While he’d waited, as promised, for Noah to arrive as backup, Ethan had pored over the tunnel maps again, asking Officer Lewis for recommendations on which ones went to the building where Sharon had been murdered. A tunnel that connected the basement of a dorm to the basement of the psych building was chosen as a starting point for their search. This particular dorm was mostly empty in the summer, with only a dozen or so students staying there, a couple of floors above the entrance to the tunnel. An ideal place to blend in or sneak around.
Lewis moved forward and handed Noah another flashlight. “I’ll wait here for you guys. This tunnel hasn’t been opened in decades. Feel free to scare away the spiders on your way through.”
“Let’s get to work.” Ethan took a step into the tunnel. Somewhere nearby, something dripped, plopping against the cold concrete floor or one of the mossy pipes that ran down the tunnel. Cool air that could only come from underground in July whispered across his cheek like a caress.
Noah shook his head. “This is like some bad movie. Late at night, all alone, no power—why is there no power again? Oh, right, because we’re stuck in some scary movie.”
“No,” Ethan said, “because they can’t find the transformer until morning, when the university grounds manager gets here. I don’t want to wait that long. The first day of the second summer-school session starts in a few hours and I’d like to figure out if Fearmonger was even down here, and whether we need to round up a crime-scene team first thing in the morning, before some student decides to try to stumble through here and ruin any…” Ethan’s voice drifted off as Noah turned on his double beams of flashlights.
“Holy mother,” Noah whispered, his tone reverent. “Looks like your guess was accurate.”
The beams were effective, illuminating the next fifty feet or so until fading to darkness. Deep red glistened where light struck the concrete walls.
“Shit,” Ethan muttered.
“Yeah.” Noah moved forward so that his lights swung deeper into the tunnel. The red continued. Big. Small. Cursive. Block. The word was repeated from ceiling to floor, all the way down the tunnel, as far as they could see.
Fear.
“Definitely the work of Fearmonger.” Ethan kept his voice low. He doubted the guy had stuck around, but one never knew.
Noah swung one beam toward the walls as the other lit their way down the tunnel. But they didn’t move forward. Instead, they backed out of the tunnel as Ethan dialed Damian’s number. It was close to midnight but his boss answered on the first ring. Ethan suspected the man never slept.
Perhaps what he saw when he closed his eyes was just too much.
“What have you got, Ethan?”
“The killer used the tunnels.”
“You know this for sure?” The excitement of the hunt colored Damian’s words, infusing new life.
“The walls of the tunnel we opened are covered in blood, used to write
fear,
like at Maggie’s place. Noah and I don’t want to go any farther and risk destroying evidence.” But gathering trace evidence in the filthy tunnel would be next to impossible, other than verifying that the blood was Sharon’s, which Ethan didn’t doubt. Or maybe they’d luck out and find a footprint. But this guy had been so careful, there was little chance that luck would be on their side.
“Have campus security monitor the entrance,” Damian ordered. “Then go home and get some rest. I want you to have a clear head when the crime-scene team gets there in a few hours.”
“Is Maggie safe?”
“Becca checked in a little while ago. They’re set up at her place for the night. Sigmund’s a little restless at being uprooted from his home, but everyone’s safe.”
The trace of humor surprised Ethan. He breathed a sigh of relief.
Damn, he wished he could be there with her. When he’d told her the news about Deborah Frame, she’d gone pale as chalk. She’d recovered quickly, but he knew she had to be thinking about it, maybe even having nightmares about it. And he wanted to be the one to comfort her.
An excuse to wrap her in his arms again?
Maybe, he conceded. He was quickly losing ground in his efforts to remain objective where she was concerned.
“Go home and get some rest.”
“Yeah.” He’d try, but he had a feeling Maggie’s pale face would haunt him.
He hung up and joined Noah and Officer Lewis, who looked grim. “I need someone to guard this entrance until we can process the scene. And if you have the manpower—”
“I’ll get it,” Lewis said, his jaw set.
“Good. Have your people examine the other tunnel entrances for possible points of entry, but they can’t go in. Make sure the access points are locked and secure. I don’t know if this guy’s used the other tunnels, and we don’t want any students wandering into them. Who knows if he might be hiding out in one.”
As Maggie concluded her eight o’clock class the next morning, she wiped the brand new whiteboard clean. They’d replaced the old one. She didn’t think she’d have been able to write on the same surface the killer had marked with Sharon’s blood. Gone was the police tape that had sealed off the classroom. In fact, everything looked just as it should. As if a monster had never been there.
But he had. And Sharon was still dead.
She glanced at her cell phone, frowning when it noted no new calls. David, who had to be crushed by Sharon’s death, still hadn’t called her back. And she hadn’t heard from Ethan yet. She hated to admit that she was missing his company.
Becca bounced up to her at the front of the classroom in jeans and a T-shirt proclaiming the logo of a local band as other students filed out. She’d recovered her confidence after Damian had placed Maggie in her care last night, but Maggie knew Ethan’s approval would still mean the world to the young woman. “Great class.”
Despite her somber mood, one side of Maggie’s mouth quirked up in amusement. “You were listening?”
Becca nodded, the dangly, star-shaped earrings she wore today jingling at her ears. “Freud was a nutcase, wasn’t he?”
Maggie smiled at that, a full-blown smile that lifted some of the heaviness around her heart. “Some scholars think so. However, he’s certainly done a lot for the study of psychology.”
“I mean, all that talk about sexuality. That’s a seriously repressed man right there.”
Maggie nodded a greeting to a passing student, the last of nearly a hundred to leave before she and Becca were alone. Once the lecture hall was clear, Becca straightened up. “Seriously, though, I was watching and nobody seemed suspicious.”
Maggie sighed in…what? Frustration? Relief? She didn’t know anymore.
“I was thinking the same thing. But then, Intro to Psych is usually full of the younger crowd. My afternoon class, Abnormal Psychology, is an upper-level course and tends to have older students.” And her stalker could easily be masked among them.
“Whoa. Abnormal, huh? That’s like sending an engraved invitation.”
Maggie nibbled at her bottom lip. “You know, I was thinking. Maybe I should offer a special lecture about fear. Give a couple days’ notice first. Maybe he’ll show up.”
Becca began shaking her head at the word
offer.
“Absolutely not. Ethan already reamed me for letting you try to lure this guy out before. What do you think will happen if you do that again, but out in public? Absolutely not,” she added again for good measure.
“It was just a thought. I hate not doing anything. You all have your assignments, but I’m just bait.”
Becca winced. “It’s not like that.”
“It feels like that.”
Becca grabbed her book and notebook, which Maggie had actually seen her writing in during the lecture, and headed to the door. Maggie followed. “For both our sakes, let’s hope not. I want to prove myself, but I’m not willing to present myself on a platter.” Her voice dropped as they neared students. “I’ll be behind you, but within shouting distance as you cross the Quad. If you need me, holler. Once you’re safe in the president’s office, you’ll stay there until Ethan comes to get you.”
“Bait,” Maggie muttered again.
“This guy is nuts.” Officer Lewis’s tone held a bit of awe as he stood with Noah at the entrance to the tunnel. “I hope you know how to track him. We sure as hell have never had anything like this here. And I’ve been here twenty years.”
Noah nodded and gave the man what he wanted. An out. “We’ll take it from here.”
At the subtle cue, Lewis left and the CPD’s crime-scene team, along with Sandy on behalf of SSAM, moved ahead into the tunnel to capture what evidence they could. One person swabbed blood samples as another snapped photographs, the light from the flash glinting off the long walls like bottled lightning.
Before Noah and Ethan could follow, however, they caught sight of Damian making his way across the empty basement. His face was taut. “Good work, finding these tunnels,” he told Ethan.
“Maggie deserves the credit for that, sir.”
His eyes narrowed. “She didn’t…”
“
See
the tunnels? No.”
Thank God for that, Noah thought. She’d had enough to deal with in her living room. This was ten times as much. The stench of dried blood, mildew and decades of dampness was nauseating even to someone who’d seen, and smelled, worse things.
And Noah had seen what she’d dealt with a year ago. Her brother, murdered in front of her. Because of some woman’s obsession with her. How much could one person take?
Beside him, Ethan looked like he was ready and willing to go to battle against Fearmonger singlehandedly. But not just because it was his job. Noah had the distinct impression Ethan would fight to the death for Maggie, if someone could just point out who he was supposed to fight.
Damian nodded. “Good. She’s been through enough.”
“She’s teaching?” Noah asked.
Damian checked his watch. “She should be in the president’s office by now. Her first class is over, Becca reported nothing unusual, and Bellingham and the commissioner are about to start the press conference.”
“She won’t be a part of that though.” In his peripheral vision, Noah saw Ethan gritting his teeth. The man’s interest in Dr. Levine couldn’t be any more obvious if he’d worn a neon sign on his head that blinked I’ve fallen for the Voice of Reason.
“No. She’s to remain in the office until her next class. But Becca has to leave. I want her to get back to the other murder scene, where Deborah Frame was found.”
“Part of her education, sir?” Ethan asked, clearly not excited at the prospect.
“She needs to know what she’s getting into,” Damian answered. “
All
of it.”
“I agree.”
“Noah has things handled here. You go take care of Maggie.”
Noah hid a grin as Ethan took off at a sprint down the dorm hallway. “He could at least try to hide his enthusiasm.”
Damian’s gaze followed his SSAM agent’s hasty retreat. “Why bother? Life’s too short.”
Maggie sat in a high-backed chair in the university president’s plush office, nibbling on her thumbnail as she waited for Bellingham’s face to fill the screen of the television. The room was large enough to seat a small gathering, with a podium just like the classrooms had sitting in the corner, waiting for just such an event. But an announcement of this magnitude clearly required a larger setting, and they’d set up in the Quad, hoping to beat the midday heat.
Ethan sat forward in the matching chair opposite her in front of the president’s desk, elbows on his knees as he waited. He had more patience than she did, apparently.
She forced her thumbnail away from her mouth in disgust. She couldn’t help but worry that the conference might push Fearmonger to do something else. To kill someone else. To set off a wave of alarm that would ripple across the university.
Amidst the shining sun in the middle of campus, the university president took the podium. The police commissioner positioned himself behind him. As President Bellingham spoke, a merciful breeze lifted a lock of white hair from his forehead. The lines on his face and the set of his jaw showed the stress he’d been under for the past twenty-four hours.
“Thank you for coming,” he said in a voice heavy with sincerity and exhaustion. “It is with great sadness that I confirm that a violent crime was committed on our campus this week. A young woman was murdered.”
A reporter raised his hand and Bellingham acknowledged him. “Can you release her name? Was she a student? Faculty?”
“Her name is Sharon Moss and, yes, she was a third-year communications student on our campus. She will be sorely missed.”
“What does that mean for university operations?” the reporter asked.
“Our numbers here on campus are greatly reduced during the summer terms and we are operating as normal. No classes have been canceled, but there will be a candlelight vigil this weekend to honor Sharon. We’ll provide that information as we get it.”
“Brilliant,” Ethan said. “That might lure Fearmonger out. He’s been so vocal that he might not be able to resist the opportunity to see the results of the chaos he’s started.”
“Is it true the woman was a victim of Fearmonger?” a female reporter asked. A murmur went through the crowd.
“Holy hell,” Ethan muttered, standing up abruptly and swiping a hand across the back of his neck. “We didn’t expect them to pick up on that tidbit so fast.”
“Maybe they didn’t.”
Ethan swung his gaze from the screen to her. “What?”
“Maybe Fearmonger leaked it. He obviously likes attention. He’s proven that by calling in to my show and provoking people on numerous occasions.”
Ethan tipped his head to the side. “Makes sense. He wants the notoriety.”
Maggie nodded. “Not to mention he gets some kind of power trip from making people fear him.”
On the television, Bellingham was addressing the question. “We don’t know
who
did this, or why. I stress that to our parents and students. We are doing everything we can, cooperating with the police to find the killer and bring him or her to justice. This campus has always prided itself on its safety record, and we will remain vigilant and watchful until the perpetrator is caught. But I stress that this is an isolated incident, and no further violence will be tolerated. I ask that students be careful, but don’t let fear override common sense.”
And wasn’t that just a challenge thrown in the face of the killer, Maggie thought, feeling sick to her stomach.
From the shade of an old elm tree, across the Quad from the media circus, Fearmonger stood among a cluster of other students and watched the show. He couldn’t help grinning to himself.
“A serial killer, here on campus?” a pretty blonde to his right said to her friend. She shuddered.
Actually shuddered.
His smile widened, his eyes crinkling behind his shades. “I’m going to get an apartment off campus.”
As if that would keep her safe. He almost laughed aloud.
“Can you afford it?” her friend asked.
“Are you kidding? My parents will do anything to make sure I’m safe. They’ll be worried.”
“Mine, too,” the plain brunette said, clutching a three-ring binder to her chest.
He felt the familiar rush of power—the power that pushed him from a plain nobody into bigger-than-life Fearmonger. From someone these girls would normally overlook into someone to be reckoned with. Owen had been interesting and scholarly, but Fearmonger was so much more. Fearmonger was someone who could show these girls what fear really was. What it tasted and smelled like. How it felt.
But these girls were already afraid. The body and mind he really longed to instruct belonged to Dr. Margaret Levine. She thought she knew everything, but he had a few things to teach her. He knew Maggie was on campus. She’d taught her morning class and had another one in a couple hours. He knew her schedule better than she did, and that she had three different routes home, to avoid someone learning her routine.
He wouldn’t risk approaching her. Not yet, anyway. Sometime soon, though.
What he wouldn’t give to have seen her reaction. The police had found Deborah Frame’s broken, carved body sooner than he’d expected. He’d cut her heart out and left it in the dirt on the floor of that abandoned shed. After all, that had been Deborah’s greatest fear—that Maggie would take her heart and stomp all over it. It lacked a certain finesse he strived for, but he’d been limited by time and resources.
He ached to take credit for it. But then, he told himself, Maggie already knew it was him. He would get credit. One day he would claim her gratitude in person.
For now, he’d be content to continue their lessons. Apparently, a murder in her classroom hadn’t hit close enough to home. He’d just have to up the ante. Find something that would lure her away from her safety zone and force her to acknowledge his superiority.
Something more personal.
Sharon and Deborah hadn’t hit close enough to home.
First though, Maggie should be receiving his little gift…
Maggie let out a gasp as Ethan yanked her aside, intercepting the messenger who’d walked into her psych classroom. The room was empty of students as class wasn’t due to begin for another twenty minutes. She’d asked him to let her leave the president’s office early to prepare her notes. Truthfully, she’d felt stifled there.
“It’s for a Dr. Maggie Levine.” The young man looked like he could barely be in college himself. “I just need someone to sign for it.”
When Ethan didn’t move, Maggie stepped forward. “I’ll—”
“Don’t,” Ethan ordered and she stopped in her tracks. Ethan continued to stare down the boy, who shuffled his feet. “What company do you work for?” The boy told him, pointing at the cap on his head that said the same. Ethan jerked his head toward the desk at the front of the classroom, indicating the messenger should set the bouquet of flowers down there. He took the clipboard with the paper that required a signature. “Sit.”
He sat in a chair in the first row, his blue eyes wide with confusion as Ethan made a call from his cell phone. Maggie tried a tentative, calming smile, but the messenger wasn’t looking. Who knew what a homicidal maniac looked like, anyway? For all she knew, the boy could be Fearmonger—which would have made him all of eight years old at the time of the initial murders.
Ridiculous.
“Take pity on him, Ethan,” she said, trying to peek at the flowers, an arrangement of white lilies, without touching them. What, did he think they would explode? He grabbed her outstretched wrist with a shake of his head and she pulled away.
“I’m calling to check on a messenger of yours,” he said into the phone. “And a delivery. For Dr. Levine. Can you tell me who they’re from?” His lips tightened at the response. “I know I can check the card. I’m not certain I want to open it until I know… Okay. Thanks.” A moment later, his gaze met Maggie’s. “Deborah. I see.”
Maggie drew in a sharp breath. The flowers were from an admirer, all right. Had Deborah sent them before meeting up with Fearmonger? If so, how? Deborah’s body had been found within a few miles of the mental hospital.