Level Five

by Carla Cassidy

  He walked to the door and set the chair outside, then grabbed something and returned to the room. He tossed her a pre-packaged sandwich that had obviously been bought at a convenience store. “Sleep well, Edie. I’ll be back tomorrow.”

  He left the room and closed the door behind him. She heard the sound of a lock falling into place and then nothing. She didn’t know how long she remained unmoving, trying to process what had just happened, trying to swallow the fear of what might come next.

  In the brief encounter she’d just had with her captive she’d learned several important things. He was definitely unpredictable and dangerous.

  “Triggers.” It was Colette’s voice that spoke in the recesses of Edie’s brain. Edie had learned an important trigger just now…his mother.

  She had a feeling there would be others. She raised a hand to her cheekbone. The pain still radiated up and into the side of her skull.

  The information that frightened her the most was learning that there had been others before her. Where were those women now? She shoved away the vision of the tooth she had found. She didn’t want to know what had happened to the others. She feared the answer would start her screaming and once she started she wouldn’t be able to stop.

  Chapter 22

  Dawn brought dark clouds that obscured the ascending sun and a weariness held back only by the terror that simmered inside of Jake.

  The Detectives who had initially shown up to investigate had finally left with no real promise that they would return. There was no crime scene, no indication of foul play inside the house, no evidence that anything had happened that was out of the ordinary.

  Rufus’s poisoning couldn’t be directly tied to Edie’s disappearance. With the amount of time that had passed since Edie’s disappearance, they couldn’t write off the possibility that she’d simply left, especially when Jake had told them about the phone call the two had shared before she’d disappeared.

  Teddy had finally left at one in the morning, promising to return sometime this morning, hoping that by that time Edie would be home and contrite about all the fuss she’d caused.

  Jake had spent the remainder of the night tearing apart the house, looking for clues that might give him Edie’s location. As he’d searched through drawers, checked the tops of closets and rifled through her desk, he’d felt like a burglar invading a homeowner’s privacy, violating the privacy Edie clung to so tightly.

  In all the time he’d spent here, she’d allowed him only to hang his shirts and pants in her closet and full access to the kitchen. He’d recognized instinctively that everyplace else was off limits. But, he’d spent the wee hours of the night methodically searching everywhere, including the spare bedroom where she stored boxes of her books and copies of reviews and articles that had been written about her.

  The search was remarkable only in the things he didn’t find. No family photos, no sentimental knick-knacks, nothing to mark the space as belonging to Edie Carpenter, the woman.

  In his line of work, if he had come upon a suspect’s home that contained so few personal things, he would have made the assumption that the place was a front and that there was another place where the suspect surrounded himself with his personal treasures, with pieces of his past.

  There was nothing to indicate that Edie had a past in this house. The only part of her that had a place here was as Edie Carpenter, crime writer. So where were her other pieces?

  He now sat at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee, unsure what his next move should be. His eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep, but he couldn’t sleep, not until he found her.

  He was still seated at the table when Teddy arrived just after seven. “I can tell by looking at you that you haven’t slept,” he said as he walked over to the counter and poured himself a cup of coffee. “By the way, officially you’re on personal leave and I’m on the case.”

  Jake quirked an eyebrow in surprise. “I’m on the case, too.”

  Teddy sank down in the chair across from him. “Not according to brass. Of course they can’t really stop what you do in your spare time, like hanging around with me.”

  Jake took a sip of his coffee. Of course they wouldn’t let him work the case. He was too personally involved, too emotionally invested. By taking leave, Jake would be officially untied to the investigation but through Teddy, he wouldn’t be left out of the loop.

  “Have you eaten anything?” Teddy asked.

  Jake shook his head. “I’m not hungry.”

  “You know better than that,” Teddy chided. “You’ve got to eat. You need to catch some snooze time. You won’t be worth anything in another twenty-four hours if you don’t take care of yourself now.”

  Jake eyed his partner bleakly. “Another twenty-four hours? We’ve got to find her before then but I don’t know where to look. I can’t imagine what’s happened to her?” Thick emotion crawled up the back of his throat and he consciously swallowed it down.

  He couldn’t crack now. Somehow, someway he had to hold it together. He was a Detective, for Christ’s sake. Finding missing persons was part of what he did.

  Visions flashed before his eyes. Kelly Paulson. Maggie Black. His gut clenched tight. They were two women who had disappeared and he and Teddy hadn’t been able to find them. Edie couldn’t be another one. The idea was unacceptable.

  They both jumped as the phone rang. Jake shot up from the table and grabbed the cordless from its cradle on the kitchen counter.

  “Jake, it’s Colette. Has there been any word from Edie?” Her voice held the worry that screamed inside of him.

  Jake’s legs nearly crumpled beneath him. He’d hoped…he’d hoped what? That the call would be from a kidnapper demanding ransom? That it would be Edie on the other end of the line with some crazy excuse for her absence?

  “No…there’s been no word,” he replied.

  “You’ll call me if you hear anything?” Colette asked worriedly.

  “Of course,” he replied. When he hung up he remained standing by the cabinet, too restless to sit any longer. He stared at Teddy. “You’re the only one they’ve assigned?”

  “Jake, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours yet. Decker was doing you a personal favor by giving you three of us yesterday because of Rufus. You get me full-time today because of Edie. Edie isn’t a minor. You know normal procedure is that we don’t investigate a person who has been missing less than twenty-four hours.”

  “But we have reason to be concerned about her welfare,” Jake replied, his voice rising with frustration, with fear that threatened to consume him.

  Teddy’s cell phone ring halted Jake further venting. It was impossible to tell who was on the other end of the line by Teddy’s curt reply.

  When he hung up, he stood from the table. “That was tech support. They’ve managed to triangulate Edie’s cell phone signal.”

  Jake’s entire body tensed. “Where?”

  “Someplace nearby…within a mile radius of where we’re standing.”

  Jake’s heart sank. He’d hoped that wherever she was she had her phone with her, that she’d be able to use it to call him. “I spent the whole night going through the house. The phone isn’t inside.”

  He walked to the window and stared out into the backyard and to the woods beyond the fence. He no longer believed it possible that Edie had left here on her own volition.

  Attempting to separate his own personal emotions from his professional acumen, he closed his eyes and reached to find the answer to what had happened?

  Something or someone had poisoned Rufus. It was Edie’s routine to let the dog out to run around the yard while she attended to other things in the house. Had she let Rufus outside and then gone to make the bed? Had she run the vacuum or dusted and then looked out the back window and seen Rufus down?

  He knew her first reaction would be to run to Rufus. But something had stopped her from getting her beloved dog help. Whoever took her had grabbed her then, outside the house in the yard.

>   He had no idea how the perp had overwhelmed her, but in his mind’s eye he could imagine the person grabbing Edie’s cell phone from her pocket where she usually kept it and tossing it over the fence.

  He turned back to look at Teddy. “We need to search the back yard and then the woods. My gut instinct is that we’ll find it somewhere there.”

  Teddy nodded. The two men had worked together long enough that Teddy knew not to ignore Jake’s gut instincts. “I’m going to call Decker and ask for more men to help with the search. That’s a big wooded area.”

  Jake nodded, grateful that Teddy didn’t state the fleeting thought that swept through Jake’s mind…that the phone was still in Edie’s pocket and someplace out there in the woods, they’d find her body.

  The dinner with Anthony left Susan wanting more. He seemed distracted and in a rush. Things had been going so well between them but the past week she’d become a little concerned.

  They’d been seeing each other long enough and she was so sure of her feelings for him that she was ready to take the relationship to the next level. At least he’d kissed her when the meal was ended and they’d left the restaurant, a long, lingering kiss by the side of her car.

  Hope had sprang back into her heart by the fever she’d felt in his lips as they’d played against her own. She wanted it so badly, she wanted him so badly. He was everything she’d dreamed of in a man, everything she wanted in her future.

  Their meal had been finished by six and he’d left the restaurant parking lot as if he had a plane to catch. Susan had remained in the parking lot, reliving that kiss over and over again.

  She wanted to make love with him. She had a feeling he would be a tender, gentle lover. He had long, slender fingers that looked specifically as if they’d been made to stroke the length of a woman’s body.

  A shiver worked through her at the thought. Her parents would soon be celebrating their thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, certainly a milestone in this era of throw-away relationships.

  She wanted that. She wanted what her parents had, a solid marriage that would mature with age, one that would find her with her husband at the end of her life. And she wanted that with Anthony.

  Finally shoving her fantasies away, she started her car engine, but instead of heading home on impulse she headed in the opposite direction.

  Anthony had been such a gentleman. He hadn’t even tried to do anything sexual with her. The kiss he’d given her just now had been the first time she’d tasted real hunger from him.

  As she drove she thought of what her friend, Peggy Winters had told her, that computer geeks needed a naked boob thrown in their face to recognize that a woman was ready for sex.

  She giggled at the visual picture of herself doing that to Anthony. Of course, she’d never do anything like that, but she needed to give some sort of signal to him that she was ready for more, ready to deepen what they had into a full-blown sexual relationship.

  As she continued to drive the businesses on the sides of the street became few and far between as the area took on a rural feel.

  She’d map quested directions to his house weeks ago but had never actually driven there. She imagined showing up on his doorstep naked under a coat and with a bottle of wine. That’s what would happen in one of the romantic movies she loved to watch.

  But it was a hot early July, definitely not coat weather. And in any case she just wouldn’t be able to summon the courage to do something like that. Still, she could show up sometime with a bottle of wine and some cheese and crackers. One thing would lead to another and she’d be thrilled to death.

  Mentally checking the directions she’d memorized, she turned left on a county road where the houses were built some distance from the road on acres of land.

  Renovating an old two-story house sounded so charming and from what little he’d said about the renovations he was taking his time and doing it right. The place would probably be a showcase when he was finished.

  She slowed her speed as she realized she was approaching his place. As she saw the mailbox at the end of a long driveway that held his address, she stopped the car and looked up the long lane.

  It was difficult to make out too many details from so far away, but it looked like a nice house. The yard around it was neatly cut and his car was in the driveway in front of a detached garage.

  She fought the desire to turn in, to surprise him by visiting. The timing wasn’t right. After all, he’d just left her at the restaurant. At least she knew he’d hurried home and not left to go on to another date with another woman.

  Surely he wasn’t that kind of man. Nothing she’d learned about him had indicated he was the type of man who would two-time a woman, toy with somebody’s affections.

  Slowly she pulled away from the curb. Soon, she thought. Soon she’d buy that bottle of wine and show up here to surprise him. She’d make sure it was a Saturday night so that they wouldn’t have to hurry to work the next morning. They could spend a leisurely Sunday, have breakfast together and perhaps an encore performance in bed before she left.

  A shiver of sweet anticipation swept through her. She knew in her heart, in her very soul that Anthony was the man who was going to change her life forever.

  The meal with Susan had been a necessary evil. Anthony had endured it with a simmering need to get home, to get to Edie.

  When he opened the door to the paper room she straightened to a sitting position, her eyes wary as he carried his folding chair into the room. He noted the bruise on her cheek and knew he had inflicted it on her but he couldn’t remember the precise moment it had happened.

  That was the problem with his rage. Sometimes he had no control over it. That’s when his projects usually came to an end. He didn’t want this one to end, not until she’d had enough time to fix him. He had to keep control.

  “Good evening, Edie,” he said as he sat in his chair.

  “Is it evening?” she asked. “It’s difficult to tell with the windows all covered.”

  Her voice was soft, her eyes holding both a hint of defiance and fear. He liked that. She wouldn’t break as easily as the others, who had all too quickly begged for death.

  He looked around, comforted by the mounds of paper and irritated by his own comfort. Like her. He’d become just like her, the woman he’d both hated and loved with every fiber of his being.

  Once again he focused his gaze on Edie. “My mother was a level five hoarder. The National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization identifies a level five as the worst kind.” He was aware of the tightening in his chest that always accompanied these sessions, although he was encouraged by the fact that Edie wasn’t crying, wasn’t begging for him to let her go like the others had done before her.

  He’d known she was different, that she would be the one to finally bring him peace, to finally fix what his bitch of a mother had done to him.

  “It wasn’t until I was school age that I realized it wasn’t normal to have to crawl between piles of crap to get through your front door. I didn’t realize it wasn’t normal to have to dig out a tiny spot amid trash to sleep. Every day at school the kids would make fun of the way I smelled, but I couldn’t smell the filth on myself.”

  He paused, waiting for her to say something. She remained silent, watching him with those eyes that were so like hers. He realized at that moment that if she looked away, if she broke eye contact with him his anger would take hold.

  His mother had never looked at him, she’d been too busy admiring her treasures. If she happened to look in his direction, it was with an impatient, dismissive glance.

  She’d always made him feel as if he was the one piece of trash she’d dragged home that she wished she could take back to a dumpster.

  Edie held his gaze, her body tensed. He knew she was wondering what came next. So was he. Part of the process of working with the projects was unpredictable because he knew that his rage was unpredictable.

  But already Edie had surprised him, not reacting in th
e way that the others had. She wasn’t screaming and slobbering for her life, rather she appeared to be listening. She seemed to be hearing what he had to say.

  “Are you afraid?” he asked suddenly.

  “Yes.” She answered without hesitation.

  He nodded, satisfied that she hadn’t shown any false bravado but had been truthful. If she lied to him he’d hurt her.

  He saw the small plastic wrapper from the sandwich he’d given her the night before. “You ate your sandwich.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Are you hungry now?”

  “Yes.”

  He got up from the chair and went into the kitchen and grabbed the sandwich and orange he’d bought for her at a convenience store on the way home after having dinner with Susan. He went back into the paper room and tossed them both to her. “You can eat now.”

  “Thank you.”

  He frowned as he watched her unwrap the sandwich. He didn’t want to talk about her appetite. He wanted to talk about his mother, about his horrible childhood. He wanted her to know, to understand that some people might think he was a monster, but more than that he was a victim.

  More than anything the balled up plastic from the sandwich she’d eaten the night before irritated him. Didn’t she know that plastic could be used again? That it shouldn’t be balled up like trash but straightened out and neatly folded?

  “If you don’t mind, I’ll eat the orange later,” she said as she finished the last of the sandwich and balled up the wrapper in her hand.

  Tension pooled in the pit of Anthony’s stomach, a tension that built with each breath he took. The plastic. It didn’t belong on the floor scrunched up like that. That’s the way she had done things.

  He’d lived in a sea of chaos because she’d been too lazy to make order. A place for everything and everything in its place. That’s what made him different, that’s what made him better than her.

  He could stand the sight of the plastic no longer. He jumped out of his chair and stalked over to the two plastic wrappers. He leaned down and snatched them up, vaguely aware of Edie pulling her knees to her chest and lowering her head into a defensive position.