Until Dark Read online

  “The food wrappers here in the photos . . .”

  “Had apparently been there long before the body arrived.”

  “He must have left something behind besides his DNA.”

  “There were fibers on both bodies, but none that matched.”

  “Meaning only that they were not assaulted in the same location. And he wasn’t wearing the same clothes. And they may not have been transported in the same vehicle.”

  Adam nodded. “Maybe all of the above. There were a few hairs that matched, though, which by and of themselves, at this point, tell us only that the killer was a white male. Which we’d already figured out, since crimes such as these generally do stay within race.”

  “And the marks on the neck?”

  “The same. Same distance from the marks made by the thumbs to the marks on the side of the neck. Bruising on the arms, bruising on the face. He worked them both over a bit before killing them.”

  “No witnesses this time.”

  “None that have come forward as yet, but they’re still looking.”

  “I can’t believe that no one saw him.” Kendra shuffled through the reports provided by the local authorities. “With a school full of parents, people coming and going. How could no one have seen her leave the building?”

  “She was seen leaving the building,” Adam pointed out. “She wasn’t seen again after the door closed behind her.”

  “Well, maybe they just didn’t ask the right people.” Kendra looked up at him. “I’m assuming you’ll be doing your own investigation.”

  “The Bureau has been requested to assist in the investigation. There are several field agents on the scene as we speak.”

  “I’ll need to meet with the witnesses that you have on the Garvey case if I’m to come up with a sketch. I’m going to want to go along with you on Tilden if witnesses are identified. If that’s all right with you.”

  “That’s why I’m here. John thought we should work in tandem on this.”

  A loud crack rattled the windows.

  “Yow.” Kendra turned toward the sound of the thunder, startled. “I wasn’t aware we were in for a storm.”

  She rose to close the window as the wind whipped up, sending the curtains dancing and billowing over the sill.

  “You might have just enough time to put the top up on your car before the rain starts,” she said. “Unless you don’t mind if all that fancy leather takes a bath.”

  “I’ll be right back.” Adam took off out the back like a shot.

  Kendra stood in the window, the curtain pulled to one side, and watched Adam cross the yard to the drive where the Audi sat exposed to the rapidly approaching storm. His strides were long and quick with the crispness of the professional athlete he once was. Within minutes, the top was up on the car and he was taking the back steps two at a time to escape the storm’s first wave.

  “I can’t believe how quickly the storm moved in,” he said as he came through the screen door. “It’s almost completely dark out now.”

  “Hopefully it will pass through before it does too much damage. If the wind keeps up like that, we’ll likely see some trees down.”

  “As long as they don’t take the electrical wires with them, I guess that’s not the worst that could happen.”

  “Losing electricity isn’t the worst thing back here. My ancestors lived a heck of a long time without electricity. But having the roads flooded out can be much worse than losing power.”

  “What’s the chance of that happening?” He frowned. His assignment left no room for delays.

  “Depends on how much rain we get and how quickly it falls.” She stepped past him into the small laundry room off the back entry and returned with a white towel. “You might want to dry off before we get back into those files.”

  “Maybe we should put the Weather Channel on,” he said as he dried off. “I was hoping to leave for Pennsylvania tonight. My schedule didn’t take flooded roads into consideration.”

  “I’ll be sure to pass that on to the Rain Gods.” Kendra turned on the small television that sat on a counter opposite the sink, and watched the meteorologist of the moment discuss a storm moving into the southwest. Minutes later the local forecast followed.

  “There you go.” She turned to Adam as the forecast concluded. “Heavy rains and wind tonight, followed by clearing skies in the morning and . . .”

  Another crack of thunder split the sky. The lights flickered and the picture on the television darkened.

  Kendra leaned over and turned off the TV.

  “It’s dark as midnight here, and it’s only, what, barely six o’clock.” Adam looked out the window and saw nothing except darkness.

  “It does seem darker out here sometimes because there are no streetlights, no lights from other houses. My closest neighbor is almost a mile down the road. The storm is just making it worse.”

  She opened a closet door and took out a lantern, several candles, and a flashlight and set them on the counter near the television, just in case, then paused and asked, “Are you hungry?”

  “I thought maybe we’d stop someplace and grab some dinner on our way to Pennsylvania.”

  “If we wait until we’re on the road to have dinner we’re going to get really, really hungry.” She appeared mildly amused. “I wouldn’t be surprised if the road is already flooded out from here to the highway.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “It takes very little to flood out a dirt road. Fortunately, because the soil here is so porous, it will recede very quickly once the rain stops. Until then, I think we can count on being here for a while.”

  “Has anyone around here considered paving the road?”

  “Sciencing,” she grinned. “Back here, the old folks call that ‘sciencing.’ Hasn’t been much call to pave these one-laners, though. Most of them are just access roads to someone’s house. They don’t actually go anyplace but into the woods a bit. People down here would never stand for their taxes to be used to pave what is, in essence, someone else’s driveway.”

  “How many houses are on this road?”

  “Three. This is the last. And no, we’ve never considered paving it ourselves.”

  She opened the freezer and poked around a bit.

  “So, the question was, are you hungry?”

  “Well, yes, actually, I am.”

  “Frankly, I could use a little break right around now. I’m for eating while we finish discussing Ms. Tilden, then maybe you can put a call in to Mancini and see what he’s come up with on this most recent victim. We’ll see what condition the roads are in after that.”

  “And if they’re impassable?”

  “Then you’ll just have to sleep here and we’ll leave in the morning. You can sleep in the study, if you don’t mind spending the night on the sofa.” She added apologetically, “The two extra bedrooms upstairs still have Ian’s and my old single beds in them. I’m sure you wouldn’t be comfortable in either, since you’re so tall. My next project is going to have to be a real guest room.”

  “Where I sleep isn’t much of an issue to me,” Adam brushed off her apology. He’d hoped to be sitting in the office of the lead investigator on the Garvey case when the sun came up the next day. He hadn’t planned on a sleepover and wasn’t sure how he felt about spending a night under the same roof with her. “We’ll have to leave really early to get an early start in Deal. We should be able to make good time if we leave before the morning rush hour.”

  “There is no morning rush hour around here, at least not until you head toward Philly or Wilmington. And if you’re planning on driving that little number out there, no one would ever believe you’re a fed. Now, we could take my Subaru. . . .”

  “That old blue thing in the driveway? You really think that will make it all the way to Pennsylvania? How many miles on it?”

  “It made it all the way back from Seattle, thank you very much.” She ignored the last question.

  “How many miles?” he repe
ated.

  “Some.”

  “Over a hundred thousand?”

  “Over a hundred thousand,” she conceded.

  “How many over a hundred?”

  “Forty-seven something.”

  “One hundred forty-seven something miles?” He grinned. “I’d say you got your money’s worth. What year is it, anyway?”

  “1985.”

  “Maybe it’s time for a new one.”

  “It was my mother’s,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “She only used it around town. She had a newer car that my stepfather bought for her as a present when she won her seat in the Senate.” Kendra paused, then added, “The Subaru was the first car she’d ever bought for herself. She was so pleased with it. She’d ordered it new from the dealer with all the options she wanted. So it may seem antiquated, and next to that smooth little rascal you’re driving it may not look like much, but as long as it runs, I’ll drive it.” Then, lest she sound too sentimental, she forced a smile. “Besides, down here where I live, my old car fits in just fine. Anything too flashy, too new, folks think you’re showing off.”

  “Maybe I should have parked in the barn.”

  “Too late. It’s probably the topic of conversation down at MacNamara’s Diner as we speak.”

  “How did you know I stopped there?”

  “The only route in to Smith’s Forge is via Route 532 through Worth. And once you’ve passed through Worth, there is no other place to stop. I’ll bet they told you to drive down the road here and look for the house with the purple door.”

  “As a matter of fact, they did.”

  “That must have made Oliver Webb one happy man,” she mused.

  “Who’s Oliver Webb?”

  “An old friend of my granddad’s who’s convinced that I’ve got all the ancestral Smiths resting uneasy since I had the house painted.”

  “Oh, thinks white would have been better?”

  “Well, down here, depending on who you speak with, one might prefer no paint at all. At one time, in some areas deeper into the Pines, it was thought that painting the house would only invite higher real estate taxes.”

  “I guess a purple door is really asking for trouble, then.”

  “I had a hell of a time convincing the painters that I wasn’t kidding. Now, back in Princeton, where we used to live, it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.” She opened the refrigerator and reached for the container of soup that her neighbor, Selena Brennan, had dropped off earlier in the day. “Down here, everything is grist for the local mill.”

  Lightning exploded outside and the thunder rattled the rafters of the old house.

  “I think we might want to get this soup heated up just in case we lose power,” she noted.

  “Can I help with anything?”

  “You can get two bowls and small plates out of the cupboard behind you”—she reached up to take a small pan from a rack on the wall behind the stove—“and maybe you could put some sandwiches together. I think there’s some roast beef and some Swiss cheese in the fridge, rolls in the bread box there. And I’m sure there’s some hot dogs, if you’d rather.”

  A look of something bordering on horror crossed Adam’s face, much as she’d anticipated, and Kendra smiled to herself. He mumbled something about nitrates and searched for the roast beef.

  The lights flickered several times while Kendra prepared soup and Adam made sandwiches. She replenished their glasses with fresh scoops of ice, some tea, a sprig of mint, and a thin slice of lemon before sitting down and, ignoring the torrent that slashed against the window behind her, asked, “Okay, where were we?”

  Adam lay on the old leather sofa in the study that Jeff Smith had built for himself almost twenty-five years earlier. The room was large and square, with a ceiling higher than that found in any other room in the house, floor-to-ceiling library shelves on one long wall, rough-hewn rafters, and a bay window with a seat piled high with cushions. Adam plumped the pillow under his head and listened to the echo of Kendra’s footfalls on the floorboards overhead and reminded himself that he and Kendra had, would probably always have, a strictly professional relationship.

  Right.

  At midnight the storm had still been shaking the trees that stood like sentinels around the old house, and Kendra had announced matter-of-factly that Adam would have to spend the night.

  “My dad designed this addition himself,” she’d told him as she led him into the darkly paneled room. “The sofa’s extra long because he was, and he liked a sofa he could stretch out on without twisting up his legs. This was his favorite place in the house. I spend a lot of time here.”

  “It’s a great room,” Adam said, nodding his approval as if it had been expected. “Do you ever use the fireplace?”

  “I’ve used it a lot since I’ve come back. It makes a cozy place to sit and read, or work.”

  Kendra opened a door to the right and said, “There’s a full bath here, in case you want a shower. There are towels stacked on the shelves. Extra blankets are inside that chest next to the sofa in case it gets cool.”

  “Thanks. I’ll be fine.”

  They stood awkwardly for the briefest of minutes, as if both of them had a sudden recollection of the last time they’d been in a cozy room together. Then, to banish the memory and avoid the moment, Adam lifted a photograph from one of the bookshelves. A tall, dark-haired man stood with his arm around a slender young woman with a mass of curly blond hair.

  “Is this your father?”

  “Yes,” she smiled. “That was taken the summer he graduated from college.”

  “And the woman in the picture, is she your mother?”

  “No, no. That’s my aunt. My dad’s sister, when she was still Lorraine.”

  “Who is she now?”

  “Sierra.” The sarcasm was unmistakable. “She took up with a somewhat wild crowd in college. Dropped out in the middle of her junior year, changed her name and bought herself a ranch in Arizona.”

  “How could she afford to do that?”

  “She and my dad had trust funds that had been set up by their grandparents.” She added dryly, “It was more than enough to pay for her ranch and to support the ‘friends’ who came and went over the years. And still do, no doubt.”

  “Sounds as if you disapprove of her.”

  “Disapprove?” Kendra pondered the word. “I hardly know her. I haven’t seen her or heard from her since the trial. Not even when my mother died.”

  “The trial?” he asked, puzzled.

  “Edward Paul Webster’s trial. The man who kidnapped and murdered my brother and my cousin Zach.”

  “I’m sorry. I’d forgotten there had been two boys.”

  “Zach was Sierra’s son.” She turned her face so that he could not see her expression.

  “Webster’s still in prison, isn’t he?”

  “Serving two life sentences. The tax dollars of the good people of Arizona at work.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

  “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t mean to get into ancient family history. Especially since it’s so late in the evening and you’re a guest in my home.”

  “Thanks to the storm.” He gestured toward the window. “I think it’s starting to slow a bit.”

  “It hardly matters at this point, since the roads will be flooded for hours yet.”

  “I appreciate your offer of a bed.”

  “Oh. You just reminded me. You’ll need sheets. I’ll be right back.”

  She returned in minutes with two pillows and a set of sheets.

  “Thanks.” He reached for them.

  “You’re welcome. I hope you’ll be comfortable.” She handed them over, then backed toward the door. “Well, I guess I’ll see you in the morning. . . .”

  “Yes. Thanks.”

  “If you need anything else . . .”

  “No, no. I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

  Adam watched her disappear down the
hall, watched the house grow dark as she snapped off lights on her way to the stairs. He made up his bed and sat on the edge of it, thinking about the last time he’d seen Kendra.

  She’d been burying her mother. Literally.

  Though they’d only had a few casual dates, Adam had ached for her when the news broke about her mother’s suicide. He’d known that she’d been devastated, but had no way of knowing just how lost she’d be in the aftermath. Kendra and her mother, the only survivors of the once happy Smith family, had been inordinately close. Kendra’s father, Jeff, had died of leukemia when Kendra was thirteen. Years later, the loss of her brother had strengthened the bonds between mother and daughter.

  Over dinner on their first real date, Kendra had spoken with great pride of her mother’s accomplishments. Finishing law school in her late thirties, becoming an advocate for tougher prison sentences for those convicted of preying on the young and helpless, as well as establishing a forum for families to deal with the loss of a child. Later, with backing from her second husband, a onetime White House press secretary with rock-solid political ties, Elisa Smith-Norton ran for and won the Senate seat vacated when the incumbent was indicted for fraud. Adam and Kendra had had only three formal dates—hardly enough to have developed an intimate relationship—when her mother’s sudden death took her back to New Jersey and out of his life.

  Adam had attended the senator’s funeral along with several other agents who’d worked with Kendra over the previous eight months. He’d spoken with her briefly—long enough to offer his condolences and little else—before passing through a seemingly endless line of mourners at the funeral home. Senator Smith-Norton had become a popular figure during her years as a public servant, and hundreds had shown up to pay their respects to her husband and her daughter. Adam had left several messages for Kendra on her answering machine, but had never gotten a return call. He stopped leaving messages six weeks later when the news began circulating through the office that Kendra had married an old boyfriend who’d come back into the picture to comfort her when her mother died. The wedding had been small. Adam had heard from a friend of a friend, and totally unexpected by everyone who knew her. According to FBI gossip, even Kendra’s stepfather had been caught off-guard. This last bit of news came from the secretary to the director, who himself was an old friend of Philip Norton, the senator’s widower.