Vicious serial killer Roscoe Marcks has escaped from
prison. Everyone is convinced he's coming for his
daughter, Jasmine, who turned him in after discovering
evidence of his guilt. FBI profiler Karen Vail is part of
the team tracking Roscoe down, while also protecting
Jasmine. But Jasmine takes matters into her own hands
believing she can do a better job eluding Roscoe. Her
actions frustrate Karen as she works to anticipate Roscoe's
next diversionary tactic in his quest for continued freedom
and to get even with those he blames for his incarceration.
The results from both Jasmine's actions and Roscoe's crusade
are shocking to Karen and everyone else working this most
bizarre and twisted case.
THE DARKNESS OF EVIL by Alan Jacobson is a
powerfully intense psychological thriller with a gripping,
complex plot. It is sharply written with lively dialog,
well-devised characters and page-turning scenes. It's
obvious to me that Jacobson meticulously researched the
subject matter. However, at times, the enormous amount of
details and narrative on profiling slows the plot
progression. And for someone who is such an expert at
understanding a serial killer's mind, protagonist Karen
Vail could have been a bit smarter, but she's tough and
still comes off believable as she makes mistakes. A myriad
of twists and turns leads to a powerful -- and shocking! --
conclusion. I am always pleased when an author can surprise
me, and Alan Jacobson did just that in THE DARKNESS
OF EVIL.
conclusion. I am always pleased when an author can surprise
me, and Alan Jacobson did just that in THE DARKNESS
OF EVIL.
FBI profiler Karen Vail is on the hunt for an escaped serial
killer in the latest jaw-dropping thriller from USA
Today–bestselling author Alan Jacobson.
Jasmine Marcks was a teenager when she discovered her father
was a killer. First, there was the strip of bloody duct
tape; then, the bloodstain on his shirt; and finally, the
long nights away from home that always coincided with
gruesome deaths. Roscoe Lee Marcks killed fourteen people
before he was finally put behind bars. But as renowned FBI
agent Karen Vail soon learns, Marcks’s reign of terror isn’t
over yet.
After writing a book about growing up as the child of a
serial killer, Jasmine receives a letter—a single sheet of
paper mailed from the maximum-security prison Marcks now
calls home. The page hides a threatening message from a
father who wants vengeance against the daughter who turned
him in to the police. So when Marcks breaks out of prison,
Agent Vail calls on a legendary retired profiler to help her
find the escaped convict—and keep him from making Jasmine
his fifteenth victim.
Alan Jacobson created Karen Vail—one of the most compelling
heroes in suspense fiction, earning acclaim from James
Patterson, Nelson DeMille, and Michael Connelly—after seven
years of working with two senior profilers at the Federal
Bureau of Investigation’s legendary Behavioral Analysis
Unit. Over the years, Vail has tangled with the worst serial
killers America has to offer. But none compares to Roscoe
Lee Marcks.
Excerpt
3901 Nebraska Avenue NWWashington, DC
“Did he ever sodomize you?”
The bright lights in the television studio bore down on
Jasmine Marcks and caught a glistening tear as it coursed
down her cheek.
FBI profiler Karen Vail clenched her jaw. How could this
woman be so callous?
“No,” Jasmine said. “He saved that for his victims, the ones
he killed.”
Talk show host Stephanie Sabotini waved her hand in the air,
as if dismissing Jasmine’s answer. “You never really say in
your book that you feel guilty. Don’t you feel remorse? An
ounce of guilt?”
Jesus Christ. What’s she supposed to feel guilty about?
Jasmine wiped at her moist cheek with a couple of fingers
and tilted her head. “What?”
Vail tried to remember the cute floor director’s name she
was introduced to shortly after arriving. Theo.
Vail stepped quickly to her right and elbowed him.
Theo was focused on his cameraman and startled a bit as he
turned to Vail.
“That’s enough. Tell Ms. Sabotini she’s gone too far.”
“Nothing I can do, Agent Vail. Miss Marcks agreed to the
interview.”
Vail wondered if Jasmine’s publicist, munching on catered
food in the green room, was watching the show. “Jasmine’s
been through enough. She’s here to promote her book, not be
interrogated and chastised.”
Sabotini leaned forward in her seat. “I find it hard to
believe that you and your mother were oblivious to what was
going on. I mean, your father was a serial killer.
You were his daughter and you say you loved him, that he was
a good father.”
Vail grabbed Theo’s arm. “Now. Tell her to back off. Or I’ll
go over there and tell her myself. While the camera’s rolling.”
Theo repositioned the headset mic in front of his lips.
“Stephanie, the FBI agent’s having problems with your
questions. She wants you to back off.”
Sabotini’s eyes narrowed slightly and her head jerked
slightly right, as if she took umbrage at Theo’s remark. She
refocused on Jasmine, who was answering the host’s question.
“I was a kid. He treated me like I was a queen. I was like
any other girl who loved her daddy. How could I know he was
a serial killer?”
Sabotini glanced into the darkness and found Vail, whose
angry gaze was fixed on her face. She cleared her throat and
said, “How about we get back to your book, Jasmine?”
What a terrific idea. Vail nodded a thank you to
Theo, who winked at her and arched his brow flirtatiously.
Vail scratched a phantom itch on her cheek with her left
hand, showing him her engagement ring. Taken. Sorry,
buddy. She turned back to Jasmine, who was already
answering Sabotini’s follow-on question.
“It’s not like my father turned to me one day and said,
‘Honey bear, I killed fourteen people.’ But he did say some
weird things that, when I was older, started to make me
think, reevaluate some of the things he’d said to me over
the years.”
“When you were a teenager,” Sabotini said, “you found some
duct tape with blood on it. And you went to the police.”
“Well, when combined with the other things, yeah, the tape
made me think something wasn’t right. I saw articles in the
paper, reports on the news about the Blood Lines serial
killer in Virginia. They said he used a knife to carve
parallel lines on his victims’ stomachs—and they also said
he used duct tape to tie up his victims. I saw my dad come
home once with blood on his shirt. Wasn’t much, but my mom
saw it. He told her he cut himself on his truck and she
didn’t need to worry about it. But I started thinking, duct
tape, blood…what if my daddy was the killer? I got scared. I
thought the police could tell me if he was the one.”
“You were only fourteen. Did they believe you?”
“Not really. They brought him in and questioned him along
with a bunch of other men from the area, to make it look
like they weren’t targeting him. And they didn’t let on that
I was the one who told on him. But…”
“But they didn’t arrest him.”
“They said they had no evidence.”
“Right,” Sabotini said, “but four years later, you found
some more duct tape.”
Jasmine nodded, her gaze off somewhere behind Sabotini, into
nothingness, like she was reliving the memory. “I found it
in the trunk of his car. There was blood on the roll, on the
inside, on the cardboard. I went back to the police and told
them, again, that I was worried my father was the killer.”
“And they believed you this time?”
“No. But I told them I was not leaving until I talked with
the detective. So I sat there for an hour and the detective
finally came with a social worker because I wasn’t eighteen
yet. I started telling him things my dad did over the years,
times when he’d disappear for hours at a time, late at
night. I’d wake up when he came home, three or four in the
morning. I once came out of my room and asked him where he’d
been. He didn’t smell like booze, so he hadn’t been out
drinking.”
“What’d he say?”
“His favorite answer. ‘Don’t worry about it, darlin’.’”
“Maybe he was having an affair.”
“Maybe. But it always happened the night before another body
was found. I started writing all these things in a journal,
just in case I was right, in case he was the killer.”
“What other things were there?”
“Those are in my book, Stephanie,” Jasmine said with a wry
smile.
“They are indeed. Let’s get back to that roll of duct tape
you found. The second one. It later became key evidence.”
“Right. The DNA was contaminated, so that was a problem. But
there was something else. An issue with forensic procedure.
Chain of custody.”
“Even if it was considered ‘tainted’ evidence, why didn’t
they question him?”
“They told me they didn’t want to tip him off. So they
looked into his background and investigated without him
knowing.”
Sabotini leaned back slightly in her seat. “But that still
got them nowhere. Isn’t that when they called the FBI?”
“Their profiling unit. The police never could find much in
the way of forensics at the crime scenes, so they needed
someone to find another way to identify the killer. The
agent gave them a profile that turned out to be very important.”
“Thomas Underwood,” Sabotini said. “We invited him to appear
with you, but we were told he was unavailable. Instead,
we’ve got his stand-in, Karen Vail, who’s going to join us
in a few moments to talk about ways of keeping ourselves
safe from people like your father.”
I’m a stand-in?
“Another three years passed before he was arrested,”
Sabotini said. “How did you handle that, living with your
father, someone you suspected of murdering eleven women and
three men?”
“The police told me they couldn’t find anything linking him
to the murders. The duct tape had only his blood and DNA on
it. Bottom line, they said they had nothing proving, or even
suggesting, he was the killer they were looking for. I
believed them and started to relax. I started questioning
everything. I was young, I told myself. Maybe I
misinterpreted the things my dad told me. I realized, being
older now, that there were different ways of taking what
he’d said.” She took a deep breath. “It was only me and my
dad. My mom had passed by this time, and you know, like I
said, he always treated me like a queen. Even when I thought
he might be the killer, it made me apprehensive—I really
just wanted to know, one way or another. But I
never felt like I was in danger.”
“What about after the police told you they had nothing
connecting him to the murders? Did that ease your mind?”
“Well yeah, I felt relief, of course. But I also felt
stupid.” She looked up at the ceiling, took a breath. “I
felt like I betrayed my own father. Going to the police…”
She shook her head. “I felt really, really guilty over that
for a long time.”
“When the police came to your door to arrest him, what was
that like?”
Jasmine hesitated a moment, looked up again, searching for
an answer, the bright white lights reflecting off tears
pooling in her lower lids. She came off as articulate,
honest, and photogenic: an athletic blonde with Nordic
features. Easy to promote, easier to book on TV, with a
compelling story.
“I went through a range of emotions. Shock. Anger at the
police for getting it wrong—I mean, he’d killed a lot more
people since I first went to them. Then there was betrayal—I
mean, Roscoe Lee Marcks, my father, my dad, the man
who tucked me in at night and gave me hugs and kisses,
really was a serial killer. He murdered people.
Lots of people. And he wasn’t just any serial killer. He was
the Blood Lines killer, a man who kidnapped women and men,
tossed them into a panel van, tortured them, reviving them
repeatedly, before slicing their bodies and cutting off
their genitalia.” Her voice caught and she looked down.
Sabotini tilted her head in mock empathy, bit her bottom
lip, and waited for Jasmine to compose herself.
Jasmine looked up and dabbed at her teary eyes. She cleared
her throat. “It’s hard to explain what it feels like knowing
that this coldhearted, brutal killer was my loving father.
You start thinking, Why didn’t he kill me? Was I
ever in danger? When he got mad at me when I broke his
favorite watch, was I—was he thinking of killing me?”
Vail glanced at the clock. They were due for a commercial
break and then the focus of the show would pivot to her. She
could not wait; Jasmine looked stressed and needed the
interview to end.
“At first I had a tough time accepting it,” Jasmine said.
“But when Detective Curtis came to my house with Agent
Underwood and they started going through things, what they
knew, the type of person they were looking for, it sounded
like a match for my father. That’s when I realized it was
not going to end well.”
Vail snorted. Depends on your perspective. It certainly
did not end well for Roscoe Lee Marcks.
Ninety minutes later Vail walked into her office in Aquia,
Virginia. Her boss, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Thomas
Gifford, was chatting in the hallway with her new unit
chief, Stacey DiCarlo.
“How’d she do?” Gifford asked.
“The host really laid into her, asked some tough, very
direct questions. Not exactly what she needed. I took care
of it. She backed off but it was still emotionally trying.”
“And I still think this hand-holding is a waste of
Bureau resources,” DiCarlo said.
Vail had been through this with her multiple times during
the days leading up to the interview and did not feel like
getting into it again.
“The reason for having Agent Vail there,” Gifford said, “was
to support our mandate to educate the public on staying
safe. Not to hand-hold a witness.”
Hmm, an assist from an unlikely source.
“I still don’t think it’s a good use of our time,” DiCarlo
said. “Or taxpayer money.”
Gifford shoved both hands into the pockets of his slacks and
rocked back on his heels. “Your concerns are noted. Thanks
for your input.”
DiCarlo frowned, then turned and huffed off down the hall.
Gifford gestured with his chin for Vail to follow him into
his office. On the way in, Vail nodded at Lenka, Gifford’s
assistant, and took a seat.
“How do you like your new unit chief?”
Vail glanced around. “Is this a trick question, sir?”
He threw out his hands. “Just trying to take the pulse of
the unit.”
“We think she’s an asshole. She knows nothing about criminal
investigative analysis and wouldn’t know a valid profile if
it struck her in the face. And I’ve been tempted, let me
tell you.”
“Tempted?”
“To strike her in the face.”
Gifford struggled to subdue his smile. “Off the record, she
wouldn’t have been my first choice to lead the unit.
But…well, you know.”
Vail tilted her head. “Know what?”
“We’re supposed to increase the female head count. And with
the success they’ve had with you, they’re not only less
reluctant to do so but they feel confident it’ll work out well.”
Smile and nod, Karen. That was a compliment.
“It’s about the person, not the gender,” she said. “Best
person for the job, that’s what matters. Sometimes that’s a
woman. Sometimes it’s a man. But yeah, I think we do need
more women in the BAU. We bring things to the table you men
don’t.”
“I agree—but don’t give Agent DiCarlo a hard time, okay?
Let’s give her a chance to find her legs.”
Vail looked at him.
“Is that too much to ask?”
Maybe.
“That was not a rhetorical question, Agent Vail.”
“Are you going to call me ‘Agent Vail’ when I’m your
daughter-in-law? Just curious.”
“In the office? Absolutely. Well, to your face, that is. You
don’t want to know what I call you when you’re not around.”
Funny.
“So let’s get back to Jasmine Marcks. You think she’s going
to be able to handle herself on book tour when you’re not
there to run interference?”
Vail thought about that a moment. “She made it through a
childhood with a father who was a serial killer, and she
dealt with the emotional stress of the trial and the intense
media scrutiny. She’ll be fine. She’s tough.”
Vail’s Samsung vibrated. She glanced at the screen and saw
Jasmine Marcks’s number. “Guess who.”
“Go on,” Gifford said with a wave of his right hand. “Take it.”
She swiped to answer and brought the handset to her ear.
“Jasmine. Everything okay? I’m in a—”
“I got a message from him. When I got home, it was in the mail.”
“Message from who?”
“My father.”
Vail glanced at Gifford. “What’d he say?”
“It’s not what he said, it’s what he didn’t say.”
Vail got up from her chair and began pacing. “Let’s start
with what he wrote. Then we’ll worry about interpreting what
he didn’t write.”
“That’s just it. He didn’t write anything.”
Vail stopped and looked up. “Your father sent you a blank
letter?”
“Right.”
“Jasmine. Are you overreacting? I mean, if there’s nothing in—”
“He’s playing with my head. Trying to get even because of
what I wrote.”
“You got all that from a blank piece of paper?”
“Do you think I’m wrong?”
“Other than mentally screwing with you, is there anything
else behind this? Are you in danger?”
After a second’s hesitation, she said, “He’s in a max
security prison a hundred miles away. No. I don’t think I’m
in danger. It just—it unnerved me.”
“I get it.” Vail pinched the bridge of her nose. “How ’bout
I stop by, you can show me the letter. And we can talk.”
“I’d like that.”
“Give me a few minutes to get some things squared away. I’ll
see you soon.”
Vail hung up and turned to face Gifford, whose face was
scrunched into a squint. “I assume you figured out what we
were talking about.”
“I did. You’re going over there because her father sent her
a blank letter.”
Vail sighed. “It spooked her.”
“So much for being tough.”
“We all have things that get under our skin. She’s been
through a lot. Hard to know what’s gonna be a trigger.”
Gifford muttered something unintelligible, then rose from
his seat and turned to face his window. He rotated a thin
rod and the green miniblinds opened wider, revealing the
fresh snow that had fallen that morning. “You’re not her
therapist, you know.”
“Don’t say it, sir.”
“Say what?”
“That I’ve been reduced to hand-holding.”
Gifford let that hang in the air a moment—he was not
verbalizing it because he did not need to. “Go. I’ll tell
DiCarlo I asked you to take something to headquarters for
me. But this is a one-time thing. Your involvement with
Jasmine Marcks is in the eleventh hour. We have pending
cases that need your attention.”
“I know.”
Gifford turned to her. “Besides, we don’t want to give your
unit chief any reason to gloat.”
Vail arrived at the Bethesda, Maryland, home of Jasmine
Marcks an hour after she called. The house was a modest
two-story colonial among larger and more robust residences,
some a hundred years old and others recently constructed or
remodeled.
Jasmine came to the door wearing the same stylish black
below-the-knee dress she had selected for the morning’s
television interview.
“Karen. I feel so silly to make you come down here. For a
blank piece of paper, no less.”
“You didn’t force me. You didn’t even ask me. I came because
I thought it was important.”
“Come in,” Jasmine said, standing aside and allowing Vail to
pass.
Vail had been here a couple of times seven years ago when
Jasmine’s father was about to stand trial. Jasmine testified
and Vail accompanied the prosecutor when she questioned
Jasmine about what she observed as a teenager.
“You’ve still not met with my father,” she said.
“I’ve asked. Every couple of years I make another request.
Each time I get the same answer: ‘We’ll see.’ He’s purposely
leading me along, yanking my chain. He leaves it open-ended
so I have to keep coming back and asking. It’s about the
only power he’s got left in a situation where he’s told when
he can wake up, when he can go to sleep, when and what he
can eat.”
“That sounds like something he’d do.”
Roscoe Lee Marcks was the last case that profiling legend
Thomas Underwood handled before he retired from the Bureau,
just prior to Vail joining the unit. Gifford gave her the
file to help get her feet wet, to ease her into the flow of
things—and, Vail was sure, to see if she had the stomach to
handle the brutality the agents in the BAU lived and
breathed regularly.
Since the profile had already been finalized and reviewed
with the Fairfax County Police Department, Vail was able to
study, and learn from, Underwood’s notes, analyses, and case
management.
When Marcks was arrested, Vail began developing a rapport
with Jasmine. After he was convicted, she and Jasmine stayed
in touch periodically, mostly through email. But their
contact grew less frequent.
“Coffee?” Jasmine asked as they sat down in the kitchen.
“I’d love some.”
“How’s Jonathan? How old is he now?”
“Almost nineteen. He’s a freshman at George Washington
University.”
“No way. How did that happen? College? And a hell of a good
one, at that. Smart boy. Like his mom.”
“I’d say he certainly didn’t get his smarts from his dad,
but that’d be disingenuous. Deacon was many things, but
before he started having problems, he was a bright man.”
Not that it got him anywhere.
“What’s he studying?”
“Criminal justice.” Vail chuckled. “Go figure.”
“Uh-oh. Another cop in the family?”
Vail laughed again—but she clearly did not find it humorous.
“Not if I can help it. Too dangerous.”
Jasmine opened the cabinet and removed a filter, then placed
it in the basket of the coffee maker.
“He’s looking at law. Which would suit me just fine. A whole
lot safer. And generally speaking, a whole lot more lucrative.”
“Well, you know how that goes, right? You can try to
influence your kids but in the end they do what they want.
And let’s not forget that whatever they choose to do in
their careers, they’ve gotta be happy.”
“Can’t argue with that.” But I still don’t want him
carrying a badge and gun. She glanced around. “So
where’s that letter?”
“Go on, take a look. That’s it right there on the table.”
Vail picked it up. It wasn’t evidence—there was no crime—but
she almost felt like she should be wearing gloves while
handling it. She pulled out the paper and unfolded it.
What the hell did I expect? She said it was blank. But
that did not fit a man like Roscoe Lee Marcks. There
was also a photo of a stuffed animal—torn from a magazine of
some kind. “What’s this?”
“What’s what?” Jasmine stepped closer and brought a hand to
her mouth.
“It was still inside the envelope. You didn’t see it?”
She shook her head, still staring at the image.
“Why would he send you a picture of a stuffed animal?”
Jasmine turned away and went back to the coffee. “I had one
just like that growing up. I used to go to bed with it every
night.”
“And your father sent this to you. With no note.”
Jasmine set a mug of steaming java in front of Vail,
purposely averting her eyes from the clipping.
“Did this stuffed animal have any special meaning?”
Jasmine stopped what she was doing and stood there. “Yes.”
She hesitated, then said, “I found it cut to pieces one day,
in my bed.”
“You’re joking. You never told me about this.”
Jasmine pulled a bowl of sugar from the cupboard. “It upset
me. A lot. I remember crying, not understanding who would do
it. Or why.”
“Did you ever find out?”
“Never. My mom wasn’t very nice about it. She said she’d buy
me a new one, which she did. And she thought that made it
all better. I loved Sparky. The new one wasn’t Sparky. I had
nightmares about seeing him all cut up for weeks. That’s why
I could never have a dog. Or a cat, or an animal of any
kind. I just can’t—” She shivered. “It’d just make me think
of Sparky.”
“You think your dad did it?”
Jasmine snorted. “What do you think?”
“Who else knew about what happened to Sparky?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. It really freaked me out. I was
afraid to talk about it. Besides, my dad told me to keep it
to myself.” She chuckled. “He said people may think I’m
weird. They wouldn’t understand. Hell, I didn’t
understand.”
Vail set the magazine clipping aside and examined the blank
piece of paper again. “You got a pencil?”
Jasmine drew her chin back. “Maybe. I mean, if you’re not a
draftsman or a sketch artist, who still uses pencils?” She
rummaged through her drawer and handed Vail an old, yellow,
chewed-up Eberhard Faber number two.
While Jasmine busied herself with pouring the coffee, Vail
held the writing utensil at an angle, covering the white
paper with soft, parallel strokes until she had shaded a
good percentage of the surface a charcoal gray. “It’s not
exactly blank.”
“What do you mean?” Jasmine came over and sat down next to Vail.
Oh shit. Shouldn’t have said anything. “Mind if I
take this with me?” Vail said as she folded it and placed it
back into the envelope.
“What’d you find? What does it say?”
“Not sure. I think there are impressions. Like when you
write, it leaves latent or visible marks on the pages below
it. It’s called indented writing. I’m going to take it over
to the lab, have our techs take a look. Okay?”
“Yeah, of course.”
Vail swallowed a mouthful of coffee. “Are you going to be
okay on this book tour? The questions may not get any easier.”
Jasmine cupped the warm mug between two hands. “I brought it
on myself. Writing The Serial Killer’s Daughter was
cathartic in a lot of ways. I can’t explain it, but it was
something I just had to do. I had to write it. Obviously
there are some unforeseen consequences.”
“Stay away from the reviews. You don’t need to subject
yourself to that kind of abuse. There are some nasty people
out there who think they know it all, who have nothing
better to do but comment on things they have no clue about.
Do yourself a favor and don’t read that garbage. It’ll just
upset you.”
“Okay.”
“And I don’t care if it’s TV or radio, a local or national
show, if there’s anything you don’t want to answer, if it’s
too sensitive or painful, turn it back on them. Tell them
they’re being cruel and you’ve been through enough. People
will understand.”
Jasmine took a drink.
“Did you get time off work for the tour?”
“I took my accumulated sick time. Almost three weeks.”
“Still working for the state, right?”
“I’ve changed jobs a few times since you—well, since my
father was convicted.”
“Something in computers?”
Jasmine managed a slight smile. “You remember.”
Now it was Vail’s turn to laugh. “It doesn’t happen often
these days.”
“I was a computer science major my first two years of
college. Then I realized I wasn’t very good at it, so I sat
down with my adviser and, well, I cried in her office. She
asked me some questions, gave me some forms to fill out, and
told me I should become an accountant.” Her eyes glazed over
as she got lost in thought. “I looked at her like she was
speaking a foreign language. But she said, trust me on this.
So I did. And she was right. I have a thing for numbers.”
Vail snapped her fingers. “Now I remember. Tax department?”
“My first job out of school. I’d interned for the state and
showed a knack for finding things others missed. When I
graduated they hired me. My supervisor liked me so much that
he promoted me in, like, nine or ten months. Two years later
I got a call from the state correctional system. It really
wasn’t any different from what I’d done at the tax
department, but they were looking for someone with my skill
set. Pay was better, hours were better, and the opportunity
for advancement was pretty high.”
“When was that?”
“Seven years ago. But two years after that a friend at work
told me about this position at the Bureau of Prisons. Doing
basically the same thing, only they paid a lot more. That
was right around the time I started writing my book. Every
night after dinner, 8:00 till 10:00.”
“So instead of dating, you were writing a book.”
“Instead of just about everything.” She sat down,
took a drink of coffee. “Once I got started, it was like
freeing my soul from a self-imposed prison.” Jasmine set her
coffee down and laughed at her own comment. “I know that
sounds silly. But when I shut my laptop every night, I slept
better than I’ve slept since—well, since I was a teen.”
“It didn’t bother you being around a prison, being that your
father was in a correctional facility?”
“Just the opposite, actually. I had a lot of pent-up anger.
I really should’ve gotten help. But the book took the edge
off. And going to work every day, seeing the prison, gave me
a sense of comfort, knowing that my father was locked safely
away just like the criminals where I worked.”
“I can understand that.”
Jasmine took another drink. “Besides, I was in the admin
offices. I didn’t have any direct contact with the inmates.
Minimum-security facility—completely different animal. And
it’s not like my father was anywhere close. He was in North
Carolina at the time, hours away, in a max facility.”
“And now he’s doing his best to reach out and touch you,
making the seventy-five miles seem like a few blocks.”
Jasmine closed her eyes. Her hand shook slightly and she
quickly set the mug down. “It caught me off guard. I didn’t
expect to get that letter from him. And those questions this
morning were…well, now I know what I’m up against.” She
laughed nervously. “I’ll be fine.”
Can you please be a little more convincing? Stop it,
Karen. Shit, maybe DiCarlo was right.
“You will be fine,” Vail said as she hugged her.
Vail drove to the FBI lab at Quantico to consult with Tim
Meadows, the senior forensic scientist who had provided her
with key assistance on many cases over the years.
The lab was a modern, free-standing facility down the road
from the Academy constructed a dozen years ago. By the time
the FBI was ready to move in, it had outgrown the building.
She found Meadows sitting on a stool peering into a
microscope. Music was blasting from an iPod paired
wirelessly with a speaker. She approached from behind and
tickled his back with a finger. He startled and nearly fell
off the seat.
She pressed “stop” and laughed. “Sorry, you had that thing
turned up so loud I didn’t think you’d hear me.”
“Thank your buddies Uzi and DeSantos for that. I still
haven’t regained my hearing completely after that explosion.”
“That was, what, three years ago? Hate to tell you, Tim, but
it’s not coming back.”
Meadows frowned. “When did you get your medical degree,
Dr. Vail?”
She raised a hand in contrition. “You’re right. I apologize
again. I just figured, three years, you know? It’s done
healing. What’d your doctor say?”
“He told me my hearing loss is just that: a loss. It ain’t
coming back.”
Vail looked at him.
“I’m not ready to accept it. I’m taking some kind of herbal
tincture my friend stirred up.” He leaned in close. “It’s
got cannabis in it. Some specially grown strain to help the
auditory nerve. Said it’ll help.”
“I thought you were a man of science.”
“I’m willing to try anything.” He pressed “play” on the iPod
and glanced back at her. “No, I don’t mean that literally.”
Vail pressed “stop” again. “I’m not here to visit.”
“Of course not, because that’s what a friend would do.”
“Tim, I’m hurt.”
“No you’re not.”
Vail could not help but smile. “No, I’m not. But I do miss
mixing it up with you.”
“Well, get to it, Karen. I was in the middle of one of my
favorite songs. Not to mention one tough case. What do you
got for me?”
“Something easy.” She unfurled the letter from the envelope.
“What the hell is that, some preschooler’s scribble?”
“Try again.”
He took the paper and glanced at it. “Oh, don’t tell me you
were playing forensic scientist again. You’ve gotta stop
watching that CSI bullshit. You know it’s bullshit,
right?”
“Why, because you can’t solve every case in fifty-nine minutes?”
“Don’t get me started.”
Vail gestured at the paper. “This was sent by Roscoe Lee
Marcks. To his daughter.”
“And why are we handling this without gloves?”
“There’s no case.”
“You sure of that?” He lifted an eyebrow.
Vail felt perspiration beading on her forehead. “No. But I
can track the letter in other ways. Through the prison. They
scan incoming and outgoing mail unless it’s from, or going
to, an inmate’s attorney.”
“Let’s first see if we’ve got something to be concerned
about. What do you want to know?”
“It appeared to be a blank piece of paper. But now it looks
like there’s something written there.”
“Hmm. You can see that through the mess you made scribbling
with that crayon?”
“Pencil.”
“Whatever.” He shooed her away and hit “play” on his iPod.
“Now go and leave me for an hour. I’ll do my thing and text
you when I’ve got something.”
Vail was gone only twenty minutes—she had run into a friend
on her way down the stairs and never made it out of the
building—when Meadows’s message came through:
you shoulda worn gloves
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