by E. R. FALLON
“I’m not a good liar.” Harry smiled. “Hey, I guess it’s a biological thing.”
Addison’s face reddened and Harry knew she’d irked him.
Working for this guy must have been a bad experience for Emily, and Harry suspected there might have been more to her leaving than Addison admitted.
“She was a bit of a looker, too,” Addison said. “Emily was. But I’ve already said that.”
Harry frowned. “Yeah, you’ve said that more than once.” She found his constant reminiscing about Emily Will’s looks creepy. She turned so that he couldn’t see her chest as easily.
“Emily was engaged to a guy who used to work for me,” Addison said. “But I don’t think they ever got married. At least, I don’t think they did. Did you know that?”
Harry ignored his last comment. “Does this guy still live in town?” she asked.
“No. I think he moved to California. I’m not sure whether Emily went with him or if they even got married. Like I said, she’s a bit of a recluse. No one sees her anymore.”
“Right, you already said that.”
“I know I’m repeating things. But you have to believe me when I say she’s a little crazy.”
Addison seemed adamant on portraying Emily Will as an unreliable whacko. Harry knew that was a tactic sexual harassers, particularly serial ones, used to dismiss their actions and discredit their victims when confronted. Had Addison harassed Emily? If he had, she might not have talked about it openly. But maybe she’d confided in someone. Harry would have to find out who.
“She admitted to us she was crazy. It’s not like I’m telling you this to make her look bad.” Addison laughed nervously. “So if she’s said something about me that sounds bad, well, you can’t really trust her. She’s just trying to get attention. I don’t know what she, Emily, told you, but she’s mentally disturbed. It’s documented.”
“She hasn’t said anything about you, Mr. Addison. Did you let her go because of her illness?”
“No. There was an incident where she sort of put two of our customers’ lives at risk. We’re lucky they didn’t sue us.”
“Sort of?”
“It might have been a little bit of my fault too because I insisted she fly even though she said she wasn’t up for it. But, no. No, of course I didn’t fire her because of her illness. Did she say that? She’s lying if she said that. Because she wanted to leave, and we were supportive. We treated her great. Like I said, there might be something seriously wrong with her. Our human resources person knows all about her odd behavior and lifestyle. You can ask him.”
“I don’t think I’ll need to do that.”
Why was he in such a knot over Emily Will? Harry didn’t like the tone he used to discuss Emily’s mental health problems.
“Did something happen between you two?” Harry asked.
“You mean, like romantically?”
“Or one-sided on your part.”
“No, no,” Addison chuckled. “She was engaged.”
Harry felt he was lying but he wasn’t really adding anything to the investigation and Harry wanted to get out of there so she could track down the former fiancé of Emily Will.
Harry didn’t like this Addison guy so she didn’t thank him when she got up to leave. She tried opening the door but it wouldn’t budge. Thinking it was stuck, Harry shook the doorknob furiously. Unsuccessful, she looked closely and realized the lock was rigged so that it could only be opened from the outside, unless you had a key. Sure, it could have accidently broken and gotten that way, or it could have been a deliberate way to trap a person inside, like an unsuspecting woman. And Harry suspected Addison had fixed it for the latter, which angered her.
Physically he was not a man most women would cross, especially not a woman smaller than her. And according to Emily’s driver’s license she was tall but looked like she had a slight build.
“What the …?” Harry put her hand over her gun in her holster and turned around. “What the heck are you trying to pull here, Mr. Addison?”
Addison got up and put his hands in the air. “It’s not what you think.”
His reddening face told her otherwise. “Sit down,” she said.
He didn’t sit.
“Sit down now, Mr. Addison.”
He complied. “Okay. Please don’t shoot me.”
“I’m not going to shoot you.”
“The key,” he said.
“What?”
“The key to open the door – I have it in my desk drawer. I’ll need to reach in and get it for you to leave.”
“It usually doesn’t work out this way for you, does it? Most women who you try to trap in here aren’t kickboxing champions are they?” Harry bubbled over with outrage.
“Uh, what?”
“I’m a kickboxing champion.”
Addison looked taken aback.
“Are you so foolish you’d try to trap me?” she said. “Is your sick urge so strong you can’t even control yourself when meeting a female cop?”
“Calm down, girl.” Addison seemed stunned and fixated with calming her down. Men like him never ceased to amaze Harry. As though he thought he could make her listen to him just because of his gender and hers. That amused Harry a little. Very little.
“Girl?” Harry said.
“You’re overreacting, I’m not going to do anything to you, and I never planned to.”
“But you have no problem doing it to other women? You’re right you’re not going to do anything to me, because I won’t let you. Get the key. Slowly.” Harry kept her eyes on his hands, to make sure he didn’t try to pull a gun or another weapon on her.
“One moment please.” Addison reached into a desk drawer and she watched him pull out a key. “I’ll get that open for you fast.”
“You sure better.”
He slowly held the key up and showed it to her. “You’re overreacting,” he said, like he just had to have the last word.
“Am I really? I’m not the one who’s rigged their door so that a woman can’t leave unless you let her. Tell me, do you set it up like that each time a woman you’ve targeted is alone with you in here, you creep?”
Addison flushed with rage and Harry knew she’d caught him in his game.
Having severed his confidence, she took her hand off her holster. “Set the key on your desk.”
Addison made a motion like he wanted her to take it from him, but she didn’t trust taking it from him when he could easily grab her hand and pull her toward him.
“Put it on your desk,” she said. “I’ll take it from there.”
He set the key on the desk and she grabbed it.
“Do you have a number for Emily Will’s ex-fiancé?” she asked.
Addison shook his head. “He moved to California.” He pretended to respect Harry all of the sudden, but she got the feeling it was all an act to get her and her suspicion about him out of there. “He has a new number now.”
“What’s his name, what’s the fiancé’s full name?”
“Uh, Peter Morgan.”
“I’m going to leave now. Stay in here and don’t follow me outside. When you hear my car pulling away, then you can come outside. Got it?”
Addison nodded. “If I’ve offended you in some way … You’re not going to give me trouble, are you?”
That arrogance again. As though the fact that she was a woman canceled out the fact she was a cop.
“You’re not in trouble, at least not yet,” Harry said. She couldn’t stand how his type always seemed to get away with bothering women.
Harry left the office not quite having figured out what had happened between Emily Will and Addison but believing it wasn’t something good.
She walked at a brisk pace to get outside and the air chilled her hot face. The incident had shaken up even someone as tough as her, and she couldn’t imagine how much it would frighten a woman who wasn’t used to tense situations like a cop was.
Inside her car Harry called Carlo
w at the station and asked him to get a phone number for Peter Morgan in California. She realized she was supposed to be driving around in the police-issued SUV and not her own car. Oh, well, once or twice wouldn’t hurt.
“There should be a record of him changing driver’s licenses,” she said to Carlow. “That’s how we can find the right Peter Morgan.”
“Who is this Morgan guy anyway?”
“He’s the guy who almost was Emily Will’s husband.”
“Okay. Hold on a second.”
As Harry waited, she thought of Jimmy Addison in the hangar and checked to make sure he’d waited. No sign of him. Good.
Carlow came back on the line. “Got it. It’s a home number, not a cell.”
“A cell number would be better, but, okay, read it to me.” She started the engine.
Carlow gave her the number and Harry repeated it in her head so she’d remember it.
“Got to go,” she said to Carlow.
“You’re welcome.”
“Yeah, okay.” She hung up.
She dialed the number but got an answering machine. She left a brief message. She was careful about what she said since she didn’t want to alarm Peter Morgan about Emily. She imagined he must still have had some feelings for his former fiancée and she didn’t want to cause him to panic.
Harry started the engine and began to leave the parking lot. She checked the rearview mirror, and sure enough, Addison was watching her pull away. She couldn’t tell from that distance exactly but he seemed to be scowling at her. She was tempted to give him the middle finger but, as an officer of the law, she had to maintain a certain decorum.
Chapter Fifteen
Harry’s cell phone rang just as she got on the highway, and although she knew that she shouldn’t be driving and talking at the same time, especially as a cop, she figured it could be Peter Morgan returning her call despite the ‘unknown’ number. She answered the phone and heard deep breathing. She remained silent and whoever had been on the line, probably Leo Green, hung up.
She wished she’d told him to go fuck himself. Oh, well. Surely, there would be a next time.
Harry drove to her apartment above the town’s small grocery store and parked outside. She entered the apartment hallway through the building’s side door and collected her mail from the box before it began piling up, which had already begun to happen. The older woman, Ms. Schaffer, who lived above her, appeared at the entrance door carrying shopping bags. Harry held the door open for her and the woman didn’t thank her, she just walked straight past Harry with a dour expression on her face like she always did. The guy who lived one floor above Harry had mentioned he thought the woman was hard of hearing. Harry would see the woman and wonder about her life. What had happened to her to make her so miserable? Harry knew that if she wasn’t careful, she might end up like that. But, then again, maybe she didn’t care.
“Good morning, Ms. Schaffer,” she said with a smile at the woman’s back.
As usual, the woman didn’t reply. But Harry would keep saying hello. If she wasn’t hard of hearing she was very good at keeping it a secret.
With her stack of mail barely fitting in one hand, Harry went upstairs to her apartment, opened the door with her key, and threw her jacket on top of the moving boxes as soon as she entered. She’d had a hard time sleeping ever since she moved because she missed the lull of the city noise, of traffic, sirens, and people talking, which had helped her fall asleep. Not only was the town too quiet but there wasn’t a decent kickboxing gym anywhere around there. She sometimes jogged in the morning and that helped, but she didn’t have a way to really relieve her stress.
She scanned through her mail, didn’t see anything interesting or vital like bills, and dropped it on top of her jacket. She ate from a bag of stale potato chips she found on the kitchen counter. She’d bought the chips from the grocery downstairs her first day in the apartment.
Harry called Peter Morgan again and got his answering machine again. She left him another message that sounded a bit more urgent than the first but still not enough to alarm him. She would try to never leave bad news in a phone message. That was a rule of hers. Then she called the station to check in with Nolan and he didn’t have any news. She told him about what had happened with James Addison, a married father of three children. Nolan had already heard about Peter Morgan from Carlow, who maybe wasn’t quite as inept as she’d thought.
“Are you okay?” Nolan asked her.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine. What’s Maple doing?”
“Why do you feel the need to keep tabs on him?” Nolan asked, not jokingly. “It’s not like he’s going to steal your job, Cannon.”
“Yeah, but he might steal my glory if I’m gone too long.”
“You already got all the glory by being mentioned in that newspaper article as the lead investigator.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right. So, where is he?”
“He’s outside on the phone with his office. Said something about a new case.”
“They’re going to send him home soon?” She couldn’t disguise the hope in her voice.
“I wouldn’t count on it. He seems to think he can manage it from afar until we’re finished with this one.”
“If we finish. Sometimes it feels like we’re so close to finding them but then they’re still getting away from us.”
“Hey, now. Cheer up. We’ll get them.”
“Is that a promise?” Harry tried to hide the tears in her voice.
“Yes. We’ll never stop until we find them and catch them.”
“Yeah, but you know as well as I what happens with these cases sometimes. A week goes by, then two, and then the case is cold. Years might go by and it’s never solved. Essentially, they get away with it.”
“That won’t happen,” Nolan said with confidence.
“Thanks, captain, but we both know you can’t promise that.”
“I can, and I will.”
Harry wanted to drop the subject because it still worried her. “I’ll be in soon.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“At home for a bit. I’ll be at the station in less than an hour.”
“No problem. Take your time,” he said carefully. “Did you visit your brother last night?” His tone had softened.
“Yeah, I did.”
“How are he and his children doing?”
“As best as they could be doing given the circumstances.” After a moment of silence she said, “I hope to hear from Peter Morgan by the time I’m at the station.”
“See you then. Take care.” Nolan ended the call.
Harry wiped her eyes. Then she opened her fridge and stared at the emptiness. She really needed to do some proper grocery shopping. She’d bought a few snacks at a rest stop on the drive from the city for her move but those were gone by now. And she’d been eating takeout ever since arriving. With her lifestyle post losing River, even a pet fish or a plant would not have survived. Before River died she’d been stringent in her routine and had been the type of person who would have unpacked from her move and stocked the fridge within a few days of her arrival. Now, she was the opposite.
She finished the chips and licked her greasy fingertips. She left her cell phone on the counter. Then she rummaged through her moving boxes to gather some clean but wrinkled clothes and went into the bathroom to shower and change.
She’d used the shower only once before and had to hit the handle with the heel of her hand to get it to work. She got the water running and stepped under the lukewarm – since she’d arrived the water never seemed able to get hot – spray before her phone could ring and she’d lose the chance to bathe. She needed to speak with the landlord about the water temperature but kept putting it off.
Harry got out of the shower and dried off and changed into the clean clothes. She stared at her reflection in the medicine cabinet and rubbed away the fog with her sleeve. She never bothered with makeup but combed her wavy hair. Her cell phone rang
just as she left the bathroom. She saw Peter Morgan’s name on the screen and accepted the call.
“Detective Harriet Cannon speaking.”
“Hi, it’s Peter Morgan. I got your message. Lucky for you, I just happened to check my home phone messages at work.”
“Thanks for returning my call, Mr. Morgan.”
“Please call me Peter or Pete, whatever you prefer.”
“Which do you prefer?”
“Uh, Peter.”
Harry knew an appropriate response would have been for her to tell him to feel free to call her ‘Harriet’ but she preferred for civilians to address her by ‘detective’.
“Okay, great, Peter,” she said. “Do you have a moment to chat?”
“About Emily? Sure. I’m on my break. I’d do anything for her, you know. Just because of the way we ended things doesn’t mean I have anything against her.”
“How did things end? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“No, I don’t mind. They ended badly.”
“I talked with Emily’s and your former boss, James Addison, early this morning.”
“That guy,” Peter said like he despised Addison.
“Is something wrong, Mr. Morgan?”
When he didn’t respond, after a moment Harry said, “You said you’re on break. Where are you working now?”
“I work for a company that build’s military aircraft in San Diego.”
“San Diego’s a beautiful place to live.”
“It is. But it’s not the same without Em.”
“Em?”
“Em, Emily. That’s what she likes to be called.”
Harry made a note of that.
“So, what’s going on with Em?” Peter asked. “Is she okay?” I’ve got to say I was pretty freaked out when I got your message. I mean, it’s not every day the police calls a guy about his ex. Is she okay? Did something happen to her?”
She gave Peter Morgan as much information as she could without revealing too much about the case. Although Harry didn’t doubt Peter still cared about Emily, she couldn’t risk him speaking with the press in an attempt to help Emily but ending up jeopardizing her safety. From everything she’d heard and read about Joyce and Albert Fisher, they weren’t average criminals. There seemed to be a sadistic side to their crimes, kind of like Leo Green.