Fear the Darkness: A Thriller Read online

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  For Rebecca and Jeremy, and Alex and Sydney, who encourage my passions while not letting me forget what’s really important

  Acknowledgments

  Raising children may take a village, but it takes at least three major metropolitan areas and one moderately sized town to make a book. So thank you to Hope Dellon at St. Martin’s for her stubborn sense of character and undying patience, Adrienne Kerr at Penguin Random House, Genevieve Pegg at Orion UK, and the entire teams at publishers around the world who first critique and then promote my books. I’m looking at you, Sarah Melnyk.

  Thanks to the readers who sent me encouraging notes about Rage Against the Dying and made me think I might be able to do it again. And thanks to the readers whose frank criticism helped me learn.

  Then we come to Helen Heller, advocate, plot doctor, and friend, so much more than anything you’d think an agent would be. Also, you and Cristina taught me everything I know about flirting.

  Special thanks to:

  Dr. Bennett Blum for giving his advice on poisoning but refusing to tell me the dosage. Details have been changed, so don’t try this on Grandpa; it won’t work.

  Micah Wisely, mixed martial arts expert, who taught me the moves.

  Thanks to friends from the forensic science and medical communities:

  Dr. Jan Leestma for all things neurological, Kevin Gannon on drowning, Drs. Robert Powers and Michael Derelanko on toxicology, Dr. Ellen Moffatt on the limits of forensic pathology, Dr. Gil Brogdon on radiology, Dr. Mary Dudley on pacemaker identification, Dr. Jamie Whiting on Colorado River toads, and Dr. Jason Byrd for his information on clean sheet maggots (don’t ask).

  Thank you to all who critiqued the manuscript for facts and gently told me when it was putdownable:

  Patrick Jones, reader in law enforcement.

  Dr. Dorothy Dean, reader in forensic science.

  Jenna Jonteaux McClay and Christine Salvaterra, readers in health care.

  William Bell, Victoria Bergesen, Mickey Getty, and Frederick Masterman, authors who read.

  But wait, there’s more! Thanks to:

  Neil Evangelista for information on guns.

  Debbie Mangold for reminding me where I got my fondness for onomatopoeia.

  Barbara Norwitz for talking out the logistics of a mass homicide in the lobby of a hotel in San Antonio.

  Rachel Ohly for being my youth consultant.

  Jody Wilson for providing details about a society fund-raiser.

  Charles DeWitt—I can’t remember quite why, but his name was on this list, so he must have said something helpful.

  And as always and ever, thank you to my dear husband, who asks me if I wrote today, gives me a place of peace in which to imagine, and, though he denies it, provides solutions to plot problems by merely asking smart questions. Honey, we’re even.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Also by Becky Masterman

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Prologue

  There is near complete darkness, yes, but it’s the least of my problems. I’d glimpsed the space before I got in, and knew the claustrophobic dimensions that would have kept me from moving easily even if I hadn’t been shot in the leg. It was empty, too, except for the usual tools that were under the pad. Carlo was a tidy sort and kept it that way. I’m still conscious enough to think of the tools, but I have trouble keeping my mind on them in any useful way. Use whatever you got, Black Ops Baxter used to tell me. Images float through my head and the best I can do anymore is name them, if that. Jack. Wrench. Lug. That elastic cord thing. Nuts.

  A little air comes from a crack between the compartments, so I won’t suffocate.

  No, my most urgent need is water, to bring my temperature down, to slow my breathing and stop those syncopated warning beats that tell me my heart is about to check out for good. If I die in here, the likely plan is to dump me at a secondary site. I have an image of my own body, picked over by coyotes who will start at the site of my wound and leave the rest mummifying in the desert. Don’t think that thought.

  George will write this on his autopsy report under manner of death: Accidental.

  Cause of death, hyperthermia. Victim experienced elevated body temperature due to failed thermoregulation that occurs when a body produces or absorbs more heat than it dissipates. Extreme temperature elevation then becomes a medical emergency requiring immediate treatment to prevent disability or death.

  Ignominious. Ignominious. A Carlo word if I ever heard one, and I’m not positive what it means, but I think it applies here. Ignominious death, maybe, but nobody is going to get away with calling it accidental. The least I can do is leave evidence behind proving that this is murder.

  I’m lying on my left side, the sleeves of the shirt tied around my leg where the bullet grazed me. I’ve figured out why the care was taken to stop the bleeding. It’s so I won’t leave any behind. That means my blood is the only evidence of violence.

  Though lethargic as a cold snake, I reach down and fumble at the knot until it’s untied, and feel the wound. With the time passing and the heat and my being so still, the blood is clotting nicely as if I have been baked in a slow oven. I move the shirt out from under my leg. Clamping my jaws beforehand so I won’t yell or bite my tongue, I dig at the ridge through my flesh on the outside of my thigh where the bullet passed. Not close enough to the artery to make a real mess (another body flashed through my head—there had been so many) but deep enough so if I work at it a bit … I yell through clenched teeth, but not so loudly. Man oh man, that hurts. But at least the pain keeps me from passing out in the heat.

  My fingers come away slick. I hope I’m bleeding freely onto the carpet, but even carpets can be replaced, or scrubbed clean. Of
course, you could see the blood with an alternative light source, but who would know to do that? No, I have to leave my mark where only someone who was looking for it would find it, and show it to the cops, and raise a suspicion of foul play.

  I dab my fingers on the underside of the lid above my head, hoping that no telltale streak will get on my face where it might be noticed. I go back for more, digging again, and smearing it on the warm metal overhead.

  Holding on to what’s left of my brain, I reach for the shirt where I had left it balled up. I wipe my fingers off on it, shift my hips to get it back under my leg, and, with some difficulty because my right arm has gone numb beneath me, retie it.

  I put my fingers in my mouth and try to suck any sign of blood off of them, but my tongue just sits there, too dry and swollen to make the effort. I can’t be sure the evidence isn’t collected under my nails and around my torn cuticles. Maybe it won’t be noticed. Even in my state I recognize the irony in thinking of myself as mere evidence, as I have thought of so many bodies over the years.

  Mind you, the only use for what I’m doing is in the event of my death. The death of Brigid Quinn.

  One

  When I got the news about my sister-in-law I was heading back from the abused women’s shelter situated outside the town of Marana, a thirty-minute drive west from where I live north of Tucson, Arizona. The shelter was called Desert Doves, or some bullshit name like that. When I wasn’t working on an investigation, I volunteered to teach the women at the shelter they didn’t have to be doves.

  There were four of them that day, one with the bruises still purplish fading to green at the edges. All of them with the look of the victim stamped on their faces. In that respect, at this stage they were interchangeable, and I couldn’t keep their names straight in my head. Maybe soon I would. A young man, midtwenties with two percent body fat, stood in the corner to watch. I hadn’t seen him before and guessed he was security.

  I stepped onto the rubber mat in the middle of the small room that contained a manual treadmill, an elliptical, and some light free weights, all of which looked donated. I had put the women through a little stretching and some cardio warm-up, but that was just to reacquaint them with their bodies. Now we were going for the basic defense move.

  I pulled my white ponytail into a bun with a scrunchy and gave my most motherly smile. “Would one of you like to volunteer?”

  Their eyes shifted away from me. I had the sense those eyes were used to doing that more often than not.

  I said, “Look at me. Look at me. I’m going on sixty years old. Do I look like someone who can hurt you?”

  The youngest of them, taller than me but with the muscle mass of a bird, stepped onto the mat.

  “What’s your name, honey?” I asked.

  “Anna.” It sounded like an apology.

  “Anna, you come at me like you’re going to attack me. Can you do it sort of in slow motion? That’s good, just like that. It’s okay, you can giggle if you want to. I’ll move slowly, too, and when we’ve done it once that way I’ll show you what it’s like in real life. Now see how Anna is coming toward me with her right hand pulled back like she’s going to slap me to kingdom come? That’s fine, but it doesn’t even matter whether her hand is out or her fist is coming up to clip me under the jaw or even whether she has a knife. Because all she’s concerned with is her attack, and she doesn’t realize that I’m not going to stand here and take it.

  “See, I’m not backing away but going toward her … making my strike area smaller by holding my head low, ducking my shoulder under that arm and … this may startle you a little, but I promise you won’t get hurt, Anna … grabbing you by the waist and rolling you over my hip. Women’s hips are where it’s at. We’ve got more power there and in our thighs than any man no matter what his size. See, I used Anna’s forward momentum against her.”

  It made things a little more difficult to do this in slow motion while talking, so I stopped to take a quick deep breath and went on. “Now Anna is upside down before she knows what happened, and you can imagine what it’s like if we were doing it fast. No, I’m not going to drop you on your head. See, if I put my foot out this way, Anna comes down onto her shoulder, while I simultaneously thrust my leg out under her. It may seem like the purpose is to keep from injuring her, and it actually does prevent her hitting the floor hard, but the main reason I do that is so I can drop to the floor and put my other leg over her in a choke hold. See how my body is perpendicular to hers?

  “Your opponent can’t move when you’ve got him like this. Your options are either to get up and run like hell while the guy is still wondering how he got on the floor, or to keep choking until he passes out. No permanent damage. I recommend the second option just to let him know you mean business. Thanks, Anna. See, in order to do this you don’t have to be big, and you especially don’t have to be male.”

  As Anna stood, smiling despite herself, the girl with the freshest bruises asked, “If I do that to my husband, what do you think will happen after that? What will he do?”

  The others looked keenly interested in my answer. I could sugarcoat it, say that hubby would be respectful and bring them flowers even when he hadn’t abused them first, and they’d live happily ever after. But the movies had already handed these women a lie about love, and it was time for the statistics.

  The harsher the words, the gentler the tone. “Sweetheart, he won’t say thank you.”

  She said, “He’ll kill me.”

  I ignored the sensation that she said those words with a little thrill, something akin to pleasure, as if she was saying He’ll love me. I said, “That’s the funny thing about bullies. You think he’ll come at you again, but he won’t. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred he’ll just go away. Leave you for someone else. He’ll go look for someone he can control, someone he can beat up who won’t fight back.”

  The girl crossed her arms in front of her. I could tell she didn’t like that answer. She preferred the lie, and one day she would fall victim to it. I could tell she was already lost, and maybe already dead. I grieved all in an instant, and then turned away because you can’t save everybody. Sometimes you have to be cruel to fight another battle.

  I turned to the guy in the corner, a good head and a half taller than me, with eyes that spoke not at all. He was pretending to slouch, but the taut muscles stretching the sleeves of his T-shirt gave him away. The thousand-yard stare made me sense he had gotten his body someplace other than a gym.

  “Iraq or Afghanistan?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Afghanistan.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Dennis.” Even two generations removed from me, his eyes flickered a warning not to say “the Menace.”

  “Want to show them how it’s really done?”

  He stepped onto the mat.

  “Come.”

  He came for me with both fists up. No problem. I put him down the way I did Anna, only with a faster one-two, and the women applauded. They had started enjoying themselves. But when I helped Dennis off the floor he gripped my wrist and swung me into the wall over the treadmill. I was unprepared, and it rattled me so I slid down the treadmill onto the floor. The women gasped, but softly, and did nothing. After all, they had seen this before.

  I recovered and got up better prepared for his next assault. He came at me again with his fists balled. It must have been that slam on the mat with my legs clamped around his throat that awakened his kill-or-be-killed reaction. I could see that he had gone back to some village in Afghanistan where he had seen and done things he couldn’t live with, and my whispering, “Dennis … Dennis,” didn’t slow him down.

  I hated to shame him in front of the women, but this guy could hurt me bad. I threw two punches up high, not for the purpose of connecting but just to get his arms up so I could go for something more vulnerable. He didn’t fall for it. Instead of covering his face, he whipped his right arm back and delivered a haymaker.

  Nearly de
livered. I slipped the punch, and before he could connect I threw him a liver shot. He dropped to the floor in a faint.

  The women looked first stunned and then surprisingly enthused to see a large man down, but I made a note to self: Next time do not use a new veteran for demonstrations. I told the women Dennis would be fine and that we were just displaying more advanced maneuvers. I brought him to when the others left the room. We spoke our understanding briefly, really seeing each other for the first time. I told him I could use a sparring partner for the exercise because I was rusty. He doubted that, but agreed.

  On the way out, when no one was looking, I stretched my neck and rubbed the spot where my shoulder hit the wall, but overall I felt good—hell, I felt great! But I also felt relieved that I was still fit after all those years undercover with the FBI, followed by a desk job, followed by my first marriage at the ripe age of fifty-eight to a Catholic priest turned philosophy professor. Life with Carlo DiForenza had all the serenity I craved, but recent experience had shown you never know when you’ll need a body tuned for defense. I needed to make sure it stayed that way, and if I could combine mixed martial arts practice with helping Dennis over his PTSD, that would be double cool.

  To reward a job moderately well done and nobody getting seriously hurt, I stopped for coffee from a caravan shop on Thornydale, headed north to Tangerine, and turned east to come back across the valley, on a straight road that undulated as softly as an infant roller coaster. When you first come out to this part of Arizona you think Good grief, it’s all fifty shades of beige, but you’re wrong. On this late afternoon in spring the rosy glow the setting sun cast on the Catalinas in the distance made me think of my friend Mallory’s wisdom, “When the mountains turn pink, it’s time for a drink.”

  I looked forward to a glass of red wine and a hot bath with some Tired Old Ass Soak after the tussle with Dennis. One of my peeves is people who kill time driving by calling other people on their cell, but I admit that while sipping at my coffee and holding the wheel steady with my knee, I phoned my husband to let him know I’d be home in about twenty minutes.

  Carlo told me he’d gotten the news that my sister-in-law, Marylin Quinn, had died.