“I-I think so,” she said.
“What time did you find the foot, Miss Wilson?”
She shuddered, reliving that horrible moment when she first realized there was no body behind the door. “About an hour and a half ago. I - I was just getting home, a little before eleven.”
“And you had been ...?”
“At work. The restaurant until just after four, then down at the television station.”
“You work at the station?”
“No. We were filming a segment for Ashli’s Kitchen.”
The young officer’s head snapped up, and a smile spread across his face. “That’s where I know you from! You’re her, aren’t you? The girl on the busses. The one who cooks.”
Ashli sighed, snuggling closer into the blanket. “Yes, that’s me.”
“I hear your show alone has pulled the television station from the edge of bankruptcy.”
“I don’t know about that,” she protested with modesty.
“I do! I heard your ratings are through the roof! There’s –”
Lange cleared his throat and glared at the young Detective. “You were asking about a timeline?”
“Yes.” It took a moment for the man to blink the stars from his eyes and refocus on the notepad in his hand. “So you say you arrived just before eleven?”
“Yes. I can tell you an exact time if I look at my phone. I was just hanging up when I saw her ... it....”
“And what did you do?”
“I saw ... I saw Jasmine’s foot,” her voice wavered as she spoke her neighbor’s name, “in the open doorway. I thought maybe she had fallen, or was hurt, so I called her name and went to - went to see if something was wrong.” She took a deep gulp of air. “When I saw ... when I saw there was only ... a foot ... I started screaming. I-I backed away and I almost fell over the railing. I immediately called Mr. Sterling, then 911.”
“And why did you call Mr. Sterling,” the Detective glanced up at Lange with a slight frown on his face, “before you called 911?”
Ashli leaned into the strength of Lange’s arm without being too obvious. “Instinct,” she said.
“You two are ... involved?” Something about the question, or perhaps the look in the young officer’s eye, led Lange to believe the inquiry was not entirely for professional reasons. Damn, did she have this effect on every man she met?
“Miss Wilson hired me to look into some problems she is having with a stalker,” Lange informed him stiffly.
“A stalker? That sounds like a matter for the police.”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” Ashli said coolly, “but apparently your superiors thought differently. I reported it to the police, but no one took me seriously, so I hired a private detective to find the person responsible.”
“And have you?” Detective Sullivan asked pointedly, glaring at Lange.
“Not yet.” His confident tone suggested it was only a matter of time.
“I’d like to talk to you more about this stalker, Miss Wilson, but at the moment I need to discuss tonight’s events. Did you see anyone else when you came home this evening?”
“Just Mr. Parnell. He’s the building supervisor. The poor thing, he was terribly upset this evening. I wonder ... I think he might have been the first to find Jasmine.”
“And why do you think that?”
“He was extremely disoriented. I’ve never seen him so badly confused, or so upset. I actually called his nurse and asked her to come over and settle him down. That’s who I was speaking to when I saw ... the foot.” Each time she said the words, her voice faltered. “Poor Mr. Parnell. I can only imagine what all the lights and sirens and people have done to him.”
“I spoke to the nurse downstairs. She said he was so upset that she had to sedate him.”
“That’s why I wonder if he had already found ... the foot ... and that was why he was so rattled.”
“We’ll have to wait until morning to speak with him. But you saw no one else?”
“Not until my other neighbors ran out to see why I was screaming.” Ashli looked at the policeman directly. “Detective, is Jasmine... dead?”
“Nothing has been confirmed at this time, Miss Wilson. We haven’t found her body, but I would say the odds are not in her favor,” he told her gravely.
“Was she ... did it happen here?”
“There’s no evidence to support that, no large quantities of blood or signs of a struggle. More than likely the crime occurred somewhere else, then the foot was dumped here.”
“But why? Why would someone deliberately leave that sort of evidence behind?”
Even before the Detective answered, Lange slid his arm around her waist. He pulled her firmly against his solid form and was holding her tightly in support when Detective Sullivan replied. “That’s a very good question, Miss Wilson. Maybe now’s a good time for you to tell me more about this stalker of yours.”
***
The police were finally gone. In the absence of red and blue strobe lights, darkness was even blacker. Quiet settled into the old mansion like a lethal injection.
“Are you sure there’s no one who can come and stay with you?” Lange asked Ashli once again.
“I’ll be fine,” she lied. “It’s almost three in the morning. I’m not about to call someone and ask them to come over and stay in a house where a murder possibly took place.”
“She was not killed in her apartment,” Lange said firmly, to dispel all doubts. “The foot wasn’t even severed there. Someone brought the foot back to her apartment to be found.” He hesitated for only a moment before making a decision. “Gather up a few things. You’re coming with me.”
“Where to?” He could hear the skepticism in her voice.
“My apartment. At least we can try to salvage what’s left of the night.”
She immediately stiffened. “I don’t think that’s a good -”
He cut her off before she could protest further. “The next couple of days are not going to be pleasant around here. There will be policemen, detectives, investigators, not to mention the media and all the nosey neighbors from a seven block radius. Unless you want to deal with the reporters sticking a camera in your face every time you come in or out of the house, you might as well resign yourself to staying somewhere else for the next few days.”
“Then I’ll go to a hotel,” Ashli said stubbornly.
Lange sighed, clearly exasperated. “And then I’ll have to go to the hotel, to keep an eye on you. It will be a lot easier if you just stay at my apartment. At least for tonight.”
“Fine. But you better not bill me for it, since I’m actually saving you the trouble of staking out the hotel.” She gave a saucy toss of her head before she whirled around and headed upstairs to pack a bag.
While he waited, Lange sank onto the couch in exhaustion. He had hardly slept a wink the night before, and tonight didn’t promise to be much better. And if he had to share an apartment with her, his traitorous body would be way too stimulated to even consider sleep for the next several nights.
Not that his mind would shut down long enough for sleep. Right now, a thousand thoughts rushed through his brain, demanding he consider each possibility it threw out. But no matter what lead he considered, no matter what scenario he played out in his head, there was one thought that kept circling in his mind, one thought that made him feel physically sick at his stomach: it could have been Ashli tonight.
Lange rubbed a weary hand over his face, thankful she wasn’t there to see how badly his hand trembled.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Lange lived in a trendy neighborhood in a revitalized part of downtown. Once a warehouse, the old brick and glass structure was now home to twenty or so residential lofts. A service elevator took them up to the fifth and top floor, where Lange led Ashli to a corner apartment.
“It’s not much,” he said by way of apology as he unlocked the door, “but you’ll have privacy from the media.”
To say the
loft apartment was sparsely decorated was a gross understatement. It wasn’t even fashionably minimalist; it was practically empty.
What could have been a spacious but intriguing room was simply a vacant backdrop for the few pieces of furniture deposited there. A sleek black leather couch and chair, both of obvious quality, were the only seating choices. Their companions, an end table and a low bench serving as a coffee table, were old wooden pieces with an industrial feel. A massive chest with multiple drawers, its wooden surface scarred and dinged and marked with age, held an oversized flat screen television, both of which were dwarfed against an impressive brick wall. The saving grace of the sparse room was the floor to ceiling windows which created the outer walls of the corner apartment and revealed a spectacular view of the glittering city beyond. Other than the view, there were no pieces of artwork, no offer of color, no personal effects.
Ashli looked at her host questioningly. “Have you lived here long?”
Lange shrugged, tossing his keys onto the one other piece of furniture in the massive room. Tucked along the wall beside the door, the narrow table was practically lost in the big space. The only thing seeming to anchor it down was a wooden bowl where his keys now rested. “Three years, more or less. Ever since I came to Richmond.”
He avoided looking her in the eyes. Until right now, the sparseness of his home had never bothered him. It was just a place to eat and sleep, after all. It wasn’t like he ever had company. The few guy friends to come over - and they were very few and far between - had never seemed to notice anything but the more-than-ample television screen. And with the exception of a couple of one night stands when he first came to town, Ashli was the first female to ever step through his door; he had never even allowed Diane to visit. He didn’t bother to ponder the significance of that fact as he carried Ashli’s meager luggage across the room, silently bidding her to follow.
The living room flowed into the kitchen, which was impressive with its gleaming stainless steel appliances, dark mahogany lower cabinets, and open glass shelf uppers, suspended on metal pipes. The few dishes on display were a snappy shade of bright blue, and were the lone bit of color in the room. A round dining table and four chairs occupied a mere fraction of the space available in the large window-wrapped kitchen.
The right side of the kitchen was banked with a wall, which was bisected by a short hallway. Lange pushed open the door on the left, revealing his bedroom. Compared to the other rooms in his apartment, this one was packed; it sported a king sized bed, nightstand, a chest of drawers, a smaller chest at the foot of the bed, and an upholstered chair. The bed covers were unmade and rumpled, piled up in a heap of blue and green tartan plaid. Like in the other rooms, electronic shades covered the wall of windows, but in here was the added layer of dark blue drapes.
“You can put your things in here,” Lange said, swinging her suitcase onto the foot of the bed.
“But... this is your room. Where will you sleep?”
When she raised big blue eyes to his, all sorts of wicked thoughts flooded through his mind, but none of them involved sleeping.
“There’s a guest room across the hall. We’ll have to share the bathroom, though.”
“No, I wouldn’t dream of taking your bed. I’ll take the guest bed.”
“I’ll sleep in the guest room,” he insisted. He didn’t bother telling her the guest room was actually an office. At least it had the added comfort of a couch, buried somewhere beneath all the boxes. He opened a drawer and took out a few articles of clothing, which he carried with him to the door. “Towels are in the bathroom cabinet. Bathroom is at the end of the hall.”
“Really, Lange, I don’t want to take your bed....” she protested.
“I insist. End of discussion.”
He left without another word, leaving Ashli alone in his bedroom. She was still reeling from the night’s gruesome events. Running a hand through her hair, she wandered over to her suitcase. She stared inside for a long moment, forgetting what she was looking for. Oh yes, night clothes. She pulled out a tee shirt and jeans, then frowned at her selection. A second foray brought forth a skirt. Trying once again, she rummaged through the rest of her clothes at least twice before her brain registered on its task. She finally found a pair of capri pajama pants and fresh panties.
As she turned away from the suitcase, a trio of framed photographs caught her eye. The first was of Lange as a teenager, leaning against a gleaming red and white vintage Mustang coupe. There was another young man standing beside him, probably the best friend he had spoken of at the cemetery, and both wore the carefree, lighthearted smiles of youth. It was a look totally foreign to the one he now wore, and just for a moment, Ashli wondered what that Lange must have been like, the one who believed in dreams and a future and the simple pleasures of life. She wondered if the car had anything to do with the happy look on his face.
Her eyes moved to the next photo. Apparently taken just a few years later, Lange appeared slightly older in this shot. He still looked young and happy, but there was a shadow in his eyes. The smile on his face didn’t seem to come quite as easily, but it seemed sincere as he stood with his arm around an older woman with greying hair. Her blue eyes sparkled with pride, her smile warm and wide and just a little mischievous. Just seeing her photo, Ashli knew she would have liked his grandmother.
Almost with reluctance, her gaze slid to the last of the photos. She knew it was going to be a picture of Lauren, but actually seeing the dark haired beauty took her by surprise. The woman in the picture didn’t look a thing like any of Ashli’s pre-conceived notions. Lauren was tall and robust, her full figure clad in jeans and biker’s boots and a clinging V-necked sweater that was partially covered by a worn leather jacket. She was posed provocatively astride a motorcycle, holding her helmet and dangling a set of handcuffs from her long fingers. The look in her eyes was one of defiance, the slight smile on her face one of challenge. Even though she was fully dressed, the sensual photo could have easily passed as a professional lay-out for a racy calendar or a men’s magazine. Only the disorganized background and a smear in the corner of the photo - more than likely Lange’s finger - marked it as an amateur’s work.
Ashli stared at the other woman’s image for a long moment. Her hair was long and dark and straight, her mouth full and sensual, her eyes dark and snapping. Even through the photographer’s lens, she could tell Lauren had possessed a passion for life. She looked dark and exotic and slightly dangerous. She looked.... exciting. No wonder Lange had loved her so. She was everything Ashli was not.
Turning her back on the photos, particularly the one of Lauren, Ashli quickly undressed and slid into her nightclothes, then wandered into the bathroom for her bedtime routine. Face scrubbed clean and teeth brushed, she exited the bathroom and saw the light spilling into the hall beneath the closed guest room door. The rest of the apartment was dark.
Like a beacon, the light guided her forward, where she stopped in front of the door. Her mind, her body, her frightened soul, screamed at her to push the door open, and find solace in the arms of the man inside. But pride kept her hands glued at her side. He did not want her. Perhaps his body did, but not his heart. It didn’t matter that he brought her into his home tonight. ‘Home’ was just a shelter, a place to store his belongings, not his heart. There was nothing personal about his invitation, nothing personal about his house. Nothing personal about them.
Ashli turned away from the closed door, wishing she could close the door on her heart just as easily, but she knew it was too late for that; Lange Sterling had already invaded her heart and soul.
She wandered through the darkness toward the living room, drawn to the huge wall of windows. The lights of the city twinkled back at her, thousands of tiny illuminations breaking through the black cover of night. If only something could break through this terrible, heavy blackness in her heart.
Her frozen mind was beginning to thaw, and reality was so much more frightening without the numbness. At
least shock had held the horrifying thoughts of Jasmine at bay. But as the horrors of the evening replayed in her mind, her body began trembling, and tears flowed down her cheeks.
Jasmine, her beautiful and elegant friend, was more than likely dead.
And it was all her fault.
***
From the shadows, Lange watched her against the windows. She hadn’t seen him there on the couch, and he hadn’t alerted her to his presence. He was still reeling from the scene he had witnessed in the hall; she had hesitated for a long moment at this door, clearly wanting to go inside. His body had reacted instantly, desire swarming his senses. He had almost gone to her, but just as he rose from the couch, she had turned away. His heart had reacted instantly to that, too. It had practically stopped.
He watched as tears ran unbidden down her beautiful but stricken face. He ached to go to her, to hold her, but he was the one who had demanded they remain uninvolved. They were playing by his rules, his lies. If he went to her now, he would only confuse her with his offer of comfort.
He knew the exact moment she re-lived finding the severed foot; a look of horror replayed on her face, the shock as fresh and real as it had been four hours ago. He knew the instant she realized her friend’s fate; she bit her bottom lip, and shut her eyes in overwhelming grief. She cried silently, her entire body wracked with sobs, as she relived the horrors of the night, alone in her misery and grief.
Not even the hardest of hearts, not even the empty shell that resided inside his chest, could ignore the sheer agony she suffered. Before he could think better of it, Lange was off the couch and reaching for her.
Having no idea he was even in the room, his sudden presence scared her. She jumped away at his touch, a scream on her lips.
He Kills Me, He Kills Me Not Page 12
