Level Five (21 page)

She knew somewhere behind the mounds of paper there had to be windows, but the multiple stacks were so high, so precariously balanced that she feared trying to move anything in any way. It might bring it all tumbling down and she’d be crushed.

But at the moment her fear wasn’t focused on being smashed to death by old papers, rather it was on who was behind door number two.

In her terrified mind she fantasized that perhaps it was a wicked gnome or a troll with filthy hair and long dirty fingernails. He’d reeked like this place and he’d sport madness in his eyes. 

Edie had never realized that fear was not just an emotion that quivered her heart. It also shot a tangy metallic taste into her mouth, and made her blood cold as it flowed through her veins.

Was this how Colette had felt when she’d first awakened in the room that would be her prison for three long years?  Edie frowned, unable to remember anything about her conversation with Colette.  All she could focus on was the fear inside her and the door that she sensed would be opening at any moment to allow the monster to enter.

As if on cue she heard the sound of a key being pushed into a lock. The doorknob began to twist and her stomach clenched in dreadful anticipation.

The door opened and he walked in.
For a moment confusion swept through Edie.  He wasn’t a gnome or a troll, rather he was a handsome man who looked hauntingly familiar.

“Hello, Edie.”

His voice was low and pleasant. The fact that he knew her name shot a new terror through her.  She didn’t answer him, her throat was so tightly closed she wasn’t sure she could squeak out any sound.

He smiled.  “You don’t remember me?”

She frowned and slowly shook her head.

“I bought your book at your signing at Barnes and Noble.”

Now she remembered. He’d been there at the signing.  She’d autographed a book for him.  Was this some sort of obsession thing?  Shades of Stephen King’s Misery came to mind.  Was he her number one fan?  “I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name,” she replied, her voice scratchy and deeper than usual from all the screaming she had done.

“No offense taken.  There were a lot of people there that day.  My name is Anthony.”  He reached outside of the doorway and pulled a folding chair into the room.  He opened it a few feet from her and sat.

Surreal.  Everything was surreal to Edie.  He smiled at her as if she was a special guest.  The best she could hope for was that he had a manuscript he wanted her to read, one that had been rejected by all the big New York publishers and he was desperate to find a way to get it published.

The best case scenario was that she could explain to him the process of self-pubbing the book, tell him about the money that could be made from such a process. By that time he’d think of her as his mentor and friend and he’d let her go.

              She wanted that, she wanted to go back to her house where it didn’t stink, where she wasn’t surrounded by paper towers.  She wanted Jake to love her and Rufus to lavish her with kisses.  At the thought of Rufus, a shaft of pain stabbed through her.

             
Reality was she had no idea what this man wanted from her.  Jake had distanced himself from her and Rufus was probably dead. The only person who would really miss her was her alcoholic father. And he wouldn’t miss her, he’d only miss the money she spent to keep him off the streets.

             
Tears blurred her vision as she looked at Anthony.  “Why am I here?” she asked, afraid of the answer and yet needing to know.  “And where is here?

             
“My home.  It really doesn’t matter that you know the exact location.  What’s important is that you know we’re a long way from neighbors and you can scream all day long and nobody is around to hear you.”

             
“Why am I here?” She asked again although she didn’t want to know the answer, yet she had to ask the question.

             
His green eyes took on a dreamy quality as he gazed at her.  “You look just like her,” he said softly.

             
Instantly Edie’s mind went to the crime against Colette.  Did this man take her because she looked like his ex-wife or a lover who had betrayed him?  Her stomach clenched tight again.  “I look like who?” Her voice was whisper soft.

             
“Her…my mother.”  His voice held reverence.

             
“You love her.”  Edie felt as if she were walking on egg shells, afraid that one false move would crack a shell and something terrible would happen.

             
“Loved…I loved her.  She’s dead now.”

             
“I’m sorry.  I’m sure she loved you very much.”

             
The brutal slap whipped her head to the side.  She bit her tongue and her mouth filled with the taste of her coppery blood. There had been no warning.  She turned her head to look up at him and saw the rage that had replaced the dreaminess in his eyes.

             
“You didn’t love me.  You didn’t even see me.”  Veins popped in his neck as his face turned red. “All you saw was your stuff, the treasures you dragged home day after day.”  As his hands fisted into balls at his side Edie scooted backward, attempting to escape him.

             
Danger!  Danger!  Her mind screamed the words as he advanced toward her. “You stupid, filthy hoarding whore.”  He slapped her again and she cried out, her ear ringing as she brought her hands up to cover her face from any further assault.

             
Nothing happened.

             
She could hear the sound of his breathing above her own, felt his presence hovering over her.  She squeezed her eyes closed. Her brain scrambled to make sense of the senseless, but her brain had stopped working with the first unexpected slap.

             
When several minutes had passed, she lowered her hands and saw that he was once again seated on the folding chair, his features composed and his hands resting comfortably in his lap.

             
If her face didn’t ache with the force of the blows, if the taste of blood didn’t linger in her mouth, she could almost believe he hadn’t left the chair at all.

             
“You asked me why you were here,” he said, as if their conversation hadn’t been interrupted.  He leaned forward slightly, his eyes blazing with a fevered heat.  “I think you’re the one.”

             
She said nothing, afraid to speak, unsure of what might set him off again.

             
“I was wrong about the others,” he continued.  “They were only pale imitations of her…of you.  I should have known when I took them that they wouldn’t do.”  He shrugged his shoulders as if to dismiss thoughts of the ones who had come before her.

             
“You will be my salvation, Edie.  You will take away my pain, my rage.  I’ll become whole because of you.”  He flexed his hands and stood and Edie cowered once again, fearing another blow.

             
Instead he folded up the chair and tucked it under his arm.  “I think we’ve done enough for tonight.  Tomorrow when I get home from work the real process will begin.” 

He walked to the door and set the chair outside, then grabbed something and returned to the room.  He tossed her a pre-packaged sandwich that had obviously been bought at a convenience store.  “Sleep well, Edie.  I’ll be back tomorrow.”

He left the room and closed the door behind him.  She heard the sound of a lock falling into place and then nothing.  She didn’t know how long she remained unmoving, trying to process what had just happened, trying to swallow the fear of what might come next.

In the brief encounter she’d just had with her captive she’d learned several important things.  He was definitely unpredictable and dangerous.

“Triggers.”  It was Colette’s voice that spoke in the recesses of Edie’s brain.  Edie had learned an important trigger just now…his mother. 

She had a feeling there would be others.  She raised a hand to her cheekbone. The pain still radiated up and into the side of her skull.

The information that frightened her the most was learning that there had been others before her.  Where were those women now?  She shoved away the vision of the tooth she had found. She didn’t want to know what had happened to the others. She feared the answer would start her screaming and once she started she wouldn’t be able to stop.   

                    
Chapter 22

              Dawn brought dark clouds that obscured the ascending sun and a weariness held back only by the terror that simmered inside of Jake.

             
The Detectives who had initially shown up to investigate had finally left with no real promise that they would return.  There was no crime scene, no indication of foul play inside the house, no evidence that anything had happened that was out of the ordinary.

             
Rufus’s poisoning couldn’t be directly tied to Edie’s disappearance. With the amount of time that had passed since Edie’s disappearance, they couldn’t write off the possibility that she’d simply left, especially when Jake had told them about the phone call the two had shared before she’d disappeared.

             
Teddy had finally left at one in the morning, promising to return sometime this morning, hoping that by that time Edie would be home and contrite about all the fuss she’d caused.

             
Jake had spent the remainder of the night tearing apart the house, looking for clues that might give him Edie’s location. As he’d searched through drawers, checked the tops of closets and rifled through her desk, he’d felt like a burglar invading a homeowner’s privacy, violating the privacy Edie clung to so tightly.

             
In all the time he’d spent here, she’d allowed him only to hang his shirts and pants in her closet and full access to the kitchen.  He’d recognized instinctively that everyplace else was off limits.  But, he’d spent the wee hours of the night methodically searching everywhere, including the spare bedroom where she stored boxes of her books and copies of reviews and articles that had been written about her.

             
The search was remarkable only in the things he didn’t find.  No family photos, no sentimental knick-knacks, nothing to mark the space as belonging to Edie Carpenter, the woman.

             
In his line of work, if he had come upon a suspect’s home that contained so few personal things, he would have made the assumption that the place was a front and that there was another place where the suspect surrounded himself with his personal treasures, with pieces of his past.

             
There was nothing to indicate that Edie had a past in this house.  The only part of her that had a place here was as Edie Carpenter, crime writer.  So where were her other pieces?

             
He now sat at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee, unsure what his next move should be.  His eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep, but he couldn’t sleep, not until he found her.

             
He was still seated at the table when Teddy arrived just after seven.  “I can tell by looking at you that you haven’t slept,” he said as he walked over to the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee.  “By the way, officially you’re on personal leave and I’m on the case.”

             
Jake quirked an eyebrow in surprise.  “I’m on the case, too.”

             
Teddy sank down in the chair across from him.  “Not according to brass.  Of course they can’t really stop what you do in your spare time, like hanging around with me.”

             
Jake took a sip of his coffee.  Of course they wouldn’t let him work the case. He was too personally involved, too emotionally invested.  By taking leave, Jake would be officially untied to the investigation but through Teddy, he wouldn’t be left out of the loop.

             
“Have you eaten anything?” Teddy asked.

             
Jake shook his head.  “I’m not hungry.”

             
“You know better than that,” Teddy chided.  “You’ve got to eat.  You need to catch some snooze time.  You won’t be worth anything in another twenty-four hours if you don’t take care of yourself now.”

             
Jake eyed his partner bleakly.  “Another twenty-four hours?  We’ve got to find her before then but I don’t know where to look.  I can’t imagine what’s happened to her?”  Thick emotion crawled up the back of his throat and he consciously swallowed it down.