by Geonn Cannon
Ari held up two fingers and mouthed "two minutes."
He sighed and stepped around the counter. He raised his voice to be heard through the glass. "We're closed! No one wants to come pick up their photos in this mess anyway. Come back Monday. We'll be open Monday."
Ari raised her voice as well. "The little girl I'm trying to find will be dead on Monday."
He stared at her for a moment, then flipped the lock. He pulled open the door a crack, wedging his foot against it so that it couldn't be pushed opened wider.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"I just need two minutes of your time. A little girl was kidnapped this morning, and I think you may be able to help me find her."
He shrugged, still looking perplexed. "I've been here all morning, in the studio, trying to finish developing pictures people dropped off before the blizzard. None of my employees can make it in, so I'm all alone. You think I'd take the time to go kidnap some random girl...?"
"I don't think you did it. But I'm thinking you might have gotten a phone call this morning. Someone who asked you about a school photo mix-up that happened last year."
He stared at her. "How'd you know about that?"
"So someone did call you?"
"Yeah. Said he'd found another picture and wanted to know where he could drop it off. I gave it to him. How does that lead to a kidnapping?"
Ari ignored the question. "The person who called, did he leave a name or a number? Any way you could get in contact with him?"
"No. Why would he?"
"Damn it." She stepped back and looked up and down the street. "What time did he call?"
"Right after I got here, so around nine." He hunched his shoulders against the snow. "Listen, you don't think this guy really kidnapped anyone, do you?"
"I do. Anything you can tell me about him would be helpful."
He thought it over and then stepped back from the door. "I got his number. It came up on the machine and I don't think I've erased it yet. You can come look if you want."
"Yes. Thank you." Ari followed him in, waiting on the customer side of the counter as he went around to check the Caller ID. She took out her phone and put the number in as he recited it. "Thank you," she said again. "This is a big help."
The irritation and arrogance was gone from his face by then. "Look, if I did something to put a kid in danger, I'll do whatever I can to help. I just thought it was part of this stupid mix-up that happened last year. We had a ton of pictures, some of them got mixed together, and we had to do a quick shuffle. Those two girls looked so alike, I just..." He sighed and shook his head. "If you need anything else, let me know, okay?"
Ari looked down at the number on her phone. Her plan was originally to take it back to the office and have Dale to a reverse look-up on it, but maybe there was an easier way to find out who had called.
"Actually there is something you could do." She motioned for the phone and he placed it on the counter for her. She dialed the number and listened to the buzzing in her ear as it rang. Her heart raced and she prayed that whoever the Mystery Man was, he would be stupid enough to--
"Hello."
It was flat, a man disturbed at his work, and it was all Ari could do not to shout in victory. Gotcha, you son of a bitch. She wanted to demand his name, but she doubted a real clerk would ask the person she had just called to identify themselves. When she spoke, she gave her voice a lighter, more air-headed accent. She inflicted up at the end of each sentence to turn everything into a question.
"Hello, this is Sondra down at Gaspode and Son Studio? You called us earlier about some photographs that had gotten mixed up?"
"How'd you get this number?"
"Well, sir, it's right here? On the Caller ID? We're getting in touch because your call made us think there may have been a further mix-up in the orders? Gosh, we're awful sorry about this, but we have a big pile of pictures here with two different girls. If you wouldn't mind coming down here and helping us sort them out, we'd be awful grateful."
There was a pause as he considered. She knew that he was imagining a big pile of Melody Scott pictures mixed together with Lucy Chabot, damning evidence that the two girls were connected. When the DNA tests came out, the pictures would provide a connection that he couldn't afford. The fact that they had his number on Caller ID, and a clerk who remembered speaking to him that morning, meant that he couldn't possibly ignore it if he still hoped to get away clean.
"I'll come down. I'm..." He sighed heavily. "I'll be down there in about an hour. I haven't, ah, I haven't yet dropped off that picture I called about earlier. Why don't I just sort of the pictures at your studio, and then I'll take the ones that aren't my daughter to the proper family? No sense in both of us getting out in this mess."
"Well, that's very kind of you, sir. We'll be expecting you in about an hour? All right. Thank you. Bye-bye."
The young Gaspode raised his eyebrows when she hung up. "So I guess you'll be the one behind the counter when he shows up?"
"No. My partner will be here inside." She drummed her fingers on the counter and then looked at his bright blue shirt. "She'll need to borrow one of those uniform shirts."
Chapter Twenty-three
In addition to the staff shirt Dale got from Kenneth Gaspode, Dale put on her black-rimmed eyeglasses and let her hair hang down on either side of her face. The plan was for her to pretend that she was doing work, but she thought it would be a better cover if she was actually occupied with something when the Mystery Man appeared. She also thought it was only fair to help Kenneth out, since he was helping them. He found the negatives for Melody Scott and Lucy Chabot in their records and ran off a half dozen of each, which Dale left in an envelope under the counter as she busied herself organizing the prints that were ready to be picked up when the store opened on Monday.
An hour and twenty minutes after Ari made the call, a black truck pulled up at the curb. Dale noticed it from the corner of her eye and whispered, "Show time." Kenneth looked, saw what she meant, and disappeared into the back room in keeping with Ari's plan. Dale tried to keep up the ruse of being busy, but she tracked the man from the corner of her eye as he approached the door, unable to deny curiosity at the man who had kidnapped three girls in the past few months.
The man who had kidnapped Melody Scott, Jenna Morris, and Lucy Chabot was completely average. In height and weight, he matched maybe five hundred other people in the general vicinity. He was balding in a way that left a peninsula of brown hair in the center of his forehead, a fact he tried to hide by growing it long and letting it fall to either side. His brown coat ended at mid-thigh, revealing pressed trousers over brown loafers.
He was completely unassuming, unthreatening. If Dale had seen him on the street she would have offered him a smile and kept walking without ever thinking ill of him. She was a little disappointed, having expected a monster. This was the bogeyman? The shooter who had killed Brandon Kent just because he was a loose end? It was almost enough to make her angry. If this guy could be a kidnapper and a murderer, then anyone could.
She stepped around the counter to let him in, forcing a smile. "Sorry to make you come all the way down here. You try to do a good deed and you end up being put to work."
"Don't worry about it." He glanced around and then looked at his watch. Dale wondered who was watching over Melody and Lucy. Surely he didn't leave them alone.
"I have the pictures right here behind the counter. Whichever of these little girls is your daughter, sir, she is just a lovely little girl. They're both so beautiful."
He nodded absent-mindedly and rested a hand on the counter as Dale retrieved the envelope. She took the photos out and then, acting as if it was an afterthought, reached for a book of receipts. "Oh. You'll have to sign this."
"Sign?"
"Yes, sir. In case there's an issue we can have a record that they were picked up by someone whose name is on the account." She smiled sweetly.
He looked at the pen as if
it was a knife, then picked it up and quickly signed. Dale put it aside as if it was the least interesting object in the world and put the photos on the counter. The girls were extremely similar, but only someone in a hurry would have made the mistake of mixing them up. The man quickly picked out the three photos of Melody Scott.
"These are mine."
"Excellent. And Kenneth said you offered to drop the other pictures off at the address he gave you earlier?"
He seemed surprised but then nodded. "Oh. Right, yes. Of course."
Dale separated the photos into different envelopes and handed them back across the counter to him.
"There you go, sir. Again, very sorry for the inconvenience."
He nodded dismissively, thanked her quickly, and carried both envelopes out the door. As soon as he was gone Dale picked up the receipt book and looked to see what name he had signed.
Luke Becker.
She smiled as Kenneth came back out. "Was it him?"
"Oh, yeah," Dale said. She tore off the receipt and sent Ari a text with the name. She hurried around the corner to see which way the truck went, hoping she would see Ari in pursuit. When she stepped out her eye was drawn down the block to where Ari had been waiting to follow whoever showed up. Dale stopped walking when she saw Ari's car was still parked, idle and dark at the corner.
Ari wasn't in the car.
#
She'd been expecting a car.
When the truck pulled up in front of Gaspode and Son, Ari knew that she had seconds to decide whether or not she was going to change the plan. She had been anxious about trying to follow someone through the still-barren streets of Seattle, certain he would see her and get spooked. The truck was a golden opportunity to follow him without being seen, but she would have to hurry. She opened the door a crack and cold air seeped in as she quickly began to undress.
She banged her knees on the steering wheel, certain that Mystery Man would come out and drive away before she could get ready. Her jeans pooled around her legs and she kicked them out of the way. She thought about the relaxation method Milo had taught her, but it was impossible to calm down enough for it to work.
She dropped out of the car on all fours, transforming quickly as she sagged her shoulder against the door to close it. The pavement was freezing under her bare hands but they quickly formed pads and covered with fur after only a few steps. Her spine stretched and elongated and her legs, one moment too long and the next just the right height, propelled her across the street. She crouched and leapt, landing in the back of Mystery Man's truck with a heavy thump that she prayed hadn't been heard inside the shop.
The bed of the truck was filled with tools protected from the elements by a thick burlap tarp. Ari got her nose under the edge of it and squirmed underneath, crawling forward until she reached the back of the cab. She braced her forepaws on the floor and curled her spine against the side of the truck, her head down so that it wouldn't make a tell-tale bulge in the material.
A minute passed, maybe two, before she heard the bell over the studio's door. Footsteps crunched in snow and then the truck's door opened. Ari had a flashback to hitching a ride to a dog-fighting ring in the trunk of a car, wishing she had some way to signal Dale that she wasn't in danger. The truck engine came to life with a growl and Ari stumbled slightly as Mystery Man began his trip home.
She lost track of their direction almost immediately, but she had the vague feeling they were going south. The truck was forced to go slowly and make frequent stops, sometimes idling for nearly five minutes before it began crawling ahead again. She sank down onto her belly and crawled back to the edge of the tarp, sticking her head out just enough to sniff the air. She smelled sea and salt to the right which supported her directional theory. Seagulls cried overhead, swooping back and forth across the prematurely dark afternoon sky. The birds were scattered by a small plane flying low to avoid the cloud cover, its engine chugging along as it angled in for a landing.
They had been on the road for nearly thirty minutes. Ari allowed for the bad conditions and cautious driving and assumed the plane meant they were somewhere near Boeing Field.
The truck stopped and Ari held her breath as Mystery Man got out. The engine was still running so she knew they weren't at their final destination. She heard his footsteps crunching through snow and risked lifting her head up enough to see above the sidewalls of the truck bed. The man had his back to her, standing atop a tall mound of snow pushed out of the way by plows. He was carrying two envelopes which Ari knew contained the pictures of Melody Scott and Lucy Chabot.
He disappeared over the hump of the mound, so Ari ducked back into her hiding place. Whether he planned to rip them up and dump them into the sewer, if there was a furnace somewhere he could incinerate them, or if he was just going to shove them into a dumpster on a construction site, Ari knew those pictures would never been seen again.
He was gone for nearly half an hour, the engine rattling noisily under the hood. Ari had a horrible vision of being stranded and out of gas while the temperature continued to plummet and wondered about just how smart her plan had actually been.
She was shivering by the time she heard his approach through the snow. The chassis sagged under his weight and he began driving again.
Their progress slowed even further as they entered a neighborhood. She could feel the truck's traction suffering as they pushed through deeper snow that hadn't been plowed, sliding a manageable amount on slick surfaces as he carefully took the corners. He finally pulled up onto a slight incline, she felt the set of the brake, and he shut off the engine.
She remained very still as she listened to his footsteps recede. He walked for a long time before she heard a door open and close, so she was expecting something rural when she finally squirmed free and lifted her head to take a look around. She sniffed the air and looked in all four directions before she narrowed down the location to somewhere between Interstate-5 and Beacon Avenue, on a large plot of land closed off by a wooden fence and embraced on two sides by thick woods. A light came on in the front room and Ari jumped out of the truck to the tightly-packed snow that covered the twin ruts of the driveway.
The pads of her paws were numb from the cold, and she tried to ignore the snow as it was caught in clumps until she had twin pairs of snowy white boots clinging to her feet. She reached the building and lifted her head until she picked up Lucy Chabot's scent. It was very faint, but she hoped and prayed that only meant she had been inside since Mystery Man abducted her. She skirted past the windows, ducking down even though they were too high for her to be seen, lifting her head toward the frame and sniffing quickly to determine if anyone was in the rooms she was passing before she moved on.
At the back of the house was a small greenhouse, a half-arch of glass that seemed to hang off the dark brown brick of the main structure. The lights were on inside and Ari could see empty shelves along the walls and rows of empty tables filling the space. She paced along the edge of perimeter looking for weak spots, but nothing presented itself. At the door she could see that it was unlatched, so she finally surrendered to the inevitable. She closed her eyes and transformed back into her human body.
It was like plunging into a frozen lake, her skin immediately contracting into goosebumps and her arms clinching over her naked chest. The snow that had been clinging to her fur cascaded down off her body and she quickly threw the latch and ducked into the relatively warm greenhouse. The door clicked quietly shut behind her and Ari sagged against the freezing glass to catch her breath. The pain was numbed by cold, her fingers curled into hooks in front of her breasts as her brain worked out the conflicting signals of pain, hypothermia, and relief from the cold. Finally, naked save for Dale's collar, she moved quickly forward in the hopes a laundry room would present itself.
The home's original back door stood open to the greenhouse, and she paused to smell the air. She didn't smell any deodorant or body odor, but she still gave the hallway a visual check before she stepped
out. Mystery Man was in the kitchen; she heard him opening cans and the splash of liquid into a cup. She moved to the left, away from the kitchen, and peered into a dark room that, fates be praised, was a laundry room.
Less than a minute later she was dressed in a black T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts, both fresh from the dryer. She had to tuck the shirt into the shorts to keep them from falling, but they would suffice for the moment. She also took a pair of socks, putting one on and saving the others for her front paws if she had to go back out into the elements on four legs. The thick cotton not only warmed her toes, it made her movement across tile floors even more silent.
Just beyond the laundry room was a wooden door with a heavy padlock on it. She pressed her ear to the wood and heard cartoon music on the other side. She searched for a key or something to break the lock with. She couldn't get this close and then leave empty-handed. The drink he was preparing in the kitchen was probably liquid courage to do the dirty job ahead of him. Lucy Chabot was going to die in the next few minutes unless Ari got her out of the house.
She looked toward the kitchen, came up with a dumb plan, and pushed away from the door with a mental promise that she would return.
Mystery Man had his back to her when she entered the kitchen. She pushed her hand into her hair, feigned a yawn, and blinked sleepily.
"Hey, sexy. There you are."
He jumped as if she'd announced herself by firing a gun into the air, spinning around so fast he nearly lost his footing. He grabbed at the counter, eyes wide behind his glasses as he stared at the impossible person standing behind him.
"Wha... y-you... who are you?"
He was torn between anger, fear, and confusion. If she'd been a man or less attractive, she was certain one of the defensive qualities would have kicked in. But she was a pretty woman wearing his underwear. All he cared about was how she had gotten into his house; he would deal with the why later. Ari decided to play on his alcohol and anxiety and smiled.
"Aw. Don't be like that. I know last night was rushed, but don't tell me you forgot my name." She swayed her hips as she walked toward him. "'Course, we were a little preoccupied at the time, so I can't be too offended. I'm Tule. And you? Was the name you gave me last night your real name, sexy?"