by David Archer
He let out a sigh. “I probably shouldn’t,” he said, “but I will. Give it a minute, and then they should tell you to go on up to her room.”
“Okay, thanks.”
The phone on the desk rang, and the lady picked it up. She was speaking softly, but I saw her look up at me and nod to herself. She put the phone down, then turned to me.
“That was the detective in charge of this lady’s case,” she said. “He said to put you on the list that can go see her. She’s in room four twenty-seven, fourth floor. If the officers up there haven’t been told yet, just tell them to call the detective.”
I thanked her and went to the elevator, rode it up to the fourth floor, and got out. It was easy to spot which room must be Marsha’s, because the two cops were in plain sight. As I walked toward them, one of them noticed me and nudged the other.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m Cassie McGraw, and…”
“Yes, ma’am,” one of them said, staring at my face. “We were told. You can go on in, but I don’t think she’s awake.”
I smiled and thanked him, then stepped inside the room. The lights were dim and the machines were beeping as I walked up and stood beside the hospital bed.
Poor Marsha! Most of her head was wrapped in bandages, and there was literally some sort of bracing around her jaw. There was a tube going into her nose, and she was black and blue all over. I noticed that her right arm was strapped to a board, and there were two different IVs run into it.
“Marsha?” I asked quietly. At first, I didn’t think she was awake at all, but then her eyes fluttered open and she looked up at me. She grunted something, but her jaw wouldn’t move. “No, don’t talk,” I said. “You’ve been hurt pretty badly. Your jaw is broken, and it looks like they’ve got it braced so it can heal.”
She blinked a couple of times, and I saw tears starting to run from her eyes.
“Marsha, do you know what happened?”
Slowly, carefully, she shook her head from side to side.
“Did you see whoever did this to you?”
This time, she nodded. I gave her a smile, and I saw her lips twitch as she tried to return it.
“Did anyone tell you about anything that happened yesterday?”
Her eyes squeezed shut, and her tears flowed steadily. I took that to mean that she’d been told about the bomb.
“Marsha, we’re going to find whoever did this. The police are working on it, and so am I. Did you know the man who did this to you?”
She shook her head again, in the negative.
“Okay, I just wondered. Detective Pennington is in charge of the case, I’m sure he’ll be down here to see you soon. You just need to rest, and he’ll tell you more about what’s going on. I just wanted to come by and see how you were doing.”
Her left hand reached across and grabbed hold of my right hand, which was laying on the rail of the bed. She gripped it tightly, and pulled me toward her. I leaned closer and looked into her eyes.
“What? Is there something you’re trying to say?”
She nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “Do you think you could write something down?”
She nodded, quicker this time. I looked around and found a piece of paper, something that had apparently been left by one of the hospital staff. I flipped it over and found a pen in my purse, then grabbed a magazine that was laying on a side table. I put the pen in her hand, and held the magazine to support the paper.
Marsha is right-handed, but she did a fair job of printing with her left. She wrote slowly, and I was following the letters, reading upside down as she wrote.
N… O… T… K… N… O… W… She finished writing those letters, then pointed at them with the pen and looked up at me.
“You are saying you didn’t know the man that did this?” I asked. “It was a man, right?”
She nodded her head slowly, deliberately. She looked back at the paper and began writing again.
A… N… G… I… E… She pointed at the paper again.
I stared at her, my single eye big and round. “Angie did this to you?”
She shook her head.
“Then what are you trying to say about Angie? They think they found her body in the wreckage, but they’re not sure yet.”
She shook her head again, then went back to the paper.
A… L… I… V… E…
I stared at the word she had written. “Angie is alive?”
Marsha nodded.
My eye still wide, I stared at her for a couple of seconds, letting the implications sink in.
“Marsha, are you saying the guy who did this has her?”
She nodded again.
SEVEN
I grabbed my phone and called Pennington, and he answered on the second ring.
“Jim, it’s Cassie,” I said. “I’ve been talking to Marsha, and she says the guy who took her took Angie, too, at the same time. Marsha thinks Angie is still alive.”
“Stay put,” he said. “I’m actually on my way there, now. Can she talk?”
“No, but she can write. Printing, with her left hand, but she can answer you. Hurry up and get here.” I cut off the call and took hold of Marsha’s hand again. “He’s on the way. Marsha, do you know where he has her? Where he took you?”
She shook her head, and then pulled her hand away and picked up the pen. She seemed to be gaining some confidence with her left hand, because she wrote more quickly this time.
Somewhere close
“Close to where the office was?”
She nodded. Her hand started writing again.
Short ride
“Okay, that’s good. Can you describe him?”
Tall young 25-26 brown hair brown eyes
She closed her eyes for a second, as if concentrating, then started writing again.
Green pants green shirt
“Okay. We’re getting somewhere. What about the vehicle, what kind of car was it?”
Old car blue big
“An old car? Any idea what kind it was? Ford, Chevy?”
She shook her head.
I picked up the paper she’d been writing on and looked it over. She said the guy was tall, mid twenties with brown hair and brown eyes, wearing green pants and a green shirt.
Green pants and shirt. “Was he wearing some kind of uniform?”
She nodded.
“Okay, think,” I said. “Was there any kind of company name on it? Maybe a logo or something, or did it have his name on it?”
She closed her eyes tight and kept them that way for moment. When she opened them, she snatched the paper back, but this time she didn’t write. She drew a cloud, with what looked like a lightning bolt slashing down from it.
It was a logo, and I suspected it had something to do with electricity, but it wasn’t anything I’d ever seen before. I took out my phone and snapped a picture of it, and emailed it to Alfie.
See if you can find out what company uses this logo, I said.
Pennington came in a few minutes later and came to stand right beside me. He looked down at Marsha and smiled.
“Good to see you’re awake,” he said. “Bet you hurt like hell, right?”
The grunt that came from her that time was probably her body’s attempt to laugh at the absurdity of his comment. She winced, then nodded slowly.
“Well, I’ve always heard that hurting means you lived through whatever happened,” he said. “And you did, and a lot of that is thanks to this gal.” He indicated me with a flick of his head. “You were lucky she needed to take out the trash at that moment. Couple more hours without medical attention, and you probably wouldn’t have made it.”
“Geez, Jim,” I said, “a little tact, maybe?”
“Ignore her,” he said to Marsha. “You were lucky, and that’s the truth. I was really hoping you’d be able to talk a bit, but I can see that’s not going to happen soon.” He looked at the paper she was holding. “I brought you a notepad. Think you can write out answers to my q
uestions?”
Marsha nodded. Pennington took the paper and pulled a notepad out of the pocket inside his jacket and handed it to her. She laid it on the magazine.
“Okay, I see Cassie has already been asking some of the right questions. This is a description of the guy who did this?”
Marsha nodded.
“The drawing is a logo,” I said. “The green pants and shirt were part of a company uniform, and it had that logo on it. Any idea what company that could be?”
“Not at the moment, but we got people who can find stuff like that.” He turned back to Marsha. “You know that your office was bombed, right? Did you see this guy plant the bomb?”
Marsha looked at the paper and started writing.
Had a bag. Put it in hall.
“Okay, that fits with what we know. It would have been in the hall, real close to where Cassie’s office was?”
Marsha nodded her head.
“Did he say anything to you before he took you out of there?”
Where is Cassie? Asked about Leanne.
Pennington glanced at me. “Leanne?”
My eye had gone wide. “Oh, Lord,” I said. “Leanne Downey. She was a client, one of Marsha’s clients. Marsha, was Leanne there?”
She nodded, and tears began to flow again. She picked up the pen and started writing once more.
He had gun. Shot Leanne and Brenda. Made me and Angie go with.
Pennington’s face was grim. “She’s right,” he said to me. “We hadn’t released that information, yet, but both of the victims we found inside the building had been shot.” He looked at the paper she had originally been writing on. “You’re saying that wherever he took you was not far from your office? Can you guess how long it took to get there?”
2-3 minutes
Pennington nodded. “Well, that gives us a radius. Excuse me, I’ve got to go make a phone call.”
He stepped just outside the room and took out his phone, but I couldn’t make out exactly what he was saying. At one point I heard him mention Leanne Downey, so I figured he was telling someone to try to confirm her identity. He was on the phone for about ninety seconds, then came back into the room.
“Ms. Wyatt,” he said, “the other woman, Angie. Was she injured when you saw her last?”
Marsha shook her head, and started writing.
He said I was message. Said he was sorry before he hit me.
“What did he hit you with?” Pennington asked.
Metal bar
“You said he told you you were a message. To Cassie?”
Marsha nodded.
“Did he tell you why he was so interested in her?”
This time, she shook her head in the negative. She looked at me, and started crying again.
“Marsha,” I said, “oh, my God, I’m so sorry.”
She wrote again.
Not your fault
I couldn’t think of anything to say. I looked at her for a few seconds, but then my cell phone chimed to tell me I had gotten an email. I yanked it out and looked, and sure enough, it was from Alfie.
That is the old logo from Lightning Electric Supply. Company went out of business three years ago. No joy on your phone. Whoever hacked it didn’t leave fingerprints.
I handed the phone to Pennington and let him read it. He grunted, then handed it back.
“That mean anything to you?”
I shook my head. “No, nothing. They would’ve been out of business before I ever came here.”
“It’s just kind of odd that a guy doing something like this would wear the uniform from a defunct company. If he’s connected to that company, that’s like giving us a free clue.”
“Might be something he picked up at a thrift shop,” I said. “My boyfriend buys old work uniforms, because they can stand up to the grease and stuff.”
He nodded. “Maybe.” He turned back to Marsha. “Ms. Wyatt, can you think of anything else that might help us catch this guy?”
Marsha closed her eyes tight again, but she opened them a moment later and shook her head.
“Well, I’ll let you rest. I’ll probably be back with more questions…”
I interrupted him. “I got a question. Marsha, when did he beat you? Was it this morning?”
She nodded.
“How did he treat you before that? Was he hurting you at all?”
She shook her head, then started writing.
Put us in room and locked it. Brought sandwiches at lunch and chicken last night. Gave us water.
“What about going to the bathroom? Did he let you?”
Bathroom in room. Like in motel.
I looked at Pennington. “What kind of buildings that close to downtown would have bathrooms in the rooms?”
He shrugged. “Could be a lot of them. You know how many offices are empty downtown? There are probably a dozen small office buildings that are completely vacant in that area, but you can bet I’m going to get someone checking them, now. Good job, Cassie.”
A nurse came in. “Hey,” she said. “Doctor said she needs to be resting. We understand you have to talk to her, but you need to make it just a little at a time, okay?”
Pennington looked at the nurse and nodded. “We were just about to leave,” he said. He turned to Marsha and told her he’d be back, then motioned for me to follow him out of the room.
When we got out into the hallway, he stopped and looked at me.
“Alicia was right,” he said. “She told me you’re a natural investigator. I missed a good point there, and you picked it up.”
“I did?”
“Yeah,” he said. “The part about when he beat her. That tells us that he made the decision to try to send you that message sometime this morning, rather than last night. If he’d thought of it last night, she would have been dead by the time you found her.”
“What gets me,” I said, “is that he was treating them decent up until that point. And she said he told her he was sorry. Sorry that he had to do it? Sorry that he was going to kill her?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “About the only thing we do know for sure, now, is that this son of a bitch is out to get you.”
I looked at him for a moment, and then I shook my head. “No,” I said, “he’s not. I’m not sure what it is he’s doing, but he would have known I was going to be at my office, alone, this morning. If he wanted me, that was his chance. Why didn’t he take it?”
“He asked where you were before he left the bomb in the building,” Pennington said, musing. “I took that to mean he was upset that you weren’t there, but maybe I got it wrong. Maybe he was making sure you hadn’t arrived, yet.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense either,” I said. “Any other day, I would have been there. If it hadn’t been for all the red lights, I would’ve made it, I would’ve been inside the building before that bomb went off.”
He looked at me and chewed on the inside of his cheek. “This is one of the most confusing cases I’ve ever seen. Maybe he was planning to grab you with them? That might be why he’d ask where you were.”
“But then I have to go back to the fact that he could have grabbed me this morning. Well, he could’ve tried.”
More cheek chewing. “No, I’m going to stick with my gut on this. I think he was making sure you weren’t there.”
I looked at him. “Wait here a minute,” I said, and I turned around and walked right back into Marsha’s room. The nurse looked up at me, but the look on my face told her not to say a word and she didn’t. I went straight to Marsha’s bedside.
“Marsha,” I began, “when did he ask you where I was? Was he already starting trouble?”
She shook her head and started writing.
No. Asked if you were there, then asked where you were. Angie said late and he took bag into hall. Angie yelled for him to stop and I came out. Leanne and Brenda came out. He looked scared and pulled out gun. Shot them and made me and Angie go with him.
Something wasn’t adding
up, but it took me a second to realize what it was.
“Marsha, they found Nicole inside the building. She was alive, but she’s in a coma. Why didn’t she come out?”
No idea. Didn’t see her.
“Okay,” I said. “You get some rest. I’ll try to come back and see you tomorrow, okay?”
She nodded, and I left the room, letting Freda glare at the nurse one more time on my way out.
“Okay, here’s what I found out,” I said to Pennington. “The guy came in and asked if I was there, and Angie said no. He asked where I was and she told him I was running late. That’s when he went through the door to set the bomb down, and Angie yelled at him to stop. Marsha and Brenda came out to see what was going on, and I guess Leanne followed Marsha. She said he looked scared, and that’s when he pulled out the gun and shot Leanne and Brenda. The thing that’s getting me is that Nicole didn’t come out of her office. Marsha said she never saw her yesterday morning, but they found her inside the building.”
“I might be able to explain that part,” he said. “You’re talking about the woman who was still alive, right? CSI thinks she had just come in the back door when the blast went off. A lot of the building caved in on her, but she didn’t actually get caught in the blast itself. That’s probably why she’s alive.”
Suddenly, I felt kind of stupid. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask where Nicole had been inside the building, I had assumed she was in her office.
“Okay, that makes sense, then.”
“And what you just told me,” he went on, “backs up my theory that he wanted to be sure you were not there. I don’t know why, but he didn’t want you to be caught in the blast. Apparently, he didn’t want to abduct you, either. All that leaves us with is knowing that you are somehow connected to all this, but with no information on how or why.”
I shook my head. “That’s what I want to find out,” I said. “Just what is it that makes him ask about me?”
He stood there and looked at me for another moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “If you come up with any theories, I want to hear them.” He turned and walked away, and I stood there, trying to think of what to do next.