Mike Omer - In the Darkness

“Of course!”

“Last time we were searching for a box that was buried deep in the soil,” Tatum told Zoe. “So presumably, there was a lot of clay in the soil. But if the hole is just covered with a few inches of sand—”

“I got it, thanks,” she said, annoyed. “No need to mansplain.”

“It’ll be slow going, though,” Foster said. “I mean, that guy pushing the radar took forever.”

“Man pushing?” Andrei’s eyes widened. “Why don’t you use a car?”

“Uh . . . what do you mean?”

“You hook the radar to a car. Drive.” He moved his hands, pantomiming driving. “The radar finds holes. It’s easy. We do it every day.”

“Can you show us exactly how?” Tatum asked.

Andrei sighed again and tapped at his keyboard, spitting short impatient sentences as he explained. Zoe half listened, already trying to think of the best way to approach this task. They’d have to focus on the areas that the killer had most likely dug in. It would have to be outside the city, and not too far. But just searching in a certain perimeter around San Angelo could take weeks. They had to find a way to narrow it down.

Her attention was snagged back to Andrei, who seemed to have stopped talking about the radar and now explained something in general.

“Very hard, tools break every day. It’s frustrating. Research is stalling. The funding is almost gone.” He glared at one of the topographical maps and groaned. “I have a birthday next week.”

“Happy birthday,” Tatum said helpfully.

“It is not happy.”

“Right.” Foster shifted his chair closer to the door, as if he intended to make a break for it. “I’m sorry your research about the Angelo bedrock layer is difficult—”

“Difficult? Pah! It is disastrous. Sample taking is terrible. Three drills broken last week.”

“Why?” Zoe asked.

Foster tried to catch her eye, emphatically motioning for her to shut up, but Zoe ignored him.

“You said you’re researching the Angelo stone? Is it called that because of San Angelo?”

“Of course. Do you see any other Angelo here?”

“And the ground is . . . what? Hard?”

“Hard? It is like steel! I need expensive drilling technology—I can’t use cheap drills. This is no Minecraft.”

“What’s Minecraft?” Zoe asked.

Everyone stared at her in astonishment.

“Even I know what Minecraft is,” Tatum said. “And I don’t have kids.”

“What’s Minecraft?” Zoe asked again, annoyed by her own ignorance.

“It is stupid video game!” Andrei roared. “Terrible! My son plays all day long; he thinks there is ten kind of stones in the world. Ten! I tell him, no, it is much more complicated, but he tells me there is sand and rock and gravel and coal. To dig, he punches floor!”

“He actually needs to use a pickax,” Foster said. “There are all sorts of pickaxes and—”

“It is impossible to dig so fast with pickax!” Andrei was apoplectic with rage. “He digs until he reaches lava. Absurd! And now he wants my help to get to Nether. Says I know about digging. He says I don’t respect his hobby. Minecraft is no hobby! Stamp collecting is a hobby. Piano playing is a hobby. We argued yesterday all evening.” He switched to Russian, carrying on his tirade, while specks of spittle shot from his mouth.

This is all your fault , Tatum mouthed at Zoe.

Once Andrei paused for air, Zoe quickly interjected. “So the ground around here is hard to dig in. Right?”

“The Angelo series is.”

“But our guy digs holes,” Zoe said.

“Not in Angelo soil.” Andrei let out a small desperate laugh. “Trust me.”

“But he did.”

“Where? Show me on map.” He gestured at the topographical map on the wall.

Zoe got up and pointed to the locations of the crime scenes. “Here. And here.”

“It is not Angelo soil there. It is Tulia soil. Much better for digging. Look.” He turned to the computer and opened a browser. A diagram of several layers in different colors filled the screen. “This is Tulia. Five layers, yes? Some hard, but not terrible. A lot of clay. Unpleasant, but you can dig. Now.” He opened a different window. “ This is the Angelo series. You dig twelve inches, you reach this layer.” He stabbed his finger at the screen with vehemence. “The bane of my life. Suka blyat! Thick and hard. The tools break all time.”

“That’s why he chooses his locations the way he does,” Zoe muttered excitedly. “He digs where he can!”

Andrei let out another short angry laugh. “If only I was so lucky.”

“This Angelo series . . . where is it?”

“Everywhere. Almost everything on that side of map.” He motioned to the area east of San Angelo.

“And the rest? It’s Tulia?”

“A lot of things. Some hard, some not.”

“But these two are Tulia, right?” She pointed at the two crime scene locations.

“Yes. Definitely Tulia.”

“Can you tell us which areas are Tulia as well? And maybe other soil types that are easier to dig in?” Tatum asked.

“It will take hours. No.”

“Dr. Yermilov,” Foster said, “it will help save innocent lives.”

Andrei sighed. “Fine. Research is crap anyway. I go get coffee. This will be very long and . . . what’s American word? Boring.”

It was. The doctor painstakingly went over each area in the map, explaining about the various layers, the tools that would be needed, while Foster compounded a list. Zoe listened, trying to take it all in. Though this was mind numbing, she was sure the killer obsessed about these details. For him, researching the best areas to dig in was foreplay.

Her phone blipped, and she glanced at it. It was an email from Harry. She skimmed it, her heart pounding hard.

You were right. The Digging Killer wasn’t partial to our unflattering article. But he didn’t comment on the site. He sent me an email, forwarded below. H.

Dear H. Barry.

I still remember my parents talking about Henry Lee Lucas’s confessions. Everyone back then had a friend or a family member in the jury. We had a guest in town, our very own serial killer. But he was just passing through. This time, it’s the real thing.

Back then, he claimed he killed thousands of people, and the reporters lapped it up, giving up their professionalism for a bit of sensation. Unlike Lucas, I will give no false claims. But I won’t accept inaccuracies.

1. Nothing was inefficient in my methods. You were misinformed. Every step I took was necessary and unavoidable.

2. I do not enjoy the suffering of my subjects. I do what I must. There’s a reason to all of this.

3. Any comparison of my work to anyone else’s is absurd. If you had one page from Einstein’s Annus Mirabilis , you couldn’t compare it to another scientist’s work, could you? Wait until you have the full story.

And one more thing. “The Digging Killer”? I think you can do better than that.

With a few sentences, the killer had managed to shed endless light on his psyche. Despite his attempt at being cordial and warm, anger seethed underneath. They’d managed to rattle him. Now they had a line of communication.

“When she dropped his wedding ring, I thought I was going to scream,” Elise said as he walked her back to her dorm room.

That would have been her fourth scream during the movie. He’d counted. Her screams made him think of his mother encountering a large cockroach. They grated on his nerves. Perhaps The Sixth Sense hadn’t been the best choice for a date movie.

Then again, after each scream, she’d buried her face in his chest, refusing to watch as the little boy faced the dead people trying to talk to him. She’d shivered in his arms. It had made him feel good. Made him feel like a man.