“Open the damn door!” a man shouted.
Jacob jerked back like he’d been struck, then retreated several steps deeper into the apartment. His first instinct was to run, but there were only two ways out of the apartment—his front door and his bedroom window, both of which opened onto the courtyard. He was trapped. Maybe if he could figure out what the visitor wanted, he could talk his way out of the situation.
But even with his mind working on overdrive, he came up empty. Then another demand from the other side of the door. “I want the ring back, you son of a bitch!”
With that, Jacob no longer had to wonder who it was. He didn’t know how Chris had found him, and now wasn’t the time to figure it out.
Think. What do I do?
He’d been quiet. So far, there was no way for Chris to know he was here. If Jacob stayed quiet, maybe he would go away.
Christopher Bell
The stone patio outside the thief’s door was four steps below ground level. Although there was enough room for a table and chairs, the patio was empty except for a long-dead fern in one corner and a bed of leaves that hadn’t been raked since they began to fall months earlier.
“You think he’s home?” Chris asked Arkin.
Arkin ran his fingers through his greasy, unkempt hair. Without a word, he climbed the stairs that took him from patio to street.
“Where are you going?” Chris demanded.
Arkin didn’t respond. He walked to the small yard in front of the building, examining the ground. Then he picked something up, which Chris realized was a rock as big as his fist when Arkin returned.
“You can’t—”
“Do you want the ring back or not?” Arkin wound up like a pitcher and heaved the rock through the window beside the door. It shattered the glass, tore open the blinds with a clatter, and thudded across the hardwood floor. The single pane of glass that was never designed to be opened was now open for good.
Chris saw a flash of a man running through a doorway that, in an apartment this small, he suspected led to a bedroom. That had to be his thief. Although he would never have broken the window himself, he was emboldened by Arkin’s actions. He reached through the hole, careful not to cut himself on the shards of glass that still clung to the frame, and felt along the inside of the door until he found the deadbolt.
Jacob Reed
Seconds earlier, Jacob had heard Chris say, “You can’t—”
Then there was another voice. “Do you want the ring back or not?”
His fingers flexed like they did when he was about to steal a wallet. This time, though, the energy driving that flex was terror, a feeling of being trapped. Chris wasn’t alone. More important, the man he was with planned on getting inside, whether or not Jacob answered the door. Standing still like this didn’t seem like such a hot idea anymore. He scooped up his laptop and disappeared into his bedroom just as a rock crashed through the bay window and thudded across the floor.
He toppled the dresser to bar the door, slid the bed across the room to reinforce the blockade. He knew this wouldn’t keep the men out forever. That was okay. He had a plan.
“Get out of here or I’ll call the police!” Jacob didn’t expect that to discourage them. But he wasn’t sure if they had seen him duck into the bedroom and he wanted them to know where he was.
A second later they started pounding on the door, trying to force it open, again demanding he return the ring. That was the moment Jacob had been waiting for. With the men distracted, like a magician’s audience looking to the left side of the stage while the real trick was performed on the right, he opened the bedroom window and crawled through it. He crouched low, keeping the laptop clutched to his chest as he passed beneath the bay window.
Once he made it up the four steps to the street and around the corner, he considered his disappearing act complete. Sooner or later the men would get into his bedroom. They’d find him gone and probably trash the apartment looking for the ring.
Jacob didn’t care. With his laptop in hand and the envelope of cash he’d gotten from the jeweler in his pocket, there was nothing there of value. Besides, if everything went according to plan, he had no reason to ever return.
Liam Parker
As the evening wore on, the lasagna brought Liam a small degree of peace, first through its smell and then its taste. After a second glass of wine, he went to bed. He needed to stay sharp.
Chloe scratched at the door until Liam let her in and then whined until he picked her up and put her on the bed with him. Sometime during the evening, his anger with her, his irrational feeling that the tiny Pomeranian should have been able to prevent the attack, had dissipated.
Chloe curled up beside Liam and put her head on his calf. The two stayed that way the rest of the night. Liam slept deeply. In the only dream he’d remember later, he was running through the jail, chased by guards and prisoners alike. They were screaming at him, blaming him for Elise’s murder. Each hallway led to a fork. Each choice he made seemed to be wrong. There was no escape, and every cell he looked in, he saw Elise, struggling to get out of her bathtub, begging for his help.
Just after seven, Liam woke up with his forehead damp from sweat and terrified of going back to jail. David was right, he should speak to the neighbor. Nobody would be able to tell his story better than he could. If she would listen to him, she would probably realize she was mistaken.
Elise’s building looked dirtier, older, even monstrous and forbidding in a way it hadn’t before. Liam could feel the six stories of gray stucco and glass looming over him as he approached the entrance.
He scrolled through the directory until he found a listing for Carlson, A. He thought about buzzing her apartment, asking her to let him up so they could talk, then reconsidered. Even if she said no, he wasn’t going to go away. This was too important. Liam needed to speak to Ashley face to face, right from the very beginning. She needed to see him as he was now—in a pressed blue button-down and a black overcoat, his hair styled and his clothes blood-free.
Liam buzzed other apartments at random until somebody let him in. He took the elevator to the fourth floor, rising slowly in fits and starts as it always did, and navigated the ugly yellow halls back to Elise’s apartment. He half-expected to see police tape strung across her door, but there wasn’t any. In fact, there was no indication at all that something horrible had happened there.
Liam looked at the doors of the two closest apartments. These were the ones he’d knocked on looking for help. Ashley had to be behind one of them. Guessing which one seemed like a coin toss.
While there was probably no harm in knocking on the wrong door, Liam didn’t like being here. He wanted to get in and out as fast as possible. He studied the doors, looking for clues, not expecting to find any. Then he did. Elise’s apartment was on a corner. One door was across the hall from hers and farther from the elevator. The other was along the perpendicular hallway he had to travel to reach Elise’s apartment, and the last anyone would encounter before doing so. With an eye to the peephole or the door open, that resident would be able to see anybody who visited Elise.
That had to be it.
Liam knocked and waited and knocked again. It was still pretty early on Saturday morning. He hoped Ashley hadn’t spent that night at a boyfriend’s or gone out for an early breakfast.
Finally, a woman’s voice said, “Go away.”
Liam was afraid she might say something like that. Still, he persisted. “Ashley Carlson?”
“Go away. I don’t want to talk to you.”
“I saw the article in the Tribune. I won’t take up much of your time. I just wanted you to hear my side of the story. I wanted you to know what happened. Please open the door.”
Silence followed. Liam heard the deadbolt turn, and the door cracked open a couple of inches. The security chain was still in place.
Ashley looked as if she had just woken up. She was wearing a pink bathrobe over a pair of sweatpants and a tee shirt. Behind her
, clothes and magazines were scattered about the floor. She held up her cell phone so Liam could see she’d already pressed the numbers 911. “You try anything, and I’ll hit Send.”
Liam took a step back, held out his hands. “No, no. I promise. I only want to talk to you.”
Ashley raised her eyebrows as if to say Get on with it.
“I didn’t kill Elise. She was already dead when I got here. I tried to pull her out of the bathtub, but I couldn’t. That’s how I got her blood on me. When I knocked on your apartment door, I was looking for help. I had left my phone in the car. I was going to ask you to call the police. I’m not sure what you . . .” He was going to say “thought I was doing,” but of course, he already knew. The article had made it crystal clear, hadn’t it? Elise had been killed only minutes before Liam had arrived. Ashley had said she heard a lot of noise coming from next door. At the time, her mind wouldn’t have jumped straight to murder. But when a stranger showed up covered in blood, knocking on her door, demanding she open up, could she be blamed for thinking he was a madman on a killing spree or a killer seeking out witnesses?
“I did call the police,” Ashley snapped.
Later, Liam would realize that was why they had arrived so soon after he had called them.
Right now, though, all Liam could think was that he’d made a mistake. He shouldn’t have come here. Ashley was never going to change her mind. “I’m sorry,” he said, trying to make a quick exit. “I know this has been hard on you. I wanted you to know what happened, that’s all. I won’t bother you again.”
Liam turned around and, before he made even one step down the hall, he heard the door slam and deadbolt lock.
He dropped his head and sighed. He was starting to understand why the police thought he was guilty. The text messages pointed to motive. The means and opportunity were both easy enough to establish. As for timing, if his cell phone records alone didn’t tie that up, Ashley’s testimony would.
He didn't know what Patricia had planned for his defense, but it better be good.
The Tall Man
The Tall Man followed Liam to Elise’s building at a safe distance, always keeping at least one car between them. He watched Liam enter the lobby from inside his car. He checked the digital display above the elevator to see which floor Liam had gone to. He scouted the hallways of the fourth floor. Slow and silent. He peered around a corner and saw Liam standing in front of a door, knocking. He pressed his back flat to the wall and listened.
A muffed voice spoke from the behind the door. The Tall Man couldn’t make out the words.
“Ashley Carlson?” Liam said.
Another muffled response. Eventually, Ashley opened the door. He listened to the exchange and was pleased with how it went. When Liam apologized, signaling the end of the conversation, the Tall Man returned the way he had come, hiding in another hallway until Liam left. Then he, too, stopped by Ashley’s apartment and knocked.
“I’m done talking to you!” she shouted. “If you don’t go away, I really will call the police. You hear me?”
“He’s gone.”
The Tall Man saw the peephole darken as Ashley looked through it. He heard the rattle of the security chain, the click of the deadbolt.
She cracked the door and made eye contact with him.
“You handled that well,” he said.
“What are you doing here?”
“Just keeping an eye on things. Doing my civic duty. I think the police might want to know about Liam’s visit, don’t you?”
Squeezed between the door and the frame, Ashley continued to stare at the Tall Man, but said nothing.
That was okay. She didn’t have to. He could tell from the look on her face that she’d gotten the message. Since he had nothing else to say, the Tall Man turned and walked away.
Liam Parker
Liam was barely two blocks away from Elise’s building when his phone rang. He answered, routing the call through the Tesla’s speakers.
“It’s Anita,” the caller announced. “You came to my sister’s funeral.”
Liam remembered the family gathered around Elise’s grave. This had to be the young woman with a scar on her cheek. “My mom’s been pretty upset. I mean, she hasn’t been herself since Elise disappeared. But since her death—well, I’m sure you can imagine. Anyway, she wanted to talk to you. I guess she’s looking for closure or something.”
Liam was surprised to hear from anybody in Elise’s family, and not just because of how they had acted at the funeral. Certainly they knew he had been charged with Elise’s murder, even if they hadn’t seen it in the paper. Bash would have told them.
After a couple of seconds, he settled on a simple, “Why?”
“You mean why does she want to speak to you?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“We haven’t seen Elise in six years. We haven’t even gotten so much as a phone call. But, Mom and I, we don’t think the person who killed her would come to her funeral, passing out his business card and asking to talk to us. There’s a place to eat at the corner of Park and Third. It’s called The Griddle. Are you free this morning?”
Liam felt a warmth well up inside him that nearly brought him to tears. Sure, David believed him. But Liam had started to wonder if he might be the only one. Even Patricia had her doubts; she’d basically said as much at the jail. But Anita and her mother more than anyone had reason to blame him and they didn’t. “Yeah, I guess so. I can be there in an hour.”
The truth was, Liam didn’t know how much help he could be. The more he learned about Elise, the less he knew. But, as one parent to another, he wanted to do what he could to provide Elise’s mother some solace.
Liam arrived at The Griddle ten minutes early. The diner was chrome-everything and had an honest-to-God jukebox. Anita and her mother were already there. He joined them at their booth. Anita’s mom looked frail. Her eyes and nose were red from crying. Once again the arch of her eyebrows and her high cheekbones reminded him of Elise.
Anita was wearing a black motorcycle jacket, zipped up. Her skin was darker than her sister’s. She had long black fingernails and a don’t-fuck-with-me look that seemed to have more to do with genetics than attitude.
Both women were drinking tea. A collection of discarded tea bags, wet napkins, and open sugar packets had been pushed to the corner of the table.
The mother held out her hand and Liam shook it. In a high-pitched voice that had a bit of a quiver, she thanked him for coming. She didn’t tell him her name, which he figured was an oversight and let it slide. This would probably be the only conversation he ever had with her.
She looked at Anita. “Remember not to say anything to your father about this.”
Anita patted her mother’s forearm. “I know, Mom.”
The mother turned her attention back to Liam. “He would not like me to talking to you.”
Liam wasn’t surprised. He couldn’t expect everyone in Elise’s family to believe in him. “So what do you want to know?”
“You and Elise were dating?” the mother asked.
“Yes, for two months.”
“And you said she was working in advertising?”
Liam nodded. He had decided it would be best to keep up the lie.
“She came a long way,” the mother said to Anita proudly. “What was she like?”
“She was one of the nicest people I ever met,” Liam said. He could tell from the mother’s face she wanted something more meaningful. What boyfriend wouldn’t say that? So he elaborated. “She had this sort of motherly instinct when it came to animals. There was this one time when we had dinner reservations and were running late. When we stepped outside her apartment building, I didn’t pay any attention to the stray cat that was circling the bushes. All I could think was that if we didn’t get to the restaurant soon they’d give away our table. But she did. She stopped and asked me to be quiet. ‘Did you hear that?’ she said. I didn’t hear anything. I said we needed to hurr
y, but she wouldn’t let it go. She told me to hold on while she shooed the cat away and looked into the bushes, where she found this small gray bird. Elise was worried it was hurt, so we took it to McAllister Animal Shelter.” Liam paused the story as he remembered the night and smiled. “Our dinner ending up being McDonald’s, and we ate it at the shelter while we waited for them to examine the bird. They said we didn’t have to stay, but Elise wanted to know it would be all right before we left.”
“Was it?”
“They said it’d be fine.”
The mother smiled too.
“And Elise was smart. She was always reading. It didn’t matter what it was. Newspapers, paperbacks, biographies. Just about everything. I think her favorites were books on psychology. She had two shelves dedicated to them, and those were just the ones she liked enough to buy. Most books she checked out of the library. One of her favorite authors was Patrick Ainsworth.”
“Really?” her mother said, surprised.
“She never read when she was living at home,” Anita added. “She was always out with her friends doing who-knows-what. There’s all kinds of trouble you can get into in Uptown.”
Uptown was a neighborhood north of The Loop, and a good long way from Oak Park, which was where Liam had grown up and where Elise had told him she had.
“Uptown? When did you live there?”
“Why?” Anita asked.
Liam shrugged. “Just curious.”
“We always lived there,” the mother said. “Still do.”
Liam hadn’t expected this conversation to reveal another lie, but there it was. He wasn’t sure what to do with it, so for now he filed it away with the others. When they were done talking and on their way out of the diner, Liam asked the women if they’d be willing to stop by Patricia’s office one day.
A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trust Page 30