Talk (The Alexandra Chronicles Book 4)

by Laura Van Wormer

  "Yeah, well, he's made a very nice living on the side here, too," Detective O'Neal said.

  "So that's what Jessica meant," Alexandra said to herself.

  "Listen," Agent Cole said, "I had another thought about those suspect lists. Someone around here mentioned that Jessica had her apartment renovated not long ago."

  "I did," Alexandra said. "It was about a year ago."

  "I think we need to check that out," Agent Cole said.

  "That's something we can get our guys on," Detective O'Neal offered.

  "Alexandra," Will said, looking at his watch, "you better get started on the computers. I'll get started with Detective O'Neal—"

  "Rich."

  "With Rich on the renovation angle. Wendy, can you help?"

  "Sure."

  "Okay," Alexandra said, moving to the door. "Let's see, I've got the Con Edison list, the contract workers list—“

  "And now you've got the visitors log, too," Agent Cole announced, hefting an enormous stack computer records and thumping it down on the table.

  Jessica set up the old wooden card table she had found in the parlor and opened one of the jigsaw puzzles. She popped in a videocassette—Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in Top Hat—and sat down at the card table facing the door. About halfway through the movie, she turned it off, went over to the cabinets to get some paper and pen, and sat down on the couch. Using the top of the puzzle as a lapboard, she wrote:

  Dear Leopold,

  I have a few questions

  1) Could you tell me which twelve hours are day, and which are night so I can get on some kind of schedule in here?

  2) Are you going to explain why I'm here?

  3) Can you give me some kind of time line for how long I'll be here so I can plan my regimen?

  4) Is there anything I can do to hasten my return home?

  Yours,

  Jessica

  She slipped the note under the locked door of the parlor, hoping it would go out to somewhere her captor would find it. Then she went back to her movie and her puzzle, feeling a little bit better.

  There would be a regimen in this place, all right. She would eat, sleep, exercise, meditate and pray. And most of all, she'd get ready to do whatever it was going to take to get out of here.

  16

  Her eyes opened.

  Jessica heard something and it was no scratching rat.

  It was human. And it was the sound of a human being in terrible pain. She sat up in bed, pushing the bedclothes to her waist. And listened.

  Nothing.

  She fumbled to find and turn on the bedside lamp. God. The red velvet and pink canopy and this whole place was like living in a nightmare.

  And then that sound. A moan, definitely human, definitely awful. She jumped out of bed and walked over toward the fireplace. It was louder here. She stooped down to move the books and pushed the swivel ash grate.

  This time she heard the moan clearly. It was coming through the ash grate. That meant someone was either down in the cellar or in another room that had a fireplace on this same chimney. And that someone sounded like misery itself.

  It sounded like a man. It couldn't be Leopold, could it? Sick or hurt?

  Now there was a cry and it wrenched at her. Whoever this was, she would have to try to help. Or get Leopold to help. She wished she knew the layout of this house.

  Fear started to gnaw at her.

  And then there was a strangled cry.

  "Pssst, hey!" she whispered loudly into the ash chute. "Hello!"

  Silence.

  "Are you all right?"

  There was a whimper and it made Jessica's flesh crawl. Whoever this was, he was in very bad shape. And then there was a voice, very faint, male. "Help me."

  "It's okay, I'm here. I'll find you. I'll help you."

  More whimpering.

  Could it be a child?

  No, it was a man. And he was delirious, and now he was making all kinds of horrible sounds. Jessica stood up and put her ear to the wall. Nothing. She opened the closet, pushed aside the clothes and pressed her ear up against the back wall. She could hear him. She stepped back, trying to look over the wall. She went back out and tried to move the bedside lamp closer so she could see.

  The closet wall wasn't plaster like the other walls in the apartment; it was plasterboard. The closet wasn't old, in fact; it had evidently been thrown up in some sort of reorganization of space. Judging by the width of the closet and the plaster molding along the top of the side walls, it appeared as though the closet might have been part of a hallway leading to another room, perhaps a sitting room. And maybe, she figured, whatever room that was had a fireplace backing up to this one.

  He cried out.

  Oh, this was awful.

  Well, she couldn't let the guy die without trying to help.

  But maybe it was Leopold. Why shouldn't she let him die?

  Because no one knows where you are and you can die in here.

  She went back into the bedroom and looked around. Her eyes traveled up to the long velvet drapes over the bricked-in windows. They were hung over a long thin bar of either wrought-iron or black steel (she never knew which was which). She dragged over a chair and climbed up to look. Then she went to the kitchen to get a stainless-steel knife and went on to the parlor for a brass bookend.

  Back in the bedroom she climbed up on the chair and started working on breaking the seal of who only knew how many coats of black paint on the rod and brackets. She was sweating profusely now; her neighbor's moans had stopped and she didn't know if that was good or bad.

  She finally pried the rod out of the brackets, which then came crashing down on her with the enormous drapes. She sat on the floor and slid the curtains off, coughing at the dust. Then she went to the closet, took a running start and javelined the metal rod into the back of the wall.

  It broke through.

  On Thursday morning, Studio B—Jessica's studio—was packed with the press.

  "It hasn't been this bad since O.J.," an ABC camera operator grumbled as a producer from the E Network stepped on his foot.

  The group settled down when Cassy, Langley, Jackson, Agent Kunsa and Detective Hepplewhite came out on the hastily constructed dais. There was a dark blue velvet curtain hanging behind them, and a lectern with the DBS logo on the front. To the side of the dais stood an American flag.

  "Good morning, good morning," Cassy said into the mass of microphones on the lectern. "Thank you for coming."

  The group quickly settled down. There were few in this room who did not know Cassy personally from her years in television and they were perhaps a tad more well behaved than they might have been otherwise.

  Cassy waited a moment more before speaking. Cleo had done a heroic makeup job to mask the circles under her eyes; Visine had done its best to deal with the red; nobody could do anything about the slight tremor in her hand.

  "We asked you to come today not only to tell you what we know about the abduction of our friend and colleague, Jessica Wright, but to implore your audiences for help."

  And then Cassy went into a general recap of what had happened, of Jessica's party, of her being abducted through the maintenance tunnel, the Con Edison truck, and the fact there had been no ransom note as yet. At the conclusion of the press conference, she said each member of the press would receive fact sheets on what they knew thus far.

  Then she introduced Detective Hepplewhite, who gave a brief summary of the manpower on the case. He, in turn, introduced Agent Kunsa, who addressed the cameras and implored the kidnapper to let Jessica go before anything happened.

  And then Langley stepped up to announce that DBS was offering a five-million-dollar reward for any information that led to the recovery of Jessica Wright, and he gave out an 800-number.

  Then Cassy stepped forward again and asked for questions. She pointed to an unfamiliar face in the second row.

  "Mrs. Cochran," the woman said, "there have been reports that Jessica staged this dis
appearance in order to publicize her new book. How do you respond to that?"

  "I respond," Cassy said without hesitation, "that anyone who would believe that must be a stupid idiot and desperate for ratings. Next question."

  There were hearty guffaws among the corps and Cassy pointed to another reporter.

  The questions were fairly standard, the who-what-when-why-and-where, and Cassy waited for a question that would make a natural lead into the statement Agent Kunsa said she absolutely had to make at this press conference. Finally, such a question came.

  A reporter from ABC was standing. "Cassy, have you heard from the kidnapper at all?"

  "No," she said. "With all the publicity, he—or they—couldn't possibly contact us without running the risk of getting caught."

  There, she had issued the dare to the kidnapper that Kunsa said she had to make. Leopold would not be able to resist it; and they desperately needed to make him contact them again. The more contact he made, the more they would know about him, and the greater their chances would be of finding him.

  Jessica knew one thing with certainty—whoever had constructed the closets between the rooms, it hadn't been Leopold. Otherwise he would have done something to fortify the back wall of the closet. Once she had punched through the wall a couple times, it was fairly easy to chip big hunks out of it. All the contractor had done was put up two two-by-fours, then he'd nailed some drywall up on one side, stuffed some insulation in there, nailed drywall up from the other side and slapped on some doors. Voila, back-to-back closets.

  Jessica had donned a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves from the kitchen and tied a T-shirt around her face as a mask against the asbestos fibers in the insulation. Over the course of the morning she set about breaking down the wall in earnest. The delirium resumed next door and the sounds were awful. Finally she had a hole big enough to use. She took the bookend with her as she climbed through and opened the door of the closet backing up to hers.

  If Jessica couldn't see him in the darkness, she could certainly smell where the ill man lay.

  "We're down to twenty-three names," Alexandra announced, striding into Cassy's office where the network president was sitting with Agent Kunsa and Detective Hepplewhite at the conference table.

  "We've got seventeen Con Edison technicians visiting West End in the last three months, five freelance electricians and technicians, and three executives with electrical engineering backgrounds. We've also got four names from the studio audiences that are connected with the power business, but the dates don't jibe at all, so we've put them to the side. These guys, though," Alexandra said, placing a computer printout on the table and pulling out a chair to sit down, "these twenty-three are possible."

  "We can check them the fastest," Detective Hepplewhite said.

  "It's all yours," Kunsa said, gesturing.

  Hepplewhite took the list and dashed out of the office, leaving Alexandra looking quizzically between Cassy and the FBI agent. "What's wrong? Jessica's not—"

  "No, no, nothing like that," Cassy said quickly. "No, it's just that we've had some puzzling news." She looked to Agent Kunsa.

  The FBI agent sat back in his chair, sliding his thumbs into the waistband of his slacks. "Our lab says Leopold's notes are from two different computer printers. Same typeface, but definitely two different printers. They also say that the paper is the same, but from two different reams. And then the shrink's report says the syntax between the two sets of notes is inconsistent."

  "Which means," Alexandra concluded, looking to Cassy, "that Leopold's notes are from two different people." She raised her eyebrows. "So? That would just confirm that more than one person is in on the kidnapping."

  "Or," Agent Kunsa said, "it means that the stalker, Leopold, and the kidnapper—who says he's Leopold—are two different entities altogether."

  Alexandra thought about this.

  "Which would mean," Cassy said, "that after the stalker started writing to Jessica, another party started to mimic him."

  “But if that's true," Alexandra said, frowning, "who kidnapped Jessica? The stalker or the mimic?"

  Jessica moved the bedroom lamp as close to the closet as she could in an effort to throw light into the room next door. She gingerly climbed back through the wall and made her way slowly in the dimness to the body that was curled up on the floor by the fireplace. Her heart skipped and her stomach lurched at what she found; a man whose face had literally been beaten to a pulp, a blood-congealed mess lying on his side by the fireplace, his hands and ankles bound behind him with razor-thin wire.

  From the blood-caked Dockers and black rubber boots, Jessica knew that this was the man who had abducted her from Rockefeller Center. Live by the sword, die by the sword, she thought. Only she had to push those thoughts aside. No one deserved to die like this, and death, indeed, could have only been the intended outcome.

  She needed more light. She couldn't see well enough to undo the wire. And even if she did have enough light to see by, his flesh had swollen over the wire and so the only hope would be to cut the strand that bound his hands back to his ankles.

  "What's going on?" Alexandra asked, arriving at her office and finding Wendy slumped over her secretary's desk.

  Wearily, the private detective raised her head. "That reporter is the biggest son of a bitch I've ever met in my life."

  "Craig Scholer?"

  "This guy is not only trouble, but a complete and total jackass. And he's angling to do a major hatchet job on Jessica."

  "Leave him to me," Alexandra said, jaw flexing as she looked toward her office. She glanced back. "Could you get Will? And Agent Cole? We might as well all hear what Craig has to say together."

  "Sure." Wendy paused. "He's got some pretty tough stuff. I'm not sure Will should hear it."

  Alexandra sighed, thinking. Then she said, "Of course he should hear it. He has to hear it." It seemed she was talking more to herself than to Wendy.

  The private investigator met her eyes. "You're sure?"

  "I'm sure. Go get him."

  Then Alexandra took a breath and went into her office. "Hello, Craig. What's up?"

  Craig Scholer gave a low whistle. "This is some chickeepoo, your Jessica Wright. Jessica Wrong is more like it." The fifty-plus investigative reporter sitting on her couch looked like a pile of rumpled laundry. He was smoking a cigarette and using an empty Coke can as an ashtray.

  Alexandra took her time sorting papers on her desk before she looked up at him. "Do you have any leads on the kidnapper?"

  "Have I got leads," he said.

  There was a knock on the door and Will appeared. Behind him was Agent Cole and Wendy. "Come in, you guys, sit down," Alexandra said. "Close the door behind you. Craig was just going to give me his report."

  Will pulled a chair over for Agent Cole and then took one for himself. Alexandra came around her desk to sit on the front of it, crossing her legs and leaning forward, resting her hands on the edge.

  Craig's eyes traveled the length of Alexandra's legs before he licked his lips and opened his notebook. "Well, I've narrowed it down for you," he announced. He looked up. "How much of that reward money do I get?"

  "We'll see, Craig," Alexandra said. "What do you have?"

  "What I have is a slew of guys this Jessica's fucked and dumped over the years."

  "Watch the mouth," Will said.

  Craig looked at him, chuckled to himself, and started again. "Okay, let's put it this way, Jessica has had many, many intimate friends and colleagues such as yourself, Will Rafferty."

  Will did not blink. "What do you have?"

  "I've got a Ronnie Perry," Craig said.

  Will glanced down to the clipboard in his lap and started looking though the papers.

  "She screwed this guy when she got here," Scholer said, "when she came up from Tucson. He's an electrician and was working on Studio B and she fucked him in the property room. Then she wouldn't have anything to do with him, and friends say he never got over it."


  "I don't remember his name on the list of twenty-three," Alexandra said.

  "What list of twenty-three?" Craig wanted to know.

  "He's on the master list," Will said. "You're right, Craig, he was a master electrician, worked on West End hookups. The only problem is," he said, looking up, "he's dead. Cerebral hemorrhage last year. What kind of friends of his did you talk to that they didn't know he's dead?"

  Craig grunted and turned a page in his notebook. "Then there's this black guy," he said. "Sam Wyatt. He's a married guy she'd been seeing on and off for—"

  "He's her AA sponsor," Will said. "Next."

  Craig looked at him. "Well, she's certainly not going to tell you if she's screwing some black guy."

  "Craig," Alexandra said sharply. "We all know Sam. Jessica's not involved with him except in the way Will said."

  "We checked him out, too," Agent Cole added.

  "What else, Craig?" Alexandra said.

  "You mean, who else? How about the pill-popping doctor ex-boyfriend? Jessica dumped the guy, he starts hounding her, starts popping pills left and right, has a psychotic episode at his practice, ends up spending three months in a rehab under the threat of losing his license to practice—"

  "We know all that," Alexandra said.

  "Gets out six months ago to face nearly one million dollars in debts," Craig finished.

  "What's that?" Alexandra said.

  "The only person to lose his shirt in the biggest bull market in history," Craig continued. "Let me tell ya, this guy's headed for hell in a hand basket. Hasn't paid child support in nine months, lost his apartment, his car, his boat, tried filing for bankruptcy but still has over three hundred thousand dollars in unpaid taxes. He's a mess. On the other hand, he's been to West End many times and the guy did get a degree from Columbia Medical School. Brainy. You know? He could figure out this electricity shit."

  Alexandra nodded. "I see your point. I don't think Matt's capable of this, though."

  "Would the fact that he seems to have disappeared change your mind?" Craig asked.