After She's Gone

by Lisa Jackson

  Nash jaywalked quickly, crossing the street between the lights to dash through the doors of the Justice Center, taking the elevator up to the Homicide Division.

  As the rain puddled onto the lift’s floor she thought she probably should find a different, less stressful job, should give up all the cop crap and the tension that came with it, but she couldn’t. Becoming a detective had been her life’s ambition. So here she was pushing forty, married to a career that wouldn’t leave her alone at night, one that invaded her dreams and chased her out of bed before dawn while her friends were busy balancing their careers and home life, husbands and children, school and work schedules.

  But she couldn’t see herself as a nine-to-fiver, or a doting stay-at-home mother and wife. “Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks,” she said under her breath.

  Besides, she loved her job, especially in the early morning, which was the most peaceful time of day in the office after the crazies of the night had been dealt with and before the morning shift got into full swing. This was a time when she could think and plan her day, a time before her partner showed up, or many of the other desks in the large room cut up into cubicles were filled with other cops on phones, writing reports, questioning suspects, or generally taking up space.

  Nash hated the lack of privacy involved. She would have preferred her own office complete with walls, maybe a window, and a door that she could open or close depending upon her workload and mood.

  As she stepped into the division, she noticed that she wasn’t alone. A few other cops were already seated at their desks, on their phones, reading files, or keying info into their computers. A couple of them were standing together, a newbie named Trish Bellegarde was trying not to be rude to Kowalski, who had trapped her into a conversation. Nash had been there. Kowalski was a decent enough detective, the “old man” in the department. He sported a white crew cut, jowls, glasses that he was always polishing, and a good ol’ boy attitude that was a pain in the butt. Retirement loomed for Kowalski and for that Nash was grateful. She just didn’t like the guy.

  After hanging her coat in a locker and leaving her bag in a drawer at her desk, she went into the lunchroom, found a carafe of coffee, and poured herself a lukewarm cup. Good enough, for now. Back at her desk she discovered she’d already acquired a dozen or so e-mail messages since she’d left the office sometime after six the night before. As she sipped from her cup with her free hand, she scrolled through the missives, sorted out reports and filed them along with autopsies and statements, then saw a more personal note from Whitney Stone.

  Oh joy.

  Stone had worked her way up as a freelance reporter and now produced and starred in her own reality-type mystery show. Nash had watched a couple of episodes and thought Stone was long on innuendos and short on facts. Worse yet, Stone, originally a native of the Southwest, maybe Arizona or New Mexico, Nash thought, had lived in Portland for a while, and since Portland had achieved a newfound “cool” status, Stone had adopted the city as her own. Now she was always nosing around, looking for a juicy story she could sink her teeth into and, sometimes, at least in Nash’s opinion, exploit.

  The woman was photogenic enough to be a model, so she made crime reporting look good.

  Now, she was sinking her investigative teeth into the Allie Kramer case, asking for an interview with Nash.

  “Forget it,” Nash said under her breath, but noted that Stone had mentioned in her e-mail that Cassie Kramer had left Mercy Hospital.

  This was news to Nash and it shouldn’t have been, since Cassie Kramer was very much a person of interest in her sister’s disappearance. The day was starting out just great, she thought grimly. It wasn’t yet eight and already Nash was irritated enough to reach for a bottle of Tums to calm her nervous stomach. After popping three chalky tablets, Nash dialed the hospital and met roadblock after roadblock in the form of a taciturn receptionist who could quote HIPAA compliancy rules and hospital regulations without the least inflection in her voice. Biting back her frustration, Nash persevered and after cutting through what seemed to be reams of red tape concerning privacy, was told, “Miss Kramer is no longer a patient at Mercy Hospital.” A few more inquiries to a local cab company and she learned that Allie Kramer’s sister had been driven to a car rental agency. More telephone calls ended up revealing that Cassie Kramer had, indeed, left the gloom of Portland for the sunnier climate of Los Angeles.

  Nash made a call to the LAPD and a note to herself.

  Then she searched through the rest of her never-ending in-box of e-mails. Once she’d dispensed with the ones she could, she picked up her phone and checked her voice mail. Fortunately it consisted of only a few calls. Again, Whitney Stone had recorded a similar message to her e-mail. She wasn’t alone. Two other reporters had left their name and number. Nash didn’t bother to call them back. If they were professional, then they knew the protocol, which was to go through the Public Information Officer.

  Besides, she didn’t have any answers. The Kramer case was a puzzler, the primary reason Nash was losing sleep, even though there wasn’t a homicide, at least not a proven one yet. A famous person was missing under suspicious circumstances, but her stunt double had been shot on the last day of filming, when the cast and crew had been called back to Portland to reshoot a scene. Had those shots been accidental? Or had Lucinda Rinaldi been the intended victim? Maybe Allie Kramer, who hadn’t shown up that day, had been the ultimate target? Had she known she was in danger, been tipped off somehow and made herself disappear, putting another woman in danger? That was hard to believe. Why stay away so long? Why not reach out to family, friends, or the police if she’d felt so threatened?

  Nash thought hard, swallowing coffee by rote. She wondered if it were possible that the killer had found Allie Kramer and kidnapped and/or killed her when he realized his mistake at targeting the wrong woman. That was a possibility. A long shot, but a working theory because Nash was certain that Sig Masters, the actor who’d actually pulled the trigger, hadn’t intended to shoot Lucinda Rinaldi or anyone else. Nash remembered questioning him and the man had broken down and cried, shaking his head, swearing he’d gotten the prop gun from the locker; and the woman who had the key, Ineesha Sallinger, the prop manager, corroborated Masters’s story and swore her key to the prop locker had been with her for the entire time it took to film the scene. Though the room where the locker was located had been left open during the shoot, the locker itself had been secure. Sallinger had sworn that no one could have exchanged the guns.

  But someone had.

  The pistol used in the shooting looked identical to the prop, but it had been armed with real bullets. The only fingerprints upon it were Masters’s. Not even Sallinger’s had been found anywhere on the barrel, trigger, or grip. That in and of itself was odd. A prop gun should have several sets of prints on it. The prop manager, maybe someone who had loaded it with blanks, and the shooter, to start with. The gun seemed to have been wiped clean until Sig had received it. Sallinger explained that question away by saying that she’d been wearing gloves that day. The Portland wintry weather had been cold and wet.

  So where the hell was Allie Kramer? Or her body?

  Dumped into the Willamette River? Buried in the wooded slopes of the West Hills? Shoved into a trash receptacle beneath a concrete slab? Rotting in a dark room or under a house somewhere?

  Or alive and held captive by a nutcase, an over-the-top, possibly homicidal fan?

  Nash chewed on the edge of her paper cup as her mind whirled with questions she couldn’t answer. The furnace rumbled, blowing warm air into the department, as other detectives began to report for duty and start their shifts. Computer keyboards clicked and phones began to ring in other cubicles, but Nash was lost in thought, caught in the mystery that was Allie Damned Kramer.

  Nash had other cases to deal with, of course. Over the past weekend there had been a knifing near the waterfront and there was always escalating gang violence that a task force was dealing wit
h, but this, the disappearance of Allie Kramer, was the one that kept nagging at her, digging into her brain, teasing her. Was it because Allie was a celebrity, a local girl who’d conquered Hollywood? Or was it just that the elements were all so intriguing, a puzzle not easily solved?

  And now Cassie Kramer, very much a person of interest in her sister’s disappearance, had flown the proverbial coop. There was the rumored jealousy and fights between the sisters. Cassie, the last person to see or communicate with Allie, had admitted that she and Allie had “argued” on that fateful visit.

  What had happened? Nash wondered, not for the first time. The broken wineglass, the furniture that had been moved according to impressions on the throw rug, the yelling that a neighbor had attested to.

  She fidgeted at her desk, playing distractedly with a paper clip as she considered the multifaceted sides to this case. Not only had Cassie Kramer had a fight with her sister, but she’d also suffered a mental breakdown on the day after the shooting on the set. She’d actually committed herself. Why? Was she really that unstable? What exactly was her diagnosis? Paranoia? Schizophrenia? Was she seriously depressed? Was she afraid of harming herself? Or others? Or was it some other condition? Nash couldn’t help but wonder if checking into the psychiatric wing of Mercy was all part of Cassie’s plan, just in case she needed a quick insanity defense should her sister’s body show up.

  Too many loose ends for Nash’s satisfaction.

  “Watch out.” A deep voice interrupted her thoughts, and she looked up to see Kowalski passing by the opening to her cubicle. His work space was located across a passageway with an eighties glamour shot of his wife, Marcia, situated on the corner of his desk, angled so that Marcia, in a glittery boa, looking over hands folded under her strong chin, seemed to be staring at Nash. “Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.” He started a rumbling laugh that was rough from years of cigarettes.

  Nash dropped the paper clip as he walked into his own cubicle and settled his heft into a desk chair that groaned in protest.

  Asshole, she thought without heat as she turned back to her computer.

  A few minutes later, she heard her partner arrive before she saw him. Talking into his cell phone in one hand, balancing a cup of coffee in the other, Tyronne Thompson, or Double T as he was known around the bureau, strolled into the Homicide Division. With a nod to Nash, he plopped himself into his desk chair, his cubicle catty-corner from hers, and took an experimental sip from the cup which, she knew, was usually filled with something like five shots of espresso from the coffee shop down the block, what he referred to as his “high-octane kick start” for the morning.

  His head was shaved, his bald pate gleaming a deep mocha color under the lights strung high overhead. With the build of an NFL tight end, Double T was usually affable, but had a temper that could spark when crossed. Fortunately he didn’t lose control all that much. He peeled off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair before stepping into the opening to her work area. “Guess who checked herself out of the hospital?”

  “Let me see . . .” She pretended to think. “How about our infamous actress who swears she doesn’t have a clue as to what happened to her sister?”

  A wide smile stretched across Double T’s defined jaw and his dark eyes gleamed. “You already heard,” he charged.

  With a shake of her head she said, “We only have one person we’re interested in who was in a hospital.” She lifted one side of her mouth. “See. I’m just displaying my awesome powers of deduction. By the way, Cassie Kramer booked herself on a flight to LA as well.”

  “More awesomeness displayed,” he said, leaning a hip against her desk. “You can’t seem to control it.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “And you’re a liar. What tipped you off?”

  “Who. Whitney Stone.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “Justice: Stone Cold.”

  Recognition flared in his eyes. “Oh. That one. Just what we need.”

  “Mmm.”

  “So what do you think our runaway is doing?”

  Nash shrugged. “Good question. Cassie Kramer does live in LA, or at least she did. Maybe she’s just going home and trying to rebuild her life.”

  “As an actress?”

  “I don’t think so. Unless all this publicity about her missing sister gives her more Hollywood cred, she’s not getting any parts. Nothing major anyway, for quite a while. She’s trying to be a writer, got a couple of scripts written.” Double T’s eyebrows raised but Nash shook her head. “Hasn’t sold anything that I could find.”

  “She any good?”

  “Who knows? The jury’s still out.”

  “And there’s still that missing sister.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Double T asked, “You got a tail on the sister? In LA?”

  Nash felt herself smile. “What do you think?” She then pulled up a link on her computer. “Take a look at this,” she said, indicating the monitor where a close-up of Allie Kramer’s beautiful face appeared along with a tense music score. Her expression was coy, a sly smile, eyes flashing with mischief, her skin appearing flawless as the camera pushed in more closely to focus the reflection of light in one of Allie’s eyes, the striations of color becoming clearer, the pupil enlarging and the speck of light growing, showing colors and movement within. Blurry images sharpened, then the screen was filled with the image of a frantically running woman, racing as if terror-driven, her shoes pounding the wet pavement, her breathing ragged, her face twisted in horror as heart-pounding music swelled.

  The woman was Allie Kramer.

  A shot rang out.

  Abruptly the image on the screen faded to black.

  With the sound of following shots, letters began to appear, spelling out DEAD HEAT. A final bang and the date of the movie’s release came into view and then the blackness behind the lettering evaporated into gray skies and Allie Kramer’s watery image before fading completely.

  Double T leaned back in his chair. “It’s almost as if whoever put this together is playing off the star going missing in real life.”

  “Ya think?” They’d already gone over the possibility that Allie Kramer’s disappearance was staged to generate more interest in her and the film, but if so the production company, or whoever was behind her vanishing act, was taking the law into its own hands.

  Unlikely.

  People had been known to pull outrageous stunts for publicity, but the idea seemed far-fetched. Yet they were getting nowhere with the missing person’s case. No one had heard from Allie Kramer since the night before the reshooting of the final scene. She’d called her assistant, Cherise Gotwell, and said she didn’t think she’d make the morning shoot, had wanted to make sure her stunt double was available, and had said that she would confirm in the morning.

  She hadn’t. No more calls had come in from her. In fact that was the last bit of communication of any kind. Her cell phone records indicated that she’d received one final call from her sister, Cassie, but then nothing. No one had seen or heard from her since.

  How the hell could someone with a face recognized by most of the people in America disappear?

  “This is just one of the trailers for the movie. There are a couple more—variations of the same. I’ve got a call in to the producer and the director. Maybe I’ll get lucky and one of them will call me back,” Nash said.

  “Yeah, right. And maybe I’ll go pick us up some Voodoo Doughnuts and there won’t be a line.”

  She smiled at the idea, but her good humor faded as she turned her computer screen to face her and replayed the video one more time to stare at Allie Kramer’s earnest face. “Where the hell are you?” she whispered under her breath, then tamped down the feeling that the woman was already dead. Until a body was located, Allie Kramer was presumed alive.

  But deep down, Rhonda Nash thought the chances of finding Allie Kramer living and breathing were slim.

  And getting slimmer by the second.

  CHAPTE
R 13

  When Cassie roused to look at the clock near her bed, it was nearly ten. Her bedroom was flooded with sunlight as she’d forgotten to pull the drapes shut the night before.

  Stretching, she raised up on one elbow as she shook off the cobwebs of a night teeming with nightmares.

  After weeks in the hospital room, hearing the sounds of murmuring voices, rattling carts, and soft dings of the elevator, the relative peace and quiet of her apartment should have brought on a slumber deeper than any sleeping aid could deliver, but it hadn’t. She was tired to the bone and felt as if she’d run a marathon. Or maybe two marathons.

  Yawning, she pushed her hair from her eyes and found her computer where she’d left it, on wrinkled sheets next to her on the bed, its screen dark.

  So now she was sleeping with electronic devices.

  Instead of Trent.

  In her mind’s eye, she saw a glimpse of life as it had been. She used to awaken to Trent stretched out beside her on the bed, one tanned arm flung over her waist, his hair tousled, his breathing rhythmic and deep. She would stare at the curve of his spine and muscles of his back, his taut skin showing a few scars.

  God, how she’d loved him.

  “It’s over,” she reminded herself, and rolled over to pick up the earring on her nightstand, the one Rinko had found in her hospital room.

  For the next hour she searched the Internet for earrings in the shape of a red cross, scouring hundreds of images and comparing them to the little bit of jewelry she’d collected from the hospital. Some had dangles, others made of glass or rubies, still others in the wrong configuration. Eventually, though, she’d discovered several pictures of red crosses on posts that seemed to be a match. From what she could glean, the earrings were made sometime after World War II, and weren’t expensive, nor rare. At least they hadn’t been in the 1950s. Now, of course, they were little more than a cheap collector’s item that, due to the passage of over half a century, had become harder to find.