Night Terrors (27 page)

But right now he needed Tara to open the car door.

Tara looked at Woods again, at the fear and compassion in his eyes. He wasn’t looking at her like she was some kind of freak, he was worried about her. She sat up and lunged for the door and unlocked it.

Woods helped Tara out of the backseat of his car.

She stumbled out, her legs were weak. She felt like a newborn fawn struggling to walk. Woods held her with his strong hands.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Everything’s okay. I won’t let anything happen to you. I swear.”

Tara held on to Woods and she felt tears stinging her eyes. It felt so good to be in this man’s arms. She had always been a strong woman, she had always trained and strengthened her body to be a weapon, she had always been proud of being alone and standing strong, but right now it felt good to have someone else in this world looking out for her, protecting her, caring about her, someone on her side.

But there was work to be done. She’d seen things in her dreams, fragments really, but the pieces of the dream-puzzle were beginning to come together in her mind and there were people in danger.

“You must’ve been sleepwalking,” Woods said.

Tara pulled out of his arms and she felt herself blushing. Her night terrors was her most embarrassing secret, and now Woods was discussing it out here in the morning light like she had just tripped or something, like it was no big deal.

She handed Woods the balled-up piece of paper. “This is for you.”

“What is it?” he asked. “Another drawing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I just know that you can’t show me what’s on that paper.”

Woods opened the ball of paper and looked at it. It wasn’t a drawing. It was a list and what looked like a set of instructions. It didn’t really make much sense to him, and he would have to study it more carefully later. Right now he balled the paper back up, not wanting Tara to even get a glance at it.

“Let’s get back inside,” Tara told him. “I need to call my aunt.”

Woods put an arm around her shoulder and led her back to the motel room door that was still wide open. She felt the warmth from his skin on her cold flesh, and a shiver ran through her body. She could feel the lean, hard muscles of his arms, holding her and protecting her like a girder of steel.

Once they were back inside the motel room, Woods closed the door and secured the locks. Tara went straight to her cell phone. No messages from her aunt. She never called back. Not even a text from her.

She dialed Aunt Katie’s number, but only got her voice mail.

“My aunt’s not answering,” Tara told Woods as he put a T-shirt on.

“You think she’s okay?” he asked her.

“I don’t think so,” she said and her stomach fluttered with fear.

A sudden memory jumped into her mind so forcefully that it almost felt like it had been shoved into her consciousness. She remembered leaving for the airport after her “date” with Jeremy – Oh God, the thought of her admiring his looks sickened her now.

But now she remembered when she was leaving that she told Steve (Jeremy) that she was going to pick up her aunt at the airport and stay with her in a hotel room.

Oh God … she’d told Jeremy where her aunt was going to be.

Tara looked at Woods with horror.

“We need to go. I think my aunt might be in trouble.”

Detective Perry and Detective Jackson swung by the police station for the search warrant. Judge Whalen had okayed it early in the morning. Perry and Whalen had known each other for decades, and Whalen trusted Perry completely.

Jackson drove Perry to the Garden Apartments where Tara and Steve lived. They pulled into the parking lot. Tara’s Jeep was parked in front of her apartment, but Steve’s pickup truck was not parked in front of his place. A squad car followed them into the parking lot and parked a few spaces away.

One squad car was already parked in front of Steve’s apartment, a cop waiting for them. He met up with Perry and Jackson as they got out of their car. There was also a faded red Cadillac, Mel’s car, parked next to Tara’s Jeep Cherokee. Mel waited by his car, and he already had a set of master keys in his hand, jiggling them nervously as he glanced around. A few residents in the other apartments stood in their open doorways watching, even the older man on the other side of Tara’s apartment who kept to himself.

Mel had already talked to the other tenants and explained what was going on. They stared at him with wide eyes and they had questions. But Mel didn’t have any answers right now. All he knew was that the man who had just rented the end unit, the man who called himself Steve, was wanted by the police for questioning and they had a warrant with them to search not only his apartment, but Tara’s as well.

Was Tara in trouble, too? The other tenants asked. Mel didn’t know. But deep down inside, he didn’t think so. He couldn’t imagine Tara being in trouble or doing anything wrong.

As Perry and Jackson walked from their car towards the apartment building, a police officer met them.

“No answer from either apartment,” the police officer told them. “Doesn’t sound like anyone’s home.”

Perry nodded at the police officer and brushed past him. Jackson instructed the other two police officers to stand back, but have their weapons drawn and ready; they were possibly dealing with a very dangerous man inside this apartment. Jackson drew his weapon, and much like he’d done at the abandoned house, he stayed two steps behind Perry, covering him.

Perry crushed the doorbell button with his thumb, and then he pounded on the apartment door.

“Steve! Are you home?!”

No answer.

“We’ve got a warrant! I’ve got the building manager here with me! We’re going to unlock the door and enter the premises unless you open up!”

Nothing but silence.

Perry nodded at Jackson who turned and nodded at a police officer next to Mel. The police officer gestured at Mel to open the door.

Mel walked down the walkway to the end unit with the ring of keys in his hand. Each key was marked for each apartment. There were only eight apartments in the two buildings that sat side by side, so the ring of keys wasn’t that big. There was another set of keys for the utility shed which was housed in a block building set far off from the other end of the small apartment complex.

Perry drew his gun and looked at Mel. “Give me the keys.”

Mel hesitated.

“If this guy shoots at us, I don’t want you here in front of the door,” Perry told him.

That sounded okay with Mel. He picked out the key for Steve’s apartment – Unit Number One – and gave it to Perry with a trembling hand. Then he hurried back out of the way.

Perry took the key and unlocked the lock on the door handle. He twisted the door handle, expecting the deadbolt to be engaged, but it wasn’t. He took a breath, clenched his gun in his right hand and opened the door with his left. He flung the door open and then moved out of the doorway, to the side.

“Steve! I’m Detective Perry with the Tampa Bay Police Department. If you’re in there, then show yourself! I don’t want anyone to get hurt here!”

There was no answer from the gloomy apartment. No sound at all from inside.

Perry’s heavy-lidded eyes met Jackson’s eyes. Perry nodded and he entered first, his gun aimed in front of him, his arm steady, his eyes scanning the room quickly. Jackson and two other police officers filed in after Perry.

Jackson nodded to the bedrooms off of a small hallway and the police officers hurried to check them out.

Perry and Jackson moved through the living room and into a dining area. The vertical blinds in front of the sliding glass doors were pulled back and they allowed the early morning light to brighten the dark apartment.

Perry entered the kitchen and stared down at the mess on the floor, the old food on the counter, the frying pans on the stove top. This didn’t look right to him. It was supposed to look like someone had been abducted here, but when he studied the scene more closely he didn’t see the signs of struggle that he would normally see: no blood, no damaged furniture or walls, no torn curtains or blinds.

It looked staged to him.

Perry moved quickly through the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator. Hardly any food. A leftover fast food meal and a jug of drinking water.

He opened the cabinets, one by one. Nothing in the cabinets except a few boxes of food and a can of soup. Most of the food was on the counter or on the floor.

The two police officers entered the dining area which didn’t have a dining room table. There wasn’t a stick of furniture in the whole place.

“All clear back there,” one of the officers said. “There’s nothing back there but a sleeping bag on the floor, an alarm clock, and a pile of books.”

Perry was only half-listening. Something was bothering him about this place. Mel, the manager of this apartment complex, had told them that Steve had moved in about a week ago. But there wasn’t any furniture and only a few kitchen utensils and dishes had been unpacked. The man slept on a sleeping bag.

Like all of this was temporary.

He stared at the stacks of boxes lined up against the living room wall. There was something about those boxes.

Perry approached the boxes, reading the words scrawled on the boxes as he walked towards them: kitchen stuff; bedroom; bathroom; books.

He grabbed one of the boxes labeled books. It was one of the smaller boxes, but he expected it to be heavy with books. But it was light as a feather.

It was empty.

And so was the next box. And the next box. They were all empty. All props to show that he was moving in. He wanted to be right next to Tara so he could keep an eye on her. So he could watch her every move.

Perry felt a tingling in his belly, like he was too many steps behind and something terrible was about to happen that he wouldn’t be able to stop.

“Let’s get next door to Tara’s place,” Perry said and rushed out of the apartment.

Mel opened the door to Tara’s place and backed out of the way. Perry and Jackson entered. They instructed the other two police officers to wait outside.

Perry spotted the drawings laid out on the coffee table. He stared down at them as Jackson checked out the rest of the apartment.

Tara wasn’t there. Jackson came back out from Tara’s bedroom and found Perry in the same spot, staring down at the drawings on the coffee table.

“What do you got?” Jackson asked Perry as he approached him.

“Holy shit,” Perry whispered. He looked at Jackson. “She saw everything. She drew it all. Details no one else could’ve seen. All of the murders. Even Miss Helen.”

Jackson pulled a blue nitrite glove out of his jacket pocket and slid his big hand into it. He picked up the first drawing and studied it. “What’s with all of these words and numbers?”

Perry shook his head no; he didn’t answer, but he was beginning to get an idea of what they might be.

Woods dressed in a white button-down shirt and black slacks that he’d gotten from his suitcase in the car. Then they rushed out to the car and sped towards the airport.

Tara prayed that her aunt was okay. She dialed her number again and again, but all she got was her voicemail.

Tara and Woods got to the hotel and rushed up to the third floor. They entered her Aunt Katie’s room – Katie had given Tara an extra keycard so she could let herself back in when she returned. They searched through the room and bathroom quickly.

Aunt Katie wasn’t there.

She hadn’t checked out. Her suitcase and clothes were still in the room. Her cell phone was still on the little writing table.

Tara checked her aunt’s phone and listened to the last messages, all from Tara. She felt a knot in her stomach twisting tighter and tighter. Jeremy had found Aunt Katie. He had taken her. There was no proof that Jeremey had abducted her, but Tara knew it was true.

“He got her,” Tara said as she looked at Woods, and she couldn’t help the tears that slipped from her eyes. “He took her and it’s all my fault. I told him where she was going to be.”

“What do you mean?” Woods asked her.

Tara explained quickly about telling Steve (Jeremy) when she was leaving that she was going to stay in a hotel room with her aunt near the airport.

“You didn’t know,” Woods told her. He grabbed her upper arms like he was steadying her and he stared into her blue eyes with his dark eyes. “He won’t kill her. He’s using her for bait. He wants
you
, not her.”

Woods turned away, heading for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I want to question the manager and desk clerk.”

Woods used his fake FBI I.D. badge to bully the hotel employees into telling them as much as they knew. The bartender and bar back were getting the hotel bar ready which would open at eleven. They hadn’t been working last night, but they called a man named Ray and woke him up with their phone call. Ray confirmed seeing Katie at the bar. She’d eaten a dinner by herself and drank two beers. And then she sat at the bar and really started drinking. He said she was talking to a guy. The guy was younger than she was, and he was a good-looking guy with bleach-blond hair. They seemed to be hitting it off and then they got up and went out for a smoke.

Tara stood by herself, away from Woods as he talked to the bartenders. She stared at the bar and she could almost see her aunt sitting there on one of the stools, sipping her margaritas or martinis or whatever she was drinking. She could almost
feel
her aunt. Katie had been lonely, cooped up in her hotel room too long. She’d come down here to be around other people. It was probably just supposed to be a quick dinner and a few bottles of beer, but then she started drinking.

And then she would’ve wanted a cigarette.

Woods walked over to Tara after he was done questioning the bartender.

“They said she was here last night,” he told her. “They said she was knocking a few drinks back, getting a little buzzed.”

Woods hesitated for a moment, and then continued. “The bartender said she was talking to a guy at the bar. He was young and had blond hair.”