Into the Dark

26

Los Angeles, California

Mark Harding was first to arrive at reception.

Allison was standing, gaping with shock, and drawing back from the letter and its contents. Harding saw the sheet of paper and the salutation.

TO MARK HARDING

He caught his breath, his pulse quickened. The instant he read the first line a sense of knowing erupted in the pit of his stomach. Without touching the letter, he leaned closer. Each word hit him hard as he read:

TO MARK HARDING: REPORTER FOR THE ALLNEWS PRESS AGENCY.

THIS IS DWK SPEAKING.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR RECENT INTEREST IN MY WORK. IT HAS BEEN A LONG TIME AND I WAS BEGINNING TO THINK THAT THE BRILLIANT MINDS OF L.A. LAW ENFORCEMENT WOULD NEVER APPRECIATE THE MEANING OF THE BEAUTIFUL GIFT I’D LEFT THEM.

YOUR ARTICLE AWAKENED THE EVIL INSIDE ME.

NO ONE CAN SAVE ME. NO ONE CAN STOP ME. NO ONE CAN UNDERSTAND MY PAIN, MY TORMENT AND THE UNPARALLELED AGONY AND ECSTASY OF MY EXISTENCE.

I LIVE A NORMAL EVERYDAY LIFE AMONG YOU. BUT I AM NOT LIKE YOU, OR ANY OTHER HUMAN BEING. I LOOK DOWN ON THE MORTALS OF THIS WORLD-SO WEAK, SO VULNERABLE, AS I PREPARE TO FULFILL MY DESTINY.

THEY CALLED ME A WORM. THEY TOLD ME I WAS NEVER MEANT TO BE. THEY TORTURED ME, TAUGHT ME TO KILL UNTIL I COULD NO LONGER EXIST WITHOUT KILLING.

TO AUTHENTICATE MY REALITY I HAVE ENCLOSED AN EXAMPLE OF MY WORK THAT WILL REMOVE ALL DOUBT.

IT WILL ENABLE YOU TO “SEE” THE LIGHT.

I AM REACHING OUT FROM THE DARKNESS TO WARN THE WORLD THAT I HAVE KEPT MY WORD.

I AM BACK TO CLAIM THE REVERENCE AND THE WONDER THAT I AM OWED.

I HAVE ALREADY EMBARKED ON MY NEXT CREATION.

I WILL SOON UNLEASH FEAR UNLIKE ANYTHING THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN FROM JTR AND ZK, MY LESSER PREDECESSORS.

I DECIDE WHO LIVES AND WHO DIES.

I AM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.

YOURS IN BLOOD,

DWK

All the saliva in Harding’s mouth evaporated.

“What are JTR and ZK?” Allison asked.

“Likely Jack the Ripper and the Zodiac Killer from San Francisco,” Harding said.

“It’s a hoax.” Magda had read over his shoulder. “It has to be a hoax.”

Ignoring her, Harding saw that two other pages were folded under the letter and he turned to Allison.

“Do you have tweezers, or something?”

Flustered, she seized her bag under the desk, went through her manicure set and thrust small tweezers at him. Using them to grip a corner, Harding carefully moved the one-page letter off the next page.

The second page was neatly divided by two crisp, color photos of the head and shoulders of a naked woman in her twenties. In the first picture she was bound in wide-eyed terror. In the second she was dead.

“Jesus Christ!” Nick Obrisk, one of the bureau’s soon-to-retire staff writers, said. “That is un-freaking-believable.”

Under that page there was a third page. Taped to it was the California driver’s license for Leeza Meadows, aged twenty-one, of Santa Clarita.

“Is this for real, Mark?” Obrisk said.

“I think so. Leeza Meadows was the first of the five victims. Tanner said two items were missing from her bag where she was found. One was her cell phone. Police never made public what the second item was. I think this is it, Leeza’s California driver’s license.”

“Who’s Tanner?” Magda asked.

Harding and Obrisk looked at her. She’d just confirmed she didn’t read the work of the people she supervised.

“He’s the detective leading the DWK task force. He’s in my story.”

“Of course,” she said. “It slipped my mind.”

“That’s a helluva thing you got there,” Obrisk said. “What are you going to do?”

“We need to record this.” Harding scanned the bureau. “Where’s Jodi-Lee?”

“She’s buying a yogurt downstairs. She should be back by now,” Allison said. “Mark can we just get this stuff off of my desk?”

“Hang on. Nobody touches anything.” Harding spotted Jodi-Lee Ruiz at the door, waved her over and told her what had happened.

“Holy crap.” She set down her yogurt and juice and slipped off her camera bag. She pulled out a camera and changed the lens as Harding gave her directions.

“We need photographs of Allison’s desk with the pages, showing exactly how the letter was received. Then close-ups of each page so we’ll have our own copies, the envelope, the license, everything.”

While Jodi-Lee’s camera clicked with shot after shot, Harding saw Magda pull out her cell phone.

“I’m calling New York. Mark, I want you to knock out a quick, exclusive item about the killer writing to us,” she said. “Can you put it together in an hour?”

“What?” Harding was incredulous at her 180-degree turn on the story. “Hold up, we need to call the task force first.”

“Why? Screw them. This is a huge story.”

“No, let me talk to Tanner first.”

“Burn him. We need this exclusive.”

“What? I’m not going to burn him. Are you nuts?”

“I don’t understand why you need to go to the cops with this. The killer wrote to us, it’s our property.”

“We need them to confirm that this is from the killer. We’d look pretty stupid if we got taken in by a hoax.”

Magda’s face flushed. It was clear to everyone that she lacked the experience to handle breaking news of this magnitude. Struggling to replace embarrassment with authority, she put her phone away and glared at Harding.

“Fine.” She glanced at the wall clock before walking away. “I’ll give you three hours. Then I want a story.”