by David Archer
“Yes! Yes, I know her! Her name is Marsha Wyatt, she was the director of St. Mary’s Outreach, the place that got bombed yesterday.”
“What? Give me that name again, please.”
I gave her Marsha’s name again, and then the police arrived. I got off the phone with the dispatcher and immediately called Detective Pennington.
“Pennington,” he said as he answered.
“Jim, it’s Cassie McGraw,” I said. “I just found Marsha Wyatt, the St. Mary’s Director, alive.” I quickly explained to him about finding her in the dumpster, and he told me to stay where I was.
One of the police officers had climbed into the dumpster, and was squatting down beside Marsha. The other one was standing just outside and looking in, but he turned to me as I got off the phone.
“You’re the one who found her?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir,” I said. I pointed to my dustpan. “I came out to dump that, and I heard her groans.”
“Good job on calling for help,” he said. “Any idea who she is?”
I told him, and pointed out that Detective Pennington was on the way. The ambulance arrived at that time, and the officers got out of the way to let the paramedics do their job.
It took them several minutes to get her onto a stretcher, and then it took all four of them to lift her out. The opening in the dumpster was too small, so they had to take her up and over the top, about eight feet off the ground. It was actually quite an operation, and if she hadn’t been strapped onto the stretcher, I’m pretty sure she would have fallen off. They had just gotten her into the ambulance when Pennington arrived, and he went right past me to try to talk to her.
“Ms. Wyatt,” he said, “can you tell me what happened to you?”
“She’s not gonna be able to talk,” one of the paramedics said. “Her jaw is broken in a couple of places, and I think she has a pretty bad concussion. She’s in shock, right now. Let us get her to the hospital and stabilized, and you can try to talk to her later this afternoon.”
Pennington scowled, but nodded. He turned around to me and motioned for me to follow him to the side of the alley.
“Is it just me, or does it seem a little odd that you were the one to find her?”
“It’s not just you,” I said. “That was the first thought that went through my mind.” I pointed at the back door of my office. “I just rented this place yesterday afternoon, because I’m going to open my own office to work with the women I was helping at the Outreach. Seems like a pretty big coincidence that she would turn up in the dumpster right behind my new office.”
“It does seem that way, don’t it? I spoke with Alicia a bit more yesterday afternoon, and she told me some of the details about your last big adventure. Do you make a habit of being targeted by crazy people?”
I rolled my eye. “Not on purpose, I assure you,” I said. “I can’t really argue with you, though. First you tell me the bomb was in my office, and now I find Marsha all beat up in the dumpster behind my new place? There’s obviously some kind of connection, and it has to be me.”
He made a face. “I’m waiting for a report back on any purchase history from the possible suspects you and I identified yesterday,” he said. “I…”
“You won’t find anything,” I said. “I got my boss at Centronic to run the same searches, but he can do it a lot faster and better. Unless they paid cash somewhere, none of them bought anything that could be used to make explosives.”
That got me a frown. “I’ll take a look at the report when it comes in, anyway. I was gonna be calling you before too long, because I just got the report back from the fire department. They only found two bodies inside the building, other than the lady who survived. She still hasn’t woke up yet, so we can’t get any answers out of her. From what you told us, though, there should have been at least four people inside there. Right?”
My eye was wide. “Yeah,” I said. “Of course, one of those was Marsha, but there should have been Angie, Nicole, and Brenda, as well. They said they found Angie’s body…”
“Actually,” Pennington said, “that body was identified as Brenda Birch. The receptionist might be the other body, but it was so badly burned that they haven’t made a positive identification, yet.”
I shook my head. “Poor Brenda,” I said. “She was another one of the counselors. If I remember the schedule correctly, only she, Marsha, and I were on duty as counselors. Nicole is actually a child psychologist, a volunteer. She comes in two days a week to work with the children the women often bring with them.”
Pennington nodded, then turned and looked toward the ambulance. They were closing the doors, and then it drove away a moment later with siren blaring.
“I’m wondering,” he said, “if you opening an office is really a good idea. I hate to say this, Cassie, but it’s really starting to look like you were the target. Whoever did this must have taken Ms. Wyatt yesterday morning, for some reason we don’t know yet. The question is how he found out about your new office so quickly. Looks to me like he planned on somebody finding her dead, in your dumpster.”
“Oh, God,” I said. “I guess it does look that way. The shape she was in, she probably wouldn’t have lasted a lot longer. You think he left her for dead, figured the garbage men would find her or something?”
“No, from the look of her, I suspect he thought she was already dead. It’s probably nothing short of a miracle that she was alive enough to make a noise for you to hear.” He looked away for a moment, then turned back to me and looked me in the eye. “I need you to understand something,” he said. “I have to consider the possibility that her injuries are your work. I’m not saying I believe that, but I’m going to need to know everything you’ve done for the last few days.”
I let Freda give him her icy stare. “Jim, you need to think. If I beat her up like that and put her in a dumpster to be found after she died, do you really think I would’ve called 911? She’s alive, and there’s at least a decent chance she’s going to stay that way. If I did it, I sure as hell wouldn’t want her able to talk, now would I?”
He had the grace to look sheepish. “Like I said, it’s not that I believe it. It’s just due diligence, all right? I admit you make sense, but I still have to look into it.”
I shrugged. “It’s okay, I really do understand. I’m more worried about what you said a minute ago. How on Earth did this guy find out about the office so quickly?”
“Did you tell anyone?”
“Well, I told my boyfriend. Other than that, I haven’t told anybody about it yet. Wait, I take that back. I did call all of my current clients yesterday and tell them that I was planning to open an office, but I hadn’t even looked at one yet. I didn’t have an address or anything to give anyone.”
“Let’s take a look at the place,” he said. We walked in through the back door, and I locked it behind us. I led him through the back utility room and into the office area, and we both jumped when somebody yelled out, “Hello?”
It was the delivery guys, of course. I had lost track of time after finding Marsha and waiting for the police and everything, and they had been there for about ten minutes.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “We had, well, something of an emergency out back.” I didn’t feel like going into detail with these perfect strangers, so Pennington simply waited while they carried everything inside. Once they were in my office setting up the desk, he and I sat down in the reception area.
“I’m going to need the list of people you called,” he said. “It’s possible one of their husbands could be our perpetrator. If he overheard you talking to her, or she mentioned that you were getting an office, he might have followed you or something.” He pointed at the sign on the window. “The real estate agent plastered ‘No Longer Available’ over the for rent sign. That would have been enough to tell him this is probably the one you got.”
I frowned. “You know what? I’ve gotten pretty sensitive to people following me, and I really don’t
think there was anybody on my tail yesterday. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.”
“And I could be wrong. I’m just trying to think of how he might have known that this was going to be your place. It’s just too much of a coincidence to believe he put her in the dumpster behind your office just by chance.”
“Oh, I agree. There’s no doubt in my mind that you’re right, he was planning on her being found dead right behind my new place of business. Nothing else makes any sense, but none of this really makes any sense, anyway. I mean, if he’s after me, why did he bother taking her? If he was planning on her ending up dead, why not leave her in the building when he blew it up?”
“Those are all good questions,” Pennington said. “I’ll be sure to ask them, when we catch the bastard.”
I turned Freda loose again. “If you get to him before I do,” I said. “It was bad enough when I thought he might have blown us up at random, and then you said the bomb was probably in my own office, so that made it kind of personal. Now, he dumps my friend in the trash behind my new office? That’s not just personal, that’s war.”
SIX
Pennington left a few minutes later, going out the back to speak to the crime scene technicians that were digging through the dumpster. I stepped out with him for a moment, just long enough to hear them explain that they weren’t finding much of anything that was of value. I closed the door and locked it again, then went back toward the front.
I looked into my office and saw that the desk was fully assembled. They were in the process of setting up the credenza that came with it, and I stood in the doorway and just admired it all for a moment. One of the guys turned around and looked at me, but then he looked quickly away.
I was used to that, so I went back up front to the reception area and sat down in one of the chairs they had brought in. I took out my phone and checked the time, saw that it was almost 10:30, and called Dex.
“Hey, sexy,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“I’m half surprised you haven’t heard on the radio,” I said. “I swept up some dirt and carried it out to the dumpster behind my office, and found Marsha Wyatt laying inside it. She looks like somebody beat her with a ball bat, and the police think whoever did it probably thought she was dead when they put her in there.”
Dex is one of the fastest thinkers I have ever known. “Somebody is sending you a message,” he said. “There’s no way it’s a coincidence, but who could have known that was your office?”
“That’s what the cops and I are trying to figure out,” I said. “Whoever did this must have had some kind of reason for taking Marsha out of the Outreach before the bomb went off, but it obviously wasn’t to keep her safe. She’s in pretty bad shape. They took her to the hospital, but the paramedics said her jaw is broken and she has a concussion. Might be a while before she’s able to talk.”
“Yeah. Anything new about Nicole? Jimmy left yesterday while I was out with you, and he’s been at the hospital ever since.”
Jimmy Hanks was a friend of Dex’s, a coworker there at the Ford garage. We had introduced him and Nicole sometime back, and they were still dating several times a week. Nicole had actually told me a few days earlier that she was falling in love with Jimmy, but swore me to secrecy. Naturally, I went home and told Dex exactly what she had said, and he laughed because Jimmy had said the same thing to him that very day.
“Detective Pennington said she hasn’t woke up yet,” I said. “Must be hard on Jimmy. I hope she’s okay.”
“Yeah, me too. What are you going to do the rest of the day? Are you going to stay there, all by yourself?”
“Of course not,” I said. “I’ll be staying here with Mr. Smith and Mr. Wesson. Don’t worry, Dex, I can take care of myself.”
“I know that,” he said. “Can’t help being cautious, though. I’m a guy, remember? It comes with having a girlfriend.”
“Well, yeah, but most guys don’t have a girlfriend with a PI license and a concealed carry permit.”
“And I’d be a lot happier if she added a black belt that list. Listen, it’s not that long until lunchtime. I’ll grab us something to eat and come down there on my break.”
“Okay,” I said. “See you then.”
I cut off the call and leaned back, thinking about Marsha and wondering just what she had gone through. From the look of her, it must’ve been horrible. I remembered the paramedic saying it look like the work of a ball bat, and I shivered.
The delivery guys finished up a few minutes later and left. One of them seemed to have no problem with me at all, even shook my hand. The other just wanted to get out of the building as quickly as he could. He hurried out the door as I was signing the ticket that said they had done a good job.
“Sorry about my partner, there,” the guy said. “He’s a little…”
“He’s perfectly normal,” I said. “Most people react that way the first time they see me, I’ve gotten used to it.”
He gave me a halfhearted grin and shrugged. “Listen, would it be rude if I ask…”
I smiled. “It was my former fiancé. I found out about something horrible he had done, something that would have sent him to prison for the rest of his life. He decided he didn’t want me to talk, so he called a friend of his who poured gasoline on me and set me on fire. Somehow, I lived through it.”
His eyes were wide and he shook his head. “That’s horrible,” he said. “What are you going to be doing here? I mean, is this for a business?”
“Actually, I’m a counselor for women in abusive relationships. Having been there, I can understand what it is they’re going through.”
His eyes somehow got a little wider. “Really? Do you have a business card or something? I got a sister who needs to talk to you. Her old man, he’s nuts.”
I still had some of my Outreach business cards, so I scribbled my cell number onto one of them and gave it to him. “Tell her to call me on that number,” I said. “Unfortunately, the Outreach was the one that got blown up yesterday.”
He nodded his head. “Will do,” he said. “By the way, my name is Jason, and my sister is Tammy. I hope I can get her to call you, she really needs to talk to somebody who can get through to her.”
“I’ll do my best if she calls.”
Jason hurried out the door and got into his truck, and he and his partner drove away. I looked around my new office for a couple of minutes, then locked the front door and started putting out the decorations I purchased.
There was a knock on the door a few minutes later, and I looked out to see a man standing there. He was from the telephone company, and he barely even got up the nerve to come inside after getting a look at my face. He installed my phone system, with a phone on the reception desk, one on my desk, and one in the conference room. He managed to give me a quick instruction in how to use the three lines and the hold button, and then he was gone.
I went back to hanging paintings on the wall and putting out fake plants, but then there was another knock. This time, it was Dex standing there with a bag in his hand. I hurried over and unlocked the door to let him in.
“I felt like fish,” Dex said. He handed me a basket of fish planks, six of them with hush puppies and fries.
“Where’s the sauce?” I asked. He reached into the bag and came out with a small bottle of malt vinegar sauce, and I rewarded him with a smile. I twisted off the cap and dumped a generous amount onto my fish, then handed it back to him so he could do the same.
We sat at the reception desk and ate, and I filled him in on more of the details surrounding finding Marsha. He shook his head at the appropriate spots, then asked if I was going to try to see her that afternoon.
“Yeah, I think I will,” I said. “A part of me is just relieved that she didn’t die in the blast, but another part wonders if what she went through might not be even worse than that. My God, getting beaten like that would be torture.”
“Yeah,” Dex said. “Have you called Alfie yet?”
&
nbsp; I guess I looked confused, because he chuckled. “Why should I call Alfie?”
“Somebody has managed to find out you got this place before any record of it could exist. You ask me, that sounds a lot like something a computer hacker could do. You ought to check with Alfie and see what he can find out.”
I narrowed my eye. “You’re thinking maybe somebody got into the realtor’s computer?”
“No,” he said. “I’m thinking somebody has gotten into your cell phone. You said you called several real estate agents and made appointments, but then you canceled the other ones after you saw this place. If somebody was listening in to your calls, it wouldn’t have been hard to know which place you took.”
I stared at him for three more seconds, then yanked out my phone and called Alfie. I told him the entire situation, and he agreed with Dex.
“Somebody is listening in on your calls,” he said. “They might even be tracking your GPS signal, checking where you’ve been. Let me do a little digging and I’ll see what I can find out.”
“He’s going to check it out,” I said. “Can he really do that? Find out if somebody hacked into my phone?”
“If anybody can, he can. Alfie knows more about computers than anyone else I’ve ever known. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard him going off on somebody who thought they were some kind of computer expert, explaining to them just how stupid they really are. It never fails, but he’s right and they end up apologizing.”
We talked for a few more minutes, and then he had to get back to work. I gave him a kiss as he was leaving, then followed him out the door and locked the office behind me. I had decided to go to the hospital and see if Marsha was able to have visitors yet.
I should’ve called first. Because she was obviously the victim of violence, and possibly connected to the bombing case, there were two police officers stationed outside her hospital room. The front desk refused to tell me anything about her, so I took out my phone and called Pennington.
“Hey, it’s Cassie,” I said. “I came to the hospital to see if Marsha might be awake and coherent, but they said you got her under police guard. Any way you could let me in to see her?”