Like the cool of the wood she was laying on passing up through her shoulder blades. Or the splinters that now dug into her calves.
With that had come the second round of hysteria, the cruel reality of where she was and what might have been done to her setting in.
The last thing she could remember with any clarity was leaving her apartment earlier in the day. It being a Tuesday, she didn’t have class until mid-afternoon. Most mornings that meant she would have been over at The Daily Grind early, shoveling out coffee to whatever bleary-eyed soul came through the door in need of liquid caffeine. Today had been a rare day off, her one scheduled break each week.
At the time, Della had been thankful. With the end of the semester fast approaching, she was in dire need of the extra hours. If not to study, then at the very least to sleep.
It seemed like months since she’d felt caught up on either.
Looking back, she couldn’t help but wonder how differently things would have played out if she hadn’t been at home most of the day. If she hadn’t waited until just after two to step outside of her apartment to head toward campus.
What had happened along the way to land her where she currently was she had not a clue, the entire stretch of time between then and now nothing more than a hole in her vision.
Perhaps even more importantly, what she could have possibly done to have earned such a fate also eluded her. Of everything she had spent the last hour trying to wrap her head around, that was the part that refused to abate.
The reality of the box she found herself in had subsided just slightly. It was horrific - the sort of thing she avoided even in movies - but there was no use dwelling on it.
Ditto for the fact that she was naked.
Above all else, it was trying to decipher what she could have possibly done to earn such a fate. Who she had angered to such a level. What demented soul would even think of such a thing.
Despite her situation, she could feel sweat rise to the surface of her skin. A direct response to the pounding of her heart, she tried to draw in deep swallows of air, willing herself to stay calm.
Trapped in the unending ebb and flow of her own mind, Della barely registered the first sound. Nothing more than a slight din on the periphery of her consciousness, it failed to penetrate.
The second, only nominally more.
Not until the third was she able to draw herself up out of the abyss of swirling thoughts she was mired in, willing herself back to the present.
The sound was about as common as existed in modern society. Able to be duplicated by nearly every electronic device on the planet, the average person had at least three different gadgets capable of producing it at any given time.
As recently as earlier in the day, Della would have known it instantly. She would have snapped forward and picked up her phone, checking to see who was reaching out.
Now, it took the better part of a minute for the buzzing sound to penetrate.
“Is that...?” she whispered, her eyes snapping open. Rotating her head back as far as possible, she checked the top half of her enclosure, hoping for any sign of the telltale light she was looking for.
And seeing nothing of the sort.
Shifting her attention back down to the opposite end of the box, she wriggled her hips to the side, ignoring the stabbing pain of the box as it dug into her.
And felt every last bit of breath she had get drawn from her lungs.
For the first time since waking, she saw the slightest break in the omnipresent darkness. Nothing more than two thin slivers, they were formed into an L. Positioned in the center of the far end of the box, the light seemed to glow in synch with the sound of vibration traveling along the box.
Again, her breath seemed to disappear from her chest, this time for a much different reason than before.
“Phone,” Della whispered. “It’s a phone.”
Chapter Eight
Captain Grimes had been right. After spending much of the last few months – and arguably even the entire year and change since he’d joined the 8th – moving at a breakneck pace, it was nice to have things slow down a bit.
Not that there wasn’t still plenty that needed doing, the evening patrols an unending source of things that required attention. Just that for the first time in quite a while, it wasn’t being paired with multiple active cases.
A change Reed Mattox was all too happy to receive.
Leaning against the front hood of his car, he was parked on the far edge of the Arthur Woodson Community Park on the outer edge of Franklinton. Who the man was or what he had done to earn his own chunk of turf, Reed didn’t pretend to have the slightest idea. Never had he even considered punching the name into his phone to find out.
Instead, he had focused on the stretch of open grass that comprised the bulk of the space. More than two hundred yards square, it was punctuated only by some rusting playground equipment in the far corner, making it a perfect place to let Billie burn off excess energy in the rare instance that the tasks at hand didn’t keep them occupied.
His weight placed above the front driver’s side tire, Reed stood with his arms folded across his torso. With summer not far in the distance, the night air was still clinging to some bit of the warmth remaining from the day. Overhead, stars peeked out between the branches of an elm tree growing alongside the makeshift parking lot his sedan sat in.
Somewhere out ahead of him, he knew Billie was making her rounds. With the lack of lighting and her inky tone, she had disappeared just seconds after bounding down from her perch in the back seat, the sound of her pounding by every so often the only indicator she was even there.
“Dispatch calling for Detective Mattox. Detective Mattox, come in.”
The sound of the radio mounted under the front dash of Reed’s car drifted into the night, snapping the tranquility of the moment. A sour look crossed his face as he turned over a shoulder, glaring at the unwanted intrusion.
And the promise of a new task it no doubt signified, putting an end to their first relatively free stretch in quite some time.
He should have known Grimes’s words would end up jinxing them.
“Reed, you there?” Jackie asked again. Usually employing a tone that bordered on singsong, her syrupy sweet tone had ebbed away.
Toward what, Reed couldn’t quite place, using his hips to levy himself up from the side of the car. Snatching at the driver’s side handle, he swung the door open and slid into the front seat, grabbing up the mic from the radio.
“This is Mattox, go ahead Dispatch.”
“Reed!” Jackie snapped, the volume and urgency both bordering on frantic. “Thank God, I’ve been calling you.”
A crease appeared between Reed’s eyebrows as he stared at the dash, forcing himself not to make a return comment. Her calls had started all of thirty seconds before. It wasn’t like she hadn’t been able to reach him all evening.
And a man was entitled to take a piss, grab a cup of coffee, or, as the case was now, let his partner out for a quick run.
“What’s going on?” Reed asked. “You sound shook.”
“I am!” Jackie fired back. “We just had a call come in, and I don’t know what the hell to do with it. I have no idea why it got turfed our way, but...”
Her voice fell away before she could finish the thought, her mind seeming to be in a hundred different places.
Which was just slightly more than usual, in Reed’s experience.
“Okay, slow down. Walk me through this. We just had one get turfed our way...”
“Yes, from 911,” Jackie replied. “They had a call come in and didn’t know how to handle it, so they sent it over here.”
The confusion on Reed’s face grew more pronounced. The Columbus Police Department, and the 911 service that it worked with, were like every other government agency and organization. They had clearly delineated procedures for almost every event that could occur.
Guidelines and protocols for handling anything that might
exist.
Never in Reed’s thirteen years with the force had he heard of them not knowing what to do with something.
“They don’t know how to handle it?” Reed asked.
“No,” Jackie replied. “And I don’t either, so I’m calling you.”
With every word, Reed could sense her trepidation growing. Fear and anxiety seemed to abut every word, forcing them out in a machine-gun cadence.
Jackie had been running the dispatch desk since Reed joined the 8th. In her mid-forties, word had it she had been there for more than his entire time as a police officer, a young girl that had needed a job and just sort of stuck around.
Despite having a look that was a bit flamboyant, and being unabashedly the office gossip, Reed had found she was more than proficient at her job. Not once had he ever seen her rattled. Coupled with what she was now telling him about the 911 call center, he could feel his core clenching tight.
“What’s going on?” Reed asked.
“I...I...” Jackie began.
“Jackie, breathe. Just, how bad is it?”
Another moment passed, two more deep breaths were drawn in. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if the call is real. All I know is there is some girl on the line saying her name is Della Snow and that she is trapped inside a box right now.”
Flashbulbs went off in Reed’s mind, as abundant as the paparazzi along a red carpet. Different bits of what she said all seemed to jump out at once, grabbing his attention before drifting to the side, replaced by the next in order.
None more important than the one lodged in the center of her statement.
“You say she’s on the line now?” Reed asked, his eyebrows rising in surprise.
“Yes, right now,” Jackie said, a slight crack in her voice. “Can I patch her directly to your cell?”
Chapter Nine
In the fifteen seconds it took Jackie to make the connection, Reed managed to perform three distinct tasks. With his mind still trying to process what he was being told, he tossed the mic back on the hook alongside the radio. Once his hand was free, he snatched up his cell phone from the middle console, holding it in front of him, waiting for it to spring to life.
His left foot he placed down on the concrete outside his door, grabbing the top of the door frame and hoisting himself out. Dipping his top row of teeth over his bottom lip, he let out a shrill whistle, a single long tone that blasted through the quiet night air.
On cue, a single bark came in reply, Billie’s standard response that the directive was heard, understood, and acknowledged.
HUA. Marine trained, through and through.
Wheeling around, Reed opened the rear door to the sedan, leaving it stand wide as she came bounding into view. Moving with the lithe grace of an athlete, she covered more than five feet with each stride.
The pink of her tongue provided one tiny bit of color against her dark silhouette as she pounded directly for the car, launching herself into the backseat without so much as slowing. Under the force of her weight and momentum, the vehicle swayed back and forth before settling back into place. Reed slammed the door shut in her wake and slid behind the wheel as the phone in his hand sprung to life, the front face lighting up bright.
Sprawled across it was the wordRESTRICTED, all written out in block letters.
“Detective Reed Mattox.”
“Oh, thank God it worked.”
The voice was young and female. Breathless, as if she was crying, or had been very recently.
A first impression that did nothing to abate the feeling in Reed’s stomach.
“Who is this?” Reed asked. “What’s going on?”
From the rear, Billie pushed her head up between the seats, as if listening in to the conversation as well.
A few faint gasps were the first response, the girl seeming as if she was trying to collect herself, the questions almost too much to wrap her mind around.
After a moment, she took in a single deep breath before saying, “My name is Della Snow.” Another voice crack. “And I have no idea where I am or what’s going on.”
Switching the phone over to speaker, Reed leaned across to the passenger seat. He snatched up the spiral bound notebook he kept for working cases and flipped it open to a random blank page in the center.
“Della Snow,” he said, scribbling the name across the top. “Can you tell me what you see right now?”
“Nothing,” Della replied, her voice echoing through the interior of the car. “I’m in a box barely big enough for my body, and it’s completely dark in here. All I have is the front of this phone, which is barely bright enough to light up the area right around my head.”
Having not moved an inch, Reed could feel his body temperature creep upward. Warmth spread across his face and forehead.
“You’re in a box?” he asked. “Meaning-“
“Meaning someone stuck me in a damn coffin!” Della screamed. The sound of tears was now back, thick and heavy over the line. “Some sick sonuvabitch drugged me, took off all my clothes, and stuffed me in a freaking box!”
With the pen poised just millimeters above the paper, Reed froze. He felt a weight press down on his chest, causing his heart to hammer away.
The 911 operator had been right. So had Jackie. This went well beyond any established protocol. It sounded like something he once saw on a bad Showtime movie, some cheap flick with Ryan Reynolds somewhere in Iraq.
Not the sort of thing that happened in a midwestern city, even one with places as bad as The Bottoms.
Which meant he had no idea where to even start.
Using the pen, he drew a line straight down the middle of the pad, bisecting the space. On the left beneath her name, he wrote:
In a box. Closet? Bathtub? Coffin?
Has no visual.
Has a cell phone.
Starting a fresh sequence on the right, he scribbled:
How’d she get there?
Where’s she live?
Drugged? By who?
“Are you there?” Della asked, the previous outburst gone, replaced by the continued sound of crying.
“I’m here, Della. I’m not going anywhere,” Reed said. Checking the list one more time, he added a fourth question to the right column.
Is this legit?
“Sorry,” Della said. “I didn’t mean to yell at you, I’m just so damn scared right now.”
“I know you are,” Reed said, skipping by the apology. His focus on the list of questions on the right side of the page, he asked, “Della can you tell me your address?”
“215 Hudson Lane,” she whispered. “But I’m not there. The last thing I remember today is leaving.”
Reed jotted down the information, nodding slightly. “Okay, that’s good. Can you tell me where you were going?”
“Class,” she replied. “I’m a student at Franklin University.”
This too Reed added to the list on his page. “Good. Good. And the last thing you remember was-“
“Climbing on my bike to head that way,” Della said. “And then I woke up here.”
With each question Reed asked, more seemed to flood in behind it. There was so much information he needed to extract, so many things about the situation that still didn’t make any sense.
Which meant before he went a moment further, before he potentially got pulled any deeper into a scam, he needed to do some legwork first.
“Della, can you tell me your phone number?”
“614-555-9893, but this isn’t my phone,” she whispered.
“It’s not your phone?” Reed asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s some cheap model I’ve never seen before.”
Reed could feel Billie’s hot breath against his neck, her head inching ever closer from the backseat. Seizing on the physiological shifts in his body, she pressed tight against his shoulder, letting him know that she was close.
“Do you know where your phone is?” Reed asked.
This time, Della’s voice was
just barely audible, no more than a faint whisper. “I don’t even know where my panties are right now, let alone my phone.”
Another item made it to the left-hand column.
When he was done writing, Reed sat and stared at the twin lists. He let his eyes glaze over, the blue ink and yellow paper forming a swirl of colors before him. Bit by bit, he tried to process what he was being told, very little of it making any sense.
Which meant he had to step back for a moment. He had to assess, to make sense of things, prove what he was hearing was true. After that, he would need to start making a lot of calls and messing up a lot of people’s nights.
“Della, do you have any idea what the number is on that phone?” Reed asked.
“What? No. Why?”
With each word, a hint of hysteria could be heard creeping in.
“Because I’m going to have to let you go for a few minutes,” Reed said. “I need to run down some things and figure out how we’re going to handle this.”
“You think I’m crazy,” Della fired back, more tears now laced with bitterness. “You think this is a prank.”
“No, I don’t,” Reed said. “I promise you, I don’t. But there are some things I have to do before I can start to help you.”
“Yeah, like what?” It was clear she didn’t believe a word he was saying.
Which may or may not have been what Reed would think in similar circumstances, the situation far beyond anything he had ever contemplated before.
“Like I need to get people in place to run a trace on our next conversation,” Reed said. “And I need to send people to your house, so they can figure out where you might be.”
There were a dozen other things Reed could think of off the top of his head, but he let it go at that.
“Listen to me, Della, I need you to memorize a number. Can you do that?”
There was another moment that passed. Another deep breath. The sound of phlegm catching in her throat.
“What number?”
“Fifty-four twenty-eight,” Reed said. “Can you repeat that back to me?”
“Fifty-four twenty-eight.”
Reed moved the scratchpad from his lap to the seat beside him and started the engine. As he did so, Billie receded a few inches behind him.
The Scorekeeper Page 3