Mike Omer - In the Darkness

That phone call was strange as well. Delia Howe was adamant that she hadn’t informed the press about it. Maybe her husband had, or maybe there was a leak from the police, but there was so much detail in the news articles about the call, detail that only Delia could know.

It was possible that the killer had leaked the details, but it didn’t seem to fit either. If he’d buried her as retribution for trying to escape and calling her mother, he wouldn’t draw attention to his own carelessness.

Lyons got out of the room and stepped over to Zoe. “What’s going on?”

“Something here is wrong. Do you think Maribel was imprisoned by the killer all this time?”

“I’m almost sure of it. That’s the best explanation.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know yet, Zoe. Maybe he used her body. Maybe he enjoyed talking to her. Maybe he liked her cooking skills. We’ll ask her when we find her.”

“Why didn’t he keep Nicole Medina? Why change the pattern so drastically? Why keep Maribel for so long only to bury her too?”

“Maybe because he’s a sadistic psychopath,” Lyons suggested.

“It doesn’t work like that,” Zoe said slowly. “The unsub doesn’t do stuff because he wants to spread misery. He’s not possessed by the devil. Everything he does is propelled by need. Some of it is his sexual need. He has an elaborate sexual fantasy in his mind, and these acts, burying women alive, are the consequence of that fantasy. He also seems to want attention. The attention of the press and the police. Fame.” A detail in the video had snagged her attention, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Like a shadow glimpsed by the corner of her eye, gone as soon as she turned to face it.

“We can figure that out later,” Lyons said. “Right now we need to finish this interview and . . .” The word died on her lips as she turned to the door of the meeting room.

Zoe followed her eyes. The door was slightly open, and the room was empty. While they’d been talking, Delia had slid out and left.

They both took off after the running woman. Delia brushed past a pair of cops, then darted to the right, straight through the door labeled “Detective Division.”

Zoe and Lyons caught up with her a second later. She stood at the division’s entrance, staring at the various screens displaying her daughter’s crying face. Though the videos were muted now, the impact of the picture was enough.

Delia’s eyes were wide, her lips trembling. “That’s . . . Maribel.”

Lyons grabbed her arm gently. “Mrs. Howe, please come with me.”

The woman tore her arm away, never shifting her eyes from the screens. “What’s going on?”

Lyons answered, but Zoe didn’t pay attention. Now, watching alongside the girl’s mother, she finally realized what had bothered her about the video.

The girl had a smear of mascara on her face. But if the killer really had taken her six weeks ago, there was no good reason for her to wear any makeup. Not unless the killer had demanded it from her.

And eyeing the girl’s shirt, a strapless green top, Zoe could think of one reason.

It was the first time since Tatum had landed in Texas that the heat was getting to him. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead and into his right eye, making it sting. Foster approached, handing him a large bottle of water. Tatum took it gratefully and drank half of it in one go.

“How long do you think she has?” Foster asked, his eyes glazed.

Tatum shrugged. They’d gone through similar conversations three times in the past hour. They had no way to know, even if they knew the exact time she’d been shut in the box. As far as he could tell from the video, Maribel was actually doing the one thing that could increase her chances of survival—she now lay still, consuming less oxygen from the very limited amount around her.

Foster’s phone blipped. “Oh, damn it!” he snapped. “The press have the story.”

He showed Tatum the screen. It was an article titled “Police Searching for Girl Buried Alive.” A frame from the video was placed directly under the headline, Maribel Howe’s face paused midscream. “Soon they’ll connect it to the Nicole Medina case, and we’ll have a panicked population to handle.”

Tatum glanced at his own phone, where the video still ran. “He didn’t stop the video feed yet,” he remarked. “It’s almost two hours long.”

“What do you think it means?”

“Hell if I know,” Tatum said tiredly. “Zoe would say his fantasy is evolving.”

The constant sound of faraway honking set his teeth on edge. Route 67 was a few dozen yards away, and two police blockades had split it into three sections, resulting in long stand-still traffic jams in either direction. Though they let vehicles pass, they did it slowly, writing down the license plate of each car.

He stared at the lines of traffic, the sun glinting off their windshields, then turned around to survey the entire search perimeter. It was a plateau of sand and gravel spotted with dry shrubs and bare trees. A trailer park stood by the road, its inhabitants gathering with interest to watch the police search. Beyond it, he could barely glimpse a gas station. A long railway ran parallel to the road a few yards apart. Having studied the map, Tatum knew this railway and the road didn’t diverge.

Several patrol officers were combing the ground with metal detectors, though all they’d found so far were beer cans. A K-9 handler who’d introduced himself as Jones was searching by the trailer park with his dog, Buster. On the other side of the perimeter, a technician was pushing a ground-penetrating radar over the gravel. It didn’t look like a complex piece of technology. In fact, it was similar to a lawn mower. The radar technician seemed to struggle with the endless rocks, shrubs, and cacti in his way. As Tatum watched, he stopped, shaking his head, and took a step away from his machine. He walked over, his shoulders slumped.

“Now what?” Foster grunted.

“The GPR can’t penetrate deep here,” the man said. “Too much clay in the soil.”

“What kind of excuse is that?” Foster asked.

“The clay interferes with the radar’s effectiveness.”

“You said this baby of yours can see fifty feet deep. So what are we talking about? Only fifteen feet? Ten? Five?”

“Fifteen inches.”

“Fifteen inches?” Foster sputtered.

“Too much clay,” the technician repeated. “I’m sorry.”

“We should get more dogs here,” Foster said to Tatum. “More metal detectors too. And—”

Tatum’s phone emitted strange static. Tatum glanced at it, shielding the screen against the sun. “What the hell?” he muttered. Something was happening on the video.

The walls around Maribel were vibrating, something roaring around her. Sand filtered through the cracks. Maribel screamed uncontrollably.

For a second, Tatum’s gut sank, and he thought of the physicist’s words. Einstein’s experiment had a barrel of explosives.

The technician let out a curse, looking over Tatum’s shoulder. The walls kept vibrating. This wasn’t an explosion. This was something else entirely.

“What is that?” Foster asked. “It looks like there’s an earthquake in there. Where is she? ”

Tatum raised his eyes, looking around him. He could see nothing that made that amount of noise and vibration, but Maribel’s surroundings were definitely shuddering. Could they be in the wrong place?

And then he caught sight of the railroad.

His gut sank, and he glanced at the screen. Maribel had been taken weeks ago, but her shirt, though a bit rumpled, didn’t seem to look like something that had been worn for more than a few days. Something was smeared around her eyes, and now Tatum knew what it was. Makeup.