Level Five (13 page)

Edie couldn’t walk away from him.  He was the one who had stayed with her when her mother had left, the one who had cared for her.  She couldn’t stand the thought of him on the streets, homeless and hungry.  And so she paid his rent in the crappy motel, at least knowing he had a place to lay his head at night, a place where he wouldn’t be beaten or victimized while he slept.

Right or wrong, it was what she did. She kept it separate from everything else in her life.  This was her shameful secret, her penance for being the daughter who had lived, the daughter who hadn’t been, who couldn’t be enough for her mother.

When she reached the motel she saw her father standing outside his unit.  Love for him welled up thick and choking in the back of her throat.

James Carpenter was a man broken at his core, and it showed in the filth of the clothes he wore, in the scraggly beard that hung from his chin.  Even his posture displayed life’s defeat. His shoulders slumped and his back bent forward as if to protect him from any more of life’s kicks.

He raised a hand in greeting as she rolled down her window and motioned him toward her car.  “Get in,” she said.  “I’ll take you to the grocery store.”

“You could just give me the money and I could walk there later.” His gaze slyly darted away from hers.

“Dad, we’re not going to have this argument.  Get in the car.” 

He smelled like the worst of the streets, like unwashed laundry and spoiled food with more than a whisper of cheap whiskey. It would take her a full day to air out the car after transporting him. What bothered her most was the silence that rode with them.

He never had anything to say to her unless it was to ask for something.  He never inquired about her life, her work or anything personal. The silence ached in her heart each time she recognized that father and daughter had nothing to talk about, that Greg Bernard had even stolen that from them.

Minutes later they pulled into the nearest grocery store parking lot.  The ride had been accomplished with the usual awkward silence that generally existed whenever they were together.

She never knew what to say to him, what might set him off into one of his crying jags that could last for hours.  She didn’t have the words to make his world right.  She couldn’t bring Francine back from the dead, all she could do was take care of her father’s most basic needs and give him just enough cash to lose himself in the altered world of booze and pot.

It didn’t take them long to zip through the grocery store, buying staples of bread and milk and bologna for sandwiches.  She picked up a box of his favorite cereal and several packages of hamburger.  He added several cans of beans and like a mischievous child sneaked in a package of chocolate covered cookies.

It wasn’t until she got to the cash register that she also realized he’d added a six-pack of beer to the cart.

She considered putting it back on the shelf and then thought what the hell.  If she left him any money he’d just go to the local liquor store and pick something up.  She might as well buy it here and keep her cash in her pocket. At least it wasn’t a bottle of gin or whisky.

Minutes later they were back in his apartment where she helped him put away the items they’d bought.  “Dad, have you ever considered going into rehab?  Getting clean and sober?” She’d never gotten the nerve to venture the question, but today she suddenly found this madness exhausting.  There had to be a better way to deal with everything.

“Why?  What difference would it make?”  He squeezed his rheumy blue eyes tightly closed. When he opened them they were filled with tears.  “If I stop drinking nothing changes.”  He
pulled the box of Fruity Pebbles from the grocery bag and clutched it tightly to his chest. 

“This was her favorite cereal, you know, along with those silly chocolate Pop Tarts she used to eat.”  The tears spilled from his eyes and down his sunken cheeks. 

“She was the best, my Frannie.”  A sob shook his shoulders.  “Even if I clean myself up and get sober, she’s still gone forever. Not a minute of the day goes by that I don’t think about her, miss her so much.  She was daddy’s girl, my firstborn.”

He set the cereal box on the counter, then turned and disappeared into the bathroom where his sobs echoed throughout the small apartment. 

She knew it was useless to attempt to get him out of the bathroom, to make him stop weeping. Woodenly Edie put the rest of the groceries away, wanting nothing more than to escape the squalor and the grief that was her father’s ‘house.’

When she was finished, she knocked on the bathroom door.  “I’m leaving, Dad.”

There was a muffled response and Edie left the apartment, carefully locking the door after her.

She got halfway home before she realized she was going to lose it.  She pulled into a fast food restaurant parking lot and found a spot at the very back of the lot.

Shutting off her engine she lowered her head to the steering wheel as hot tears began to burn her eyes and deep sobs welled up in her chest.

Francine had been the child that had sparkled and shone.  She’d been the diamond.  She’d loved attention and although she got good grades and had lots of friends, she was also one of the first to seek out her fair share of mischief. 

Edie had been background chatter in her family, more introverted and much less shiny.  She’d been the coal, easily overlooked in the presence of Francine’s brilliance.

The tears became sobs that shook her shoulders as the scent of burgers and fries from the fast food place filtered in through her half-opened window.

Although her father hadn’t actually said the words, she knew what was in his heart.  And as if his inner sentiments weren’t enough, her own mother had found her not valuable enough.

Francine had been the child of their hearts.  Edie had been an afterthought.  If she’d just waited that day to walk home
with Francine instead of getting frustrated and leaving Francine to walk home alone.

It had all been Edie’s fault.  That’s what her parents believed.  Although they’d never spoken the words aloud, their actions had spoken much louder than any words.

If only the creep that had killed Francine had taken Edie instead.  Then Edie was certain that her parents would still be together, her father wouldn’t be anesthetizing his pain with drugs and alcohol and everyone would be happy. 

A deep shudder worked through her as she mentally acknowledged what she’d always known…the wrong daughter had died.

“Do you think she’s dead?” Teddy asked and then burped the first few bars of Heartbreak Hotel.  They had just eaten barbecue, which always made Teddy verbose in his belching.

“If she is, her body must be buried somewhere,” Jake replied.  The subject of their conversation was Maggie Black.  The case had gone beyond cold and the most difficult thing of all was having no answers for Maggie’s distraught mother.  “At
some point in time a dog will dig her up or some kids will stumble on her.” Jake sighed in frustration.

“How did the book signing go?  Lisa and I planned to be there but around noon Snap started throwing up and by one we had all three girls ralphing into a variety of containers.”

“Are they okay?” Jake asked as he pulled away from the barbecue restaurant.

Teddy nodded. 
“Must have been some sort of vicious twenty-four hour bug.  They seemed to be doing better by morning.”

“After the signing we had dinner with Frank and Colette Burgess.  He said that for the three years that Colette was kidnapped, he never lost hope because her body hadn’t been found. As long as there was no body there was a possibility she might still be alive.”

Jake shook his head as he turned the corner back to the police station.  “When we don’t find the bodies of murder victims, do the families just exist in a state of limbo between hope and despair?  I mean sometimes it takes years to stumble on a body. Sometimes we never find the victim.”

“It’s a sad part of the business we’re in,” Teddy replied.  “There’s never a happy ending when murder occurs.”

Jake immediately thought of Edie, whose father had died when Edie had started college and whose mother had run away from her grief and built a brand new family, effectively erasing her painful past. 

They’d had closure; they’d known what had happened to Francine.  They’d buried her in a funeral that had drawn crowds of people and still they’d all been destroyed.

How much worse was it for those who never got that kind of closure, who never knew the fate of their missing loved ones?  What was it like to go through day after day, not having the answer you needed more than any other?  He dismissed these thoughts from his mind as he pulled into the station.

The crime scene they’d begun the morning with had been easy.  Wife dead on the floor from a single gunshot wound, husband standing over her body sobbing with a gun in his hand.  Before Jake and Teddy could say a word the man had dropped the gun and confessed to anyone and everyone in the area. 

They’d fought, he’d said, things had spiraled out of control. He’d drawn the gun just wanting to scare her and bang – he’d killed the woman he loved. 

It had been an open and shut case, something that rarely occurred.  The only things that would have made the day better would be if they could give Danielle Black a definitive answer on what happened to her daughter and if he were going home
tonight to Edie’s instead of the apartment he no longer felt was home.

Home was sitting across from Edie at the breakfast table with Rufus begging at his feet.  Home was Edie spooned against him in her king-sized bed. 

That’s where he wanted to be and for the first time he felt an edge of irritation with the situation…with her. The problem was he didn’t know what to do with his irritation. He definitely didn’t know what to do with her.

Anthony had found work beyond irritating all day.  He’d almost taken a sick day, but he was in the middle of a big project and really couldn’t afford a day off. 

Still, the allure of Edie’s garbage had haunted him all night and throughout the day.  He’d come home the night before and had meticulously placed everything he’d dumped into his truck in two garbage bags. Then he’d carried them into his paper room where soon she would be his guest.

He’d wanted to start sorting through it then, but he knew he’d get lost in it, in her and would never manage to make it to work this morning.

The project at work was finished and he’d put in for a personal day off tomorrow. When he got home this evening he could lose himself in all things Edie.

He looked at the clock on his computer.  Thirty more minutes and he would be out of here and surrounded by pieces of Edie.   He closed his eyes, momentarily caught in a euphoric state that had him on the verge of exploding.

Twenty-nine more minutes and he could get out of this place and be where he most wanted to be, surrounded by his things and by
her
things.

“Anthony?”

Susan’s voice snapped him from his rapture. For a moment he wanted to smash her face in, claw her throat out.  Instead he pasted on a pleasant smile.  “Susan, I was just thinking about you,” he said.

Her cheeks
pinkened in color.  “I was thinking about you, too.  I was wondering if maybe you’d like to come to my place Wednesday night for dinner instead of going out someplace. I thought it might be fun to throw a couple of steaks on the grill.”

He couldn’t think of anything he’d like to do less, but he reminded himself that this pseudo-relationship with Susan was necessary.  “That sounds wonderful.  What time and what can I bring?”

“Why don’t we say around six and you don’t have to bring anything but yourself.”

“How about I bring a nice bottle of red wine?” he countered.

“Sounds perfect.”  She positively glowed.  “And now I’ll get out of here so you can finish up and go home.  See you tomorrow morning.”

He breathed a sigh of relief as she left the doorway.  He hadn’t even bothered to tell her he wouldn’t be in tomorrow.  Another glance at the clock on his computer let him know that in the time he powered down his computer and gathered his things together, it would be time to go home…home to his new treasures of Edie.

By the time he pulled up in his driveway he trembled with such excitement he nearly tripped getting out of the car.  As he opened the front door he automatically twisted to ease past the tower of baskets on top of several boxes, stepped up on a three-foot high stack of carpet samples and through a narrow opening between towers of hard-backed books. 

That brought him into his kitchen and beyond that was his paper room where the contents of Edie’s trash can awaited him. He didn’t bother to make himself a cup of coffee and he didn’t take time to change out of the suit he wore.  He went directly to the two garbage bags, dumped them out and then sat nearby and drew in a deep breath. 

The things he surrounded himself was him…these things were her.  He picked up a coffee-stained receipt and studied the items she’d bought.  A lot of salad stuff, a bottle of wine, chicken breasts and a box of Vanilla Wafers.  The receipt was from a grocery store not far from her house.  So, now he knew where she shopped.  It was time stamped three-thirty in the afternoon. 

It was amazing the things you could learn about people by picking through their garbage.  She liked Chinese take-out. She’d gone through one roll of toilet paper and shredded her credit card receipts.  He found several crumpled pages of what appeared to be the book she was working on. On one of them she’d
doodled the name Jake Warner.  He set that page aside, intending to Google Jake and find out who he was and what his relationship was to Edie.

Not that it mattered.  Edie was already marked as Anthony’s.  Nothing and nobody would stand in his way.  His need
for her was life-threatening.  There was no question in his mind that she would be the one to finally bring some peace to his life, to fill the hollow hole inside him.

He spied a half of a sandwich, the bread hard and the slice of cheese bright yellow and stiff.  He picked it up and felt as if it almost vibrated with her psychic energy. 

She’d eaten part of it.  There was a place in the center where teeth marks were visible, hardened and preserved by the petrifying bread.  He raised the sandwich to his mouth and carefully placed his teeth around the place where hers had been. 

He bit into the bread and chewed with his eyes closed.  It was like he was eating her…taking her into his
body, swallowing her whole…destroying her bite by bite until nothing remained. He was momentarily at peace. 

    
         Chapter 14

Jake sat in a small conference room with a stack of missing persons' files on the desk before him.  He and Teddy had hit a brick wall in the Maggie Black case and the Kelly Paulson disappearance before her.  They were currently between assignments and Jake had okayed it with Chief Decker to do a little digging into the missing case files from the Kansas City area and the surrounding small communities.

There were hundreds of missing persons reports called in each year to the station.
Most of them resolved on their own within a couple of hours.  A run-away wife comes home, a missing husband sobers up, and others just show up in a different town, with a different relative.

However, there were plenty of cases that just never got solved.  Either the person wanted to disappear permanently and
has gone underground or a crime had taken place and the body had yet to be found.

Teddy walked into the room with a stack of reports that had been faxed to them from nearby communities.  He slapped them on the table with a frown.  “I feel like Chief Decker is punishing me by making me do this with you,” he grumbled as he sat in the chair opposite Jake.

“If you are being punished it’s because Decker heard you burp Hail To The Chief behind his back earlier this morning.”

Teddy grinned proudly.  “It was an unusually clear rendition, wasn’t it?”

Jake remained silent, refusing to sink to the depths of actually making this a viable conversation.  “Why don’t we start with the files from just the past year?”

“What are we looking for?”

“Let’s separate what we have between blonds and brunettes around Maggie and Kelly’s ages,” Jake said.

Teddy stared at him.  “I thought you told me the other day not to go there.”

“I still don’t want to go there,” Jake replied.  “I’m just curious, that’s all.”

“Haven’t you heard that curiosity killed the cat?” Teddy
asked, his eyes heavy-lidded with speculation.

“It bothers me a little bit that the two women who disappeared off the face of the earth within the past seven weeks looked a lot alike.  I’m not expecting this to go anywhere so just indulge me, okay?”

“Consider yourself indulged.” Teddy began to separate the reports.  “What do you want to do with the redheads?”

“Put them in with the blonds,” Jake replied.

Once again silence reigned in the small room, broken only occasionally by a rumble of Teddy’s stomach.  At least the rumble was remaining contained rather than coming up his throat or blowing out his ass.

It had been last night as Jake had laid awake in his bed alone that photo images of Maggie and Paula had flashed over and over again in his head.  They both shared long dark hair, bright blue eyes and slender, delicate features.  They both had disappeared from public places.  Maggie from a McDonald’s parking lot and Paula from the parking lot of a busy dental office.

              Despite the fact that he and Teddy had been working the two cases, last night the similarities had bothered him more than usual.  Maybe it was because he’d been alone in the bed, without Edie to talk to, without the presence of her warmth snuggled up against him.

             
The darkness of the night had seemed more profound and his mind had drifted to sinister places. What if they were missing something?  What if the two women who looked so much alike were tied by a single force that had removed them both from sight?  What if the same man was responsible for both women’s disappearances?