Broken (5 page)

Mary
Harrison took a step closer and looked at my face. “You’ve been sick,” she said
disapprovingly. “And my word, you’ve gotten so skinny!”

“Yeah,”
I said. “I have been sick.” I was starting to sweat in the cool night air.
Goddamn withdrawal. I hadn’t had enough to drink before I got in my car.

Boy, did
that sound strange in my head.

“Come
in, Nevada,” Mary said soothingly. “I’ll fix you something to eat.”

I had to
admit that sounded good, but the last thing I wanted to do was sit with them
and come up with believable lies to explain what I’d been doing for the last
three years. They didn’t know the things that hadn’t been in the papers. “I
can’t,” I said. “I’m…I’m working a case.”

Mary’s
eyes widened. “You’re working again?” Roger beamed at me and I was immediately
embarrassed. This was like being a toddler and having your grandparents
congratulate you for using the toilet instead of crapping your pants. You’re
not
supposed
to crap your pants.

“Not
officially,” I said. “I’m not a cop anymore, but I’m helping…someone…with
something.” What was I supposed to tell them? I was doing errands for a mob
boss?

“Good
for you!” Roger couldn’t contain his enthusiasm.

“Yeah,
it is,” I said. “It’s getting me out of the house, you know? It’s good to be
doing something.”

“You
were so good as a police officer,” Mary said, and now there were tears in her
eyes. “It’s your calling.”

I shook
my head. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“I am.”

“Anyway,
I have to get working on this case,” I said. “So, I just wanted to give you
that rent and say sorry it’s late.”

“Come
see us soon,” Mary said. “We do worry about you.”

“We do,”
Roger agreed.

“And for
goodness sake, eat something,” Mary admonished me. “You don’t want to look like
one of those skinny models.”

“I’ll
work on it,” I said.

“Wait a
minute, I’ll fix you a sandwich.”

“I’ve
got plenty of food at home,” I lied, taking a step back. I felt my legs
starting to tremble. “I’ve really got to get going.”

“Take
care,” Roger said.

“Come
see us,” Mary repeated.

“I
will,” I said. “I promise.” The words got out before I remembered how much I
hated making promises. Now I was going to have to come see them. Well, I hadn’t
said
when
.

I got in
my car and drove a block before pulling over again. I needed to pull myself
together and I didn’t want the Harrisons to look out of their window and see me
sitting in my car while I was doing it. My sweating seemed to be slowing down
now that I was sitting again. I still felt weak but that was par for the course
these days. I’d probably feel this way until I’d eaten solid food for a few
days in a row and gotten my metabolism going again.

I shut
my eyes. How stupid was I? I’d meant to ask them about their son, but I’d been
in such a hurry to get out of there I’d completely forgotten about it. I’d been
avoiding human contact for so long I’d forgotten how to talk to people like a
normal person.

My hands
were less steady than they had been earlier, but they still weren’t shaking. I
could keep going for a while yet. I needed to stay sober for a few more hours,
at least long enough to get up to Heather’s condo and take a look around.

I took a
deep breath. There. I was okay. Things were going to be fine. I put the car in
gear and pulled away from the curb. Next stop: La Jolla.

Chapter 6

It took me
a good half hour on the freeways to reach the exit that led into La Jolla, and
then another half hour of searching to find Heather’s condo. That would teach
me not to look at a map first.

Heather lived in a luxury two-building complex on a
ridge overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I could only imagine what a place like
this cost. The ten grand Davies had given me earlier might be enough to cover
one lease payment. Then again, it might well not.

Heather’s
complex had a small guest parking lot adjacent to the resident parking. That
was something I didn’t see very often. In my part of the city an apartment
building might have one guest parking space near the building management office.
Two would be a luxury. An entire lot was just extravagant.

I locked
the car up and headed into the lobby, which seemed to be constructed entirely
out of glass. People always tell you not to go outside during an earthquake,
but if the ground started shaking when I was in here, I’d be running for the
door like a teenager going to see a boy band.

A
security guard in a dark suit sat by himself at a desk in the lobby. He looked
up at me and smiled as I entered. “Good evening, Ms. James,” he said.

I
blinked in surprise. “If that was a guess, it was pretty amazing,” I told him.

“Mr.
Emerson called ahead and told me you would be stopping by. He was good enough
to describe you.”

I nearly
asked
how
Emerson had described me, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear
it. I wasn’t sure how the guard even knew who Emerson was, but then I
remembered the lawyer’s name had been on the lease paperwork. The staff here
must be used to dealing with him.

Not
having to explain who I was and what I was doing here only made things easier
for me. “You have any problem with me going up to her place and taking a look
around?”

“Not at
all,” the guard said. “If you didn’t bring your key I can let you in.”

I held up
the key Emerson had given me. “You guys think of everything.”

“That’s
what we get paid for,” he said.

I hit
the button for the elevator and the doors slid open instantly. So far this
visit was going really well.

Heather
Davies’s condo was on the third floor, on the side of the building that faced
the ocean. I knocked at the door, not really expecting a response, but it
seemed like the polite thing to do. For all I knew she really was just hiding
out here, not wanting to be bothered.

There
was no response. I knocked a second time and put my ear up to the door to
listen. I couldn’t hear anything coming from inside. I stepped back and looked
up and down the hallway, half-expecting curious neighbors to be peeking out
their doors at me. Nobody was. The whole place was as silent as a tomb. Quiet
was probably one of the luxuries these people paid for.

I put
the key in the lock and turned it. The door opened easily, and my hand
instinctively reached for the waist holster where I used to keep my gun. Of
course I wasn’t armed. Old habits. But I had alarm bells going off in my head.
Something was wrong inside the condo.

The
lights were on.

“Hello?”
I called. There was no response. I pushed the door open the rest of the way.
“Hello?” I was louder this time, but there was still nothing. I could hear
music playing softly. It was coming from another room. I recognized the melody,
but couldn’t place it. It was from a movie I’d seen, but I couldn’t think of
which one.

I
stepped into the condo and closed the door slowly behind me. “Hello?” I called
a third time. If anybody was in here, they had to be aware of my presence by
now. I was making enough racket that I’d have been surprised if the neighbors
couldn’t hear me, thick walls or not. Could Heather and Anna be hiding in here?
If so, why?

Heather’s
condo was furnished much as I might have expected any upscale condo in this
area to be. She had considerably better taste than her husband. There wasn’t a
single marble column in sight, and nothing a person would call ostentatious.
She had money, or at least access to money, but she spent it well.

I headed
down the hall towards the source of the music. It was so familiar. Where had I
heard it before?

The
music was coming from a bedroom I assumed belonged to Anna. Unless it was her
mother who had decorated her walls with posters of Justin Bieber, but that
seemed unlikely. A large flat-screen television was set up in a media center
against one wall. It was on, and looping the DVD menu from one of the Harry
Potter movies. So that was where the music was coming from. Every time the menu
reset itself the music started up from the beginning again. So someone had been
about to watch a movie, or someone had been watching a movie when they’d been
interrupted. The movie would have played through to the end and then returned
to the menu, where it had been stuck in an endless loop ever since. There was
no way to tell how long this had been going on. Barring a power outage, I
didn’t see a reason why it would ever stop.

I looked
around the bedroom for anything suspicious, but nothing in the room seemed out
of place until I turned back to the door. There was a small black scuff mark
about three feet up on the door frame. I knelt down to take a closer look. I
was no forensic scientist, but it looked like a mark made by a shoe. There was
the tiniest bit of tread from a sneaker visible. Ten-year-old girls didn’t
typically kick walls, as far as I remembered. I hadn’t. But one who was being
carried out of a room against her will might.

I shut
off the television to get rid of the noise, then stood absolutely still for a
moment and just listened. I couldn’t hear a sound. Either someone was playing
the best game of hide-and-seek ever, or there was nobody here.

The
guest bathroom was just down the hall. Nothing in there seemed out of place.
The most interesting thing in the medicine cabinet was a bottle of Advil, and
when I twisted it open I wasn’t surprised to find that it did indeed contain
Advil.

Back in
the hallway, I pulled open the door to a hall closet. It contained a vacuum
cleaner, a broom, and other cleaning supplies. Nothing unusual in there.

Heather
Davies had the master bedroom, the centerpiece of which was a queen size bed.
It had been neatly made sometime before and the room was tastefully decorated.
No Justin Bieber posters in here. I opened her closet and found it full of
carefully-hung clothes. There were no gaps among them to suggest that she’d
taken anything out to pack for a trip. The shoe rack below told the same story.
It was lined with a variety of shoes from one end to the other, with a gap on
one side that would have accommodated exactly one pair of shoes. If she had
planned to go away with her daughter, even for just a few days, I was sure
she’d have taken some of this stuff. Even I took more than one pair of shoes on
a short trip, and I was the least girly girl anyone had ever met.

My hand
clutched the air where the handle of my gun would have been again, only to drop
back to my side. Something was very wrong here.

I went
back to the living room to look around. This time I noticed that the carpet
near the door had been vacuumed recently, but
only
the carpet near the
door. That was odd. Looking closer, I could see that there were a number of
track marks still in the carpet. I knelt down to get a better look. Some of the
tracks had definitely been left by a vacuum, but there were other marks that
were too wide and deep to have been made by someone cleaning. Something with
wheels had been here recently, and it would have been something large and heavy.
I traced one of the marks with my finger. Luggage? No, the marks were too deep,
and they were in the wrong pattern. Two large objects had been here, each
having four wheels on a wide rectangular frame. They’d been wheeled in,
stopped, and then wheeled back out.

I
couldn’t think of anything that made marks like the ones I was seeing, unless
someone had wheeled two upright pianos in here and then decided to get rid of
them.

The
kitchen was on the other end of the living room, to the right of the entry door.
An enormous refrigerator was full of diet soda and other things to drink. I
opened one and drank half of it. Looking for clues was thirsty work.

The
refrigerator had two crisper drawers. I opened one and took out a head of
lettuce. The leaves were black around the edges. There was a bag of carrots
that hadn’t been opened yet. I tore a hole in it and pulled out a carrot,
unsurprised to find it limp. All of the fresh vegetables were in different
stages of decomposition, all well beyond edible. They’d been in here untouched
for quite a while.

A line
of cabinets was set in the walls above the kitchen counters. I opened them one
by one, revealing plates, bowls, glasses, and finally the liquor I’d been hoping
to find. There was no vodka but Heather had a bottle of good tequila that was
well outside my normal price range. I took it down and twisted it open. The
smell hit my nostrils with the effect that steak might have had on a starving
man. I took a long sniff, then treated myself to a small sip directly from the
bottle.

It was
amazing stuff. The tequila went down my throat with a warmth that felt like
visiting distant relatives on Christmas. I took a deep breath, then chased the
liquor with a swallow of diet soda. That was better.

I took
the bottle back into the living room and looked around again. There had to be
more to this story. What was I missing? And what was
that
? I could see
what looked like a dark green scratch on the wall a few feet away from the
door, but it was just above my head. That hadn’t been anybody’s shoe, unless it
had a green sole and had been thrown with considerable force. I reached up and
ran my fingers across the mark. Something had definitely hit the wall here, but
what could it have been?

A set of
shelves near the television caught my eye. It held an assortment of ceramic
animals painted in different colors. I saw an elephant, a camel, a family of
little dogs, and another family of cats. The figures didn’t appear to be part
of a single set; Heather must have been collecting these for years. But there
was a large space empty between a rainbow-painted gecko and a long-necked
giraffe. Something else had been on this shelf.

I didn’t
see a trash can in the living room, but there had been one in the kitchen. I
went back there and looked inside the trash can, unsurprised to find several
green ceramic shards at the bottom of the bag. I picked them out one by one and
laid them out on the counter. It didn’t take long to put them back into an
approximation of their rightful places. This had been a turtle about the size
of a softball, before the figurine had met its unfortunate end.

I took
one of the shards into the living room and held it up against the scratch on
the wall. The colors matched. Someone, most likely Heather Davies, had hurled
the turtle at the wall hard enough to shatter it. The ceramic was heavy; it
wouldn’t have broken easily. It didn’t seem likely that Heather had been angry
with the turtle. A more reasonable theory was that she had been meaning to do
some damage to someone standing near the door.

Returning
to the kitchen, I took another swallow of the tequila, but this time my stomach
rebelled and I vomited it up into the sink almost instantly. It took a moment
of clutching the side of the counter and breathing hard to get myself back
under control. When I had my breath, I took another drink, swallowing hard and
fighting off the nausea that followed to keep it down. When the nausea passed,
I took another drink for good measure. I didn’t have time for withdrawal
symptoms tonight. If I didn’t keep drinking I was going to be useless before
long.

I wiped
my mouth with my sleeve and then put the turtle back together. Heather could
get some superglue when she came back and fix the little guy herself.
If
she came back.

I took
another lap around the apartment but couldn’t think of anything else to do
here. This was looking very much like an abduction to me. I couldn’t think of
anything else that made sense.

The
security guard I’d talked to before was still in the lobby when I went back
downstairs. “Everything all right?” he asked me.

At first
I thought he was asking if
I
was all right. My eyes were probably
bloodshot from vomiting, and I knew I couldn’t smell all that great. But then I
guessed he was talking about my search of Heather’s condo. “When did you see
Heather Davies last?” I asked.

“A week
ago, maybe.” He frowned. “I’m not sure, to be honest.”

“She got
a delivery recently,” I said. “Do you know what that was about?”

The
guard took a clipboard out of his desk and began flipping through the sheets on
it. “Here it is,” he said. “Furniture delivery the Tuesday before last.”

I wasn’t
sure if that had been ten days ago or not, but it would have been close.
“Delivery from where?”

“It
doesn’t say,” he said. “Just that they were in at 2:53 pm, out at 3:20. Two
crates in and out.”

Crates.
That made sense. It would be hard to drag a woman and a child out of a security
building like this. But if you knocked them out or drugged them and then shut
them up in wooden crates, nobody would think to look twice at you as you
wheeled them outside. “Would anyone here have looked inside the crates?” I
asked.

He shook
his head. “Oh, no. We take security pretty seriously, but we’d never inspect
anyone’s property like that. We’re not really expecting to be bombed,” he
laughed.