Obsessed (The Lizzy Gardner Series) (17 page)

CHAPTER 37

By the time Lizzy left her office on J Street, it was cold and dark. She walked for quite a while before she realized she couldn’t remember where she had parked. She heard footsteps in the distance. Shivers coursed over her as she stopped to look over her shoulder. A dark, shadowy figure walked beneath a line of trees, out of the streetlights. Someone was following her.

Relieved to see the church a few blocks away, she ran as fast as she could, her breathing ragged by the time she pushed through the double doors.

Everyone was there . . . Cathy, Brittany, Jessica. Even Hayley. They all looked beautiful in the bridesmaid dresses Jessica had picked out. Jared looked better than ever in a perfectly fitted tuxedo. It wasn’t his tuxedo or handsome face that made him stand out—it was the way he carried himself, with a dash of cockiness and a barrel of confidence.

Everyone looked her way, everyone except her father, who sat in the front pew and pretended not to notice her.

Raking a hand through tangled hair, she realized she’d been so busy she hadn’t had time to fix her hair. Panic set in as her gaze fell to her jeans and T-shirt. And then her head snapped up and this time her attention settled on the woman standing next to Jared. She wore a beautiful strapless wedding gown with billowing tulle and tiny crystals that twinkled under the lights.

Slowly, the bride turned her way.

What the hell?

It was their neighbor, Heather somebody—she never could remember the woman’s name. Everyone’s attention had settled on the bride and groom. Something was seriously wrong with this picture.

The church doors blew open. A cold gust of wind rolled over her back, reminding Lizzy that she was being followed. She reached for her gun as she whipped around so fast her hand smacked against something hard.

“Ouch. What’s going on? Are you OK?”

She lifted her head from the pillow. It was dark. Her heart hammered against her chest.
Just a dream. Thank God.
“Did I hit you?”

“Right in the chopper.”

Blindly, she reached for Jared before she leaned toward him and kissed his jaw. “Sorry I woke you. I was having a bad dream.”

He pulled her close. “Want to talk about it?”

“No, it was nothing, stupid, really.”

Her phone vibrated on the nightstand.

“It’s two in the morning,” he said.

She turned over and grabbed it. “Hello?”

It was Madeline. Once again she was hysterical.

“Try to calm down,” Lizzy told her. “I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

“He called me. It was
him
. He has my friend Amber. She’s the waitress you met when we were at Monty’s Bar & Grill.”

“How do you know he’s not just telling you he has her?”

“It was her voice. I talked to her. She’s the one who was on the phone when I answered. Oh, God, it was awful. She sounded calm in the beginning. I think he convinced her that if she called me, he wouldn’t hurt her. Oh, my God, Lizzy. Oh, my God. It was horrible. She was screaming at first. I think he covered her mouth because after that I heard muffled cries for help. I don’t know if he was choking her or what the hell he was doing.”

Lizzy sat up. “Did she tell you where she was?”

“She couldn’t,” Madeline said. “He took the phone from her before she could tell me.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Yes.”

“OK, that’s a good start. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Stay calm, and if you can, write down what he said so you don’t forget. There could be clues that might help us find him.”

She shut her phone and turned on the light.

Jared squinted. “What’s going on?”

As she slipped into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, she repeated everything Madeline had just told her. Then, since she and Jared had barely had two minutes to talk over the past few days, she also told him the part about Madeline asking David Westlake to call in to her show and pretend to be a perverted stalker.

“The woman doesn’t sound stable.”

“It gets worse. Remember the wallet investigators found after Madeline was attacked?”

He nodded.

“When I first met with Madeline, she showed me a note that had been delivered to her work. It was short and sweet, made from letters cut out of a magazine. It said, ‘I know what you did.’”

“And?”

“Madeline gave the police everything the stalker had left for her except that note.”

“Why would she keep evidence from the police?”

“I didn’t understand at first, but now I think it was because she knew exactly what the note meant. Whoever gave it to her must have known she had lied on air about having a stalker. She was embarrassed by what she did and didn’t want anyone to know.”

“And she was probably afraid of losing her job,” Jared added.

“Definitely. Her career is number one.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“Come on,” Lizzy said, “that’s not fair.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. Anything else?”

Lizzy grabbed her shoes and sat on the edge of the bed to put them on. “During the basic investigation interview, which was done at Madeline’s home, Kitally found a magazine with all the cutout letters that were used to make the note I just told you about.”

“What did the detective think about that?”

“He doesn’t know. Assuming Madeline’s attacker planted the magazine when he left the wallet, I figured there had to be more surprises in the house, so Hayley, Kitally, and I performed a search. There was a steel rod in one of the living room windows, which is how Madeline’s attacker must have been getting inside. We also found a syringe that I’m sure he planted in hopes that the police would think Madeline was the one who put a needle in her arm, not her so-called attacker.”

Jared rubbed his face with both hands. “And what did you do with all of this evidence?”

“I took photographs and I made everyone wear latex gloves. I made sure everything we found was placed inside evidence bags.”

“And then?”

“And then I put it all in a box in the trunk of my car.”

Jared slid his legs over the side of the bed, and then turned on another light. He looked at Lizzy, his hair mussed, his eyes tired. “What are you doing?”

“I already told you. I’m going to meet Madeline at her house. The police should already be there.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about. You can’t just take evidence away from a crime scene. And no matter how careful you were, you know evidence gathered by anyone but the cops won’t be admissible.”

“Look,” Lizzy said as she came to her feet, “this stuff was obviously planted. Madeline’s judgment might be suspect when it comes to furthering her career, but she’s not stupid enough to leave wallets on her coffee table and cut-up magazines in her bathroom for everyone to see. If she had anything to do with it, that magazine would have already been burned in the fireplace or shredded.”

Jared came to his feet. He stood near the bed, naked in all his glory, and she was running out in the middle of the night to help a woman she wasn’t sure she could trust. She grabbed her bag, then walked up to him and gave him a quick kiss on his jaw.

“I guess I’ll meet with the photographer and the florist alone,” he said.

Her shoulders sagged. “Was that today?”

“Yep.”

“I shouldn’t be long. What time are we supposed to meet the photographer?”

“Ten o’clock for the photographer and twelve noon for the florist.”

“Any chance we can postpone until next week?”

“I’ll be gone next week.”

She sighed. “That’s right. You leave tomorrow, don’t you?”

“Just go,” Jared said. “Go take care of whatever it is you need to do and I’ll figure out the rest.”

He ushered her out the bedroom door and when she got to the landing, Lizzy looked back at him, but he’d already disappeared. The bedroom lights went out.

For a moment, she merely stood in the semidark and wondered if she was doing the right thing. Maybe she should tell Madeline to find someone else to help her. And then her cell phone rang and she walked out the door, photographers and wedding plans all but forgotten.

CHAPTER 38

Hayley had been walking the streets for hours. It was cold out, but not cold enough to stop her mind from racing. A dog barked in the distance and she could smell the last remnants of a fire simmering from a chimney or two. She thought about Tommy and wondered what he was doing tonight. Two years ago, before her mother was murdered, she had considered Tommy to be more than a friend. Not a lover, although that had been a possibility, sort of. Now she wasn’t sure what exactly he meant to her. She usually saw him at UFC training, but she hadn’t been going lately, mostly because she’d felt angrier than usual and she had no desire to hurt someone who might not deserve it. Kitally and Lizzy were the only two people brave enough to step inside her apartment. And now Jessica, too, although Jessica probably had no idea she was playing with fire by coming around. Or maybe Jessica did know . . . she wasn’t as easy to read as she used to be.

It was hard to tell what Jessica was thinking these days. There was something about her that boggled the mind. Jessica used to get so emotional and afraid when it came to doing anything outside the law, even outside her own set of unspoken rules. The same maniac who’d abducted Lizzy had taken Jessica’s sister. That was their connect, their bond. Jessica’s sister had been subjected to some of the cruelest torture possible before she was killed and put out of her misery. And yet despite all the things that man had done to her sister, Jessica was determined to remain on the up-and-up and do things within the law.

What is it that makes the two of us so different?

Hayley knew the answer to the question before she’d finished the thought.

It was all about choices.

People, good or bad, right or wrong, made choices every day.

Hayley’s situation with Brian, though, was different. She had no choice when it came to how this would end. She knew what had to be done. She couldn’t eat. She couldn’t sleep, and she couldn’t rest until Brian was dead.

She took a hit off her cigarette, but even the nicotine failed to release enough dopamine to do her much good.

As on many other nights, she found herself across the street from the house she’d once shared with her mother—the house where she’d found her mother propped up with an axe embedded in her skull.

And it was all Hayley’s fault.

She’d known exactly what kind of a scumbag Brian was when she’d cut off his dick, but she hadn’t had the guts to go on and do what needed to be done. Her mother would be alive today if she’d taken care of business when she’d had the chance.

She hated herself almost as much as she hated Brian.

She couldn’t let it go. Never. No way. She would find Brian and this time she would take him out. No last smoke. No last words. She would just point and shoot and be done with it.

CHAPTER 39

Lizzy had been wrong about Detective Chase. She’d thought she was impervious to his intimidation tactics, but that wasn’t true. Now that she’d had the opportunity to spend time alone with him, she could see that the man didn’t bother with tactics to bully or coerce. He didn’t need to. The man was just plain scary. He had a set jaw and dark eyes, not a glimmer of warmth no matter where you looked. She couldn’t help but wonder how he could afford the perfectly fitted suit and shiny new watch. She did not trust the man.

The only reason he’d agreed to meet with her at all was because he happened to be pals with Special Agent Jimmy Martin, who’d happened to put in a call for her, asking Chase to meet with her as a favor.

Lizzy turned over the evidence collected at Madeline’s house and after the detective had a chance to examine it, he looked across his desk at her and said, “So, what is it you want?”

“Three people are missing now. Dr. Blair’s cell needs to be tapped. She needs twenty-four-hour surveillance.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Lizzy straightened in her chair, taken aback by the outburst.

“Do you realize I could bring charges against you for withholding evidence?” he asked.

“I brought the evidence to you as soon as I could,” Lizzy said, keeping her voice calm. “Maybe I should talk to my friends at Channel 10 News and let them know that the police failed to do their job in the first place, leaving me to clean up their mess.”

His jaw hardened, which couldn’t be an easy feat, considering it appeared to be made of granite. She watched as the hand on his desk rolled into a fist. What was he going to do, hit her?

“Under the circumstances,” Lizzy went on, “we both know that a missing persons case is not considered a conventional criminal investigation.”

“That was before we found one of the missing persons’ wallets in Dr. Blair’s house.”

“Said missing person was reported by Madeline herself. You wouldn’t have known anything about her missing neighbor if she hadn’t told you.”

“Doesn’t matter. Dr. Blair is a suspect and there’s nothing you can do about that.”

“All the more reason for you people to pull your heads out of your—out of the sand and tap her phone, at her home and office. You also need to set up surveillance.”

A uniformed officer knocked on the door before he poked his head inside. “I just got off the phone with Amber Olinger’s roommate. She said it’s common for Amber to be away for days at a time. I also talked to her parents. The last time they heard from her was two months ago when she called to borrow money.”

Detective Chase nodded and the officer shut the door.

Chase settled an unflinching gaze on Lizzy and said, “Being that you’re sort of like the slug on the bottom of the investigative pond, maybe you don’t understand that missing person cases take time. Unless there are obvious signs of foul play, our hands are tied.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but he stopped her with a raised hand. “Lizzy Gardner, big Sacramento PI,” he said with distaste. “You really think you can just walk in here and get everyone hopping with a snap of your fingers?”

Lizzy kept her voice level. “I was once a missing person, Detective. I know firsthand what it feels like to think everyone’s looking for you, but then begin to wonder why nobody’s knocking down any doors. Mine wasn’t a mere missing person case, and neither are these. Why would David Westlake leave his car at work? And why would Chris Porter’s wallet be found in Dr. Blair’s home? Do you really think Dr. Blair would lie about being attacked and then go so far as to say a crazy man called to let her know he had another victim? Someone she happened to know?”

“Dr. Blair lied about having a stalker. Why would she stop there?”

Frustration clawed at her insides. Lizzy tried to think, but he was right about one thing. There were too many dead ends. No bodies and no solid leads. “Can you tell me what you’re doing around here to find Chris Porter?”

“Seventy percent of reported missing persons are found or return within seventy-two hours. I suggest you practice patience, Ms. Gardner.”

“I suggest you read the files again,” Lizzy said. “Chris Porter has been missing for weeks. What are you going to do when another one of Madeline’s friends disappears?”

“You be sure and come back for a visit and let me know when that happens.”

The man’s condescending tone brought Lizzy to her feet. “You think you’ve got everybody cowering under that black-eyed stare of yours, don’t you? Well, you don’t scare me. You’re an asshole, Detective. Plain and simple. If anything has happened to any one of these people, I’m holding you accountable.”

“You should watch that mouth of yours. It just might get you into trouble.”

“I’ll be in touch,” she said as she turned toward the door.

“Ms. Gardner,” he said, stopping her. “I don’t think you want to get on my bad side.”

She lifted both brows in surprise. “Are you trying to tell me that this is your good side?”

“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”

“Are you threatening me, Detective?”

“Just a warning, Private Eye, just a warning.”