Trix

by Kate Morris

  “Sure. We were all told to work with you guys, so have at it. I’m not here to step on progress.”

  “Thanks,” Jack said and firmly shook the Special Agent’s hand again.

  “I don’t think anyone over there would’ve seen anything with all the big trees around, but it’s worth a shot,” Masterson said and left them.

  Lorena looked around, went to the kitchen, found the point of entry where the agents had figured that she was taken from and took notes on the scene. She stepped outside and looked around there, as well. It was worth noting that the driveway angled around, and the cars parked in the rear, four-car, attached garage. Whoever took her likely pulled his vehicle around to the side where it wouldn’t have been seen from the road. It also would’ve hidden Hailee from view from people driving by if she struggled with him in the driveway.

  Jack walked away from her toward the garage while Lorena took a different route and headed down toward the lake. It was a slight incline and slippery from the rain, but she made it all the way to their boathouse where a very expensive looking boat was tethered. She could see the homes in the distance across the lake more clearly. Surely someone somewhere in this exclusive neighborhood had been neighbor-watching and had seen Hailee being taken from her home in broad daylight.

  She went back to the house and around front to wait for Jack near the car while listening to The Runaways sing about teen rebellion on her iPod. The chill in the air and the rain that had dampened her hair earlier left her feeling cold, so she got in. She was going to need to see if Jack packed her a warmer coat than just her hoodie. She reached over and started the car so that she could turn on the heater. Then Lorena rubbed her hands together as she looked out the window at the mansion with all the windows and the perfect family with their dark secrets living inside.

  Movement at the side of the house caught her attention, and she watched as Elizabeth hugged Jack. Her husband was nowhere in sight. Lorena looked away, not wanting to pry. Instead, she stared at the houses in the neighborhood, spread out with privacy in mind. Masterson was standing in the driveway as well, at the end of it, talking to some of his co-workers. Two of the men in the group turned to look at Lorena sitting in the car. She didn’t acknowledge them. She also didn’t care what they thought of her working their case.

  Lorena jumped when Jack opened the door and got in the driver’s side.

  “Ready to head over and talk to the neighbors across the lake?” he asked.

  She nodded and kept silent. There were too many personal questions floating around in her brain about his marriage, his divorce, his ex-wife. She had to keep those suppressed and work the case. Everything else could wait, probably forever since none of it was her business anyway.

  Jack drove them to the other side of the lake where they spent over two hours talking to the families. Three homes were empty, one being for sale and the other two without families occupying them, to which they learned from other neighbors that they were, indeed, on spring break.

  They talked to a retired couple who had been at a doctor’s appointment at the time of Hailee’s abduction. Then they spoke with a young couple with no children and discovered they’d both been at work at the time. Lorena would have someone verify that. The next home also proved unhelpful. A stay-at-home mother who’d been running kids to and from after-school activities and a husband who was in India on business. Lorena marked him down to check into later and verify that he was, in fact, in India. The next home belonged to a doctor who worked in the city and wasn’t home, but they talked to his wife. She was in her late forties and had two children. One of them even went to Hailee’s school but was in a different grade. The mother had been shopping with her daughter for a junior prom gown in the city while the son was at his friend’s house in a different neighborhood playing video games. Everything ended up being dead-ends, but Lorena would check into each family further to verify their stories. In a case like this, everyone was a suspect until just one person was, even the neighbor next door. Everyone had to be ruled out.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Martin,” Jack told the doctor’s wife as they left her home.

  “This is gonna be tough,” Lorena confided as they walked through a light drizzle to their car again. That was their last neighbor to question, and it got them nowhere. Even the daughter who went to the same high school didn’t know anything and didn’t know Hailee all that well. They’d left their business cards with every person they spoke with just in case something they saw or knew jogged a memory. “We’re going to have to move fast on this if Mr. Neumann is ever going to see his daughter alive again.”

  “Elizabeth told me that Victor hired a private investigator,” he said.

  “That always helps things,” she remarked with heavy criticism.

  “Right,” he agreed. “He probably didn’t think the FBI could handle this case.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky and whoever he hired will find something more than us. Doubt it, but maybe.”

  “And now I’m involved, so that has to really be pissing him off.”

  “Yeah, I noticed the lack of love in the room.”

  “You noticed that, huh?” he said in a teasing tone. Then he mumbled about Victor, “Prick.”

  Lorena let it slide. She didn’t want to muddle their investigation or her thought process by getting into the gritty details of Jack’s divorce.

  “Let’s head back to the apartment so that I can check on Grace if you don’t mind,” she requested.

  “Yep,” he said. “That’s where I was going.”

  “Thanks.”

  They drove for a while in silence until Lorena mentioned, “As soon as Masterson gets a match on the boyfriend in the pics, we should talk to him. If this girl was hiding her friends and boyfriend from her family, she might’ve been keeping other things hidden, too.”

  He sighed and nodded, his mouth tightening into a thin grimace of frustration.

  “Sorry that this involves your ex. I’m sure this isn’t how you thought this was gonna go, Jack.”

  “I know. It’s fine. I just want to solve this and get the hell outta’ here.”

  “Ditto,” she answered, but not just because of his ex, the woman that Lorena wanted to rename the ice queen. She was about as cold as one person could get, even with the fake tan and painted on smiles. “The boyfriend could be a dead-end, too, but I still want to question him.”

  “Me, too. Hailee has obviously been hanging out with kids that Victor would not approve of, so it’s worth it to look into every angle on this.”

  “What did you mean about his business dealings? Is he into illegal activities?”

  “Not technically, nothing that would probably stand up in court. He’s one of those Teflon kinda’ guys. You know, nothing sticks?”

  “Great,” she said. “This ought to be fun then. And he’s a lawyer which makes it double special.”

  “His family is in the importing business, but he also had a lot of commercial property deals in California. Some of them were investigated. Like I said, nothing stuck. I’d suspect that’s why he’s here instead of there.”

  “And running for Attorney General,” she reminded him as he turned left onto another road, the traffic growing thicker as they drove closer to the city center.

  “Yeah, he’s always been a real weasel,” Jack told her.

  Lorena looked at him and asked, “Do you think there’s any connection to his bad business deals with Hailee’s disappearance? Anyone that would do this to get back at him?”

  “The Neumann family has a lot of enemies,” he answered. “If Victor knows Trix personally, I think he would’ve told us. He’s an asshole, but he does love Hailee. I’m sure of that much. He’d do anything to get her back.”

  That’s a good thing,” Lorena said as he drove them to their apartment.

  Grace was watching t.v. when they got there, so they picked her up and took her to dinner with them at a restaurant Jack knew of down by the river. They sat overlook
ing the water as the sun set on their first full day in Portland. It just reminded Lorena that this man they were hunting liked dumping women’s bodies by the water.

  “See over there, Grace?” Jack asked her niece.

  “The area with the docks and boats and stuff?”

  He nodded as the waitress brought their drinks, “Yep, I used to have a houseboat over there.”

  “Oh, cool! You lived in a boat?”

  He chuckled as Lorena took a drink of her iced tea, “Not exactly. I lived in a houseboat, not a boat. It’s a little different.”

  “So your house was on the water?”

  “Yeah, it floated. It was small but enough for me,” he said. “I can take you by there and show it to you if you want. My friend lives there now.”

  “Your friend?”

  “Yeah, I still own it, but he rents it from me.”

  This grabbed Lorena’s attention, “Wait, you still own property here? Were you planning on coming back?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. I guess I just thought it was a good idea to hold onto it. I still like Portland, just not living here anymore. It’s a nice place to visit.”

  “Oh, okay,” she said nervously. “Or maybe you’ll go back to Miami.”

  “Hey, I’m not going anywhere, partner,” he said and placed his hand over hers for a nanosecond. “You’re stuck with me. We’re partners.”

  Grace giggled and said, “Like Murtaugh and Riggs.”

  “What?” Lorena asked with confusion.

  “You know the movie, Lethal Weapon,” Grace answered on an ornery laugh.

  “That’s it!” Lorena threatened. “No more going over and hanging out with Bob anymore. He’s letting you watch R-rated movies. What the heck, Grace?”

  Jack just laughed. “Those were funny movies. Not realistic, mind you,” he said, winking at Grace. “But they were pretty funny.”

  “No!” Lorena argued as the waitress brought their meals. “You know how I feel about you watching movies that are too old for you.”

  “I don’t remember them being that bad,” Jack said, trying to help Grace.

  “Hey!” Lorena said, pointing at him. “Stay out of it. She’s just a kid.”

  “I watched them when I was young.”

  “So? Look how you turned out?” she berated.

  “You’re definitely Murtaugh,” Grace said. “He’s really uptight, too.”

  Lorena gave Grace the look, which caused her niece to cringe.

  “All right. Fine. No more R-rated. But do you know how hard it is to find movies that aren’t? Like really hard, Aunt Lo!”

  “Try harder, Grace. Disney movies aren’t R-rated,” she reminded her precocious niece.

  Lorena was trying her hardest to be a good parent and mostly felt every day that she was bungling that job on every possible level.

  “Disney?” Jack said before crushing his crab leg and pulling out the flesh.

  Lorena was having grilled chicken and a salad. He was guilting her a lot lately about eating too much junk food. Besides, if she ate salad, she could have dessert.

  “Yes,” she answered him. “What’s wrong with Disney movies?”

  “Only everything!” he said dramatically. “The moms are always dead or killed off. They’re violent. The kids end up in foster care or with evil step-mothers. They’re almost all based on Grimm’s fairytales, which are even worse and more violent than the Disney adaptations. She’d be better off watching Lethal Weapon.”

  Lorena raised an eyebrow.

  “Or something else. Maybe not that one. Maybe Caddyshack.”

  “Never saw it,” she admitted.

  “What?” he asked rhetorically. “You’ve never seen Caddyshack?”

  “No, it’s about golf or something, right?”

  Jack just rolled his eyes. “What about Full Metal Jacket?”

  Lorena shook her head and smiled as Grace tried to break her crab leg. She’d ordered the same as Jack, who Lorena was worried that her niece was beginning to idolize a little too much. He took the tool from Grace and showed her again how to do it.

  “The Outlaw Josie Wales?” he questioned.

  Lorena shook her head again and said, “No, I’ve never been a big movie goer. I never had the time…or money, either.”

  “No, most of these are all old movies. I just thought maybe you saw them on t.v.”

  “My mom and Aunt Lorena didn’t have a television growing up. Their dad didn’t let them.”

  “Grace,” Lorena scolded with a scowl.

  “Really? Is that true?” Jack asked, pausing in his crab mutilation to look at her. Then he said quietly, “Oh, wow.”

  Lorena sighed and said, “Not everyone had the great family and upbringing in the burbs like you, Foster. Which is exactly why I’m trying to raise Grace differently!”

  He smiled and said, “Full Metal Jacket’s still better than Disney.”

  Lorena and Grace both laughed. They left the restaurant and walked to a place that served ice cream where she and her niece shared a hot fudge sundae with whipped cream, and Jack got a hot coffee. She hoped he forgot what Grace told him about her weird upbringing. It was bad enough having people know that you’re a freak without providing them with the evidence to explain it.

  Chapter Eight

  Trix

  I drove up the interstate in the dark to the turnoff in the forest. Nobody was out and about at this time of day. It was dark, long after dinnertime, and people were readying themselves for their workdays tomorrow. It was of no concern to me that I’d be pulled over under suspicion of anything. I was simply going to a property that I owned to get some rest and relaxation and to get the cabin on the lake ready for the family this weekend. Of course, I’d never bring them to the cabin. Not when Hailee was tied up in the basement of it.

  Sometimes we visited the cabin, but my wife hated it. She was a city person, born and raised. She’d bitch and complain about the mosquitoes or the poison ivy. She didn’t even like it when we had a campfire and roasted s’mores. Our spoiled children were the same. They mostly whined the entire time we were at the lake house, so it was better when I could come by myself.

  Also, I wasn’t worried about getting nabbed during a routine traffic stop because the car I used to transport my new toy was my wife’s. I made sure to have it detailed this morning before work like I did every time I took a new toy to the cabin. Plus, the car’s trunk was covered in plastic beforehand to prevent further evidence from being left behind. The plastic tarp was burned in a barrel at the cabin just like the ones before it. Then I would use our small pontoon boat and dump the contents of the barrel in the lake, weighted down with bricks. The lake wasn’t big, about six acres total, so the kids and wife even bitched about that, too. They wanted somewhere they could water ski, wakeboard, and tube. Self-indulged brats, the lot of them.

  I turned the high beams on to see better as I navigated the SUV down the long gravel driveway to the log home. No lights were on inside. It was so hard concentrating at work today on my actual job when all I could think about was the elaborate crime I’d just managed to pull off. The anticipation was almost too much to bear.

  However, I was not my father. I didn’t murder people out of rage and anger or because I disliked my wife. I did, indeed, dislike my own wife, but I wasn’t about to screw up my one true passion by going off and killing her in a fit of temper. As far as that cow knew, I was the mellow, mild-mannered man she knew. As a matter of fact, years ago when we were first married and on our honeymoon in Europe, a man had beaten and robbed an old man right in front of us. I’d simply ushered her into the closest building, a restaurant and ordered the manager to call on the telephone for help. I’d seen the look in my wife’s eyes. She was disappointed that I hadn’t done something to stop it. I stayed in good shape, exercised and ate right. She knew I was strong. She’d wanted me to do something, act on my manly instincts. I hadn’t. I could have. Very easily, actually. I could’ve killed that young
punk with my bare hands if I’d wanted to. There were two reasons I hadn’t. One, I didn’t want anyone to see the side of me that I’d worked so hard to hide from the public. And two, I just didn’t care. My wife hadn’t hidden her surprise and disgust that I hadn’t stepped in to help the old man. I didn’t care what she thought, either. She was just one more useful tool in my toolbelt of tricks to hide my real identity. If people ever saw the monster inside of me, they’d never let me out of a mental institution or prison.

  As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t crazy. I’d read quite a few books on psychology and took classes in college. I didn’t fit inside their box of simplistic explanations. I was not my father. I was patient and diligent in pursuing my craft.

  I’d waited so long to take her, nearly a year, but I’d finally managed it. The pieces had fallen into place so easily, too. From the planning to the execution, it had almost been too easy. With other victims, I merely chose randomly women who would make nice toys for a while. I’d pluck them from their pathetic existences off the streets or off the pole like I had the stripper. Hailee was different, though. I had known for so long that she’d be the most valued treasure I’d collected so far. She was perfect. She met every single criteria. And now I had her, and I could take my time. The FBI had nothing on me and never would. The letter I’d penned and left at her house was for my own satisfaction. I knew enough to know that they’d never figure out my identity from that simple piece of paper.

  Pulling right up to the front steps, I grabbed my bag of take-out from my favorite restaurant, the bottle of wine, and today’s paper. It was always good to stay abreast of the news, especially since I was sometimes in it. Of course, I was the only one who knew that it was me. Everyone else thought it was the Tooth Fairy. How boring, this name the press had assigned. It was somewhat irritating, too.

  I went inside, turned on a few lamps and a dim overhead light and placed my loot on the counter. The floorplan of the cabin was open concept, the kitchen, dining area, and living room were all connected, wide open spaces to each other.