Harry took the knife, put the tip of the blade on the concrete landing outside the door and pushed on it until the thin steel bent. He kept working on it until he turned the blade into a rough approximation of the letter L. He put his hand with the knife through the opening in the doggie door until the upturned blade hooked the back of the grey neoprene flap. Then he pulled the knife back through the opening. The flap followed. He lifted it up on the outside of the door so that it was out of the way.
Harry turned over on his back and stuck his head through the opening. He could see the doorknob with its lock a little more than two feet above the tip of his nose. If his tongue had been longer, he could have wrapped it around the doorknob and opened and turned it. As it was, he was going to have to get one arm along with his head through the rectangular opening. Harry remembered a trip to Thailand and seeing monkeys who had been trained to climbed trees and knock down coconuts. About now he was wishing he could rent one.
He slid his head to the right and brought his left hand up into the opening. The problem was the bend in the elbow. He might be able to work it through so that his arm, up to the shoulder, was inside.
After a couple of minutes, some effort, and not a little sweat, Harry got his arm inside. How he was going to get it out was another question. He reached up and turned the knob. Pressed by the upper part of Harry’s body, the door popped open.
“Oh! Oh! You got it,” said Boggs.
“Ma’am, it’s a matter of debate who’s got what,” said Harry. “Maybe you can give me a hand, come over, and pull me out of here.”
A couple of minutes later, Harry was back on his feet, a small rip in his dress shirt under his left arm. Otherwise, no worse for the wear. “Now that’s the easy part,” said Harry. “Let’s hope we don’t find anything inside. You stay here.”
Harry went in. It took him less than a minute to clear the downstairs. Other than some dust and a few children’s toys scattered across the carpet in the living room, there was no evidence of any crime except the one Harry had committed in coming through the back door.
He went upstairs. There was a short hallway with what looked like three bedrooms. The doors were closed on two of them. He assumed, based on the various knickknacks, hand-printed signs, and glow-in-the-dark objects pinned and glued on the outside that these two closed doors led to the children’s rooms. Harry couldn’t see anything, but his nose was already telling him there was something wrong.
Harry took out a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to turn the knob on the first door. It swung open. Inside was a sea of chaos, stuffed animals and toys tossed everywhere. There was a storm of rumpled blankets and pillows on top of the bed.
Harry stepped inside to take a closer look. He used his handkerchiefed hand to turn on the light, then reached over and grabbed a pony on a stick from a barrel of toys. He used the pole from the pony’s body to poke through the blankets and pillows on the bed. There was nothing there. No sign of a child. He looked in the closet. It was a confusion of clothes and sundry items, but nothing bad.
He moved on to the next room. It was much the same though a little neater. Harry assumed that this might belong to the older of the two boys. There were pictures on the wall and a few toy guns. A small computer sat on a table in the corner. One of the photographs pinned to the wall was a shot of Cam Akers with some other men, all dressed in camo gear holding assault rifles. The stark, barren mountains in the distant background offered a hint of Afghanistan, or maybe the tribal regions of Pakistan. In the photograph, Akers’s face, the skin peeling and parched, looked much thinner than Harry remembered it. His cheeks were drawn and hollow. From the picture, it was clear that Akers had paid a heavy price for his service.
He stepped out of the room, closed the door, and moved down the hall toward the sunlit room at the end. Here the door was open. With each step, the dense odor of putrefaction become stronger. Before he reached the door, it overwhelmed him. He put the handkerchief to his mouth and nose and kept walking as he held the pole pony in the other hand. Here Harry touched nothing. This was a crime scene, and he knew it.
At the open door, he finally saw her. A woman perhaps in her late twenties, though it was difficult to tell from rigor that has drawn her lips back into a tight, rigid smile of death. This mirrored the larger macabre crescent beneath her chin, where the blade wielded by her killer had opened her throat. She lay sprawled on the bed, dressed in a cream-colored nightgown that might once have been white. Harry couldn’t tell.
Her eyes were open to the sky. Drained of the rose color of life, her flesh was white as new-fallen snow, though in places splotches in various other shades running to black had already begun to turn. The brown hue of putrefied blood had congealed in the folds of the bedcovers like rivers of rust. It pooled in a low reservoir formed by the mass of body weight in a moat surrounding her hips.
Her right arm hung off the edge of the bed angled toward the floor. Her dead, limp fingers dangled above the small dog huddled on the floor beneath them, as if waiting to be caressed by its mistress one last time. The fact that the bed was so high and the dog so small prevented her from making the leap that would have no doubt transformed the pooch into a bloody paintbrush, the four-legged messenger of death.
Harry looked around, his eyes carefully scanning the corners of the room and the dark recesses of the open closet, looking for the two children. He checked the connecting bath and took a quick look under the bed, but there was no sign of them.
He used the pole from the pony to prod the dog away from the bed, then scooped it up in one hand and headed back down the hall toward the stairs. He opened the door, pitched the pony pole back into the child’s room, then reached into his pocket for his cell phone. Harry punched in 9-1-1, and a few seconds later said: “I want to report a homicide. . . .”
Chapter 18
BY THE TIME Joselyn finally woke up, it was dark outside. She seemed dazed, confused. She must have been exhausted, she thought. She had slept for hours. It seemed like a bad dream. But now that she was awake, locked away in the bedroom in a strange building knowing he was outside her door, and she could hear him moving around in the kitchen, it was becoming a nightmare. It took her a several minutes to gather herself, to work up enough nerve to come out of the bedroom and face him again.
Akers was pouring milk over cereal in a bowl at the kitchen counter.
“I thought you wanted me to cook.”
“Tonight, this’ll do.” He said it with his back to her in a near mumble.
“Fine.” So much for steaks and champagne. Not that Joselyn cared. She had long since lost her appetite, her mind occupied with other more pressing matters, whether Akers was truly dangerous. She didn’t want to press the matter to find out. What she wanted was a way out. His mood hadn’t changed. If anything, he seemed even more morose. He was no longer the man of adventure, firing rapid rounds of wit. Now every reply was rationed, limited to as few words as possible.
Joselyn lifted the lid and looked at the groceries in the ice chest. Most of the ice had turned to water. Nothing had been put in the refrigerator. Perhaps he was waiting for her to do it. Woman’s work.
She spied a square of cheese, Asiago, shrink sealed in heavy plastic, floating in the bottom. She rescued it, grabbed an apple and a small container of yogurt, and retreated to the kitchen to find a spoon for the yogurt and a knife to cut the cheese.
“I’ll cut that for you,” he told her.
“I can do it.”
“No, you can’t.”
When she opened the drawer, she found out why. All of the knives were gone. Forks as well. There was nothing in the drawer sharper than a teaspoon. If she wanted to get the plastic wrap off the cheese, she would have to gnaw it with her teeth.
“Where’s all the silverware?”
“Guess they lost it,” he told her. “You know how it is. Souvenir hunters.”
“Yeah, I’d want that stuff for my collection. Wonder if it was the same pe
ople who chewed through the phone lines.”
He shot her a look that made her think maybe it wasn’t wise to run her mouth and get lippy with him. Nurture his fantasies, and maybe she might make it through the night.
“Here, give me that.” He reached out.
She handed him the cheese.
Akers pulled the folding tactical knife from his pocket, flicked open the blade, and sliced through the plastic like it was melted butter. He peeled it back and cut several pieces of the dry, hard cheese. He slipped one of the slices, resting on the flat surface of the blade, into his mouth.
She watched as it disappeared.
He sliced another, left it on the knife, reached over and fed it to her.
“It’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but it should be sliced very thin,” said Joselyn. “Can I do it?”
“Not with my knife. I’m afraid you might cut yourself. Then how would I feel?” He sliced a few more pieces, then closed the blade and put the knife back in his pocket.
Joselyn ate the cheese and the apple between spoonfuls of yogurt. She was hungrier than she thought. When she finished, she put the rest of the cheese in the ice, tossed the empty yogurt container in the trash, and said: “Do you mind if I take a shower?”
“Not if I can watch,” he said.
When she turned to look at him, it was like someone had flipped a switch. The jock was back. Big grin on his face. Suddenly, he wanted to party. It caught her off balance. She thought for a second and realized maybe it was an opportunity. If she threw cold water on him, Mr. Hyde might come back.
“Do you like to watch?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never done it. I was just giving you a bad time.”
“You like to do that, don’t you? Give me a bad time.”
“It’s fun. Most of the time, I’m kidding around. Go ahead and take a shower. I won’t bother you.”
“Can I trust you?”
“I don’t know. Let’s find out. Could be fun,” he said.
She looked at the clock over the stove. It was almost 9:00 P.M. Joselyn had slept away the entire afternoon and early evening. She wondered if he had drugged her, the soda water he’d given her earlier in the day. Akers had pulled all the curtains closed across the windows of the living room and shut down the blinds in the small kitchen window. It was like he was hiding in a cave.
“Aren’t you tired?” she asked.
“Little bit, I suppose,” he said.
“Maybe if we get a good night’s sleep, we’ll wake up refreshed in the morning,” said Joselyn.
“Yeah, but I have a hard time sleeping,” he told her.
“Maybe you should take something for that.”
“No. I like to sleep light. Besides, I don’t like taking stuff that messes with my head.”
“That’s wise.”
It gave Joselyn an idea. “How about a cup of tea?” she said. “I’ve got some in my bag in the other room. It’s something new. I’ve never tried it before. But it might be fun tonight.”
“What is it?”
“A friend recommended it. She says I’m frigid. I think she’s crazy. It’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac.”
“Really?”
“I bought it in San Francisco a few weeks ago. It’s probably nothing but a scam. They say it comes from China.”
“That would make sense,” said Akers. “How else are you gonna get a billion and a half people?”
“The guy who sold it to me says it turns women into nymphomaniacs and makes men hard as a rock. Of course, the guy’s a salesman, and he’s selling the stuff. So take it with a grain of salt. Stands to reason, anything that powerful would require a prescription, don’t you think?”
“Maybe we should find out,” said Akers.
“I’m game if you are. Let me change and get ready to shower. I’ll make the tea. We’ll have some. Then I’ll take my shower, and we’ll see what happens.”
“I’m thinking that to make you horny, it’s gonna have to be a fucking wonder drug,” said Akers. “Two days, and I haven’t been able to get near you.”
“Like I say, I wouldn’t expect too much,” said Joselyn. “But you never know. Let me go get ready.”
“Yeah, go ahead. Put on something comfortable,” he said.
She headed for the bedroom, went inside, and closed the door. Joselyn grabbed her purse and found the small plastic tube with the cap on it inside. If he had drugged her earlier in the day, she was about to return the favor. Her prescription was for Ambien, sleep medication, a full thirty-day supply. She took out three tablets, started to put the top back on the bottle, thought about it, and took out one more. She knew she would lose some of it in the process of crushing the pills and probably a little more getting it into the tea. She didn’t want to kill him, but she wanted to put him down long enough to get away.
She looked around the room for something she could use to crush the tablets. The best she could come up with was the hard metal edge of a compact from her purse. She used a piece of plate glass covering the top of the bureau, put the pills on it one at a time, and used the compact to turn them to powder. It took several minutes. She was working on the last pill when he knocked on the door, and asked: “What’s taking so long?”
“You have to be patient. Give a girl some time and a little privacy,” she said.
“I’ll wait, but hurry it up.”
She listened as he walked away from the door. Joselyn reached into her purse and pulled out a packet of chewing gum. She slid out one stick, unwrapped the metal foil from around it, and tossed the gum in the waste can. Then she flattened out the metal foil on the glass top of the bureau and used her finger to sweep the sleeping powder onto the foil. When she had gathered as much of it as she could onto the foil, she folded it up into a tight little packet and tossed it on the bed.
Then she scrambled to get into something that might keep him distracted until she could visit him with the sandman. Unfortunately, Joselyn hadn’t come prepared to seduce him. There were no lacy underthings in her overnight bag, lingerie from Victoria’s Secret or baby dolls from Frederick’s. She best she could do were a pair of sheer bikini panties with a small heart printed in a strategic location and a loose-fitting nightshirt that hung off one shoulder, which, if she maneuvered it skillfully, might keep him on the edge long enough to put him to sleep. Joselyn knew that it wasn’t the packaging that mattered but what was in the box. The trick was to keep all the parts moving fast enough so that he couldn’t get his hands on it long enough to open it.
Then she remembered. She’d purchased a pair of thigh-high nylons for a costume party at Halloween. She never wore them because she never made it to the party. But she had slipped them into one of the outer pockets of her traveling bag. She checked and, sure enough, the cellophane envelope with the smoke-colored nylons was inside. She slipped it out and ripped open the package.
“What the hell’s taking so long in there?” He was outside the bedroom door knocking.
“Wait and see. You’re gonna like it,” she told him.
She pointed her toes and slipped on one of the nylons, pulled it up her leg, and allowed the tight elastic to close around her thigh. Then she worked in the mirror to straighten the seam in the back. She repeated the process with the other leg. The effect wasn’t quite the same without heels. But it was better than baggy sweats and running shoes.
When she looked in the mirror and worked the nightshirt to effect, the nylons offered a tantalizing glimpse of the “no go zone,” the area above the dark elastic of the thigh-highs and the lower edge of the bikini panties. The only question was whether she could dodge his hands long enough for the Ambien to sneak up and whack him.
She walked over to the bed and picked up the small foil packet with the powder. The problem was where to hide it. She opted for the elastic band on the nylons at the inside of her right thigh. She slipped the packet under the tight synthetic material and felt with her fingers along th
e outside of the stocking until she was satisfied that the foil wouldn’t slide down her leg.
She grabbed two tea bags from the traveling pack in her bag. It was some kind of spice tea from Ceylon. She also plucked two packets of Equal, then reached in and got one more. She wanted to make sure she had something sufficiently sweet to cover the bitter taste of the Ambien.
She checked herself in the mirror one last time, took a deep breath, and headed for the door.
Chapter 19
HARRY STOOD INSIDE the yellow tape that now bordered Allyson Akers’s house in Chula Vista. The street out in front was a mass of humanity, patrol cars, neighbors, several satellite vans from the media, and reporters all hawking for the story. In front of the driveway, at the curb, was the coroner’s meat wagon. Forensics had been working the scene for almost four hours.
It was dark and Harry was tired. Sitting in a chair on her front porch, Joanna Boggs had a drawn, vacant expression, as if she had gone catatonic. She wanted to know where the children were and whether they were safe. It was the same question on the lips of everyone now that the media had picked up the story that the two kids were missing.
“Take it you’re Mr. Hinds?”
When Harry turned, he saw a man in uniform standing behind him. But he wasn’t with the police.
“I’m Captain Norman Shivers,” he said. “I’m a medical doctor attached to North Island Naval. I understand you found the body?”
“That’s correct,” said Harry.
“The police also told me that you met with Mr. Akers professionally.”
“Not exactly,” said Harry. He explained the situation: that Herman had brought Akers to the office and that Harry’s partner was the one who actually talked to him, but that they had determined not to take the case because, in their view, there wasn’t one, at least not at that time.
“I was treating Chief Akers at the time that he left the military. We were in the process of trying to move his file and treatment over to the V.A., but,” he said, “I’m afraid we weren’t very successful.”
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