by Charly Cox
‘Curly Lee here’s deaf and going blind,’ Mr. Leroy said as he gently set the aging animal down into a soft dog bed. ‘He was my late wife’s pooch, really; I prefer bigger dogs that are actually dogs, if you know what I mean.’
Deaf and blind – that would explain the lack of barking and reaction on the dog’s part. ‘I certainly do know what you mean,’ Alyssa said. She looked around the sparsely decorated room. A tattered brown couch, a scratched coffee table, and the dog pillow took up most of the area. To the left and right of the couch were two mismatched end tables with some of the ugliest orange and green lamps she’d ever seen. They had to be from the seventies.
The nicest things in the room were the russet-colored curtains covering the windows. They were made of a heavy fabric and did a great job of shutting out the outside. There were few pictures on the walls. She’d been in hotel rooms that felt more lived-in.
A large flat-screen television was mounted to the wall, and what must be hundreds of DVDs lined a shelf. Various novels decorated the coffee table as if the man couldn’t pick just one book to read. From the looks of it, he liked his mysteries and horror stories.
To Alyssa’s thinking, the house was a little on the creepy side. When Cord raised his eyebrows in his trademark What the hell look, she knew his thoughts ran similar to her own.
‘You live here alone, Mr. Leroy?’ Cord began.
‘Yes, I do. My wife died six years ago next month. Heart attack. But I’m sure you didn’t come to talk about my wife, so I ask again, what is it I can help you with, Detectives?’
Cord pulled out a picture and handed it to the man, watching his expression. ‘Have you seen this woman?’
Mr. Leroy took the picture from Cord’s hand and stared at it. He kept his head down, not hiding his nervousness. ‘Yeah. She’s the woman who was on the news this morning, the missing woman.’ He looked back at them.
‘Is that the only place you’ve seen her? On the news?’
‘No, no. I met her at the MCM service station yesterday. We were both getting our cars worked on, and since we were the only two there for a while, we started talking. Since you’re here, I assume you already know that.’
‘What time did MCM finish working on your car?’ Cord asked.
‘Oh, I guess it must’ve been around eleven thirty or so. It took longer than I expected, and I was pretty hungry when I left. I remember thinking I could still beat the lunch crowd if I wanted to stop at Blake’s and grab a hamburger.’ He peered directly into Alyssa’s eyes, making her feel a little uncomfortable. ‘You maybe think I had something to do with this woman’s disappearance? I can tell you all I did was talk to her.’
Since he’d addressed his comment to her, Alyssa asked, ‘What did the two of you discuss?’
Mr. Leroy looked away sheepishly. ‘You know, I chatted with her for a long time. She was awfully nice, letting me talk her ear off.’ He peered down at the picture, back up, then down again, running his finger along the photo. ‘She looks different in this here picture. Her hair’s longer or something. I don’t know; I can’t quite put my finger on it.’
His gaze went from the picture to Alyssa and back again. ‘Sorry. We talked about the celebrity couple who’s splitting up, the one that’s all over the news. That and dogs. I told her how I used to train police canines. That’s about it.’
In Alyssa’s opinion, a man who trained canines for the police force should have something adorning his lawn besides poodle-shaped hedges.
‘Did Mrs. McCormick,’ she nodded her head to indicate the picture still in his grasp, ‘mention anything about going somewhere, meeting someone?’
Mr. Leroy looked confused. ‘No, no. Why would she?’ His face turned red. ‘Besides, I did most of the talking. It was… nice… to have someone listen to me ramble. It’s been so long since my wife –’
Alyssa interrupted. ‘If you knew Callie McCormick was missing, why didn’t you call the police immediately and let them know you’d spent time speaking with her?’
‘I’m not sure I follow. What was I supposed to say? It’s not like I knew her; she was just someone I passed the time with while my car was being fixed. You people would never get anywhere if everyone who ever spoke with a missing person called to report it.’
Cord reached out and took the photo back. ‘Alright, well thank you for your time. We just need to eliminate people from our list.’
‘I hope you find her soon. She was a real nice lady.’
At the door, Alyssa reached for the handle and then stopped. ‘One more question – you wouldn’t happen to have your receipt from Blake’s, so we can verify the time you were there?’
Mr. Leroy shuffled his feet. ‘No, I don’t believe so. I paid with cash and tossed the receipt. Guess I didn’t know I was going to need it for an alibi.’
‘No, I guess you wouldn’t know that, would you?’ Alyssa said as she opened the door and stepped outside. The door clicked behind them as they moved off the porch into the bright sunlight.
At the car, she climbed into the driver’s seat and waited for Cord to close the passenger door before speaking. ‘I don’t know about you, but that house gave me serious heebie-jeebies. Did you see those hideous lamps?’
‘Yeah, that they were. Other than needing a major update on furniture, what’s your take on this guy?’ Cord asked as he snapped his seatbelt into place.
She started the car and pulled away from the curb before responding. ‘He has an apparent love for the macabre, wouldn’t you say? Those movies? Saw, Halloween, Psycho, Insidious, The Last House on the Left…That’s a little… sinister, I’d say.’
‘Having a taste for horror movies doesn’t mean he’s guilty of anything. Just shows he likes the dark and mysterious. I did find it weird, however, that he got all choked up about his wife’s death but didn’t seem to have any photos of her lying around – at least nowhere I could see,’ Cord said.
‘Yeah, I caught that, too. But, aside from a dark, creepy vibe and a haunted house feeling, I really didn’t get a clear read on the man himself. Unfortunately, I think you’re right. Mearl Leroy might be a little unnerving and bizarre, but it doesn’t make him guilty of anything.’
Cord leaned in to turn up the radio. ‘So, we keep looking, but we don’t mark him off our list yet?’
‘Exactly.’
Chapter Thirteen
Tuesday, March 26
Callie’s legs had fallen asleep, and she struggled to stretch them, startled when she couldn’t. She tried again, but then something sharp poked her foot, and her eyes swept down to her feet. She screamed when she saw someone – no, not someone – HIM – standing at the foot of the bed with a fireplace poker, repeatedly jabbing her in the foot. Fierce pain ripped through her legs, and that’s when she realized he was also burning the soles of her feet. The poker was hot, as if it had recently been pulled from a fire. On instinct, she tried scrambling backwards to get away…
Callie jolted awake from a nightmare-plagued sleep, slamming her back into a reality she literally couldn’t escape. Not a nightmare. A memory. Sometime during the night, her captor had come in for the simple pleasure of torturing her, or so it seemed. ‘So, you don’t try to run,’ was his reasoning when she’d asked why he was burning her feet and begged him to stop.
Her brain categorized every searing pain. As a teenager, she’d been in a terrible car accident and spent weeks in the hospital. At the time, she thought nothing could feel worse than that. She was wrong. Her right cheek was still tender from his punch, and the abrasions on her wrists and ankles burned where she’d torn her skin as she’d yanked them in her attempt to get away from his torturous game.
Why was this happening to her? Unable to choke it back, she felt panic begin its familiar trek up her throat until an intense pressure low in her stomach forced its way to the front of her mind, giving her a new focus; she really needed to pee.
Her gaze swept the room, searching. Aside from a dim light down what she assumed
was a hallway, the room she was in was dark with no windows to tell her if it was still night or the next day.
And no way to escape.
Once more, her eyes landed on the shadowbox. She squinted as her brain tried to make sense of what it held. When it did, she squeezed her eyes in denial, a scream bubbling up from deep in her chest, threatening to choke off her air.
The door opened at the top of the stairs, and her screams turned into a keening, pleading wail when she noticed the man holding something in his hands. ‘Oh god, oh god, oh god,’ she whimpered even though she couldn’t tell what it was he held. Just imagining whatever it was caused violent tremors to course through her body. He ignored both her cries and shaking as he grabbed the TV tray and set his things on it.
‘Hello, sleepy head. I’d ask if you had a restful night, but I already know the answer.’ He cocked his head and gave her a strange look. ‘Do you know you talk in your sleep?’
Heart threatening to pump through her breastbone, Callie struggled to remember the rules. Her no was a whispered plea, and she was only mildly relieved when she saw him nod his head in approval.
‘Well, you do,’ he continued. ‘Several times I thought you’d woken, but maybe you were just having bad dreams.’ He looked at her expectantly.
Tears blurred her vision as her eyes glued onto his every movement, trying to brace herself for whatever he was going to do to her.
‘I used to have bad dreams, too,’ he said conversationally as he lifted one of her feet, inspected it, and then repeated the same thing with the other. ‘They go away eventually.’
When he reached for something on the table beside him, she cried, ‘Please, no.’
He froze for just a moment before returning to what he was doing.
When she felt a warm dampness on her feet, she realized the man was tending to the wounds he’d inflicted during the night, muttering to himself as he worked. She clenched her teeth and struggled to breathe against the sharp, burning sensation that flowed from the tips of her toes to the top of her head.
When he finished, he said, ‘There. That should help.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Don’t you have something to say to me?’
Her mind raced until she realized what he expected.
‘Th – th – thank you.’ Her teeth chattered so violently, it sounded like a jackhammer in her brain.
He nodded in approval. ‘That’s a good girl.’ He walked around the corner into the dimly lit hallway and pulled a chair over to the side of the bed. ‘Now, I know you have questions. You asked them in your sleep. So, let’s start with why you. I suppose the answer is, why not you? Give it a day or two, and I think you might find I’m not unreasonable at all. All you have to do is obey me.’
At his words, her eyes darted again to the shadowbox on the wall. He followed her gaze and smiled at her like he was proud, though it was unclear if he was proud of her or himself. ‘Do you like it?’ He stood and walked over so he could pull it down.
When he held it in front of her face, she gagged, her mind recoiling at the tiny, framed pictures of bound and beaten women. Spots swam in her vision as she realized that, dear God, she wasn’t his first victim. Lord help her, she didn’t want to know what had happened to them. The urge to look away or close her eyes grabbed at her throat, but she was too terrified to move. Each niche held various items along with the photographs – necklaces, earrings, and other jewelry. With each item was a braided length of blonde hair. Seven of them.
But when she saw the niche where a discolored yet otherwise well-preserved dismembered hand rested beside a jar that held an actual eyeball, the vomit she’d tried so hard to hold in gushed up and out, spraying her captor, who leaped back in shock and rage. At the same time, her bladder released, the strong scent of ammonia drifting up to greet the odor of terror as she flooded the plastic cover beneath her. The dark look that overtook his face prepared her for the coming slap.
One hand reached out and squeezed her jaw, tightening his fingers when she cried out. He twisted her head and forced her to look at what she’d done. ‘Filthy! Disgusting!’ he roared, his spittle landing on her. ‘I will not tolerate this type of behavior. I should shackle you face down into your own filth.’
‘I… I’m sorry,’ she choked out.
The man released her and reached into his pocket. When she saw what the item was, her gaze flew to the stairs, but even before the thought of escape could fully form, she knew there was no way, especially with her damaged feet.
Key in hand, he inserted it into one shackle and then suddenly stopped, and since Callie was watching that, she was unprepared for the punches to her chest and stomach. She gasped, trying to get enough air into her lungs.
‘That’s in case you think you can escape me.’ He was still yelling when he unlocked the manacles and dragged her from the bed, her body hitting the floor with a thud. She screamed as her bloodied, raw ankles scraped against the rough carpet. He didn’t stop until he reached a very utilitarian bathroom. It had a sink, a lidless toilet, a shower stall with no door or curtain, and nothing else. He thrust her into the shower and turned the water on.
Needles of icy water hit her tender skin, but she was in too much pain to try to scramble out of its path – even if she could.
Lost to the fire lighting up every one of her nerve endings, Callie didn’t know if it was an hour or a minute later when he turned off the spigot, and dragged her over the lip of the shower floor and back into the bedroom where he used his foot to send her the rest of the way. For one blessed second, Callie thought he was leaving when he turned away, but all he did was throw the cloth at her that he’d used on her feet.
‘Clean this mess and get back in the bed,’ he ordered.
But she couldn’t force her muscles or mind to obey, and she collapsed the rest of the way onto the floor, her body curling into a fetal position. ‘Please,’ she begged, ‘please, I can’t. What did I ever do to you? Please, let me go.’
She passed out from the kick to her kidney area, welcoming the blackness as it closed her in its arms.
Chapter Fourteen
Wednesday, March 27
Creaking, groaning pipes and a blast of obnoxious noise – what her son referred to as music – alerted Alyssa that it was time for Holly and Isaac to get up and ready for school. She smiled gratefully when Brock placed her first cup of coffee in front of her, bending down to kiss the top of her head before reaching for the remote to turn on the early morning news.
A photo of Callie filled the screen.
‘…your help in locating Callie McCormick, who was last seen Monday morning at the MCM Jeep service station located on Eagle Ranch Road. Callie’s husband, Rafe McCormick, owner of The Espresso Grind cafés, has offered a substantial reward for any information leading to the safe return of his wife. You can see the full interview tonight at 10:00.
As soon as the reporter moved onto the next story, Alyssa reached over and muted the sound.
‘Did you know about the reward?’ Brock asked.
‘Yeah. I don’t know how much it’s going to help, but we’ll take anything we can get. Even if it means initially having to wade through hundreds of false leads first.’ She didn’t need to remind her husband that the odds of finding Callie alive reduced with every ticking second.
At the sound of the shower turning off, Brock changed the subject. ‘By the way, Mom called. Her stomach’s bothering her again, so she won’t make it to dinner tonight.’ He winked at his wife. ‘Try not to be too devastated by that news, okay?’
If she was being completely honest, she’d already forgotten Brock had told her Mabel had called Monday evening to invite herself over. ‘I’ll do my best,’ she said just as Holly walked into the kitchen, pulling up short when she saw her mom.
‘Do your best for what?’ she asked as she opened the refrigerator and pulled out the orange juice. She poured a glass, looked at the time, and then said, ‘I’m surprised you’re still home. Shouldn’t you be at the precinc
t by now?’
Behind her daughter’s shoulder, Alyssa saw Brock’s smile widen, and she bit back her own. ‘Not until seven, and I haven’t seen much of you and your brother lately, so I figured I could go in after I see your bright, shining faces.’
The rest of the conversation was interrupted by Isaac’s heavy, tired footsteps as he plodded his way into the kitchen. Like his sister, he did a double take at seeing his mother still there. Unlike Holly, he didn’t speak, heading straight to the cupboard for strawberry pop tarts – the only kind there should be, according to him – and only after he had devoured them did Alyssa attempt to speak to her son, knowing better than to try to have a conversation when he wasn’t fully alert or firing on all cylinders, which didn’t occur until after his morning sugar buzz. She smiled. If either of her children was going to have her penchant for coffee, it would be this one.
‘Good morning.’
‘Morning,’ Isaac said, his voice still groggy. ‘How come you’re still here?’
She was beginning to feel a little unwelcome in her own home, Alyssa thought grumpily. So, instead of answering her son’s question, she looked at Holly and said, ‘Dad told me you got that internship at the Labs that you applied for. I’m so proud of you, baby. When do you start?’
Holly, a miniature version of her mother, though she stood a couple of inches taller – something she pointed out as often as possible – grinned. ‘Not ’til the end of June, and it’s only for a month, but it’ll get my foot in the door, at least.’ She hesitated. ‘I could still go to Europe for a few weeks. It wouldn’t be the whole summer, but…’
Isaac suddenly perked up as he looked expectantly at his parents, hope and excitement etched over every feature.
‘Dad and I are still discussing that.’