In the Waning Light Page 2

  Carefully, she moved to the blind on the opposite side of her camper, but as she did, she got a whiff of smoke. Then stronger. Fire. Panic licked into her stomach. She had two gas cylinders, one open, feeding into her heater and powering her fridge. A full tank of diesel fuel in her truck. The whole rig could blow sky-high in seconds.

  “Noah! Wake up—quick!”

  She lunged to unlock the door, then halted. Panic squeezed her brain. What if someone was trying to flush them out? She had to chance it.

  “What’s happening?” Noah sat up, confused and thick with sleep.

  “Grab your jacket, get over here!” She twisted the door lock free, swung down the handle, pushed. But the door held fast. She shouldered it. Nothing happened. She rammed harder. But it was stuck dead. The scent of smoke thickened. It was seeping in from below the bed. She caught a flickering glow of orange through the small window that looked into the back of her truck cab. Flames. Noah started to cough.

  Someone had locked them in. They were trapped—human meat in a tin can about to explode.

  Focus. Panic kills. Think. Logic …

  Hands trembling, Meg yanked up the blind and struggled to slide open the window. It was stuck. She lunged for the opposite window, breaking nails as she scrabbled to open it. It had been jammed shut, too. Her gaze shot around the interior. Fire extinguisher. She snapped it free and rammed the back of it into the glass of the biggest window over the table. Cracks feathered through the glass. She rammed it twice more, and pieces crumbled outward. Rain, wind, slush blew in, saturating her face.

  “Noah, over here.” She smashed the extinguisher along the bottom rim of the window, eliminating sharp edges. Wrapping a blanket around Noah, she helped him onto the bench seat. “I’m going to lower you out, okay? When you hit the ground, run. As far as you can, up to the coast road before this blows. I will find you up there. Go!”

  Rain drenched through her sweater as she helped Noah out. His feet hit gravel. He glanced up, white-faced, wide-eyed.

  “Go! Run!”

  He turned and raced away, a little form on skinny legs into the wet, black storm.

  Meg struggled to squeeze herself sideways through the window. Her legs swung down, feet hitting gravel. She reached back inside to get the knife. But as she did, she felt a hard crack at the back of her skull. Her body juddered, went still. Pain exploded through her head and radiated down her spine, to her fingertips. Her vision blurred. She tried to turn around, to put a foot forward, to run, but her knees buckled and she slumped to the ground.

  Another blow came sharp at her ribs. She felt a bone crack. Gasping for air, she tried to roll away, to get onto her hands and knees. To crawl. In the periphery of her mind she was aware of flames licking out of her truck, fed by the tearing wind. Smoke roiled, acrid, thickening. Slush beat down. Meg staggered up onto all fours. Her vision was blackening. She had to get away before the gas cylinders exploded. But as she moved one hand forward, someone yanked her up by the hair, spinning her around.

  Lightning split the sky. And in that instant she saw.

  Him.

  His eyes met hers. And in that moment, suspended in time and pain, she saw in his features an expression of utter equanimity. And she knew.

  She knew with bilious, oily certainty. She finally had The End of her book—and she’d never get to write it. Because now that she knew it was him, she also knew with certainty … she was dead.

  CHAPTER 1

  Four weeks earlier. Seattle.

  “And tonight we have in the studio with us renowned true crime writer Meg Brogan.” Stamos Stathakis, The Evening Show host, stretched out his legs and hooked one cowboy boot over the other, reclining at an odd sideways angle in a boxy, lurid orange chair. Meg faced him in a matching chair that was too low, too close, and made her wish she’d worn pants instead of having to now carefully press her knees to the side in order to look half respectable in her tailored skirt.

  On the table to his side was a copy of her latest hardback, Sins Not Forgotten. Behind them, a floor-to-ceiling screen displayed the bleak and snowy image of her cover. The artist had reworked it several times in an attempt to capture a grim “Nordic noir” tone. In front of them, beyond the starkly lit dais upon which she and Stathakis were positioned, the eyes of the studio audience glistened in the dark. And into that darkness, Stamos threw his trademark, conspiratorial smile, a look that said, this woman is about to be skewered.

  Sorry, not happening, Stathakis.

  Nevertheless her pulse quickened. She became aware of Jonah, her fiancé, observing from the wings, alongside her publicist. The studio felt hot. An irrational sense of unease feathered softly into her chest. She was good in front of a camera, but never comfortable.

  “Before turning to true crime writing, Meg was most well-known for her brief and controversial stint as crime editor for the Seattle Times. Prior to taking over the Times’s crime desk, she clawed her way up from the trenches as a junior reporter to pen award-winning and unflinching features on matters of crime and punishment. Then came her popular blog, and the guest television appearances where she’s increasingly asked to offer commentary on high-profile cases. Her debut book, You Are Mine: A Story of Obsession, first hit the shelves and the New York Times list five years ago, and Meg’s been soaring up charts since, showing herself as a force to be reckoned with in the competitive genre of true crime. Now, in her latest hardcover, Sins Not Forgotten—on sale tomorrow”—he held up the book. The camera zoomed in—“Meg takes us on a gothic trip into the dubious territory of memory, and its unreliability, effectively shining a light onto an old and very cold case that was all but forgotten. Thank you for being with us, tonight, Meg. Can you tell us a bit about your latest book?”

  Restraining the urge to push back her hair, she smiled. “Sins is the story of Gloria Lulofs, who, as a young girl, was being sexually abused by her father in a barn on the family’s Minnesota ranch when two boys from a neighboring reservation intervened in an attempt to save her. Gloria’s father murdered both boys with a pitchfork and buried their bodies in the barn while seven-year-old Gloria watched. The crime went unreported for fifty-six years. Gloria, traumatized by what she’d seen, repressed all memories of the horrific event, as well as memories of the ongoing sexual abuse. Until she was in her sixties, when she came forward to report what she’d begun to believe she was remembering.”

  “But police found no record of two boys missing from the reservation,” Stathakis added.

  “Correct. And Gloria’s father denied all allegations. The police did not believe her credible, either. She was in fairly advanced stages of pancreatic cancer, had been an alcoholic most of her life, and she was on medication, showing signs of early-onset dementia. The investigation was dropped.”

  “Until a newspaper picked up her story.”

  “Yes. The paper brought in ground-penetrating radar equipment. Shapes were detected in the frozen ground below where the Lulofs’ barn had once stood. Permission was granted by the current landowners to dig up the area. Human remains were found—two boys who had slipped through the cracks at their reservation over half a century ago. Forensics confirmed Gloria’s account, and Hans Lulofs, in his late eighties, was charged and convicted on two counts of murder and sexual assault last year.”

  “A huge catharsis for Gloria, who died only three months ago, holding your book, I believe. As if she was waiting to have this resolved before she could peacefully pass.”

  “I’d sent her an early copy.” Meg’s voice caught slightly. She cleared her throat. “Closure can have profound psychological and physiological effects.”

  “Why is it, do you think, that closure is so vital to the victim or the victims’ families? Is it a form of revenge, to see the criminal caught and punished, that gives satisfaction?”

  “I don’t think so. In my experience speaking with victims, hearing the guilty verdict is often a hollow-feeling victory. It’s more a case of being released. During an investigatio
n into a crime, throughout the arrest process, the trial, the victim, and loved ones are gripped in a stasis. Their lives are on hold. Once a case has been adjudicated, and the bad guy put away, once they’ve gotten the truth of what happened, they’re finally free to grieve. To allow the old self to die, and to be able to begin again.”

  He allowed this to hang a moment, then leaned forward.

  Meg tensed.

  The host had a formula. He liked to come out of left field with a backhanded question, usually delivered right toward the end of an interview, the camera panning out before a guest could fully extricate herself. Meg glanced at the clock on the studio wall. It would be coming any second now.

  “You interviewed Hans Lulofs for the book.”

  “I won’t do a story unless I have access to the perpetrator—he’s the antihero of my books. I always pick a case based on him. Or her.”

  “You’ve mentioned before that ideally you want an antihero, or villain if you will, who appears to have everything: good looks, charisma, charm, success, love, wealth, brilliance, respect, talent—the kind of traits we’d all love to have—the least likely person in the world you’d expect to be arrested for murder. Because this is good for sales?”

  Meg smiled. “Because it has the most universal and commercial appeal, and it lends itself to story structure. I learned from the best in the business, Day Rigby—she’s become something of a mentor to me.”

  “But Hans Lulofs doesn’t quite fit this bill, does he? He’s a crippled old man, a chronic alcoholic at the end of a miserable existence scraping a life from a barren ranch. Not exactly commercial appeal.” He leaned further forward, right into her space, his eyes suddenly boring into Meg’s. “So why? Why this case? What was it about Hans and Gloria that got to you?”

  Meg cleared her throat. She could feel Jonah’s gaze from the wings, feel his judgment. She felt Stathakis’s coup de grace lurking in his next words.

  “It was … I think the fallibility of memory has always intrigued me. How it works, its role in criminal investigations, identification, prosecution, trials. How our own minds can deceive, and protect us from pain. And here was a perfect case in point. A forgotten crime. But not entirely erased. In some ways it had been oozing just under Gloria’s consciousness her entire life. It fueled her drinking, her self-destructive behaviors, her inability to form proper relationships.” She forced a smile. “I do think Gloria’s story will resonate with something in all of us.”

  Stathakis eyed her, allowing two full seconds of silence.

  “So it’s not about your memory loss—your own deep-seated need to recall a murder—that drew you into this story?”

  Wham.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your own sister, Sherry Brogan, was brutally raped and strangled twenty-two years ago. You yourself were attacked and left for dead, concussed, no memory of the actual assault. Your own father died in prison serving time for murder, did he not? Perhaps this is the subterranean driver that sucked you into Gloria Lulofs’s case? Is this what drew you into a lifetime of writing about crime, seeking to understand minds of the monsters who live among us, and kill? Digging deep for the ‘why.’ Because it’s closure you want. Deep down here”—he thumped his sternum softly with his fist, eyes steadily boring into hers—“it’s all about you. Your past. Your need to understand why.”

  “My past,” she said slowly, darkly, holding his gaze, “has nothing to do with my work. I fell into crime writing in college while studying for an English lit and psychology degree. A student riot erupted on campus. I was on the spot. I wrote it up for the university paper. I kept on the story as it continued to unfold, both for the campus paper and stringing for the Times. Then I did more freelancing while a student. After I graduated, the Times offered me a job.”

  “Ah.” He leaned back. That smile. “But there’s no denying we are all products of our pasts, are we not, Meg? No matter how we try to pave it over, those subconscious drivers shape us. Will you write it one day—the Sherry Brogan story?” He paused. “Or is this the one story you cannot write?”

  Out of the corner of Meg’s eye, her publicist made a panicked rolling movement with her hand: go with it, roll with it, almost over. Jonah stood stiff.

  Meg smiled, folded her hands neatly on her lap. And sat silent. Television, radio hosts hated dead space. Her eyes locked with his, warning him that her line in the sand lay right here.

  “It certainly has all the commercial elements you look for,” he prompted. “The darkly seductive, devastatingly handsome young antihero from the wrong side of the tracks. A man who volunteered at the local animal shelter. He rapes and murders Shelter Bay’s golden girl, homecoming queen, forever tearing apart and changing a town. All-American values, innocence lost. Telling your story might be as cathartic for you as it was for Gloria Lulofs. Do you ever fear, Meg, that what is locked in your memory might have changed the outcome, that your father might not have ended up in prison?”

  She lurched to her feet and reached for the mic pinned to her blouse.

  His hands shot up in surrender. “No worries.” He smiled at his audience. See? I rattled the big-name crime author. See her vulnerabilities exposed now?

  He held up her book again. “Sins Not Forgotten. On sale from tomorrow. Thank you, Meg Brogan, for joining us on The Evening Show.”

  Applause sounded. There were shuffles in the shadows. A cough.

  Meg unclipped the mic and dumped it on the chair. She spun around, stepped off the dais, strode toward Jonah and her publicist, her high heels clicking on wood, face hot. Stathakis came rapidly after her. He placed his hand on her arm. Meg spun back at him, anger stomping through her chest. “We had an agreement,” she said, very quietly. “My sister’s murder was off-limits tonight. I refuse to be pigeonholed by something that happened to my family twenty-two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Like hell you are,” she ground out through her teeth. “You intended using Sherry’s story from the moment you first mentioned it backstage. I should have—” She felt Jonah’s arm sliding around her waist.

  “Relax, Megan,” Jonah said softly in her ear as he drew her away. Her publicist stepped in front of Stathakis to run interference.

  “Not worth it,” Jonah whispered, leading her out of the studio.

  But Stathakis’s words dogged her into the chill winter night.

  What is locked in your memory might have changed the outcome … or is this the one story you cannot write …

  “Let it go. You did fine,” Jonah said as he escorted Meg along the waterfront to the restaurant for a late, celebratory dinner. Icy wind whipped about them, carrying the briny scent of ocean. The halyards of yachts chinked against masts, float planes straining against moorings as waves slapped pontoons. Tiny snowflakes had begun to crystallize in the January night and they pricked Meg’s cheeks. The radio in the cab on the way over had reported heavy snow already falling in the Cascades.

  “Besides, you looked great. That’s what really matters.”

  Meg cast him a sardonic glance. He grinned at her and she felt a familiar punch of attraction. Jonah was dark and handsome in his wool coat—a sleek and powerful jaguar in an urban jungle. He carried authority in the set of his shoulders, in the athletic grace of his stride. His was a command presence born out of a supreme confidence in his own intellect and genetic good fortune. A forensic psychiatrist with a private consultancy in demand by law enforcement agencies around the globe, Jonah was Meg’s on-tap resource with the psychopathology of the real-life villains in her books, often sitting in with her on much-coveted pre-and post-trial interviews. The package came with an impeccable sartorial sense, a faint British accent, and the financial resources with which to indulge his love of all things fine.

  Meg was seized by an urge to just lean into him, let herself go, let their relationship swallow her wholly and properly. Be the woman he wanted her to be. Yet always, there was this tug of restraint she could never quit
e rid herself of. A tension. Like a wire stretched too taut, humming just under audible range, ready to snap at any moment.

  “He’s an asshole,” she quipped, as they started up a gangway strung with white fairy lights. Wind gusted and hair blew across her face. “I told him backstage—Sherry’s murder was off-limits.”

  He opened the restaurant door for her.

  “Why?”

  She stalled. “Why what?”

  “I mean, why is it off-limits? Maybe it would be good to just put it out there, talk about it. He did have a point, you know, with his question about your memories in relation to Lulofs’s.”

  “Oh … no. No. Don’t you go pulling out the old victimology tricks and profiling me, Doctor Lawson. Sometimes people just do things, okay? Doesn’t all have to be traced back to childhood trauma.”

  But by the time they were seated at a table in front of tall glass windows, cocooned with candlelight and looking out over the bay, snow starting to fall in fat gauzy flakes under the halos of lamps, Meg’s mood had soured further. She picked at her napkin while Jonah perused the wine list and ordered a Burgundy from the slopes of the Saône River.

  Once the waiter had poured the wine and left, he said, “Maybe you should write it, Meg. Go back and put the past finally, properly, to bed. Get closure.”

  She stared at him. “I have closure. Tyson Mack is dead. Why are you even pushing this?” She reached for her glass and took a fierce slug of wine.

  He crooked a brow, watching her intently. “Stathakis was right about the commercial potential.” He raised his glass, gently swirled the liquid. “The ending is poignant, too. Your father going to prison. Your mother—”

  “Stop,” she said, her voice low, quiet. “Stop right there.” Something in her tone must have brooked no argument, because he went very still, his dark blue eyes holding hers. Her cheeks burned and she took another heavy pull of the damn fine Burgundy she knew he’d ordered because they’d visited the vineyard. It was where he’d proposed. Over two years ago. And by the price it was a wine to be savored.