Fatal Intimacies (Romantic Suspense)

by Ali, Isabelle

  What the hell are you doing, Jessica, she thought to herself.

  But something inside told her that she had to go. The not knowing would be the worst part. She wouldn’t know how her sister died or why. And the police didn’t sound too involved in the case. Maybe with a relative there pushing them, particularly a relative that was a law partner at a decent-sized firm, they might be more willing to move things along.

  She wiped the remaining tears away, and went to the office to book her flight.

  8

  Seattle, from an airplane, looked like a city from the future. The buildings were tall and modern with a rail a few stories off the ground zipping between them. The Space Needle appeared like the centerpiece of some carnival; as if it were a magical place that only a few would be allowed to enter. The entire city had an enchanted feel to it.

  The sky was a dim gray with pockets of sunshine coming through.

  After the plane had landed, Jessica undid the seatbelt and grabbed her bag from the passenger compartment. She worked her way off the plane and to the baggage claim, retrieving her one suitcase. Afterward, she rented a car.

  Only when she was actually sitting in the car did she realize she didn’t have a real plan. She was going to come up here and pester the detectives working her sister’s case, speak to all her friends, and find out more about her. But as to how she was actually going to go about doing that, she had no idea.

  The interstate leading out of the airport was relatively clear for a Monday, but she wouldn’t really have known if this was normal or not. She googled the Seattle Police Department’s headquarters and inputted the address into the phone.

  The city was a contradiction, she decided. After getting off the interstate, she snaked through neighborhoods that appeared rundown, with buildings that could’ve fallen over at any moment. But she also passed upscale condominiums, mansions, estates with beautiful brown and black horses running freely, and even a few farms. It seemed like anyone that wanted to live here could find their own little corner.

  The police headquarters, where the Robbery-Homicide Division was stationed, was a square building with an interesting grid pattern roof made up of interlacing steel beams. Visitor parking was around back and she parked and got out.

  The interior was glass and sunlight. The station had certainly been built with an eye toward making the atmosphere seem as uplifting and open as possible. Probably, she guessed, to counter the madness they had to deal with on a daily basis.

  The front desk was manned by a woman in a blue uniform who was sipping coffee out of a paper cup. Her eyes were glued to the computer monitor in front of her and she only casually glanced to Jessica before her eyes drifted back to it.

  “Excuse me, I’m looking for a detective that’s assigned to a homicide case.”

  “Case number.”

  “Um…” She fumbled through her purse before finding the number in a smooth, red leather wallet. “A A, 4 6 7 1 6.”

  The woman typed the numbers into the computer. “That’s Detective Thomas Garcia’s case.”

  “Yeah, I think that’s who I spoke with before. Can I see him?”

  “We like to have appointments for our detectives, ma’am. If you’d like to set one I can go ahead and do that for you.”

  “Please, I’ve come all the way from Texas. The victim was my sister.”

  The woman’s eyes came up to her and then returned to the screen. Without saying another word, she picked up the phone and hit a button. “Someone’s here to see you on the Barlow case,” she said. She listened a moment and then hung up. “He’ll be right down.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jessica sat in the lobby. The chairs were black and steel and meant to fit the building. But they were incredibly uncomfortable and a metal bar poked into her back. Finally, she decided it’d be better to stand. She rose and walked around, taking in the few abstract paintings that hung on the walls.

  “That one’s an imitation of a Dali.”

  She turned around to see Thomas Garcia standing in front of her. He wore a suit with no tie and his blue shirt was unbuttoned at the top. His black hair came down straight and the tips danced in front of his eyes.

  For a moment, and just a moment, butterflies tickled her belly and she got flustered.

  “You guys won’t get sued?” she asked.

  He put his hands in his pockets, revealing the gold badge clipped to his belt as his gaze drifted up to the painting. “Dali’s dead. Don’t think he’d mind.” He looked to her, their eyes locking. “You wanted to see me about the Barlow matter?”

  “Yes. I’m Jessica Barlow. We spoke on the phone.”

  He was silent a moment. “I’m sorry about your sister.”

  She nodded. “I’ve come up here hoping to find out more about what happened.”

  He shrugged. “I’m afraid there’s not that much more to tell you. The investigation’s stalled right now.”

  “Stalled how?”

  “We ran the se—the DNA recovered from your sister through the national DNA database and didn’t come back with any hits. The prints around her throat were unusable, so the DNA was really what we had to go on. At this point, we’re just following up on anything neighbors may have seen. But so far, there’s nothing there.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that you don’t have anything.”

  “If that’s the way you want to put it. No signs of entry into the home, so she may have known her attacker. Or he picked the lock.”

  She folded her arms. “A young woman is murdered in her apartment with neighbors on every side and you’re telling me the man that did this is going to get away?”

  “Who said it was a man?”

  She scoffed. “It’s always a man.”

  “Ms. Barlow, I’m doing everything I can to follow through with the case. I’ve got a sick partner in the hospital so I’m barely keeping my head above water right now.”

  Her mouth nearly dropped open. “How dare you? I don’t care how busy you are, Detective. Find the man that did this. Before he does it to someone else.”

  She turned and walked back to the revolving entrance doors. As she stepped outside, she glanced over her shoulder. He hadn’t moved and was eyeing her. His hands still in his pockets with the badge that gleamed from the sunlight cascading through the windows.

  9

  Jessica sat in her car a while, staring at people coming in and out of the police precinct. A woman ran out in tears, tissues almost glued to her face. A man, older, probably her father, had his arm around her as they walked. Jessica looked away.

  Her own father had been distant. That’s one of the reasons she and Michelle had been so close. Their father would come home from work and immediately disappear. No coming to softball or soccer games, no birthday outings. Even talking to him was like pulling teeth. Both Michelle and Jessica had moved out when they turned eighteen. Their father had said nothing to them other than, “Good luck.”

  She realized she still hadn’t told her parents that Michelle was dead. Maybe after Seattle, she would tell them in person. Then again, she wasn’t actually that certain her father would have much of a reaction. Though her mother would certainly lose it.

  Jessica turned the car on and pulled out. She brought up a note doc on her phone and input an address in the note app on Google Maps. The app lead her through the streets of downtown until she came to an apartment building near a liquor store. Across from the building was a news studio with an electric billboard set atop the building.

  She parked at the curb and stared up at the building. According to the police reports, which Jessica had to pay $25 dollars for, and spend an hour on the phone with a customer service representative at the precinct, this was Michelle’s last known address.

  She got out of the car. The air was cool and she took a jacket out of her bag in the backseat before hiking down the sidewalk. The pavement was uneven and broken. Completely neglected. She got the impression this wasn’t the best
neighborhood.

  The apartment building had a keycode entry. She stepped to the side and placed her hands in her pockets, the wind whipping her hair. After about ten minutes, someone came out of the building. Jessica smiled to them and walked in. They glared at her, but didn’t say anything.

  A sign was up indicating the manager was on the basement level. She walked down and found the apartment and knocked. A woman with short blond hair answered.

  “Hi, are you the manager?” Jessica asked.

  “I am.”

  “My name is Jessica Barlow. I’m Michelle Barlow’s sister.”

  Her face immediately softened. “I’m sorry. She was a nice girl.”

  Jessica nodded. “I’m here about her apartment. Have you taken her things out yet?”

  “No, not yet. We have painters scheduled for next week so we’ll do it before then.”

  “Well, before you do, I was hoping I could go up and see everything. See if there’s anything there that… you know, family heirlooms and things.”

  The manager glanced back to an infant that was in a bouncer. “I understand. Okay, I’ll take you up.”

  Jessica waited until the woman put on shoes and grabbed her infant. The three of them headed up the stairs as there was no elevator. The paint on the walls was chipping and the carpets were deeply stained.

  “She always paid her rent on time,” the manager said. “Never had any problems with her. Parties or anything like that.”

  “Did you know her personally?”

  “Not really.”

  “Did you know any of her friends? Maybe a boyfriend?”

  “No, nothing like that. She’d drop a check off every month and we’d chat for a few minutes. That was pretty much it.”

  They came to the third floor and the manager used a master key to open it. The police tape wasn’t up any longer.

  “They haven’t… I mean they haven’t cleaned the blood in the bathroom,” the manager said shyly.

  “I’ll be fine, but thanks for the warning.”

  “I’m going to head back downstairs for a minute. I’ll be right up again. Fifteen minutes enough?”

  “That should be. Thanks again.”

  When Jessica was alone, she stood in her sister’s living room and reached back to shut the door. She stopped, and left it open.

  The apartment was small, perhaps the size of Jessica’s bedroom back home. A worn futon and an old television on a stand were the only things in the living room. A few decorations up on the walls. She noticed a poster of Edgar Allan Poe. Her sister had been obsessed with Poe in high school. Jessica never understood why. His writing only served to depress her.

  She glanced through her sister’s bookshelves and then the cupboards in the kitchen. She thought coming here would teach her something about her sister. But there wasn’t anything left of the sister she knew here. None of this was familiar in any way. It was like walking through the house of a stranger.

  Jessica stood before the door in the bedroom. She knew the bathroom was where her sister had been killed. Building up her courage, she took a deep breath and stepped inside.

  The bed looked as worn out as the futon in the living room. A dresser drawer was there, something that looked almost homemade. Jessica turned toward the bathroom. Stains took up the walls and floors. When she had come here, she thought she could look. But now, faced with something physical, something tangible that told her Michelle was really dead, she couldn’t face it. She turned away and strode into the living room. Sitting down on the futon, she exhaled and glanced around the room. There was nothing here for her now.

  She left the apartment. For a moment, she stood staring at the door. Then she turned and headed back to her car.

  10

  The precinct was nearly empty at lunchtime. Most of the detectives went out together, but Garcia stayed behind to catch up on a few things. Although they were going to Porter’s and Porter’s had the best steaks in the city. If you wanted to know where the best places to eat were, Garcia always thought you could ask a cop. They never brought their lunch and could sample everywhere.

  He picked up the phone and called Miriam. She didn’t answer and it went to voicemail. A moment later, he got a text, asking if they were still meeting tonight for dinner. He replied that they were and then placed the phone down on the desk.

  When he’d met Miriam, she seemed exotic and exciting. Garcia had spent most of his childhood in Cuba and when he migrated to the States, his parents could only get menial work. Money was tight, and a vacation at his house was going to his grandma’s for a few hours. So when he met Miriam in a $4000 dress, gold glittering on every bared portion of skin, she may as well have been an alien that had crash-landed on earth.

  He decided to call it a day and left, mumbling to the receptionist that it was five o’clock somewhere. Last week, he put in a good seventy hours and wanted a straight forty this week. He felt weak and tired and his mind would wander if he pushed himself too hard too often.

  After a quick can of Red Bull, he headed to the gym.

  The Rodrigo Montoya Boxing Club was in a building as rundown as the abandoned apartments next door. This section of Seattle had been bought and developed several times over the past four decades. Each time, the developers were unable to make it work. Something about the make up of the neighborhood didn’t lend itself well to middle class. It was a poor neighborhood and always tended to stay that way.

  But the boxing gym had been there through it all.

  As Garcia walked in and went to the locker room, the smell of sweat and synthetic leather hit him. A smell he’d known for twenty years. Growing up in Miami, all the boys in his neighborhood learned to box at a local rec center. It wasn’t an option. If you couldn’t fight, you became the target of bullies and gangs immediately. They’d forever see you as a mark and you could never break out of that stereotype.

  Garcia remembered a time three boys had jumped him behind the restaurant he bussed at. He was throwing out the trash for the night and they knew he’d collected his portion of the tips from the servers already. But those tips went to his mother who used it for groceries, for rent, to buy shoes for his young siblings. There was no way in hell he was about to hand it over.

  The boys were older than him by maybe a year, but they were the same size. The three of them closed in. If he would have thrown them his money, they might have just struck him a few times and left him alone. If he fought, he knew they might literally kill him. But he didn’t care. If this was how he was supposed to die, then this was how he was going to die.

  He struck the first one so hard he broke his hand. The other two rushed him. One grabbed Garcia from behind and held him as the other one decked him in the face. Garcia managed to wiggle free by dropping his bodyweight to the ground. He came up behind the boy that had held him. With one massive blow, consisting of kicking both legs into the boy’s back, Garcia knocked him into the other boy.

  He reached into the dumpster and found a glass bottle. Breaking it against the dumpster, he stood there, breathing heavily, blood dripping down his chin, and waited for the three boys to decide what they were going to do. All three of them glanced to each other, and then turned and left. They never came to the restaurant again.

  Garcia changed and warmed up on the heavy bags. He switched to the speed bags after ten minutes and then got into the ring for some sparring. His partner was a taller black man named Ricky. They exchanged blows, traded insults, and fought in three-minute increments, until neither one of them could hold their arms up.

  After the workout, he hopped into the shower. The water was hot and steamed up the space quickly. He lathered himself and washed his hair. Catching a glimpse of the black tiger tattoo on his arm, he thought back to the young woman he was dating at the time he got that tattoo. He couldn’t remember her name as they’d been together so briefly, but he remembered wild, carefree nights that ended far too quickly.

  As he was leaving the gym to head to dinner
with Miriam, he received a call from a number he didn’t recognize.

  “This is Tom.”

  “Yes,” an older woman’s voice said, “I’m looking for Detective Garcia?”

  “This is Detective Garcia.”

  “Oh, good. I’m Daphne Claymore. You called me the other day about Michelle Barlow.”

  Garcia opened his car door and sat down. He leaned back in the seat, his muscles exhausted, and closed his eyes as he spoke. A calm euphoria coming over him. “That’s right, I did. My understanding is you live in the same building that Ms. Barlow lived.”

  “I do.”

  “Did you know her at all?”

  “No, not really. We said hello a few times.”

  “What about the night she was killed, the fourteenth of this month. Friday. Did you see her at all that day?”

  “Yes, actually. I did. She was dropped at her building by a nice looking young man late at night.”

  Garcia opened his eyes and sat up. “What young man?”

  “Oh, I have no idea. I’d never seen him before.”

  “How did you happen to see them?”

  “I live on the first floor and sometimes I peek out the window is all. I have my blinds open in the kitchen and can see out when I’m cooking or doing the dishes.”

  “Do you remember the make or model of the car?”

  “It was gray. I don’t really remember much more than that.”

  “Ms. Claymore, I’d like to send down a sketch artist to work with you if that’s alright. This man you saw was probably the last person to see Michelle alive.”

  “Oh, well, anything I can do to help. As long as we can keep this private.”

  “I’ll do my best. I’ll give you a call soon.”

  He hung up and placed the phone down. That familiar feeling of the hunt was back. He didn’t get it on every case, but every once in a while, he saw himself as a wolf in a forest. Chasing down prey that had escaped. It was an image he’d dreamed once and it’d never left him.