Rob Blackwell - A Soul To Steal

“Shit,” Quinn said.

He read the story quickly. Sure enough, Paul Gibson, the chairman of Loudoun’s board of directors, had begun circulating a plan that would give a developer two-thirds of the old farmstead, but protect the rest under a conservation easement.

All his work, Quinn thought, and his story was already outdated. There was seldom anything worse than waking up and discovering you had been scooped. How had it happened? He had talked to everybody, including Gibson. And no one had breathed a word about any new plan. Damn.

He did not even need to look at the by-line. He knew Summer had beaten him and she would find some way to bring it up the next time they met.

Quinn dropped the paper in disgust and got up. He stumbled down the hall to the bathroom. He stopped when he passed the mirror above the sink. In the reflection was a 30-year-old of average height and regular build-he was thin enough, but not in great shape. He put his hand through his brown hair. Were those gray hairs? Maybe it was the nightmares. Was he good looking? He didn’t know. There seemed little exceptional about him.

Except…his eyes. He stared back at himself with electric blue eyes. An old girlfriend had once told him his eyes were the only reason she had agreed to go out with him. She had been on the verge of saying no when she looked him in the eyes. And then she changed her mind.

Quinn smiled, but the expression held little humor in it. If his eyes had ever been arresting, he doubted anyone would notice now. His skin looked gray and pallid, as if he hid himself from the sun. And his eyes were surrounded by dark circles, the sign of a man who does not sleep well.

Jesus, he thought, I look… haunted.

He turned on the water and washed his face, as if to brush the look away. But the only change that occurred was his reflection now looked wet.

Screw it, he thought. It didn’t matter.

But just as he turned and reached for the shower faucets, he paused and listened intently.

Quinn grabbed the side of the shower door to steady himself. That couldn’t be right, could it? He walked into the hallway slowly and then to his window to look outside. His apartment faced the back, looking over a brief sparse of woods before another cluster of apartment buildings.

He opened his window. Over the sounds of traffic winding its way through Leesburg and beyond the call of birds, it was the sound of a horse running. The sound caused his stomach to seize up and he struggled not to be sick. It sounded close.

Quinn tried to dismiss it out of hand. Horses in Loudoun were hardly unusual, he thought. It meant nothing. But how could he hear these things? Most people wouldn’t hear the sounds of a horse if one were twenty feet away, much less through a bathroom wall-not to mention an apartment.

Quinn shut the window. He didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to remember it. It was nothing but a horse lover out for a ride and there was no sense in making it into some kind of demon. He had enough real demons to worry him, didn’t he?

He sighed as he stripped and turned on the shower. Mentally, he ticked off the things that had already gone wrong with his day: He got four hours sleep, began his morning threatening a door with a kitchen knife and was scooped by Summer Mandaville, Post reporter and pain-in-the-butt.

The only benefit to starting the day in such a lousy manner was that at least things weren’t likely to get any worse.

But he was wrong about that, too.

LH File: Letter #1

Date Oct. 1, 1994

Investigation Status: Closed

Contents: Classified

Dear Mr. Anderson,

Some of what I tell you will be lies. I don’t mean to get us off on the wrong foot, but I thought I should make that clear from the outset. There is, at least, a good reason for this caveat. Within the day, this letter will be in the hands of the police and they will pour over every detail, real and imagined. If I only offered truth, it might provide them with a roadmap to me and I’m not quite prepared for that. Yet.

I am a longtime reader of the Chronicle-that part is no lie, I assure you. In particular, your work has captivated me. It’s something in how you write about crime. It seems pedestrian in others hands. But you offer me enough details that I can almost hear the squeal of tires at a roadside accident and smell the smoke from the fire. You are very talented and I have no doubt you will go far.

So allow me to hand you the biggest story of your career.

Approximately 6.7 miles from here to the northwest, just past Waterford on Clover Hill Road, lying in a shallow stream bed, you will find a body. While it’s possible some local urchin will spot it first, it’s sufficiently fresh that I think it likely you could be the first on the scene. Whether you want to see it yourself, or call the police, I leave up to you.

The name of the victim is Henrietta Verclamp. I had nothing against her. She was an attractive 37-year-old artist given to painting nature scenes and we chatted quite amiably shortly before her death. Even when she saw the knife, she didn’t really understand. And why should she? Monsters lurk in the dark, not the daylight, and most don’t stop to chat.

To help you with color for your story, I will tell you this: She attended GeorgeMasonUniversity and studied history. Art was something she took up to pass the time when she returned home to Leesburg, Va., while she decided what she wanted to do with her life. On a lark, she entered one of her paintings into a competition and the rest, as they say, is history. She won. In the 15 years since, she has never achieved widespread fame. But I think you will find her reputation was good and growing.

She had wonderfully red hair, an easy laugh and a certain twinkle in her eye when she smiled. Oh, in case it’s relevant, she screamed delightfully when I sliced into her. Unfortunately, I cut a little too close to the left lung and she began choking on her own blood, which rather diminished the effect.

No one heard her. She died at 11:33 a.m. this morning. Her parents, whom she mentioned still live in Leesburg, undoubtedly think she is out painting. Can you call them and tell them yourself, or is that too tacky? I really wish I understood more about the niceties of reporting. I mean, that way you would get a great scoop, right? Be able to tell all about their reactions right as they hear their only daughter has been murdered? That would make for great color, I would think. God, I wish I could see it, but I’ll have to rely on you to convey what you can. I leave it to you to best judge the situation. I can’t know everything and your work has left me sufficiently impressed that I’m confident you will know the best way to handle it.

Now for your questions. I suppose the biggest one is: Why? As you know, it’s the hardest question for anyone to answer. Why does a man feel like watching football on a Saturday afternoon, a cold beer in his hand as he kicks his feet up on the couch? No, that’s a bad analogy.

Why does a woman enjoy a good game of tennis with her best friend on a Sunday morning? That’s better-more active. Believe me, murder is an aerobic workout.

My point is: You do these things because on some level, they are a lot of fun. A way to relax. A way to blow off steam after a hard day’s work. And I figured it was a good way to start the month off right.

There are other reasons. I wouldn’t want you to think I murdered her just for fun. I did it because I wish to prove a point: the world is changing. It’s something indefinable in the air and water. History is a cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations and individuals. There comes a certain point where the apex has been reached and everything begins slipping into darkness.

That point has now come. When it turned, I can’t exactly say, but I feel it under my skin. Underneath the perfume of the roses, you can begin to scent the rot and decay setting in.