Level Five (14 page)

             
It had been seven weeks since Kelly Paulson had disappeared.  Three weeks since Maggie had vanished.  Was that some sort of time line?  Three weeks between events?  There just wasn’t enough information to leap to any sort of conclusions.

             
His sleep had been haunted by nightmares of the two women crying out his name, begging him to find them, to bring them back to the light.  The worst part had been when Maggie’s face had morphed into Edie’s face. Then Kelly’s had done the same thing, filling him with a terror he’d never known before.

             
The dream had stopped abruptly and he’d come to full consciousness, bathed in sweat and with his heart pounding a thousand miles a minute. 

A glance at his clock had let him know it was just after three.  What he wanted to do more than anything was grab his phone and call Edie, make sure that she was okay. He knew he was being ridiculous, spooked by nightmares and dark images he couldn’t control.

He’d called Edie at seven when he’d been on his way into the station.  She was fine and sitting at her computer already at work, but it had been the nightmare that had prompted him to dig into the missing persons’ reports to see if there was any kind of a pattern they might have missed.

By the time he and Teddy were finished with their sorting, they had five women who fit the general profile of long dark hair, blue eyes and dainty features.  Maggie and Kelly had been taken from Kansas City. The other three came from Liberty, Riverside and Smithville, all small towns that were minutes from the Kansas City limits.

“This one…” Teddy plunked his fat finger on top of one of the reports, “doesn’t quite fit with the others.  Both Maggie and Kelly were taken from public areas.”  He pulled out two of the other reports.  “This one, Regina Smith, disappeared from a pizza place. Linda Burns vanished from a convenience store.  All of their cars were found in the parking lots where the women disappeared.” 

His finger once again pointed to the earlier report.  “But she disappeared from her house.  Her car was found in the garage and her husband was a number one suspect. No evidence was found to directly tie him to her disappearance.  She’s an anomaly out of the group.”

Jake frowned as he looked at the reports of the four other women.  “Is there enough of a pattern with the cars left at the last places they were seen and the physical resemblance of the victims for us to go there.”

Teddy leaned back in his chair and released a deep sigh.  He knew what Jake was asking.  Was there a serial kidnapper working in the area?  Taking women who physically rang his bell?  And if there was, then where were the women? 

Were they still alive?  Or was he killing them and burying them someplace where they’d never be found, replacing one with another as the need struck him?

“Is it possible that you’re more sensitive about all this because these women kind of look like Edie?”  He raised one of his eyebrows and held Jake’s gaze.

Jake hesitated a long moment and then gave a curt nod.  “Maybe,” he conceded.

“I’m just wondering if we go through the stack of blonds the same way we just did the brunettes, would we find the same kind of
patterns?”

The last thing that Jake wanted to do was sound a false alarm, based on his nightmares, on his irrational fear of losing Edie. Maybe he was the one who had gotten too close to Colette Merriweather’s story.  Maybe listening to Edie talk about
everything that Colette had suffered was affecting him a little too closely.

He eyed the separate stack of blonds and redheads.  “Let’s go through them and see what kind of patterns we can find, see if any of the facts of their disappearances matches what we’ve found with the four brunettes.”

Teddy burped the first refrain of Get A Job by the Silhouettes and then both men fell silent as they once again got to work.

Edie was deeply immersed in all things Colette.  She was in the zone, the words tumbling over themselves to get from her brain to her fingers to the computer screen.

She scarcely had to look at her notes next to her as she wrote about the night Colette awakened in her apartment with a man standing next to her bed.

It was amazing the thoughts that went through a person’s mind in the brief moments between recognizing danger and danger unleashed.

For the mere seconds before the man had attacked her, Colette had noted that her clock read two-thirteen, that a sliver of moonlight danced in the window and that she’d worn an old nightgown to bed. If her body was found the next morning she’d be embarrassed by the wear and tear of the gown.

Such a crazy feminine thought at a time of imminent danger.  These are the kinds of things that fascinated not only Edie, but also her readers. The human touches made the victims all the more real. 

That was Edie’s job, to make the victims real and vital and to minimize the monster to a pathetic stealer of dreams, of hopes, of life itself.

She finally took a break and leaned back in her chair.  The air-conditioner hummed a pleasant white noise that was conducive to her writing and also her own comfort.  The weather was nasty hot outside and she’d finally decided it was time to close and lock the windows and give into the need for the pleasures of the forced cool air.

She dreaded her electric bill.  Trying to make a living as a writer was difficult enough, especially since she had the added burden of being financially responsible for her father.

Absently she moved her arm down to give Rufus a pat on the back.  He’d been snoozing next to her office chair since she’d started work that morning.

Knowing she needed to stop and take a break and stretch a little bit, she got out of her chair.  Rufus instantly rose and looked at her expectantly.  He knew the routine.

He followed her to the back door, where she opened it and allowed him out before her.  He stretched on the deck next to the stairs and then nimbly ran out into the yard.

Edie stood in the center of the deck and raised her arms overhead, feeling kinks in her back and neck slowly unkinking with the movement.  It was hot, but the heat felt good as she bent over and touched her toes and then twisted her body back and forth to finish loosening up.

Rufus did his business against a bush he was slowly killing with each visit outside and then suddenly shot toward the back of the fence where a thick stand of trees stood just behind the chain link enclosure. 

He began to bark, a fierce bark that instantly set Edie’s nerves on edge.  It wasn’t his chasing rabbits
bark, rather it was a stranger danger snarling sound that raised the hairs on Edie’s nape.

Was somebody out there?  What would anyone be doing in those woods behind her house?  “Rufus,” she yelled as she inched closer to the back door.  “Rufus, come.”

The dog ignored her command and instead continued to snap and growl at one particular part of the fence.

Movement.
 

Edie froze as she saw some kind of movement in the trees and thick brush. Was it a bobcat, which had been rumored to be in the area?  The slight rustle appeared higher than what a bobcat could make? 

Perhaps a deer?  Although Rufus had never reacted so violently before to the graceful creatures that occasionally drifted through the area behind the fence.

Rufus quit barking.  The sudden silence chilled Edie almost as much as the barking had.  The dog turned and trotted toward the deck, but Edie saw that his hackles were still raised.

She got him inside the house and not only locked the back door, but made sure the doggie door was latched as well.  She remained standing at the door, staring out at the woods, but saw no more movement. Nothing to indicate that anyone was out there.

Rufus stood by her side, but appeared disinterested in the back yard.  He sat on the floor and scratched with a hind leg behind his ear then looked up at her with a happy grin, the
drama of moments before clearly forgotten in his little doggie brain.

Edie wasn’t so easily de-spooked. She remained at the glass back door that led to the deck for a long time, her gaze focused in the distance. She hoped to see a deer or something that would explain Rufus’s frantic actions and the inexplicable chill that still pooled in the pit of her stomach. 

She finally moved away and returned to her computer, Rufus at her heels. Still it took the chill inside her a long time to finally warm.

When Jake called an hour later she didn’t mention anything about it.  She’d managed to convince herself it was some kind of animal that Rufus had responded to and nothing to be concerned about. 

Besides, she knew if she told him that she’d thought somebody had been in the back, he’d go to some crazy extreme. He’d have the fence electrified and she’d find all kinds of squirrels and other wild animals dead each morning on the fence because of her overly-active imagination.

“What are you doing?” Jake asked when she’d answered his call.

“Sitting at the computer.”

“What are you wearing?” he asked.

Edie glanced down at her cut off shorts and navy t-shirt.  “Red lace hose and a bustier,” she replied.

“Hot.”

“I always dress this way when you aren’t around,” she teased.  “How’s your day going?”

“Okay.  Quiet.  We’re kind of between things.  I just wanted to check in and hear the sound of your voice.”

“That’s nice.”  She leaned back in her chair and squeezed the phone closer to her ear. The sound of his strong, deep voice made her feel safe and warm.  “We’ve been invited to dinner with Colette and Frank on Friday night if you feel like it.”

“Sure, sounds fine,” he agreed.  “What are we eating?”

“Colette and I were thinking maybe that Japanese place where they cook the food in front of you and then throw it at you would be fun.”

“That would be fine with me. Are you seeing her tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I thought we’d firm up the plans for dinner then.”

“Sounds like you have everything under control as usual.”

“Call me later?” she said, even though she knew that he would.

“You know it.”

They hung up and Edie went back to work, but in the back of her mind she couldn’t help but wonder what in the hell had been in her back yard?

Anthony got into his car, his heart pounding so fast he felt it might explode.  He’d spent most of the day immersed in Edie’s trash, carefully examining each and every item that he’d brought to his paper room.

Crumpled paper towels were carefully spread out so he could attempt to discern what she’d done with them.  Every scrap of paper was unwrinkled and saved.  He’d begun a paper stack especially devoted to Edie.

Still, it hadn’t taken long before he’d finished with her things, saving what could be saved and then re-bagging the rest of it to stack in another room.  And, it hadn’t taken long before just being surrounded by her garbage hadn’t been enough.

He needed to see her again.  He ached with his want of her.  He’d finally given into the need and gotten into his car.  He figured it would be good for him to see her place in the light of day since it had been dark the last time he’d seen it.

He’d parked in the same place he had the previous time he’d come and made his way to the back of her property, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. 

There wasn’t a breath of air as he stood beneath the shade of a tree, sweat trickling down the center of his back and on his scalp.  Flies buzzed in the air, but neither the sweat nor the bugs could deter him from his goal. 

He just needed to see her for a minute, to feed his soul, to provide fodder for his fantasies of what was to come.

He had no idea how long he’d been standing there when his cell phone rang in his pocket.  He yanked it out to see his work number displayed.

Keeping an eye on the house, he answered.  “Tompkins.”

“Anthony?”  Susan’s worried voice came over the line and he felt a curtain of anger descend over his eyes.  He fought it back.

“Hi, Susan.
  What’s up?”

“I was just worried about you when you didn’t show up to work this morning.  Is everything okay?”

His hand gripped the phone so tightly he thought it might shatter.  Stupid cow.  Why was she bothering him now?  Attempting to destroy his private moment with Edie?

He drew a deep breath to contain the rage that wanted to erupt.  “I felt a little sore throat coming on this morning and so I decided I’d take the day off and get some extra rest.  I’m feeling better this afternoon so if you’re worried about our date tomorrow night, I should be fine by then.”

“Would you like me to stop by your place after work and bring you some homemade chicken soup?  I have some in the freezer and it’s good for a scratchy throat.”

“No, I’d rather you not do that,” he said quickly, firmly.  “I’m just getting ready to take some cold medicine and plan to sleep for the rest of the afternoon.  I should be back at work first thing in the morning.”