Dark Prophecy (21 page)

 

The moment Dark saw someone running toward him, he knew it would be Riggins. The man wouldn’t send anyone in his place. Not on a case like this. No matter that Riggins had just Ping-Ponged from coast to coast. His ex-boss would insist on being here, working the evidence, bagging the shell casings and spraying the carpet and escorting the bodies to a makeshift morgue nearby. Riggins was relentless. In that way, the man was still his role model.

Not now, though. Now, Riggins wouldn’t understand. Wouldn’t tolerate his presence.

Riggins would take him off the playing field without even blinking.

Dark quickly tucked away the last swab in a test tube, jammed everything into his pockets, then pulled out his cell phone from his other pocket. He speed-dialed Graysmith as he darted for a line of shrubs and trees about a dozen yards away. Probably the same path the killer took. Away from the plane, and out of sight.

“Graysmith, I needed to get the hell out of here. Where’s the driver?”

 

 

Fast as he ran, the years of beer and poor eating and smokes and everything else Riggins jammed into his veins caught up with him. The guy vanished into the trees, leaving Riggins with his palms on his thighs, hunched over, struggling to breathe. Damn near vomiting, if he was going to be honest about it. Guy was younger, faster.

Guy. Right.

Just say it.

Now Riggins had a tough decision to make. Either sound the alarm on Dark, send a team of men and dogs out into those trees, and have him chased down and cuffed immediately. Or do nothing, knowing that he possibly let a killer go.

Riggins thought back to the day Dark quit Special Circs the first time, not long after the slaughter of his foster family. They’d been standing together in a parking garage when Dark told him:

“I’m on the brink. I’m walking a fine line. If I don’t get out now, I’m gonna be going to the dark side, and you’re going to be out catching
me
at nights.”

Riggins had nodded, told him that he understood. But clearly, he hadn’t.

Because now Dark’s own prophetic words had seemed to come to pass ...

Riggins stopped himself. Was that what he
really
believed?

If Dark was a killer, would he really linger around the scene, watching everyone work? Why not watch from the trees?

When Riggins reached down for the cell clipped to his belt, fate made the decision for him. The phone buzzed.

chapter 47

Washington, D.C.

 

 

Johnny Knack loved the stack of hundred-dollar bills in his jacket pocket. But when it came down to it, journalism was still about connections.

If he could somehow trade what he knew for access, he’d finally have the lock on his book proposal. No one else would be able to claim exclusive access to the files of Special Circs. Never mind that Tom Riggins would never agree to that in a billion years, but even the slightest hint of official cooperation could be spun a lot of interesting ways.

“The killer’s been in contact with me,” Knack said.

“Knack,” Riggins said. “Leave me the fuck alone.”

“You’re at the crash site now, aren’t you?”

Silence on the other end. Knack knew he’d stunned him with that one.

“You’re there because it’s the Tarot Card Killer, only nobody knows it’s him. Far as everybody else is concerned, just another sorry group of rich people bit the dust. But I know the truth. And how would I know the truth if the killer hadn’t told me?”

“I’m not confirming anything.”

“You don’t have to, Agent Riggins. I don’t want anything from you. I’m calling to
give
you something. Because I think the killer told me where he was going to strike next.”

“Where?”

“Happy to tell you . . . but just promise me one thing.”

“Fucking knew it.”

“Nothing major, I swear,” Knack said. “Just promise that we can keep talking. Or at the very least, you can keep up your stony silence while I run things by you. If something’s way off, grunt. If I’m on to something, sneeze. Come on, you know what I mean—
All the President’s Men
-style. Flag in the potted flower on the balcony, and all that.”

Knack listened. The silence thrilled him. Riggins believed him! He was considering the proposal . . .

“Where you right now, Knack?” Riggins asked.

“At home.”

“In Manhattan, right? Same Village apartment you’ve rented for the past three years? Well, listen up, shithead. In about five minutes a couple of Federal thicknecks with buzz cuts are going to be walking through your front door and seizing your laptop, your notes, your files, your underwear and sticking it into little plastic ...”

“Wilmington, Delaware.”

Well, Knack had gone for it; Riggins shot him down. This wasn’t the first gamble he’d lost.

“What’s that?”

“Where the killer told me he was going to strike next.”

“He, huh?”

“Well, I don’t know. He . . . or
she
, whoever, started texting me this morning.”

“I want copies of everything,” Riggins said. “And I want a tech there to look at your laptop.”

“Whatever you need, buddy.”

“We’re not buddies.”

Knack thumbed the red button. Fucking
ass.

That’s okay. It was still a free country. And Knack felt a trip to Wilmington, Delaware, coming on.

VI

five of pentacles

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

Wilmington, Delaware

 

 

Too much, too little. That was Evelyn Barnes’s life.

Like tonight—a unit of sick kids filled to capacity, and three of her nurses calling out sick. If it were up to Barnes she’d fire them all. This wasn’t the first time. But there was still a severe nursing shortage, and replacing these three meant Barnes might be stuck with three newbies with poorer training and an even bigger sense of entitlement. That was the real problem: the next generation, the twenty-somethings. Indulged by their parents, given nothing but treats and straight As despite their actual performance, and with this strange idea in their heads that they should all be paid outrageous salaries for barely adequate work. Worse yet, they would hold out for better paying positions, even if it meant not working for six months or a year. Why not? Mom and Dad would still take care of them at home.

Barnes knew the story firsthand—her own daughter was a nurse. She hadn’t worked in a year.

Meanwhile, too little sleep had taken its toll on Barnes’s face. She used to be the pretty one—the petite, chesty, funny blonde everyone bought drinks. Even better when she’d finally admit to being a nurse (as if the scrubs weren’t a dead giveaway). Working with kids? Even better. Men were apparently still very much suckers for the whole nurse-patient fantasy.

It had been a long time since someone offered to buy her a drink. Men in bars (as if she ever saw the inside of a bar these days) were more likely to suggest a vacation or, at the very least, some Advil. Her dirty-blond hair was nothing more than something to be pulled back and clipped so it wouldn’t hang down in her face. Her tired, puffy face, her weary eyes completely drained of life. What the hell had happened to her?

Too much, too little. Same old story.

There was a small bodega across the street that catered almost exclusively to the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff. Barnes slid her money across the counter, the owner slid back a pack of her favorite smokes. The habit was growing more expensive by the day, and it flew in the face of the advice she gave every young person she met—
and you’re never going to smoke, right, Josh?
—but what the fuck. Everyone needed an outlet. Barnes tapped one out of the soft pack, lit it, and looked over at the hospital. The institution that had sucked away more than two decades of her life.

Not that she regretted it. She’d helped a lot of kids, held a lot of worried parents’ hands. She wouldn’t trade that for anything. Still, she wished the stress would let up, just for a little while.

As she stood and smoked, a bracing wind cut through Barnes’s body. The sky was a dark gray. Looked like snow up there. Weird for late October. She should have worn her coat out here.

All too soon her smoke was finished. Back to the floor. Barnes flicked the stub to the ground, smashed it with a foot.
Don’t smoke, Josh, and never, ever litter
, she thought to herself. Then someone grabbed her from behind.

A thick forearm was suddenly around her neck, choking off her air. Christ in heaven, Barnes thought. A drug addict? The more she squirmed, the angrier she became. God, even this neighborhood was turning to shit. Who the hell would mug a nurse outside a children’s hospital?

But then Barnes heard a clear, calm whisper in her ear. The voice sounded muffled, as if speaking from behind a hollow mask:

This was no addict. There was no trembling, no stink of the streets. This person was huge, strong.

As Barnes struggled, the white nurse hat fell from her head. Barnes tried to cry out but then she inhaled and saw gray, and then nothing at all. This was it.

 

 

No. There was more.

She was in a hard bed. Stiff sheets. Was it over? Was she a patient now? No. She couldn’t be. They wouldn’t have put her in one of the beds in the children’s hospital. Why was it so dark in here? And cold. So, so cold. She reached out into the darkness and her knuckles immediately smashed against a hard surface.

What was going on?

Her fingertips tried to make sense of it. A cold, hard surface was directly above her, just inches away. Now that she groped around in the dark, she realized she was pinned in from the sides, too. When Barnes felt the bed beneath her, she realized that there were no sheets or mattress. It was the same cold surface.

All at once she realized where she was and why it was so cold. . . .

Evelyn Barnes screamed and pounded at the roof and thrashed her tired legs trying to make as much noise as possible, praying someone would hear her before she froze to death. She tried to stay calm but couldn’t. Who would? Oh God, please let me out of this; I promise I’ll do whatever you want; I don’t want to die like this; oh God, who’s going to take care of my daughter; please, God, LET ME OUT OF THIS FUCKING BOX . . .

But no one could hear her screams. It was growing late, and the morgue—like the rest of the hospital—was horribly understaffed.

chapter 48

Wilmington, Delaware

 

 

Constance couldn’t imagine the horror of being left to freeze to death in a morgue body locker.

Yet the Tarot Card Killer had done just that to Evelyn Barnes. Abducted the veteran nurse right from her own hospital. Drugged her into unconsciousness. Placed her body on a sliding tray. Then he’d locked her in tight, knowing that at this hour, no one would hear her cries for help. Not in this tiny morgue, buried at the bottom of the hospital.

And Constance knew that Barnes had cried, screamed, kicked, punched, and clawed at her cold steel prison. Her hands, elbows, knees and feet were horribly bruised. She had fought to the very last . . . knowing exactly what was happening to her.

She couldn’t imagine.

Why punish someone so severely? What had Evelyn Barnes done?

Or was this murder like the others—horribly random?

Riggins had sent Constance to Wilmington alone. At first she thought it was punishment. But then Riggins explained the tip Knack had received, and that he wanted his “best” ready to pounce if something happened. That made her feel good. The smallest scrap of praise went a long, long way.

Especially when faced with a nightmare like this.

And there was little doubt that this was the Tarot Card Killer at work again, barely a day after the plane crash. He’d placed a Five of Pentacles card beneath Barnes’s back, the one place where it wouldn’t be disturbed no matter how much she thrashed and kicked and punched. The logistics worked, too; it was easy to imagine him bailing at the plane crash scene and traveling up to Wilmington. The drive would be six hours, maybe.

Constance called to mind the card: two sick people, an adult and one child, making their way across a snowy field. Their bodies are bandaged; their clothes inadequate for the weather. They are poor people. The childlike figure hobbles along on crutches. The adult wraps a shawl tightly around her frame, her back to the child—ignoring him and his obvious difficulty. Behind them: an ornate window of stained glass, with five pentacles arranged in a treelike shape, fiercely yellow and glowing.