Leslie Parrish - Fade To Black

“Did you find what you were looking for in the footage?” Blackstone asked, sounding courteous, yet not quite so… What was that tone in his colleague’s voice? Protectiveness, maybe. Yes, when she thought about it, the near-stranger had seemed almost protective of her. Such a novel thing. Nobody had tried to protect her in years. She did a damn fine job of it herself, and part of her should have been offended.

She wasn’t. She’d evaluate why later, when she didn’t have to look across her desk at those deep brown eyes.

“Sheriff?” Blackstone prodded.

Determined to get past the awkward moment of her sickness, she nodded and reached for her notepad. She’d jotted down specific moments of interest in the film. “You said this video was made public last April? About a month after she disappeared?”

The senior agent nodded. “But we believe it had been made sometime prior to that, given the wintry appearance of the background location.”

She thought about the scene, the stark, skeletal bareness of the trees. Then she recalled the early spring they’d enjoyed last year; her pollen allergies had been in high gear by the first week of April. The timing definitely fit. “I noticed that, too.”

Blackstone folded his hands in his lap, saying nothing.

“She left Dick’s Tavern, a hangout two miles outside of town, a little before two a.m. That night was the last full moon of the cycle. I remember because we’d had a really bad week, calls out to Dick’s every night. Around here the general consensus is that the crazies come out during the full moon, and they all end up at Dick’s. Most folks think Lisa ran off with one of them.”

“Maybe she did,” Taggert muttered.

“Maybe. But if so, she didn’t get far. Because she died within hours.”

Both FBI agents watched her closely. Neither appeared surprised. Just interested.

“There’s one moment when she’s looking directly up, when the camera panned up, too,” she explained, suddenly feeling weary. “Maybe the bastard wanted to see if there really was a God up there listening to her prayers. It’s only a split second, but I’m nearly certain the moon was full.”

“Yes, we saw that,” Blackstone admitted. “We sent the tape for evaluation beyond what our office could handle, and I imagine they’ll verify it. But the fact that you caught something that appeared so briefly says a lot about your powers of observation.”

Under other circumstances, she might feel pleased by the compliment. Now, though, her mind still awash with the visions of Lisa’s final moments, there was no room for anything positive.

“To recap…” She ticked off the obvious points on her fingers. “We know she was last seen at close to two a.m. on the final night of the full moon in March. We know she was killed under a full moon. We know there were no buds on the trees, while if it had happened at the next full moon, there would have been. And we know the video went public in April.” It was simple deduction, really. “She had to have been killed the night she disappeared. It had to have happened somewhere close to here, since there would have been only a few hours between when she left the tavern and dawn, and there was no sign of morning on that video. With the time it took to grab her, get her somewhere entirely secluded, and do what he did , there wouldn’t have been time to drive too far out of the area.”

Agent Taggert leaned forward in his chair. “You said you might know where she died, meaning you saw something else.”

“Yes, I did.”

They waited.

“During the segments when your suspect zoomed out and panned the clearing, you can see a glint of silver through the branches of some of the trees, to Lisa’s left. I first spotted it in the third picture you showed me. You can see it better in the video.”

Taggert opened the folder, glanced at it, then offered it to his colleague.

“Brandon Cole, our IT specialist who’s been working on this, spotted the same glimmer,” said Blackstone. “But he couldn’t isolate it enough to identify it. It was too far away and too small. It could be a flash from the spotlights, a smudge on the cheap camera lens. Maybe even a reflection from one of the blades the perpetrator used.” He put the picture down. “It’s not a headlight or something, if that’s what you’re thinking. We considered that, but the height and dimensions don’t work. We’re hoping the final analysis of the footage will give us more to go on.”

She wasn’t thinking vehicle. And the other explanations could be correct. But the first impression Stacey had had when she’d spotted it hadn’t been of any of those things; it had been of wire. Very thin, very sharp wire, looping on itself.

Intuition. But she trusted her own intuition. She always had.

“I think it might be razor wire. If you use Lisa’s position to gauge it, the image is about level with the tops of her hands.”

She stood, demonstrating, raising her arms above her head, thrusting away the thought of Lisa being tied in this position. Actually, she needed to thrust away the thought of the Lisa she’d known, period, if she was going to be of any help in this investigation. She needed to think of her as only another victim. Nothing else.

“I’m five-ten. Li-The victim was a good six inches shorter. The level of her hands would be right about the same height as the wire running across the top of a steel fence.”

Blackstone immediately reopened the folder, and the two agents looked down to test her theory against the eight-by-tens. Stacey lowered her hands, tucked her shirt, which had slid up over her middle, back into her khakis, and returned to her seat. Why the hell she’d had to play Miss Show-and-Tell, she had no idea. Far from being eminently professional, she’d probably looked like some amateur detective solving bloodless murders on an old, pre- CSI TV show.

“Damn, I think she’s right,” Taggert said. He looked up, caught her eye, and immediately leaped to the next conclusion. “Not many places need that kind of security. You know of a fence like this in the area?”

Still not quite believing that Lisa could have been killed at a place she drove by practically every day, Stacey nodded. “I do. One of the locals, Warren Lee, has a farm outside of town. He’s a bit of a character.”

Taggert stiffened. “Violent?”

She considered it. “Possibly. He’s a survivalist type; I suspect he’s armed to the teeth out there.” Realizing why he’d asked, she almost immediately ruled out the agent’s unspoken supposition. She knew Warren well enough to fear that when he snapped he’d go out guns blazing. He didn’t have the patience, the calmness she’d seen in the video.

“I don’t believe that was him on the tape, but it could have happened near his place. He has a huge spread. It’s fenced in, with razor wire across the top.”

Agent Taggert immediately swung to face his boss. “Can we get a warrant?”

Blackstone shook his head. “We’ve got nothing to justify one.”

Stacey cleared her throat. “I didn’t mean I thought the crime occurred on Warren ’s property. The way he guards his place, the only way it could have is if he did it, and I tell you, everything I know about the man says he didn’t. I think it’s more likely this happened on the other side of his fence. In which case, you can easily look around.”

They both waited in tangible expectation.

“Most of Warren ’s land skirts along part of the Shenandoah National Park.”

A quick grin appeared on Taggert’s face, as if he’d heard his first good news in days. “Federal property.”

“Exactly,” she replied, thinking for a fleeting moment how much younger the man looked when he smiled. “No warrant required.”