As I strode along, the slanted concrete rise of the ramp accelerated the tempo of my breathing, which I liked. Any time I could get some physical activity, I thrived on it, so I quickened my pace trying to gain more aerobic results, tone my calves and drive my heartbeat up higher.
Just then a vehicle came rushing up behind me so close it brushed my handbag and shot past me. “Hey, watch where you’re going!” I yelled as the vehicle swerved into the upward ramp turn, revealing the black Porsche 911 with the Mai-like person driving. A little too coincidental for my tastes and I’d been so busy trying to identify the driver, I’d missed the license plates. I slipped behind one of the support columns and waited. Nothing happened. He might be waiting for me up above.
I began scooting cautiously along the garage walls, careful to stay in the darker sections. It was a good thing, too, because, lo and behold, another Porsche 911 sped by. Silver with maxed out rims and racing way too fast for parking garage safety. I slid even further back into my dark corner. The Porsche nearly took the turn on two wheels. I focused all my attention on the driver. I couldn’t get a clear look, but my stomach tightened when a swift image of Karl Zaiid burned into my brain. If true, my energizing walk in the parking garage was getting even spookier. I wished I had my little pistol with me, but had rejected the idea for my first day at work. I might start carrying it now, as I hadn’t noticed any metal-detecting device in the entry to the Central One building.
I cautiously advanced upwards through the shadows of the parking garage, bobbing quickly from tall vehicle to tall vehicle, duck walking behind the shorter ones, trying to shield myself from view. Hard to do in a tight little sheath, but the tennis shoes helped.
I made it along the north side with no incident and welcomed the relative darkness of the west wall of the parking garage. Using this method, I’d almost made it all the way to the roof, and I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I got there. I kept sliding my way along the shadowed walls, stopping now and then to listen. No sound, except for the traffic far below.
Then I heard another sound, like someone whispering or saying shush to a child. Since I couldn’t hear any vehicle in motion, I carefully slid around the edge of the column I’d been standing behind to get a view of the roof of the garage. My Mazda3 was parked on the east edge, not far away. I could see it now. No one in sight. No speeding Porsche 911s. I slid back into the shadows and decided to wait even longer. I could see the exit ramp, one of those circular affairs, spiraling downward from the other end of the upper floor, so that vehicles going down would avoid those coming up. If the two Porsches had come up this far, they appeared to be gone by now.
I waited even longer to identify the strange whispering, but it had subsided. By now, my gorgeous sheath was sweaty under the arms and I was sure the smoke-colored, greasy walls of the parking garage had forever etched their signature across my rear. I’d be forced to toss my lovely sheath when I got home. I have to admit, I’m not that easy on clothes, or shoes, or men or…time to quit distracting myself and walk over to my car.
I stepped out into the exposed light, all my senses alert. Nothing happened, except the heat pounded down on me from above. My car looked funny, kind of lopsided. Upon closer view, I figured out what the shooshing sound had been: all the air was whispering out of my rear tires. One was completely flat and the other halfway there, still seeping down. A huge, unsightly gash, as if my rear tires had been gutted with a butcher’s knife, clearly showed on the outside wall of both tires. An obvious threat. No intention of hiding it.
I stood up and pivoted slowly in a full three-sixty. Nothing. No one. Just the hot, white sky of Phoenix. I could see a commercial plane swooping toward me from the west, heading in to Sky Harbor Airport behind me. Other than that, nothing. I walked around the car, looked under it and inside it. Everything looked normal. I flipped open my cell phone cover to dial a tow service just as the giant silver belly of the plane whooshed over me, its landing wheels already out. I slapped my cell phone shut. Impossible to be understood in the roar. I turned to watch the plane descend, as the air seared easily to 130 degrees in the shimmering after burn.
Chapter 9
As the sun set outside the many windows of the bookstore, Kathy decided it was now safe to venture home. After slipping into the restroom when she first arrived to clean out her cuts with wet paper towels and smooth out her clothing—wiping off the back smudges and blood the best she could—Kathy had spent the whole day trying to read, but mostly she’d worried and tried to think things through. She reasoned that until evidence revealed otherwise, which might be very soon, St. Pierre would assume she’d died in the explosion, so he wouldn’t hang around waiting for her.
She left the bookstore and stopped by an ATM where she withdrew as much cash as the ATM would allow. Three hundred dollars in twenties. She stuffed five of the twenties in her wallet, then hid the rest in the glove compartment of her Saturn. She had another two hundred in cash, what her mom used to call mad money, zipped into a side pocket of her purse. That added up to a total of five hundred dollars to cross the U.S. When she ran out of cash, she’d have to stop at an ATM, but she hoped to avoid leaving any clue to here whereabouts for as long as possible. She merged onto the freeway toward Newark and eventually exited in the direction of the Christiana Creekside apartments.
This time when she cautiously glided into the apartment parking lot, the dark blue BMW was nowhere to be seen. The parking lot looked quiet and peaceful in the settling dusk, much like it usually did. Kathy breathed a sigh of relief and guided her car into a visitor’s space away from her assigned spot. She wanted to remain as unseen as possible in case her apartment was being watched.
She got out, crossed the grassy area and walked quickly to the stairwell that led up to her apartment, almost stumbling over a plastic trike turned on its side. Kathy had made friends with the three-year-old, Darren, who often rode the trike around and around the stairwell at all hours of the day followed by his four-year-old sister, Patti, who feverishly pedaled a larger, red metal tricycle, yelling “I’m gonna get you, Darren! I’m gonna get you!” For some reason Darren thought this was hilarious and they’d go round and round until, presumably, they became too dizzy and switched directions. Kathy would miss them.
All was quiet right now, though. Twilight. The dinner hour, thought Kathy as she slipped out of the dark corner and silently glided up the stairs, trying not to make them creak. Her heart beat painfully within her chest—she had no idea what she’d find. She was most worried about Peepers.
Peepers was nowhere to be seen as Kathy got to the third and final landing of the stairwell. Her front door stood halfway ajar. No light on inside. No sound emitted from within. She stood with her back up against the wall beside her door, like she’d seen on crime scene shows. Kathy edged inward through the door, listening. Hyper-alert. Still no sound, no Peepers either. Kathy nudged the door open further with her foot and slipped inside. Suddenly, she felt foolish for not having a weapon or for not calling the police. St. Pierre, and probably her boss––well, ex-boss––were obviously desperate people, desperate enough to kill her to hide their activities. Entering her apartment without any protection was a fool’s choice and could get her killed.
Kathy edged back out of her apartment and onto the landing to stop and think. Her heart was pounding so violently in her chest, she began gulping in huge breaths of air to try and calm herself down. What evidence did she really have, though, if she were to call the police at this point?
Shortly after Kathy had started the job, she realized the office had no backup system for their sensitive files. So Kathy had made it a point to back up her hard drive twice a day onto an external drive she’d purchased with her own money. She wanted to make sure business could operate as usual if all their retrieval and storage systems went down. Just before lunch, Kathy had saved the files to her backup drive and placed it into her canvas bag. She then headed out to Lettuce Feed You. That was such a short time ago,
Kathy thought, before her whole world literally blew apart.
Kathy listened with her back to the door, reasoning through what to do next. Even on that flash drive, Kathy had no solid evidence that would convince the police of her suspicions regarding the illegal activities of St. Pierre. Kathy had just begun to piece together what she thought might be happening. Clearly, in hindsight, after the explosion, her intuitions must be on target. In fact, Kathy now suspected that the illegal activities might be even deeper and more pervasive than she’d imagined. She regretted now how she’d so innocently alerted her boss to her budding suspicions, igniting this irreversible chain of events.
Still no sound emerged from Kathy’s apartment. No Peepers, no nothing. So Kathy made the quick decision to enter, grab some stuff, find Peepers and get out. It wouldn’t be long before the police and everyone else realized she hadn’t died in the explosion. Kathy had a fleeting, horrifying thought that perhaps the police would try to pin the explosion on her. Certainly, that solution would appeal to her boss, and her boss had a lot more power and clout than she did. All the more reason I need to nail down what’s going on, thought Kathy as she slipped into the semi-dark kitchen. She stepped over ransacked drawers and her cat calendar which was tossed haphazardly onto the floor. Once again, like her office, papers were scattered everywhere. Kathy felt her way to one of the lower kitchen drawers where she kept a flashlight. Miraculously, that drawer was still on its runners, though pulled way out. She grasped the flashlight and turned on its dim beam. Then she slipped over to the open drapes and pulled them shut.
“Peepers!” Kathy hissed in a harsh whisper in the darkness. “Peepers, here kitty, kitty.” No sound in response. Kathy edged around the displaced sofa with the cushions thrown all over and slashed with X’s across the fabric. He’d obviously been searching for hidden paperwork. Either that or St. Pierre was a vicious lunatic. Probably both. Kathy shuddered.
Kathy wended her way through the maze of overturned furniture to her bedroom. “Here kitty, kitty. It’s okay. You can come out now.” Still no sound. Kathy finally reached the bedroom door. It was ajar too. She pointed her flashlight inside. Her mattress was pulled off the bed at an angle and slashed with the same X mark. Similar slash marks had ripped open the boxspring’s fabric, exposing the wood frame and springs beneath. The bedroom was in frightening disarray, clear indications of a violent, desperate man. Kathy pulled the box springs aside to find her empty suitcases. They had been unzipped but were still intact. Grabbing around on the floor, using the thin beam of the flashlight as a guide, Kathy threw the jeans, tops, skirts, underwear and socks that were sprawled all over the floor into the suitcases. She was frugal and didn’t have much. Then she turned her attention to the closet to get her shoes and a few dresses and jackets. She shone the flashlight at the hangers, rapidly pulling off the few clothing items that remained.
As Kathy worked her way through the closet, she guided the waning flashlight beam down to where she’d left her shoes carefully lined up this morning. The beam lighted upon a furry, black and white tail. Peepers! She’d found Peepers! Kathy leaned in closer and shined the flashlight along the length of his tail searching for his head, hoping against hope that Peepers was crouching there, hiding in the closet, afraid to move. She shone the flashlight at where his head would be, and discovered that it had been twisted at a grotesque angle. He lay spread-eagled on his back, limp. Kathy dropped to her knees as if she’d been sucker punched.
“Oh my precious, precious Peepers. What did he do to you?” Kathy gingerly petted the cat’s furry side, realizing he was already stiff with rigor mortis. Then she saw St. Pierre’s signature X slashed across the little white stomach of her beloved cat. Blood and entrails covered the edges of the opening. Kathy began to sob. “Oh, my sweet, innocent kitty,” she whispered. “What did you ever do to deserve this?”
Just then, Kathy heard a noise in the stairwell. It sounded like someone tripping over the plastic trike that Kathy had barely avoided. Kathy gulped, sucking in her sobs, so she could listen better. She distinctly heard the sound of footsteps now ascending the stairs. Heavy, male footsteps, but with a slow stealthy gait. The metal stairway made a telltale creak with each step. The apartment had only one exit and that was the front door. If St. Pierre returned to finish her off, as he had done to Peepers, she was trapped. Kathy did the only thing she could think of and slid back into the furthest recesses of her closet. She had one of those closets where the doors slid to either side.
The footsteps stopped. Kathy listened as intently as she could over the pounding of her heart. Unstoppable tears were still streaming down her face, but she sobbed in silence. Her every sensation on alert. No sound. Then she thought she heard the footsteps resume. The closet and bedroom walls muffled her hearing, but the footsteps definitely seemed to be ascending. One other apartment resident had a doorway at this particular third-story landing, but he worked in the evenings, so it was unlikely to be him returning home. Besides, the footsteps sounded quite stealthy. Not normal. The familiar creaking of the metal stairwell occurring at unevenly slow intervals.
Kathy strained to listen through the door. Then she heard the most awful sound in her life, her front door sliding open. Kathy remembered she had closed it, without actually latching it shut, to hide her flashlight beam. That was when she realized her flashlight was still on. She doused it and desperately tried to figure out what she could use in the closet as a weapon. The flashlight was too small, and the hangers were all plastic. Useless.
She suddenly remembered she had a golf club somewhere in the closet. She didn’t even own a full set of clubs, but a driver might work as an effective weapon. As silently as possible, she groped about in the darkness all around her trying to lay her hands on the driver. No luck. Should she use her phone to dial 911? Kathy immediately rejected that idea. The sound would alert her attacker to her presence long before rescue arrived. Kathy quietly bent her knees again and began to feel around with her hands on the closet floor. No driver.
Suddenly her hands touched something metal. Like a blind person, Kathy ran her fingers along it to try and figure out what it was. A shoe rack with a solid wood toe on one end. Kathy picked it up and clutched it to her chest. It would have to do.
Kathy silently rose up again from her crouch, so she’d be better positioned to defend herself. Then she listened intently to try and determine his location.
Bang, blam, bang!
St. Pierre, if it were him, had just tripped over some pots and pans. Kathy nearly catapulted out of her skin. Then all sound ceased. Kathy was pretty sure the intruder was St. Pierre, but even if it wasn’t him, this person was up to no good, because he’d never rung the doorbell nor turned on any lights. Kathy considered running past the intruder out to the landing, flailing the shoe rack about wildly in defense and screaming at the top of her lungs. But she rejected that idea too. He probably had a silencer on his gun or a knife. Obviously, who ever had been here earlier carried a knife.
A door slammed loudly down below her apartment. It was all Kathy could do not to jump straight through the roof of the closet, her adrenaline spiked so high. What was happening? The pots banged again, and Kathy heard her own front door fly back open, and a life-saving voice trilled upward merrily from the bottom of the stairwell. “Darren, Darren, I’m gonna get you!”
At the sound of Patti’s little voice, Kathy heard footsteps descend rapidly down the stairwell. Shortly after, Kathy’s straining ears heard a car jump into life and peel out of the parking lot. Kathy breathed a sigh of relief, but remained frozen in place until she was sure no more sounds emerged from within her apartment. Then she turned the flashlight back on, bent back down over the lifeless Peepers and said a silent prayer for him, as there was nothing she could do for him now. A few clothes still hung on the hangers. She pulled off one of the nice dresses she wore to church and spread it gently over Peeper’s stiff, mutilated body. She crossed herself, then hoisted up all she had left in the world p
acked into just two suitcases. One in each hand, she lugged them down the stairs as fast as she could go.
On her way out, she passed Patti and Darren going around and around the stairwell column with all the doorway lights shining on them. As Kathy went by, Patti stopped her pursuit of Darren long enough to call out, “Who was that man running out your apartment, Kathy?”
“I don’t know exactly, Patti, but I’m pretty sure he’s gone.”
“Where ya goin’ with those suitcases?”
“Just away for a little while, honey,” Kathy said, knowing she’d probably never return. She tried to keep the tears from flowing down her cheeks. She wiped her hand across her eyes and dragged the suitcases across the side lawn, while scanning the parking lot for a dark blue BMW. Gone. Thank God! A momentary sense of relief flooded through her, then she flung the two suitcases into the Saturn’s trunk.
Kathy slid into the driver’s seat, started the car and just sat there, unable to move. She rested her head against the steering wheel, taking in deep, halting breaths until slowly but surely she forced herself into calmness. Then she whispered with deadly precision, “Well, Patti, the truth is I’m going to Arizona to catch a mother-fuckin’ killer, and I promise, with every ounce of resolve I have left in me, he will not escape.”
With that, Kathy blushed mightily, since she never swore, reversed out of the visitor’s parking space, and shot out of the parking lot toward Highway 95. She was on her way to the Valley of the Sun, and no amount of tears was going to stop her.
Chapter 10
The sun was setting as I finally swung my Mazda3 into my driveway. The Arizona skyline sometimes bathes the horizon in unforgettable colors. This was one of those days. Normally, the sky is a smudgy, grayish brown from our polluted air. Floating above the smudge, though, on this particular day, our special mix of pollution and pollen seemed to be clenching at the receding light, refusing to let go, compressing the air until it appeared to be burning alive. Crimson streaked across the lower sky, pierced by splinters of gold light.
Baby Brother Blues (Sammy Dick, PI Series: Book 1) Page 7
