by Beverly Long
Rena followed her, stood next to her. “Great program, huh?” Rena said.
“Isn’t he an excellent speaker?”
“Yes. Have we met?” Rena asked.
“I cocktail at Mory’s.”
Flags went up in Rena’s brain. Mia Franklin, number twenty on the list, had also cocktailed at Mory’s. Coincidence? Maybe. “What’s your interest in WWII?” she asked. She was keeping one eye on Tess, who was back in her chair. She had her cell phone out. Was staring at it. And while Rena could see only her profile, she knew the woman had tensed.
What the hell?
“Matt’s a customer. Comes in for lunch and...”
Tess was standing. Headed toward the door.
And Rena’s first thought was that something had happened to A.L. and her chest got tight. She pivoted to follow Tess when a sharp crack split the air. She dived down, yanking the woman next to her along with her. “Get down,” she yelled. She pulled her gun.
People were screaming. Running. Smoke in the air.
It took her seconds, just seconds, to find the source. Some type of bottle rocket thrown through the open side window.
Matt Connell was there, beating at the small fire with a rug. The undercover cop was stomping on the edge of the flames.
People were running for the door.
And she could no longer see Tess.
Twenty-Four
A.L. heard a pop, and his head shot up, just enough that he could see out the window of the SUV. It had not been a gunshot, but there were people pouring out of BHP’s front door. Shit. What the fuck was going on? He kept his eyes on the door, looking for Tess.
His phone rang. Rena. “What?” he answered.
“Bottle rocket thrown through the window. Fire contained. No injuries that I can see. Tess was very near the front door. Do you have eyes on her?”
He opened the vehicle door. The hell with trying to stay hidden. He ran toward the building. People were outside, and he pushed through the crowd. “Police,” he yelled. “Police. Everybody on the ground with your hands in the air. I repeat. Get on the ground and put your hands in the air.”
He could hear sirens and knew that reinforcements were on their way.
He did not see Tess anywhere. He called her phone. He knew she had it, had watched her put it in her pocket right before they’d left the house. It rang. Rolled over to voice mail.
Fuck.
Rena approached. Her eyes were big, and she’d pulled her gun. “Do you have her?”
“No,” A.L. said, his gut feeling hollow.
“Something came in on her phone. A message. A call. I don’t know what. But she was staring at her phone and then moving toward the door. I was... Wait... I want to talk to that woman.”
The last part didn’t make sense, but he watched her approach a young woman who had dutifully followed directions and was sitting on the ground with her hands in the air. The sirens were closer now.
A.L. ran into BHP. It was empty. He ran through the building and out the back door. Looked across the dark parking lot. Jesus. She couldn’t just disappear.
He ran around the side of the building to the front again. Found Rena. “Anything?”
“No. I’ve already asked them to cordon off this area of the city. Nobody in or out.”
Rena was thinking, thank God. He’d better get his own goddamn head in the game.
* * *
He’d grabbed her by the arm and yanked her sideways. And when she’d opened her mouth to scream for A.L., he said, “If you make a sound, I’ll kill her.”
And Tess had known exactly who he was going to kill. Marnee. Because that was the photo on her screen in the unfamiliar email. Marnee, walking, her hair blowing in the spring wind, the familiar buildings of her campus in the background. The message had been clear. Cooperate or she dies. Leave the building now.
And she’d flashed back to her first conversation with A.L. and Rena and how they’d wondered how someone could force the women to simply take off their clothes and wait to be smothered. And it had become very clear to her how that happened. Their children had been threatened.
And a mom would do most anything to save her children. Even die.
But Marnee was supposed to be protected. The police were watching her.
Tess had decided to leave the building immediately. But had intended to go directly to her vehicle, to A.L., whom she trusted. He would save her. Make sure Marnee was safe.
But she hadn’t made it. Grabbed and dragged and finally tossed into the back of some kind of white work van. It had been pitch-black, but when the door had slammed shut behind her, she’d immediately scrambled to find the interior door. But there wasn’t a handle on the inside. And there were no windows. Desperate for light, she searched for her phone, only to discover it was gone.
She couldn’t see into the driver’s seat because he’d put up some kind of wire between the front seats and the cargo area and covered it on his side with something that might have been cardboard.
It was all so terrifying. She’d barely seen her attacker. But thought he was white. He wore a black stocking hat and all his clothes were black.
“I need to talk to Marnee,” she yelled. “I need to make sure she’s safe.”
“You cooperated. She’s safe. I haven’t had to hurt any of the children.”
The woman who’d been skipped had been single, no children. That was why she’d gotten a pass, not because she lived in a duplex and the killer had been afraid that the neighbor might overhear. This guy wasn’t afraid of things like that—he’d practically grabbed her in front of other people. She suspected if she hadn’t been close to the door already and the first person out, he’d have found another way to separate her from the group. “You killed those other women, didn’t you?” She lowered her voice, wanting to save it in case she needed to scream for help later. He could hear her, because she could hear him.
He started the vehicle, and it pulled away fast. She dug her fingers into the chicken wire and held on.
“Yes. And I’m going to kill you. But it will not hurt. And you will have saved your daughter. That’s what a parent should do. Save their children.”
He was a madman. “How do I know I can trust you?”
“Because I’ve said so.” His voice changed. Became harder. “Don’t talk to me. You have already caused me so much more trouble than any of the others. You shouldn’t have just disappeared. I spent hours trying to find you and my time is valuable.”
He was scolding her.
“You probably have no idea what my hourly rate bills out at,” he added inanely.
Madman and an egomaniac. She just had to stay alive. A.L. would have immediately realized that she hadn’t taken off on her own, that she’d been taken. He’d be looking. Everyone would be looking. She had to stay alive and get as much information from this guy as possible so that they could catch him. “No, I’m sorry, I don’t. What’s your name?” she asked, working hard to keep the terror racing through her body from showing in her voice.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he wrenched the wheel of the van so hard that she lost her grip on the chicken wire and went skidding across the van, knocking her right shoulder against the side.
After just minutes, the vehicle slowed, turned, then eased forward before stopping. She heard what sounded like a garage door coming down. Her heart was pounding so hard that she was afraid that she was going to have a heart attack. Just days ago, she’d thought she didn’t care if she lived or died. But now she knew. She desperately wanted to live.
The back door of the van opened. No light came on, but she heard the door open and felt fresh air blow in.
“Get out,” he said.
She could see nothing. It was terrifying. She sat down and scooted on her butt to the edge. Then jumped when he grabbed her arm again.
He pulled her forward, and she heard the sound of a door opening. And then there was light. It was a breezeway, lit with a single bulb. It was long and narrow, and she thought it was likely that the garage and the house had not been connected initially. At the end, he opened a door. The room was dimly lit, too, with just a light above the kitchen sink.
She was in a house. There was carpet on the kitchen floor, and the appliances all looked old. That was all she had time to see before he pushed her forward into a small living room. There were dark blinds or curtains on the windows. He did not turn on any other lights.
“Sit there,” he said, shoving her toward a chair.
It wasn’t a living room chair. No. It was more like a kitchen chair. Straight-backed. Wood. She sat. Looked at him. He was in the shadows, but she could tell that he’d removed the ski mask. Now she was confident he was white. Maybe five-ten, a hundred and sixty pounds. She’d expected him to be bigger, because his grip was strong and he had no trouble pushing her around.
There was no other furniture in the room.
They had not driven very far, maybe less than five minutes. They were still in Baywood. “Is this your house?” she asked.
“My mansion,” he said, his tone sarcastic. “You know, this is the house my father was raised in. There’s so much evil here.”
She wasn’t going to argue that. He was all the evil it needed. And it was no mansion. The rooms were small, and the air smelled musty, like the house might have been closed up for years.
“Can you turn on a light so that I can see more of it?”
“Shut up,” he said. “I have had to change everything because of you. I don’t like change.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” she said.
He said nothing for a long time. It was too dark to see his eyes, but she didn’t think he had fallen asleep standing up. But she had to try to escape. She slowly stood.
And he was across the room and shoving her back in the chair. “You have to wait,” he said. He was close enough that she could smell him. He didn’t stink. In fact, he smelled good, like he was wearing a very expensive men’s cologne. She saw movement and realized he was reaching into his pocket. She caught a glimpse of silver and knew it was a roll of duct tape.
“Help,” she yelled. “Help.”
Then he had a piece of tape over her mouth and she could yell no more.
She tried to kick and swing her right arm, but he was too strong. Because she’d struggled, it was likely not neat or pretty, but he managed to duct-tape her to the chair. She cursed the fact that since the shark attack she’d allowed herself to get weak and out of shape.
“Two hours and seventeen minutes,” he said. “Then I’ll kill you. And it will be right. Everything will be right again.”
She quickly calculated. Midnight. He was waiting until midnight. She was supposed to die on Friday, May 20, and he was going to make sure that happened.
Hurry, A.L. Please hurry.
* * *
Tess had now been missing for almost an hour. They’d made their way through the crowd, questioning whether anyone had seen anything. Other officers were on the streets, stopping and searching every vehicle within a one-mile radius. Beyond that perimeter, suspicious vehicles and anyone trying to leave Baywood would be stopped. They’d already recovered the remains of the bottle rocket that had been tossed through the window. And Tess’s cell phone that had been in some bushes. Confident that it might contain a valuable clue, but unable to get into it without her thumbprint, A.L. had already put in a request to get content directly from the carrier.
“Why did you need to talk to that woman?” A.L. asked Rena, his hands on his hips, surveying the crowd one more time. The undercover cop had taken authority over the crime scene, and he had not yet released all the attendees.
“She was staring at Tess during the presentation.” Rena had pulled off her wig and put on a police jacket so that people wouldn’t get whacked out when they saw her with a gun.
“What did she say?”
“That she saw her arm and realized it was amputated. Her brother just got home from the war. He lost both an arm and a leg. She was working up the courage to ask her about it. I don’t think she’s involved in any way. I’m sorry, A.L.,” she said. “My attention was off Tess for just seconds, and I lost her.”
“It’s not your fault. Something motivated her to leave the room. Based on what you said, it was something on her phone. And I think that whoever threw that bottle rocket through the open window came around the side of the building, saw her and grabbed her. I must have just missed her.”
Now he sounded miserable.
“We’ll get her. Whoever took her won’t be able to get far. They’ll—”
Her cell phone was buzzing. It took her just a second to realize that the number on the screen was the one she’d tried several times earlier that day. Brian O’Grady.
She motioned for A.L. to come with her. She led him in the direction of her SUV. “Hello, this is Detective Morgan,” she said.
“This is Brian O’Grady. You left messages earlier.”
He spoke clearly, didn’t seem impaired. “I did, Mr. O’Grady. Thank you very much for calling me back.” They were at the vehicle. She put the phone on Speaker as they slid into seats so that A.L. could hear. “As I mentioned in my voice mail, I’m a detective with the Baywood Police Department. We’re working on a case that may have something to do with an incident that occurred at the Gizer Hotel in 1973.”
“Nobody has asked me about that in a whole lot of years.”
“I’ve read the statement you gave to the police at the time. Sir, do you remember the details of that day?”
“I’ll never forget them.”
Rena looked at A.L. There was something in the man’s tone that was ominous. “Go ahead, sir,” she said.
“I’d been living at the Gizer for about a year when it happened. But I wasn’t surprised. I knew that family was trouble. A person hears things through the walls, a person sees things through open doors.”
Rena and A.L. said nothing.
“The wife was a nice enough lady, I think. Probably didn’t deserve what she ended up with.”
They waited. “And what was that?” Rena finally prompted.
“That husband of hers. He wasn’t right in the head. And it carried down the line. Their boy was even worse. Every time I looked in his eyes, I saw a little more of the devil.”
“What happened the night of the shooting?”
“It was evening, but I hadn’t yet eaten dinner. I was making spaghetti, and I was in the middle of draining the water from the pan when I heard a terrible loud noise. If I’d been in my living room, which shared a wall with their apartment, I probably would have realized that it came from next door. But since I was in the kitchen and had my music on, I thought the noise came from my window, which was open. It was a bad neighborhood, and that night wasn’t the first time I heard shots. I opened a jar of sauce into a pan and was just about to heat it up when I heard a second shot. Now I was getting concerned. I stirred the sauce for a minute and then thought I better close the kitchen window. Didn’t want to get shot at my own table, you know?”
“Of course,” Rena said.
“When I closed my window, I saw the Sands boy leaving the building and running down the alley.”
“Was he carrying anything?” Rena asked. Maybe he’d returned with the ice cream and heard the shot and run.
“Nope. He was running, and both his arms were pumping at his sides. His hands were empty. I can see him as clearly today as I did that night. And then when I realized that the shot came from next door, I just knew that he had something to do with it and that he was running away.”
“I know you said the boy had a look in his eye, but was there any other reason
that you thought he’d be involved?” Rena asked.
“I kept my window open all the time. Even in the winter. That whole building had a smell to it that I didn’t like. And voices carry, especially the shrill voices of children. And that Sands boy, and that girl who he was always with, spent a lot of time in the alley. One night, I saw him kill a small dog—just wrapped his hands around the poor thing’s neck and wrenched it.”
“Did you report that?”
“I should have,” the man said, his voice heavy with disappointment. “If I saw something like that today, I would. But then, I was having a little trouble with the law myself. Had been arrested a couple times.”
“I see,” Rena said.
“But that night that I saw him running, I did tell the police everything that I saw. But they didn’t seem to care. Or maybe they didn’t believe me. Maybe they thought I was stoned and didn’t know what I saw. But I knew exactly.”
“The girl that the Sands boy hung around with, do you know her name?
“It was Marie. Just like my mother’s.”
Rena and A.L. made eye contact. A.L. motioned for her to wind it up.
“Thank you, Mr. O’Grady. I really appreciate the call back.”
“No problem. I told the truth that night, and I’m telling it now. I can go to sleep with a clear conscience.”
“Goodbye, then,” Rena said, and hung up. Looked at A.L. “I believe him,” she said.
“Me, too. Sean Sands Mallor was there when his father got shot. But for some reason, both his mother and sister lied about it. Why?”
There weren’t that many good reasons. “He had something to do with it,” she said. “But he had an alibi for May 10. We cleared him.”
“We missed something,” A.L. said. He pulled his own phone. “I’m calling Faster. He can coordinate with the Chicago PD to get Sean brought in. I don’t think they’re going to find him, though. He’s here. Somewhere. And he’s got Tess.”
“Unless Marie has her. She lied to me again. Said that they were acquaintances, but that she didn’t recall if Sean was in her class. It sounds as if they were very friendly. They could be working together on this.”