With Vics You Get Eggroll (A Mad for Mod Mystery Book 3) (16 page)

“It’s okay, I guess. I mostly stay here. I don’t like going out by myself.”

“That’s understandable.”

“I just—I can’t stop thinking about Barbie. I was with her the night she was taken.”

“Effie, Barbie went to her boyfriend’s house just like she planned. Whatever happened to her didn’t happen at the Landing.”

“I know, just like I know Lt. Allen couldn’t have been the person who approached me.” She pulled her knees up to her chest. “If her sister hadn’t cared enough to call her boyfriend, nobody would know she was missing.” She wiped tears from her eyes.

I changed the subject. “Did you tell Chad we were coming over? I’d think he’d like knowing you had a visitor.”

“He knows how much I love Rocky. I even asked him if we could get our own dog.” Rocky hopped onto the leather sofa and laid his paws across her thigh. She stroked his fur away from his face, showing off his round marble-like eyes. “He probably wouldn’t want a Shih Tzu, even if I could convince him. He’d probably want a big dog, like a pit bull.”

“Maybe you two should check out the next pet adoption day at White Rock Dog Rescue? All kinds of dogs need adoption, and I couldn’t think of a person who would make a better pet owner than you.”

She shrugged and slumped down on the sofa. Her shoulders sagged. “Chad thinks we’re not ready for a dog. He says we have to make our own life first before bringing any crutches into it.” She bent down and kissed Rocky on top of his head. “You’re not a crutch, are you? No. You’re Madison’s perfect little guy, right? Who needs a real man when she has you?”

Ouch. After being faced with my emotional limitations with Hudson that morning, her words caught me off guard. My breath caught in my throat and my face felt warm. “Effie, can I use your restroom?” I asked.

“Sure. Down the hallway, second door on the left. If you get to Chad’s office you went too far.”

I left the room and hurried down the hall with Effie’s words in my ear. I’d thought as much already, but hearing it from someone else was worse. Was I ignoring what Hudson offered me—an invitation to experience life with another person—because I’d convinced myself that Rocky was all I needed?

I splashed cool water on my face and wrists and looked around for something to use to dry off. Below the sink was a small cabinet, and draped over one of the doors was a pair of gray hand towels. I freed one and blotted my face and hands. When I was finished, I opened the cabinet door wide enough to drape the towel over the top. A bundle in a similar dark gray towel shifted inside and landed by the opening. I bent down to push it back in, but froze when I saw what had been wrapped inside.

It was a carpet knife. The curved metal blade matched the description of the one Effie had seen in the abductor’s hand outside of the Landing. The initials “EL” were carved into the handle.

TWENTY-FOUR

The handle of the knife was wrapped in the same type of dark gray towel that I’d used on my face. It appeared to have been propped along the inside left wall of the cabinet and knocked loose when I opened the doors.

My brain spun in circles, trying to understand what this meant. What was Lyndy’s carpet knife doing in Chad’s apartment? Why had it been hidden under the sink in his bathroom?

I stooped down and opened both doors to the cabinet. To the right was a black plastic bin filled with bars of soap and a package of razors. A dopp kit sat against the back. Stacks of toilet paper were lined up in the middle. And the bundle with the knife was in front of it all.

I had to call the police and let them know what I’d found, but I needed a landline. I needed to convey the address for where we were, which would show up on the caller ID.

If I repositioned the knife so I could close the cabinet doors, my fingerprints might be left on it—or worse, Chad’s fingerprints might be destroyed. But the knife was in Chad’s house. Of course his fingerprints would be on it—it would almost be more suspicious if they weren’t.

I was caught in a tug of war of indecision. Finally, I pushed the knife back into the cabinet with the toe of my shoe, closed the doors as best as I could, and snuck out into the hallway.

Effie had said that Chad’s office was farther down the hall. He had to have a phone in there. I snuck from the bathroom to the office. A black laminate built-in desk filled two-thirds of the room. Three computer monitors and a handful of keyboards were scattered across the surface. I spotted the phone, a black cordless model, resting on the charger, next to a scanner/printer. Wasting no more time, I grabbed it from the base and called 911.

“Please state your emergency,” said a female voice.

“This is Madison Night. I have information regarding the abductions that have been taking place in the Lakewood area. Can you connect me to Sgt. Osmond at the Lakewood Police Department?”

“What is your emergency?” she asked again.

“I’m in an apartment that I think might belong to the Lakewood Abductor. Luxury Uptown Lofts, apartment two-thirty-seven on the second floor.”

I heard the sound of keys clicking. “Please—I need to speak to someone from the police force.”

“Are you in need of medical assistance?” she asked.

“No—not yet, anyway. I’m here with a college girl named Effie Jones. She was one of the targets who got away.”

“Help is on the way,” she said. “Please stay on the line.”

Out front, I heard a door slam. “Where’d that thing come from?” a male voice asked. It was Chad.

“I have to go,” I said into the phone, and set it back on the cradle. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, but letting Chad discover me making phone calls to the police from his office wasn’t something I thought would have a good ending. I couldn’t let him know I’d made that call. I couldn’t let him do anything with the knife. But I also couldn’t leave him alone with Effie and Rocky.

I slipped out of the office and back to the bathroom. I double-checked that the knife was where I’d found it, and closed the cabinet doors. I washed my hands and dried them a second time, and then returned to the living room. Chad stood next to the sofa. The picture of nineties grunge, he wore a faded Nirvana T-shirt over a cream long sleeved thermal and jeans. He aimed a remote at the TV and flipped through a few screens until he landed on ESPN.

“Chad, hi. I didn’t hear you,” I said. He glanced at me and looked back at the screen. “I hope you don’t mind that I brought Rocky for a visit. I thought it would be nice for Effie since she’s been through such a scare.”

“She needs to stop acting like she’s a victim. Nothing happened to her. Best thing is to move on and let life get back to normal.”

That was an odd response, coming from someone who claimed to care about her. Effie sat on the sofa with her knees pulled up to her chest. She kept her eyes focused on the coffee table in front of her, like she couldn’t hear that we were talking about her while she was in the room.

I forced a smile into my voice. “I’m sure Effie wants nothing more than for life to get back to normal, but speaking as someone who’s had a couple of shakeups myself, I know it takes more than a few days to get over the scare of being attacked.”

“Effie wasn’t attacked. Nobody laid a finger on her. Paying her extra attention only makes her feel like she’s a victim, and she wasn’t.”

In the distance, I heard the sound of sirens. I knew they were headed this way. What I didn’t know was how long it would take for them to get past the buzzer in the lobby and up to the second floor to us. And what Chad was capable of doing in that same amount of time.

“Chad, I know you want me to snap out of it, but it didn’t happen to you,” Effie said. “You don’t know what it was like. Women are getting killed by this guy and it could have been me. And you don’t care!”

Effie had stood up to face Chad. Tears flowed down her red face. I had no right to watch their fight be played out in front of me, but there was no place for me to go.

Rocky sensed that Chad was threatening Effie, and his playful barks turned into bared teeth and a low growl. He jumped down to the floor and faced Chad, barking at him as if to say “Leave my friend alone.” Chad kicked his foot out in Rocky’s direction. I jumped in front of his foot just in time to absorb the blow that was intended for my dog. I dropped to the ground and pressed my hands against my calf where he’d kicked me.

“Madison!” Effie screamed.

Chad looked up at her and then down at me. He grabbed a blue nylon jacket from the back of a chair and shook his head. “I’m out of here,” he said. He whipped the front door open and found himself facing two uniformed officers.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Back inside,” one of the men said. They entered the apartment. Behind them was Sgt. Osmond from Jumbo’s parking lot the night before, and behind him was Chief Washington himself.

“Ms. Night, you made the call?” Osmond asked.

I nodded.

“What call? What’s this about?” Chad asked.

“Is everybody okay? Does anybody need medical help?” Osmond asked.

“No,” I said.

The chief looked at my leg, where a purplish-red bruise was forming on my shin. He looked at Effie for the first time since he’d entered. She was back on the sofa, hugging a thick black pillow close to her chest. Mascara ran down her cheeks and smudged around her eyes, giving her the appearance of having been battered.

“Did he do that to you?” one of the officers in uniform asked.

She swiped the back of her hand over her eyes and distorted the smudge of makeup even more. She sniffled twice, but didn’t answer the officers.

Chief Washington turned to one of the officers. “Wait here with him while I talk to Ms. Night.”

He looked at me and I pointed down the hallway. Once we were clear of the others I turned to him. “Do you usually respond to 911 calls?”

“We’ve got every available man out on the streets looking for this wacko. Pressure from the city is almost unbearable. This isn’t the time for me to pull rank and prop my feet up on my desk.”

I nodded my understanding. We reached the bathroom. He hesitated in the hallway when I went inside. “I’m not using the facilities. I need to show you something.”

He stepped inside and I opened the cabinet door. I stood up and pointed at it. “I wasn’t going through his things. I used the towel to dry my hands and face and the door opened up. It must have been propped along the side and it fell. The towel opened up and I saw the blade.”

The chief dropped to a squat and lifted the edge of the towel until he exposed the curved blade wrapped inside. He whistled. From a pocket of his suit jacket, he pulled two folded up plastic bags. He held one open at the edge of the cabinet and used the razor to bump the knife forward until it tipped and fell in. He sealed the bag by sliding a small red clasp along the top edge, and then put the towel into the second bag. He set both bags on the sink and then stood up. Both of his knees snapped when he straightened.

“I don’t like getting old,” he said. “The body likes to remind me that I’m not twenty-five anymore.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” I said.

“I hear you got Lt. Allen swimming. That’s good. He needs an outlet like that.”

“Chief, what do you make of this knife being here in this apartment?”

“I don’t know what to make of it. What are you doing here, anyway?”

“The young woman out front, Effie Jones, she used to live in my apartment building. She’s the one who was approached out front of the Landing. She was pretty shaken up, so I called an officer she knew to come and take her statement.”

His face clouded. “I thought she came in to make her statement?”

“She did, the next day. That night she talked to Nasty. Nast. Donna Nast. Officer Donna Nast.”

An unexpected grin replaced the cloud. “Donna Nast is no longer on the force.”

“I know. I didn’t know it that night, but I know it now.”

“That still doesn’t tell me what you’re doing here.”

“My building is empty right now. It was down to Effie and myself. Her boyfriend Chad suggested she stay with him instead of remaining in the building. They both graduate college this year, and I get the feeling their on again off again relationship was in the on position.”

“So you came over for a social call and found a curved knife that matched the description of a weapon that she gave. You know there’s a chance she’s seen this before. There’s a chance her whole statement was intended to punish her boyfriend for a fight. I have two college-aged daughters. They don’t play fair.”

“Effie wouldn’t do that.”

The chief stepped out into the hallway. “Where’d you call us from?”

“There’s a room with computers and a phone down the hall.”

“Show me.”

I left the bathroom and retraced my steps until I was back in the computer room. “The phone is on the charger by the scanner,” I said. I walked behind the desk and pointed to the phone.

Chief Washington followed me behind the desk and took in the computer setup from left to right. The screens were dark, but I could hear the sound of computer fans whirring from underneath the desk. The chief reached out and tapped the space bar on the main computer and the large monitor in the center of the desk flickered to life. The screen was divided into a nine box grid that appeared to be running individual movies in each box, like the picture in picture feature on a TV, only covering the entire screen. I leaned forward to make sense of it, and then gasped when I recognized three of the video feeds: Chad’s living room, the Landing parking lot, and Effie’s unit in my apartment building.

In addition to a number of interiors that I didn’t recognize, I understood one thing. Chad Keith had been monitoring Effie’s every move.