"James was found electrocuted in his armchair," Will explained. "It corresponded with his wife being uncharacteristically away from home that night. Whoever did it either got lucky or knew she wouldn't be there. Can you think of anyone who might have waited until he was alone? Someone with a grudge, perhaps?"

  Gareth shook his head. "Look, a lot of people were upset by James. He'd cut ties with me and a few others."

  "You mean your stolen goods network?" Charlie asked, pointedly.

  "I ain't admitting to anything," Gareth said. "I'm just saying that he had upset a few people, but no one I know of who would electrocute the guy. That's just not most people's style, ya know? A gun, maybe, a hammer, but not like that. It takes too much time."

  Valerie knew he was telling the truth, as much as he was a snake.

  It was time to rattle his branches and see if anything else fell out. Valerie took out a brown envelope from her bag and placed it on the table, never taking her eyes off the man for one second. Carefully, she revealed three photos, each one depicting the horrible crime scene at the Asper house.

  "Oh, man..." Gareth sighed. "That's James?"

  For a moment, Valerie thought he was showing some uncharacteristic empathy. But that moment passed and he resorted to twisted humor.

  "He looks like something I had on a barbecue last Friday," Gareth said, laughing loudly.

  "I don't think you'll be getting that deal, after all," Charlie grimaced.

  But Gareth continued with the jokes. He picked up one of the pictures and laughed again. "And what's the deal with these headphones? Maybe he had faulty wiring. Death by stereo."

  Valerie had enough, and she stood up. "Merrilee Police Department will check out your alibi. And if it holds... Enjoy your stay for trying to kill an FBI agent."

  "Wait, no," Gareth said. "Maybe I do know something."

  "What?" Valerie said.

  "Eh... Let me think..."

  Valerie knew he was just stalling. He had nothing.

  "You know nothing," Valerie said. "Except how to hurt your wife and child. If you think of anything, alert officers here."

  "Wait... I can't go back to prison. I ain't out that long!"

  "Then you'll fit right in," Charlie said.

  Gareth Sheerin swore and cursed at them as Valerie led Charlie and Will out of the interview room. They closed the door behind them and Valerie said nothing.

  She walked out, past the desk sergeant at the front of the building.

  "Thank you, Sergeant," she said. "He's all yours for now."

  The sergeant gruffly nodded and then Valerie walked out into the darkness of the parking lot.

  Above her, she saw the stars twinkling in the blackness of space. A memory came to her of her mother singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star when she was five years old. Before the delusions came.

  A pang of grief for the past shuddered through her.

  "Are you okay?" Charlie asked, appearing with Will behind her.

  A cold breeze ruffled through the parking lot. She turned to her colleagues.

  "We've got nothing," she said. "I've got nothing..."

  "We can come back to it, tomorrow," Will said, gently. "It's three in the morning; we should get some rest."

  Valerie gave a tired smile and nodded. She walked towards her car, knowing that her home in Quantico was only a half an hour away.

  But even that journey would stretch out like the black void above. A darkness filled with frustration and the very real suspicion that life was short, and it was going to get much shorter for some poor innocent person out there.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Valerie stood before the twisted, sharp-angled house that had been seared into her memory from her previous visit. Standing on the doorstep, it seemed strangely nightmarish, now. She didn't remember the Asper house being so menacing before.

  It appeared as if someone had taken a building made of glass and distorted it somehow, making it look like surreal art. The windows were all smashed out, shards of glass resembling icicles glinting in the moonlight. To Valerie's horror, she could make out the faintest outline of something red staining the walls, evidence of what had taken place here not so long ago.

  She didn't want to go in. She wanted to turn and run. But she felt compelled to move forward. It was the only thing she knew how to do.

  The door creaked open slowly and Valerie stepped inside, feeling the world pulse with a chill as she did so. The only light came from candles that flickered eerily in each room and gave off an acrid smell of smoke and wax. There were cobwebs everywhere that seemed to move in time with each flickering flame, like they were alive.

  None of it made sense.

  Am I hallucinating? she thought. She feared that the walls between reality and delusion had finally collapsed inward, both worlds bleeding into each other.

  In one corner was a chair covered with fraying velvet curtains and ancient cushions, seemingly untouched for years but still potent with an invisible burden of despair.

  A lifeless figure, charred black from electricity, sat on the chair, covered in a thick layer of cobweb. And yet, although it had seemingly sat there for an age, Valerie could now smell the thick, caustic scent of burnt hair as though it had only just happened.

  There was no doubt in Valerie's confused mind: the corpse with the hair was James Asper.

  "But you're in the morgue..." Valerie said, fear shaking her voice into a faint tremble.

  Valerie felt a terror finger its way up her back as a new sound then reached her ears. For as Valerie stood there, something inside her sensed a shift in the air and she heard it. A faint but unmistakable sound. The sound of a beating heart, reverberating off the walls like an echo, pounding away in the silence of this dead place.

  Valerie felt her own heartbeat quicken with fear at what she had stumbled upon, yet curiosity won out and she stepped closer to the figure on the chair, feeling her skin prickle with horror.

  The beat was growing stronger now and Valerie could tell that it was coming from deep within the figure on the chair, its heart still beating after all these years despite everything that had been done to it. It was all so impossible.

  The beating slowly increased until it filled Valerie's head entirely and seemed to be shaking her insides like thunder rolling across a stormy sky.

  Then a thought worse than any other came to her. She watched as she saw the subtle movement of the cobweb over the corpse's face. In and out. In and out.

  "My God, you're alive..."

  Valerie stepped forward slowly and reached out, nervously pulling the cobweb away from the body, revealing open eyes and a skeletal mouth. Over the head, Valerie could now see a set of headphones, unused and as clean as the day they were bought.

  Putting her hand forward, Valerie touched James's chest; but as she did so, the beating heart sound stopped, and all she felt was the hard, cold roughness of his burned skin.

  Remorse now came to Valerie. She felt terrible for the man. She felt terrible for all the victims. Guilt filled her mind like poison, and she shed a tear for those she couldn't save.

  Looking up, she heard a click and watched in horror as the jaw of James Asper snapped shut. Suddenly, he moved, reaching up and grabbing Valerie's hand by the wrist.

  Blue sparks then flashed from the headphone around James Asper's head and he screamed, "Looks like he has some faulty wiring!"

  Valerie pulled as hard as she could, but the corpse was too strong. The light sparks of blue now turned a horrid red, and Valerie watched as the pulsing electricity from the headphones made its way towards her. She was to share James Asper's fate.

  Valerie screamed and woke up covered in sweat. She instinctively reached her hand out to the side of her, but Tom wasn't there. He was still away on his fishing trip.

  Panting for air, Valerie got out of bed, cupping her forehead with her hand. She moved out of her bedroom and through the hallway into the kitchen, her night dress clinging to her sweat-covered body.

  Reaching the kitchen, she poured herself a cold glass of water and splashed some from the faucet onto her face. She then took a long, deep drink.

  "A dream," she said out loud. But it had been so real. Sometimes when she was on a case, she would have such a dream. A dream that would throw nightmarish uncertainty all around like a black sun.

  She stood for a moment and thought about how her first reaction was to seek out Tom. For all her strength, all of her independence, there was something to be said for being in the arms of the man she loved.

  Valerie tried desperately to shake away the images from the dream so that they wouldn't push her into a worse frame of mind.

  But as she thought over the dream, one image solidified above all the others: the image of James Asper's headphones glowing with electricity.

  "He has some faulty wiring..." she said to herself. It was the same joke that Gareth Sheerin had made when he had seen the photos of James Asper's body.

  To hear those same words come out of James's mouth was disconcerting.

  "Death by stereo," Valerie then said. Another joke observation by Gareth Sheerin.

  "Death by..." Valerie repeated.

  Then suddenly a thought occurred to her, making its way through the fog night like a lighthouse's beam. The electricity sparking between James's headphones. The same headphones left by the killer.

  "He's trying to tell me something," Valerie said, as she started to pace up and down.

  There was something about that image. Something bleakly familiar about it. And then the comment about faulty wiring, a saying often used for someone who was mentally disturbed.

  Valerie stopped in the darkness of the kitchen, her feet on the cool tiles, and stood for a moment.

  She closed her eyes.

  She saw the sparks flying between the headphones.

  "Faulty wiring..."

  Valerie opened her eyes.

  "My God. I've got a lead!"

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Valerie stood in the briefing room of the Criminal Psychopathy Unit, sipping coffee. She looked around her at the silent computers and the glass walls, and felt like she was betraying her boss, Jackson Weller.

  He wasn't there, moved out and replaced by Arthur Heinlein until the investigation into his running of the unit was complete. If it had been any other job, Valerie would have walked out in protest, but when people's lives were on the line, she didn't have that luxury.

  "Val?" Charlie said, walking into the room.

  Valerie broke from her train of thought. "Hey, Charlie."

  "I got here as soon as I could," he said.

  "I hope Angela didn't mind."

  "Well, she didn't. Then I woke up the kids as I was leaving. Then she did." Charlie smiled.

  Valerie knew his wife Angela very well. She felt for her. She was in the same position as Tom was, but whereas Angela and Charlie's relationship was on solid footing, Valerie and Tom's had felt like one bad word away from collapse for quite a while.

  "How are the kids?" Valerie asked.

  Charlie didn't say anything for a moment. Valerie sensed something was going on with them.

  "Richard is going through a difficult time," Charlie said, sighing. He walked over to the coffee machine and filled up a cup.

  "What's going on?" Valerie asked.

  Charlie hesitated. "I'm too tired to talk about it. Maybe another time, Val."

  "I'm here if you need me," she said.

  "I know," Charlie replied. "That street goes both ways."

  The glass door to the room opened and in strolled Will. "Am I awake or is this a dream?"

  He looked tired under the eyes, and his usually ruffled hair was a little more wild than usual.

  "Actually, it was a dream that brought you here," Valerie said with a smile.

  She stepped forward and turned on the large touch screen at the top of the room. With a few flicks of her fingers, she had brought up the images of the victims.

  "Here is James Asper when he was found," Valerie said, displaying an image of James's remains sitting in his armchair.

  "You've noticed something new?" Will asked, making himself some coffee.

  "It was there all along," Valerie said. She pinched in on the screen, zooming onto James's burned head. "It's the headphones."

  "What do you think they represent?" Will asked.

  "I thought we saw them as a funereal offering or tribute?" Charlie asked.

  "What if they're not?" Valerie asked. "What if they are a statement? Something that connects the victims, perhaps even to the murderer himself?"

  "That would be helpful," Will mused, yawning. "But we don't have any way to know what that connection is."

  "Maybe we do," Valerie said, excitedly. She brought up more photos.

  "James Asper," she said. "Electrocuted in his chair. Morris Davenport, dragged through a field and connected to nearby power lines. Dennis Newbury, the pathologist, electrocuted as he was trying go into the morgue."

  Valerie looked around the room at Will and Charlie.

  She continued: "We said that our killer is using electricity for a specific reason."

  "Yes," Will agreed. "For distance from the kill. A killer who doesn't want to get his hands dirty, someone who can't stand the violence of say a knife or strangulation."

  "It's hard to understand the motivation, though," Charlie added. "Most killers get some sort of arousal from the closeness of a knife or their hands. This creep does the exact opposite."

  "That's my point," Valerie said. "The killer isn't doing this for the thrill. That may be a part of it, but I would say this is more of a message killer."

  "Message killer?" Charlie asked.

  "Ah, yes," Will interjected. "A message killer is someone who is making a statement rather than trying to fulfill a deep desire. But what is he trying to say, if this is indeed the case?"

  Valerie thought it through again for a moment. The coffee had kicked in, but she still had the fog of sleep deprivation running around her head.

  "I think the headphones are the key," she said. "The killer is using electricity, the way he is killing, as his message. The headphones are connected to this."

  Valerie turned and looked at Will with a knowing smile.

  "Tell me, Will," she continued, pointing at the close-up of James Asper's head, straddled on either side with headphones. "What does that remind you of? Something to do with electricity and mental illness..."

  "My word!" Will said with excitement. "Look at that. I didn't see it before. Quite, quite, brilliant, Valerie."

  Charlie took a deep sip of his coffee. "Can someone enlighten me?"

  "I believe Valerie thinks the headphones and electricity represent electric shock therapy. Am I correct?" Will asked, an eyebrow raised.

  "Ten points for the Doctor," Valerie replied. She pulled up a stock image of a patient undergoing electric shock therapy. On either side of their head was a device that pulsed the electricity into the brain of the patient.

  It looked remarkably similar to a set of headphones.

  "Does anyone still do that anymore?" Charlie asked. "That's brutal."

  "It is brutal," Will said. "However, there are clinicians who believe that in the most severe cases of mental fragmentation, that electric shock therapy or electroconvulsive therapy, ECT, for short, actually works. There's good evidence it gives patients a period of stability following each protocol. Of course, it should only be used as a last resort."

  "It looks like torture to me," Charlie said.

  "Some think it is," Valerie replied. "But others believe the massive jolt of electricity somehow resets the brain for a while, giving relief. When you're experiencing the worst mental illness has to offer, sometimes it's preferable to throw the dice."

  Will stepped forward and looked at the pictures. Then he turned to Valerie.

  "We should run a check on anyone who has a violent past and has had ECT and is in the area," Will said.

  "How can we get that information?" Charlie asked. "Wouldn't that come under medical confidentiality?"

  Valerie knew that Charlie was right. She tried to think of a solution, but it seemed that Charlie was going to solve his own objection.

  "Hold up," he said, putting down his coffee cup and becoming more animated. "What about newspaper reports? If it was mentioned in a newspaper that a violent offender had undergone ECT, then we should be able to find that, right?"

  "Brilliant," Valerie said, rushing over to her computer and beginning the search.

  "Don't give him too many compliments, Valerie," Will said with a smile. "It will go to his head.

  Valerie was already typing away, searching through the newspaper databases for any mention of a violent criminal undergoing ECT in the local area. She knew it was a long shot, but she needed to try every avenue if they were going to stop this killer. Minutes passed as she searched through dozens of articles, and then finally one headline caught her eye.

  "I've got a suspect," she said. "This article mentions a man who underwent ECT at a local psychiatric hospital after he attacked his own father with a crowbar."

  "Can we cross check his name with our criminal database?" Will asked.

  "On it," Valerie said.

  A moment later, she had the information she needed. She turned and grinned at her colleagues.

  "John Fox," she said, "39 years old, which puts him slap bang in the common age group for serial killers."

  "Is he out?" Charlie asked.

  "He was released from Marrington Psych Ward two months ago," Valerie continued.

  Will tapped his temple with his finger while deep in thought. "That would be plenty of time for an escalation arc to begin. He could have reached a tipping point in the last few days."

  "Yeah, but get this," Valerie said. "Not only does he have priors for assault and battery, including stabbing someone when he was 15, but he also trained to be an electrician."

  "Bingo!" Charlie said, clapping his hands together. "Let's get him!"

  "We'll need to be fast," Valerie said.

  "Something else?" asked Charlie.

  "Yeah," she said, "John Fox was involved in an altercation three days ago with a police officer. He posted bail, but his lawyer is already suing the county over it. We should tread carefully."

 

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