She closed her eyes and relived that moment. Jeremiah had moved incredibly fast. She hadn’t even had time to see the gun, but she had heard the crash and felt the impact on the body of the man who held her captive. She would always remember the look in his eyes, though, so cold and hard. Nor would she forget the confusion afterward about who had actually fired and hit the killer.
She shuddered and felt as though she was going to be sick. She had fought so hard for so many years to be safe, to stay away from death and danger, and yet she found herself completely immersed in both. She stood up. She had to do something before she went crazy.
With an apology to Clarice and Buff, she closed off her bedroom, bathroom, and office and left the dogs free to roam the rest of the house. She piled a plate with leftover food, grabbed a napkin and some plastic utensils, and then headed out the door.
She had too many questions that needed answers. Who was behind the murders and why? What, if anything, was Joseph’s involvement? Why had the police not been able to find the homeless man who had jumped in front of her car in protest?
There was one question, though, that she hoped she could get an answer to. What had Harry witnessed when he was attacked?
When she arrived at the hospital, she discovered a policeman standing guard outside Harry’s door. She recognized him as one of the officers who had been there when Harry was removed from the recycling bin. He recognized her as well and gave her a friendly smile.
“That smells like turkey,” the policeman said, waving to her plate.
“It is.”
“Any chance you brought enough for two?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling guilty.
“That’s okay. I’m being relieved in twenty minutes, and my family is waiting dinner for me.”
“That’s nice of them.”
He shrugged. “What can I say? I’ve got a great family.”
“You’re very lucky.”
“I know. So is Harry if that’s for him.”
“It is.” She hesitated. “Is it okay?”
“Yeah, you’re on the approved visitor list.”
“Really?” she asked, startled.
“Yeah, the detective said he figured you’d be along soon enough to check on Harry and ask him questions.”
“I guess the detective knows me better than I know myself.”
“Seems as though. Go right in.”
He opened the door for her, and Cindy walked inside. Harry lay still, eyes closed in a badly swollen face.
She gently put the food down on the tray beside the bed and then took a seat on one of the hard, plastic chairs in the room.
“I smell turkey,” Harry said, making her jump slightly.
“Not just turkey, but stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy too.”
“Now, that’s worth waking up for,” he said, slowly opening his eyes and blinking in the brightness.
He turned his head slightly so he could look at her. “I guess I missed Thanksgiving dinner?”
“Not really. The dinner didn’t go very well. But you get the food, which was the best part.”
“Then I’m a lucky man.”
Looking at him lying there so helpless, she couldn’t agree with him. He had to be one of the most unlucky men she knew. She bit her lip and didn’t know how to respond.
The door opened, and a male nurse walked in briskly, saving Cindy from having to say anything. He quickly checked Harry’s vitals.
“Looks like Thanksgiving dinner came to you,” the man said.
“Yup,” Harry agreed.
The nurse helped Harry work the remote control for the bed and then maneuvered the pillows and pulled the tray in front of him so he could eat. “I’ll be back in a while to check on you,” the nurse said before exiting.
Harry began to eat, and Cindy contented herself with sitting quietly as he took his first few bites. “You’re a good cook,” he said at last.
“Thank you. I got lucky.”
He smiled. “It doesn’t pay to be too modest.”
“A lot of people would disagree with you on that.”
He laughed, a sharp, biting sound. “A lot of them haven’t suffered because of it. You know what my favorite Bible verse is?”
“No.”
“First Hesitations 1:3. He who does not toot his own horn, whereby shall it be tooted?”
“That’s not a real verse!” she burst out. “That’s not even a real book in the Bible!”
“I heard it once in youth group years ago, and it always stuck with me. You’d be surprised how many people go scurrying for their Bible trying to look it up when I tell them.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Wish I was. You know my IQ is 170?”
She blinked at him. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. When I was young, I was modest to a fault. You know what happened?”
“No.”
“I lost my job to a guy who took credit for my work, lost my wife to a man who boasted about being in Mensa because she didn’t think I was very smart, and couldn’t get a new job because I was always quick to point out my shortcomings and slow to point out my strengths in job interviews.”
“That’s awful!”
“Yup. But you know what?”
She shook her head.
“I’m better at being homeless than anyone else I know.”
“That seems like the last thing you’d want to be proud of,” she said before she could stop herself.
“I consider it good training. Ask me what else I’m good at.”
“What else are you good at?”
“Taking advantage of every system I can get my hands on, as well as physics, math, and reading people. And I can tell you didn’t just come down here to bring me Thanksgiving dinner.”
She flushed with guilt. “You’re right,” she admitted.
“Of course I am. Excuse me, but I have a killer headache that doesn’t lend itself too well to civilities and formalities. So what is it that you want to ask me?”
“Did you see the person who attacked you?”
“No. Wish I had. I got a good whiff of him, though. He was wearing Old Spice. I can also tell you he was devilish strong.”
“How do you know?”
“He had to be to get me in that dumpster.”
“It was a recycling bin,” she corrected.
“You think that makes it any better?” he asked incredulously.
“No.”
“So I smelled him but didn’t see or hear him.”
“Well, that’s at least something.”
“Yeah. What else you got on your mind?” he asked, taking a bite of potatoes and gravy.
“There was a homeless guy, a protestor, at the charity event Friday night. The police can’t find him, and they need to ask him some questions.”
“And you assumed since I’m also homeless I would know him?”
“I was hoping you’d seen him before, at a shelter, the park, somewhere,” she admitted.
“What does he look like?”
“He’s got dreadlocks.”
“Okay, what else?”
Cindy shrugged. “I really don’t know. He was right in front of me, and yet for some reason that’s all I remember.”
“It’s because you didn’t really look at him.”
“I couldn’t help but look at him; he jumped out right in front of me.”
“You saw him, but you didn’t look at him.”
“I don’t understand,” Cindy said.
“The more uncomfortable a homeless person makes someone, the less they look at him,” Harry said.
Cindy shook her head. “I still don’t understand.”
“Close your eyes.”
She hesitated, but then did as he said.
“Now, tell me what I look like.”
“Ummm… you have long, no, medium, dark-blonde hair… it’s kinda wavy, I think. Your eyes are brown,” she said, straining to remember.
??
?Okay, open your eyes and look at me.”
“I got your eye color wrong,” she realized. His eyes were a pale green and not the brown she had envisioned.
He nodded. “And you know me. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being very, how much do I freak you out?”
“One.”
“Tell the truth.”
“Four,” she said, flushing.
“Uh-huh. Now you know that nurse who was in here?”
“Yeah.”
“Describe him.”
She found it easier to do so.
Harry nodded. “You got him right, and you’ve only seen him once. Difference is, you looked at him—really looked at him. People don’t want to look at what makes them uncomfortable. How much did he freak you out?”
“One,” she admitted.
“Even though you don’t know him. He could be a crazy killer guy for all you know.”
“You’re right,” she said, thinking about her own experiences with killers she had never suspected until too late.
“The harder someone begs off of you, the less you’re likely to look at them because they make you uncomfortable. It’s easier to not deal with them as a human being because then you’d have to do something about it.”
“Do something, like what?” she asked, startled at the thought.
“It depends. You might have to realize that he’s a human and hurting and you might have to open your wallet or your home or involve yourself in charity work. Or you might also realize that he’s human but that he’s crossed a line and is being an ass and you might have to push back, tell him to back off, yell, put him in his place. Most folks don’t want to do that with homeless people because it would make them feel too guilty.”
“What’s the solution?”
“To homelessness? Hell if I know. To the personal problem? See them as people, give them a buck if you feel like it, or call the cops if they’re whack jobs who are threatening and harassing you. We homeless get used to being dehumanized. People throw money at us or run from us, but they don’t treat us like humans. They don’t expect us to behave like citizens. They treat us and expect us to be no better than dogs, loud, aggressive, mean dogs oftentimes, but dogs nonetheless. You want to give the homeless man some dignity and self-worth? Look him in the eye and talk to him like you would any other human being in that situation.”
What he said shook Cindy to her core. It also had her thinking, though, about more than just Harry, about more than the homeless, but specifically about that idea of making people uncomfortable and becoming almost invisible.
Like the homeless protestor who had jumped out in front of her car. All she had really seen of him was his dreadlocks. She hadn’t wanted to look at him. She bet nobody else had wanted to, either. Maybe the reason Mark couldn’t find him was because he knew how to disappear. Maybe he wasn’t even really homeless, but someone who understood them, and how others related to them, really well.
Maybe it was a shelter worker.
Or a cop, the thought came to her.
“Thank you, Harry,” she said, as she jumped to her feet.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To the store. I need to sniff some Old Spice.”
“You think you know who attacked me?” Harry asked.
She tapped her nose. “I’ll know soon enough.”
Mark glanced at his watch. He had under half an hour before he had promised Traci he would be home. He hoped Joseph would just confess and make everything easier on all of them, but he couldn’t count on that happening. Something seemed off about the whole thing, anyway.
He steeled himself to head into the interrogation room and began walking in that direction.
“Mark!”
He swiveled, something cold and hard stealing over him. There was a quality in the tone of Paul’s voice that he had never heard before. It sounded like panic.
“What?”
Paul stopped before him, a stricken look on his face. “911 just received a call from a woman saying that someone kidnapped her neighbor a minute ago. Squad cars are on the way.”
“Who?”
“The woman, she was your neighbor. Mark, someone’s kidnapped your wife.”
15
MARK STOOD IN HIS OWN LIVING ROOM AND FELT LIKE HE WAS LIVING A dream. Everything around him was his, but none of it looked familiar. The dining room table had papers scattered on top of and around it. He picked one of them up. Traci had been working on the bills. Her checkbook lay open on the table, her signature half signed on the cable bill. A drop of blood obscured the date.
Three of the chairs had been knocked over in the struggle; the legs on one of them had been smashed. One of the doors on the china hutch had been pulled off its hinges and lay across the room as though flung there.
Deep marks in the carpet looked as though someone had been clawing at it, trying to grab hold of something as they were dragged across the floor. More drops of blood were splattered along the path.
A wall close to the front door had been bashed in about a foot above the ground, cracks radiating out from around the impression. He crouched down to better study it. What had hit the wall with such force? There were no objects lying anywhere near. Was it a fist, a foot, a head?
He shuddered and rose to his feet. He couldn’t think of it as Traci—couldn’t think of this as having happened in his home to his wife.
“What does the neighbor woman have to say?”
“Her name is Alice,” Paul said softly.
Mark knew her name. He had more than once helped her clean her gutters in anticipation of winter or helped carry packages that were too heavy for her stooped frame. But if he thought of her as Alice, then he would know that the woman who had been taken was Traci. And he couldn’t know that, not if he was going to find her.
“What did she say?”
Paul took a step back, cleared his throat, and pulled out his notepad. “She heard a dog barking. She had fallen asleep watching television when she was awakened by the sound of a dog barking. At first she thought it was the television, but the barking continued when she turned it off. She says she knows the difference between the sound of a dog barking over a cat and a dog barking over danger, and she knew there was trouble. Next, she heard a scream. She went to her window and saw a man, tall, over six feet, with short dark hair, drag Tra— the woman who lives here out of the house and toss her into the trunk of his car. He drove off while she was trying to dial 911. She never saw his face but maintains that she could recognize him by a scar on the back of his neck, just below his hairline. He was dressed all in black.”
Paul turned the notepad toward him where there was a rough sketch of a gently waving line with a sharp downward turn at the end—the scar. Something about it seemed familiar, like he had seen it somewhere before. He racked his brain wishing he could remember where he had seen it. Had it been on one of the people he had interviewed in the last few days? A criminal he had captured in the past?
Think!
He heard someone shout something, and he saw Paul turn and walk quickly outside. They might have found something; he needed to follow him. Before Mark could move, Paul returned, his face ashen.
Please, let them not have found a body. In that moment Mark wished he and God were on speaking terms, that he might pray and He would answer.
And then someone else walked into the room, a tall African American man with a cool demeanor and an expensive suit, and an icy hand wrapped itself around Mark’s heart. He couldn’t deal with what had happened in this room, but he knew the man talking with Paul would make him.
“Mr. Walters?”
“Detective,” he corrected.
“Mr. Walters, I am Percy Grayhorn. I am the one they call in when there’s been a kidnapping. I’m in charge of this investigation, and I need to speak with you for a few minutes.”
“No, I’m in charge of this investigation,” Mark corrected. “I believe it is tied to an ongoing murder investigation.”
br /> “That will be for my team to decide,” Percy said in a tone that broached no argument.
He grabbed Mark by the elbow and moved him toward the kitchen, which seemed to have been untouched. He pulled out stools for both of them, and Mark sat after a moment.
Percy folded his hands on the counter and looked him in the eyes. “Now, generally, in a kidnapping situation, we can expect a ransom call fairly quickly. Do you or your wife, Traci, have any substantial assets or means of getting them?”
“No,” Mark whispered, shaking his head.
Why does he say her name like that? He has no right to say her name, none at all. He has no right to be here. Mark squeezed his eyes shut. They had nothing, there would be no ransom call, he was sure of it. What would someone have to gain?
“I understand that Traci was kidnapped less than an hour ago.”
Traci. Traci was kidnapped. His Traci. Mark dropped his head into his hands. I’m not this man, I’m not the hapless husband, the victim waiting, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not. I’m the one in charge. I’m the one who gives bad news, not the one who gets it. I’m not the one whose wife, whose Traci, has been kidnapped.
“I’m not this man,” he groaned.
“Well, Mr. Walters, today you are.”
“Excuse me,” Paul interrupted, and Mark was grateful for his partner’s presence. It would be all right, not because of well-dressed Percy and his team, but because of his team, the homicide team.
“I just need to ask Mark a quick question.”
Please, ask me a million, just get me away from this guy, Mark wanted to beg.
Percy nodded, and Paul put a hand on Mark’s shoulder, shaking him slightly as though to wake him up, or remind him of who he was.
“Is there anything missing?” Paul asked.
Missing? Mark glanced around and then back at Paul. Paul already knew the answer; he just needed Mark to confirm it. He tried to read his partner’s eyes. What was missing? He thought of Alice’s description of what she had seen and then it struck him. Mark cleared his throat. “Yes. Buster is missing.”