Mourning Gloria (34 page)

She made a sweeping gesture that included the leather sofas. “This package is our best. We have a parking garage for tenants—the door is just at the far end of the hall, so our residents don’t have to go out into the weather. And twenty-four-hour security.” She smiled toothily. “We make every effort to protect the young people in our care.” But her smile faded quickly, as she remembered that the sheriff had told her that something very bad may have happened to Gloria Graham.

I was thinking that a student—or her parents—had to have plenty of money to afford a place like this, with its designer furniture package and weekly cleaning service. “Is Matt Simmons’ apartment similar?” I asked.

“All our one-bedroom units have an identical floor plan,” she replied. “Of course, his has a different view.” She gestured toward the door to the deck. “I like this one, because it looks out onto the hills.”

I was about to make a response, but through the partially open door, I saw a movement in the hallway. Across the hall, the door of 205 had opened, and someone was coming out. He was carrying a large canvas duffle bag, empty, and striding swiftly down the hall in the direction of the parking garage.

I crossed to the bedroom in three quick steps. “I’ve just seen Matt Simmons going down the hall,” I said urgently to Blackie, who was inspecting a closet. “Looks like he’s headed for the parking garage. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but he’s carrying an empty duffle—about the size of a body bag.”

Blackie grasped the situation immediately. “Stay here,” he commanded. He unsnapped the flap on his holster and stepped out into the hall. “Mr. Simmons,” he called. “Adams County Sheriff’s Department. Hang on a minute, please. I’d like to talk to you.”

But at the sound of the sheriff’s voice, Simmons broke into a run, pushing through the door that led to the stairs to the parking garage. Blackie sprinted after him. I pretended I hadn’t heard his command and ran after him.

“Wait!” Ms. Sternfeld cried. She was trying her best to follow, but she was hobbled by her narrow skirt and three-inch heels. Power suits may connote clout, but that’s about as far as it goes.

I turned, running backward. “Call 9-1-1,” I said. “Now! Tell them to come to the parking garage.”

She gave up the chase and was pulling out her cell phone by the time I hit the stairway door. I pushed through and rattled down a flight of concrete stairs. The door to the parking garage had already thudded shut behind Blackie, and I opened it and stepped into the garage.

I was standing on the lowest level of the two-level concrete structure, a few cars parked nose-in along each side. In the dim light, I could see Blackie. He had slowed down and was moving deliberately through the half-darkened garage, looking into and under every car. He held his gun in one hand. Simmons was nowhere in sight.

I listened, waiting for the sound of an engine starting up, thinking that Simmons had reached his vehicle and might try to drive out. And then, off to my left, about three or four cars up the row, I saw a door in the wall, closing itself on one of those door closers that work very slowly.

I reached it before it closed completely. It was a gray-painted metal door with the words Storage Area stenciled across the front in brown letters. Under that, Residents Only. It had one of those key-pad security locks on it, where you punch in a number code to gain access.

I knew immediately what I was looking at. Right after I graduated from law school, I had rented an apartment in a large unit in Houston. Every resident had a walk-in storage locker in a large room adjacent to the parking garage, which was handy for stowing stuff you didn’t use regularly and didn’t have room for in the inadequate closets in your apartment. Sports equipment, out-of-season clothing, stuff like that. The door to the parking garage was locked. Residents put their own locks on their lockers.

Matt Simmons had just carried an empty duffle bag into the Villa’s storage area—not a suspicious act, of course. But instead of turning to ask why the sheriff wanted to talk to him, he had fled. Why?

My foot still in the door, I glanced around, and spotted what I was looking for, leaning up against the wall, just within arm’s reach. It was a four-foot piece of lumber that people were using to prop the door open and keep it from locking when they were moving stuff in and out. I wedged it into place, then ran to Blackie.

“I think he’s in the storage area.” I pointed at the door. “Over here!”

Blackie turned and strode toward the door. I was ahead of him, feeling on the wall to the right for the light switch I knew must be there. My fingers found it and I flicked the switch. The room inside was what I expected, a labyrinthine complex of closets, large enough to store a stack of boxes, a bicycle—or a dead body.

If I had thought, I might have been more prudent, but I acted purely on instinct and without thinking. “Jessica!” I cried. “Jessica, are you there?”

“Help!” I heard from a far corner of the room, the quavering sound echoing eerily. It was a young woman’s voice. “Oh, help, pl—!” The last word was cut off, strangled, as if a hand had gone over her mouth.

“Shut up,” a man shouted. “You hear me? Just shut up!”

Blackie shoved me to one side. “Matt Simmons!” he shouted, raising his gun to shoulder level. “Come out with your hands over your head. No weapons. I want to see both of your hands up and empty.”

“No way,” Simmons said. “I’ve got the girl, and I’ve got a gun. Come after me and I’ll kill her.”

He must have jabbed her or twisted her arm, because there was a shrill, panicked cry. “No, don’t, please!”

“Hear that?” Simmons asked roughly. “I mean what I say.”

“I heard.” Blackie’s voice was calm. “Jessica, can you confirm that he has a gun?”

I heard a low, quavering, “Yes.”

“Didn’t I say I had a gun?” Simmons demanded, sounding annoyed.

“Yeah,” Blackie replied. “Just wanted a confirmation, that’s all.” His tone, calm and steady, became conversational. “Jessica, you do what Simmons says. Don’t take any chances. You hear me? We’ve got officers out here. You’ll be okay.”

There was no answer, but Blackie went on as if there had been. “Good. Simmons, I’ll get back to you shortly. Stay where you are for now.”

Without waiting for a reply, Blackie stepped back, closing the door against the prop. To me, he said in a low, steady voice, “Go out to the parking lot, China. Tell the PSPD officer to call in backup. Tell them we’ve got a hostage situation here. I want them to clear the garage and the outside parking lot, and keep everybody away.” He unclipped the radio from his belt. “I’ll call for county backup.”

I ran toward the entrance to the garage, where I saw Jerry and two other uniformed PSPD patrol officers approaching fast. “We just got a 9-1-1 call from the manager,” Jerry said crisply. “What’s up, China?”

I pointed to where Blackie was standing, using his radio. “The sheriff has an armed man holding a female hostage. He wants you to radio for backup from the PSPD, and keep everybody away.”

Jerry’s eyes narrowed. “Hostage?”

“Yes,” I said. “The owner of that green Ford you’ve been watching. We’ve found Jessica Nelson.”

 

 

IT was like a scene out of a movie. The police were dealing with a desperate individual—in this case, a suspected killer who was holding a hostage and threatening to kill her. After a while, it became clear that the situation was in what’s called the “standoff phase,” when the hostage taker is holed up with the hostage and the police are in control of the possible exits—in this case, the one door to the storage room.

While the backup gathered in the parking lot, Blackie established contact with Simmons, via cell phone. Simmons seemed cool and rational, and—in return for Jessica—asked for promise of safe passage out of town. To hold the ante down, Blackie was treating this as if it were a single act, unrelated to anything else, and he didn’t mention the murder of Gloria Graham, or Simmons’ possible involvement with her. But both he and I were pretty well convinced that Matt Simmons had murdered Gloria, and that he had seized Jessica because she managed to follow a trail of clues that led to him.

Sheila arrived and took charge of the area outside, directing the cordoning off of the area immediately in front of the parking garage. Before long, there were a dozen patrol cars and deputies’ vehicles parked around the perimeter. Two EMS ambulances were there, too, with a couple of teams of medics. I waited nervously just inside the entry to the garage, where I could see the door to the storage area.

Nearby, Blackie and Sheila had set up a command center. The sheriff was on the phone to Simmons, trying to persuade him to let Jessica come out, unharmed. Simmons was stubbornly resisting, saying he would only come out if there was a car waiting for him and a promise that he could get in it and drive off. The conversation went on until Simmons suddenly stopped talking.

“Maybe the battery on his phone has given out,” Sheila said worriedly, when the silence had stretched to several minutes.

“I’m going in there and find out,” Blackie said. “We can get him another phone, if that’s what it takes. We need to keep him talking to us.”

“No,” Sheila said, putting her hand on his arm. “Hold off for a few minutes, Blackie. Maybe—”

But at that moment, the door was pushed open and Jessica stumbled through it, nearly falling. Sheila ran forward and grabbed her, pulling her off to one side, while Blackie and another officer stationed themselves at the open door.

I went quickly to Jessica, now sitting on the floor, her back to the cement wall, eyes shut. She was breathing heavily. I took her hand. “You okay?” I asked.

Her eyes flew open. “China!” she exclaimed. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you! How did you get here?” She glanced wildly around. “How did you find me?”

“Long story,” Sheila said beside me. “We have some med techs here who want to check you out, but we need to know what’s going on in there. Did Simmons let you go? Is he a threat to himself? What kind of arsenal does he have in there?”

I understood her questions. If Simmons had released Jessica, he might be intending to kill himself. Or he might be heavily armed, intending to take out anybody who came in after him.

“He didn’t let me go,” Jessica said, rubbing her wrist. “I hit him. He’s out cold.”

Sheila stood. “Go get him,” she yelled at Blackie. “Jessica says he’s out cold.”

“How did you do it?” I asked Jessica.

“He’d tied me up, but I’d already managed to get loose,” she said. “When he came running in, he was so stressed that he didn’t notice that my hands and ankles weren’t tied tight, the way he’d left them. When he was talking to the sheriff on his cell, I hit him from behind with a golf club. As hard as I could.”

“A golf club?” I exclaimed. “Good lord, Jessica. Where did you get a golf club?”

But the medics took over just then, and I didn’t get an answer to my question. And by the time Simmons was wheeled out, strapped to a gurney and under armed escort, Jessica was already on her way to the Adams County Hospital, where she would likely spend the night. I couldn’t go with her—it was nearly four, and I had to get back to the shop.

The excitement over, the patrol officers and county deputies were beginning to leave. There was still crime scene tape closing off the front of the garage, where a team of investigators would begin the work of going through Simmons’ locker and, later, both his apartment and Gloria’s.

“Sorry to leave when you guys are having so much fun,” I said to Blackie and Sheila, “but I have to get to work.” I smiled at Blackie. “Good job, Sheriff.”

“Good timing,” Blackie said, clapping me on the shoulder. “I’m not forgetting what I said about recommending you as an investigator. If you hadn’t been so persistent in tracking Jessica, this business today would have had a much different conclusion.”

“Actually, I think the credit goes to Jessica,” I said. “She said she hit him with a golf club.”

“A seven iron,” Blackie said. “I saw it lying in the locker where he’d been keeping her.”

“The seven-iron slugger,” I mused. “The media will have fun with that.”

When this all began, Jessica had been hoping for a big story that would carry her own byline. She got a lot more than she bargained for.

Hark ran a huge banner headline: ALERT REPORTER CAPTURES ARSON-MURDER SUSPECT. He did the reporting on that one, outlining Jessica’s investigation of Gloria Graham’s death and her abduction by the man who was suspected of killing Graham. In addition, Jessica wrote a special full-page feature about the experience of being captured and held, bound and gagged and in desperate fear for her life, for over forty hours. The Austin
American-Statesman
printed a page of photos showing the interior of Simmons’ storage locker, the machete she had used to cut her ropes, and the golf club she had whacked her captor with. The San Antonio
Express-News
featured a two-column interview with Jessica, and the Houston
Chronicle
put her on the front page—albeit below the fold. (The space above the fold was dedicated to one of the usual local political corruption scandals.)