Anonymous

by Elizabeth Breck

  Madison managed to give him a smile for that. He was being uncharacteristically animated, likely an attempt to keep her spirits up.

  “I called and woke up a sergeant in Sacramento. Seems Larrabee was a cop there but was fired for shoplifting.”

  “Shoplifting? That seems sort of small potatoes for him.”

  “Yeah, it would be. But get a load of what he was stealing: a hammer and dog repellent.”

  Madison pulled her hair back and then realized she had no hair tie. She felt slimy. She let her hair fall back down. “That seems random yet sinister.”

  “Yeah. They were going to give him a hearing prior to firing him, just to hear his side of the story since it was so bizarre, and he refused the hearing. He said he would just take his punishment. So they fired him and he got probation for the petty theft.”

  That made more sense. He’d probably been stealing the materials he needed for a more serious crime, and he hadn’t wanted anyone looking into his activities.

  “The sergeant thought he went to law school. That’s what he told everyone he was doing. Maybe he did. Maybe we’re going to find missing girls connected to a campus somewhere.”

  Madison cleared her throat. It had to be said. “I’m sorry I thought it was you.”

  “Hey. Don’t even worry about it. If I hadn’t set the stage by stalking you—”

  “It wasn’t really stalking, it was just sort of … a general wonderment.”

  “Nice Friends reference. It was stalking, I admit it. So if I hadn’t started it with that, making me seem creepy, you wouldn’t have been able to jump to those conclusions. So I’m sorry.”

  That was nice. They were both sorry. A happy ending. Hurray and woohoo. Madison realized she was a bit in shock; she felt punchy.

  “How did he manage that BOLO? Did a cop friend of his do it?”

  Ryan appeared in his bay window and looked up at where Madison was sitting on the stairs. He waved slightly; Madison waved back. That was going to be awkward for a while.

  “No, and thank God for that. I can’t take another story about a corrupt cop. But like I said, we don’t need a warrant for a BOLO. Sometimes it needs to go out fast, like in the case of a child who has just been kidnapped. So there aren’t a lot of checks on it. Once it gets seen by someone, it gets sent out fast. So Larrabee hacked into the computer system. The hows and the whys, I can’t tell you, because I’m not an electronics guy; but it is all on computer and he hacked into it. We’ll get to the bottom of it and put in a better firewall or whatever they do.”

  Madison figured Arlo could tell her how the guy did it. The guy. She didn’t think she’d say his name for a long time.

  “I just want to say—” Tom began.

  “Don’t say something mushy.”

  “No, no. It’s not mushy. It’s just. The reason I stalked—”

  “Watched.”

  “Okay, okay, watched. The reason I watched you is because I’ve never met anyone like you in my life. You walk into a room and the whole place lights up; it isn’t even your beauty. It’s just a presence you have. And then to top it off, you’re the best investigator I’ve ever met.”

  Madison was silent.

  Tom continued. “I know we’re not meant to be together. I’m meant to admire you from afar. And that’s okay.”

  Madison figured that was the most poetic Tom had ever been in his life. He was practically reciting Yeats.

  Finally she spoke. “Okay. As long as it’s only from ‘afar.’”

  Tom laughed. Madison felt like she had a friend.

  “Any word on Felicity?” Madison had been afraid to ask before then. She hadn’t been ready to hear it. But she had to know.

  “She’s gonna make it. You saved her life.”

  Madison coughed again to cover the sob that ejected from her like a belch. She turned it into a coughing fit.

  “Let me get you some water.” Tom went down to where the trucks were parked on the street in front. Windansea looked like a war zone—police cars, crime scene trucks, coroner’s van, and crime scene tape surrounding the entire thing. Seeing yellow tape always used to give her a thrill: “Someone died! I wonder what happened?” Now that she was behind the yellow tape, it just made her feel sick.

  Madison heard a commotion coming from the street. There were men yelling. Then she saw a blond head and surfboard. She stood up.

  “Hey, it’s okay. He’s with me!”

  They let Dave through. He was in his wetsuit, but it was dry. He must’ve been on his way to surf sunrise when he saw the yellow tape and imagined the worst.

  “Maddie! What the fuck?”

  It was good to see him. It felt like coming home.

  “Yeah. Well. There was an incident. Come here and sit down. I don’t need you punching a cop and going to jail today.”

  He walked to the bottom of the steps, and she stood up. He set his surfboard against the building and ran up the steps; he grabbed her and picked her up in a huge hug.

  “What the fuck happened?” He sat next to her on the step.

  “Well, remember that murderer I was looking for?”

  “Yeah …?”

  “I found him. In my apartment. And I shot him.”

  Dave looked her up and down. His mind had gone to the obvious: did this guy hurt you? He took in what she was wearing, her face and arms to see if she had bruises or defensive wounds. It reminded her of her beloved Labrador retriever: when she would lie on the floor to do yoga, he’d think she was injured or sick and run his huge lip with all its olfactory points over her forehead and face, ever so lightly, to assess for damage; it used to tickle. Dave seemed satisfied.

  “You shot him? Epic!”

  Madison laughed. And then coughed. It was kind of epic.

  “So. Dave. The stuff you said made me think.”

  “Forget it. I was angry; I didn’t really mean all of that.”

  “Yes, you did.” Madison wasn’t sure exactly what she wanted to say. But she wanted to say it.

  Tom had started walking from the crime scene truck down the path to her carrying two bottles of water, but he saw Dave and stopped. He glanced at Madison and made a signal to indicate that he would give her a minute.

  Madison tried to form the thoughts to tell Dave how she felt. In those moments when she hadn’t known if she was going to live or die, she saw a lot of things. She saw art day with her mother: Saturdays when she was six and her mother took her to walk in the forest; they picked pinecones to decorate with gold glitter. She saw the moments with Dave where she’d let her guard down; why hadn’t there been more of those? Her life had been full of love when she’d let it in. What had she missed out on by refusing to be vulnerable? And her father’s voice. The sound of her father’s voice was the sound of her dreams; it was the sound of love forever and always. At the end of her life she had remembered so much love, and she’d lamented the many times she hadn’t allowed it in.

  “I don’t ‘need’ you,” Madison said. “That’s true. It’s just the way I am. But I saw my life without you, and I didn’t like it.”

  “I like your independence. I was just … tired of feeling like I didn’t matter.”

  They watched the commotion below. There was something macabre about having this kind of conversation amongst the trappings of a violent death. But maybe it was perfect: hope rising from the ashes.

  “You matter,” she said.

  “You matter to me, too.”

  Madison felt a warmth that started in her heart and spread outward. “As long as you understand that I won’t change. I’m always going to be the girl who doesn’t need a guy.”

  He leaned over and kissed her.

  “Love and the Murder Scene,” Madison said. “A very special episode of Madison’s Life, brought to you by Smith & Wesson: make sure you have us nearby when you need us.”

  “Did you shoot him with your S&W?”

  “No, with the Czech .25. The S&W was in my purse, and he was stan
ding next to it.”

  “Damn.” Dave didn’t trust guns. He preferred to knock a man out with one blow. But he liked justice and standing up to bullies. “Classic!”

  “So anyway. I like my life with you in it. I’d like it if you stuck around.”

  “I’d like to stick around,” he said.

  “What about Gabrielle?”

  “That’s over anyway. Apparently she had a problem with my lack of ‘earnestness’ in not telling her about you.”

  “‘Earnestness’?”

  “Yeah, she wasn’t using the word right. Which kind of sealed the deal.”

  Madison grabbed his hand. They sat in the middle of a crime scene, watching the specialists come and go, carrying equipment, making notes, having conversations.

  “There’s waves, babe. Gotta go.” He stood up.

  “Catch a tube ride for me,” she said.

  He leaned down to kiss her. “And just remember this: à cœur vaillant rien d’impossible.”

  To a brave heart, nothing is impossible. Dave spoke French better than she did. Then again, she didn’t have a trust fund pay for her Stanford education. He grabbed his surfboard and hobbled in bare feet around to the alley to walk to the beach. Tom saw Dave leave and came up the path.

  “They found Samantha.”

  Madison waited for the rest.

  “She was in a shallow grave in his yard in Spring Valley. He probably intended to move her at some point. Man, that place is full of crap. It’s gonna take a long time to sort through it and process everything. But they found tokens: women’s jewelry, a couple of driver’s licenses. And then there are Polaroids. Glad I’m not the one going through those and matching them to missing women. But a lot of families are going to get closure, that is for sure.”

  The enormity of what she had accomplished weighed on her like an albatross. Because it automatically made her think of what would’ve happened if she hadn’t discovered all of this. How many more women would’ve died? How many loved ones would’ve never had answers?

  “Like I said, you’re gonna be a hero.”

  As if on cue, two news vans showed up on the street in front. They parked, and their huge satellite dishes were raised.

  “You don’t have to talk to them right now. It can wait.”

  Madison realized that her life was going to change. She would be on the news. People would know her name and would probably call to hire her to find their missing loved ones or solve a cold case. When this whole thing began, she’d been trying to figure out if handling murder investigations was what she wanted for her life. Now she felt like it was. She was good at this. She could make a difference in the world. She could help people.

  “So are you going to keep investigating murders?” Tom asked.

  “Hell yes.” Madison stood up. “I’m a hero.”

  “I’d heard that about you.”

  Madison walked down the steps as the first TV reporter crossed the lawn for a statement.

  Acknowledgments

  There have been times when for me the act of writing has been a little act of faith, a spit in the eye of despair.

  —Stephen King

  My thirty-fifth birthday was fun: a martini party with swing music. But it feels so long ago that it might as well have been my tenth. You think of a life as peaking around the age of thirty-five—family started, well into your chosen career, life pretty much set up and knowing what’s to come. Not me. Just like Madison, I wasn’t settled at thirty-five. I’ve experienced more changes since my thirty-fifth birthday than I did in all the years before it. Some of the changes haven’t been fun at all: the death of my father, my own sickness, those parts of life that make it harder to keep going with a smile on your face. But there were good things too: for example, I graduated summa cum laude from UC San Diego with a degree in writing—thank you Professor Cristina Rivera-Garza, for guiding me through my honors thesis, which was a short-story version of Madison’s adventures. Thank you Professor John Granger, for turning me into a real writer. And to Danny Panella, my undergraduate adviser, who helped me transition from a French literature major to a writing major, thank you for having an open-door policy so that this overachiever, who just had to get straight As, could come and cry in your office.

  The other good thing that happened after age thirty-five was my decision to become an author. While continuing to work as a private investigator, I kept my eye on the goal of becoming a published author—throughout the not-so-fun challenges that followed. When I sat down to write this book in earnest, I was in a new home, my office had boxes stacked in it, and my desk was dirty—disorganization that normally would’ve rendered me unable to function. But the challenges I’d been through had an upside: they made me focused and determined, almost to a fault. So I sat down in the dust and disorder and wrote like a house on fire. Madison made me laugh, she made me cry, and no matter what, I just kept writing.

  It helped to know that someone was waiting for pages: Kristen Weber became more than an editor with great ideas whom I’d hired to make sure I finished the book. She became a cheerleader, my first fan, and ultimately a friend.

  My editor at Crooked Lane, Terri Bischoff, was the first to offer publication, and boy was she quick. Her swift offer made me feel she deserved special consideration, and I’m so glad she did and I did, because Crooked Lane is the perfect place for me; thanks go to Matt Martz for creating that environment and bringing me into the fold. Terri encouraged me to bring more of Madison into the book—I didn’t realize parts of Madison were missing until Terri pointed it out. I’m looking forward to a long relationship with Terri, where together we bring readers much more Madison.

  Madeline Rathle and Melissa Rechter at Crooked Lane were tornadoes of efficiency, making sure I stayed on track and turning ideas into action. This book was put on a fast track to publication, and they were on top of it the whole way. Nicole Lecht designed a kickass cover that leaps off the shelf; she made it better than I could explain it.

  My brother and his wife have helped me in many ways, especially during the not-so-smiley challenges I’ve faced. Without them I couldn’t have written this book.

  The same goes for Kathy, a fairy godmother through and through.

  My agent, Abby Saul of the Lark Group, has been with me from the beginning: sticking it out through thick and thin with encouragement and words of wisdom, suggesting edits for the book, and guiding me into a wonderful relationship with Crooked Lane. What a team we make. I can’t wait to see what the future holds.

  Mentioned in the book are Tim Pilleri and Lance Reenstierna of Crawlspace Media and the Missing Maura Murray podcast. They fight the good fight every day by bringing attention to cold cases and making sure the missing are never forgotten. You can help: https://investigationsforthemissing.org/

  Aside from Lance and Tim, if you recognize yourself in the pages of this book, I did a good job as an author because the characters are all fictitious. There is no Tom Clark, so there is no one to blame other than me if I got police procedure wrong (or I might have known it was wrong and wrote it that way anyway—poetic license!). There was no Gaslamp mystery, and the bars the girls went missing from are a product of my imagination. However, the rest of the places mentioned in the book are real, and I hope you visit them someday. San Diego is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

  To the authors who have influenced me, like Thomas Perry (thank you for your encouragement), Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Lee Child, Robert Crais, Sue Grafton, Janet Evanovich, Rex Stout, Agatha Christie, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, thank you for your artistry, to which I aspire every day.

  Finally, I would like to thank the everyday unsung heroes. You don’t know who you are—because you don’t think of yourself as a hero. You get up, feed the kids (or the cat, or the dog), go to work; you take care of a parent, visit a friend, lend an ear to a stranger. You volunteer, cheer, and console, often without any thanks. You’re kind, you’re patient, and sometimes you’re ashamed of y
our behavior and try to do better next time. You may not be the star of the show, but you’re the backbone of society and we’d fall apart with you. I dedicate this book to you and the part you play in keeping life worth living for everyone else, even if you don’t realize it. I do. I see you. Thank you.

  Author Biography

  A native Californian, Elizabeth Breck had read Harriet the Spy twenty times by the time she was 9. It was no surprise, then, when she grew up and went to work for a private investigator, amassing the 6000 hours of apprenticeship necessary to earn the right to take the state’s notoriously difficult private investigator’s examination. Passing with flying colors, she has been licensed for years, working mainly in the field of insurance investigations—making her the real life version of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone. In 2013 she decided to go back to school, earning a bachelor’s degree in Writing, summa cum laude, from the University of California San Diego. Anonymous is her first novel. She lives with a black Labrador named Hubert who is her best friend.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, organizations, places and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real or actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Elizabeth Breck

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crooked Lane Books, an imprint of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Crooked Lane Books and its logo are trademarks of The Quick Brown Fox & Company LLC.

  Library of Congress Catalog-in-Publication data available upon request.

  ISBN (hardcover): 978-1-64385-564-6

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-64385-565-3

  Cover design by Nicole Lecht

  Printed in the United States.

  www.crookedlanebooks.com

  Crooked Lane Books

  34 West 27th St., 10th Floor

  New York, NY 10001

  First Edition: November 2020

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