Don't Be Afraid

by Rebecca Drake

  Maybe Meredith wasn’t home after all. Amy let herself in and called out a loud “hello” just in case. She got no response. She saw car keys and a leather purse dumped on the elegant console table in the hall and called louder, “Hello? Meredith?”

  She tucked the keys in the purse and hung it out of sight in the hall closet.

  Moving swiftly, Amy straightened couch cushions in the family room, regretting that there wasn’t enough time to start a fire in the huge stone hearth. She entered the expansive kitchen, where she found overflowing shopping bags, an empty Diet Coke can and an open bottle of rum.

  “Great, just great,” Amy muttered. She screwed the cap back on the rum bottle and whisked it and the Diet Coke can into the fridge. Then she looked around for a place to stash the shopping bags. She dragged them into the front hall closet and arranged them in a neat row. It took a precious six minutes, but the place was spotless when she was finished and everybody knew that kitchens were one of the biggest factors in home sales.

  She ran up the stairs to check the second floor, her heels sinking into the plush carpeting. She moved quickly through the bedrooms, each empty and pristine. They were carefully and tastefully decorated. It was like being in a museum, Amy thought, running a hand over a Chippendale highboy. Everything was exquisite, but there was something sterile about it.

  The master bedroom was at the opposite end of the hall. The door was closed but a thin crack of light peeked out from underneath the frame. She knocked twice in rapid succession and waited. Nothing, but she definitely heard voices. She knocked harder. Again, nothing. She pressed her ear against the door and heard canned laughter.

  She had a sudden vision of a drunken Meredith sprawled in front of the TV and held back a nervous giggle as she imagined explaining that to the potential buyers.

  Slowly, she turned the knob, wondering what Meredith’s reaction would be if she wasn’t drunk and Amy walked in on her. Braced for an explosion, she was surprised to see the large empty bed. Well, empty except for a small shopping bag from an overpriced skin care boutique. Picking up after Meredith was never Meredith’s job.

  The entertainment center opposite the bed was closed. The TV dialogue was coming from the bathroom. Fantastic, Amy thought. The lawyer and her husband would arrive just in time to join the home’s owner in the master bath.

  “Meredith?” she called, expecting the woman to step out the door, screaming about invasion of privacy. Only she didn’t. “Meredith,” she called loudly, one last time before pushing open the bathroom door.

  RED. This was the first thing she registered followed immediately by BODY, then BLOOD. The words screamed through her head as she stared at what had been Meredith Chomsky. She was hanging by her hands and her hair from the back wall. Her lower body was sprawled, legs akimbo, in the water, which was red.

  It looked as if nails had been driven through her palms, which were shredding from the weight of her body. Her long blond hair had been yanked up and also nailed, holding her head forward so that Amy could see the sightless red sockets where her eyes had been.

  She bolted from the room, gagging and struggling to find her cell phone. Clutching the banister with one hand, she stumbled down the steps as she dialed 911.

  “What’s your emergency?” The female voice was nasally and disinterested.

  “I need the police.”

  “What’s your emergency?” the voice repeated more loudly.

  “A woman’s dead. She’s in her tub. There’s a lot of blood.”

  “How do you know she’s dead?”

  “There’s blood . . . eyes gone . . . she’s dead.” Amy struggled to find the words.

  “What’s your address?”

  “Oh, God, um, something Brindle Lane.” She tried to think straight. “Two-fifty Brindle Lane!”

  “Ma’am, I’m dispatching someone right now. You need to calm down.”

  “I’m in a client’s home and she’s dead in a tub full of blood!” Amy cried. “Why in the hell should I calm down?”

  “Don’t yell at me, ma’am, I’m just doing my job.”

  “Oh, God. Just get the detectives. Juarez. Detective Juarez. And his partner. The other guy. Pale, short, bad glasses? Do you know who I mean?”

  “The police are coming, ma’am, just try to calm down.”

  That was a ludicrous suggestion, but Amy was far too stressed out to complain.

  She made it to the bottom of the stairs when she realized that she couldn’t escape. Not without a car. Amy panicked, running for the front door as if she could flee on foot, but as she passed the hall closet, she remembered Meredith’s keys.

  Yanking open the closet door, she ripped the purse from its hook and held it upside down so the keys spilled out on the floor, along with everything else. Scooping them up, she ran through the kitchen for the garage. She pushed a button on the key ring. The gleaming black Mercedes SUV opened. Amy slid onto the smooth leather of the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut, hitting the lock button. Only then did she realize that she hadn’t opened the garage door.

  There had to be a button on the key ring, but none of the ones she pushed did more than turn on the lights or unlock the door. Terrified, she hit the lock button again and searched the car for a garage opener. There was a manila envelope addressed to Meredith Chomsky on the toffee-colored leather passenger seat. The print looked familiar and there was no return address, but Amy didn’t really know what it was until she found a second envelope within the first. Only the word written on the outside of the envelope was different: SLUT.

  Inside were six photos, just like the packet sent to Sheila, and also just like Sheila’s the pictures were of Meredith naked, lounging in her bedroom or getting undressed. Amy sifted through them rapidly.

  “Put your hands in the air and step out of the vehicle!”

  A cop stood in the doorway, gun drawn. Amy dropped the photos and held up her hands.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m the one who—”

  “Get out of the vehicle! Now!”

  Chapter 14

  Acutely aware of the gun pointing at her, Amy scooted across the leather seat with her hands in the air. She dropped them to push open the car door.

  “Hands up! Keep them where I can see them!”

  She shot them back up and nudged the door open with her knee. It was a long drop from the SUV. She slipped out of the car, landing on the garage floor with her arms wobbling from the effort to keep her balance in heels.

  Without taking his eyes or his gun off her, the cop reached back a hand and pushed a button on the wall. The garage door rose with a whir, folding into the ceiling and there stood another cop with his gun aimed straight at her.

  “Turn and face the car,” cop number one ordered.

  “Listen, I’m the one—”

  “Face the car!”

  Angry, as well as afraid, Amy did as he said, turning slowly, her hands still up in the air. “Please listen—”

  “Put your hands on the car, palms down!”

  Amy smacked her palms down on the cold metal. “I’m the one who called the police, damn it!”

  Cop number two moved closer and then Amy flinched as the first cop’s hands touched her waist and then moved quickly over her body, patting her down.

  She blinked back tears and held still, resisting the urge to kick the guy. He stepped back after a few seconds.

  “Okay, you can turn around.”

  Suddenly, they wanted the information she’d been trying to give them all along. Who was she? What was she doing in the car? What was she doing with the photos?

  She explained as quickly and coherently as she could, realizing that they hadn’t found Meredith yet. Cop number one stepped back into the house. Cop number two led her outside to the patrol car she hadn’t heard pull up, just as another police car, siren loudly blaring, came up the drive, followed by an ambulance.

  Amy sat in the backseat of the patrol car, under some hybrid of house arre
st. Car arrest? They hadn’t actually said she was being arrested, but they had, very pointedly, advised her to stay.

  More patrol cars screamed up the drive, followed by plain cars and a coroner’s van. Soon the quiet neighborhood was filled with the squeal of sirens and the static rasp of police radios.

  Amy saw Detective Juarez arrive with his partner and hurry into the house. Then she was interviewed by a seemingly endless stream of police officers, all of them quizzing her about the same things: What time did she find the body? Where was she before that? Did she know the victim?

  She had no idea how much time passed, only that it seemed to go on forever. It was like Sheila all over again, only this time the detectives wanted her to stay.

  At some point, she began to shake all over. The paramedics said it was shock. She didn’t even register who they were until the man handing her a blanket addressed her by name. Then she realized that he was the same emergency response worker who’d done such a great job with Emma. She saw his dangling ID, Ryan something. She tried to focus, trying to tell him that this death was the same as Sheila’s, but he didn’t seem to know what she meant.

  “It’s okay, Ms. Moran, you just need to sit here and let us take care of it.” He guided her from the patrol car to the back of their truck and she waited there, the rough blanket around her shoulders.

  She’d forgotten all about the lawyer and her husband until they pulled up with their son. They’d gotten lost and had clearly been bickering until they saw all the police. Amy briefly explained the situation.

  “Cool!” the young boy declared when he saw the cops and the ambulance, but his parents looked horrified.

  “I’m so sorry this didn’t work out,” Amy said, striving to sound professional and knowing how absurd it was to even care under the circumstances. “We’ll try and reschedule at the earliest possible time,” she said, as if it were something as innocuous as bad weather preventing them from viewing the property.

  Ryan appeared with a bottle of water, holding it for her because she couldn’t manage, water slopping over the sides as she choked down a mouthful.

  “Easy,” he said. “It’s okay. Just slow down and drink it.”

  When she was finished, she thanked him, apologizing for her nerves. “Just a little shaky,” she said.

  “Totally understandable,” Ryan said. “Was she a friend?”

  “No. Just a client. I’m a realtor.” Amy indicated the Braxton Realty sign that had finally been posted in the yard. “I’m selling her home. Or I was. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”

  “Are you sure there isn’t someone I can call to be with you? Your husband?”

  “I’m not married,” she said, then realized that he was looking at the wedding band she still hadn’t taken off. “Well, I’m separated. Divorce in the works. So no, I don’t have a husband to call.”

  “Maybe a friend?”

  “My closest friend in this town is dead,” Amy said, the tears she’d held back suddenly spilling over. “She was killed just like this woman.”

  “Jesus! That’s terrible!” He reached past her and found some tissues for her in the ambulance. “Here.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I wish there was more I could do.”

  His partner came around to the back of the truck. “We got another call we got to take.”

  He frowned and walked around the side of the vehicle with her while Amy mopped her face and blew her nose, trying to regain some sort of control. Ryan reappeared.

  “Look, I’m sorry, but we’ve got to go. Another emergency. But we could drop you off at the hospital on our way.”

  Amy shook her head. “No, I’m okay. I don’t need the hospital. I just need to get home. Emma needs me.”

  He frowned again, clearly ambivalent about leaving.

  “Then at least let’s get you somewhere warm,” he said, ushering her up to the house. They were stopped in the hall by the young cop. She was to wait outside, he apologetically told her, and the detectives would come to talk to her soon.

  “She’s not waiting outside, it’s too cold,” Ryan said. “If you want her here, then she needs to sit inside.”

  So she was ushered into the living room and offered one of the vast club chairs near the fireplace. Twenty minutes of feet tramping up and down the stairs and loud voices followed, but every officer who passed by the room ignored her.

  She suddenly thought to call Chloe, pulling out her cell phone and trying to steady her voice while she explained, without detail, what had happened.

  Emma was asleep and breathing fine, Chloe said. She’d just checked on her. That relieved some of Amy’s anxiety, but she kept thinking of the photos she’d found and the similarities between this death and Sheila’s.

  She glanced at her watch and realized that the cab she’d taken to Meredith’s house would be arriving any minute to take her back home. As she got up to check on it, Detectives Juarez and Black finally came downstairs and over to talk to her. They looked grim and Juarez jotted down details of what she said while Black kept giving her searching looks that she found disconcerting.

  “What time did you say you made it back here, Mrs. Moran?” he said.

  “I’m not sure. Seven? Seven-fifteen? I went home after the last showing and made my daughter dinner. I came here as soon as the babysitter arrived.”

  “And Mrs. Chomsky was expecting you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you let yourself into the house?”

  “I wasn’t expecting Meredith—Mrs. Chomsky—to be home. She knew there was a showing and usually that’s done without the owner on the property.”

  Detective Black gave a grunt that might have been acknowledgment or dissent and he produced the manila envelope that he had tucked under one arm.

  “What were you doing with these photos, Mrs. Moran?”

  Amy sighed. Not this again. “As I explained to the other officer, they were in the car. I found them.”

  “Weren’t you putting them in the car?”

  “No!”

  “You’re a photographer, Mrs. Moran. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes.” She should have seen this coming, but she hadn’t. Now going into the car seemed like the stupidest thing she’d ever done.

  “Didn’t you take these photos, Mrs. Moran?”

  “No!”

  “And the photos of Sheila Sylvester?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  He simply stared at her, a slight smile—or was it a smirk?—hovering around his lips. Detective Juarez didn’t say a word, but he’d taken the mailer from his partner and was examining the photos.

  “You could have taken these photos, though. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Moran?” Black said.

  “I could have, but I didn’t.”

  “Where were these photos developed?”

  “I have no idea,” Amy said.

  “You can’t tell from the photos?”

  “Sometimes there’s a serial number,” Amy said, holding out her hand for a photo. Juarez passed one to her and Amy caught a brief glimpse of a naked Meredith gazing at herself in a mirror before flipping the photo over to examine the back.

  It was clean and she flipped back to the front, looking less at the photo itself than at the quality of the photo, reducing Meredith’s black-and-white image to so many pixels.

  “I think these are digital prints,” she said after a minute. “They’re probably produced from a computer printer.”

  Black simply nodded, but Juarez was staring intently at the other photos.

  “How can you tell that?” he asked.

  “This is high-quality paper,” Amy said, “but the resolution is ever so slightly different from regular film.”

  “So these could be done on a home computer? Not a photo lab?”

  Amy nodded. “You have to have a little expertise, but you don’t have to be a professional photographer to do this.”

  “But you could be, right?” Detective Black
said. It was definitely a smirk.

  “I didn’t take the photos, detective,” Amy said, tersely. “Either set. I think I’ve given you as much information as I can and I really need to get home to my daughter. Now.”

  She didn’t wait for their permission to leave, just turned and headed for the door.

  “Do you have any trips planned, Mrs. Moran?” Detective Black called after her, surprising Amy. She turned to shake her head at him.

  “Good,” he said and gave her a sinister smile. “Don’t leave town.”

  Chapter 15

  Guy stretched out on his couch and switched on the TV, wondering if there was any coverage yet. Surely at least one young, intrepid reporter had listened to a police scanner and arrived in time to pick up an exclusive.

  Not that the police would have much to say. There wasn’t any danger of leaving incriminating evidence behind. He’d taken care of that immediately, just as he always did.

  It was simple, really, a matter of making sure that everything that came into proximity with the body was disposable, and slipping off those paper clothes and the latex gloves, bagging them and sending the bag down an incinerator chute of a neighboring apartment building.

  Underneath the medical supply store paper pants and smock, he always wore regular clothes: cheap, dark denim jeans and a Hanes T-shirt, clothes for the masses and sold in masses at low-cost warehouse stores, which was exactly where he’d bought them. Generic sneakers were covered in paper hospital booties, easy to slip on and off and also easy to burn. He’d taken to covering his hair with the plastic shower caps found in most major hotel chains.

  By far the hardest thing about the whole operation was getting the paper bag containing the paper clothing safely down the incinerator. A resident stopped him once, eyed him suspiciously and informed him that strangers weren’t allowed to dispose of their garbage in that building. He pretended to be a visiting family member and that had been the end of it. But now he was much more careful, scanning the halls for busybodies before making the drop-off.