by Anne McAneny
Chapter 41
Zoey’s cab dropped her off about twenty yards from her building due to a huge delivery truck supplying new booths to a nearby diner. Farnham would not approve of her walking alone at this time of night, but what could she do? She paid the cabbie, got out, and soon spotted Hal behind the desk in the lobby. He was chatting to the guy who showed up once a week, always at night, to clean the lobby windows.
Pictures of Phillip Medeiros’s maltreated corpse filled Zoey’s head as she walked. Despite only glancing at the picture for a few seconds, she’d internalized more than she’d realized. The railroad-track ligature marks on his wrists and ankles indicated that his hands and feet had been bound, but the photo had been snapped after someone had untied him. His face had been bloated, the lips swollen and recently cut, his jaw knocked well out of place. Combined, it had given the effect of a door knob reflection, distorted and strained forward toward the viewer. If forced to form a quick hypothesis, Zoey would have said he’d been severely beaten, then tied up and drowned. She pressed her lips together to keep from crying and hoped that Phillip had at least been beaten to a state of unconsciousness so he hadn’t had to suffer through the drowning. Of course, had he been conscious when thrown into the water, he might have been able to save himself.
Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t notice the old Buick across the street until a flicker of light inside it went dark, as if someone had been listening to the radio and suddenly turned if off. She whipped her head around to peer at the car, unable to discern anything inside it except—just maybe—a shadow of a figure in the driver’s seat. The engine purred to life, startling her, and the car pulled out and crept down the street at a slow but steady pace.
Zoey felt her insides tighten. She hurried the final ten feet to the door. As she reached for the handle, Hal opened it from the inside. “Miss Zoey,” he said, “did you walk here? Do you think that’s safe?”
Zoey ignored him and glanced back outside. The car was gone. Why hadn’t she gotten the license plate? She turned to Hal. “Did you notice that car across the street?”
“No. What car?” Hal pressed his nose to the glass to have a look, drawing a look of consternation from the window cleaner.
“I don’t know. A car—some sort of sedan—with someone in it.”
“Could have been Norman, I guess, if his van was out of commission.”
“Who’s Norman?” Zoey asked, growing a bit exasperated.
“Don’t you know Norman? He lives on nine. He usually parks his car over there, but I didn’t see him come down.”
“If it comes back, will you let me know? It was beige, or maybe white, I don’t know. But if someone parks over there, call me, okay?”
“Of course, Miss Zoey. Do you want me to ride the elevator with you?”
“No, Hal, it’s okay. I’m sure whoever broke into my apartment is long gone.”
Zoey thanked Hal and regretted her decision the moment she stepped onto the elevator. It cranked to a stop on four, and the doors creaked open. Zoey waited, her whole body tensed, as she realized that if Corbin Black stepped on, she’d be completely helpless. All she had were the new keys to her apartment, and they’d hardly be a match for a knife. No one appeared. The doors began to close, and then a hand grabbed the edge of the left door. A mottled, age-spotted hand. Zoey felt a scream rise all the way to her throat, but it got no farther. Her body tensed from stem to stern and she readied the keys for attack.
“Oh, hello, Zoey. I’m sorry. Did I startle you?” It was old Mrs. Boyd, using her walker. “Would you hit seven for me, dear? I’m on my way to see Mr. Leonard. He claims to be dying again and has asked me to keep him company. You know, I think that man plays the death card a little too often.” She chuckled. “But I don’t mind.”
Zoey watched her own hand trembling more than Mrs. Boyd’s wobbly legs. She managed to press seven and the two of them headed up together. She dropped off Mrs. Boyd and chastised herself for being so frightened. For God’s sake, she entered caves with deadly snakes at least four times a year. And here she was, scared to her wits by the tiny, liver-spotted hand of an old woman. She rode the elevator to eight and strode to her apartment. Once inside, she locked her new deadbolt and scanned her surroundings. All quiet.
She tried Jake’s cell again, feeling bolder now. But no luck. Anger butted up against the cloud of worry forming in her mind. Where was he? What was he up to? He was the one who was so eager to talk. A frustration over her inability to form a concrete opinion of Jake began to sap her strength. “Enough,” she said aloud. “Love isn’t supposed to be this hard.”
She threw her cell phone back into her purse, and brought her laptop and her mother’s police report to the living room. She sunk into her couch, kicking off anything in her way, and read. There wasn’t much more to the police report than she’d already digested, because Matthew Collette had arrived. Zoey still couldn’t believe the police had allowed that to happen. Must have been some jaded officer at the end of his shift. Zoey indulged her anger for a full minute before softening into Matthew’s point of view. Could she even empathize with him, given his infatuation with Susan? Could she, as a woman, relate to a man whose lover had been raped? Especially a man as ingrained in the military as he had been? He must have felt it his sworn duty to love and protect Susan, and yet, he’d been useless while another man had forced himself upon his wife. The one time he’d failed to take care of her may have been the one time she needed him most. He’d missed his opportunity to prove how much he would sacrifice for her. Zoey sighed. She did believe, based on what Bernadette had said, that Matthew would have died to protect Susan. What would such a failure do to a person? For a man, it had to be humiliating. No. More than that. It had to be destructive to the soul and mind, requiring a massive mental overhaul to even begin the healing process. And then, of course, he’d had to deal with the pregnancy.
Finally, for the first time, she understood how Matthew might have been forever altered by such a monumental failure, and why, in the extreme, he would take his own life.
Deep in thought about her parents, Zoey drifted off to a sporadic sleep on the couch. She dreamed of Jake drowning his brother, of Aunt Eva holding up a dead baby with a cord around its neck, screaming that she didn’t do it, and of her own mother yelling at Corbin Black to change his life. It all transformed into a nightmare in which Magda transformed into Susan and then into Zoey, at whom a huge knife came hurtling out of nowhere.
Zoey awoke with a start. Quick, fleeting glimpses around the apartment helped her remember her whereabouts, but still, her heart raced. She breathed herself back to a normal state of mind and then noticed a blinking icon on her laptop indicating a new email. She clicked on it. It was from Jake, at 10:30 p.m. She checked the time. It was two in the morning. She wriggled around and tried to work out the multiple cricks in her body, feeling a modicum of relief that Jake was alive and well. Guess you’re too wimpy to call, huh, Jake? Not up for a pregnant woman’s wrath? She opened the email.
A terrified cry escaped her lips as she read the contents of the message and clicked on its accompanying photo. No! It couldn’t be. Fear crippled her body. Curling herself into a ball in the corner of the couch, she used her eyes to locate her phone. It was in her purse, ten feet away on the kitchen counter. Could she even get to it without fainting? To find courage, she closed her eyes and, of all things, focused on her mother’s attack. She envisioned Susan getting up after the rape in a dark, lonely corner of a park that had once seemed familiar and safe. Susan hadn’t lain there like a paralyzed, frightened child; she had risen and walked out of the park to report the crime and save others from harm.
Zoey found her strength. She traversed the short distance to her purse, retrieved her phone, and called Detective Farnham.
“Hullo?” said a weary voice. Zoey could hear chatter in the background, as well as car doors slamming. Farnham was either still working his case from earlier or had lucked upon a new one.
/> “Farnham,” she said in a voice barely breaking a whisper, “it’s me, Zoey. He knows about the foretelling. There’s no way he could know, but he does. All the details.”
“Who?” Farnham said in a voice suddenly as alive as an exposed nerve ending.
“Jake.”
“What? Where are you?”
“My apartment.”
“Are you in immediate danger?”
“No.”
“Stay put. I’ll be right over. This body ain’t going nowhere.”
Farnham hung up and Zoey ventured back to her laptop. She stared at the picture that had been attached to Jake’s email. It was a huge boulder with a significant divot in it, large enough to offer protection to one or two people—if, for example, a raging lunatic with a knife was stomping around with blood on his hands. The boulder was on the edge of a wooded area. Behind the boulder, in the background of the photo, was a raging force that remained motionless in the photo, but was undoubtedly rushing by the boulder at this very moment—the Schuylkill River. And slightly out of focus, but still distinguishable by its colors, a Kraft College crew team banner hung from a distant ledge.
Zoey swallowed hard. Inexplicably, she now possessed a picture of the precise location where her mother had foretold her murder. Sent to her by Jake.
Chapter 42
The buzz from Hal didn’t startle Zoey as much as she’d anticipated because she’d been active and thinking for the entire twenty minutes it took Farnham to arrive. The constant mental activity had calmed her and allowed her to prepare her thoughts. Hal told her that Farnham was on his way up.
Zoey paced as she waited. After her call to Farnham, she’d pushed aside her panic and printed both the picture and the bizarre email from Jake. Both were laid out on the kitchen table where she’d switched her light bulb to a blinding 100-watter to better examine every detail of the photo. If this boulder represented the place where she would face her assailant, she wanted to know it in as much detail as possible. She had logged thousands of miles jogging along the banks of the river over the years, but this area looked unfamiliar.
Farnham’s knock shattered her concentration just as she found an on-line site that one of her colleagues had mentioned to her. It allowed her to zoom in on individual pebbles of the earth if she needed to.
Zoey approached the door. This time, she checked the peephole before allowing her cohort in.
“What’s going on?” a haggard but alert Farnham said. He didn’t exhibit any of the impatience Zoey would have if their roles had been reversed at two-thirty in the morning. She led him to the kitchen as she told him about the email.
Farnham shielded his eyes from the glare of the bulb. “Planning an interrogation in here?”
“No. Unfortunately, we’ve got a river bank to deal with.”
He peered down at the printed picture of the boulder overhanging a river bank. It lay like an open dissection on the table. “This was the whole email?”
“No, there was a written message.” She pointed to the other page she’d printed. “Jake and I were supposed to meet tonight at his place around 8:30, but he never called and never showed up. I tried his cell a few times, and so did his editor. He hasn’t answered.”
Farnham, an expert at not reacting when it would give something away, used his skills now to remain neutral. He focused on the message and read aloud, slowly:
“Meet me at the following coordinates: 39 degrees, 57.3 feet North Latitude, 75 degrees, 10.8 feet West Longitude, near the huge boulder. Picture attached. The gift in your hall closet will help you find it. Be there 7 a.m. Tuesday. No sooner. As you can probably guess, it will be a matter of life and death. I have quite a surprise for you. Finally. Don’t bring the police. They’ve been useless so far. We’ll work it out, even if the baby can’t be part of it. I love you.”
Farnham turned to Zoey, his brows forming a decided V above concerned eyes. “What’s in your closet?”
“I haven’t looked yet.”
Farnham questioned her with a curious expression.
“Look,” she said, turning pink with embarrassment, “I’m okay with ancient skulls, but if there’s a freshly chopped head in there, or even a toy Jack-in-the-box, I don’t think I can handle it.”
Farnham grinned. He put a gentle arm around her shoulder and led her to the closet. “I’ll do it,” he said.
“No,” she said. “You know what? I’d like to.”
Farnham grinned again, handing her a plastic glove from his pocket. She put it on. As her hand reached for the knob, her bravado suddenly faded and she felt like the fool in a cheap horror flick. She swallowed and glanced at Farnham who nodded his encouragement. She yanked the door open.
Half a roll of striped wrapping paper fell from its precarious perch and knocked Zoey on the head. She jumped and yelped before laughing nervously. She and Farnham both scanned the closet. Nothing. Just the same old junk piled in a disorderly fashion. But Farnham, with his significant height advantage, spotted something on the shelf above the coats. He pointed to a Tupperware container. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t look familiar.”
Farnham reached up, grabbed the container, and opened it. “It’s a GPS device.” Farnham switched it on. “Looks like it’s preprogrammed with the coordinates he gave you.”
“It’s like some sick game of hot or cold, the prize being my corpse.” Zoey grabbed the device from Farnham. “So this is what the intruder was doing in here the other day.”
“You mean Jake,” Farnham said.
“Maybe.”
“It has to be Jake,” Farnham said. “He said he loved you. He mentioned the baby.”
Zoey returned to the kitchen, Farnham at her heels. She set the GPS device on the counter and pointed to the text of the email. “I don’t think Jake wrote this. It’s all disjointed and… strange.”
“Well, who else would say they loved you?”
Zoey raised a brow to acknowledge Farnham’s unintended slight. “No one,” she answered dryly.
Farnham let it go, his list of love interests pretty limited itself. “As I see it,” he said, “there are two possibilities. The first, which I think you’re leaning towards, is that Jake is being held against his will.”
“And was forced to send this email from his phone, right?”
“Maybe,” Farnham said.
“It would explain the stilted sentences,” Zoey said, “but not the reference to the baby. Jake is the only one who”—Zoey bit down on her lip in some desperate form of denial, but then forced herself to continue—“the only one who wouldn’t want the baby.”
“Who else knows about the pregnancy?”
“Dora Santorini and my mom’s friend, Bernadette. Oh, and a nurse in Virginia, but no worries there. That leaves only Jake. But this email doesn’t sound like him.”
“Jake’s a writer,” Farnham said expectantly, as though Zoey should get it from there.
“Exactly,” Zoey said. “He would make more sense.”
Farnham looked her squarely in the eye. “He could make this email sound however he wants. If he wants you to think it sounds forced, that’s how it’s going to read. He might want you to think he’s being held against his will so you’ll come running.”
Zoey shook her head, not quite able to credit Jake with that level of deception.
“Come on, Zoey,” Farnham said, twisting his lips into a frown. “You said it yourself. No one knows about the pregnancy.”
“Okay,” she said, her energy frantic, her convictions wavering. “So my choice is that my fiancé is being held captive in the middle of the woods at the place where I might be killed, or he’s—”
“Think about that—the scenario you just painted. Jake’s out there in the one place on the entire earth that you don’t want to go. You’ve been suspicious of him. And now he’s telling you to show up alone, playing on your sympathies by making it sound like someone forced him to write this—as if he’s the
one in danger, not you.”
Zoey’s face fell. It all played out so nicely. Besides, what were the odds that Jake could be kidnapped and taken somewhere against his will? He was strong, trained in self-defense, an expert runner with intimate knowledge of the city—hardly one to be intimidated by some run-of-the-mill mugger telling him to get in the car or else. And the likelihood that Jake just happened to mention that Zoey was pregnant—to his kidnapper? Zero. There was absolutely no way for some stranger to know about the pregnancy. But what if—
“Farnham! What if Jake is up against Corbin Black? He’s insane, and his freedom is at stake. What if he has a gun or a knife at Jake’s throat, or worse? And what if—”
Zoey cut her defense argument short and ran to the bathroom. She emerged a moment later, distraught. In her hand was the original pregnancy test, but its once-glowing plus symbol had now turned pale and was crackling with age, no longer readable as positive or negative. “This was my pregnancy test. I threw it out, but there was a second one, and it’s gone. I just turned the whole trash barrel upside down and it’s nowhere to be found.” She leaned in desperately toward Farnham. “Whoever broke in here yesterday must have taken it. They could know that I’m pregnant.”
Farnham didn’t look like he bought it. “Could be, but you know as well as I do, it could also have been Jake. He could have taken that test out of anger. Like some sick souvenir or a form of motivation. You just said he doesn’t want the baby.”
An image of Jake’s brother flashed in Zoey’s mind, and a spark of fear ignited inside her. Both for herself and, ironically, for Jake. She sure didn’t want her next vision of him to be a lifeless corpse. And she couldn’t believe that was what he wanted to do to her. Didn’t she at least need to give him a chance to explain?
“Farnham, treat me like the lawyer we pretended I was earlier. Would you admit, under oath, that it’s at least possible that Corbin Black could have forced Jake to write this? That it presents reasonable doubt as to Jake’s guilt?”