Caridad Pineiro - Darkness Calls

Where he took the women had to be as equally isolated as the places where he left the bodies. But the evidence pointed to a more populated location. She glanced at the comments about the sheets in which the victims had been wrapped. They were the kind that hotels used and bore the traces of commercial laundering. The ME indicated the sheets had been clean and contained no latent prints nor hair or skin samples other than those of the victims.

But they did have DNA from the killer. Body fluids had been found on the women’s bodies, although he had not sexually violated them.

She closed up the files, shut her eyes and leaned back in her chair, trying to create an impression in her mind of the kind of man who would do this. There was anger there, both at the women and at himself. He probably hated that he became aroused by what he was doing. When the arousal became too intense…It likely gave him a sense of control to be able to curb his response. It gave him a high to shame his victims and degrade them with their inability to stop him from taking pleasure. When that no longer satisfied him…

Could Ryder Latimer be that kind of man? she wondered. She didn’t doubt that he was capable of violence, although he had restrained himself during their altercation. But Latimer had lied and he was hiding something. Diana’s gut told her that it was a big something. And that she could easily have her answer by forcing Ryder to submit to a DNA test, only…

She wanted to believe in him. She wanted to think that he would show up that afternoon and provide the answers she needed. Restore the connection she had sensed last night.

Rousing herself, she shook her head and turned to her computer to run through all the databases at her disposal.

By the time she finished, nearly three hours later, her head was swimming. None of the materials had brought her any closer to the identity of the killer. Nor had they brought her any closer to eliminating Ryder Latimer as a suspect, although…

Her intuition kicked in again, screaming not to be ignored. Telling her that she had to keep an eye on him, but not because of the murders.

Ryder took one last look in the mirror, imagining as he had for over a century that there was an image staring back at him. It made shaving a bitch, not to mention straightening one’s tie.

Slapping on some Chanel aftershave, he inhaled the light, citrusy scent. It helped mask the odors of the people with whom he came into contact. Odors that sometimes caused him problems.

Diana wore no scent. Around her, all he smelled was the clean, enticing allure of a woman. Plus leather and oil, he remembered suddenly. In addition to the leather pants she’d worn last night, he’d caught the odor of a holster with a well-maintained gun.

Glancing at his watch, he noted he had to get going. Although it was a short subway ride downtown, the New York City transit system was sometimes unpredictable. The last thing he wanted was to go aboveground and grab a cab. Staying any length of time in the sun drained him of energy. After prolonged exposure, his joints and muscles grew excruciatingly painful and stiff. Leave him out in the sun way too long…He didn’t want to think about it, having once seen the shriveled remains of a vampire who had dared to think himself invincible.

No, he recognized his limitations all too well. That was why he had used his lawyer to stall the meeting. Early morning and midday sun were too much for a vampire of his age to handle, even with the protection of clothing. The late afternoon was infinitely better, and so here he was, on his way to see her. He had no delusions about his reasons for heading into the sunlight. He had told himself all night long that it was lunacy. The only way this could end would be badly. He didn’t want to be attracted to her. He couldn’t afford to be, he reminded himself and shook his head.

The things men did for women, he thought as he pulled the lapels of his jacket until they were flat, and walked to the door of his apartment. He grabbed a fedora from the coatrack next to the door and called his goodbye to Danvers, who was heading to the hospital for her late-afternoon rounds. “If you need me—”

“I’ll call you,” Ryder finished, and Melissa sailed out the door, perfectly groomed.

The brilliant doctor’s orderliness and control had helped him on more than one occasion. But he worried that as his companion she had no social life. He experienced a twinge of guilt; serving him kept her from enjoying a normal life.

Running out of the apartment, he grabbed an elevator and took it down to the subbasement level, a floor normally frequented only by the maintenance men who checked the building’s electrical plant. Dark, damp and almost always empty, it had a second door that led to an underground access tunnel near Lexington Avenue. The entrance was hidden in the recesses of the building, next to a bomb shelter.

Ryder had had both built during the fifties, at the height of the Cold War. The mason who had done the work had seemed to understand why Ryder wanted another avenue of escape in the event of a nuclear attack. The man had been paid well to do the work and keep the secret of the tunnel’s location and the fact that Ryder had a hand in the corporation that owned the building.

The building was just one of the many properties in which Ryder’s company had an interest. After his “death” he’d recovered some of the funds he’d hidden before the Civil War, leaving the bulk of the money for his wife. With his funds, he’d bought real estate and with the earnings from the real estate, he’d invested in other things. Little by little, his holdings had grown and now money was not a concern.

He stepped into the tunnel and secured the door behind him. The smell and heat in the tunnel was always bad and only slightly better in the winter. Thankfully, it was just a few yards to a similar entrance into a maintenance tunnel for the Sixty-eighth Street subway station. The subway would deposit him at the Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall stop. From there it was a short walk to Federal Plaza. Not enough exposure to the rays to do much damage, especially since the fedora helped shade most of his head and face and the sunglasses in his pocket protected his acute eyesight from the worst of the sun.

Once out of the tunnel, he was in a little-used passage to the main subway entrance. He walked to the turnstile, pulled out his Metrocard and swiped it through the reader.

Walking to the edge of the platform, he looked uptown into the tunnel, but there was no sign of a downtown train. Despite that, his body registered the subtle vibrations and sounds of something approaching. A few moments later, the rush of air from the tunnel confirmed the imminent arrival of the number six.

With the hiss and squeal of brakes that grated on his sensitive hearing, the train lurched to a halt. Except for a number of younger people, clearly students on their way to Hunter College, few passengers got off. Most were headed to the main commuter stations like Grand Central and Times Square, where they would make the necessary connections to other trains. Ryder packed onto the crowded car and the scents and sounds of the mass of people attacked him. He closed his eyes as he always did and began a mantra he had learned many, many years ago from a Japanese man interred at a California camp during World War II.

As always, the mantra soothed the anger of the animal within and brought him some measure of peace.

Holding on to the pole, he swayed and bounced as the train rocketed to his destination. Once there, he raced up the stairs, slid on his glasses and did what he could to avoid the direct rays of the sunlight until he was finally in the cool interior lobby of 26 Federal Plaza, home of the New York City branch of the FBI. Tranquilly, he got in the line necessary to clear the security barriers, and, after waiting almost interminably, he was allowed through and directed to someone who would take him to the interrogation room.