by Tim Ellis
Staring into the Darkness
Tim Ellis
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Kindle Edition
Copyright 2019 Timothy Stephen Ellis
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Kindle Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
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All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Books written by Tim Ellis can be obtained either through the author’s official website: http://timellis.weebly.com/ at Smashwords.com or through online book retailers.
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To Pam, with love as always
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A big thank you to proofreader James Godber
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Chapter One
Tuesday, January 13, 1948
The door of 5F was open a crack.
Her heart began thrashing about.
She knuckled the sleep from her eyes.
Was she dreaming?
A dull light knifed out through the gap.
The dark corridor outside the apartment was empty.
The luminescent hands on her wristwatch showed six minutes to three in the morning.
Maybe he’d left the door open by mistake.
She unzipped her sleeping bag and wriggled out of it.
How long had she been in the corridor now? Eleven days! It felt as though she’d spent her whole life there.
She recalled knocking on his door that first day and expecting him to open it immediately, but he didn’t. Maybe he’d gone out, she thought. So she paced up and down in the corridor and waited, but nobody came.
After knocking until her knuckles were swollen and bruised, a woman with straggly grey hair stuck her head into the corridor three doors along to the left and said, ‘Will you please stop that?’
‘Sorry. You don’t know where he is, do you?’
‘He never comes out of there.’
‘Never?’
‘Not that anybody has seen. Hasn’t done for almost three months now.’
‘Three months! Are you sure he’s still alive?’
‘He’s alive all right. Mister Solomon next door to him on the other side . . .’ She pointed a hooked finger to indicate where she meant. ‘. . . he said he’s heard him talking to himself. And Ruby Lowenstein, who lives in Apartment 5A at the far end of the corridor, says she’s seen a light under the door sometimes.’
‘What about groceries?’
She pulled a face and shrugged. ‘No idea.’
‘Thanks anyway.’
‘You’re welcome.’
She banged on the door again and said, ‘I’m going to stay out here until you open the door.’
Well, she was true to her word. She’d lived in the corridor outside Apartment 5F in the dilapidated high-rise for the whole eleven days. Of course, on that first day, she’d had to go to the local store and buy food and drink, but apart from that she’d been in the corridor the whole time knocking, shouting, pacing, eating and sleeping.
She’d become friends with Mrs Martha Barbarossa in Apartment 5I, who’d first come out and complained about her knocking. After she’d told the old woman why she was there, she’d allowed her to use the bathroom when she needed to.
Other people nodded at her and muttered “hello” as they shuffled past. She was nearly one of them.
Now, after eleven days, he’d finally opened the door.
Pushing herself up, she crept forward.
She’d come up from Kettle River in Minnesota to find him, and she wasn’t going to leave without at least talking to him. If he’d thought she was going to give up, he had no idea who he was dealing with – she never gave up.
That’s what her father had said when she’d been ten years’ old. ‘Give up, let your mother go now.’ But she couldn’t do that, she could never do that. She’d phoned a million specialist doctors, researched brain cancer in the Kettle River library until her fingers had bled from the papercuts and she couldn’t read another medical word with her worn-out eyes, but she’d never given up. Her mother had died, and she’d cried for a whole month, but she’d never once given up hope of keeping her mother alive. Annie was only three years’ old then and didn’t understand what had happened.
Three months ago, her father had died from a broken heart. Or, at least that’s what it seemed like from the outside looking in, because the doctor said there was nothing physically wrong with him. Annie had run away from home two months prior to that, which was the day after her seventeenth birthday on August 2, 1947, and they hadn’t seen or heard from her since. She’d left a note, that her father didn’t find for two days, saying that she didn’t want to live on a farm in the middle of nowhere for the rest of her life. She had hopes, dreams and rainbows to follow. She was going to Hollywood to become an actress just like Lauren Bacall, Ava Gardner and Rita Heyworth.
She didn’t think Annie was her father’s favourite, but she was the youngest and that made all the difference. And even though he never said as much, he took his parenting responsibilities seriously – probably too seriously if the truth be told. For Annie, and maybe for her a little bit as well, he’d been both mother and father. That’s just the way he was. When his wife had died, he’d promised her he’d look after the two girls, and he’d kept that promise . . . Well, up until Annie ran away.
Two months after Annie had left, Billy Madden – the Sherriff of Kettle River – made a special trip out to the farm to tell her father that Annie’s naked body had been found in Echo Park, which as well as being a park was also a suburb of Los Angeles, not far from Hollywood.
It was as if the Sherriff’s words had sucked the life out of her father and he collapsed onto the veranda. Within a week he went from life to death in the blink of an eye.
In the middle of October 1947, she buried her father. Over the next two months she sold the farm to the highest bidder, handed in her notice at the local elementary school in Kettle River where she’d been a history teacher, ruthlessly packed her few belongings into a backpack, and bought a one-way ticket on a Greyhound bus from Minneapolis to Kansas City and then onto Los Angeles in California.
Before she’d left Kettle River, the Sherriff had told her that Annie was victim number seven, but the detective who had been in charge of the investigation from the beginning – Erik Urban – had been on sick leave with exhaustion for the past six months and the detective who had taken over from him – Mike O’Meara – was the man she needed to see in the Homicide Division at Police Headquarters on the South Side of First Street.
So, as soon as she’d stepped off the bus, she made her way by cab to the police headquarters.
After waiting an hour and a half, Detective O’Meara finally showed up.
‘What can I do for you, little lady?’
‘Little lady! Don’t belittle and patronise me, Detective. Didn’t your parents teach you how to address a woman?’
‘You want to talk to me, or no?’
‘My name is Katie Brazil. I’m the sister of the killer’s seventh victim – Annie Brazil. I’d like to know what you’re doing to find my sister’s killer?’
‘We’re doing everything we can is all y
ou need to know, Missy. More than that I can’t tell you.’
‘Won’t tell me? Don’t want to tell me?’
‘Can’t. Is that it?’
‘You don’t know anything, do you?’
‘It was not so nice talking to you, Miss Brazil.’
‘Do you have any suspects?’
‘I can’t tell you anything about the case – you’re a civilian.’
‘Where’s Detective Urban?’
‘Not here.’
‘I’d like his address.’
‘Sorry, no can do.’
‘You’ll be hearing from my attorney.’
‘Looking forward to it,’ he said, and left her standing there seething with anger.
She had a good mind to lodge a formal complaint, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. She’d met people like Detective O’Meara before. Not that many, but enough to know they couldn’t help themselves and would never change.
‘I’d like Detective Urban’s address, please?’ she asked the Desk Sergeant.
‘You know I can’t give you that, Miss.’
She wasn’t going to give up.
Outside, she accosted every police officer who went in or came out of the building. After close to two hours an officer in uniform appeared with a slip of paper and pressed it into her hand. ‘You’d better go before Sergeant Millington sends someone out here to arrest you.’
‘You could have given me the address two hours ago.’
‘From what I’ve heard, it won’t do you any good. Nobody’s seen him in three months. In fact, I don’t even know if he’s still a police officer.’
She hailed a cab and told the driver to go to the address on the paper: George Washington Heights on Arlington Avenue in Old Town Torrance.
After climbing the five flights of stairs to Apartment 5F, because the elevator was out of order, she banged on Detective Erik Urban’s door.
That was eleven days ago.
***
Now, she eased the door open with her fingertips.
The old hinges creaked.
‘Hello?’ she called.
Maybe he hadn’t left the door open for her to walk through at all.
There was a dim light at the end of the hallway.
She turned and shut the door.
Both sides of the hallway were full of cardboard boxes with other stuff stacked on top of them. The wooden floor was bare. There was a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, but it wasn’t switched on. It was like a nocturnal obstacle course.
‘Hello?’
Why wasn’t he answering? He wasn’t deaf, was he? And according to Mrs Barbarossa he was still alive.
‘Hello, Detective Urban?’
She pushed the door of the living room open, but didn’t step inside.
There was a single chair on a threadbare rug in the middle of the room facing the far wall, which was completely full of photographs, sticky notes, reports, fingerprint sheets, location maps, crime scene photographs, newspaper cuttings, witness statements, missing person reports . . . it was a terrible mess. She couldn’t see the wood for the trees, but she did see a pouting photograph of Annie that had been included in her portfolio.
She could see the top of his head in the chair. Two out of four wall lights worked. There were beer cans, rubbish, newspapers, files, part-filled cardboard boxes, maps and scraps of paper scattered all over the bare wooden floor.
On the right was a filthy drape covering a window and there were three more doors leading into dark rooms.
She walked up to the wall and touched Annie’s photograph and then she turned round to look at Detective Erik Urban.
He was emaciated. His skin barely covered his skeleton; his hair and beard were long and unkempt; his clothes were full of holes; he had bare feet with long twisted toenails and his hands trembled like someone with an affliction.
‘Jesus!’ she said, holding her nose. ‘You stink.’
His empty eyes stared at her, tears rolled down his face, but he didn’t speak.
‘When was the last time . . .?’ but she didn’t bother to finish what she’d started. It didn’t matter. It was obvious what had happened and where it would lead if she didn’t do something. Another couple of weeks and she would have found a dead man sitting in the chair.
She left the apartment, let herself into 5I and knocked on Mrs Barbarossa’s bedroom door.
‘Martha?’
‘Is that you, Katie?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry to wake you at this time of the morning, but can I ask you to help me?’
‘With what?’
‘It’s Detective Urban in 5F. He needs a bath and probably some food if he can keep it down.’
She swung her legs out of the bed, put her dressing gown on and followed Katie to Urban’s apartment.
‘Look at this place,’ Mrs Barbarossa mumbled, squeezing through the cardboard boxes in the hallway. When she walked into the living room and saw Erik Urban she said, ‘Oh my word!’ She glanced at Katie. ‘Wait here,’ and hurried out. A couple of minutes later, she returned with Ruby Lowenstein from Apartment 5A.
‘You leave Mister Urban to us, dear,’ Ruby Lowenstein said, helping Erik out of the chair like a broken porcelain mannequin. ‘I used to be a nurse in another life. I’ve seen people this thin before. Martha and I will take care of him while you sort this place out. Phew! It stinks in here.’
‘There’s cleaning things under the sink in my apartment,’ Martha said.
Once they’d gone, she went from room to room and decided that it would probably take a team of cleaners the whole day to clean the apartment.
She checked her Tudor watch, which had been a present from her father on her eighteenth birthday. It was only five o’clock – far too early to call anybody. The place needed decorating as well. And what about some furniture? The fridge and kitchen cupboards were also empty. All of Urban’s unwashed clothes needed disposing of. She thought about moving her stuff into the apartment, but it was cleaner in the corridor, so she decided to stay where she was until the cleaners had been in.
With the money from the farm, together with her savings, she had just shy of four hundred thousand dollars in her accounts. And she was prepared to spend a small portion of it sorting Detective Urban’s apartment out, especially as she’d be staying there to help him find Annie’s killer whether he liked it or not. There were two bedrooms, so she could sleep in one and pay him rent.
While she was waiting for the hands of her watch to reach nine o’clock, she moved the rubbish on the floor to one side of the room and emptied a cardboard box to use. She then began taking everything carefully off the wall and placing it in the box. If they were going to use the wall like a pinboard, then it needed doing properly.
As a historian, she had transferrable skills that she could use to put the wall back together again, but first it needed painting.
When she pulled back the drape and opened the window to let some fresh air in, she found a rope tied to a hook on the windowsill with a bell attached. She peered out of the window and pulled on the rope. The bell tinkled. She smiled. This must have been how Urban was getting copies of the files, she thought. She pulled the rope all the way up. There was a wicker basket tied on the end with an envelope in the bottom.
She opened the envelope. An eighth victim had been found – her name was Lola Coburn, and she was just eighteen years’ old. Katie put the paperwork in the cardboard box.
Once she’d done as much as she could, she walked along the corridor to Ruby Lowenstein’s apartment to find out how things were going.
‘He’s in my spare bed,’ Ruby said. ‘We’ve scrubbed him, force-fed him a little soup, dressed him in a pair of my late Shimon’s night clothes and now we’ll just have to wait and see. It’ll be a few days before he gets out of that bed without assistance.’
Mrs Barbarossa clicked her tongue. ‘What was he trying to do – kill himself?’
‘He wasn’t far off,’ Ruby said. ‘It’s a goo
d job you got yourself into his apartment when you did, dear.’
‘You’ll be keeping him here for a couple of days then?’
‘No alternative. He needs looking after. It’s either here, the hospital or the morgue.’
‘I’ll arrange for his apartment to be cleaned and decorated while you have him locked up here.’
Martha chuckled. ‘Locked up! Yes, I like that. Course, he’s a detective, isn’t he. Well, he ain’t escaping from Ruby’s jail anytime soon, that’s for sure.’
She walked back along the corridor, packed up all of her belongings, moved them into Urban’s apartment to keep them safe and then picked up the phone. Urban obviously hadn’t paid the bill, because there was no dial tone, so she walked along to Martha’s apartment and used her phone.
***
The first day, the cleaners came in. As well as cleaning the whole apartment, they disposed of everything except for seven cardboard boxes she’d stacked in the middle of the living room floor. While they were there, she also organised a plumber, an electrician and a gas engineer to come in, check everything over and fit new parts where necessary. Over the next two days, the decorators painted everything white. She also had a carpenter cover the whole length of the far wall with a pin board. There was no point in sticking things on a newly-painted white wall when she could arrange for a pin board to be put up.
While the decorators were in the apartment wearing masks and slopping paint everywhere, she went shopping. She had a long list and bought rugs; a three-piece suite; drapes; light fittings; a table and chairs; some Chinese wall art that she liked the look of; two three-quarter-sized beds with mattresses and pillows; bed linen; kitchen utensils; pots and pans . . . and arranged for it all to be delivered the following day.
