The thought settled into her stomach like cold water.
This wasn’t going to stop.Whoever was doing this wasn’t finished.They were working through a collection, and the collection was large, and each piece in it was a weapon that had been designed, at some point in history, to end a human life.She was dealing with someone who had intimate knowledge of the building’s layout, access to the cases, and either the keys or the skill to defeat the locks without a trace.Someone who chose their instruments the way an artist chose brushes—deliberately, with an eye toward effect.
Sarah had been a homicide detective for fifteen years.She was good at her job.She knew her limitations.And standing on the mezzanine of the Duluth Armory at eleven o’clock at night with a medieval mace and a body that had been struck so many times the skull had caved inward, she knew—with the particular certainty that came from honest self-assessment rather than weakness—that this was beyond what her department could handle alone.
She didn’t like the thought.She didn’t have to like it to know it was true.
CHAPTER TEN
Michael Torres was sitting on the tailgate of a patrol car with a blanket around his shoulders.He was a heavyset man—mid-forties, broad across the chest with a gut that strained against his security uniform, the reflective vest he’d been wearing unzipped and hanging open.His flashlight sat on the tailgate beside him, switched off.His hands, resting on his knees, had a fine, visible tremor that he kept trying to control by gripping his own kneecaps.
Sarah approached with a cup of precinct coffee she’d poured from the thermos in her car.She handed it to him without asking if he wanted it.People in shock needed something warm in their hands.It was one of the smallest, truest things she’d learned in this job.
“Mr.Torres.I’m Detective Sarah Vaughn.I need to ask you some questions about what you saw tonight.”
He took the coffee.Didn’t drink it.Stared at the steam rising from the cup as though it were doing something interesting.“I already told the officers.”
“I know.I’d like to hear it myself.”
Torres had been hired four days ago, he told her, after the first killing prompted the building’s management to bring in overnight security.He worked the eight-to-six shift, ten hours, alone.The job was straightforward: walk the building every thirty minutes, check entry points, log anything unusual.He’d taken the job because it paid better than the warehouse gig he’d been working and because, at the time, one murder had seemed like an isolated event rather than a forecast.
“Walk me through your rounds tonight,” Sarah said.
He’d completed his nine-thirty sweep without incident.All entry points secured, all display cases locked—he’d been told to check the cases specifically, given what had happened with the bayonet.The main hall had been occupied: a woman with a sketchpad had identified herself as Clara Hartley, the project’s interior designer, working late on measurements.Torres had noted her presence and moved on.He’d seen the woman on previous nights; she worked late often.
“Did anyone else enter the building while she was there?”
“Not through any door I was watching.”He said it with the careful emphasis of a man who’d already thought about the implications.“I check the main entrance, the loading door, and the north fire exits every round.All locked.Alarm on the loading door was active.”
“What about between rounds?”
Torres looked at the coffee.“Between rounds I’m in the security station.Ground floor, west side.There’s a monitor for the loading door alarm, but no cameras.I can hear the main hall from there, mostly, but it’s a big building and I’m one guy.”
At ten o’clock he’d begun his next sweep.He’d entered the main hall from the west corridor and immediately noticed that the work lights on the mezzanine level were off.They’d been on during his last round.He’d called out to Hartley.No answer.He’d climbed the construction stairs, using his flashlight, and found her on the platform.
He stopped talking.The tremor in his hands worsened.
“Take your time,” Sarah said.
"She was just lying there.The blood was—there was a lot of blood.And that thing, that weapon, it was right next to her."He swallowed hard."I checked for a pulse.I know you're supposed to.There wasn't one.Then I called 911 and I searched the building."
That got Sarah’s attention.“You searched the building?”
“I know, I know.I should have stayed put.But whoever did that—they might still have been in there.I checked the main hall, the west corridor, the storage rooms on the ground floor.I didn’t go into the basement.The grate was still padlocked.”He met her eyes for the first time.His were brown, bloodshot, scared in a way that couldn’t be performed.“I didn’t see anyone, Detective.Not a shadow, not a sound.Whoever did this was gone before I got there, or they’re better at hiding than I am at looking.”
Sarah wrote it down.She studied Torres the way she studied everyone—not just his words but the architecture of his distress, looking for the cracks where deception might live.She didn’t find any.Torres wasn’t performing shock.He was experiencing it, rawly and without the self-consciousness that liars carried even in their best performances.His timeline was consistent with the patrol officers’ arrival—the 911 call was logged at 10:04 PM, first unit on scene at 10:11 PM.Seven minutes during which Torres claimed to have searched the ground floor.It was tight, but plausible for a man moving fast on adrenaline.
More importantly, the nature of the killing didn’t fit him.Whoever had opened that display case had done so without damaging the lock, just like the first time.Whoever had carried a medieval mace up a flight of construction stairs and used it to kill a woman had done so in the dark, in the window between security rounds, with an understanding of the building’s blind spots that spoke of planning and familiarity.Torres had been on the job for four days.He barely knew where the bathrooms were.
“Detective.”Torres set the untouched coffee on the tailgate beside him and stood.The blanket fell from his shoulders and he didn’t pick it up.He was a big man on his feet, heavyset and broad, but the size did nothing for him now.He looked diminished.“I quit.”
Sarah looked at him.
"I'm not doing another night in that building.Not alone.Not with—" He gestured toward the Armory, the arched entrance lit from within by the crime scene techs' floodlights."That's twice now.Somebody's killing people in there with the building's own weapons, and nobody can figure out how they're getting in, and nobody can figure out who they are, and they expect me to walk those halls by myself every thirty minutes waiting to find out if I’m next?”His voice cracked on the last word, and he didn’t try to cover it.“I’ve got two kids, Detective.I’m done.”
Sarah couldn’t blame him.She wouldn’t have said so out loud, but she couldn’t blame him at all.
“I understand,” she said.“Before you go, I’m going to need your contact information, and I’ll need you available for follow-up questions.But Mr.Torres—I’d strongly recommend that the building’s management bring in at least two additional guards, minimum, working the same shift.And nobody—nobody—should be in that building after dark unless they’re part of a security team.No designers, no crew, no late-night work sessions.The building closes at sundown until we resolve this.”
