by K. T. Tomb
“That fucking uppity bitch!”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”
Suddenly, Strong felt that he really liked Agent Hunter’s style after all.
***
Strong sat down across the steel desk.
“Your name is Chelsea?” he asked.
“Yes,” the short blond woman answered. She looked nervous; her answer was short and defensive.
“And how did you know the victims?” Strong asked next, barely giving her time to give her one-word answer.
“Erin and Sheila were my friends—they were like sisters to me. What is this about?” she demanded.
“Did you ever know of, or suspect either woman of having an affair?” Strong shot her the question without responding to Chelsea’s question.
“An… an affair? What? N… No, never,” Chelsea stammered.
“You don’t sound very convincing, Mrs. Leib.”
“I… I maybe had a suspicion,” she said.
Strong didn’t like something in her voice. Her disbelief seemed forced. He didn’t like how quickly she went from ‘never’ to ‘suspicion’ so quickly. She backtracked too fast. Not a good start for her. If she had truly never had any idea, she would have stuck with that. Classic mistake of someone with something to hide; she either should have started wishy-washy or stayed strong, but by starting strong and ending up wishy-washy, it gave them a place to dig. A place to pry.
“How is your marriage, Mrs. Leib?” Strong asked, changing subjects in the hopes that they could throw her off. Strong was looking for a nerve. He knew that if he found one, he could use that as leverage.
“My marriage? My marriage is fine. I don’t run around on my husband,” she retorted.
“What do you think of women that do run around?” Strong pushed her. Her body language, her defense of her marriage… she knew something. And marriage seemed to be that nerve, especially based on the responses he was getting.
“I… They… they didn’t deserve to…” she responded. She was getting flustered, angry, defensive. Strong continued to push forward because he felt like he was on to something.
“What, Mrs. Leib. What didn’t they deserve? They did deserve something, didn’t they?”
Strong decided to lead her on, give her something to build on, give her a nice, easy ride into a confession.
“That’s where you’re wrong detective,” she replied.
Suddenly there was a strange, maniacal grin on her face as she turned to look at Detective Strong. I have her, he thought. This is it. She’s going to break right here, and me and Hoya are gonna get the collar on this one, not those damn feds.
“They did deserve to die. They made a promise and they broke it. They’re liars and debauchers! They’re adulterers. They broke one of the Ten Commandments, and I hope their souls burn in hell for it for all eternity.”
The burst of outrage from Chelsea chilled the detective to the bone.
“So you killed them?” Strong asked. “What about your own soul? What will you do? You broke one of the Ten Commandments as well, you know,” he added.
“Yes… yes, I killed them.” Chelsea finally broke down. “I killed them, and I may have doomed my own soul… I can only hope that God will forgive me for trying to serve His justice.”
Strong read her rights then produced a notepad, and told her to write down everything.
“I need you to write down everything about those murders. Everything you did, how she got in, whose gun you used… everything.” And he left her in the interrogation room to do so. He and Hoya left the station to get coffee and asked one of the other officers to keep an eye on her, but not to let anyone else in the room.
Chelsea was emotional after the confrontation with the detective. She felt relieved that it was finally over with. She began writing out her confession, trying not to leave anything out.
After about three hours, he returned to find Chelsea Leib face down on the table, dead in a pool of her own blood. She had sharpened the edge of the plastic pen on the concrete wall and used it to stab open the veins on her left arm. She must have known what she was doing, because the gash went vertically up her arm. The notepad with her statement written out was pushed safely out of the way.
Well, she can’t have been that much of a believer. Suicide is straight damnation, Strong thought to himself.
Detective Strong picked it up from the table and looked it over. He was pissed that she would never have to face a court of law. She would never have to answer to the families she had ruined. Mancini and Uplandsson would never get the opportunity to see justice actually done.
The confession read:
I, Chelsea Leib, murdered two of my closest friends. They were adulterers, and had had affairs with a professional male escort by the name of River. They got his name and phone number and contact information from others in our group of close friends. We were all like sisters. I chose Erin and Sheila because I knew they would be alone. I used my key and went in the front door. They were each in their beds, in nighties. I don’t know why they were dressed for seduction; I can only imagine it helped them feel wanted. They should have talked to their husbands. Not found a surrogate. They should not have let another man usurp their husbands’ place in their beds. It was wrong, so I took my husband’s pistol and shot both women with it. They were drunk, they did not even know I was there. When I left, I locked the front doors after myself. I posed them peacefully in their beds after I killed them. I put them that way so that they could potentially find peace in Heaven, though secretly I hope they burn for what they did. I ditched my clothes, my shoes, everything that would have gunpowder or residue of any kind on them. I threw them in the river. I had a change of clean clothes in my car. That way, all trace evidence was gone. I went back to my home, where I faithfully awaited my husband’s return from his annual duck hunting trip to the coast.
The last sentence of Mrs. Leib’s confession confused him more than it helped.
It read: And then I took out a hit on the man who ruined so many marriages.
The End
Return to the Table of Contents
KIDNAPPED
A thriller by
K.T. TOMB
Kidnapped
Published by Quests Unlimited
Copyright © 2018 by K.T. Tomb
All rights reserved.
(Previously published)
Kidnapped
Chapter One
Mary Gordon hung wet sheets on the clothesline while Cassidy played on her tire swing at the bottom of the tree-lined yard. She could hear her seven-year-old daughter softly singing to herself as she pumped her legs back and forth.
“What are you singing?” Mary called from behind the billowing sheets.
“Let It Go.”
“I can’t get that song out of my head either.” Mary smiled and pinned up another corner of the wet sheet.
“I can’t see you, Mommy,” Cassidy said.
Mary leaned out from behind the sheets and waggled her eyebrows at her daughter. “Peek-a-boo.”
Cassie laughed, and Mary went back to her laundry tasks.
“Why’re you doing that?” Cassidy called up the hill.
“Doing what?”
“Hanging clothes on the strings.”
Mary frowned. “I’m using the clothesline because something’s wrong with our dryer. I need to call someone to fix it.” Just as she bent to get another sheet out of the laundry basket, Cassidy screamed.
Mary jerked upright and ran through the blowing sheets to see her daughter climbing on top of the tire swing.
“What’s wrong?” she shouted.
“A snake buzzed his tail!”
Rattlesnake! A spurt of adrenaline surged through her. “Get up high in the tree and stay there! I’m coming!”
“He flied, Mommy!”
“What?” With a cry of alarm, Mary grabbed a wet sheet from the laundry basket and sprinted downhill to get between Cassidy and the snake. She
nearly overran the coiling rattlesnake in the grass next to the tire swing.
How the hell had it gotten into her walled yard?
“God, help me!” Mary shouted and threw the wet sheet over the large rattlesnake. Then she threw rock after rock onto the snake that squirmed and twisted under the sheet. It managed to get its large head out and struck at her, but its length became entangled in the wet sheet. Mary ran to get another rock and suddenly, the snake freed itself and pursued her.
She screamed and clambered on top of the lid of her rolling trash barrel. When the snake drew close, it struck at the trash barrel where her leg had been, just a fraction of a second earlier.
Now, the snake was definitely the aggressor.
She removed a boot, and, as hard as she could, Mary threw it.
Bam! Her boot heel thudded against the viper’s head and bounced off.
Now, the wounded snake began to slither away crookedly.
But Mary didn’t let it go.
She jumped off the trash barrel and, running across the rocky yard with one sock-clad foot and one booted foot, she had one thing on her mind.
Murder.
Staying out of its range, she became the pursuer again and, her old softball skills kicking in, she stoned the snake with rock after rock that she plucked from the ground while running—her overhand aim was true as the stones made contact with its spine. As it writhed in agony, she walked closer and smashed in its head with a small boulder.
“Got ya!” Her blood throbbed in her veins as she stared at the crushed vanquished rattler. It was motionless now, but she knew that snakes could still bite for a few minutes after death.
Mary shuddered and her knees quivered. Panting and trying not to hyperventilate, she piled more rocks on top of the rattler, just to make sure it was a goner. She would dispose of it later. Right now, she wanted—and needed—to hug her daughter.
When she turned back to the tire swing, Cassidy was gone, though the tire was still moving. She looked to see if Cassidy had climbed the tree. Nope.
The back gate was open, too. What the hell?
“Cassie? I told you to stay up high. I killed it! Come back in our yard!”
There was no answer. A prickle of new worry streaked through her already overloaded adrenaline, making even her fingertips throb.
“Answer me, Cassidy Lynn Gordon!” she called louder.
Nothing.
Mary pulled off her burr-covered sock and flung it. She jammed her stone-bruised foot into the boot she’d thrown. She ran-limped through the open back gate into a cloud of dust that looked as if a car had just peeled out of the dirt alley.
She heard nothing. Not even a car engine receding.
Her heart hammering, she ran a few steps, calling her daughter’s name.
Mary tripped over something and nearly fell. She looked down to see what it was.
Underfoot, the padlock that usually secured her back gate lay on the ground in pieces.
As if someone had taken bolt cutters to it.
Also at her feet, one of Cassidy’s blue sparkle shoes lay in the dirt next to fresh tire tracks.
Mary screamed.
Chapter Two
Three hours later, after some of the neighbors had helped her and the cops sweep the neighborhood and the nearby wooded area, Cassidy was still missing.
As night fell, the local cops had been replaced with a half-dozen FBI agents and now, her orderly home began to look as if burglars had ransacked it.
Mary stood at her kitchen window watching FBI agents swarm the floodlit backyard and alley as they took photos, made impressions of tire tracks and footprints, and virtually turned her private life inside out, as if she…she…had done this!
The images in her head were the most self-damning. Time after time, she rolled it over in her mind, wondering what she could have done differently.
In the agonizing hours since Cassidy had been kidnapped, every ounce of Mary Gordon’s energy was spent clinging to the edge of sanity—she willed Cassidy to be alive and unharmed. She prayed for it. She cursed silently, and sometimes aloud.
The smugness and self-entitlement of some of the FBI investigators upset her as they ridiculously perused her computer, her fridge, her bedroom, and Cassidy’s bedroom. At first, they had even looked in closets and under beds and under the house.
As if she had lied!
They had no idea what it felt like to have the most important person in your life ripped away. She would rather have lost a limb or even had a lung torn out of her chest than to have to endure the torture of having her daughter kidnapped, missing. How could they even assume that she had done something to her daughter?
She could hear their chitchat in the next room. Some of it personal and not related to the case—and her anger began to boil as high as her terror.
She noticed her hands hurt as she gripped the countertop, her knuckles white. She peeled her hands away and shook out her fingers, trying to uncramp them.
She forced her eyes away from the silent landline phone, which was now attached to various FBI tracing and recording hardware and software, just in case the kidnapper called with a ransom demand. They were still going through her cell phone and had already accessed her phone records for both phones. They were setting up her smartphone with some app that she wasn’t privy to, but she saw them installing something.
She concentrated on her breathing. She quieted herself long enough to get a better grasp on hope—hope was the only thing keeping her from plunging into an abyss of despair. She tried to picture Cassidy singing and playing on the tire swing. She couldn’t. Her mind kept going back to the one little blue sparkly shoe in the alley and the open back gate. The cut padlock…
“Mrs. Gordon?” Agent Eric Calder asked.
“Yes?” she replied while trying to keep the hysteria out of her voice.
“What sort of assets might you have that a kidnapper might ransom your daughter for?”
She struggled to keep her voice even. “None. The house was left to me by my deceased husband, who was left it by his deceased mother. There would be no other way, except inheritance, for me to have a house completely paid off in Southern California. I have about two months of savings, but still some debt from Cassidy’s broken arm last year. She has medical bills. I have no stocks, no bonds, nothing like that.”
“You said you were self-employed.”
“That’s what I said.” Mary gritted her teeth a little. “I told the other agent who asked me that I am an online math tutor for fourth and fifth-graders. Again, I am a stay-at-home mom and Cassidy is legally homeschooled. The kids that I tutor are on a two-week break right now, so I am not working this week or next. Your questions are becoming repetitious.”
“I know. We just have to ask the same questions over and over, but in different ways. I am sure you understand.”
“I know from TV cop shows that investigators ask the same questions over and over during an investigation to compare the answers. Honestly, my answers are going to be the same every time, so why don’t you ask me something new that might actually help the investigation?”
The agent nodded, his eyes blank, as if he wasn’t sure what to do next and had to consult someone else to figure it out.
It looks as if the lights are on but nobody’s home, Mary thought.
Agent Calder looked at his smartphone, as if there were a list on it and looked up. He said, “Okay. Let’s skip to the next group of questions. How did your husband die?”
“My husband? That was four years ago. He managed a gas station and convenience store and was shot during a robbery. You can look it up in the LA Times. We are a simple family. Not ransom bait for kidnappers who are looking to get rich quick.”
Agent Calder looked at his phone again and asked, “What happened to the money that the convenience store corporation paid out for your husband’s death?” He looked at her intently.
“Are you freaking kidding me with these kinds of questions?” Mary
slapped her palms on the kitchen sink, hurting her hands.
The agent said, “I assure you, I’m quite serious.”
She took a deep breath and let it out. “What happened to the money I received for my husband being murdered on the job four years ago? Well, I am almost done paying for my daughter’s broken arm from last year. It was over a hundred thousand because it was a complex fracture that required two surgeries. There was a health insurance snafu with my husband’s old company, which I thought was maintaining the payments for our health care. I have the hospital printout of the bills if you want to see them. It’s about a hundred pages on the itemized bill.”
“If we need to, I’ll ask you for them. How did Cassidy break her arm last year?” Agent Calder again looked at her intently and ticked off another item on his smartphone.
“You’re starting to make me really mad with these crazy questions that have nothing to do with today’s kidnapping of my daughter.”
“Just answer the question.”
She huffed out a breath and said, “Cassidy fell out of a tree in the backyard. My next-door neighbor saw it happen because he was cleaning my gutters of leaves with his power washer while I was working in the backyard. She landed on a rock and it broke her arm in several places. I carried my daughter into the house while he called 9-1-1 for me. What does this have to do with anything?”
“Is this neighbor someone you have a relationship with?”
“Geez. Not in the way you mean. He’s seventy-five years old. We help each other out with yard work and once, he gave me a jumpstart for my car. We exchange cookies at Christmas and generally mind our own business. What else do you want to know?”
“Do you think he would hurt Cassidy?”
She huffed impatiently. “No, and he just helped us canvass the neighborhood and search for her. During the house-to-house search, he even allowed the local cops to tramp through every room of his house. With a bloodhound. Satisfied?”
“For now.”