Marcus leaned back against the headrest of the Crown Vic and growled to himself. He looked toward the front of Liz Hamilton’s house. It was old and small, but well kept. Apartments that looked government-subsidized lined the opposite side of the street. Officers had set up a perimeter, but the apartments had emptied as the neighbors fought for a good view. It was like some kind of macabre block party. They could probably see as much as he could, which wasn’t much. There was a fresh crime scene and a dead woman in that house, and his own stupidity had made it so that he couldn’t visit it. He wasn’t sure how Belacourt would react at seeing that he was still in town, and he didn’t need the extra complications. He couldn’t afford another wasted night in jail. As much as he hated to, he would have to trust Vasques’s assessment of the scene.
He was tired and felt useless, but there was more than just the case weighing on his mind. Ackerman’s words from earlier that morning kept repeating in his head. Could the killer have been telling the truth? Was there a reason why Ackerman had been chosen for his recruitment? It wouldn’t be the first time that the Director had lied to him or deliberately withheld things from him.
Grabbing for his phone, Marcus dialed Emily Morgan. It took six rings for her to answer, and when she did, she sounded groggy. “Hello?” The word was punctuated with a yawn.
“I’m sorry for waking you.”
“Don’t be, it’s what I’m here for. What’s going on?”
“Do you know anything that you haven’t told me?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Have you ever seen my file?”
She was silent for a moment but then said, “I don’t have access. Only the Director is allowed to view personnel files. I’ve requested to see them, but he won’t allow it.”
Ackerman’s words came back to him again. I’ve never lied to you, Marcus. Unlike everyone else in your life.
“How are you supposed to treat us from a psychiatric standpoint if you’re kept in the dark about our pasts?”
“I’ve asked the same thing, but the Director feels that I should only know what you want me to know.”
“What about the things that we don’t even know ourselves?” he said.
“Like what?”
“Ackerman told me that he and I were connected and that there’s a reason why he was chosen for my recruitment. Something that the Director’s keeping from me.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“In the sessions where you were helping me remember the night my parents died, I kept hearing that voice in the darkness that comforted me while they were screaming downstairs.”
Emily yawned again over the phone, and Marcus remembered that it was actually an hour later in DC. “We had talked about that. Many researchers refer to it as the Angel Effect and believe that when people have a traumatic or near-death experience, their subconscious minds manifest a comforting voice or figure to help their brains deal with the situation.” She hesitated for a moment. “Then again, I do believe in God and angels. So it wouldn’t surprise me if you did have a guardian angel watching over you that night.”
“Yeah, maybe I did.”
Emily started to say something more, but Marcus’s phone showed another call coming through. It was Maggie. “Emily, I need to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He clicked over to Maggie and said, “What’s happening?”
A hint of fear permeated Maggie’s voice, evident in the tremor of her speech and the shallowness of her breathing. “I just got a call from Ackerman.”
Marcus jerked up in his seat. The killer had never involved another member of the team in such a way. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. He wanted me to give you a message immediately. He said that he has important information for you about the case and that I should tell you to answer your damn phone.”
As if on cue, the unknown number appeared on the screen. Speak of the devil. “He’s calling now.”
“Call me back.”
This time, Marcus accepted the call and said, “I don’t need your help.”
Ackerman laughed. “That’s highly debatable. Does this mean that you don’t want to hear what I learned from your friend Crowley?”
Marcus’s fingers clenched around the phone, and his teeth ground against each other. He didn’t want Ackerman’s help, but innocent people’s lives were on the line. He wondered if, by accepting the information, he was condoning the methods used to obtain it.
“Are you still there, Marcus?”
“What did you do with Crowley?”
“I wouldn’t worry about him. Did you know he was a pedophile?”
Marcus noted Ackerman’s use of the past tense. “Is he dead?”
“If I were you, I would worry more about the Anarchist and saving those poor, innocent women. Leave Crowley to rot.”
Marcus closed his eyes and thought of the monster he could feel himself becoming. There had been a time when he would have taken the moral high road, a time when there were values that he held above all else. The world had once seemed so black and white, good and evil. But now everything was cold and gray. The lines between right and wrong had blurred to the point that he no longer understood on which side he stood.
“Tell me what you’ve learned.”