When Shadows Fall Read online

  “You’re right. I can. That’s why we’re still having this conversation. Here’s the profile I’ve been working with all these years. The kidnapper was a man acting alone, in his midtwenties to thirties, very smart, very capable, with a steady white-collar job. He’s low ranking, not management, but gets good reviews from his bosses, who wonder why, with his smarts, he doesn’t try for promotions. He’s probably turned down opportunities to move up the ladder if it would mean a physical move. He’s not married, has a private place to keep his victims, a basement or the like. He’s a loner, one of those men who disappear into the framework of society. He doesn’t make waves, doesn’t draw attention to himself, but he doesn’t set off people’s alarm bells, either. The notes indicate he was discarding the girls, even though we haven’t found any more bodies. Profiling is an inexact science. I might have that part wrong.”

  “Does Doug Matcliff fit this profile?”

  “Yes and no.”

  Sam shook her head. “So if you’ve been wrong all this time, and this guy isn’t a corporate white shirt, but a part of the NRM, and if they were involved, you’re saying a whole group of people kept quiet all these years about kidnapped little girls? That seems pretty far-fetched.”

  “Not as far-fetched as you might think. The power of these cult leaders defies logic. Look at Jim Jones, and David Koresh. They used mind control and drugs to keep their followers in line. Jones was a con man, through and through. Koresh had a massive God complex, decided he was going to be the chosen one and everyone would do everything he said, at any time. They were both sexual sadists, too, which goes along with this.”

  “But a female version?” Sam asked.

  Baldwin ran his hands through his hair. He looked tired, so tired, and Sam felt bad for pushing him. His job was heavy on the horrible and light on the happy, and she knew he did his absolute best with everything he touched.

  When he spoke, his voice was soft. “Sam, you of all people know there isn’t anything in the world that surprises me. If it is them, then it seems someone in Eden wanted a very specific type of little girl, and whoever took Kaylie and the other girls fits that profile.”

  Sam shook her head. “Nothing about this scenario is typical though, is it? I know you said historically there was a series of garrotings surrounding each kidnapping. Where do those murders fit into this?”

  “I don’t know. They may be totally unrelated. Stranger things have happened.”

  “You don’t believe that,” Sam said.

  He sighed. “No, I don’t. But other people do, and I’ve had a hard time convincing them otherwise. You know hindsight is twenty-twenty. We can see the pattern more clearly now than before.”

  “The pattern here seems slightly different, though—Matcliff was strangled, not garroted. And he doesn’t seem to have been living with a cult—he was pretty far off the grid.”

  Baldwin ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up on end, a gesture she recognized as pure frustration. “I’ll be honest, we don’t know what the link is. Right now it’s one hell of a coincidence. We’re running the specifics through ViCAP now, and I’ve extended the search parameters to include the surrounding jurisdictions where the girls went missing. Maybe we screwed up. Maybe there’s a more specific pattern than we realized. We’ve had multiple agencies on these cases across six jurisdictions, and no one’s been talking to each other. You know how it is—too many cooks. That’s why I’m here now, to coordinate the effort, see the links between all the cases, and work it to the end. With your help, of course.”

  Sam nodded. “Of course we’ll help you. Anything we can do, you know we will.” But inside, she had to admit she was a bit surprised. If the FBI’s most hotshot profiler was asking for her help, things must be bad. No, that wasn’t a fair assessment of the situation; Sam and Baldwin had worked together on many a case in the past several years. He knew he could trust her. That’s why he was bringing her in.

  A light went on. That’s why he wanted her as an official consultant. He trusted her judgment. She wasn’t a part of his system. A system that had been keeping the links between six kidnappings quiet until now.

  Xander spoke up. “A stupid question. If the kidnappings are tied to the cult, could they be using these girls for something? Maybe a sacrifice of some sort?”

  Baldwin got up and poured himself a cup of coffee, took a sip, grimaced then downed the cup as if it were a shot of espresso and rejoined them at the table.

  “It’s not a stupid question at all. Now that we might have a link, it’s exactly what I’m afraid of. The notes would certainly lead us to believe that. You lose one, you replace one. The particular use of lose makes it seem the girls are dead. For years, we thought we had found Kaylie Rousch’s body, and the others simply were disposed of more thoroughly. This new DNA evidence throws that theory on its ear. Whether they were kept alive, and still are, or were killed after they grew out of the prepubescent stage, we won’t know until we can get our hands on the only one we know is still alive.”

  “Kaylie Rousch.” Sam said. “I assume you’ve done your magic and put together a geographical profile of the kidnappings?”

  Baldwin opened his iPad and showed them a map of the United States with a series of pins spread across it. Beside each red pin was a name and a black circle, another little girl lost. “There’s no discernible pattern. The girls have gone missing all over the country. Bethesda, Maryland. El Paso, Texas. Denver, Colorado. Hot Springs, Arkansas. Lexington, Kentucky. We find Kaylie, and Rachel Stevens, and we’ll find our answers.”

  “And you said Eden was a female-oriented group. I don’t know if this has anything to do with it, but when I rolled Doug Matcliff during the autopsy, I found an incredibly intricate tattoo on his back. A triskele. Three spokes in a counterclockwise orientation. It looked Celtic to me, actually.”

  Baldwin pulled a photograph from his file. “Does it look like this?”

  Sam glanced at it. “Exactly. This one is smaller, though. His tattoo covered his whole back. It must have taken a long time to finish. The spokes were made up of a ton of different mystical symbols. Moons and stars and inverted circles with lines through them, all kinds of strange stuff.”

  “This particular triskele is Eden’s symbol. We’ve never figured out the meaning, because we’ve never been able to talk to anyone about it. I’m hoping Kaylie Rousch can shed some light on things.”

  “So where do we look for her? Lynchburg?”

  “Might be the best place to start, yes. Though I’d like to go by the Rousches and see if perhaps Kaylie showed up there. If she’s free and alive, it would stand to reason she would want to see her parents, right?”

  “It’s a good thought,” Sam said.

  “That will be our last stop for the night, and we can head to Lynchburg first thing in the morning.”

  Sam met Xander’s eye as they gathered their things. He shook his head slightly, almost as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.

  There were so many lives at stake, and here they were, stuck sifting through evidence, trying to piece it all together. She wanted to get out there and start looking for Rachel Stevens herself, even though she knew there were hundreds of people with badges searching for her. She couldn’t help imagining the little girl, scared, alone and clearly in grave danger.

  She needed to help Baldwin sort through the new information. The more they could discover, the better chance they had of finding the truth.

  Chapter

  34

  1989

  Washington, D.C.

  THEY LEFT THE unconscious girl in the weeds of the garden, and Curtis Lott took him to a flophouse on Fourteenth Street, and talked to him while a working girl did her thing in the next room. He remembered little of their initial conversation, only that the tall, reddish-blonde woman with bright green eyes was absolutely into
xicating.

  It was her scent, he thought, that had stopped his hands from their fateful journey earlier. Honeysuckle and musk and some sort of earthy fragrance he eventually recognized as her natural aroma, as if she were tied directly to the soil they walked upon.

  It was nearly dawn when he realized he wanted to bed her more than he wanted to kill her—an evolutionary moment even he recognized.

  It was like fireworks going off in his brain. He could master his urges by replacing them with others. Control his homicidal bent through sex.

  He put the moves on her then, clumsy adolescent fumblings she endured with a brief smile before she took his hands, set them in his lap and said, “Let me.”

  In his bloodlust over the past year, he’d forgotten he was still a virgin. Curtis fixed that, carefully showing him the things she wanted him to do to her, explaining with her body and lips what men and women did together in the dark. When they were done, indecently quickly in his mind, he felt a sort of peace he’d never experienced before. This, being inside this woman, was more than sex. It was truth.

  “I would do anything for you,” he murmured into her hair, knowing it sounded romantic, and meaning it.

  “That’s good, Adrian, because I have some things I need you to do.”

  * * *

  Curtis was twenty-two years older than Adrian, and worldly. She had an air about her, weary, torn, yet joyous and impetuous, that he found mesmerizing. She wouldn’t tell him where she came from, only that she’d been put on earth to find him and take him home.

  And she did so the next day.

  Home was Eden, a small farm in western Fairfax County. The acreage was put to sustainable farming that served a group of people known as the Edenites. There was no electricity, but they did have running water from a pump to maintain the crops. On the drive there, Curtis talked of a happy place where each person had a role, all were considered equals, and how her people, the Edenites, were special. She’d handpicked them all—he was too young, too inexperienced, to realize this meant they’d each been seduced in a small room by this glorious woman before being brought here—that realization came later, when he wasn’t cloudy with love.

  Adrian drove his beat-up pickup truck through the gates, thrilled to be in the company of the woman sitting in his passenger seat. She was his. He’d claimed her.

  When he pulled up in front of the farmhouse, several people came to meet him. They gave him sips of homemade spruce beer, and small corn cakes, an offering from their own hearts to make him welcome. He ate and drank and accepted their gentle touches. Lost in the sea of friendly faces and smiles and polite greetings, he had eyes only for Curtis.

  After the Greeting, as it was called, she brought him into the house, into her rooms. There was a small antechamber, the reading room, she called it, which housed her texts, row after row of mystical and spiritual books, unlike anything he’d ever seen before.

  The reading room opened into a large square bedroom with two windows on the far wall, sunlight spilling onto an unmade king-sized bed. The room smelled of sweet incense and even sweeter honey. Without saying a word, Curtis shut the door and began removing Adrian’s clothing. He was desperate to be with her again, to feel the softness between her thighs, and she was happy to oblige him. He didn’t care about the other people around hearing him; he knew no embarrassment when he was with her. And when she cried out, and he knew he’d pleased her, he swelled with pride.

  It was known as the Seasoning. In the subsequent years, he’d managed not to kill the men who came after him, who were led into that sweet sanctum with dazed smiles on their faces, who made Curtis cry out in pleasure. But only because by then, Curtis had taught him how to channel himself. His murderous impulses were put to better use in service of the Mother.

  After the Seasoning, which lasted a week and a day, he emerged, drunk on love and sex and power, meaning every word of his foolishly romantic statement after their first encounter.

  He would do anything for Curtis. And he did.

  Anything, and everything.

  * * *

  His first task was to make love with every woman in Eden. This was his first Reasoning, which would be repeated quarterly. Curtis assured him it was not only necessary, but expected. These women were all his. She’d brought him to pleasure them, to give them children. He was a perfect specimen, and they were all thrilled to be with him.

  There were fifteen sacrosancts, as the women of childbearing age were known. Fifteen was a sacred number in Eden. The sacrosancts were divided into three sets of five, lived in three small cabins with five small rooms and one large great room in each, and every night for two weeks he fulfilled his duties in each of the bedchambers.

  He learned that women were very different. Sizes, shapes, smells, movements; all unique, all precious. His mates ranged in age from twelve to nearly fifty. Some he enjoyed more than others, but he did his duty for all.

  At each hearth, he was fed and given sweet homemade wine. He was in fact treated as a king. And he liked it. He liked the attention from these women. He liked the idea of spilling his seed in them, knowing that coupling with him brought them joy. The small whispers in the night told him things he needed to understand about his new life. Eden was a utopia, and he was going to be their greatest asset. If they could have his children—big strong strapping young men—their lives would be blessed by Curtis, and they would bless him in return.

  At the end of the Reasoning, sore, tired and happy, he was sent back to Curtis’s chamber. She was naked upon the bed, the sun playing off her glorious hair, and she asked him if he was interested in killing anymore.

  The question caught him off guard, and it must have shown, because she told him to be completely honest with her, for she would know if he was lying.

  He wanted to lie, to tell her what he thought she wanted to hear. He needed to stay. For the first time in his life he felt as though he belonged somewhere, to someone. He felt loved, and cherished, and desired.

  This woman knew what he’d done, and she still wanted him. It was more than a benediction. It was the ultimate forgiveness.

  And because she’d been honest with him, he was honest with her.

  “Yes, I still want to kill. I won’t, for your sake, but I can’t tell you honestly that I wouldn’t want to. There is something very different here that satisfies part of what I crave.”

  “Which is what, my Adrian? What do you crave?”

  “Feeling the life of a person leave their body.”

  She was up in a flash, and he thought she meant to slap him, but instead she kissed him and smiled. “You have answered well, Adrian. You will kill again. But you will not do it for yourself. That is wrong. You’ve spent a year removing people from this earth who have done you no harm, who are innocent. Instead from this moment forward, every kill you make will be in my name. You will do this for me.”

  “Anything, Curtis. I will do anything for you.”

  They settled into life on the farm. He was happy. Happier than he’d ever been. They lived a good life. His previous urges were mollified. All he wanted was to retain Curtis’s favor, to make her happy, to work hard and have the respect of his fellow Edenites. He was the first to sit when Curtis stood to speak, the first to clap, to allow his eyes to roll back, to accept the Wafer of Life, which gave him insight into Curtis’s explanations of the great Mysteries of the Universe.

  After a month of excelling, it was time for him to be fully accepted into Eden. Accepting the Mark, as they called it, was a brutal, all day and all night process. His entire back was tattooed with a triskele, the symbols of Eden, as a base. It was an important ceremony. Everyone participated, all the members of Eden spilling their own blood into the ink for the marks they were going to make.

  It made them one. They shared all things. The blood of one was the blood of many, and t
ogether they were consecrated.

  The next day, he was in pain, but happy. All of Eden gathered for a feast to welcome him as a true member of their fold.

  He hadn’t connected his coupling with the fact that there were no young children or babies in Eden. It was only nine months later, after six of the women he’d been with swelled with new life and gave birth to healthy, squalling children, that he saw any infants. He wondered why there were none before he came, but he soon found out why.

  Within a week, all the newborns were gone.

  He asked Curtis about this, and was shocked when she flew into a rage. She swore at him, cursed him, punched him, then had three men drag him down the stairs, to the dark, dank cellar below the farmhouse. Things crawled on him, bugs and rats and spiders, but he’d been tied down and he couldn’t move to get them off. He was there for three days in his own filth, with no food and only the barest trickle of water from a broken pipe sticking out from the wall, which he could reach if he rolled, straining, to his right.

  Curtis would join him once a day and explain his wickedness to him. In those dark moments, when he couldn’t see her face or smell her intoxicating scent over the musty earth, he wondered why he was there. What his true purpose was. Why the woman he loved so dearly was hurting him.

  This, he learned, was the Great Darkness, meant to strip away the evil within, and it wasn’t something he ever wanted to experience again.

  People of Eden rarely misbehaved, and he understood why. If they displeased Curtis in any way, from a scorched meal or a weak harvest to a miscarriage or reluctance to engage in the Reasoning, even dressing in a way she found provocative, or speaking to another member when it was not allowed, they were sent into the Great Darkness.

  Adrian finally came to understand the Great Darkness had little to do with being left alone for three days in the dark. To be without Curtis’s love and favor was painful. She was the most intelligent, gracious, loving person he had ever met. She would do anything for him, allow him transgressions the others were punished for. She kept him above the rest of her flock, exalted, at her side all the time outside of the Reasonings.