Nightwatcher (Nightwatcher #1)
Wendy Corsi Staub
PART I
I fear that all we have done
is awaken a sleeping giant
and fill him with a terrible resolve.
Admiral Yamamoto after the Pearl Harbor attack, December 7, 1941
Prologue
September 10, 2001
Quantico, Virginia
6:35 P.M.
Case closed.
Vic Shattuck clicks the mouse, and the Southside Strangler file—the one that forced him to spend the better part of August in the rainy Midwest, tracking a serial killer—disappears from the screen.
If only it were that easy to make it all go away in real life.
“If you let it, this stuff will eat you up inside like cancer,” Vic’s FBI colleague Dave Gudlaug told him early in his career, and he was right.
Now Dave, who a few years ago reached the bureau’s mandatory retirement age, spends his time traveling with his wife. He claims he doesn’t miss the work.
“Believe me, you’ll be ready to put it all behind you, too, when the time comes,” he promised Vic.
Maybe, but with his own retirement seven years away, Vic is in no hurry to move on. Sure, it might be nice to spend uninterrupted days and nights with Kitty, but somehow, he suspects that he’ll never be truly free of the cases he’s handled—not even those that are solved. For now, as a profiler with the Behavioral Science Unit, he can at least do his part to rid the world of violent offenders.
“You’re still here, Shattuck?”
He looks up to see Special Agent Annabelle Wyatt. With her long legs, almond-shaped dark eyes, and flawless ebony skin, she looks like a supermodel—and acts like one of the guys.
Not in a let’s-hang-out-and-have-a-few-laughs way; in a let’s-cut-the-bullshit-and-get-down-to-business way.
She briskly hands Vic a folder. “Take a look at this and let me know what you think.”
“Now?”
She clears her throat. “It’s not urgent, but . . .”
Yeah, right. With Annabelle, everything is urgent.
“Unless you were leaving . . .” She pauses, obviously waiting for him to tell her that he’ll take care of it before he goes.
“I was.”
Without even glancing at the file, Vic puts it on top of his in-box. The day’s been long enough and he’s more than ready to head home.
Kitty is out at her book club tonight, but that’s okay with him. She called earlier to say she was leaving a macaroni and cheese casserole in the oven. The homemade kind, with melted cheddar and buttery breadcrumb topping.
Better yet, both his favorite hometown teams—the New York Yankees and the New York Giants—are playing tonight. Vic can hardly wait to hit the couch with a fork in one hand and the TV remote control in the other.
“All right, then.” Annabelle turns to leave, then turns back. “Oh, I heard about Chicago. Nice work. You got him.”
“You mean her.”
Annabelle shrugs. “How about it?”
“It. Yeah, that works.”
Over the course of Vic’s career, he hasn’t seen many true cases of MPD—multiple personality disorder—but this was one of them.
The elusive Southside Strangler turned out to be a woman named Edie . . . who happened to live inside a suburban single dad named Calvin Granger.
Last June, Granger had helplessly watched his young daughter drown in a fierce Lake Michigan undertow. Unable to swim, he was incapable of saving her.
Weeks later, mired in frustration and anguish and the brunt of his grieving ex-wife’s fury, he picked up a hooker. That was not unusual behavior for him. What happened after that was.
The woman’s nude, mutilated body was found just after dawn in Washington Park, electrical cable wrapped around her neck. A few days later, another corpse turned up in the park. And then a third.
Streetwalking and violent crime go hand in hand; the Southside’s slain hookers were, sadly, business as usual for the jaded cops assigned to that particular case.
For urban reporters, as well. Chicago was in the midst of a series of flash floods this summer; the historic weather eclipsed the coverage of the Southside Strangler in the local press. That, in retrospect, was probably a very good thing. The media spotlight tends to feed a killer’s ego—and his bloodlust.
Only when the Strangler claimed a fourth victim—an upper-middle-class mother of three living a respectable lifestyle—did the case become front-page news. That was when the cops called in the FBI.
For Vic, every lost life carries equal weight. His heart went out to the distraught parents he met in Chicago, parents who lost their daughters twice: first to drugs and the streets, and ultimately to the monster who murdered them.
The monster, like most killers, had once been a victim himself.
It was a textbook case: Granger had been severely abused—essentially tortured—as a child. The MPD was, in essence, a coping mechanism. As an adult, he suffered occasional, inexplicable episodes of amnesia, particularly during times of overwhelming stress.
He genuinely seemed to have no memory of anything “he” had said or done while Edie or one of the other, nonviolent alters—alternative personalities—were in control of him.
“By the way,” Annabelle cuts into Vic’s thoughts, “I hear birthday wishes are in order.”