Expire

by Danielle Girard

  “This double homicide,” Marshall said. “This case is yours and Wyatt’s.”

  Damn it. A double homicide, with all the extra attention from the press and the city, would bury him in work. Every waking hour would be occupied, stretched to its limit.

  “I need that case solved,” Marshall went on. “And you two are what I’ve got available for the job. I’ll expect to see you tomorrow by noon. We’ll get you caught up then.”

  With that, Marshall ended the call.

  Hal stared down at his phone and slowed his pace. Go back to San Francisco or lose his job. He had no choice. He needed access to law enforcement to find her.

  Hal closed his palm around the phone and squeezed until he thought it might snap in his hand. Replacing the phone in his pocket, he turned around and started back to the bureau to inform Telly that the agent would have to go to Denver on his own.

  20

  Wednesday, 8:25 a.m. MST

  Outside, the sky was a deep magenta. Fat cumulus clouds marked the sky, their undersides reflecting the light. Looking out the window, Schwartzman would have sworn the view was fake, like a painting of heaven. But this was no heaven. And the pink sky meant no snow. Which meant no water.

  Her fingers found the key hidden back in the mattress. She had tried for hours the night before to cut the collar with the rough edge, but she’d barely made a dent. Her arms and neck were stiff and sore from the effort.

  She would have to drink again today. Already, she felt light-headed. Her lips were cracked in the corners, and a hint of metal floated in her mouth from the blood that seeped from the small cuts. Roy had drugged the water in the shower as well. Which left her . . . what? Toilet water?

  She thought about the yellowed inside of that bowl. If she contracted a parasite, it could be harmful to the fetus—potentially more harmful than whatever sedative they were using to drug her. Plus, there was no guarantee that the water that ran to the toilet wasn’t also drugged. If that was the case, she risked the drug and whatever parasites were in the toilet water, and the combination could cause her to terminate the pregnancy.

  No. She wasn’t willing to take that chance.

  Despite her thirst and the accompanying dizziness, her thoughts felt clear. Before she could drink, she had to work on an escape. Once she gave in to the thirst, the drugs would make her sleep.

  She gave herself one hour to find water or a way to cut herself out of the collar. One hour.

  Out of bed, she heard the click of the baseboard heater go on. The main room had a forced air vent. The bedroom was the only room with a baseboard heater, which meant the room may have been added after the original structure. It was the second time she’d heard the heater click on in the last ten or twelve hours. The temperature was dropping. If she were to get free, she’d have to have a plan for finding shelter, too.

  Again she considered how she might cut through the collar. She listened to the rustling sounds of the hot air and wondered about the heater. Rising from the bed, Schwartzman dragged the cord to the farthest wall of the bedroom, below the window. Pulling out sufficient slack to allow her to sit on the floor, she got on her knees beside the baseboard heater and tucked a length of cord under her leg. She tested the metal housing, not yet hot to the touch.

  She opened a corner flap to display the controls and turned the dial to “Off.” The control cover was a piece of plastic, worthless for her purposes. But the heater itself was metal. She pried off the bracket at the end of the heating unit. She sawed its edge against the fabric of the sweatpants, but it was too smooth to cut. She thought about trying to wedge the bracket up under the ceiling track to pry it loose, but the bracket didn’t seem strong enough. Setting it on the floor, she pressed down on it.

  It bent with the slightest pressure. If the shower curtain ring didn’t work to bring down the track, the bracket certainly wouldn’t.

  Setting the bent metal aside, she returned to the unit itself. The top of the heater was mounted to the wall. Below it, the small metal slats of the vent ran perpendicular to the unit, hundreds of them. She fingered them, testing again for their ability to cut. With her fingers wedged between two, she tried to pull one loose, but the slats were too close together, too firmly in place. Removing one would require pliers. Moving lower, she ran her hands across the slat that stretched along the length of the unit. By wrapping her fingers underneath, she was able to loosen the cover.

  With a little work, it came free. A three-foot-long piece of flat metal. The bottom was curved to fit under the unit, but the top was straight-edged and thin. She rubbed her elbow along the top and felt the metal through the fabric of the hoodie. It might be sharp enough to cut. She stood slowly, careful as the slack of her cord retreated into the ceiling mount.

  Setting the cover on the bed, she lowered her neck to the straightedge. Shifting her torso left and right, she searched for an angle that would enable her to use the sharp edge to cut the collar. No matter how she turned, her chin was in the way. Twice, she sliced the skin along her jaw before the edge reached the collar.

  Frustrated and winded, she sat back on her heels. It was the most activity she’d had since she’d been abducted. Her arms and shoulders ached. Catching her breath, she stared at the metal, thinking it through. Come on. There has to be a way. She tried several more times without success. The length of the metal made it too unwieldy to hold and impossible to maneuver, especially so close to her face.

  The metal was too large, too solid not to work for some purpose. She thought she might bend it, break it into something smaller, but she had another idea first. With her cord gathered in one hand and the metal in the other, she climbed up onto the bed and studied the track. Maneuvering the metal slat beneath it would require both hands. She swallowed against the fresh terror of strangulation.

  With no choice, she slowly released the cord until it ran in a straight line to the ceiling cleat. Then she lifted the metal cover. On her first try, the slat was too close to the track, the angle wrong. She pulled out slack in the cord and backed to the head of the bed, kicking the pillow to the other end and standing with her back against the wall. There, she released the cord again. The tautness of the collar against the back of her neck brought a wave of nausea. Drawing slow breaths, she raised the metal cover and tried to work the thin straightedge under the track on the ceiling.

  The work was slow and awkward. The curved bottom of the metal meant she had to hold it by one corner to try to get the metal into the narrow slot between the track and the ceiling. Outside, the pink sky had faded to a bluish purple as the sun rose over the horizon. Her hour was almost up. She tried not to think about her thirst, which felt overwhelming and oppressive.

  Covering her hand with the sleeve of the hoodie, she used the heel of her hand to hammer the metal corner under the track. But she managed to wedge only an inch or so of the slat’s corner successfully between the ceiling and the track. When she twisted the slat to try to pry the track from the ceiling, the slat corner bent immediately, the metal as soft and malleable as the corner bracket piece had been.

  She created slack in the cord and lowered herself to the bed. Exhausted, she lay back and closed her eyes. There had to be a way to use the metal to help. As a weapon? She supposed she could swing it at someone, but it would take both hands, which meant letting go of the cord and risking strangulation. And even then, the slat was hardly heavy enough to do much damage.

  Standing from the bed, she turned back to the heater. Through the window, the sky was a brilliant blue, all the traces of pink bleached away. She glanced down at the way the light hit the snow on the ground, making it sparkle like diamonds. All that water. So close.

  But maybe . . .

  She opened the window, shivering as the frost bit her face. She studied the snow piled against the outside of the house, maybe four feet below the window. She lifted the slat and stared at the one bent corner. Pressing it against the floor, she bent the other side until the two corners were almo
st touching. Like a scoop. Checking the slack on her cord, she eased the slat out the window and lowered it slowly until the metal hit the crisp snow. She punched through the hard top layer and pushed it forward until it came free again.

  There, at the end of the slat, was a pile of fresh snow.

  Cautiously, Schwartzman pulled the slat back in through the window. Clearing off the bedside table, she dumped the snow on the hard surface and scooped it into a small, firm pile. Then, laying the slat carefully on the bed, she went to the kitchen and retrieved every container that would hold water—the cup, her bowl, the fry pan, the ice cube holders, the empty yogurt container still in the trash. In the bedroom, she filled each one with snow, packing it down until it would take no more.

  Then she hid the slat under the bed and moved the containers to the kitchen. She wanted to shove the snow in her mouth, but still frozen, it would dehydrate more than help.

  Instead, she took the fry pan, filled to the brim with snow, and set it on the stovetop. Now she could spare a little water. She turned the stove on low and waited for the ancient coils to glow red.

  In the meantime, she shuttled the rest of the containers back into the kitchen and searched for anything else she could use to collect snow. She could empty the orange juice and milk, but she didn’t know how much of the drug might have leached into the containers.

  She scanned the collection of vessels she’d assembled. They held at least thirty ounces, and with the stove, she could melt the snow quickly. She returned to the stove, but the coils were still black, cool to the touch. She tried turning on the oven, but it, too, remained cold. No heat.

  Tears burned her eyes. She needed water. Waiting even ten more minutes seemed impossible. There had to be a way to get it to melt. She turned to the kitchen faucet. The water wasn’t drinkable, but it did get hot.

  She put the stopper in the sink and ran hot water into the basin until the bottom was covered with a thin layer of steaming water. Then she set a cup of snow in the water, holding the top of it until she was confident it wouldn’t tip. She added a second cup and the bowl and pulled a chair to the sink to watch the snow melt.

  After five minutes, she retrieved one of the cups from the hot bath and wiped the water off the bottom with her sleeve. Then she lifted the cup to her lips and tasted the pure joy of icy water.

  A sob caught in her throat. She had water. At least temporarily. She drank until the water was gone and only snow remained, then replaced the cup in the hot water and lifted the bowl.

  She continued this way until she had consumed twelve or fourteen ounces of water, and then she went back to the bedroom to reload while the rest melted. Back and forth, she gathered snow and worked to melt it, planning how to spend the waiting time. Scour for the makings of a tool that would cut. Make a plan with a clear head. Think of Hal and their baby. Yes, especially that. Free of Spencer’s invisible fingers inside her brain, dulling her senses, anything was possible.

  21

  Wednesday, 1:00 p.m. EST

  Georgia Schwartzman was not feeling herself. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d missed a Wednesday lunch at the club. Wednesday was women’s day, and a group of twelve or thirteen of them had a standing date. Plenty of the women missed weeks—some for months at a time—but Georgia was almost religious in her attendance. Her life was exactly conducive to being there without fail. No husband, no grandchildren, a daughter who was thousands of miles away. Or maybe not thousands of miles away. Did anyone know where Bella was? Had she turned up at home, and no one had thought to let her mother know?

  She’d left Bella two messages, but it wasn’t unusual for her daughter to take days or even a week to phone her back. “It’s been a crazy week at work.” Her daughter’s standard excuse for the delays.

  Spencer was still out of the office and had yet to return either of her voicemails or any of her texts. Georgia had spoken to the Greenville detective who had come by the other night, but he had nothing new to report. No word on Bella. No reason to think Mr. MacDonald had any part in her disappearance.

  “Disappearance,” he’d said again. “If it was in fact a disappearance.”

  When Bella had left Spencer, she’d changed her phone number and didn’t give her mother the new one for some time. It had been several weeks before Georgia learned she’d been staying with Ava. Since then, Bella had gone through a few other phone number changes.

  Surely this was just another one of those. But someone should know where she was. If not her mother, then her job, certainly.

  Georgia knew she should call the San Francisco inspector. She’d written his name down after the police visit—Hal Harris. When she searched him on Google, the results all referenced homicide. Why was a homicide inspector involved in her daughter’s . . . If it wasn’t a disappearance, then what was it? She sat at the kitchen island with the avocado toast she’d made herself. She had no energy, but she also had no appetite. She took a small bite of the toast and chewed slowly. What she longed to do was go back to bed. But she’d been sleeping for days.

  Maybe she was coming down with something. She didn’t have any pain, and she wasn’t feverish. She could call Dr. Hayes, but getting an appointment was always such as process. She didn’t even have the energy for that.

  And Dr. Hayes always asked the most probing questions. Was she having any negative thoughts? Was she sleeping? Drinking too much? In the last few years, it seemed like the man wanted to open a door straight into her head. Had it started around the time Bella left Spencer? All these years, she’d convinced herself that Anna and Spencer’s split had been a private affair. What things would other people possibly have to gossip about other than their divorce?

  But then there was Spencer’s arrest. Even that had been hushed. Certainly, no one ever talked about it with her. Maybe she should have been thinking more about her own head. How had she imagined that people weren’t talking behind her back? An ex-son-in-law in prison? What bit of gossip was juicier than that?

  How many Wednesday lunches had she attended during which women watched her and silently wondered how she’d let her daughter marry such a man? But she’d never thought that. She had always believed Spencer was innocent. That the miscarriage had broken something inside her daughter. That the only way Bella could handle the loss was to blame Spencer.

  That was the only thing that made sense.

  But after the police had been at her house and she’d had that strange visit to Spencer’s office, she began to wonder if she was wrong. And the thoughts became a new weight she carried, pressing down on her. So at Tuesday’s bridge group, she’d found herself asking the others if they invested money with Spencer. She was surprised to hear how openly they discussed her ex-son-in-law.

  “I think we used to,” Patrice had said. “But Bill moved the money after Spencer was arrested.”

  The table had gone silent momentarily, every woman gripping her cards and holding her breath. But Patrice reached across to pat Georgia’s arm. “I know he was cleared of all the charges, but Bill is Bill.”

  “A change can be good,” Evelyn had added, rattling the ice in her empty vodka soda glass. Her second, Georgia thought, although she’d been a few minutes late, so it might have been her third. “It must be a little strange working with your daughter’s ex-husband?”

  Georgia thought it had been the most natural thing in the world. And suddenly, she couldn’t for the life of her recall what had made her think that.

  “I’m surprised he hasn’t been snapped up again,” Cheryl Ann said, looking directly at Georgia. “I mean, aren’t you?”

  Georgia nodded, taking a sip of her wine. She’d asked for the chardonnay, but it was suddenly too thick on her tongue, too warm.

  “I heard he took out Montgomery Swann’s middle daughter,” Evelyn said, raising her empty glass and shaking it to get the attention of Cheryl Ann’s maid, who did not normally tend bar. Still, the maid retrieved the glass and carried it to the side bar to fix another
. “They only went out twice, but Emory—that’s the daughter—she thought it was going great. She was falling for him. But two dates, and he never called again.”

  “Same thing happened to Diana Heathrinton’s daughter,” Patrice said, waving an empty hand. “What’s her name? Caitlin or Catherine or . . .”

  “They call her Kiki,” Cheryl Ann said.

  The maid handed Evelyn a full glass, which she promptly drank down to two-thirds.

  “Maybe he’s still in love with Annabelle,” Patrice said, raising her eyebrows.

  “I hope you don’t think it’s rude, Georgia, but he does strike me as a little strange,” Evelyn said, continuing to make her drink disappear.

  Her own hackles were up. She thought of Jenny Fontaine, who had worked in his office all those years.

  “No stranger than my sons-in-law,” Cheryl Ann said dismissively. She shook her head toward Georgia as though to say, Don’t pay her any mind. You know how she gets after a few drinks.

  “Well, Tamara Rogers said she sees him at the club all the time, and he’s very friendly,” Patrice went on. “But then she ran into him down near the community college.” She waved her arms and added as an aside, “We all warned her not to go down there. It’s not safe. But her grandson is a freshman. And who did she see when she stopped for gas but Spencer? She was parked at the pump next to him. He had to have seen her, but when she got out of the car and said hello, he walked right past her, got in his car, and drove away without a word. Like she wasn’t even there.”

  Georgia was looking for an excuse to leave when Patrice got a call that Bill was being taken to the hospital with chest pain. This was not particularly unusual for Bill, although only Evelyn commented on its regularity. The rest of them ushered Patrice off, and once she’d left, the party broke up quickly. Georgia thanked Cheryl Ann for hosting and ducked out before Evelyn could corner her again.