American Nocturne Read online

  Grant turned his head and stared at the eye, which pressed against the glass, wide with anticipation. He tried to tell himself it would be over soon, that at least then he’d be free. The eye seemed both patient and eager, like it knew it would get its way, but hated the wait. Grant wondered if this was what it was really like to stare down the eye of fate.

  He also wondered whether that eye, naked and merciless, saw any of the same things in him that he saw in it.

  Cold Service

  MARLIE STOPPED IN a faint wash of streetlight, facing the low-slung brick and stone building, and checked the information on her phone. This was the place, but she refreshed the page and scoured the details one last time, just to leave no doubt. It was almost two am, the town was small. No cars, no open businesses, and certainly no pedestrians. Her SUV was parked roadside just around the corner. She glanced in its direction, making sure the location was secure in her mind. If she had to sprint out of there, she couldn’t afford to head the wrong way.

  The roll around her midsection jiggled with each step, and more than anything else she wished she could find a way to stop noticing it.

  It was worse now, more annoying since she’d trimmed down to her current weight. Strange, she thought, how something less pronounced than it used to be, than it had been a little over a year ago, bothered her more, but it did. The outfit didn’t help, loose black track pants and an oversized black pull over, but there was more to it than that. All the girls with this one – and it was always girls, young ones, teens and twenties – were thin, something she’d never been accused of. She couldn’t ignore the probability that had something to do with it, with her sudden awareness. The changes in her life over the past year, the expanding creep of perpetual activity – she always seemed to be in motion these days – had caused her to shed a good twenty pounds, but her body type would always be a bit wide, a bit meaty. To use a phrase she hated, her body was what it was. Still, she’d always been athletic, just never thin. Being fit was more important than looking fit, she told herself. Wasn’t it?

  She pushed those thoughts aside and cut around the side toward the back, adjusting the messenger bag over her shoulder and neck. She broke into a trot, following a driveway until she reached an entry bay with a large roll-up door. She switched her phone to a flashlight app and scanned the side of the building. Next to the bay was a narrow set of cement steps leading to a plain metal door. Thick, industrial. Latch handle and heavy-duty deadbolt.

  The deadbolt was a familiar type. Basic pin tumbler. She reached into her bag and pulled out a lock pick gun. A glance to each side, then she slipped the finger of the gun into the keyway and gently squeezed the trigger until she felt the needle drop. With her other hand she inserted a tension wrench and squeezed some more. The hammer fell and the needle snapped up, taking the top pins with it. She heard a dull thunk, felt the bolt withdraw. She thumbed the latch. The door whispered open.

  A deep breath; the fall air icy in her chest. She glanced over her shoulder again and stepped inside. Forced herself to ignore the jiggles.

  This isn’t the hard part, she reminded herself, easing the door shut behind her. She took another breath, the interior of the building stale to her nostrils, the heavy mix of old paint and floor wax and cleaning solvents.

  No, she thought. This definitely isn’t the hard part. That comes later.

  * * *

  The woman raised her head. Chains clinked against the stone block behind her. The light was dim, but Marlie could see her eyes widen, her body stiffen.

  A moment of hesitation. Fluttering lids. Disbelief in the eyes, then uncertainty, then the burning flash of an appeal. The chains jangled and clanked more loudly this time as she raised up onto her knees.

  “Help me! Please help me! Oh, God! You have to help me!”

  Her voice cracked and she began moaning the words, struggling to utter them over her sobs.

  Marlie nodded, showing her palms. “Calm down. I’m a friend, sweetheart. I’m just glad I’m not...” She paused, choosing her words carefully. “Too late.”

  “You have to get me out of here! Before he comes back!” She grabbed a section of chain and yanked, scraped at the manacles over her wrists. “Or call the police! Anything! Please, just get me out of here!”

  Hysteria was gathering behind those eyes now, Marlie could see. A full panic building a head of steam. Marlie forced herself not to look at her watch. It would telegraph a message she didn’t want to send. It was pointless, anyway. There was no need to confirm what she already knew – there wasn’t enough time to deal with a meltdown. Not before she got the information she needed.

  “Listen, Tasha, you have to keep calm. It’s important.”

  “Just get me out of here! Please! He might be back any minute!”

  “I’m right here, Tasha. Not him, me. I came here to find you. But I need you to help me. Can you do that, Tasha? Can you help me?”

  Tasha swallowed and nodded, gasping a few times. Her body convulsed, her breaths stuttered in fits. Her eyes grew puddled.

  “Thank you.”

  Marlie took in the space, tried to be discreet about it. The wall behind the young woman was stone, the floor cement. The wall had been there for quite some time, at least a century, but the cement was probably only a few decades old.

  “I can’t believe you’re here.” The woman wiped her nose on the back of her hand, sniffling. A degree of composure had returned and her body movements had quieted. “Are the police on the way? Are they outside? Are you a cop or something?”

  Above the young woman’s head, words had been etched into the stone, probably with a knife. No, something cruder. Maybe a screwdriver. Or an icepick.

  LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH’INTRATE

  “No, no, nothing like that. But I’m not here to hurt you. I’m on your side.”

  She held up her arms. “Is there any way you can get these off?”

  Her arms trembled under the weight. Her eyes, peering upward, made her look so much the supplicant Marlie thought she might burst into tears herself. She looked down at the floor for a moment and with some effort managed not to.

  “I don’t have a key, or bolt cutters, no. But listen. There isn’t much time. I need you to answer a few questions, okay? About the man who did this to you.”

  “But if he comes back—”

  “It’s almost three o’clock in the morning. I’m sure he’s asleep, or soon will be. No matter how much of a monster he is, he still has to sleep.”

  “But are the police on their way?”

  “Tasha, I need you to focus. Tell me about the man who did this. The man who took you.”

  “How... how do you know my name?”

  “It’s why I’m here, Tasha. You’re why I’m here. I came looking for you. I’ve been tracking this guy. Your abduction was in the news. I knew it was him. I know his M.O. He cases grocery stores, remote ones, open late. He followed you. How did he get you out of your car, Tasha?”

  She thought for a moment. Eyes clenched shut, lips squeezed tight against each other.

  “I... had a flat tire.”

  “He pulled up while you were trying to change it?”

  “No, he told me. He flashed his lights then pulled up beside me. He made a gesture, got me to roll down my window, then he told me I had a flat tire.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “He was sort of small. I mean, for a guy. White. He wore a baseball cap, or something like one. He had a little patch of beard under his mouth. One of his front teeth was crooked, but he smiled like he was proud of it”

  “So, you pulled over?”

  “Not at first. But then, the car started driving funny. And I saw a warning light on the dashboard panel, telling me tire pressure was low.”

  “He put a roofing nail behind your rear wheel. They have a flat top, square, so it can stand with the nail pointed up. When you backed over it, he knew just how long it would take to leak enough to be noticeable.”
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  “Even then, I didn’t want to stop, but what else could I do? He pulled off and parked right in front of me. I grabbed my cellphone and tried to call my insurance company, for the service. What’s it called? Roadside assistance.”

  “But your phone didn’t work.”

  “No! It kept acting strange, cutting out every time I’d try to make a call.”

  Marlie dipped her chin, nodded that she understood. “He had a jammer. Blocks the signal.”

  “He told me he would call a tow for me. Or would change it himself. I started feeling rude, he was acting so helpful. He held up a flashlight, asked me to hold it for him so he could see the tire. Told me I didn’t even need to get out of the car, just hold it out the window. What was I supposed to say? As soon as I rolled the window down, he jammed it in the space. His other arm shot through and put something against my neck that made my whole body buckle and my skull go numb. I felt like a giant funny bone.”

  “A stun gun,” Marlie said.

  “It took all my energy, felt like I’d run a hundred miles. I could hardly move. I was vaguely aware of him stretching over to find my key fob and unlocking the doors. I felt myself get dragged, saw the road and my car swing in front of me as he picked me up. Then he dumped me in the back of his truck, or van or whatever.”

  “Okay, this is very important, Tasha. Which was it? A truck? Or a van?”

  “I don’t know what you call it. It was big and square. Not like a pickup truck. But it was bigger than a van. More like those brown trucks that deliver packages. Only it was white.”

  “Did it have any markings on it?”

  “No. Not that I saw. The side was just a big white square. Will the police be here soon? Should you call them again?”

  “Focus, Tasha. What else do you remember?”

  “Nothing! He handcuffed me to the floor then he stuck a rag in my mouth and wrapped tape around my head. He shoved a pillow case over me and looped more duct tape around my neck to keep it on. Maybe twenty minutes later, he stopped and pulled me out, dragged me down here. Then he... he—”

  “I know, you don’t have to say it. He won’t do that to you anymore, I promise. And, with your help, I’m going to make sure he never does it to anyone else, either. What else can you tell me, Tasha. Can you remember things he said? Things that might let me identify who he is?”

  The woman whipped her head from side to side. “He was crazy. He told me he was a Watcher. He talked and talked and talked, like he was giving a lecture in school. He said that meant he was an angel in human form. That I was chosen. That he would cleanse my sins with the dew of Heaven. That everything he did to me was to make me pure. He kept saying that over and over. That he had to allow demons to take over his body so that they could... so that they would absorb all my evil. Then his expression would change and he would... do things. I would scream from the pain and he would tell me to shut up, that my Watcher wasn’t here anymore. I bled so much. From everywhere. But he would just wait a while and do it again. And those eyes! I don’t ever want to see those eyes again! Oh, God, please, please just call and check on the police! I can’t stand it here, not another second!”

  “There’s no cellphone reception in this place, Tasha. Remember what I said about focusing. I need you to think really hard. Did you see anything else? Hear anything else? A name? An address? Anything?”

  She sunk down, dropping with a thump, her body filling the space where the floor met the wall, her head sagging. She started sobbing again, quietly this time. “No. I just wish you’d get me out of here. I just wish someone would get me out of here.”

  “There has to be something, Tasha. Something that can help. Did you see a license plate? A bumper sticker?”

  The young woman stared at the concrete floor, her face swaying back and forth, like a pendulum. “I just want to go home,” she said, barely giving voice to the words.

  She can’t help me, Marlie thought. The poor thing can’t help at all. He’s going to do this again.

  “Tasha—”

  “Wait.” Her eyes were a deep emerald. They raised and widened, blinking.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s dumb.” Her gaze seemed to loosen, turning inward. She wiggled her head, let out an audible breath. “Just something I thought of.”

  “Tell me.”

  “After he cuffed me to the floor, put the pillowcase over my head, I kicked out. My foot hit something, like a box. Only harder. There must have been a stack of them, because something fell on me and dumped a few light packages over my legs, light and spongy. Loose plastic wrapping. I felt them bounce off me, one landed between my knees next to my hands and I grabbed it and squeezed it and swung it around blindly. He got really mad at that. He punched the side of my head and pried it from my hands. Then he made a noise like he was growling, said something about me lacking appreciation and costing him money. I don’t remember exactly. I didn’t even remember it all until right now. But he told me I needed to learn to respect a man’s livelihood.”

  “Okay,” Marlie said. “That’s better. Did he say what that livelihood was?”

  “No, but the stuff that fell on me, the thing I grabbed. I think it was a loaf of bread. I think there were lots of them.”

  Bread. Marlie closed her eyes, inhaled deeply. Yes. Bread. It had to be.

  “Can you please get me out of here? Go out and call the police again? Make sure they’re coming?”

  “Look at me, Tasha. I need you to hang on a little while longer. I have to stop this guy, do you understand what I mean? Not the police, not anyone else. It’s up to me.”

  “What are you saying? That the police aren’t coming?”

  “I promise, I’ll be back.”

  “Y-you’re leaving me here? No!”

  “You have to trust me. I swear, if you can just hold on a little longer, I’ll be back.”

  “But why? What about the police? Can’t you at least tell them where I am?”

  “I have to do this, Tasha. This is how it’s got to be. But I promise – I promise – I’ll be back. Just hang on.”

  “Don’t leave me! Don’t you dare leave me! What if he comes back before you do? You can’t do this to me!”

  “I’m going to make sure he never comes back to anyone, Tasha. I promise you that, too.”

  Tasha shrieked at that, howling pleas and curses as Marlie left the chamber, dissolving into the darkness, but within a few minutes the sound of the woman’s voice was just a memory, and Marlie was leaving out the back of the building and circling the building toward the street, breaking into a sprint to her car once she was sure there was no one else around, her ears now filled with the trilling chorus of crickets and the lonely cry of a distant owl.

  * * *

  A light rain started to fall, sprinkling dots over the windshield and forcing Marlie to turn on the wipers every few moments. She stared at the duplex, not needing to cross-check the address. The only vehicle in the driveway was a large, white, bread truck.

  Narrowing it down to this one hadn’t been too difficult. She’d already had a list of names, a little over thirty men, with roughly twenty fitting the profile. White, male, twenty-five to fifty-five, unmarried. Generic, but the victim profiles were consistent. Young women in their twenties. Four white, one Hispanic, one light-skinned African-American. She hadn’t reached the first five in time – hadn’t even known about the first three until well after the fact – but she had reached Tasha. The hunting ground spanned three counties, but all the abductions had common factors. Women alone, taken at night. Low-populated area, a deserted roadway, vehicle found on the side of the road with a flat tire.

  And all had last been seen near either a grocery store or a convenience store.

  The police were slow to pick up on this last part, most likely because three of them hadn’t actually been in any of those stores. One had left a gym, but that chain health club was at the end of a large strip-center that had a grocery store. Another used an ATM at a
bank drive-thru that was in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart. The third had returned a Redbox Blu-ray to a fast-food joint also in a parking lot adjacent to a supermarket. Of the remaining three, one had picked up a gallon of milk, a dozen eggs and a rotisserie chicken, two had gotten gas at a convenience store. Tasha was one of those.

  Marlie had visited the sites, saw they all had one thing in common. They were all close to groceries of some kind. So she made a list of who would deliver to all of them. Beer. Soft drinks. Cigarettes. Milk. Baked goods. Bread.

  She’d already had a list of companies, with names. The culmination of days – days stretched out over weeks – on the phone, using all manner of pretext. Excuse me, but what baked goods do you carry? How often do you restock your beer? It was amazing how people opened up, especially people under the impression they’re doing business.

  And here she was, staring at a Heavenly Farms bread truck, its logo of bright rays of sunlight reaching down through fluffy clouds making stalks of golden grains glisten in a rolling field.

  The information readily available on the internet was astounding. Companies had social media pages with employee photos tagging names that popped up under a cursor. Once she was able to focus on bread delivery, she had what she needed within an hour. Seven bread delivery services, but only one with the same driver for all locations.

  Arthur Zorn. White male, thirty-one years old. Light delivery service driver. Been with the company three years. Earned privileges to drive and keep his truck at home after two years with a clean driving record and no complaints. For a small fee, she was able to pull his driver’s license information, employment information, arrest record, phone number and, of course, home address. That didn’t even cost a dime. Mr Zorn owned his duplex unit, and therefore paid property taxes. A search by last name turned him up in the second county she checked.