Missing: The Body of Evidence (9 page)

With
Kyle gone, Nancy settled down to read the newspaper. There was nothing
interesting in the Los Angeles Times, other than a police shootout down on West
Washington Boulevard; that, and an article, which raised a smile, about Madame
Tussaud’s, who were claiming their Angeline Jolie waxwork was better than the
Hollywood Wax Museum’s effort. It sounded to her like a schoolgirl; claiming
her breasts were shaping up better than the girl who stood next to her at the
gym changing room mirror. Nancy flicked through the pages. The weather forecast
predicted unusual high temperatures over the weekend for the time of year.
Need
to pack.
She headed for the bedroom.

Her weekend travel bag was almost out of
reach on a high shelf. She jumped and grabbed for it a few times before finally
making a connection. The bag tumbled out, with a whole host of other
bric-a-brac and her backpack, sending her careening backwards onto the bed. She
sat up, forlorn at the pile before her, before setting about packing for her
weekend trip.

With the chore finished, she returned to
the living room, sat on the sofa and turned on the television. After a minute
channel hopping, she turned off the TV and went to make a coffee. Nancy poured
the boiling water and savoured the aroma as it hit the granules. She grabbed a
milk carton from the refrigerator and tipped it over the cup. Thick blobs of
foul smelling curdled milk oozed out.
Yuk, holy crap.
With the contents
dumped down the sink, and the carton washed out, she headed for the living
room, put on her shoulder holster and jacket. Grabbing her purse, she set off
for the supermarket.

At her car door, she looked up to the
heavens. The moon looked like a waning crescent in a clear sky. Nancy opened
the door and worked her way onto the seat. She opened the glove box and stowed
her purse before belting up and closing the car door. A dust covering on the
windshield obscured her vision and she gave it a blast of water and turned the
wiper control. A twist of the key in the ignition and with an arm over the back
of the seat, she reversed out, stopped and set off to hit the road.

Nancy could hardly remember how she had
ended up on Ronald Reagan Freeway. Her mind had tangled, like strands of
spaghetti thrown on a dish. The trauma of visiting her dad, breaking down in
front of Kyle and trying to work out what Astral Chemical’s connection could
possibly be to the CIA had all fought for her attention, with each strand coming
to a dead end.

The task on hand came to mind. She turned
off the freeway, picked up Porter Ranch Drive and turned right to head toward
Wal-Mart. Only a month back she had been here on business. She had assisted the
other detectives taking statements from witnesses to a pepper-spraying incident
during a Black Friday melee. Nancy parked, took her purse from the glove
compartment, and made her way inside the store.

With the festive season in full swing, she
was surprised at how quiet it was with five minutes to closing. In contrast to
Black Friday, she thought she could have driven an RV down the aisles with
ease.

Nancy tried to shut out the festive goods
on offer. That was the next nightmare she had to face alone and a date on the
calendar she tried to ignore. To add insult to injury, she found herself in the
children’s clothing section. A turn of her heels, and a quick reverse brought
her back on mission. Nancy picked up a carton of milk and mooched around the
aisles looking for a microwave meal. She stopped and picked up a frozen-lasagne,
with exactly the same packaging she had found at the Kelly’s apartment, and
headed for the checkout. She paid for the goods and set off back to her car.

Her hands felt clammy as she gripped the
steering wheel with the engine idling. ‘Case closed,’ Logan had said,
re-enforced by Kyle. She didn’t know if it was out of some sense of
stubbornness, or idiocy, but she couldn’t let go and set off to the Kelly’s
apartment.

***

There were no
lights on in the apartment when she crawled past in her car and parked some way
down the road. She began to wonder if she was unhinged and going through a
crazy stalker stage. Persistence and following your nose was one thing, but it
was beyond credibility in her mind that she could just walk up and knock on the
door at that time of night to ask how his son was, or whatever other lame
excuse she could conjure up. At least the logic of her notion told her she had
some sanity left. Nonetheless, she got out of the car and walked behind the Kelly’s
apartment, to see if there were any lights showing.

The moon was not giving much light around
back, there were no lights on in the bedrooms and she edged toward the window.
There were no curtains at any of the windows, which she thought was odd, and
made her way around to the front of the block. She looked at her watch under a
street lamp; it was ten-thirty four. She recalled the woman at number five left
for her night shift at eleven o’ clock, and maybe she could ask her some
questions about the janitor. Nancy froze. There were no curtains at the front
windows of the janitor’s apartment. She inched toward the window to the living
room window and peered inside. It was empty.

Nancy rushed through the entrance, up the
stairway and knocked on the woman’s door.

‘Who is it?’

‘Detective Roberts, we spoke the other day.’

After the rattle of the door chain and the
sound of bolts being drawn, the door opened.

‘Come in. It’s late. I need to be going to
work soon. How can I help?’

The woman was polite enough, but Nancy
could see she wasn’t pleased.

‘I see the janitor has moved out of his
apartment. Do you know where to and when?’

‘Moved out this afternoon, around two I
reckon, when I went to see if I had any mail.’

‘Did he say where he was going?’

‘Didn’t see him, I thought maybe he was in
prison after your gorillas knocked his door down.’

The woman kept glancing at the time on her
wristwatch, clearly agitated.

‘How do you know he moved then?’

‘Like I said, I was going to check my
mailbox. I couldn’t get past a woman who sat on the stairs with her arms around
that young man. I gave you a description of the boy, if you remember. I had to
ask them to move. Then the moving guys blocked my way, carrying a sofa.’

‘So you didn’t see Kelly.’

‘No, the same guys who painted the
apartment where the fire was turned up after all the furniture had gone, with
cans of paint.’

‘Did you get a look at the moving truck?’

‘No, I just emptied my mail box and went
back upstairs. I only noticed the decorators when I went to the store, but I
didn’t take any notice of a vehicle.’

Nancy sat pondering. The woman stood up,
her facial expression indicated Nancy had outstayed her welcome. The fact that
the decorators were the same people who had painted the professor’s apartment
after the fire, nailed a connection to the CIA. Then she thought, maybe they
hired locals for the job. The woman beckoned Nancy to leave with the nod of her
head toward the door and a glance at her watch. She followed her to the door,
firing a few final questions.

‘What about the woman, can you describe
her?’

‘Late forties; smartly dressed; brown hair
and wearing glasses.’

‘Was her hair tied back, and where her
glasses half rimmed?’

The back of Nancy’s neck tensed as the
woman locked her door and stood back. The woman’s eyes looked upward and
inwards, as if she were searching the dark corridors of her mind, pensively
considering the question and hoping for an answer.

‘No, sorry. I can’t remember.’

Nancy glanced at her watch. It was 10:40
p.m.

Friday morning and
Nancy was lying in bed in a state of paralysis. Unable to move a muscle, her
eyes popped open. She fought to catch her breath and suddenly sat bolt upright.
The duvet slipped off the edge of the bed and onto the floor. Beads of sweat
ran down her brow and stung her eyes, but she felt ice cold. She had just had
the weirdest of nightmares. She was fuzzy headed and disorientated, besides
having a sense of absolute panic. Whimpering hysterically, she drew her knees
to her chest, grasped her ankles and began to rock to-and-fro.

There was no way she could figure out if it
had
been a nightmare. Everything that transpired, had taken place in the
familiar surroundings of her bedroom.

In her nightmare, she had awoken lying
in bed; everything in the room was in place as it should be. She experienced a
great pressure on her chest, struggled to breathe, and was pinned to the bed by
an invisible force. Try as she may, she could not move any part of her body. A
hazy vision of the janitor’s son, David, had appeared at the foot of the bed
staring down at her and laughing. His laugh sounded metallic, like it was
vibrating in an echo chamber. His vision took the form of a naked body made up
of flames. He was holding his arms out in front of him, his palms facing toward
her as if he were controlling an invisible force. One of his hands waved,
beckoning, and the duvet slid down her body leaving her vulnerable. Even with
all her will power, she couldn’t call out, or move a muscle.

Nancy’s mind had screamed for him to
leave her alone. He had withdrawn his hands and covered his face with them as
if protecting himself from the pleas in her mind. A faint memory passed through
her mind of an awareness of tears in her eyes and the futility of her managing
to move the small finger on her left hand. And then the vision of David faded.
Finally, Nancy managed to break free of the force that pinned her down.

That’s when she sat up, gasping for breath.
What she was still finding hard to figure out was if she really had been unable
to move and breathe, and if the vision had been the result of a lack of oxygen
in her brain causing her to hallucinate.

Whatever had happened, she just wanted to
get the hell out of the bedroom. Nancy swung her legs over the side of the bed
and tried to stand, but her legs buckled under her and she landed sprawled on
the floor.
What the hell’s happening?
Her head pounded as if she were
taking a beating. Her fingers clawed at the mattress and she hauled herself
onto her feet. She took a moment to take short breaths, which seemed to work
and she started to feel normality return. Nancy stumbled to the living room,
using the walls for support where she could and made a final effort to get to
her computer desk. Her elbows rested on the desk and she stretched out her
fingers. The hands and fingers trembled, as if a force seven on the Richter
scale was shaking her. Gradually, she stopped shaking and the pounding in her
head settled down. Her backside managed to find the chair and she sank down
onto the cushion. Nancy picked up the mug of cold coffee she’d left out from
the night before and guzzled it down in one gulp, hoping a shot of caffeine
would help.

Logic started to kick in as she began to
think straight and she wondered if she had just experienced an asthma attack in
her sleep. She hadn’t had hay fever since she was a child, but the experience
came a close second to what she could recollect.
Damned asthma at my age.

Nancy dialled her doctor’s number and the
answering machine picked up the call. A garbled message spewed out of her
mouth. She wished she could cancel the message and start again, as she tried to
explain why she thought she needed an urgent appointment. The call ended, with
her leaving her name and cell phone number and she hung up the phone.

She sat back, tried to relax and took a
moment. Maybe, she thought, the caffeine had done the trick. Her hands were no
longer shaking, her head was clear and she felt able to breathe normally.
Fingers gripped the arms of her chair for support and she stood. The strength
in her legs had returned and she moved about her apartment, opening all the
windows, finishing in the bathroom, where she turned on the shower.

Nancy slipped off her nightdress, donned a
bathing cap and stepped into the shower. The spray of warm water hitting her
face had never felt so good. She took hold of the shower gel and started to
wash herself. Thoughts of what had happened wouldn’t leave her mind and she began
to dwell on the loneliness she had felt. The fear was that if she hadn’t broken
free there was no one there to save her. She wondered if that was maybe what
the dream was about... her being alone.

Soap caught in her eye and as she reached
out for the bath towel, she slipped on the tiles, her arms and hands flailing
to stop her falling. It was too late and she hit the floor of the shower tray,
banging the side of her head in the process. Her skin started to sting as hot
water hit her body. She reached out to try to grab the faucet, but she couldn’t
locate it. Boiling hot water spray scalded her body. Her other hand felt the
towel and she pulled it over her and clawed with her hands as she searched to
open the shower door. The door slid open; she dove and finished spread-eagled
on the bathroom floor. She desperately rubbed her eyes with the towel. When she
finally managed to open her eyes, the bathroom was full of steam. Nancy flushed
the toilet, paused and then tested the shower water. Flushing the toilet had
done the trick, the water had cooled and she turned off the shower.
Thank
you, Kyle.
If it wasn’t for him flushing the toilet the last time she took
a shower while he was here, she wouldn’t have known what to do in that
situation.

She couldn’t be certain if she had caught
the faucet with her hand, or if it was faulty. Nancy now knew it was going to
be one of those days. The best thing she thought she could do at that moment
was to get the hell out of there, put her bags in the trunk, get to work and to
keep her head down until it was time to go with Kyle to the cabin. She dressed,
picked up her baggage for the weekend trip and headed for her car.

The journey to the office was slow as she
hit heavy traffic. When she finally arrived in the parking lot at the station,
her cell phone rang and she took the call from her doctor’s receptionist.

‘Can you make it for twelve-thirty?’ she
asked.

‘Sure, it’s as good a time as any.’

Nancy hung-up and sat a while.
Damn, I
feel like a fraud now. Here’s hoping he doesn’t say I shouldn’t go on the
weekend vacation.