Mike Omer - In the Darkness

“Sheppard’s out.” Foster put down his phone. “I just spoke with the surveillance crews that were on him. He had no opportunity to take Zoe.”

Tatum nodded. “Zoe thought he wasn’t a likely suspect.” He still felt his heart clench. Sheppard was one of the few leads they had.

“The only suspect we have for now is that guy Joseph Dodson,” Foster said. “They should be picking him up any minute now. Any thoughts about him?”

Thoughts. Tatum forced himself to concentrate, to think about it clinically. “He’s approximately the right age. He’s strong. He works as an electrician and an air-conditioning technician, so he probably has a van he works with. It’s likely he could acquire the relevant technical knowledge that was needed to film the girls he’d buried and to broadcast it. Also, he was close to Zoe, so he could get details about the investigation from her.”

“I like him for it,” Foster said darkly.

They all became silent. Zoe’s frantic breathing emanated from the computer, and Tatum clenched his fists.

“Why YouTube?” Lyons asked, for the third time in the past hour.

“Probably because of the comments,” Foster said impatiently. “He wants to see the shocked and horrified comments of the viewers.”

Tatum frowned, thinking about it. “It doesn’t fit the profile. This guy doesn’t want to engage. He wants to show people he’s smart. If he wanted comments, he could have let people post comments on the previous experiments as well. My guess is he doesn’t care about the comments. It’s just random noise.”

“What then?”

Tatum looked at the video. What did YouTube give its users aside from comments? It had to be something the killer couldn’t do on his own website. All he could think of was ads, and he doubted the killer was concerned about revenue.

“Traffic.” Lyons suddenly pointed at the view count. It had just become four digits and was climbing steadily.

“That’s it,” Tatum agreed, trying to ignore the nausea in his guts. “With Juliet Beach, people already reported they couldn’t get the feed. The website couldn’t handle the traffic. And this time, I think he wants to go big. He wants everyone to see. He wants his precious fame.”

“YouTube will remove the video once it’s reported,” Lyons said. “What then?”

“We can’t let them,” Tatum said, his heart missing a beat. “I’ll handle it.” He would call Mancuso, tell her to contact YouTube, explain the situation, and stop them from removing the video until Zoe was safe. Even as he thought it, he realized he was doing exactly what the killer wanted. He was carrying out the bastard’s job for him.

Foster’s phone rang, and he answered it. “Yeah. Bring him here, and get him to Interview Room One.” He hung up.

“Joseph Dodson?” Lyons asked.

“Yes,” Foster said. “They just picked him up. We’re working on a search warrant.”

“We might not have enough for a search warrant,” Lyons pointed out.

“We’ll search his home no matter what,” Foster said grimly. “We’ll get what we need to find her.”

Zoe lay exhausted, not knowing how much time had passed since she had woken up. She felt like she occasionally blacked out but wasn’t sure if she really did lose consciousness or if her mind simply disconnected, leaving her body to flail blindly in panic. She had no way to measure the passage of time aside from the slow, relentless increase in the pressure of her bladder and the close to unbearable thirst. Thinking back on the day before, she realized she hadn’t drunk much and now paid for it dearly.

But it would be suffocation that would kill her long before thirst.

For the first time since she’d woken up, she was exhausted enough to stop thrashing and to slowly think of her situation.

When they’d started the investigation, the analyst had estimated that Nicole Medina would run out of air in twelve hours. Juliet Beach had been buried alive for about nine hours, and she’d been almost dead when they’d found her. Zoe had no idea if the box she was in was the same size, but it was safe to assume it was close enough. She was smaller than the average woman, meaning that maybe there had been more air in the box when she’d been shut there.

All her thrashing and screaming had significantly lowered that amount.

The best thing she could do to maximize the time she had was sleep, lowering her breathing rate significantly. But that wasn’t an option right now; the discomfort she was in was too severe. So she’d have to lie still and stay calm.

It was the “stay calm” she had an issue with. She could still feel the cavernous terror just at the edge of her mind, waiting for her to touch one of the walls, feel the space closing in on her again, think of the tons of sand and dirt that lay on top of her small, confined space.

She tried some basic relaxation techniques, focusing on her body, trying to loosen her muscles, breathing steadily. But she couldn’t focus properly, and frightened thoughts kept assaulting her. She lost control for a while, kicked around the walls of her enclosure. Cried.

She’d have to try something else.

If she couldn’t calm herself by emptying her mind, she’d have to calm herself by filling it. This was something she found much easier to do. In fact, it was her default state.

She tried to think about Andrea, but there was too much uncertainty there, too much fear of a different kind, and she quickly shied away from those thoughts. Her sister was alive and, for now, probably in a much better situation than Zoe was.

Then it occurred to her that she was probably being filmed. If she could glean anything about her situation, perhaps she could somehow let her viewers know about it. She could save herself. The idea that she would be able to extract herself from this situation immediately reduced her terror of being trapped.

She wiggled a bit, got her cheek against the wall of the box. It was wooden but somehow smooth. She tried to recall how smooth the boxes of the other victims had been. Was this box different somehow? She tried to sniff the interior, maybe smell something that could help, but all she could smell was herself. Then she lay silent and listened hard for what felt forever.

Nothing.

Of her five senses, taste and sight were out of the picture. So far touch, smell, and sound had given her nothing.

She tried to remember what had happened the night before. The memory was fragmented, and she estimated it was probably because she had been so distraught. She recalled deciding to fly from Austin. A brief interaction with Tatum—she couldn’t remember anything they’d said. She’d walked to the parking lot, and then . . .

Pain. All of her muscles had been rigid with pain. She hadn’t been able to move.

He had tased her. And then, somehow, had knocked her out. A shift from his previous strategy. He was clearly even more confident than before. Or more desperate. Perhaps a bit of both.

She tried hard to remember whether she’d managed to see anything helpful. She remembered seeing the rental in the dark and then . . . nothing, just pain.

She didn’t let herself lose hope. She knew how memory worked. It often returned in surprising bursts of clarity. She would wait. But she had to keep her mind busy. She had her eyes closed, and as long as she didn’t move, it was possible to almost forget where she was.

She focused on the case. That was the best way for her to keep busy. When she worked, she could think about a case for hours, trying to get into the killer’s mind-set, figuring out his motives, compulsions, the things that made him tick. Usually, she would surround herself with photographs of the crime scenes and the victims, but she had to work with the hand she’d been dealt.