She picked up the phone to call Ken back but put it down again. She didn’t consider him a lifeline at this point. He was too close to Tom. No matter how nice he was, she couldn’t trust him not to give her away to Tom. In trying to help her, he might tell Tom where she was or want them to “work it out”—and thereby give her away unwittingly. No. She was on her own. He had told her all he could, and talking to him would give her a false sense of security.
She decided to check her Twitter, since anyone trying to reach her would likely try her there. Sure enough, there were a couple of direct messages for her. The first was from Arlo: Hey what’s new? Give me a call. He must have information on the computer used to set up the Twitter account that had tweeted her. Let me guess, a guy named Tom? She would call him later.
The next direct message was from Josie: I’m trying to reach you. It’s urgent.
Madison messaged back: I don’t have my phone. Call me at this number—and she included the burner phone number.
Then she saw she had a message from Felicity. She would have checked that first if she’d seen it. She opened it and with rising panic tried to comprehend what Felicity was saying:
I know who it is. But the police won’t believe me because it’s a cop. I’m going to confront him. I know it’s dangerous but I don’t want to be afraid anymore. You’re not afraid. I can do this. I’ll get him to confess. I’ll record it. I’ll find out where Samantha is and bring her home.
My God, what is she doing? Madison looked at the time: Felicity had sent this message an hour ago. Madison started typing frantically.
Felicity don’t do this! I lost my phone. Call me: 858-555-4278. This is not bravery this is stupidity! It doesn’t make you brave to do something reckless! Please!
This was all Madison’s fault. If she’d reported Tom to his supervisor when he started stalking her, he wouldn’t be around for Felicity to contact. How did Felicity know who it was? Or think she knew? And something Madison had said or done had made Felicity think this was a brave thing to do? She was going to be brave “like Madison”?
Madison opened a new window on the browser and pulled up her PI database. She entered her password, put in Felicity’s name, and requested a comprehensive report. She was looking for a pen to write down Felicity’s address when the doorbell rang.
Madison froze. Should she ignore it? Someone was ringing the doorbell in the middle of the night. She tiptoed to the foyer and looked through the peephole. It was a middle-aged woman wearing a big fuzzy bathrobe and holding a cell phone with carefully manicured nails. She had permanent makeup creating eyebrows and lip liner on her sleepy face. She had obviously seen Haley and the two cars. She was pretty brave to knock on the door. Madison didn’t know what the night would bring, but she wanted to at least be able to leave her car in the garage for the time being. If she could trick this woman into calming down and not calling the police, which would probably be her next move if Madison didn’t answer the door, she could buy herself some time. She opened the door.
Madison put on her cheeriest face. “Hi! You’re up late.”
The woman was taken aback by Madison’s confidence. She went for a haughty response. “I’m sorry, have we met?”
“I think so. At Jack and Tina’s last party, maybe?” Madison hoped to God Jack and Tina were the entertaining type.
“That could be. They have so many parties.” Bingo.
“Can I help you with something?” Madison managed to put the slightest tinge of irritation in her voice while still remaining polite.
“Oh. Well, I just saw cars and people, and I thought Jack and Tina were going out of town yesterday. And then there were sirens and the police helicopter … so I just wondered.”
My God you’re dumb, Madison thought. You think some criminals that the police are looking for are in your neighbor’s house, so you go knock on the door? “I see. That makes sense. I think it’s important that neighbors look out for each other.” Madison was trying not to explain. Explanations sounded like excuses, which sounded like being defensive. If she had a right to be there she wouldn’t be making excuses.
The woman wanted more. “Anyway … I just thought I would check if everything was okay …?”
“Well, that was kind of you. I’ll let Jack and Tina know that you were concerned. I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.”
The idea that the nosy neighbor was going to get a nice word put in with Jack and Tina seemed to be the thing that sealed the deal. Jack and Tina would know that she was the one who had observed unusual activity and gone across the street to check it out. Jack and Tina would be happy that she had been nosy. “Alrighty then. Well, you have a good night. Sorry to disturb you.” She still sounded a little bit confused, but her doubt seemed to have turned toward herself: Did I come over here for no reason? I think maybe I did.
“You too, dear. Have a good night, hon.” Madison found that if you called middle-aged woman dear and hon, they naturally felt you were older and more knowledgeable, even if you were clearly thirty years younger. They seemed to relax into being patronized. Madison shut the door.
She ran back to the office and checked to see if Felicity had responded to the direct message. She had not. What on earth was she doing? And where was she going to meet Tom? Was she just going to call him? Or try to meet him somewhere? Or have him come over? Madison didn’t have Felicity’s phone number in the burner phone, and no phone number came up in the comprehensive report. Madison had to rely on the direct message to reach her—or else she would just have to go to Felicity’s house and see if she was home; if not, Madison would track her from there. She finished writing down Felicity’s address. She erased the history from the browser and turned the computer off.
She went back to the living room and grabbed her purse and the keys to Haley’s BMW. She suddenly remembered her bag of belongings from Target; she might need that. She went into the garage and grabbed the Target shopping bags from the back of her SUV—and saw the balloon. The white memorial balloon with the message inside. She got a utility knife from the console and popped the balloon; she put the message in her pocket. Back inside, she took one last look around. She hadn’t turned on any lights, so there was nothing to turn off.
The dilemma would be how she was going to get back into the house. She checked out the lock on the front door: if she shut the door, it would lock automatically. She went back to the kitchen and dining area and searched for a garage door opener. If she made it back, the main thing she would need would be her car. She could access the house from the garage, so a garage door opener handled all of her problems. She just had to find one.
She finally found it on the kitchen counter in a bowl that had some mismatched screws and nails, a plastic part to some unknown plastic item, and a set of keys. She took the keys and ran to the front door, opening it slightly. The keys didn’t fit. The garage door opener would have to do; she would have to pray that it worked. She didn’t dare test it out, because she didn’t need the garage door opening right now and her car being visible.
She gathered all of her belongings, walked out the front door, and got into the BMW. She had to move the seat back to accommodate her legs; Haley was tall, but not as tall as Madison. She started the car and took off. Her Ford Explorer was fast, with a lot of power, but nothing beat the pickup of a BMW. If she was being hunted and it was the worst night of her life, at least she was driving a BMW.
She drove out of the neighborhood slowly and entered Felicity’s address into the BMW’s navigation system. Felicity lived in North Park, another suburb of downtown that was full of architecture that Madison loved: California Craftsman homes like Ryan’s, built in the early part of the twentieth century, many of them since certified as historic homes.
Madison decided to call Arlo on the way; he was a night owl, so she knew he’d be up.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Arlo, it’s Madison.”
“I wondered what had happened to you.”
“Cool. Anyway, I wanted to ask you: what have you gotten me into?”
It was hard for anything to shock Madison at this point. But she honestly didn’t know what was coming next. “What do you mean?”
“I was able to find out which computer was used to open the Twitter account MaddieKelly12. I can’t tell you where the person ended up tweeting you from, but I can tell you where the account was opened.”
“Okay. I’m ready. What computer was used to open that Twitter account?”
“A computer in the lobby of the San Diego Police Department headquarters on Broadway in San Diego.”
Madison shouldn’t have been surprised at this point. She would have thought Tom wouldn’t use a computer at the police station, but he was always there. He was smart enough not to use the computer at his desk. And he probably didn’t know that Madison would try to figure out who had opened the account, or if she did, that she had someone like Arlo who could find out so much that he scared the government.
“Thank you, Arlo. I haven’t gotten you into anything. No one can tell you traced that, right?”
“Oh, don’t be silly.”
“That’s what I thought. I’ll talk to you soon.” They disconnected the call. Madison didn’t consider telling him what was going on; they didn’t have that kind of relationship. If she needed something specific from him later, she would call back.
Madison got off the freeway at the exit for North Park. She drove through the not-great part of town on her way to Felicity’s house. Madison had noticed that most communities surrounding the entrance and exits to freeways were not very nice. Probably because nobody with money wanted to live next to a freeway.
Madison turned onto Felicity’s street. It was a quiet neighborhood of small bungalows, some of them Craftsman and some of them just imitating the Craftsman style. Felicity’s was small, probably two small bedrooms and one small bathroom, on the corner of Myrtle Avenue and an alley. One whole side of her little bungalow was along an alley. Madison was looking for Tom’s Crown Victoria or his Ford sedan but didn’t see them on her approach. She didn’t have time to make a search of the neighborhood. She had to make sure Felicity was okay, if she was even home.
She parked two doors down. She took off the Ralph Lauren Olympics jacket and threw it in the back of the car; she didn’t need to stand out more than she already did. She ran to Felicity’s front gate, through it, and up the steps to the front door and started banging on the door. She yelled through the door. “Felicity! It’s Madison! Open the door!” She cupped her hands to the curtained window in the door but couldn’t see through. There was a light on near the back of the house. She walked down the steps and around the corner into the alley. There was a long fence, six feet high, protecting the house and the backyard. Madison grabbed a milk crate next to a trash can and propped it next to the fence. The milk crate wasn’t tall enough for her to get all of her core muscles utilized to help her over the fence. She ran back and got the actual trash bin and brought it over to the fence. She used the fence to pull herself up on the trash bin, onto her knees. It was plastic and nearly empty, so it wasn’t steady or prepared to hold her weight. She needed to get over the fence before the trash can collapsed.
Her pectoral muscles had never been the same since the plastic surgeon sliced through them in order to put implants underneath. She regretted getting the plastic surgery, especially in moments like this. Who cared if you had pretend boobs if you had no strength in your upper body? She yanked and pulled and used every muscle in her upper back and torso and managed to yank herself over the fence and fall to the other side, landing on her hip. It really stung, but she had to keep moving.
She jumped to her feet. She had made a huge racket trying to get over the fence. She was surprised Felicity had not come to the back door, and if someone were inside with her, he must have heard her. Tom. Why can’t I say “Tom?” She made it to the back door, which was two French doors with tiny pains of beveled glass. She could see that this was the room the light was coming from. She could see movement but not much else. She heard a sound from inside. It sounded like a dove cooing. The door was locked.
She looked to her right and saw gardening tools: gardening gloves and a metal trowel and other implements. She put the gloves on and grabbed the trowel and smashed it through one of the small panes of glass. She reached her arm through the broken glass and unlocked the door.
Felicity was lying in a pool of blood on the floor, staring straight at Madison. She was trying to indicate something with her eyes, which were huge and round.
“Is he still here?” Felicity couldn’t talk. She couldn’t communicate at all. She just stared at Madison like she wanted to say something but couldn’t. There was blood gushing out of her neck.
Madison had left her purse with the gun in it in the car. She didn’t make a very good outlaw. She grasped the trowel in her hand, which was at least metal and sharp, and raced through the house, searching. She made it to the front door; it was standing open. He must have heard Madison coming over the fence, stabbed Felicity, and left.
Madison went back to Felicity and tried to assess the situation quickly. Her arms were tied behind her; her legs had been tied but had been loosened. Her clothes were on, but her jeans were undone and halfway down her hips; it looked like he’d tried to pull them off but had stopped. Madison must have interrupted him; at least there’s that. Madison wasn’t going to think about what would’ve happened if she hadn’t interrupted. Madison took the gardening gloves off and lifted Felicity’s hair and saw that the blood was coming from a wound in her neck: he had stabbed her with a letter opener that was still protruding from her neck. It seemed to Madison that she had interrupted his plans, so he had grabbed the nearest weapon to end Felicity’s life quickly so she wouldn’t be a witness. But she wasn’t dead yet.
Madison grabbed the house phone from the bedside table and called 911.
“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
“A woman has been stabbed in the neck. She is bleeding profusely. There isn’t much time.” Madison gave the address.
“Who stabbed her? What’s your name?”
Madison knew that 911 operators could dispatch the fire department and the police on a keyboard while keeping the reporting person on the phone talking. These were important questions that would be recorded and listened to later. But Madison wasn’t going to discuss anything other than getting Felicity help.
Madison dropped the phone, but she left it off the hook so they could continue to trace the call and use GPS to find Felicity if needed. Madison jumped up and went to the bathroom and grabbed a towel. She came back to Felicity and held the towel to her throat. She knew better than to remove the letter opener; it could be the only thing keeping Felicity from bleeding to death. She ran over to a small desk and opened the drawers, looking for scissors; found them. She sat on the floor behind Felicity to cut her bindings. They seemed to be drapery cord, tied using intricate knots. Felicity groaned as her arms and legs fell down into a more natural position. Madison left the scissors and cut cords on the floor behind Felicity. She cradled Felicity’s head in her lap, trying to keep her neck straight and the handle of the letter opener from causing any more damage. She pressed the towel into Felicity’s neck, trying to slow the bleeding.
“Just stay with me, Felicity. You were very brave. Don’t give up now.”
Felicity had been watching Madison, but now her eyes didn’t seem to be focusing.
“Think of all you have to do in your life. Think of Josie. How much she loves you. Or did you not know that? She does. Even if you don’t love her, she wouldn’t make it through without you.”
Felicity’s eyelids fluttered; it seemed she was straining to keep them open.
“I know you have dreams, Felicity. Think of your dreams; they didn’t die with Samantha. You have your whole life ahead of you. But y
ou have to stay here and stick it out with the rest of us. We are so close to catching the guy. You helped—he made a lot of mistakes tonight, and you will help catch him. You have to stick around and see this through.”
Felicity had closed her eyes, and Madison felt like she was slipping away. “Do not leave me, Felicity! Stay with me!” Madison started crying. She was rubbing Felicity’s forehead and trying to hold pressure on the wound in her neck at the same time, without pushing the letter opener in further. She could hear the sirens now; they were getting closer. When the piercing shrill stopped in front of the house, Madison set Felicity’s head gently on the ground and leaped up. She was covered in Felicity’s blood. She ran out the back door and dragged a patio table to the fence. She climbed up onto the table and jumped over, landing on her feet in the alley.
She ran to the mouth of the alley but stopped abruptly and stood against the fence before she got to the street. She peered around the corner. It was one paramedic unit and one fire truck. The paramedic unit members had gone inside the open front door, and the firemen were gathering supplies and getting ready to go in. She waited. The firemen went inside. She assumed the driver was still in the driver’s seat, but he was way on the other side of the truck and wouldn’t see Madison. She could hear more sirens; the police would be here in moments. She stepped out of the alley and turned left. She had two doors to walk past, and then she got in the BMW. She made a U-turn so that she did not drive past Felicity’s house again. She was out of the neighborhood in thirty seconds.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Madison drove down 30th until she was out of North Park. Even though the police were not looking for a white BMW, she didn’t need to tempt fate by staying near Felicity’s house. She turned a few corners until she was once again in a quiet neighborhood. She pulled over and parked in front of some bushes between two homes. Whenever she was doing surveillance, she found that parking between houses was the best bet; one house thought she was visiting the other house and vice versa. This was a nice neighborhood, and there were other BMWs parked on the street. She turned off the car and put her hands in her lap.
Anonymous Page 22