Felonious Jazz

by Bryan Gilmer

  SUNDAY

  Thirty-seven

  The rubs and scrapes, exaggerated through the speaker of the baby monitor on Sarah Rosen’s nightstand, half-woke her. She listened, only partly conscious, to judge whether the boy would whimper and settle himself to snooze again or melt down and demand a bottle now.

  Now someone hummed a melody, something Jacob wasn’t even close to being able to do. She leapt upright in bed, snagging a fingernail on the coverlet. She yanked it free and grabbed the plastic box, pressing its speaker to her ear.

  The louse! Electricity pulsed every nerve in Sarah’s body. Leonard was here to hurt Jacob.

  “Twinkle, twinkle little star,” Leonard now sang in a whisper, “How I wonder what you are.”

  Sweat pricked Sarah’s back under her nightgown, and now it felt like she was having a heart attack. In the speaker, Jacob’s scrapes and social coughs turned into distress whimpers and now a full-throated scream, and she pulled the monitor away from her face and forced herself to go slowly enough to move quietly in the dark. She set the monitor on her nightstand, groped for the drawer pull, slid it open, reached inside it and closed her fingers around the pistol she had bought after Leonard left.

  She knew in that moment that she would kill her son-of-a-bitch husband without hesitation – if she could do it without jeopardizing Jacob.

  She felt the revolver’s weight in her right hand, crept to the door of her room and forced her screaming mind to shut up. She had to be quiet, because if he heard her coming, he might hurt the baby.

  Sarah moved nearly silently on bare feet into the hallway, her breathing ragged, the sweat making the gun feel as if it might slip from her grip, stepping carefully over the section of floor beneath the nightlight, the spot that always creaked. It creaked now. She kept going.

  The soft humming from the monitor she’d left on her nightstand had faded from her hearing, and she couldn’t yet hear Leonard in person around the corner. She struggled to draw a breath into her constricted chest as she took the last three steps to Jacob’s door.

  She shoved the half-open door. It banged against the rubber stopper as she curled around the corner, flipping the switch to turn on the overhead light and screaming – for some reason – “Hey!”

  She was pointing the gun just to the left of Jacob’s empty maple crib. Leonard wasn’t in the nursery.

  JACOB WAS GONE.

  Sarah gave an anguished grunt. She darted through the rest of the house, swiping on every light switch she passed and pointing the gun into empty rooms. In the living room, she grabbed the cordless phone from the end table and punched 9-1-1 with her right index finger, banging the pistol against the phone in the process.

  Instead of the ringing she expected, Leonard’s voice baby-talked in the earpiece of the phone, sounding just as he had through the baby monitor: “Listen to that, little Jacob. It looks like mommy’s discovered you’re with me. She heard you crying, didn’t she? Say bye-bye.”

  Then, in the acid, adult tone he had used with her for the past year: “Um, hey honey, how’s it going; Listen, I didn’t make it by that place to sign those papers, and I’m not sure when I will. I meant to, though, but one thing led to another, and anyway, I just didn’t make it. You know how it is. Anyway, don’t worry about dropping Jacob off at day care tomorrow, okay? I’ll, uh, take care of him. Got to go.”

  “Where are you!” Sarah screamed into the phone, but the call went dead, and when she tried to hang up, she got no dial tone, just electronic near-silence. She scrambled upstairs and found her mobile phone in her room and called the police on that.

  * * *

  The first Wake County deputy who arrived at Sarah’s house found her on her front lawn in her nightgown clutching the pistol, pacing, half crazed with panic. Not knowing for sure who she was, he pointed his own weapon at her and ordered her to drop hers.

  After Sarah explained what happened, the deputy found the transmitting module of the baby monitor – the part with the microphone that normally sat on the changing table next to Jacob’s crib and beamed his cries to her bedside receiver – plugged into an outlet on the front porch of the house. Next to it was a cheap desk telephone with a speakerphone function. A 100-foot cord stretched from that phone around the corner of the house to the gray phone company box screwed onto the siding. The box’s door dangled open, and the porch phone’s cord was plugged into the jack inside. Leonard had wired a new extension to the front porch.

  Then other cops arrived and found that the ringers on the front-porch phone and every other phone in the house had been turned off. Leonard must have turned off the power to the whole house to disable the baby monitor temporarily while Sarah slept. Then he’d used his key to sneak inside, abducted the baby and flipped the switches to silence the phones, since he knew where they all were.

  Then, on his way out, he’d moved the baby monitor transmitter to the front porch and plugged it in there and turned the house power back on. He already had the new telephone installed and waiting. So when he’d called Sarah’s house line on his cell, none of the phones rang, but he was standing on the porch to press the speakerphone button to receive the call.

  After he’d driven away with Jacob, the phone had piped everything he’d said into his cell phone into the baby monitor via the speakerphone. By the time Sarah had picked up the telephone to call the police, Leonard was already miles away – and tying up her phone line.

  Thirty-eight

  Ashlyn steered her VW down the I-95 exit ramp somewhere south of Petersburg, Va. She pulled under a gas station’s giant canopy, and she could see the first hint of dawn along the horizon under its opposite edge. She filled the tank, went inside for a pit stop and bought a 16-ounce cup of surprisingly good coffee – and some peppermint gum to chew after she finished it.

  If she didn’t hit bad traffic, she should be at Jeffrey’s door in a little more than an hour. She was looking forward to surprising him. A bunch of the people in the seminar had been going out to dinner together every night, and last night she’d had a long conversation with a woman about her age who was planning her wedding. That had inspired Ashlyn to surprise Jeffrey by visiting him a week early. Ashlyn had gone to her hotel, packed a few things, slept for a couple of hours and left at 3 a.m.

  She wore the baby-blue halter top and tight jeans that had gotten Jeffrey’s attention last year at Club Oxygen. She hoped he’d still be in bed when she got there, because that was where she wanted him. She savored her naughty thoughts and licked her lips. The boy really got her going.

  Since she was feeling seductive, she listened to a Norah Jones CD, and the time passed quickly.

  The sky brightened as she picked her way through light traffic in downtown Raleigh to the donut building, drove into the alley where Jeffrey was going to put his garage door. She’d probably have to honk her horn to get him to come let her in…

  She found the wooden doors. Writing said, “To Contact Owner,” then gave her own phone number and his cell number. Apparently, he was at her place after all, which was even better, because she had the key and could sneak into bed next to him.

  It wasn’t far to her place. There was Jeff’s car parked by the building. She turned off the engine, pulled down her sun visor and retrieved her purse from the passenger floorboard. She glided on lipstick and touched up her mascara as best she could in the little mirror. She shut the door and locked it. She savored the emotional anticipation of seeing him mixed with the little bit of horniness that only Jeffrey could make well up so reliably.

  She tiptoed to the door and pressed her ear against it. She didn’t hear any sounds. She smiled as she put her key into the deadbolt as gently as she could. It seemed dead quiet inside.

  Ashlyn had an intuition something was wrong.

  She pushed the door open. No one.

  Now the sound of sudden movement.

  “Yes?” A pretty, skinny, young brunette in a huge T-shirt and pair of drawstring shorts appeared around the half-ope
n door, holding a mug of coffee – staring out of Ashlyn’s own apartment at her.

  Ashlyn actually checked the number on the door, even though the key had just worked in the lock. Now she noticed the mug in the woman’s hand: Ashlyn’s own Health Education Association mug. She felt a rush of embarrassment, then a little nausea. And only when Jeff said, “Who is it?” – fury.

  The brunette looked at Ashlyn as if to ask, yeah who are you?

  The door started to close, but then Jeff appeared behind the woman. “Ashlyn!”

  Ashlyn was just absolutely stunned by this. She hung a smile on her face while she struggled to figure out what she should do. She’d been apart from Jeff for a week, and he was already cheating on her in her own damn apartment? Her first impulse was to turn without a word, get into her car and drive back to Baltimore. She would not cry here on this doorstep, that was for sure.

  And now she decided she would not let Jeffrey Swaine off that easily, either. This was her apartment, and she had some cleaning to do. She stiffened the smile.

  “Margaret, this is Ashlyn I was telling you about.” Jeff was trying to act casual, but the boy knew he was in deep damn trouble. His hair was wet from a shower.

  “Oh my god,” this girl Margaret said, reflexively smoothing her hair and looking down at herself. “This is your apartment.” Then, “This must look pretty terrible.” She blushed, switched her coffee to her left hand and extended her right to Ashlyn. Now Ashlyn recognized the clothes Margaret wore. Jeff’s. Ashlyn pushed forward to gain entrance, and the woman awkwardly stepped backward, nearly sloshing coffee over the rim of the mug but still talking: “I’m an old friend of Jeff’s, and we met for dinner last night because I’m in town for work, but I had a little too much to drink, and he was nice enough to let me stay here. On the sofa.”

  “Yes,” Ashlyn said, imagining that her smile looked crazed. “You’re his girlfriend from college.”

  Margaret took another step backward, all pedicured bare feet and smooth, toned legs. Ashlyn pushed aside her insecurities about her own legs. Her hand vibrated as she finally extended it to touch the woman’s fingers. She drew back quickly, both as a snub and to hide her trembling.

  She stepped in and looked at the man she’d felt closer to than anyone else in her adult life and wondered whether she really knew a damned thing about him. She’d never been so mad and hurt at the same time. Ashlyn scrutinized the sofa, realizing she was desperate for evidence the little slut had actually slept there.

  Past the far end, a blanket was folded on the floor with a bed pillow on top.

  After an initial surge of relief, Ashlyn realized that even if there had been no sex, which she would be a fool to believe, this was all a huge violation of their relationship. It was even more heartbreaking if Jeff was having sleepovers with old girlfriends than if he’d met some slut in a bar.

  Jeff seemed to be deciding whether he should approach Ashlyn for a kiss. His cluelessness was infuriating! Ashlyn stepped around Margaret, walked to her boyfriend, and threw her arms around him. “Hello, sweetheart,” she said, a name she never called him.

  He tensed. Margaret managed an uncomfortable smile. Then Ashlyn walked around Jeff into the kitchen, searched through the cabinets for another clean mug and poured herself coffee. She walked back to the living room and sat at the end of the sofa with the pillow. Now she could smell the woman’s perfume on it. Another favorable bit of evidence, she admitted.

  Both of them just stood looking at her for a second before they realized they should sit, too. Margaret sat on the front edge of the opposite end of the couch, and Jeff did some more calculating before he finally pulled a chair over from the dining table. The black dress that hung over the back of another chair puddled onto the floor when he jostled the table.

  “I would be so pissed off right now if I were you,” Margaret said, trying to cultivate girl-to-girl chumminess.

  Jeff set his chair at the end of the couch nearest Ashlyn.

  “Why?” Ashlyn said breezily. “You slept on the couch.”

  “Still, it’s so embarrassing.” Margaret turned toward her, making eye contact. “He was telling me all about you, that you were at that conference in Baltimore, how you met, how long you’ve been dating. I was in town playing a concert – I’m a violinist. I invited Jeff to dinner afterward to catch up. We had some wine, and I was worried about him driving too far, so he offered to let me sleep here so he didn’t have to take me all the way downtown. I slept right there. I have a boyfriend myself.”

  Ashlyn suppressed a sneer, nodded and reached over to pat Jeff on the knee. She thought, well, what’s the big deal if all you were doing was taking my boyfriend out to dinner in that sexy dress and drinking to excess together before coming back to my apartment in the middle of the night?

  Ashlyn smiled at Margaret with her mouth and frowned with her eyes. “Why don’t we all go to brunch? You and I can get to know each other.”

  Jeff took a breath, started to say something, then simply breathed out and shut his mouth.

  Thirty-nine

  EmmaJane sat in the filthy, tiny room and cried. She had done this lots of times before, and really, she was kind of good at it and liked it. But no one had ever forced her to do it before. So this was totally creepy. The weird, bearded guy was making her.

  This was why he had kidnapped her, EmmaJane realized. To babysit.

  To, like, stay here at this old house wherever and take care of this little baby. Why was this baby here?

  He was cuuuuute. And he was hollering. She snuggled the sweetie on her lap the best she could and tried to figure out why he wouldn’t stop crying. Probably because EmmaJane was crying, she realized as one of her tears dropped onto his forehead.

  She didn’t even know the baby’s name, so she just decided to use the boy name she’d picked when she and Katie’d come up with names for their future children.

  “Dylin, honey, it’s okay. I’munna take care of you.” She wiped her nose and eyes on the sleeve of her hoodie. She really needed to take a shower. She had slept in these same clothes. Gross.

  The big creeper had opened the door about 10 minutes before, and EmmaJane had curled herself into a ball in the corner, afraid he was a pervert and was going to, like, assault her, but he hadn’t paid any attention to her. First he’d laid the screaming baby on the carpet in the middle of the room. Then he’d dragged in all these boxes of baby supplies.

  EmmaJane bounced Dylin on her knee a little and scooted over to the boxes on her butt. She would start with the diapers. She’d never sat for a baby this tiny, but she had changed a lot of diapers. She opened the big box and got one out. It took a while, but she finally got the baby’s butt clean and a new diaper on him (she folded the nasty one together with the tabs and put in the bucket the guy had left for her to, like, pee in or whatever), but Dylin was still crying, maybe a little bit louder than before.

  The sound made EmmaJane feel different than she ever had before. Somehow, she just knew that Dylin must be hungry. So she picked up one of the big cans of the powdered milk stuff. Next to it, there was a baby bottle still new in a box. EmmaJane read the instructions on the can and the bottle box, and it said to like, boil the nipple, but she didn’t have any way to do that. Dylin needed to eat. She hoped it would be okay. She scooped out powder from the can, poured in Aquafina from a new bottle, measuring by the scale on the side of the Avent Nurser, and shook it up.

  She curled Dylin against her chest and put the nipple to his lips. He shut his eyes, stopped crying in a second and stretched his lips around the fake boob and started suckling.

  EmmaJane sniffed up the last of her own tears. Somehow, giving the little guy his milk made EmmaJane feel safer, too.

  Forty

  Leonard yawned broadly and scooped up a marigold with his trowel, then re-buried it upside down. He wore train engineer overalls and a ball cap. He had the wagon stashed in front of a different apartment building in the complex. People who saw him woul
d think he was just some nameless contract landscaper some nameless real estate investment trust had hired to maintain franken-plants at its just-like-everywhere-else Class-A apartment complex. He dug up another marigold and buried it bloom-down. It cracked him up.

  His heart was still beating kind of fast. Acting like the gardener was his backup plan, and he had been forced to resort to it right away. The blonde woman from J. Davis’ photo had showed up at the apartment door right as he was about to walk up the steps. They had nearly bumped into each other on the sidewalk. Then the brunette had answered the door in her nightclothes. And there hadn’t been a fight! The girls had shaken hands, and now they were all still inside together. Maybe the blonde was Swaine’s sister, but he didn’t think so from the way he’d seen them standing in that picture ... The brunette definitely wasn’t.

  At any rate, Leonard had to stay put. Three against one wasn’t good odds, even if two of them were chicks.

  After learning where the investigator was staying last night, Leonard had calmed down and gone back to the brew pub and played his second set. He had known Mr. Investigator and the brunette would be inside all night. Leonard was no pervert, so there was no reason to waste his time watching the place when he had the gig and then other important elements of his composition to attend to. He felt like a conductor – he had J. Davis staked out; The Soulless Bitch would be totally freaking out by now, and he’d kidnapped the little hottie from the subdivision and had her taking care of J. Davis’ bastard child. Everything was in harmony, Leonard figured. He would introduce dissonance at just the right moment.

  Leonard thought about how humble, frightened and submissive the teenager was locked in a room at his house, the total opposite of when she had been prancing down the sidewalk in her neighborhood. Yes, her knowing who was in control was a good feeling. It reminded Leonard that it was about time for the rape track. He started thinking about the composition.