Abducted: A Jake Badger Mystery Thriller (13 page)

Chapter 25

Friday Afternoon

Evelyn Darwin lived in Norwalk,
a suburb about seventeen miles south and a little east of Los Angeles. It was
fifty miles from Malibu and would take us an hour and a half to get there.
Before getting on the freeway in Santa Monica, Alex stopped at a 7-Eleven. He
got a coffee; I got a Coke Zero.

The house Evelyn lived in was
older, probably built in the nineteen sixties. The little stucco house was
painted a light yellow; the trim was light blue. An older Toyota sat in the driveway.
We parked on the street and went to the door. Alex knocked.

In a moment, Evelyn came to
the door. She opened the door and spoke to us through an aluminum-framed screen
door. She was in her early fifties and was still a
good
looking
woman. She was wearing jeans and a yellow tee shirt that said,
Tomorrow, I'll be sober but you'll still be
ugly
. She didn't seem to recognize me.

“Can I ... help you?” she
managed with some effort. The smell of booze was strong.

“Evelyn Darwin?” Alex asked.

“Yes.”

Alex held up his ID. “We'd
like to ask you some questions, Mrs. Darwin. May we come in?”

She squinted at the ID and
then said, “Sure.”

She turned away and went back
into the house, leaving us to open the screen door and follow her in.

Evelyn went into the dining
room and sat at the table. She didn't invite us to sit but we did anyway. Alex
looked at me and I nodded that he should go ahead with the questions.

“Mrs. Darwin,” he said, “where
were you this past Monday morning between five and eight a.m.?”

She thought for a moment. It
was not easy for her. Finally, she said, “I was here. In bed.”

“Can anyone corroborate that?”

She looked at Alex and then
looked around the house, turned her hands palms up and shrugged her shoulders. “I
live alone.”

“Do you remember a man named
Jake Badger?” Alex asked.

The mention of the name seemed
to jolt her. Her eyes wandered to me and recognition began to dawn on her. Hate
sobered her.

With her eyes locked onto
mine, she said, “Diane is dead.”

“I'm sorry to hear that,” I
said.

Tears welled up in her eyes.
“Please excuse me for a moment,” she said. She got up and walked into the
living room and down a hallway, toward the bathroom or a bedroom, we assumed.

In a moment, Evelyn returned.
Her right hand came up quickly and she fired a .38 at me. As her hand was
coming up, I saw the weapon and dove to my left. Her shot missed. She fired a
second round, which also missed because I kept moving, rolling back to my right
toward the table. By then, Alex had his weapon drawn and shouted for her to
freeze. She ignored him and fired a third shot, which came very close to me.
Alex fired twice and she went down.

Everything stopped for a
brief moment. Alex and I were both looking at Evelyn lying on her floor,
bleeding on her carpet.

We looked at each other. I
nodded. “She missed.”

Alex kept his weapon aimed at
her. We approached cautiously. She wasn’t moving. I used the toe of my shoe to
nudge the small revolver out of her hand. It was a Ruger LCR .38 caliber.
Hammerless. Good weapon. I have one just like it, except mine's a .357 Magnum.
If she'd been a better shot, her .38 would have done the job.

Alex holstered his weapon.
Evelyn had taken two .40 calibers to the chest but was still breathing. I got a
towel from the kitchen and applied pressure to the wound. Alex called 911,
making sure they understood the FBI was on the scene.

Evelyn stopped breathing, so
while I kept pressure on the wound, Alex began CPR. The wound was to the right
of the heart by a couple of inches. Trying to control the bleeding and
administer CPR at the same time was difficult, but we managed. The local cops
arrived and hurried around doing a lot of nothing until the paramedics arrived.
The paramedics took over the CPR for a few minutes, working feverishly to
stabilize Evelyn. We watched. After a moment, they stopped. The lead responder
shook his head. “She's gone.”

“Shit,” Alex said, rubbing
his forehead with his fingers and thumb, as if to massage away the regret of
having to kill again.

A local detective arrived and
took our statements while the uniforms secured the scene. The M.E. arrived and
removed the body. It was three thirty when we left the Darwin house.

“Under other circumstances,”
I said, as Alex started the car, “I'd say let's call it a
day
...”

“But we can't,” Alex said,
finishing my sentence. “Monica is wondering what's taking so long and we can't
afford the luxury of down time.”

I nodded. “Thank you,” I
said. “And thank you for saving my life back there. If she'd had another shot,
she'd have gotten me.”

“I doubt that. After her
second shot, you were in a position to pull your own weapon. If I hadn't shot,
you'd have shot a second later. Either way,” Alex said, “when she raised that
gun, her chances of survival went way down.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Just the
same, thanks.”

“Sure.”

After a moment, Alex asked, “What
if it was Evelyn who took Monica?”

“That's a good question. But
I don't think it was her.”

“Why not?”

“It's the middle of the
afternoon and she was wasted. Initially, she didn't even know who I was. And
when she finally did recognize me, she didn't respond in a calculated manner.
She went over the edge. Her behavior wasn't consistent with everything else
that's happened up to this point. The notes suggest that whoever took Monica is
smart and calculating, to the point of knowing where we’re looking, who we’re
looking at. Evelyn wasn’t capable of that sort of thing.”

Alex nodded. “Good
assessment,” he said. “You'd make a good agent.”

“That your professional
assessment of my assessment?”

“Something like that,” he
said, stopping at a red light. “So, on to Lindsey Connors?”

“Daughter of the psychopath,”
I said.

“You know,”
Alex
said, “technically, they aren't referred to as
psychopaths or sociopaths any longer. They suffer from antisocial personality
disorder.”

“I've heard that. I think
those of us who've had to deal with them in dangerous situations find the term
psychopath more descriptive.”

“Certainly sounds more
ominous, doesn't it?” Alex said.

Given the events of the
previous hour, our conversation would have seemed odd or even cold and uncaring
to anyone else. But sometimes, in order to keep going, you have to deflect
reality, push it away so it doesn't overwhelm you. That's what we were doing.
We had to put Evelyn aside so we could concentrate on Lindsey Connors, because,
ultimately, concentrating on Lindsey Connors was concentrating on Monica. And
that's really all that mattered—because like Alex had said, Monica was
wondering what was taking so long.

Chapter 26

Friday Afternoon

Lindsey Connors lived in
Hermosa Beach, about forty minutes from where we were in Norwalk. Traffic on
the freeway moved along nicely. Alex had the radio set to a classical music
station. I talked about movies and books to keep from thinking too much. Alex
knew I was just distracting myself, so he listened as I rambled on.

We parked in front of Lindsey's
apartment at four twenty. Alex knocked. No answer. He knocked again, harder.
Still no answer.
The door to the apartment next to Lindsey's
opened and an older man stepped out.

“You fellas looking for
Lindsey?”

“Yes, Sir,” Alex said. “You
know where she is?”

“Why you looking for her?”

Alex took out his ID. “FBI,”
he said. “Need to ask Ms. Connors some questions.”

“FBI, huh. She in trouble?”

“No, Sir. We just need to ask
her some questions.”

He nodded absently. “Well,
Lindsey ain't home during the day. She works.”

“Do you know where?” Alex
asked.

“Sure. She owns
Scrumptious
. A sandwich shop down by the
beach.”

“Scrumptious.”

“Hermosa and Tenth.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

He nodded and went back into
his apartment.

Scrumptious was a nice little
eatery on a corner lot with tables inside or on an outside patio. We parked on the
side street and went in. The lunch crowd was long gone and the dinner crowd had
not yet arrived. Lindsey was behind the counter. One other woman was working in
the kitchen.

Lindsey looked up with a
smile when we walked in. She recognized
me immediately and
the smile faded
. She ignored Alex and fixed her eyes on mine.

“Jake Badger,” she said. “You're
the last person I ever expected to see in my restaurant.” Her manner was
straightforward but not hateful.

I didn't say anything.

“What do you want?” she
asked.

“We need to ask you some
questions,” I said. “Can we sit down for a bit?”

“Who's your friend?” she
asked, looking at Alex.

He showed her his ID and
said, “Agent Watson. FBI.”

She looked at the badge and
then at Alex and me. “Sure,” she said, finally. “We can sit. Want some coffee?
A Coke? Anything?”

“I could use a cup of coffee,”
Alex said. “Thank you.”

“How?”

“Black.”

She looked at me.

I shrugged. “Diet Coke.”

She poured two cups of coffee
and filled a glass with ice and Diet Coke and put them on a small round tray.

“It's nice out,” she said. “Why
don't we sit on the patio?” She led us out to a table that was shaded by a
large umbrella.

This wasn't the kind of
reception I had expected—especially after what had happened at Evelyn’s
house.

After we sat and she had
distributed the drinks, she said, “So, how can I help the FBI?

Alex seemed to be hanging
back on this one so I said, “Do you know a woman named Monica Nolan?”

She thought for a moment and
then shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

She sipped her coffee.

“This past Monday morning,
between five and eight a.m., where were you?”

Her eyes shifted to Alex and
then back to me. “I was home.”

“Is there anyone who can
confirm that?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Because this past Monday
morning Ms. Nolan, a very close friend of mine, was abducted.”

“And you think I had
something to do with it?”

I drank some of my Coke.

“You made threats against me,”
I said.

She took a deep breath and
looked away for a moment. When she looked back, she said, “I did, didn't I?”

It was a rhetorical question.
I didn't reply.

After a moment, she said, “I'm
not the same person I was then. I'm very different. My life is very different
now.”

“How so?” I asked.

She had some more of her
coffee.

“I hit rock bottom. I was
self-destructing. Sex. Drugs. I hated everything and everyone. I tried to kill
myself. I went into rehab. While I was there, I heard the message of Jesus and
became a Christian. Turned me around.”

She paused to calculate my
reaction to her story. Then she said, “I no longer hate you, Jake Badger. I no
longer hate my father or myself. I've been forgiven and I have forgiven ...
myself and the people who hurt me.”

I was watching her eyes and
her body language. There was no sign that she was lying.

“I had nothing to do with the
abduction of your friend.”

I continued to search her
eyes. I took another drink of my Coke.

After another moment, she
said, “To answer your previous question, no, I have no one to corroborate my statement
that I was home Monday morning. I live alone. But I did come to work at nine.
Carla can confirm that. We come in at nine to get ready to serve lunch at
eleven. I was here at nine on Monday morning.”

Alex got up to go speak with
Carla.

“I'm sorry for the
accusations I made,” Lindsey said. “I understand now that my father was a sick
and dangerous man and that you were just doing your job. He had to be stopped.
I'm sorry if I caused you any distress.”

I'd never had anyone in her
position apologize to me before. It felt odd ... good, but odd.

“Thank you,” I said.

She studied me for a moment.

“You love her, don't you,
your friend who was kidnapped?”

She had been honest with me.
I saw no reason not to be honest with her.

“Yes,” I said.

“I hope you find her. I'll
pray that you do, and that the Lord will keep her safe until you do.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I took a five out my wallet
to pay her for the coffee and Coke.

She shook her head and said,
“My treat.”

When we got back in the car,
Alex said, “Carla said Lindsey showed up at nine and seemed completely normal.”

“She didn't have anything to
do with it,” I said. “She was telling the truth.”

He started the car and
pointed it in the direction of his office.

“Do we need to go through
some more of your old case files?”

“We need to do something,
don't we?” I said.

“We'll find her, Jake. We'll
find her.”