searching for any other human. Too remote, too early; there was no one. Beach houses spotted the shore, but each sat on ten or twenty acres of land with nothing but sand and dune grass in between. The ominous red dawn stretched along the horizon, but even in the houses that Layna could see, the lights weren’t yet on.

Phone.

She tamped down the panic and patted her arm band, her phone tucked in a Velcro pouch. She ripped it out and dialed 911. Her voice sounded hysterical in her ears.

“There’s a woman,” she gasped, the dog still trying to get ahead of the tide. “Buried in the sand.”

“A woman in the sand?” the voice repeated, sounding undaunted.

“Yes.” Layna’s heart pounded like a piston.

“Is she breathing?”

“No.” Of course she wasn’t. Wait. Maybe—“I don’t know. I can’t see her.”

And yet, even as she said it, a larger wave came up and swept away a big enough batch of sand that even the dog backed up, and in the space of five seconds, another foot came into view.

Layna tasted bile. She looked up at the houses again, trying to remember the address of this one. Hibiscus Drive. That was it. Three-seventeen Hibiscus Drive Northeast.

She spat the address at the 911 operator, trying to get her heart to beat evenly again, and in some distant corner of her mind, she heard the operator command her to stay on the line until police arrived. She dropped her hand to her side, her fingers barely holding on to the phone, and with the other hand she took the dog’s collar, watching in utter helplessness as the woman’s feet came into full view between waves. Painted toenails, a toe-ring on the second toe of her left foot, a butterfly tattoo on her right ankle.

Oh, God.

The 911 operator’s disembodied voice came from the phone in her hand, but Layna couldn’t bring herself to listen. She looked at the horizon, feeling the inexorable power of the sea—stripping a woman’s body of sand, yet at the
same time, burying it in rising water. By the time police got here, the woman would likely be knee-deep under water. Or floating freely. That thought brought the nausea up, and Layna hobbled to the water’s edge and threw up, her stomach heaving on the emptiness there. When it passed, she rinsed her face and wiped it off with the sweatshirt tied around her waist, then held the dog again and watched another wave pull back into the sea and reveal a knee.

She remembered the phone and put it back to her ear. “I’m here,” she said, and let the woman on the other end of the phone try to soothe her. A car had been dispatched; police were on their way.
Was Layna hurt?
No.
Was there anyone else around?
No. And the famous admonition for every crime scene:
Don’t touch anything.

Layna might have laughed at that if it hadn’t been so tragic. There would be nothing for police to see. The ocean was taking care of that.

The lawyer in her surfaced. This was a crime scene. Most likely a secondary one, but a crime scene nonetheless. And in a few moments, there would be nothing left.

Against orders, she disconnected from the 911 operator, her brain beginning to function again. She ordered the dog to stay back—the urgency in her voice actually causing him to do it—and touched the camera icon on her cell phone. Frantic, she began snapping pictures, catching the still-erect portion of the castle and then the lumps and gullies of what had once been the eastern walls, shooting photos between waves, from one side and then the other, trying to get every angle and imprint in her mind with an image of what the castle had originally looked like. She moved around the top of it, the upper walls still mostly intact, hoping she might catch a footprint or hand print, maybe a—

She stopped. In the brightening light, something came into view in the uppermost portion of the castle, where the sand was piled deepest. She lowered the camera and bent down. It was a funnel, plastic, buried with the wide-opening up. She reached for it, knowing not to compromise anything about the scene but also knowing that within moments, the scene would be leveled anyway. Police wouldn’t get here in time to see this. She looked at the two cone-topped sand turrets that were left and realized that whoever made the castle had left the plastic funnel here.

Fingerprints?

Layna’s heart kicked up again, and she snapped several more pictures, then stepped into the soupy sand and grasped the funnel. She pulled, freeing it from the sand, but it seemed to pull back. It wouldn’t come loose. She wiggled it, shaking off more sand, then realized it wasn’t just a funnel. A tube was attached to the base, duct tape wound around the narrow end of the funnel and sealing it to the tube, which ran beneath the sand.

She frowned and in one terrible instant, reality struck. “No,” she breathed, and at the same time, her fingers sprang open and the funnel fell to the beach. Layna swayed, dizzy with horror, and a wave surged in and tossed the funnel in foam.
Is she breathing?
the 911 operator had asked.

Oh, God.

Layna tossed her phone up to dry sand and grabbed the funnel, sinking to her knees, holding it up high. She dug into the sand like the dog and a moment later, he was there, too, digging in glee. She tried to match his energy—harder, deeper, with sobs trembling on her lips and shards of shell cutting her hands. She groaned, forcing her fingers
deep into the soaked beach even as the waves kept coming, chilling her to the bone. She freed a few inches of the tube and jammed it under her arm to keep it out of the water, but the beach became moister and heavier with every wave. Sand hit her in the face and clung to the tears on her cheeks, grains flying into mouth and making her cough, and she gagged and grunted as the waves came higher and washed sand and water back into every dent she made. She got a few inches down, then a wave washed in, over and over again. She wailed and cursed the sea.
Is she breathing?
In minutes, both sand and water would pour down the tube into the mouth of the woman beneath. She moved lower toward the woman’s feet, where the sand wasn’t as deep, and dug harder, deeper, her arms numb and right hand bleeding, scraping at the sand until her nails ripped across something.

A thigh. Layna bit back nausea. Tears mixed with sea water on her cheeks and the dog barked. The ocean lapped at her knees, inches deep now, and something grasped her shoulders, and she screamed and tried to shrug it off, but voices shouted over the waves and other hands began to dig and she was lifted up, the tube falling from beneath her arm, and someone dragging her up the beach and dropping her to dry sand.

“Stop it, lady,” a voice said, pinning her arms to her sides. “Stop it.”

“She’s under there,” Layna gasped, coughing. “There’s a woman.”

“I know. We’ll get her.”

“She may be alive. There’s a tube and funnel. She can still breathe.”

“Funnel?”

The man went still. He straightened and watched one
of the uniforms pick up the plastic funnel, the connected tube attached but disappearing into ever-deepening water.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, deep in his chest. Another man handed the dog off to Layna, then jogged back to the castle site. Layna turned and looked to see who had pulled her away—a uniformed officer in his fifties, emblems and bars on his jacket. His face was the color of rice paper, and he stared at the two men who’d taken over the digging as best they could with their hands, one of them shouting, “We need shovels, we need shovels!” even as he dropped to his knees in the surf and dug deeper. Two more officers arrived, and the man holding Layna reached out and snagged one of them.

“Call the FBI,” he said, his voice choked. “Ask for Mike Hogan.”

“The FBI?” asked the cop. “What the hell, Elliott?”

The man named Elliott swallowed, still sheet-white. He bent toward the cop and spoke just above the rumbling waves. “Tell him it’s the Sandman.”