ALSO BY MEG GARDINER
Phantom Instinct
The Shadow Tracer
Ransom River
JO BECKETT NOVELS
The Nightmare Thief
The Liar’s Lullaby
The Memory Collector
The Dirty Secrets Club
EVAN DELANEY NOVELS
China Lake
Mission Canyon
Jericho Point
Crosscut
Kill Chain
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Copyright © 2017 by Meg Gardiner
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Gardiner, Meg, author.
Title: Unsub : a novel / Meg Gardiner.
Description: First edition. | New York : Dutton, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016041608 (print) | LCCN 2016049126 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101985526 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781101985540 (softcover) | ISBN 9781101985533 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Women detectives—Fiction. | Serial murder investigation—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Suspense. | FICTION / Mystery & Detective / General. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PR6107.A725 U57 2017 (print) | LCC PR6107.A725 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov./2016041608
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Shane Salerno
CONTENTS
Also by Meg Gardiner
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
April 1998
The yelling woke her, the rough voice of her father, shouting into the phone.
“Listen to me. We don’t have days. We have hours.”
The black sky poured through the bedroom window. Shadows crawled along the ceiling.
“Don’t you understand? It’s in his message—Mercury rises with the sun.”
Caitlin curled into a ball, hugging her bear. She knew what Mercury meant. It meant flashing lights and BREAKING NEWS and everybody so scared. A body bag sliding into the coroner’s black van. KILLER CLAIMS EIGHTH VICTIM. It meant you could never close your eyes or turn your back. Because he could get you anytime, anywhere.
“He’s telling us, flat out. When the sun comes up he’s going to kill again.”
And her dad had to stop it.
That’s why each word Mack Hendrix spoke sounded angrier than the last. Why his shirt was dirty and he hadn’t shaved in three days and when he came home for an hour he ignored dinner and the Warriors’ game and her. Why he paced and stared at the walls and yelled into the phone.
The back door creaked. “Because I’ve goddamn worked this case for five years. I know.”
Caitlin slid from under the covers and crept to the window. Her dad stepped outside, lit a cigarette, and stalked across the backyard. Lights reflected on his gun and detective’s shield. His shoulders were bent. That frightened her. The wind blurred his words.
She tiptoed from her room. Her parents’ door was shut, Mom asleep. She slipped into the kitchen to the open window, to hear what he was saying.
“. . . we work the evidence. We keep working. Or somebody dies.”
She stopped. The door into the garage was open a crack.
The rule was: Never go in the garage unless Dad says it’s okay. He spread files on the workbench in there. All his information. But sometimes he let her in, to help stack his papers. Her stomach knotted. She looked out the kitchen window again, into the backyard. The cigarette glowed red.
Answers were in the garage. Truth. She edged to the door and stole through.
She stopped, bare feet cold on the concrete. The walls were covered with photos.
Faces. Flesh. Open eyes. Jagged slices. Blood. Her head began to pound.
A plastic bag on a screaming face. Bite marks. Dogs. At the edges of her vision, starlight shivered. A cut. A cut, he cut with a knife in the person’s chest, a dead person, she’s dead.
A sound rose from her throat. He cut a picture into the woman. Stick figure. It.
She turned in a slow circle. She saw dangling feet. Frankenstein stitches. An arm with words scrawled on it—despair. Her legs started to shake. The cuts the cuts the cuts. The sign.
Dizzy, she turned. The photos seemed to lunge and wail. Devilman him him. She pressed her hands over her mouth, but the sound grew louder.
Footsteps pounded through the kitchen. The door banged open. “Jesus, no.”
Her dad charged in, mouth wide, eyes burning. The sound poured from her throat, uncontrollable screams.
He swept her in his arms. “Don’t look, Caitlin. Close your eyes.”
She buried her face
in his chest, but the photos howled and clawed. She sobbed, clutching him, feeling him shake. The work of the killer was everywhere. Mercury, the messenger. The Prophet.
They were surrounded.
1
Equinox
Present Day
Weapon at her side, eyes on the night, Caitlin approached the house. Fog clung to the ground, rolling thick off San Francisco Bay. It hid the stars, their faces, the view beyond.
Silently they climbed the steps to the broad porch. The March chill weeviled down Caitlin’s arms. By the doorbell a faded sticker announced that JESUS SAVES, but Caitlin saw no evidence of it. Not tonight, she thought. Tonight, he didn’t get the call.
They stacked up beside the door. Behind drawn blinds, a television burbled. Intel suggested that six people were inside. But suggested didn’t mean confirmed.
Caitlin’s heart beat hard against her ballistic vest. Beneath it she wore a T-shirt, jeans, and work boots. Her auburn hair was tucked beneath a ball cap. Her nerves were tuned to an ultrahigh frequency, adrenaline crackling through her like static, waiting for the sign.
The raid leader held up a fist. The team stilled.
Rios was an Oakland Police Department sergeant, built like a furnace in black tactical gear. He glanced at them over his shoulder: Oakland Police, San Francisco PD, Alameda County. Caitlin’s vest read SHERIFF. Her ball cap read NARCOTICS TASK FORCE. They gave him a thumbs-up.
The moments before, the suspense, always fried her. Anticipation was hell. The hateful uncertainty. The house was two-story, decrepit, secretly humming with danger. Caitlin hugged the stucco wall, SIG Sauer warm in her hand. At her back, a young Alameda sheriff’s deputy named Marston thrummed with apprehension. Come on, she thought. Jesus might not get the call tonight, but we’re here. Let’s move.
Rios raised his semiautomatic rifle and pounded on the door. “Police.”
A dog barked. The TV droned. Rios drew back his arm to pound on the door again.
A gunshot from inside blew splinters across the porch.
The static in Caitlin’s nerves resolved to a clear tone. Here we go.
Inside the house, feet pounded. Men yelled. Rios tested the doorknob. Locked. He signaled the fourth man in the stack, an Oakland cop who held the Little Pig.
Caitlin braced for more gunfire. The Oakland cop, Hillyer, rounded them and aimed the Little Pig at the dead bolt. The scaled-down shotgun was loaded with a breaching round. He fired from an inch away. The dead bolt assembly blew into the house and Hillyer stepped aside. The door yawned open. The Master Key—it worked on any lock.
Rios said, “Go, go.” Rifle to his shoulder, he led the formation in.
The lights were dim, the floor warped. Tight and fluid, they swept into the hall. Rios aimed ahead, then to the right.
“Right clear,” he said.
Caitlin stepped to the left, pistol level. Checked her sector. “Left clear.”
The hall reeked of sulfur and ammonia. At the back of the house, a battering ram smashed open the rear door.
Marston stepped past her, checked his sector. “Clear.”
They closed up behind Rios, left hands on the shoulder of the person in front of them, and advanced to the wide doorway to the living room. Rios pointed. Go. He swung in.
“Drop it,” he yelled.
A gun clattered to the floor.
Caitlin came in behind him. Again she checked her sector. Rios yelled, “Get down,” and peripherally she saw a man drop to his knees. She said, “Left clear.” Rios kicked a handgun away from the suspect and held his rifle on him while Marston and Hillyer swept the room.
“All clear.”
Down the hall, men shouted. Footsteps raced back and forth.
Rios pointed at Caitlin and Marston and put two fingers to his eyes. “Kitchen. Go.”
Caitlin returned to the hall. At the far end, men grabbed stacks of cash and fled with officers in pursuit. She advanced toward the kitchen door, weapon level, finger on the trigger. Her pulse pounded in her ears. The kid, Marston, closed up behind her.
His breath warmed her neck. She was taller than he was, five-ten, and, for the moment, a shield. In another room, someone shouted and slammed into a wall.
“Clear,” an officer shouted.
The stench of ammonia burned her throat. At the threshold she stopped, concealed. Heard nothing from the kitchen. Marston’s hand grabbed her shoulder. She nodded: Ready to clear the room. He squeezed: I’ll be right behind you. They moved together.
She swung through the door with Marston on her heels, peripherally checking the gap between the door and the frame. Vision pulsing, SIG sweeping the room. She immediately stepped out of the doorway. The fatal funnel, path of most bullets.
“Right clear,” she said.
Marston went around her. “Left clear.”
Crusted dishes covered the counter. On the table sat a money scale, colorful currency straps, and a pile of cash. A trail of twenty-dollar bills wafted across the linoleum in the clammy breeze blowing through the window. The screen had been punched out. It looked like a quick getaway.
A shiver climbed Caitlin’s arms. She hated having a doorway behind her. Even though the team had cleared the hall, a door always felt like a hungry mouth at her back.
And the window opened to darkness. To anyone outside, she and Marston were brightly lit targets.
Marston’s knuckles were white on his gun. He was waiting for the all clear.
Beneath the chemical stench hung the reek of sweat. She eyed the darkness outside, a pantry in the corner of the room, and the twenties on the floor. The money didn’t actually lead in a trail to the window.
Marston stepped toward the table. Outside, the dog barked again.
Caitlin raised her left hand, fisted. “Stop . . .”
The pantry door flew open. A man lunged out.
Shirtless, strung out, he charged toward the table. A butcher knife gleamed in his right hand. Caitlin turned to put him in her sights.
Marston was directly beyond him in her line of fire.
Screeching, the man drove the knife forward.
She launched at him, a flying dive, and tackled him around the chest. He was ripe with sour sweat. Twenties were falling from his pockets. They hit the kitchen table and slid across it. Twitching eyes. Blackened teeth. Clawing hands. She worked the momentum and rolled, flinging him with her to the floor. He shrieked like a smoke alarm.
She flipped him facedown and subdued him with a wristlock, forcing his head into the linoleum, knee shoved against his elbow. Marston stood above her, eyes on his own chest. The knife jutted from his ballistic vest.
Rios came through the door, weapon raised. He stopped at the sight of Marston and of the man thrashing under Caitlin’s grip amid broken dishes and crumpled cash.
Marston pulled the knife from his vest. “All clear.”
Rios lowered his rifle. “The guy pop out of the toaster?”
Caitlin handcuffed the man and pulled him to his feet. “It’s the meth fairy. Tweakerbell.”
Rios’s eyes didn’t match his light tone.
“Under control,” she said.
Marston touched his vest, wincing like his ribs were bruised. Rios told him to bag the knife for evidence and take the suspect into custody. As Marston led him away, Hillyer appeared in the doorway.
“House is clear,” he said.
Caitlin followed Rios into the hall. The yelling and running had stopped. In the living room three men sat cuffed on the floor, backs against the wall. The SFPD officers were counting bags of crystal meth. She holstered her gun and exhaled.
Overhead came a noise. They all tilted their heads to the ceiling.
Rios pointed at Caitlin and Hillyer. “Upstairs. Two bedrooms. Go.”
The tone in her head revved like a firehouse Kla
xon. She didn’t ask what the team had missed. She drew her gun again and led Hillyer down the dingy hallway. Her vest felt heavy. So did the SIG Sauer, in a two-handed combat grip. At the foot of the stairs, Hillyer put his hand on her shoulder. Steady. Together they climbed.
Upstairs they cleared the hall and first bedroom. The second bedroom door was half closed. From within came muffled sounds. Caitlin leveled the SIG. Not gonna get surprised again. Gonna be ready.
The sounds intensified. Almost a cry. She and Hillyer stopped outside the door. They had concealment but not cover, not if whoever was inside decided to shoot them through the plywood. She tried to slow her breathing. She nodded, Hillyer squeezed her shoulder, and she flowed through the door, gun aimed at the source of the sound.
“Sheriff. Don’t move.”
The crying intensified. Hillyer slid around her, his weapon swinging.
“Stop. Stop.” She raised a fist. Grabbed Hillyer’s vest. “Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Take your finger off the trigger.” She lowered her gun. “Oh, my God.”
2
Caitlin closed the front door behind her and flipped the dead bolt. Her footsteps echoed on the hardwood floor. A table lamp gave the living room an amber glow. She reached to unhook her duty belt. She couldn’t get her fingers to work the buckle. She closed her eyes and clenched her fists. After a few seconds the shaking eased. She unbuckled the belt and dropped it, clattering, on the coffee table.
Her jeans were torn, her knee swollen where she’d hit the crank-house kitchen floor. Her red hair was disheveled. Beneath her white T-shirt, the scarred bullet hole in her shoulder ached. The world seemed bright and supersonic.
From the back of the house, Shadow came running. Big ears alert, tongue lolling. Caitlin knelt and buried her face in Shadow’s soft exuberance and let the dog lick her face. The tremor in her hands subsided.
She leaned back and looked at Shadow’s bright eyes. “Who’s a good girl?”
The mutt yipped and sat, tail wagging. She was skinny, black with white paws. Caitlin roughed her fur, then groaned to her feet.
She followed Shadow to the kitchen and filled her water bowl. The small house was warm against the foggy night. It was a rental in Rockridge, a Craftsman cottage behind a Father Knows Best picket fence. The Berkeley Hills rose behind it. The neighborhood was crowded, eclectic, heavy with fir trees and spilling ivy—which meant she was safely beyond the fire line. At least until the fire line burned its way downhill to her street.