by T. R. Ragan
As soon as she exited the car, she heard a distinct call for help coming from Lindsay Norton’s neighbor’s place—the creeper’s house. Leaning back into the car, she grabbed her cell phone, then shut the door and hurried across the street. The last time she’d approached the house was when Olivia had gone to the front door and got all pissy after the creeper took her picture.
This time Zee reached over the side gate and realized there was a padlock. Weird. Another shout from inside got her moving. Holding on to the top of the gate, she jumped as high as she could, then pulled with her arms and pushed with her feet until she could get one leg and then the other over the top. She dropped to the other side.
She wanted to yell back to the person, tell whoever it was that she was trying to get inside, but that would only alert the neighbors to the fact that she was trespassing. The thought that she might be hallucinating or paranoid stopped her from calling the police or running to a neighbor for help. She needed to be absolutely sure something was wrong before she did anything rash.
Go back to the car and ignore the shouts for help! Francis said.
Call Jessie. She’ll know what to do.
“Quiet,” Zee told the voices. “Jessie said if I didn’t see anyone getting hurt, I was supposed to mind my own business. I’ll just take a quick look around, and if I don’t see anyone, I’ll return to the car and forget about it.”
Once she got to the backyard, the cries for help grew louder.
Panicked, she ran from door to door, and then window to window, but the house was locked up tight. She stood in place for a moment. When she looked up, she noticed one of the windows on the second story was a third of the way open. Upon further analysis, she realized the only way to reach the window would be to climb the big oak tree. She wasn’t exactly limber, but she’d gotten over the gate, hadn’t she?
You can do it, came another voice inside her head. It was Marion, the voice of reason and sometimes compassion.
The first two branches were the easiest to climb, and for a minute or so Zee thought she was quite brilliant. But the next branch was a different story. It was too high for her to reach. She would have to straddle the trunk of the tree and inch her way up or jump for it. What if she jumped and then missed altogether? That thought worried her. Or what if she jumped, hung from the limb, and then grew too tired to swing her legs over the branch? She was already far enough up that she could break her leg.
Definitely a conundrum, Francis said.
Don’t do it, Lucy warned. You’ll fall for sure and break your neck.
Praying the voices would shut the hell up, Zee hugged the trunk of tree with her arms and legs and began her slow ascent. The tree bark poked at her arms and into the fleshy part of her inner thighs. Painful, but she wasn’t turning back now.
The cries for help were coming less often, but that didn’t stop her from continuing. When she reached the next limb and maneuvered her body so that she could stand on the branch, she laughed and jabbed a finger into the air. “I did it!”
If you work hard and do your best, you can do anything. “That’s right, Deanne!”
Zee could see right into Lindsay Norton’s backyard. And speak of the devil. Beans and cheese! What was Lindsay Norton doing? The woman was standing in the middle of the lawn, doing squats and lunges without any problem whatsoever.
Zee reached into her back pocket for her phone, set it to video, and began taping just as Lindsay Norton picked up a big ol’ kettle bell and began swinging it between her legs.
Why hadn’t the woman heard the screams, she wondered. And then she saw the wires hanging from her headphones. She was obviously working out to music.
If you’re going to do this, Francis warned, you better get in and get out.
Zee had almost forgotten why she was in the tree to begin with. She quickly put her phone away and continued. It wasn’t until it came time to scale the roof that she fully questioned her sanity, something she tried so desperately to hold on to. What was I thinking?
We warned you! Only a fool would try to crawl to that window.
Zee held on to a branch above her head as she stepped onto the roof. She stood still for a few seconds, trying to get a feel for the terrain. It felt like sandpaper beneath her shoes. That was good.
She looked at the window.
Only about five feet to go.
She would do a slow sort of crab-walk, she decided. With splayed fingers flat on the prickly roof, she took her first step, and then another, and another.
It’s not so bad, she thought right as her foot slipped and she lost her balance. Flailing, she reached above her head, thankful when her right hand got a grip on the window frame.
Breathing hard, she hung sideways for a few seconds before pulling herself upward. When she finally managed to open the window wide enough to pull herself through, she fell to the carpeted floor, cursing herself for being so foolish.
After catching her breath, she lifted her head and looked around. The room she was in was maybe twelve by twelve. There were boxes stacked high against every wall. No furniture at all. After getting to her feet, she tiptoed across the room to the door, then peeked out and saw a long hallway.
There was a door on each end and a stairway. She’d made it to the first door when she heard the same cry for help. It was coming from downstairs. Whoever it was had grown hoarse and lost their ability to shout. Without bothering to check the other rooms, Zee ran for the stairs, taking two steps at a time until she was at the front door. She peeked out the window—she could see her car a block away. Turning away from the door, she walked hurriedly through a family room area and into a short hallway.
“Where are you?” she said in a loud whisper.
The cries led her to a bedroom. The man on the bed had been blindfolded and stripped naked. His wrists and ankles were cuffed to the bedposts. From the looks of things, he’d chewed off the duct tape that had once covered his mouth.
“I’m here,” she told him.
“Please help me,” he croaked.
“I’m going to do everything I can to get you out of here.” Zee looked around. Goose bumps covered her arms. Five different cameras on tripods had been set up in the room, circling the bed. They were all at varying heights and angles. Weirded out by what she was seeing, Zee began opening and closing drawers. “Do you know where he keeps the key to your cuffs?”
“Around his neck,” he said.
Fuck. That wasn’t good. The cuffs were made of metal, not plastic. How was she going to get them off him?
And then she remembered Jessie’s cop friend. She needed to call him. She pulled out her phone again and began to scroll through her contact list. After Jessie had given her the business card, she’d added him to the list, but she couldn’t remember his name. Was it Rollin?
Rollin. She went to the names listed under R.
Nope. Not Rollin.
“La-la-la. Oh, my. Zippy-doo-dah. Help me.”
“What are you doing?”
“Oh, sorry.” Spotting a sweater slung over the back of a chair in the corner of the room, she grabbed it and used it to cover his man parts; then she took off his blindfold. “I can’t get these cuffs off you. I’m going to call for help. Colin! That’s it. Colin Grayson.” She scrolled back up, found his name, and hit the “Call” button. “Pick up. Pick up.”
“Hello.”
“Colin Grayson?”
“Who is this?”
“Zee Gatley. Jessie told me I could call you if I ever found myself in danger.”
Through the curtains, she saw shadows as a car pulled into the driveway. “Oh no! He’s here. I’ve got to hide.”
“What’s going on, Zee? Where are you?”
She rattled off Lindsay Norton’s address. “It’s the house to the left, and it belongs to Rudy Archer. Inside the house I found a man cuffed to a bed. He’s been screaming for hours, but I can’t get him loose because of the cuffs. The creeper dude just got home. Oh my God. I hear t
he door. I gotta go.” She hung up the phone, then hurried to the bed and put the blindfold back on the guy. Her heart was about to explode inside her chest. How did she get herself into these predicaments? If she had simply followed Jessie’s orders and headed back to the office, she wouldn’t be in this mess.
“Where are you?” the man asked.
“Shhh. Help is on the way. I promise!” She scrambled around the room, looking for a place to hide.
In the closet, Marion told her. Hurry!
“Don’t leave me!”
Grabbing the sweater from his lower half, she tossed it back on the chair where she’d found it. She then forced herself to stop and think. Her gaze fixated on the closet door. “Everything is going to be fine,” she told the naked man. “I’ll be in the closet until the police arrive.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Jessie knocked on Rene Steele’s front door. When nobody appeared, she rang the doorbell. There was a car in the driveway, and she could see lights on inside the house.
She knocked again, louder than before. “Rene Steele,” she said in case the woman was standing nearby. “My name is Jessie Cole. It’s very important that I talk to you.”
Nothing.
She waited a few minutes and then started off down the walkway back toward her car. When she heard the door open behind her, she turned around and saw Rene Steele holding a rifle, the barrel pointed right at her. Oh, shit.
“Getz youz off my property ’fore I shoot!”
Double shit. The woman’s words were slurred, and her body swayed. She was drunk.
Jessie raised her hands in the air in surrender. “I was just leaving. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
“I don’t like strangers here on my prop—look! Youz messing my grass.”
Jessie looked at her feet, which were clearly on the sidewalk. Besides, there was no lawn, just brown, dried-up weeds. Jessie wasn’t sure what to do. If she walked away, would the woman shoot? She was about to do just that when the skinny little gray-haired woman swayed to her right as if a strong wind was pushing her over. Rene lost her balance and tumbled to the ground, arms flailing as she tried to break her fall. The gun dropped and clattered across the stoop.
Jessie ran to help her. Rene was struggling to move. Blood oozed from her nose and the corner of her mouth.
Feeling queasy, Jessie looked away as she helped the woman into the house. “Come on. Let’s get you inside so I can see if you need to go to the hospital.”
“Not going to no hospital.”
“Okay, that’s fine. Just let me help you, okay?”
“I don’t have money if you’re meaning to rob me.”
“I’m not a thief.”
Jessie led her to the threadbare couch in the main room and helped her take a seat. Rene reached for a throw blanket that had more holes than cloth and put it over her knees. Jessie headed off to find something to clean her up with. The house smelled like mothballs. The kitchen sink was filled to the brim with unwashed dishes. Jessie found a rag in a bottom drawer and put it under the faucet. When she returned, Rene’s head had fallen back onto the cushioned seat.
Rene’s mouth was wide-open. She wasn’t yet sixty, but the spider veins and the jaundiced skin made her look closer to seventy.
“Here you go,” Jessie said, startling the woman.
Rene hardly moved as Jessie did her best to clean her up without making eye contact with the blood. She’d never done well with blood. If she ever found time, she planned to see a therapist and hopefully find a way to deal with her extreme aversion to it.
Jessie kept the cloth over Rene’s nose. If she didn’t, they would both pass out. “It looks like you chipped a tooth. Here—hold this to your nose to stop the bleeding. Can I get you some ibuprofen?”
Rene waved a frail hand toward the kitchen. “Just get me that bottle of whiskey by the stove. That’s all I need.”
Jessie did as she asked. She also brought Rene a glass of water, glad to see her nose had stopped bleeding when she set the bloodied cloth to the side.
As the woman sipped her whiskey, Jessie took the rag and held it low and out of sight as she carried it to the kitchen. She then retrieved the rifle from outside and was glad to see that it wasn’t loaded. She set the gun against the wall by the entry, then shut the door and returned to the main room.
“Who did you say you were?” the woman asked, her head wobbling.
“Jessie Cole. I’m a private investigator. I came here to talk to you about the baby that was stolen from Mercy General seven years ago.”
“Dakota Bale,” Rene said under her breath before taking another swig.
The woman’s hands were shaking.
“Are you hungry? I’d be happy to make you something—soup or maybe a sandwich? It’s probably a good idea if you eat something.”
Rene snickered as if she’d said something amusing. “If my mother were still alive”—she hiccupped—“she probably would have shot you just for asking about that baby ’cuz she don’t like me talking about the Dakota baby.”
“Why wouldn’t your mother want you to talk about Dakota?”
Rene sat up another inch. Her face grew serious, almost sober-looking. “She doesn’t want my name dragged through the mud again.” Rene groaned. “She hates that.”
“When was your name dragged through the mud?”
“Long time ago,” she said with a wave of her hand. “When I was living in Los Angeles.”
“Do you remember what happened?”
Rene put the glass on the side table. “Yeah. I do. The people at the hospital where I worked called me a child killer.”
Chills crawled up Jessie’s spine. “Why would anyone call you that?”
“They were jealous. I was boss of them, you know, what do they call it—oh yeah, the head nurse.” She grew quiet before she said, “There was a boy. A sick boy. During my shift he’d been given the wrong medication. He died that night. I was blamed.”
Rene looked at Jessie, her eyes bloodshot. “They accused me of being an alcoholic.” She downed the rest of the whiskey. “Those TV people wouldn’t leave me alone. Everybody said I was a lazy, no-good drunk.” She wiped a tear from her cheek.
Jessie went to the kitchen and found a box of tissues. She also found some crackers and brought those, too, surprised when Rene ate one and washed it down with water.
“Is that when you came to Sacramento?” Jessie asked. “After the boy died?”
She nodded. “I came here to live with my mother.”
“And at some point you got a job at Mercy General.”
“Yes.”
“There was speculation around the circumstances at the time the Bale baby went missing,” Jessie told her. “Do you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“After Dakota Bale was abducted, you started coming to work late and sometimes not at all.”
“Yes,” Rene said. “My mother wasn’t well at the time. I had to take care of her.”
“What was wrong with her?”
She waved a hand as if she were swatting away a gnat. “I don’t remember.” Her body sagged to one side as she sipped from an empty glass. She frowned and said, “Fill my glass, and maybe it’ll all come back to me.”
Jessie knew the woman didn’t need any more whiskey, but it wasn’t as if Rene was going to stop drinking once she left.
“So,” Jessie said after she handed her a full glass that she’d watered down. “Is that when you started drinking? After Dakota Bale was abducted?”
Rene took a gulp, swallowed, nodded.
“Were you involved somehow in Dakota’s abduction?” Jessie asked next.
“No,” Rene blurted, staring at the liquid in her glass as a child might peer through the glass of an aquarium.
Jessie leaned forward until she caught Rene’s gaze. “You saw something that night in the hospital parking lot, didn’t you?”
Rene’s eyes gleamed back at her.
“What did you see,
Rene? There’s nobody here but the two of us. Tell me what you saw.”
As she sipped the amber liquid from her glass, her gaze never left Jessie’s. When she finally moved the glass away from her lips, she said, “I saw the person who took Ashley Bale’s baby.”
Jessie’s heart thumped against her chest. Stay calm, she told herself since she didn’t want Rene to stop talking. “Why didn’t you report whatever you saw to the police?”
Rene’s face twisted. “Because Mother insisted I keep quiet. No dragging my name through the mud, remember?”
Jessie leaned forward. “Who took Dakota Bale?”
“I had just gotten done working my shift, and I was leaving work. It was hotter than hell as I walked through the parking lot. That’s when I saw someone standing a few cars away from mine, wearing a big fat coat.” Rene coughed and then reached for a tissue. She almost knocked her glass from the table in the process.
Jessie waited patiently, wondering if Rene had really seen Dakota’s abductor.
“It was late at night, but there was enough light, and my car was so close that I couldn’t help but notice the person. I was scared, which made it harder to unlock my car door. But right as I did, I heard a baby cry.”
“What did you do?”
“I looked that way, and the person in the coat looked right at me. He had long hair, which I quickly realized must be a wig because it wasn’t a woman. He had a five o’clock shadow and a very prominent Adam’s apple.”
Rene took another swallow. “At first I simply stared back at him. Like I said, the area where I was parked was well lit, except for the light above his car. I remember thinking that he must have broken the bulb somehow. Even without the extra light, though, I could see him clearly.”
“Did he try to talk to you?”
“I didn’t give him a chance. I scrambled behind the wheel of my car, turned the key, and sped off.”
Jessie pulled a picture from her purse. “Do you think there’s any chance you would recognize the man if you saw him in a lineup?”
“I know who he is.” Rene’s head fell back on the cushion. Her drink sloshed. “I know his name.”