Don't Be Afraid (22 page)

The phone kept ringing and ringing. Chloe grabbed it. “Hello.”

Again there was silence. Someone on the other end listening, waiting.

“What do you want?” Chloe tried.

“Are you home alone?” The voice was high, guttural, and inhuman.

Chloe slammed the phone down.

“Who was it, Chloe? Was it Mommy?”

“No. Just a wrong number.”

“What’s a wrong number?”

Chloe’s hand was throbbing as well as her head. She ran ice water over it and while she was doing that the milk she’d forgotten about boiled over on the stove.

“Shit!” Chloe leaped and pulled Emma away from the stove. The little girl started crying, her wheezing increasing with every sob.

“It’s okay, sweetie.” Chloe tried calming her, but then she noticed that Emma’s lips were blue.

“We need to do the inhaler right now, Em.” Chloe ran for the bedroom, grabbing the rescue inhaler and the spacer from a box on the shelf painted with little fairies and frogs and took it back to Emma, who’d sunk down onto the kitchen floor.

“Oh, God.” Chloe dropped next to her, fumbling with the spacer. “Here, Em, let’s get this in you.”

Emma’s eyes rolled back in her head and Chloe screamed and jumped up for the phone.

 

 

Amy rode to the hospital in the back of a police cruiser, sitting forward on the seat, her hands clenched in fists on her knees, as if her posture could make the car move faster.

Detective Black had immediately offered to drive her to the hospital when a younger officer delivered the message about Emma. She might have appreciated the offer more, given that he was running every red light and taking corners at seventy miles an hour, but all she could think was that he was responsible for Emma’s attack.

She was out of the car the moment he pulled into the emergency drive, passing through the automatic doors and slamming, breathless, against the reception desk.

“My daughter was rushed here with an asthma attack. Emma Moran.”

The nurse behind the desk moved with agonizing slowness. She probably wasn’t even a nurse, just some clerk who’d been given a penny-ante power position and enjoyed using it. “What’s the name again?” she said, stepping over to the computer screen.

“Emma Moran. She’s five.”

“Five?”

“Yes!”

“I don’t see it here—” the woman started, then, “oh, here it is. She’s in the ICU.”

Amy took off running for the elevators, the woman calling after her. “You can’t go there! I need you to fill out some paperwork.”

An elevator slid open and Amy stepped in and slammed the close door button.

Chloe was in the hall outside Emma’s room. She looked up when Amy called her name, eyes bloodshot, and nose red.

“I’m so sorry,” she said and she kept repeating that while Amy stood in the room with Emma, who was unconscious and in an oxygen tent. Her skin looked waxy and it was as if Amy could see straight through her, all the veins standing out like a blue road map, her rib cage wholly visible, a fragile shell covering her poor damaged lungs. The little heart seemed visible, too, pulsating at the top of her chest, the constant, steady movement the only thing that gave Amy hope.

She hadn’t cried when Black hauled her in for questioning. She hadn’t cried during the long, horrible afternoon in the station, but now she wept, breaking down into the loud, strangled sobs that choked and hurt in their effort to get out of her body. Chloe held her for a moment, crying too, but she was looking for forgiveness, and in the end Amy was comforting her, trying to reassure her that it wasn’t her fault and that she didn’t blame her.

“Hey, get up, you’ve got to leave.” The voice was matter-of-fact and way too loud.

Mark swam out of the dream he’d been having in which the boy in the hall had soft brown eyes and was holding a nail gun. A woman wearing a uniform was standing above him and she looked impatient.

“Look, I hate to have to kick you out so early, but I’ve got to get my kid to school and me to the diner. You’ve got to take off.”

She took a drag on a cigarette and exhaled the smoke in his direction. Mark coughed and rolled to a sitting position. The bedroom that had looked soft and romantic at night was far less so by day. The rose-colored cloth that covered the lamp turned out to be a blouse that had been tossed onto it. Other clothes were on the floor and on an old armchair. The sheets on the bed looked like they needed to be washed and the room itself smelled, of cigarette smoke and cat urine. There was a bong on the dresser sitting below the cracked mirror and among dozens of bottles of perfume, nail polish and pills.

“Here’re your clothes,” the woman said, tossing them onto his lap. She took another puff of her cigarette and washed it down with a swig of Diet Coke. Her voice seemed harsh in the morning, not smoky but old. She was probably in her thirties, but she looked haggard in the morning light, as if she were a dozen years older. Maybe she was.

Mark dressed hurriedly while she primped in front of the mirror, applying all sorts of makeup and teasing her limp blonde hair.

“Mom, I can’t find my math book.” A blonde-haired boy stood in the doorway and Mark froze in the middle of buttoning his shirt, his pants open around his hips. The boy’s gaze fell on him, but his expression didn’t alter, as if he were looking at something he’d seen a million times before.

“Hi,” Mark said, tucking his shirt rapidly into his pants.

“Hey,” the kid responded without any interest.

“I don’t know where it is, Chad, you probably left it on the couch.” The woman’s spoke from under her hair. She was bent in, half brushing it rapidly.

The kid disappeared without a backward glance.

“That your son?”

The woman pulled her hair back into a ponytail and began pinning loose strands to her head with bobby pins. She managed to keep her cigarette in her mouth the whole time. “Yeah.”

“Where’s his father?”

“What are you? A social worker?”

“No. Just think it must be hard to be a single parent.”

The woman regarded him for a moment and then snorted. “Listen, sweetie, what we had was a fuck. Nothing more. You are just one in a series.”

She must have read it in his face because she laughed and it sounded harsh and cold. “Don’t worry, you wore a rubber.” She pointed and Mark saw an overflowing wastebasket with a used condom on top. Relief mixed in equal parts with nausea.

“I don’t want another kid,” she said. “And I manage just fine. He doesn’t need some man fucking him up, so don’t get any ideas about creating your own happy little family with us. I don’t need no man fucking me up, either.”

She drove him back to the bar parking lot and his bike, pausing just long enough for him to get out of the car before speeding off in her Cavalier, blue smoke shooting out the exhaust pipe, the engine pinging like it had never known a drop of oil.

He reeked of cigarette smoke, perfume, and stale beer, and what he wanted more than anything else in the world was a long, hot shower, but Mark didn’t head toward home. He couldn’t face his mother’s censure, not after yesterday. She’d probably be worried about him, but she’d been married to a cop for almost forty years and she knew how to temper that with the reality of the job.

There was a Holiday Inn near the parkway. It was clean, it was anonymous, it would do. He checked in for one night and if the kid behind the counter thought anything of the fact that Mark had no luggage he was careful not to show it.

Mark took a forty-five-minute shower, shampooing his hair three times, washing his body twice. He simply stood under the spray once he was clean, trying not to think of anything. He put all his clothes in the plastic bag for laundry service, left it outside the door and hung the Do Not Disturb sign and then he folded back the covers of the vast king-size bed and fell into it.

When he woke up, he was clear-headed and ravenous and shocked to discover that it was almost four
P.M.
He’d slept almost the entire day. He ordered room service and shaved, pleased to discover that his clothes had been returned and were waiting outside his door along with his shoes, buffed to a high shine, and the newspaper. He read it over a meal of a salad, turkey burger and water. It was time to cleanse his system.

They were still talking about Meredith Chomsky’s killing. Speculation about who stood to benefit from her death ranged from her ex-husband to his adult children. All of them super-wealthy, of course, which made them even easier targets.

There was no mention of any arrests, so clearly Black hadn’t weaseled a confession out of Amy Moran. Had he detained her? Was he out searching for something more so he could make the collar?

Mark thought about calling the desk sergeant, but not yet. Not until he’d figured out what he was going to do. His own impatience with this case had led him to act foolishly and if he didn’t rectify this with some real evidence, he was probably going to be fired. If he hadn’t been fired already.

Jesus, it was hard to imagine sinking lower than being fired by the Steerforth police force. What had happened here? How had he gone from the guy who graduated at the top of his class at the academy, the guy who made detective after only a year, the guy who had a reputation for clean, smart police work to the guy stupid enough to contaminate a crime scene?

It was tempting to give into self-pity, but he’d already wasted enough time on that. He shuddered as he thought of the woman at the bar. He needed to get tested after that encounter, condom or not. What the hell had he been thinking? Clearly he wasn’t thinking at all, he’d been doing nothing but drinking, trying to obliterate all thought.

Now was the time for clear thinking and Mark tried to recapture the elation he’d felt yesterday, the sense that he was making real progress with the case. Yes, it had been a mistake not to glove Amy Moran, but bringing her to the house had been a smart move. Up to that point, they hadn’t known how the killer was taking pictures. Now here was a crucial piece of evidence that he—or she—had been stalking these women.

The problem was that he couldn’t prove that Amy Moran hadn’t planted that tripod. Or could he? All at once it occurred to Mark that there
was
a way to get proof.

Twenty-five minutes later he’d checked out of the hotel and was walking the aisles of the Buy-and-Fly with a basket on his arm. He picked up Ziploc baggies in two sizes, large and small, a manicure set that included tweezers, magnification card, a flashlight, a box of disposable latex gloves, a disposable camera and after some searching, a small set of screwdrivers.

Ten minutes later he turned his bike onto a street lined with large houses and started up the long driveway toward one of them, feeling very conspicuous.

Without his gun he felt naked and he had no right, given that he’d been remanded to desk duty, to enter the Chomsky house. If he were very lucky there’d be no cops guarding the crime scene. If he were a little bit lucky, the cop guarding would be a rookie who wouldn’t know about his demotion.

He got very lucky. There was no one around. The yellow tape blocking the front door billowed in the wind. He stepped under it and tried the door but it was locked. So were the windows at ground level. He wandered around to the side of the house and there was another door, also locked. A large terra-cotta urn sat next to it, a white flowering plant overflowing its edges. On impulse, Mark shifted the urn and there, underneath, was a key.

If he did this, he was breaking and entering. If he got caught he’d undoubtedly lose his job. If he didn’t do this, he didn’t know if he had a job to go back to. Mark put the key in the lock.

The door opened with a soft click and Mark was afraid an alarm might sound, but there was silence. He closed and locked the door behind him, pocketing the key. His footsteps seemed loud on the tile floor. He walked through the mudroom and saw that he was in the kitchen. A clock in the shape of a rooster was ticking loudly on the wall. It seemed to be telling him to hurry. He pulled the latex gloves out of his pocket and donned a pair. Then he took a paper towel off a roll near the sink and wiped down the doorknob and the key.

It took him a couple of minutes to navigate his way through the huge house, but at last he found his way upstairs and to the master bedroom. This time, he didn’t have the benefit of the photographs and had to try and remember what they’d looked like. Hadn’t Meredith Chomsky been on the bed in several of them? He tried what Amy Moran had and went to every window, removing the screen so he could see and feel his way outside. There was nothing.

There had to be something more. Amy had said that the killer had taken the pictures from inside the house, but where? He combed the room, looking for equipment on the bedside tables, on the faux antique vanity crowded with silver-backed hairbrushes and bottles of every body lotion on the market, and in and around the entertainment center hidden in a massive wardrobe. There was nothing.

What if he was wrong and there was nothing to be found here? Mark felt more and more anxious. He slipped off his shoes and climbed on the vanity bench to check within the overhead light fixtures. Nothing. He used one of the small screwdrivers he’d bought to painstakingly remove the forced air vent in the floor, but there was nothing in there.

He’d just finished screwing the cover back on when there was a loud crash from a room nearby. Mark went for his gun, but it wasn’t there. He jumped to his feet and ran to the door, staying close to the wall before darting a foot and then his body into the open. There was no one in the hall and no one in the other bedrooms.

A large, framed picture was facedown on the floor in a guest room two doors down. The glass had cracked when it landed on the hardwood, but he couldn’t figure out how it had gotten knocked off the dresser. He checked the closet and under the bed, but there was no opportunistic thief lurking.

He was walking toward the door when something darted in his peripheral vision and he whirled around. A large, black cat with a white diamond on his head landed on the bed and looked at him with a satisfied expression before loudly meowing.

Mark laughed, relieved. He’d have to tell someone at the station about the animal. Had it been fed since its mistress’s death? He walked back to the master bedroom, wondering where on earth the cat had been hiding not to have been spotted by all the cops and crime scene workers combing this home. Maybe he’d made a home for himself in the walls.

And just like that, it hit him. Mark surveyed the salmon-colored walls up and down, running his hands over the surface and then he started knocking. He rapped his fist on one section, then another, listening for a hollow sound. But no wall was completely hollow and the walls in these newer homes were made of drywall not plaster, so nothing sounded solid or empty. He was just about to give up when he hit a section where the thud of his fist against the wall seemed different, softer.

It was at the edge of a wall, where it opened up for the walk-in closet. Mark turned on the lights in there and shifted the clothes on that end of the wall and then it was clear. There was an access panel at floor level that had probably been installed when the house was built. It was probably to get access to the wires for all the elaborate wiring, but it had clearly been put to other uses. The panel had been expanded, made taller, but still shorter than the height of the clothing rack so it wasn’t visible behind the clothes. And the clothes in this section of the closet were things that remained in storage bags and appeared to be mainly men’s suits. Apparently Henry Chomsky hadn’t cleared out all his belongings and Meredith had never touched this section of the closet.

Mark carefully removed the access panel, aimed the flashlight into the dark space and there it was. A tripod just like the one Amy Moran had found on Sheila Sylvester’s roof was attached to the wall at eye level with a small hole where a beam of light was shining through. Mark went back into the bedroom to see it from that angle and it still took him a minute to spot it. It gave a perfect view of the bed but was small enough and low enough that no one would spot it.

Excitement at his find mixed with nausea. Just because he was a cop didn’t mean he was immune to feelings about the crimes he uncovered. It was impossible to stay completely detached, though the successful cops, the ones who managed to stay married and made it to retirement without eating their own weapons, had somehow learned to compartmentalize the despair.

He stepped back into the access panel and examined it minutely, sweeping the flashlight up and down its surface. He wished he had the klieg lights that the crime scene investigators used, but he had to make do with a five-buck cheapie. What he needed was some evidence that someone other than Amy Moran had used this space. The size was one indicator. Amy was tall, but not this tall, and it had been cut for a six-foot person to fit. There might be prints on the tripod, it was hard to tell, but Mark didn’t think so. If the guy was this careful, he was going to take the time to wear gloves. Still, he’d have to have it checked out.

There was a small scrap of paper stuck in the tripod’s shaft. Mark pulled it out and unwrapped it. It was about the size of a fortune and had one word written on it: Peek-a-boo!

Mark was so pissed off he almost ripped it to shreds. This sick fuck was toying with him. There wouldn’t be prints on the tripod. They wouldn’t find his prints because this was a game and he was hoping they’d find his secret little cubby. The disappointment was so strong that Mark wanted to give up, but the realization that he’d gone this far and that he had the choice between continuing to search for some hard evidence or giving up and returning defeated with this new transgression on his record spurred him forward.