Footprints of a Dancer (Detective Elliot Mystery) (13 page)

The doctor jotted the information down. “Could you help us get in touch with a family member, or a relative?”

Elliot recalled the conversation he’d had with George and Emma Gardner. They’d be delighted he had found their daughter. “Her parents live here in town. It won’t be a problem.”

Doctor Shaffer smiled. “Now let’s see if you can get the patient to talk again.”

Elliot walked into Angela’s room, the doctor following close behind.

Angela’s eyelids fluttered open. “Are you an angel?” She asked, directing the question toward Elliot.

“We met in college,” Elliot said. “Your memory is just a little foggy. It’ll come back to you.”

“Why are you here? What do you want with me?”

Elliot glanced at the wrinkled sheets of Angela’s bed. He didn’t wish to cause her any more stress, but she needed to know. “I met with your parents earlier today. They want to see you. They want you to come home, Angela.”

Angela said nothing, but her arm slid from beneath the covers and when she found Elliot’s hand her cold fingers wrapped around it. “If you think I should.”

The doctor put a hand on Elliot’s shoulder and nodded.

Elliot pulled his notepad and jotted down the address and phone number for Mr. and Mrs. Gardner. He tore off the page and handed it to Doctor Shaffer.

“I appreciate your help, Detective.”

“No problem.”

“Angela,” Doctor Shaffer asked, “Are you under the care of a doctor?”

“Am I going to die?”

“I’d say you have a good chance of walking out of here soon. You need to take it easy on the Valium, though, and whatever else you’ve been taking. You might not be so lucky next time.”

Angela seemed to ignore the doctor, but again spoke to Elliot. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Detective Kenny Elliot.”

“You’re a cop?”

“I’m here as a friend, but I would like to ask you some questions.”

“All right, but if it’s about college, I don’t remember much about those days.”

“Do you remember meeting me?”

“My roommate, Amy, got us involved with the spiritualism stuff. It was okay at first, but it turned ugly and dark.”

“What about Professor David Stephens?”

A smile found its way across her face. “How is David?”

“He’s not with the school anymore. Do you know where I can find him?”

“He was so nice. It didn’t work out, though.”

Elliot glanced at Doctor Shaffer. “What did you mean when you said it got dark and ugly?”

“They talk to me, try to make me do things.”

“Who talks to you, Angela?”

She put a finger to her lips and shook her head.

Elliot rubbed his temples. From what little he knew about paranoid schizophrenia, Angela certainly seemed to be exhibiting the symptoms. And, if she’d had the affliction a few years, it would explain her behavior on campus back then as well.

Again Angela reached out and grasped Elliot’s hand. “When I saw you earlier today, I wasn’t dreaming, Kenny. I was dead. I know because I’ve experienced it before, with the voices, more than a lack of light, even an opposition to it. Do you have relatives, Kenny?”

“Sure,” Elliot said, though a real family was something he’d never had. “Why do you ask?”

“When I was young, I stayed with my Aunt Kathryn one summer. I don’t know why, but she found a church and she asked me to go with her. It was my only experience with church. I think it might have been that way for her as well. Anyway, we went every Sunday, until I went back home. Whenever the darkness came, I would think about Aunt Kathy, and the church. I don’t want it to take me. Can someone like me be saved?”

Elliot squeezed Angela’s hand, and though he wondered how he might explain what he barely understood, the words came out easily. “Yes. Of course you can.”

“There’s a lot missing, chunks of time that I can’t remember. I don’t know what all I’ve done, but I think it has something to do with your friend, the one with the dark eyes and black hair.”

Elliot tore his gaze from Angela and visually swept the room.

There was no one except for Doctor Shaffer, who had stayed in the room but had remained silent.

He released Angela’s hand and went to the door.

The hallway was busy with people, but none who fit the description of the person Angela was talking about.

She was referring to Laura. Elliot went back to Angela’s bedside. “I don’t see anyone. When was she here?”

“Just seconds ago.”

Elliot strolled to the window and stared at the cars below.

A grey colored Infinity, one similar to the car he’d seen cruising past George and Emma Gardner’s house, glided across the parking lot and pulled onto the roadway.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Elliot flipped on the lamp beside the bed, and though he saw no one, the notion lingered, unwilling to be dispelled by mere visual verification.

Someone had been in the room, hovering over the bed, just inches from his face.

After leaving Angela at the hospital, Elliot had driven home with the intention of grabbing a shower and a quick nap. Carmen had planned on an evening together, but a glance at the clock showed he’d slept through the night. It was 6:00 AM.

Something clanked against the house, followed by footsteps thudding across the backyard.

Elliot scrambled from the bed and struggled into a pair of pants. He grabbed the .38, a secondary weapon he kept in the drawer of the nightstand, and stepped quickly from the bedroom. When he reached the breakfast area behind the kitchen, he unlatched the patio door and stepped outside.

The footsteps continued on the west side of the house.

The prowler was on the run and moving fast. Elliot followed the sound, but when he reached the area, the gate swung open and banged against the fence.

A black silhouette ran through it and across the front yard.

By the time Elliot reached the driveway, the distinctive sound of an automobile pulling away from the curb sent a shiver up his spine. It was the roar of the Infinity.

Elliot turned and ran toward his pickup, digging into his pockets for the keys, reprimanding himself for leaving them in the house. But the truck wasn’t going to be the way he caught the intruder.

As if it had been crippled from overuse, the truck leaned lower on one side.

Elliot ran his hand across the fender of the truck, a curious understanding playing around the edges of his consciousness. Someone had let the air out of the tires, and he had a pretty good idea who it was. Angela indicated someone fitting Laura’s description had been in her room. He’d watched someone leave the parking lot of the hospital, driving the grey Infiniti. Even more curious, Elliot connected the incident to a story Terri Benson had told him. She’d once followed Gerald to find out where he’d been going at night. He’d driven to a small house located a few miles from the university, where he met with his new love. If Laura Bradford had indeed been resurrected, he would find her at the small house in Stillwater.

A few minutes later, Elliot fired up the Harley and drove out of the neighborhood. He took Highway 169 to 412 and headed west.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Terri Benson had remembered the incident in detail. Not only had she given Elliot the address, but directions as well. Elliot had caught her at the trailer court, where she lived with Mr. Tattoo.

The old sandstone structure Terri had described occupied a piece of ground among a clump of maple trees.

Elliot shut off the bike and leaned it against the kickstand. In the front yard of the nearest house, a man sat on an overturned bucket, working on a black 1959 Chevrolet, a bumper jack holding up the driver’s side wheel.

Hoping to get some information, Elliot strolled over to the neighbor. The name on the mailbox read Walter Shelby.

He stopped working and looked up. “Something I can do for you, son?”

“I hope so,” Elliot said. “Do you know who owns the property next door?”

The man, who wore striped bib overalls, glanced at the old house. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m looking for a friend who used to live there.”

He shook his head. “That old place has been empty for a long time, son.”

“She was a Native American girl,” Elliot said, “about eighteen or nineteen at the time.”

He put a four-way lug wrench on the last nut, spun it loose and dropped the nut into a hubcap. After that, he removed the wheel.

“Her name was Laura Bradford.”

He rolled another tire and rim around, lined up the holes, and lifted it into place. Using the four-way, he secured the wheel with the lug nuts.

“It’s important,” Elliot said. “Do you remember her?”

A nervous look slid across the man’s face. “I couldn’t tell you one way or the other about the name, but I know who you’re talking about.” He stood and pulled a shop towel from his back pocket and wiped his hands. “I used to see her out there in the backyard at night. She’d light a fire and move around like she was dancing or something.” He stuffed the rag back into his pocket.

“Would you mind if I had a look around?”

“Permission isn’t mine to give. Don’t know who owns it either. But I can tell you this. Several people stopped and looked around over there after your girlfriend left. None of them stayed for more than five or ten minutes. After awhile, they just stopped coming.”

He gathered his tools and started toward his garage. “I got curious about it once. Now, I’m a God fearing man, son. But there’s something not right about the place. You can feel it when you walk through the door.”

“Thanks,” Elliot said. He turned and walked toward the abandoned property. When he reached the front entrance, a once white-painted door with three rectangular windows, he thought about Mr. Shelby’s warning. He shook his head and shoved open the door, stepping inside the house where Laura Bradford had lived.

Standing in the hollow of the living room, Elliot had the unsettling notion that the air from outside remained there because its counterpart had become different, inhospitable. Even the light trickling in through the open doorway seemed reluctant in its intrusion. Wide planks of oak flooring stretched the length of the house, while intricate crown moldings, also carved from oak defined the ceiling. Arched doorways separated the dining area from the living room and the kitchen. No beer cans littered the area, no graffiti decorated the walls, and no makeshift sleeping-quarters crowded the corners.

If Elliot hadn’t known better, he might’ve thought the prior occupants had stuffed their belongings into the back of a truck late last night and left to avoid past due rent.

Barely visible, prints of mud showed someone had come part way into the house only to stop and turn back.

Elliot suspected the footprints were those of Walter Shelby. Fighting an urge to follow Shelby’s lead, he walked deeper into the living room until a doorway along the north wall caught his attention.

The passageway led Elliot into another room where the window shades had been drawn.

Elliot found his flashlight and switched it on.

The light fell across more blank walls and empty flooring.

The next area was a bathroom with two doors connecting it to both bedrooms. Wallpaper with a pattern of pink and blue flowers decorated the walls, and a medicine cabinet with a mirrored door clung to the wall above the sink.

When Elliot opened the medicine cabinet, although no toiletries sat upon the glass shelves, the aroma of bath powder filled the air. The odor did not diminish as Elliot left the area but became stronger, strengthened even with a hint of perfume.

Elliot stepped into the back bedroom and the light fell across something.

Having moved the beam in a wide sweep, Elliot jerked the light back to the corner.

A small writing desk caught the light and reflected it back.

Using the flashlight, Elliot applied upward pressure to a corner of the desk, lifting the writing surface.

The action revealed a storage area beneath the lid.

He pushed the top higher, causing the sliding hinge to lock into place. Repositioning the light, he shined it into the storage tray.

An issue of the
Stillwater News Press
, the local newspaper, lay folded in the desk. The date indicated it had been printed eight years ago, approximately three weeks before Laura showed up on campus.

Elliot picked up the paper and scanned an article that had been sectioned off, bracketed by the black markings of an ink pen.

The article talked about a band of people, drifters who’d started a commune near Stillwater, only to abandon the place. It wasn’t detailed, nothing much more than a side note, but someone, probably Laura, had found it significant. It struck a note with Elliot as well, reminding him of what was happening in Tulsa.

Even though the room had become noticeably colder, a bead of sweat fell from Elliot’s forehead and dropped onto the yellowed newsprint. He remembered hearing about it. Some of the students had joked, others had worried, but beneath it all had been a suspicion of the events being underplayed.

From the bottom of the desk tray yet another newspaper glared at him.

Placing the Stillwater paper on the floor, Elliot took the next paper and brought it close.

Originating a few days after the vintage
News Press
issue,
The Daily O’Collegian
, a university press, covered the same story.

Elliot’s throat went dry. The college piece had been written by his old friend, Stanley Gerald Reynolds III. He’d put a more sinister spin on the story, pointing out that the drifters had left under curious circumstances, leaving behind pets, clothing, even food in ice chests.

The thought that the newspapers could be evidence and should be left alone had not escaped Elliot, but a lingering question took precedence. Had Laura been fascinated by the unusual events of the case, or was it the coverage itself publicity for her own acts that had intrigued her?

Elliot found his notepad and copied the dates and issue numbers of the papers. He also recorded the name of the investigating officer. He returned the papers to the desk and walked into the dining room.