Authors: Blackwell| Rob
Quinn shut the window. He didn’t want to think about it. Didn’t want to remember it. It was nothing but a horse lover out for a ride and there was no sense in making it into some kind of demon. He had enough real demons to worry him, didn’t he?
He sighed as he stripped and turned on the shower. Mentally, he ticked off the things that had already gone wrong with his day: He got four hours sleep, began his morning threatening a door with a kitchen knife and was scooped by Summer Mandaville,
Post
reporter and pain-in-the-butt.
The only benefit to starting the day in such a lousy manner was that at least things weren’t likely to get any worse.
But he was wrong about that, too.
LH File: Letter #1
Date Oct. 1, 1994
Investigation Status: Closed
Contents: Classified
Dear Mr. Anderson,
Some of what I tell you will be lies. I don’t mean to get us off on the wrong foot, but I thought I should make that clear from the outset. There is, at least, a good reason for this caveat. Within the day, this letter will be in the hands of the police and they will pour over every detail, real and imagined. If I only offered truth, it might provide them with a roadmap to me and I’m not quite prepared for that. Yet.
I am a longtime reader of the Chronicle—that part is no lie, I assure you. In particular, your work has captivated me. It’s something in how you write about crime. It seems pedestrian in others hands. But you offer me enough details that I can almost hear the squeal of tires at a roadside accident and smell the smoke from the fire. You are very talented and I have no doubt you will go far.
So allow me to hand you the biggest story of your career.
Approximately 6.7 miles from here to the northwest, just past
Waterford
on
Clover Hill Road
, lying in a shallow stream bed, you will find a body. While it’s possible some local urchin will spot it first, it’s sufficiently fresh that I think it likely you could be the first on the scene. Whether you want to see it yourself, or call the police, I leave up to you.
The name of the victim is Henrietta Verclamp. I had nothing against her. She was an attractive 37-year-old artist given to painting nature scenes and we chatted quite amiably shortly before her death. Even when she saw the knife, she didn’t really understand. And why should she? Monsters lurk in the dark, not the daylight, and most don’t stop to chat.
To help you with color for your story, I will tell you this: She attended
George
Mason
University
and studied history. Art was something she took up to pass the time when she returned home to Leesburg, Va., while she decided what she wanted to do with her life. On a lark, she entered one of her paintings into a competition and the rest, as they say, is history. She won. In the 15 years since, she has never achieved widespread fame. But I think you will find her reputation was good and growing.
She had wonderfully red hair, an easy laugh and a certain twinkle in her eye when she smiled. Oh, in case it’s relevant, she screamed delightfully when I sliced into her. Unfortunately, I cut a little too close to the left lung and she began choking on her own blood, which rather diminished the effect.
No one heard her. She died at 11:33 a.m. this morning. Her parents, whom she mentioned still live in Leesburg, undoubtedly think she is out painting. Can you call them and tell them yourself, or is that too tacky? I really wish I understood more about the niceties of reporting. I mean, that way you would get a great scoop, right? Be able to tell all about their reactions right as they hear their only daughter has been murdered? That would make for great color, I would think. God, I wish I could see it, but I’ll have to rely on you to convey what you can. I leave it to you to best judge the situation. I can’t know everything and your work has left me sufficiently impressed that I’m confident you will know the best way to handle it.
Now for your questions. I suppose the biggest one is: Why? As you know, it’s the hardest question for anyone to answer. Why does a man feel like watching football on a Saturday afternoon, a cold beer in his hand as he kicks his feet up on the couch? No, that’s a bad analogy.
Why does a woman enjoy a good game of tennis with her best friend on a Sunday morning? That’s better—more active. Believe me, murder is an aerobic workout.
My point is: You do these things because on some level, they are a lot of fun. A way to relax. A way to blow off steam after a hard day’s work. And I figured it was a good way to start the month off right.
There are other reasons. I wouldn’t want you to think I murdered her just for fun. I did it because I wish to prove a point: the world is changing. It’s something indefinable in the air and water. History is a cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations and individuals. There comes a certain point where the apex has been reached and everything begins slipping into darkness.
That point has now come. When it turned, I can’t exactly say, but I feel it under my skin. Underneath the perfume of the roses, you can begin to scent the rot and decay setting in.
I don’t mean this just at a national level. You can feel it here too. Maybe you already do. You are a perceptive man.
Loudoun
County
has stayed much the same as it has for 200 years. But that is beginning to slide.
Fairfax
County
is growing and expanding. Pretty soon, the future will be at the door. There will be immigrants, developers and yuppies flooding through our gates. And that will bring with it the enemy of all humankind: change.
Change is inevitable, but there are times in life when we must make a stand. I intend to do so. My medium is the one best understood by every being on this planet, from the lowly maggot to us—fear.
Don’t worry, I won’t single out immigrants or minorities. I’m not prejudiced and—in all honesty—that would be trite and predictable. For terror to be most effective, it has to be indiscriminate. You can’t ever believe you are safe. You have to always be looking behind you, wondering who is there in the shadow beyond the streetlight. So, starting today, everyone is up for grabs.
I will be the thing people fear. And for all time, my name will send a shiver down everyone’s spine. It will become synonymous with the creeping darkness.
Today is the first day of October. By the end of it, five women, five men and five children will be rotting in the ground. You cannot stop me, just as you cannot stop change. I am night. I am cold. I am flesh rendered and torn. I am steel. I am the harbinger of fall: I am death.
You can call me Lord Halloween.
Chapter 2
Wed., Oct. 4, 2006
Kate woke up thinking about a corpse.
The image should have been faded like an old photograph wearing around the edges. But instead it felt fresh, more real than yesterday, as vivid as a minute ago.
There was a buzzing sound. She had to clear her head with some effort (she could still clearly see the hand lying awkwardly off the bed—the flesh was pink but it was cold to the touch) and realize it was just the alarm clock.
Her hand reached out and fumbled over buttons until the noise stopped.
She took a dim account of her surroundings and tried to let the dream go. Of course, it wasn’t really a dream at all. It was a memory, a related but fundamentally different beast.
It felt stuffy in the room. Kate got up and walked to the sliding glass door. She opened it and felt a breeze blow past. She walked out onto the balcony of the Hotel Leesburg and was treated to a partial view of the town. Zoning laws did not permit any tall buildings within the city limits, so the view was a poor one.
Still, she breathed in the crisp fall air and took in the orange color of the leaves. It might have been beautiful, but she barely noticed.
Why is it always the same? The image of walking across the ground floor of her childhood home, so real she could feel the carpet beneath her toes. In the dream, she knows what is happening above her but cannot stop. She’s stuck on repeat, a character in an old home movie doomed to do the same thing again and again.
But the dream (or the memory, it didn’t matter anymore) could not explain why she was here—why she had come back. Kate stared down the street and felt her hands grip the cold rusty railing. What was she doing here?
She could hear the chirping of birds, with one long mournful call breaking through the morning air. It was the only answer she received.
Would you know it if you went crazy? There was supposed to be a catch—you can’t be crazy if you wonder if you are insane. But it didn’t feel like a blanket exemption. What happens if you can look at your own behavior, evaluate it coldly in the light of day, recognize it for utter lunacy, but can’t stop it?
There was no reason for her to have left
Ohio
, a suitcase thrown in her trunk, and return here. Not a good one anyway. Did she expect an answer, or healing, or…
She let the thought drift off. Compulsion. What she felt was a compulsion, an obsession, and she hadn’t been able to stand it anymore.
Kate turned and walked back inside. She sat on the bed and put her head in her hands. Before she could even begin to be depressed, the familiar anger took over, the feeling growing quickly inside her. Why? It was a question that echoed in her head every second of every day. Why had this happened to her?
She stood back up again and walked to the bathroom to take a shower. As she turned on the water, she tried to block out her own thoughts. There were no answers inside her head. She had to trust the instinct—the compulsion—that brought her back here. She hoped some answers were out there somewhere.
It was not until after she toweled off that she saw it. She had just begun to brush her teeth and absentmindedly looked in the mirror. When she looked up, she saw a word written in the mirror. It had been drawn in careful strokes as if the writer had taken their time. Kate was so surprised, she stumbled back through the bathroom door.
“Sanheim,” it said.
For a moment, Kate almost screamed. But when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. Instead, when she blinked, the message was gone. All she saw was fog on the mirror.
She shook her head. She was going crazy. It was as simple as that.
One way or another, this had to stop.
*****
Quinn sat in his usual place at the Leesburg Starbucks and stared out the window. It had become a ritual, this stop, and he knew it was a bad idea. Starbucks was a giant pit that he threw money into. He could have purchased a coffee maker—it might have even produced better coffee—but somehow coming here made him feel better. Maybe it made him feel less alone.
He picked through the main section of
The
Washington Post
, waiting for something to catch his eye. But aside from the usual political scandals, the various fights in Congress and the inevitable crime stories, there was little to be found. Certainly nothing distracting.
And then she walked in. Quinn felt the cool draft sweep by him as the door swung open and then shut. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her blonde hair flip off her shoulder—the result of a casual toss of her head. Her hair just brushed her shoulders and curled a little in various directions. It was simple, yet elegant, like her khaki slacks and white blouse.
By now, Quinn was staring shamelessly. No doubt, she was beautiful. Petite and graceful, roughly his age, with delicate hands as she counted out her money for the cashier. But she was compelling in a way Quinn could not begin to explain.
When she turned to find a seat, Quinn almost caught his breath as he saw her bright blue eyes. With great effort, he stopped staring, but continued to steal glances as she stretched out in an armchair to read the paper.
He had never been so drawn to a stranger before, nor so observant of her every detail. Her silver earrings, the way her fingers rested on her eyebrow as she read.
He shook his head. This was stupid. It was nothing more than a reaction to two dateless years and too much time spent around women who were too old to court. It was a new face, that was all, he told himself. A new face with a great looking body.
Suddenly she caught him watching her. But like a child caught staring, he couldn’t even pretend that he wasn’t. They held each other’s gaze for a moment and then she looked back down at her paper—his paper, his employer in fact. After a while she got up and barely looked his way as she left the Starbucks.
When she was gone, he let out a large sigh, like he had been holding his breath the whole time. What was his problem?