Better Read Than Dead (29 page)

“Not a problem. I’ll take care of it pronto.”
Liar, liar . . . pants on fire . . .

There was no way I was going to make it easy for Milo to follow up with my sister. He was already too suspicious, and I didn’t want him to press her until I had the rapist’s description in hand. “Take care of yourself, Cat, and give Tommy my love.”

We clicked off and I climbed out of the tub and got into my flannel jammies. The house seemed empty without Eggy, and I got a pang in my stomach from missing him. I missed Dave too, and as I trotted into my room and turned off the space heater before getting into bed, I wondered how soon before my life would get back to normal.

I sighed as I puffed up my pillows and pulled the police file Andros had given me off the nightstand. I peeled back the rubber bands and opened up the folder, looking at page one. The paper was old and abused. After I’d looked it over a few times it dawned on me that I was looking at a copy of the police report taken twenty years earlier on the day of Dora Kapordelis’s disappearance.

The report indicated that there had been a call to the Perry Drugstore on Fourth Street to investigate a lost child. The officers on the scene soon discovered that a little boy had been found wandering the aisles of a drugstore, looking frantically for his mother. The store had paged her over the intercom, but no one had come forward to claim the little boy. The child’s home number revealed a housekeeper, who said that the boy had gone off with his mother to run several errands, and had not returned home yet.

I read through the police report a couple of times, then allowed my intuition to chime in. My eye searched the top of the page, and I was shocked to discover that the Kapordelis family once lived in Royal Oak, mere blocks from my office, in fact. I read on and saw that the little boy’s name was Demetrius, and remembered something about Andros telling me that Demetrius had had a rough time dealing with his mother’s disappearance.

I flipped back through the folder and found a picture of Dora. I held it in my hand for a minute, looking at her picture. My first thought was that she’d probably been abducted and possibly murdered—I mean, Andros was bound to have enemies. But her picture didn’t reveal the flat plastic image that I usually got when looking at a dead person. I had to assume then that Dora was still alive.

That was a pivotal revelation if it were true, because it meant that Dora had probably been responsible for her own disappearance.

But why would a woman leave her children behind? Her youngest had been only a toddler. How could she be that cold? I stared at the image, and something popped into my head. I saw a map of the United States, and the state of Texas rose up out of the image.
Hmmm.
So there was a connection to Texas here. I wondered what it was. I also had an urge to turn to the next page of the report, which simply documented how the police had canvassed the neighborhoods around the drugstore, and short statements from possible witnesses. My eye drifted to the upper left-hand corner, and curiously I noted that the page began with the digit 3. I flipped back to the first page, which was numbered with a 1, then back to page three. Where was page two?

I searched the rest of the file, thinking that perhaps page two had gotten rearranged within the folder, but it wasn’t there. Curious.

I flipped back to Dora’s picture again, wondering if I could focus in on her energy, but my eyelids were beginning to droop, and I gave in to a tremendous yawn. Tiredly, I closed the file and vowed that tomorrow I’d concentrate on this again, and see what I could come up with. Already I felt like I’d made some good progress. The pressure was on, however, if I wanted to get a physical description to the police before Thursday rolled around again.

Slugishly, I put the folder back on the nightstand and turned off the light, drifting off to sleep almost immediately.

I don’t know what initially woke me—a sound, perhaps, or just the presence of another person—but in an instant I was wide-awake . . . and terrified. I strained to hear what had woken me, and I was too scared to move, because I knew someone else was in my bedroom.

My heart raced with terror as I realized my alarm hadn’t gone off. My intruder had managed to bypass it, which meant that he’d probably also cut the phone lines. My mind whirred as I began to run through a list of ways to escape, my heart thumping so hard in my chest I thought it would certainly give me away. I couldn’t really hear above the pounding in my ears, and I was about to risk turning my head to look around the room when an arm snaked its way across my chest, and another covered my mouth to muffle my scream.

I was pulled off the bed and onto the floor, but I was not pulled willingly. Fighting like a rabid cat I scratched and flailed and kicked, throwing my attacker off balance and gaining a small purchase on the floor. With all the strength I could muster I pushed up from the floor and heaved backward as hard as I could with my right elbow, making contact with a rib cage and sending my attacker momentarily backward. I didn’t waste any time clawing and scrambling my way out of the bedroom, my limbs working independently of each other in their effort to propel me away from danger.

I could hear nothing but my own heartbeat and cries of terror as I made it to the stairway, still not having made it fully to my feet. Not pausing to stand up I simply launched myself forward, trying to get to the bottom as fast as possible.

I rolled down the stairs, hitting my head, scraping my knee and banging my hand. I was oblivious to the pain, the terror of the man in my bedroom crowding out all else.

Somehow I made it to the front door. I reached up to the handle and pulled myself up, snatching at the lock and yanking before I’d unleashed the catch. I sobbed as I struggled, aware that my attacker was close behind; then the door gave and I had a nanosecond of relief until a tremendous weight crashed into it, and the door was slammed shut as the body of my attacker hit the door frame and squashed me in the middle.

“No!”
I screamed, sandwiched between the great bulk of the intruder and the door. I wriggled and clawed and continued to pull at the door. A hand with a viselike grip grabbed my shoulder and spun me around; another hand grabbed my other shoulder, and I was shaken so hard my teeth rattled. Finally the shaking stopped and I was let go, but I was dizzy from the manhandling and fell to the floor. Shuffling backward I pushed myself into the small space behind the front door and blubbered like a baby, “P-p-please . . . d-d-don’t hurt me!”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Abby; now calm the hell down!” came a deep baritone.

In the dark it was impossible to see the man in my house, but his voice marked him as distinctly as his face. “Dutch?” I said with a sniffle.

“Well, who the hell did you think it was?”

“Obviously
not
you!” I said, getting angry. “What the
hell
are you doing here, and why did you
attack
me?” I demanded.

“I didn’t ‘attack’ you, and keep your voice down,” Dutch said, sternly kneeling down in front of me. Faintly I saw him rub his rib cage. “I think you cracked a rib,” he complained.

“Do you
know
how much you scared me? Have you thought about . . . oh, I don’t know . . . calling me on the
phone
or ringing the
doorbell
instead of breaking and entering into my house? What are they teaching you guys at Quantico, anyway?” I snapped at him, the overflow of my terror fueling my anger.

Dutch sat down next to me and said, “I couldn’t call or knock on your door. Kapordelis has your phone bugged, and your house is being watched. I had to get in through the back.”

“How’d you bypass my alarm?” I demanded.

“I’m not the only one who uses their birthday as a PIN,” he answered smugly. “Hey,” he said, looking around, “where’s Eggy? I was surprised when the little guy didn’t start barking.”

“Kapordelis tried to poison him. He’s fine, but I’m keeping him at Dave’s until I can sort all this out.”

“Which reminds me—what in God’s name are you doing getting mixed up with a guy like Andros? Do you
know
who you’re dealing with?”

I sighed heavily. “Of course I know, but it’s complicated.”

“So you’re working for him willingly?”

“No! I mean, sort of, but not really. The truth is, my sister was attacked the other day by the Royal Oak rapist, and one of Kapordelis’s men got a good look at him. I need to cooperate with Andros until I can get the information I need out of his goon, and then we’re done with each other. The reason I got involved in your little operation is only because Kapordelis wanted to test me—and, I might add, you’re damn lucky I did. That guy was going to kill the two of you.”

Dutch smirked. “Joe and I had a backup plan, so don’t you worry about it. But that’s not why I’m here. You can’t work for this guy; it’s too dangerous. Milo’s working on this rapist, and he’ll get him. You don’t need Kapordelis’s help.”

I couldn’t explain why, but something told me that I had to stick close to Andros for some other reason. I pondered that as I looked at Dutch, and something flashed through my mind. “Hey, you really need to be careful around this guy. He’s got cancer—bad—and he doesn’t care if he lives to see another day, ’cause he knows he’s only got a couple of them left. He’s a man with nothing to live for, and if he feels like taking you down because you’re wearing the wrong kind of aftershave, then that’s what he’ll do.”

“He’s got cancer?”

“Bad.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. I’d be surprised if he made it to Christmas. . . .”

“Then we’ll have to move fast. In the meantime, I’m warning you, back off this case. I mean it. Joe thinks you’re on the take, and I’m having a hard time convincing her otherwise. What’s Kapordelis want from you, anyway?”

“He wants me to help him find out what happened to his wife.”

There was a very long pause, and I squinted in the dark to see Dutch’s face. Finally he said in a voice that suggested he meant business, “You cannot help him with that.”

“Why not?”

“Just back off, Edgar. I mean it. Okay?”

I was confused by the ice that had materialized in his voice. He was waiting for me to agree to walk away. But I didn’t think Dutch fully understood what I had to lose here. Not only did I feel I was very close to cracking the case of the rapist, but something was pushing me to find Dora. All of my intuition screamed for me to continue poking through the file on my nightstand.

I could tell, however, that Dutch would have none of that, so I put it all back on his plate. “And just how would you suggest I deal with Andros in the meantime? I mean, the guy’s not going to take a ‘no, thank you’ from me, you know.”

“Stall. Tell him nothing—and I do mean
nothing
—until we make our move. We’re really close to nailing his entire organization, and if you go poking around in this you could blow the whole case for us. Andros may die before we can bring him to justice, but there are a lot of other members of the family willing to take his place at a moment’s notice. You’re way out of your league here, so you need to lie low. We clear?” he asked, standing up and holding his right side tenderly.

“Fine,” I said getting to my feet. “Are you taking off now?”

“Got to. I’d stay and make a dishonest woman out of you, but I think you cracked a rib, and besides, your room is freezing! What’s going on up there?”

“It’s a long story. Listen, please,
please
be careful. This guy Andros is a lunatic, and I don’t think he’s totally convinced that you’re not a Fed.”

“I’ll be fine,” Dutch said, and kissed me lightly. “Walk me out the back?”

I walked him to my back porch, where he turned to me and held my chin, looking into my eyes for a long moment. Finally he said, “I really miss you, sweethot.”

“So hurry home,” I replied as he leaned in and kissed me senseless.

After Dutch had gone I locked up again, set the alarm and went back to bed. My hand hurt and my knee was swollen, so I popped an aspirin before crawling back under the covers. I took a look at the clock before shutting my eyes, and noticed it was after two. One of these days I was going to work off my sleep deficit and get a decent night’s shut-eye. Little did I know as I closed my eyes and sank down into the covers then that I wouldn’t get that particular opportunity for several more days.

The next morning I’d barely woken when there was an insistent knock at my door. I came downstairs in my bathrobe and slippers, stopping to hike up the heat while the next round of knocking encouraged me to hurry.

I peeked through the peephole and saw a young officer there wearing a grim expression and about to raise his hand yet again against my door. I pulled the door open and said, “Can I help you?”

“Miss Cooper?”

“Yes?”

“I’m here to escort you to the police department. Detective Johnson would like to speak to you.”

“And instead of calling me on the phone he sent you?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Fine, give me a minute and I’ll be right with you,” I said as I waved him into my living room and beat a quick path up the stairs. I had an inkling why Milo would send an officer to fetch me—my guess was that he’d viewed the video from the parking garage and wanted some answers. Pronto.

I sighed my way into a pair of jeans and a thick sweater, skipping the stiletto boots and choosing a pair of comfortable loafers instead.

After I’d locked up the house the officer and I headed over to the department, and dutifully I followed behind him as we walked up the stairs and into the Detectives’ Unit. We pushed through the double doors, and I noticed immediately that Milo wasn’t in the large, open room. Instead of dropping me off to wait at Milo’s desk, my escort motioned me down the hallway to one of the interrogation rooms. The officer stopped before one of the doors on the left and, after opening it, waited for me to enter. I walked in and heard the door close briskly behind me. I turned sharply at the sound and noticed that I was alone . . . or so it appeared.