Trespass (5 page)

Chapter 9

T
J fastened JR into his car seat and got behind the wheel of her Mini Cooper. Richard had been after her to get a larger car now that she transported JR, but the car was dear to her; they had been through a lot together. When she had JR with her in the Mini, they usually never went very far from home. She could keep it and get another, but the garage only held two cars, and she wanted Richard to be able to use the other slot when he stayed. She had thought about having a cement apron added next to the garage so she would have room for a third car. It was probably time to get some estimates.

The Wauwatosa Fire Inspector’s office, housed in a renovated old building on North Avenue, wasn’t far from their house. They could have walked over, but she had no idea if the man would be in or if he would even be willing to answer her questions.

With JR in a small stroller she had managed to stuff in the small car, she found admittance an easy task. A woman with a small child generated interest and smiles and they were oohed and aahed forward to the inspector’s second-floor office.

Sitting behind an old oak desk, Fire Inspector Dennis Penestorf had a military haircut and muscular arms displayed by a short-sleeved shirt. He turned when he heard her enter his small office and grinned at the sight of JR, who was decked out in a Milwaukee Brewers’ onesy.

“And who do we have here?”

“My son, JR,” TJ explained and showed him her PI license. She held out her hand. “TJ Peacock, sir.” It never hurt to act as respectfully as possible.

He shook her hand and then bent over, making the usual baby noises and faces at JR, who never got enough of such silliness, even though he had his first birthday a week ago. “What can I do for you, Ms. Peacock?”

“We live off State. I was home when that house exploded last week. Just curious, I guess. Wonderin’ if it was an accident. I’d hate to think there were any gas-leak problems in the neighborhood.” She wouldn’t tell him her real purpose unless she had to.

“I’m sorry, but until the final report goes out, I can’t share any information with you. But I can tell you a final determination may be difficult. The damage is extensive.”

“Any chance it was arson?”

“I have to give you the same answer. You could ask the police. They’re investigating that angle too, although I’m not sure they could tell you much either.” He pulled a lollipop from his desk drawer and offered it to JR, who giggled at the sight.

TJ didn’t think he was shining her on, but he didn’t seem overly concerned about the case. It could be that he didn’t have results back from forensics, or he had them and the results were inconclusive, which as he mentioned happened all too often with suspicious fires.

“Can you tell me how long it’ll be before the official report comes out?”

He chuckled. “Don’t give up, do you? Sorry, I really can’t say. It all depends on what they find. It could be a week. It could even be months.”

Detective Brian Haymaker had to keep reminding himself to be grateful he had been assigned to a significant case, one that was a possible murder. Madison Chapman, who remained unconscious, was still in the ICU and not expected to pull through. He couldn’t begrudge the opportunity just because he had only gotten the case when the other detectives realized it might be linked to the dirty-sheet cases. He refused to use the “cum case” moniker the other detectives used. Not that he was prudish when it came to profanity, he just didn’t think the vulgar term for semen should be linked to an actual case.

When the techs were going through the Chapman house after finding Madison Chapman at the foot of the stairs, they had discovered an open bed with stained sheets exposed in the guest room on the first floor. The Chapmans hadn’t left it that way. Madison’s friend insisted that Madison had been sick the night of the party and definitely hadn’t gone home to hook up with a guy.

The lead detective, a surly, fifty-something man toying with early retirement, had been visibly disappointed when Haymaker told him that he had been assigned as Brian’s second-in-command. Detective Francis Lukaszewski, Franco to his cronies, had a large, slightly overweight frame and a face with a carnivorous grin that faded to a scowl when he heard the news that he would be playing subordinate to Haymaker.

Too damn bad, Brian thought. He was as good a detective as any of the others, even if they had a few years on him. He intended to make the most of the new assignment. The camaraderie he felt the day he delivered his partner’s baby on the conference room table had been short-lived and led to a coarse discussion of who had gotten the best view of her lower half. Between her screams and her swearing, Tasha had threatened death to anyone who ogled her “stuff.” As far as Brian was concerned, his partner had no “stuff.”

Earlier in the day, he and Lukaszewski questioned the friend who had found Madison Chapman at the bottom of the stairs. Cassie Cantwell hadn’t been able to tell them much. Madison left the party she and Cassie had been at the night before because she was coming down with the flu. Cantwell was adamant that Madison hadn’t been drinking, which test results had proven true. They would have to wait longer for the tox-screen results to find out if there were drugs in her system.

Madison didn’t have a boyfriend, but on the night of the party she was waiting for Rodney Johnstone, a boy she had been hoping to hook up with. According to Cantwell, the guy had been invited to the party, but he never showed. They hadn’t located Johnstone yet; he lived at home and was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Between his classes and his part-time job, his mother told them, he was often hard to locate. She gave them his schedule so they could catch him at the campus as he left his last class.

The Johnstones lived across the street and three houses down from where Norman Teschler’s house had exploded. An irrelevant connection? Probably, but Haymaker planned on going back to the neighborhood and asking new questions.

Lukaszewski had dumped the paperwork on him and then left to get a sandwich. Brian usually brought a lunch, opting to save money and eat healthier than the junk food so readily available near the station.

“Detective Haymaker?”

He looked up into the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. A vivid blue, or were they purple? Either way, they were exotic eyes on a slim woman with high cheekbones and skin the color of a Florida suntan. “That’s me,” he answered. “And you are?”

“TJ Peacock,” she replied and flipped open a wallet to show him a private investigator’s license.

Her eyes went steely the minute she exposed her creds. Brian had an ominous feeling when he shook her small but surprisingly strong hand; there was more to TJ Peacock than an intriguing pair of eyes.

Chapter 10

M
adison Chapman died the next morning from her injuries. Unless her autopsy proved otherwise, her death would be reported as accidental. The medical examiner’s official report wouldn’t be in until the next day.

Detectives Haymaker and Lukaszewski easily identified the Johnstone kid when he walked out of his last class of the day. Rodney Johnstone carried himself with a large load of self-esteem and was well built, with blond hair in one of those peaky styles like fresh whipped cream. His clothes were as casual as all the other students rushing from the room. They stopped him, flashed their IDs, and led him to the side of the corridor.

“What’s going on?” Johnstone asked, looking from one to the other.

Lukaszewski took the lead. “We’re here to ask you about Madison Chapman. I understand you were supposed to meet her at a party two nights ago at the home of Jared Kellar.”

“She invited me, yeah. I told her I might come just to get her to let up on me. She had a thing for me, but I wasn’t interested. Too young.”

Too young.
Brian figured Johnstone was at the most three years older than the girl. “So you were never at the party?”

“Ask anyone who was there. I never showed. I had a date that night. What’s this about, anyway?”

“Madison fell down the stairs in her house the night of the party. Her injuries were fatal,” Lukaszewski said.

The kid lost his arrogance. He dropped his backpack on the floor and slumped against the wall for support. “You think someone pushed her?”

Brian found Johnstone’s question interesting, but it could simply be a reaction based on the police showing up to question him.

“I’m not sure what we think yet,” Lukaszewski answered. “Write down the name of your date, including her contact information. Do you know of anyone Madison might have been seeing?”

“No. I hardly knew her. She comes into the place where I work sometimes and puts the moves on me. I don’t even know her friends’ names.” He pulled a ragged notebook out of his backpack and jotted down the information, then tore off the sheet and passed it to them.

Lukaszewski slipped him a card. “We’ll get back to you. Call us if you think of anything.” The detectives turned to leave.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Johnstone said. “There was this guy that always hung around when they were there.”

“They?” Brian asked.

“Madison and the other girl, the one she hung with; I don’t remember her name. I don’t know the guy’s name either. He hangs out at the restaurant sometimes and he usually leaves when they do. I only noticed because he’s kind of weird.”

“Weird strange or weird scary?”

“I don’t know. He wears a hoodie pulled up over his head, and he’s always alone. I think he’s about the same age as the girls. Sometimes he mumbles to himself.”

Not much to go on, Brian thought.

“Can you describe him?”

“I never got a good look at his face.”

“Next time you see him, get a name and call me,” Lukaszewski said.

Johnstone stuck Lukaszewski’s card in his pocket and ambled away, slowly picking up his earlier swagger.

“One down,” Lukaszewski added. “And unless we want to interview every freakin’ kid at that party, let’s hope the girl tripped on her nightgown.”

Chapter 11

I
can’t move. Once more, the paralysis is upon me like a lead blanket. I’m helpless, my limbs frozen in place. My fear becomes terror. Something’s different this time; I can’t see my room or my furniture. There is no presence clinging to me, but even without it, I am caught in a blind panic.

I moan in an effort to waken myself. It doesn’t work. Taking a deep breath calms me enough to realize I’m lying on my kitchen floor in front of the stove. How did I get here? I vaguely recall being in the screened porch. I must have fallen asleep there, but why am I in the kitchen? Like my bedroom in past paralysis experiences, the room is in shadow, small rays of light drifting in from between the plants in the bay window above the sink.

When I managed to regain consciousness, I was reclining on the sofa in the porch exactly where I’d been when I’d fallen asleep. I had a dark memory of lying on the floor in the kitchen, and my displacement to another room felt as threatening as the night visitor. Had he been there, unknown to me? Had he moved me while I slept?

I had an appointment with my doctor tomorrow; I was looking forward to the relief of sleeping pills. I was having a terrible time focusing on any one thing. So much had happened in the last few days: the explosion, seeing Carter, being near the scene of a possible murder. Carter and I had given our brief statements to the police and then repeated them once more to the detective who arrived, the same one who’d been at my house the morning after the explosion. We left the scene as soon as we could get away.

Carter offered to stay with me, but I turned him down. I wanted to get my life back on track, and I couldn’t do that with old feelings for my ex-husband appealing to my loneliness.

I returned to Lisa Rayburn’s office the day after I saw the doctor. Before we even sat down, she gave me the information about the support group. “The group had five members originally, but recently two left.” She must have seen my concern. “Oh, no,” she added. “They moved out of state; their leaving had nothing to do with the group.

“The group meets once a week in the evening, and they’d love to have you join them. If you like, I’ll call and set it up, or you can call the therapist yourself. His name is Robert Bernstein. He may want to see you before your first meeting, and I know he’ll require a note from your doctor verifying that your problem isn’t physical.” She handed me one of his business cards, then looked at me expectantly.

I blurted, “I’m glad you were able to get me in again before I joined them.” I told her about my meeting with Carter, the inheritance, and the incident with the girl who found her friend at the bottom of the steps. Lisa’s expression never changed, and she didn’t speak until I got it all out, including that I had received a clean bill of health, along with a prescription for sleeping pills, from my doctor. My sleep issues weren’t health related.

“You’ve had quite a week. Is there one of these things in particular you want to talk about?” she asked.

Was there? I knew in my heart what I should be discussing with her, but, for some reason, it was a subject I wasn’t ready to share.

She sensed my hesitation. “Why don’t you tell me about your ex-husband? How did it feel to be with him again?”

That I could handle. “It seemed odd at first. I was glad we met, though. I realized I did the right thing by divorcing him.”

“Gemma, tell me about your divorce. What went wrong in your marriage?”

There were so many things I needed to talk about, but how my marriage had ended wasn’t one of them. But so many things are woven together in one’s psyche; maybe I couldn’t get to an answer for one compartment of my mind without opening the other chambers. I took a deep breath, wishing I were stretched out on the chaise in the corner of the room with my eyes shut.

After I concluded the tale of my marriage’s demise and the part my career as an escort played in it, I ended by telling her about last week. How I had turned Carter down when he offered to stay with me after we talked to the police.

Lisa offered me a cup of tea. I gratefully accepted, happy to have a break from my lengthy discourse. I rose from the chair and stood at the window. The view of the lake displayed a lovely autumn scene: oak trees, waving rushes lining the shoreline, a lone sailboat gliding along the surface of the lake.

After handing me the tea, Lisa didn’t comment on what I had told her, which I expected was how therapists worked, trying to draw you out rather than give their own opinion of what you revealed. Uncomfortable with the silence, I told her about my latest sleep paralysis episode, how I had experienced being in my kitchen, not where I’d fallen asleep.

“Why do you think the paralysis is just as frightening without the feeling that someone’s there with you, holding you down?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” I had asked myself that repeatedly. “While I was lying on the kitchen floor it felt like… I was dead or something, like I had no control over my own body. I had no idea how I had gotten there. I feel frightened even talking about it now.”

Lisa appeared to be taking in every detail, although she didn’t take notes. “Gemma, there’s usually a reason for the feeling of a presence holding onto you. Often, it’s invoked by feelings about a person or possibly the memory of a person. We need to explore those. I think the displacement you experienced with this latest episode represents your feelings of being helpless to control what’s been happening to you.

“Keep a small notebook on your nightstand,” she advised. “The next time you experience the paralysis, as soon as you awaken, write down exactly what you were feeling and thinking about when you fell asleep. Write every detail you can remember from the time the paralysis started and how you managed to pull out of it. You may gain some valuable insights.”

I wanted to object and tell her she was wrong. I didn’t think it possible that a mere memory of a person from my past could cause the night visitor to terrify me, but I was paying her to help me; it would be foolish not to do what she suggested. “I can do that,” I answered.

“I hope you’ll consider joining the support group. I believe sharing with the others and hearing their experiences might help to resolve some of your tension.”

In my desperation, I would agree to try anything. “Can I still come to see you?” I liked Lisa Rayburn. I felt like she understood me in a way no one else ever had.

“Why don’t you see how it goes with the group? Go to a meeting or two, and if you still feel you need more time with me, we’ll set something up. We have some time left now. Why don’t you tell me more about when you worked for the escort service? It seemed like you had more to say about it.”

The woman had to be a mind reader. “I don’t like to talk about it. No one ever believes it wasn’t a call-girl setup. It wasn’t.”

“So none of the girls, yourself included, had sex with the clients?”

“I never saw the other girls. The only one I ever met was the one who told me about the escort service in the first place. She was a fellow student; she told me she didn’t.”

“And you?”

I had to tell her. “A few times, but only with men I was attracted to. And I never took money from them.”

“Gemma, I can’t help but suspect there might be a tie of some kind between your night visitor episodes and your escort days. You say you have no feelings of guilt about it, but maybe you had a bad experience with someone?”

There had been no “bad” experiences, at least not the abusive kind she hinted at; no one had ever been violent. I sighed, my memories spiraling into a past I wanted to forget. “You’re right. There was something—but it was worse than a traumatic experience—I fell in love with a client.”

Lisa’s face registered no surprise at my admission. “Tell me why you describe it as a bad experience.”

I sighed and looked out over Pewaukee Lake. If only I could be there on a sailboat, carefree, and enjoying the day. I had never told anyone but Norman about Taylor, and I hadn’t told him everything.

How to start? I struggled with it for a moment before I realized that in a psychologist’s office there were no right or wrong ways to tell a story.

“I got a call from the escort service for a daytime engagement, which surprised me since those hardly ever happened. When I was advised to dress for a trip to an amusement park, I had no idea what to expect. I had never heard of anything like that. My ‘date’ picked me up in front of a coffee shop near the university driving a small white sports car with the convertible top down. His eyes were the first thing I noticed about him, dark hazel with thick, long lashes like a woman’s. They were always laughing and his love of life was contagious.”

As I told her about him, I felt like I was back in the day, the sun shining, and a soft breeze tickling my bare legs. “He looked so happy to see me, like we were old friends, and I wasn’t paid company. Rather than step out and open the door, he reached his hand out to me. I jumped in and took the seat next to him. He introduced himself as Buddy. It wasn’t until our third date that he admitted his real name was Taylor.

“As we drove off, he said, ‘I bet no one’s ever taken you to Great America.’

I laughed when he said that, but I knew by ‘no one’ he meant my engagements through the service. I had
never
been to Six Flags Great America, had never experienced all the rides, the shows, and the food it offered. My father owned a small jewelry store, and my mother kept books for him so they rarely had time for family outings.”

Lost in my memories, it became difficult to stay in the moment. “He told me he grew up being groomed to become part of his father’s business. Even as a child, he took the role seriously, rarely leaving his studies and training for such frivolities as amusement parks. Playing football in high school had been the one exception because his father was an avid football fan.

“He admitted having a girlfriend who was at her family’s summer home until the end of August. They were engaged to be married when he finished law school. That’s why he called the service. It was a beautiful day, and he wanted to do something fun without anyone knowing he was spending time with another woman.”

I was nearly twenty-one years old that day, yet I had more fun at the amusement park with Taylor in one day than I remembered ever having as a kid.

“I don’t think we missed a ride or a game in the entire park. We ate French fries, pizza slices, ice cream bars, and corn dogs. His energy and excitement were contagious; I had never met anyone like him. When we talked, he listened to me as if I were the most important person in his world.” I paused, remembering.

Lisa finally said, “Go on.”

What I had felt that day was nearly impossible to describe. “While I was with him, part of me felt like the child I had never been, and the other part a woman desiring a man for the first time. I had dated, even had a boyfriend or two, but I had never felt emotionally connected to any of them. I fell in love with Taylor that very day.”

I remembered how he held me close on the rides and took my hand in his the rest of the time. That first date, so like a fairy tale that remembering it still filled me with desire for him, lived on in my unconscious. It was no wonder that no one else had been able to live up to his memory.

Sadly, I couldn’t even call it a date. I had been bought and paid for. But recalling that detail robs me of its magic.