Heart Of The Night

By Gayle Wilson

He was a man of mystery

Judge Thorne Barrington was a survivor the only living victim of serial bomber Jack the Tripper. He'd even survived Jack's real curse advance warning of bombings he could not prevent. But survival had its price. Once the darling of debutantes and the crowned prince of the society pages, Barrington had vanished from the public eye.

Driven by a need she told herself was professional curiosity, Kate August delved into the mystery of Thorne Barrington. But for reasons more elusive and far more personal she followed him into the darkness, determined to find the heart of the mystery and the man.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781460870839

Gayle Wilson

Gayle Wilson is a two-time RITA Award winner and has also won both a Daphne du Maurier Award and a Dorothy Parker International Reviewer's Choice Award. Beyond those honours, her books have garnered over fifty other awards and nominations. As a former high school history and English teacher she taught everything from remedial reading to Shakespeare – and loved every minute she spent in the classroom. Gayle loves to hear from readers! Visit her website at: www.booksbygaylewilson.com

Book preview

Prologue

In a darkened room in Atlanta, Georgia, Thorne Barrington put the phone back in its cradle. It took a conscious effort to force his fingers to unclench from around the receiver. He raised his left hand to run it tiredly through thick black hair, a habit left from childhood, used then to subdue its stubborn tendency to curl. He became aware that he still wore the latex gloves with which he had handled the letter.

He stripped them off and laid them on the table beside the telephone. He shivered suddenly, although, even with the efficiency of central air, the brutal heat of the Georgia summer had invaded the house. Finally he closed his eyes. There was nothing to do now except wait. He had had a lot of experience waiting during the last three years. As he had endured the rest, he would endure this, but the waiting was always so hard.

IN AN OFFICE a thousand miles away, Hall Draper also put a phone back in its cradle and sat for a moment reliving the triumph of last night’s game. They were in the play-offs, and Trent had gone two for three and then made a diving grab of a shot down the middle that no one had any right to expect a ten-year-old to catch. Tonight would be the test. The Sox were the best in the league, and everyone knew it.

Trent was pitching, and although Hall was nervous as a cat, he knew the boy wouldn’t be. Trent would be keyed up, looking forward to the game, the challenge, but he’d be okay with a loss. It would give him more time for other things. It was a long season, and the kids were always glad when it was over. It was the adults who suffered the letdown, who cared how it all turned out, who held the bitterness of defeat into the coolness of fall.

Hall had often vowed he’d never be one of those LittleLeague parents, but that was before it had been his kid up at bat, his son on the mound. The adrenaline started flooding, no matter what he told himself. Jackie wouldn’t even go to the games anymore. It made her too nervous. He just hoped for a win so he could sleep tonight.

Mail, Claudia sang out as she came through the door that separated his office from the small reception area. An eternally cheerful woman, a little heavy and beyond middle age, his secretary had previously worked for an attorney who had just retired. Hall sometimes thought she knew more about running a practice than he did.

He had come to it late, had postponed the dream because of a lack of money and an early marriage. Trent had arrived before they were on their feet financially, and Hall had worked days and attended classes at night. It had taken far longer than it should have before he had his degree and had passed the bar, and it had been a struggle since. He hadn’t attracted the interest of any of the big firms, his résumé unimpressive by his own standards. Even now, they were just barely getting by. Jackie was still working, but she didn’t seem to mind.

Life was good, he thought, a little surprised by the introspection. He was not by nature an introspective man.

A couple of remittances, a bill and a package. You want me to open it? Claudia asked, a matter of form, they both knew. It was always slow enough that even the mail was an event in his day.

Who’s it from? he asked, using his thumbnail to split one of the envelopes. It was a check from a client. A dollardown-and-a-dollar-a-week law practice—he knew that’s all he had. But at least this one was still sending his dollar.

Claudia turned the package, pretending that she hadn’t already read the return address.

Thornedyke Barrington, she told him. It’s marked personal. You know him?

If I do, I can’t remember where. It sounds familiar. Just leave it, and I’ll get to it later.

You remember I’m taking Mother to the doctor? I’m taking the rest of the day off. I swear I dread it. That woman wears me out. You’ll be okay, won’t you?

Unless we get a rush. What are the chances of that, Claudia, do you think?

They smiled at each other.

Good luck tonight, the secretary said, turning to retrace her steps to the door. Tell Trent I said to knock ‘em dead.

I don’t think that’s what you tell a pitcher—especially in Little League, but I’ll try to convey the thought. Be careful on the way home from the doctor’s.

I will. See you tomorrow.

The door closed behind her, and Hall’s thoughts moved back to the game. He thought about calling Jackie and asking her to run out and pick up some Gatorade. He decided finally that he could stop on the way home and then she wouldn’t have to get out of the house in this heat.

He got up and walked to the windows behind his desk. He lifted one slat of the blind that was closed against the summer sun and looked out on the deserted street in front of his office. It was too hot for anyone to be out if they didn’t have to.

He turned back, and the package caught his eye. Thornedyke Barrington, he remembered, but he turned it around so the address faced him and read it for himself. He had heard the name before, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember where. He’d never been to Atlanta. Probably something to do with a client.

He took his old Boy Scout knife out of his top drawer and slipped it under the string that bound the brown-paperwrapped box. He pulled the blade up sharply against the twine and cut through, the string releasing with a small twang. He turned the package over, his mind again slipping away to the familiar scene under the lights of the ballpark. He slid his thumb under the taped triangular flaps on the back and lifted the paper away from the box.

He had wadded the wrappings in one hand before he thought better of it. He probably should save the return address, he decided. He straightened out the crumpled sheet and laid it carefully on his desk. He put both hands on the box, one on each side, and the lid slid upward in one smooth motion.

As soon as the top had cleared the upright sides, just as the maker of the bomb had intended, the world exploded before Hall Draper’s eyes. He was dead before his body slammed into the chair behind the desk and then fell heavily to lie on the blood-splattered floor of his office.

Chapter One

Your boy did it again.

My boy? Kate August questioned, her blue eyes flicking up to meet her editor’s as she opened the bottom drawer of her desk to put her purse back in its accustomed place. She’d just returned from a long and pleasant lunch with a college friend, and she had not yet refocused her mind on the newsroom. She didn’t understand the reference. At the moment she could not, in any context, be accused of having a boy.

She bent to fumble awkwardly under the desk, one-handed, trying to locate the comfortable shoes she’d worn this morning. The black heels she was now wearing, which she had put on for her luncheon appointment, had been carried in to work in a Rich’s bag. There was something about meeting a friend you hadn’t seen in a while, no matter how old or how good a friend, which demanded a little extra effort, a conscious decision to mask the evidence of years passing and the concessions that had inevitably been made to their passage.

So Kate had put her long, sun-streaked chestnut hair up today, had worn a little more makeup than usual and her best suit, but all the way back from the restaurant she had thought only that she couldn’t wait to get the shoes off, no matter what they did for her ankles.

Jack, Lew Garrison said, his usually smiling brown eyes serious. His thinning gray hair was disordered as if, distracted, he’d run his fingers through it. Jack hit again.

Kate’s hand, which had been searching in the black hole where her flats had apparently disappeared, froze. Her cheek still resting on the metal surface of the desktop, she allowed herself a deep breath and then straightened to meet Lew’s eyes.

Damn, she said softly. It’s not near time… The comment trailed. There was no point in voicing the obvious. The consensus had been that the mail bomber, whom the press had begun calling Jack the Tripper almost two years ago, was working according to a careful schedule. Twice a year some unsuspecting victim opened his mail and died.

Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Ridiculously, the children’s rhyme ran through Kate’s mind, which was still trying to deal with the shock of Lew’s announcement. That was one of the many puzzles of this story she’d been working on the last four months. There seemed to be no connection between the recipients of Jack’s mail bombs, at least none anyone had yet figured out. Only his timing had been consistent. Until now.

Shoes forgotten, her fingers quickly lifted above the edge of the desk to flip backward through the revolving calendar. She was right. It had been late March, a little more than three months ago. She didn’t need the notation to remember where. Austin, Texas. She had gone there. With the help of Detective Byron Kahler, her in with the Atlanta police, she even had been allowed to view the carnage in the boarding house where the device had exploded, killing an old man. Such a nice old man, everyone had told her. She closed her mind to the images from that devastated room, denying their impact.

Who? she asked.

A small-time lawyer in Tucson. A guy named Hall Draper.

Kate felt a small surge of excitement. A lawyer? Like Barrington.

She couldn’t remember exactly when the press had made the connection between the first bombing here in Atlanta and the others. The police had not originally discussed the Barrington case in conjunction with the rest—because, of course, there was one obvious and very important difference. Jack the Tripper had screwed up. One intended target, an Atlanta judge named Thornedyke Barrington, had survived.

The Barringtons had always been prominent in civic affairs, cultured, educated at private Southern schools or the Ivy League. In Thorne Barrington’s case it had been Tulane and then on to Harvard Law, followed by a return to Atlanta where he’d gone to work in the DA’s office. And why not? Kate thought. Heir to one of Georgia’s largest fortunes, he didn’t need the income from some Peachtree partnership.

The surprising thing had been how good he was. A lot of people in Atlanta had waited for Thorne Barrington to fall flat on his face, believing his academic successes had resulted from his father’s generous contributions to the schools he’d attended. Smart, dedicated, and realistic, he had proved the doubters wrong, and the most remarkable thing was that he hadn’t even seemed to be aware he needed to.

Barrington had risen quickly through a stream of successful convictions, and when a judgeship had come open, his record and family name had secured it. If his daddy had used his influence, no one thought at that point to question the rightness of its use. Thorne Barrington was already being mentioned for the state Supreme Court when Jack’s package arrived.

There’s no justification in linking this guy and Barrington, Lew said. Maybe if all Jack’s victims were involved with the law—

Barrington was a judge; this guy in Tucson’s a lawyer. It seems a pretty obvious connection to me. Don’t try to tell me that you didn’t at least think about it.

What about the six in between? Besides, the law those two practiced was poles apart. Apparently Draper had a hole-in-the-wall practice, mostly wills and simple divorces. And he wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

"Just because we haven’t found the link between Jack’s victims doesn’t mean there isn’t one," Kate said. This wasn’t a new argument. The cops’ idea that the bomber ran his finger down the pages of a phone book to choose the next recipient of his package had never made much sense to her. Other serial killers might be forced to depend on opportunity. Because of his method, Jack wasn’t limited by that. He chose his own victims, and Kate was convinced they were chosen for a reason.

Random selection, Lew said. You know that’s the usual rule. You just think your theory makes for a better story.

Makes more sense, you mean. You think he’ll talk to me? she asked, keeping her voice casual. It took a second for Lew to sort through the possible he’s, but he was bright, and of course, he knew Kate very well.

Barrington? You think Barrington’s going to talk to a reporter?

Yeah. Maybe, she amended. Under the right conditions. Maybe the bombing today brought something back, triggered some feelings. Maybe I’ll get lucky and catch him in a moment of weakness. You never know until you ask.

Trust me, Lew said, Barrington’s not going to talk to the press. Today is only going to drive him a little further into that shell he crawled into. He doesn’t see anybody. Not since the bomb. He didn’t even go to his father’s funeral last year.

Was he disfigured? It was a question that had bothered her since she’d begun the series, one there had been no information about. There was not a whisper about Barrington’s injuries in the published reports. Only a lot of money could buy that kind of privacy.

"He’d have access to the finest plastic surgeons in the world, and it’s been three years. Surely by now, whatever injuries he sustained…" Lew shrugged.

Then why? Why disappear?

How would you react to someone trying to blow you up? Especially someone who has succeeded in blowing up everybody else he’s targeted.

Jack’s only failure. You think he’s afraid the bomber will try again? Kate asked. She had become fascinated with the Tripper case and the cast of characters she’d studied so carefully during the past four months. And, she admitted, especially fascinated with Thorne Barrington.

He hasn’t changed his address. He hasn’t run. Lew shrugged. He’s just…

Stopped living, she said. More than three years ago.

How would you react? Lew asked again. How can any of us know how we’d react to something like what happened to Barrington?

The same thing that had happened again today in Tucson, Kate thought. Another human tragedy, its humanity lost, somehow, in the familiarity of its violence. By the national telecasts tonight, she knew and accepted, the coverage of the bombing would have been reduced to a four-minute segment, complete, if possible, with a glimpse of members of the grieving family, the real cost of today’s events etched starkly in their faces—providing, of course, that the local affiliate came through with the tape.

AFTER SHE LEFT the office that night, Kate was reluctant to go home, too keyed up by the events of the day, by thinking about Jack and the series she was doing on the bombings. So she found herself heading once more in a now familiar direction. During the last three months she must have driven by the Barrington mansion a thousand times.

It was in a section of Atlanta that had been the city’s most exclusive before the turn of the century. Only the Barringtons had never moved out, refusing to give in to the urban decay that had slowly surrounded the house during the last fifty years. This is where the Barringtons had chosen to live, and to hell with anyone who believed they had made a bad decision. The irony was that the area was coming back. The homes that were left, huge and hard to maintain, expensive to heat and cool, were being snapped up and renovated into exclusive apartments.

She slowed as she approached the house, only its shape and size visible, the distinctive Victorian tower and irregular roof lines jutting against the night sky. The one concession to the changing neighborhood that the family had made some time in the last thirty years was the high, wrought iron fence that surrounded its narrow grounds, the gate always securely locked against intruders. There were lights visible deep within the house, their glow diffuse and distant.

As she held the Mazda to a crawl along the street that paralleled the grounds, she saw that the front gate was standing open. That was unprecedented, and on today of all days, it seemed almost bizarre. Kate pulled the car up to the curb.

A golden retriever sat forlornly near the open gate. She could see the light-colored lead securing him to one of the tall spikes of the fence. There seemed to be no one around, and as Kate watched, the dog lifted his head and howled. The aching misery of the cry raised the small hairs on the back of her neck. She cut off the engine, but it took another plaintive wail before she opened the door and stepped out onto the street in front of the mansion.

The dog strained toward her, whimpering in his frenzy to free himself and to once again secure the safety of human companionship. It was obvious that he had not been placed here to serve as a watchdog. He was far too glad to see her, a stranger appearing out of the night, to be effective at that.

The retriever was almost beside himself by the time she knelt down to smooth her hands over his head, scratching behind the silky ears and eventually cuddling the reaching nose against her chest. Despite his size, she could tell he was still young, just an overgrown puppy.

Apparently someone had begun the dog’s evening walk and then returned to the mansion, leaving the gate open. The only problem with that reasonable scenario was what she knew about Thorne Barrington’s obsession for privacy.

Was it possible that the retriever had been brought out here deliberately to get him out of the way? she wondered suddenly. That idea was melodramatic, perhaps, but why was the gate standing open? Today of all days. Against her will, Kate again remembered the room in Austin and before she could talk herself out of it, she reached to release the puppy’s lead from the fence.

As soon as it was loosened, the leather loop was pulled out of her fingers, and the dog, trailing the lead, disappeared into the darkness inside the fence, far more eager to escape her company than she could have imagined based on his previous delight. Kate hesitated a moment, and then, following the retriever, she entered the grounds through the gate she had not ever, in all her trips by the house, seen standing open.

Trespassing, she reminded herself, climbing the stairs to the front porch. This is trespassing. She had no right to be here, no logical explanation for the compulsion she felt to investigate.

The front door stood ajar. There was a faint light from inside, dimly visible through its heavy beveled glass panels. She put her palm against it and the door swung inward, almost inviting her to enter. Breaking and entering flashed into her head, but she ignored the mental warning because her sense that something was very wrong, a feeling that had begun before she’d ever gotten out of her car, was now too strong to deny.

The crystal tears in the chandelier overhead tinkled softly in the draft from the open door, and hearing them, she automatically stepped inside, closing the door behind her.

The faint light she had seen from the porch seemed to be coming from the back of the house, from behind the massive staircase that climbed to the upper stories. She walked to the foot of the stairs, and looked up, her gaze following their rise. Four stories of railings spiraled upward, like some Escher drawing, into the darkness at the top of the house.

It was as still as death except for the faintest strain of music drifting into the foyer like fog. Even the sounds from the street had disappeared behind the thickness of the materials that had been used in the mansion’s construction.

Hello, she called, her voice too tentative to reach the back of the house or upstairs, the most likely places to find the inhabitants. Still she waited, listening. Even the crystal teardrops were silent now.

Is there anyone here? she called again, holding her breath. She had wanted to meet Thorne Barrington, but somehow, despite her legitimate concerns about the deserted puppy and the open door, she knew this was a bad idea. She had invaded his privacy on the flimsiest of excuses: his front gate was open on a day that Jack the Tripper had claimed another victim, more than a thousand miles away.

It would be better to leave and call 911 from her car phone. The police could come and check. An anonymous call from a concerned citizen who had seen the dog and the opened gate. She wondered if they’d send a car if she refused to give her name. Or better than that, she should call Detective Kahler, who would certainly understand the strangeness of the situation. Kahler had been the officer in charge on the Barrington case, long before anyone had realized they were dealing with a madman.

Instead of following any of those sensible avenues, she found herself surveying her surroundings. There were four sets of closed double doors, two on each side of the long entrance hall. She crossed the foyer to stand before the first set on the right. She fumbled for a knob in the dimness, realizing finally there was none. What her fingers discovered was an indentation by which the door could be pushed open. The half of the door that she touched slid almost noiselessly to disappear into the wall beside it.

Through the opening created by the sliding door, she saw an empty ballroom, lights from the cross street behind the tall sweep of windows providing enough illumination to allow her to determine, without any doubt, the room’s purpose. Both sets of doors on this side led into this ballroom. In the stillness, she could almost visualize couples swaying on the floor that still gleamed softly, as if awaiting their return.

She stood a moment, caught by the ghosts her mind had created, and eventually she realized that the faint echo of melody was not part of the fantasy. The music was very real and had been there from the first, softly whispering into the darkness. Leaving the ballroom doors open, she moved back across the foyer to those on the opposite side.

The doors there operated the same way, sliding just as noiselessly to hide themselves in the wall. The design was such, she realized, that all four sets could be opened at once to create an enormous space, encompassing the wide foyer and the rooms on both sides, suitable for the lavish entertainments the Barringtons had been famous for. Now the house itself was as lonely as the man who inhabited it. So different from its past. So different now from his.

The music originated from this room, much louder now than the eerie whisper it had been before. She stepped into what had obviously been the downstairs parlor, the familiar shapes of the Victorian furniture indicating that it had stayed unchanged from the century before. In the dimness she couldn’t see the fabrics that covered the scattered chairs and couches, but she could imagine their richness.

Despite her fear, despite the sense of urgency that had compelled