Enemies Closer (22 page)

“What if she’s not there at all? I’ve got my hopes up now, but what are the chances that Eddie kidnapped my sister and stashed her on the only property listed under his name other than the condo in Seattle?”

“It’s not a brilliant move,” said Ben, “but Eddie’s not a brilliant guy. Besides, he may not have had any other options.” He took his hand from her grasp and wrapped a strong arm around Clara. “We’ll look around – if she’s not there, we’ll look somewhere else and we’ll keep looking until we find her.”

“This is La Conner,” said Ben, as they drove through an impossibly quaint town. “Home of Tom Robbins.”

Clara sat up straight to take a look. “
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
, Tom Robbins?
Skinny Legs and All
?
Still Life with Woodpecker
?”

“I see you’re a fan.”

“I based an entire segment of my young adulthood on one of Tom Robbins’s novels.”

“Which one?”

“I’ll never tell.”

They passed through a roundabout on their way out of town and continued north. “Are we close?” asked Clara.

“We are,” said Ben, checking the GPS and turning onto a two-lane road nearly engulfed by trees. He flipped on the headlights to see through the gloom, turned two more times, and five minutes later, pulled to a stop when the forest gave way to an acre of open space with a large house and an attached garage. “This is it.”

Clara released her seat belt and opened the car door, stepping cautiously onto the gravel drive. She waited for Ben to come around to her side before closing the door. “Where do we start?” she whispered.

In a normal tone of voice he replied, “There’s no need to whisper. If there’s anyone here we’ve made our presence known whether we like it or not.” He looked around. They were sitting ducks if there was anyone up here. “Let’s start with the house,” he said, and he stepped in front of Clara, making his way up the steps to the front door.

It was a good-sized three-story Shaker home built into the hill with the lowest floor half underground. The top floor had a peaked roof and wraparound balcony with whitewashed wooden rails. The landing in front of the door swept around to a large deck on the front of the house. They followed the wooden planks around the corner and Clara’s eyes widened at the view. From this height there was a stunning vista of Skagit Bay. She turned to find Ben cupping his hands around his face and peering through a large picture window. She joined him and did the same.

“Looks pretty quiet in there,” said Clara with a tinge of disappointment.

Ben walked over and tried the sliding glass door. “Locked.” They walked around the house back to the front door and tried it. “Also locked.” The door had a decent-sized window made of smaller panes of glass, but all Clara could see on the other side was a small foyer with some bright watercolor paintings, a coat closet and a stairway leading to the lower floor.

Clara hadn’t thought about how they would get inside once they were here, but she needn’t have worried because Ben pulled a small sack made of heavy duck cloth from his belt loop. He must have taken it from the back seat of the Jeep after they’d arrived. She was about to ask what it was for when he stuck his hand inside and with a short, powerful motion, punched out one of the panes of glass in the door.

Ben cleared the remaining shards of glass from the pane and then removed the sack from his hand, reached through the door and unlocked it from inside.

“What if there’s a burglar alarm?” asked Clara, though she didn’t really care as she followed him into the house.

“If there’s an alarm then the cops will come and this time they’ll have just cause to enter the house because the intruders – you and me – will still be inside.”

“Good thinking, Mr. Radcliffe.”

“I do my best, Miss Gardner.”

In the hall closet, Ben found a set of golf clubs and pulled out the three and five irons, handing one to Clara with a shrug. “Just in case.” Thus armed, they made a cursory check of the main floor.

A great room with a large living space, fireplace and dining area extended into an open kitchen at the back end of the house. Divided from the living area by an island with a bar counter and four leather stools, it was a decent kitchen for a chef on her days off. The great room was furnished with overstuffed sofas piled with blankets and quilts. Heavy wooden coffee and side tables sat on a wide-plank floor with thick, tribal rugs. Framed antique maps decorated the walls and a basket of chopped wood stood ready by the fireplace.

On the other side of the kitchen was a half-bath and an entertainment room with a huge television, a stereo system, and built-in shelves holding hundreds of books, from
War and Peace
to
Grey’s Anatomy
.

They found a staircase leading to the sloped-roof top floor, which had been converted into a master bedroom and bath. So far, no signs of life.

Next they followed the staircase to the lower level, which had two more bedrooms and a bathroom against the back wall of the house, and a large mudroom and game room in the front with another television, a full-sized pool table and a carved wooden wet bar. Another set of glass sliding doors opened to a concrete patio directly under the cedar deck of the main floor. Outside there was a gas grill covered with a dust cloth and two large bins holding basket – and soccer balls, a badminton set, and foldable lawn chairs. No sign of Maddy.

“Let’s check the garage,” said Clara, and Ben led the way back into the house and up the stairs to the door in the foyer that led into a two-car garage.

Inside, one space was occupied by a beat-up, hunter green SUV; the other was empty. Wire shelves holding boxes and tools lined the walls. There were two very nice mountain bikes on hooks near the door.

Ben unlocked and opened an exterior door that led back to the gravel drive where they had parked. “Okay, no one’s going to jump out of a closet with a gun. Let’s do a more careful search.” They started by walking around the perimeter of the house and, finding nothing out of place, re-entered through the front door.

Chapter Twenty-One

D
ays upon days of utter silence had been deafening, and Maddy Gardner had started talking to herself just to stave away the insanity. The only thing keeping her from utter despair was that she finally had a task. Perhaps an exercise in futility, but at least she was doing something.

“Just keep going, Maddy Gardner.” After a lot of crying and feeling sorry for herself – totally understandable, she knew, but not particularly helpful – Maddy had decided to make use of her rusty toolbox lid. After careful scrutiny of each and every link of the iron chain that bound her to the support post in the cellar – an inspection she had performed by touch, in the dark – she found two chinks in the armor. Two weak links that she just might be able to pry open.

It had taken a long time to wedge the steel lid of the toolbox into one of them, but she had done it. Now she was using the lid as a lever to enlarge the opening. It was slow going, but it was going.

“One thing at a time,” she encouraged herself, pushing away the frustration and fear that threatened at every moment. She took a break to eat a granola bar and drink some water and then she went back to work.

Clara and Ben had searched every inch of Eddie and Michelle Perkins’s country home and found no traces of Maddy, no hidden compartments or secret rooms, no indication at all that anyone was staying here or had recently visited. The refrigerator contained only condiments; the freezer was full of frozen peas and carefully labeled cuts of meat. No fish. Michelle would never cook anything but fresh. The thermostat was set for fifty degrees, appliances had been unplugged, the water heater had been turned off.

Clara sat heavily on one of the overstuffed sofas. It had become obvious a while ago that there was no silent alarm. The police were not coming to arrest them for breaking and entering. Carlisle had not sent in the troops. She looked around the great room and sighed in disappointment.

Ben said, “We’d better search the grounds before it gets too dark.” It was already dusk when they walked back outside and Ben went to his Jeep for a flashlight.

As they entered the gloom of the forest, he turned on the light and Clara said, “Were you a Boy Scout, Ben?”

“If I were a Boy Scout, I would’ve brought a bigger flashlight.”

She walked alongside him as they searched the grounds in a grid pattern around the house. Fifty yards into the woods she saw a short, circular stone wall; Clara stopped in her tracks.

Ben approached the structure and called back to her, “It’s an old well.” He set the flashlight on the ground. There was just enough ambient light coming through the trees here to clearly see a wrought iron handle bolted to a rotting plank lid. A tentative pull revealed that the wood was falling apart, so instead of lifting it, he slid the circular lid to the side. Clara was standing beside him now and she picked up the flashlight, shining it into the hole. Nothing but dirt and stone and darkness. She dropped a pebble and heard it hit the bottom. The well was completely empty.

Eddie Perkins sat on one side of a table in an interview room across from Detectives Iverson and Tanaka. Carlisle and Kincaid stood on the other side of a pane of one-way glass and watched. The whole case seemed to be coming to a head, but Carlisle still wasn’t sure how it would shake out.

She had received a text message from Clara saying they had arrived at Eddie and Michelle’s house near La Conner and that no one was there waiting for them with a loaded gun. “Cheeky brat,” Carlisle had said. She didn’t doubt that Clara and Ben would break in and search the place. In fact, maybe they already had, and if there was no trace of Maddy, then Eddie might be their only hope.

So far, both Eddie and the detectives had stuck to the tacit agreement they had reached at Eddie’s condo: Eddie had not asked for an attorney and the detectives had not arrested him. Carlisle surmised that besides the public embarrassment of being dragged from his luxurious digs in handcuffs, he didn’t want his wife to find out that he’d been brought in for questioning after the police had found his fingerprints all over the murder victim’s headboard.

Kincaid said, “What do you think?”

“I think he probably did it.”

“Probably, huh? Yeah. We have a lot of evidence, but it’s all circumstantial. He looks pretty anxious in there, though.” He took a gulp of bad coffee. “A confession would come in handy right now.”

“Confessions always come in handy,” said Carlisle simply. “But he seems more preoccupied with whether or not Michelle is going to hear about his affair than whether he’s going to go down for murder.” The moment Iverson had asked Eddie if he was sleeping with Susan, he’d admitted it. Now they had to get him to admit to killing her and telling them where he stashed Maddy, alive or dead, and it wasn’t going to be so easy.

After they had returned to the station with Eddie Perkins, the four detectives had taken a few minutes to talk strategy, agreeing that Tanaka and Iverson would do the questioning while Carlisle and Kincaid observed. The homicide detectives would lead the interview from Susan’s murder back to Maddy’s disappearance, piling facts and conjecture in an attempt to overwhelm their suspect. Iverson would be curious and rational, Tanaka would be accusatory and angry. It could work, they had all agreed, but every one of them wondered what would become of Maddy Gardner if it didn’t.

The interview room was clean and uncomfortable, with a steel table bolted to the floor, three chairs, fluorescent overhead lighting and a hard tiled linoleum floor. Eddie looked a little grey in the bad light and tense in the stiff chair, but so did everyone. The interview room was an intimidating place.

Eddie said, for the tenth time, “You’re not going to tell my wife about this, right?”

Iverson replied calmly, “Not unless it’s relevant to our investigation into the brutal murder of Susan Burns.”

Tanaka took his cue and slid a stack of eight by ten color photos out of a manila folder. “You haven’t forgotten about the murder, have you, Mr. Perkins?” He set a photograph in front of Eddie, who gasped and looked away. “Because we don’t give a shit who you’re fucking on the side, Mr. Perkins” – he set another photo next to the first – “we only care about who you killed.” He set a third picture on the table. The photos depicted a gruesome still life of the crime scene: Susan Burns lying on the floor next to her coffee table in a pool of blood, her body bent at awkward angles. Susan’s face after she’d been turned by the medical examiner, mottled purple with smears of blood on her cheeks, her left temple caved in, eyes clouded with death. The third photo was a shot of the entire tableau, books and pictures strewn around, broken glass, and a horrifying amount of blood, pooled and spattered around Susan’s broken body.

Eddie gagged as though he might throw up. Tanaka and Iverson didn’t even flinch. Plenty of people had vomited in this room and Eddie Perkins wasn’t going to get their sympathy. No trash can would be proffered, no glass of water. They would let him puke all over himself and then tell him he was disgusting and let him sit in it for a while.

But he didn’t throw up. He gagged, coughed, drew a few deep breaths and managed to collect himself.

“That was close,” said Carlisle from the viewing room.

“We want to know,” said Tanaka as if nothing had happened, “why you killed her, Mr. Perkins.”

“I didn’t kill her. I would never hurt a woman.”

“You would
never
hurt a woman?” Tanaka sounded incredulous. “You’re cheating on your wife. Doesn’t that qualify as hurting a woman?”

“I mean
physically
.”

“Oh, I see, you only hurt men physically. You hurt women emotionally.”

“What I meant was—”

“You hurt a guy down in LA County bad enough to put him in the hospital,” interrupted Tanaka.

Now Eddie looked angry. “I was never officially charged with that. Besides, I was a kid.”

“You were twenty-four years old, Eddie. Old enough to show some self-control.”

“I was never charged.”

“You were arrested. Just because you struck a deal with the guy you beat up, it doesn’t make you innocent. It only means that your mommy and daddy had enough money to pay for his nose-job after their crazy kid broke it.” Tanaka had made some calls to the LA Police Department and tracked down one of the arresting officers. The guy was a detective now, in the auto theft division, but he remembered how pissed he’d been when his first assault arrest had amounted to nothing.

Eddie couldn’t hide his surprise. “You have no idea what happened.”

“I do have an idea, Eddie. You got drunk in a bar and beat the shit out of a wannabe actor, then you sobered up in a jail cell and got your parents’ lawyer to cut a deal and pay the guy off. They must’ve really loved you, Eddie, to bail you out like that.”

“Fuck you,” said Eddie. “That’s got nothing to do with anything.”

Eddie had been studiously ignoring the photographs on the table in front of him. Now Iverson tapped one of the photos hard. “Your fingerprints were found on the murder weapon, Mr. Perkins.”

That stopped him short. Eddie’s face went from fury to fear in a nanosecond.

“Here we go,” said Kincaid.

“I didn’t kill her,” stammered Eddie.

“Did you love her?” asked Tanaka.

“Look, we were having fun.”

“Like her? Care about her?”

“Of course I liked her!” Eddie shouted. “Neither of us was looking for a relationship. I’m married, for god’s sake.” He put his head in his hands and clutched at his scalp, leaving red fingerprints, oblivious to the paradox of not wanting a relationship and the fact that he was already married.

“Did you know that Susan had a boyfriend?” asked Iverson.

“Yeah,” he replied miserably. “So what?”

“So what was she doing with you?” asked Tanaka.

“Susan couldn’t get enough.” He added suggestively, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she had someone else on the side.”

“Someone besides you? Besides her boyfriend? Her career? Her social life? You think she had time for another guy?” Tanaka demanded incredulously.

Eddie looked uncertain. “Why don’t you haul the boyfriend in here? Maybe he found out about me and went nuts.”

“
He
has been ruled out,” said Iverson simply, “and
you
have not.”

“I had nothing to do with her murder!”

“No one can account for your whereabouts between one and four PM yesterday afternoon?” Iverson was giving wide berth to the time of death in the preliminary interview to cover his bases.

“No,” said Eddie miserably.

“Not at any time?”

“No.”

“What about credit card receipts, time logged in on your home computer?”

“I was alone. Drinking.”

“So, you have absolutely no alibi during the time of death of Susan Burns. She was your illicit lover. And we found your fingerprints, not only all over her apartment, but on the murder weapon itself. You can see why we’re looking at you, Mr. Perkins, can’t you?” asked Iverson reasonably.

He didn’t respond, just shook his head. “Can I have some water?”

Indeed, Eddie was looking a little shaky. Whether it was from nerves or just days of too much drink, he was starting to sweat. Tanaka said, “I’ll get it,” and left the room.

“What do you think?” he asked Carlisle and Kincaid when he came into the viewing room.

“He looks a little green around the gills,” said Carlisle with appreciation. “Accusations coming from the good cop and the bad cop. It’s a good play,” she said with a nod.

“He’s getting nervous,” said Tanaka, appraising Eddie through the one-way glass.

“A confession would be nice,” said Kincaid again, knowing they didn’t yet have an open and shut case.

“A confession always comes in handy,” Tanaka reiterated Carlisle’s words as if he’d heard them himself. “We should be so lucky.”

“I don’t want him to lawyer up before you ask him about Madeline Gardner.” Carlisle said it like an order.

“Don’t worry, boss,” said Tanaka with equal parts sarcasm and placation, “Iverson’s going to start on that now.”

He left to get a drink for their suspect and as if on cue, Iverson’s voice came through the speaker. “Let’s talk about Maddy Gardner.”

“What about her?” Eddie demanded sharply. “Are you going to try to pin that on me too?”

“Pin what on you, Mr. Perkins?”

“Her disappearance!”

Iverson paused as Tanaka came in with two cups of water and a can of soda. He set everything in front of Eddie and sat back down across from him. After Eddie had gulped down an entire cup of water and wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, Iverson went on. “Do you know anything about Miss Gardner’s disappearance?”

“No, I don’t.” When neither detective responded he went on, “She’s a big girl. Maybe she just took off.” When Tanaka cocked his head questioningly he said, “I know I wouldn’t want to deal with Michelle every day of the week. She probably just needed a break.”