by Mike Omer
Satisfied, Zoe turned back to the list.
CHAPTER 30
Lily’s younger brother had been afraid of the dark when they were children. She’d mock him about it, call him a baby and a scaredy-cat. When their mother yelled at them to turn off the goddamn light and go to sleep, Lily would switch off the light and then start to hiss and growl like a monster until her brother would leap screaming out of the bed, only to be punished by their irate mom.
She wished she could go back in time and tell him that she understood now. That she finally realized the dark really was scary. Because when it was dark, really dark, you were left with only your imagination.
She moved her feet, trying to spot the movement, any movement at all, but she couldn’t. She wanted to wave her hands in front of her eyes—surely she would be able to see that. But her hands were twisted behind her back, the metal bite of handcuffs on her wrists. She trembled in the cold, terrible thoughts flooding her about what might happen to her soon. That guy . . . when she rode in his car, he had seemed so normal. So much better than most of her clients. At first, when he put the knife to her throat, she had almost believed it was a joke. A bad joke, sure, but still, a nice guy like that . . .
She’d heard stories, of course. Working on the streets, you couldn’t avoid them. Girls who disappeared completely or were found dead in an alley. But somehow, she assumed the girls had been careless, that they’d gone with the wrong customer, that they hadn’t paid attention to the warning signs.
Now, a bit late, she discovered some guys gave no warning signs. With those men, the first warning sign was the knife against your throat.
He had left the radio on in the other room. She suspected it was mostly to mask her screams. Not that she could scream so loudly anymore. The cold, hunger, and fear had sapped all her strength. The best she could do was moan and sob. The radio played some music, but it was mostly talk shows, the voices of the callers and the host muffled through the door. There were moments when she got confused, suddenly certain those were real people talking outside the door, and she screamed for help through the rag in her mouth, only to recall a second later that it was nothing but the disembodied voice of a person traveling on radio waves to drive her mad.
Something hummed, the sudden sound jolting her. She opened her eyes, realizing she had nodded off. There was a small buzz somewhere inside the room. A strange faded light glimmered, not far from her eyes.
By the time she understood what was happening, the humming had stopped, and the light had faded away, the room sinking back to blackness. It was her phone. Her other phone. She had seen him take her work phone from her handbag, but he must have left her personal phone in it. It was set on vibrate. Customers didn’t like it when her phone interrupted, so she always set it to vibrate when she was working. And the buzzing had been a call.
The handbag was discarded by her clothing. Far from where she sat. Too far. For a moment she struggled against the handcuffs that forced her hands behind her back. The handcuffs themselves were chained to the wall, preventing her from reaching her handbag. She pulled her hand, trying to escape the metal cuff around her wrist, feeling her skin rip painfully, tears springing to her eyes. Her shoulders slumped. It was impossible. The handcuffs were too tight.
The hum began again, the faint light of the device’s screen filling the room with a soft digital light. She could clearly see both her body and her handbag, discarded on the floor. Frantic, she stretched, trying to get her foot to touch the handbag. Perhaps she could pull it over somehow . . .
The hum stopped. Darkness. Toying with her, teasing, a hint of freedom inches away from her bare feet. There and then gone.
A thought suddenly struck her. How much battery did she have left? She had charged the phone before leaving. But she had been in this place for what felt like more than a day. What if her battery ran out? Her last glimmer of hope gone?
She began stretching in the darkness again, groaning. Her shoulder was about to pop out of its socket as she forced herself further, inch after inch, fumbling for the handbag with her toes, screaming with frustration and pain.
The hum began again, and in the light from the phone, she could see that she was almost there. Almost. Screaming into the rag, she pulled against the handcuffs, her skin tearing, shoulders burning, sweat drenching her body . . .
She managed to grab one of the straps of the bag with her toe, and she pulled.
The handbag fell aside, spilling its contents on the floor, her phone, by some divine intervention, facing up. Her eyes were immediately drawn to the battery mark on the screen.
Six percent.
The call stopped, the phone darkened, and Lily whimpered. She fumbled at the phone with her foot but couldn’t get a good grip. Breathing hard through her nose, she tried again. Her foot was barely touching the device. She kicked the phone a bit farther by accident and groaned fearfully. Had she kicked it too far?
The screen turned on again; the hum resumed. The battery indicator was at 5 percent. The phone was still within reach.
She slid her foot against the screen, cursing the design that required her to slide to answer the call rather than tap the screen. Over and over she tried to slide her toe across the screen, managing nothing, screaming herself hoarse.
CHAPTER 31
Zoe was almost finished prioritizing the list when Mel suddenly hissed, “Shit.”
Zoe raised her eyes to the detective. She gripped the phone hard, her eyes scanning the room and its three other inhabitants.
“Lieutenant,” Mel said sharply, “get over here.”
The tense tone got Martinez moving, and he stood up quickly and began crossing the room. Mel hit the speaker button on her phone.
Zoe frowned. All she could hear was the muffled sound of two people talking in the background. She couldn’t figure out what had prompted Mel’s reaction.
Mel hit the volume button, several times, increasing it to its maximum, and then said, “Hello?”
Nothing. Just the faded background noise of a faraway conversation.
“Hello? Lily? This is Detective Mel Parks with the Chicago PD. I just wanted to make sure that—”
Another sound. High pitched, tense, and unclear. A car wheel squealing? No, it kept going, rising and falling. And then, her heart sinking like a stone, Zoe understood what she was listening to.
Muffled screams.
Martinez reached the desk and listened. After a second, Mel said, “Lily? I need you to calm down and try to answer me. Is your mouth gagged?”
A moment of silence. Then a muffled response. It sounded like a woman trying to say, “Uh-huh.”
“Is there some way you can remove the gag from your mouth?”
“Uh-uh.” An almost imperceptible shift in tone, but clearly the answer was no.
“Do you know where you are?” Mel asked.
“Uh-huh.”
Zoe glanced at the list. Lily Ramos. Aged twenty, working as a prostitute, reported missing by her friend, who was supposed to meet her when the night ended. She’d been missing for a day, last seen trying to pick up a customer in the evening. She had been described as Caucasian, with almost no makeup, wearing a skirt and a long-sleeved blouse—relatively modest for her profession. She had only one tattoo, not visible when she was clothed—a black cat on her lower back. Zoe had marked her as number three on the list.
“Can you describe the man who took you?”
A muffled, frustrated grunt.
Martinez took control. Picking up the phone, he said loudly, “Lily, this is Lieutenant Martinez. Do you know the address you’re at?”
Since he had picked up the phone, the woman’s voice could no longer be heard, but after a second he nodded. “Okay. We’ll do this letter by letter. When I get to the right letter, I want you to stop me, okay? We’ll get you out of there. Here we go. A . . . B . . . C . . .”
In the background, Tatum was talking rapidly on the phone. He was trying to get someone in the FBI to
trace the call. He turned to Zoe and mouthed, Phone number.
Martinez’s voice droned on. “D . . . E . . . F . . .”
Zoe grabbed the list and rushed to Tatum, handing it to him, pointing emphatically at Lily’s phone number. Tatum gave her a curt nod, his face grave. He began reading the phone number to the man on the other side of the line.
Her fists were clenched. Her heart pounded, its rhythm aligning with the letters as Martinez spoke them.
“G . . . H . . . I . . . is it I? Is it H? Okay, good. Again. A . . . B . . .”
Zoe turned to Martinez and waved her hand at him frantically. He glanced at her, frowning.
“Vowels,” she said. If the first letter was H, the next one would be a vowel.
He paused, then nodded. He cleared his throat. “E . . . I . . .”
Mel was tapping on her keyboard furiously, the sounds merging with the voices of Martinez and Tatum.
“O . . . U . . .”
Zoe glanced over Mel’s shoulder on the screen. There was a list of names there. Street names. All starting with H.
“Is it U? Okay, good. Okay. Third letter. A . . . B . . . C . . .”
Mel hit the letter U, and the list shifted, displaying only the street names starting with HU. She frantically sent it to the printer, then dashed across the room to where the printer was located. Zoe clenched her fists, focused and alert as she listened to the one-sided conversation, a macabre version of the ABCs.
Mel grabbed two pages as they slid out, then jostled past Zoe and slapped the pages in front of Martinez. He stared at them, then nodded.
“Okay, Lily? Are you there? Good. Listen, I have a list of Chicago streets here starting with HU. I am going to read you their names, and you stop me once I get to the right one, okay?”
Zoe could imagine the woman grunting as she understood what Martinez said.
“Hubbard . . . Hubbs . . . Huber . . .”
Tatum stopped talking, and Zoe turned to him as he slammed the phone in its cradle. He strode to his own computer, tapping. A map of Chicago appeared on the screen. Did he have a location? She walked over to him, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow. He was looking at a Chicago neighborhood, but the scale was small. The location was far from accurate. She felt sick. She couldn’t imagine what Lily was going through right now.
CHAPTER 32
Lily listened to the man drone the street names. Too slow. Much too slow. Her eyes didn’t budge from the battery indicator. Two percent.
“Huck . . . Hudson . . . Huguelet . . .”
She wanted to shout at him to hurry up; the call would be disconnected any second. But she couldn’t stop him. Could only grunt.
“Hull . . . Humboldt . . . Hunt . . .”
He was nearly there. And then they’d have to get to the house number. Was it 3202? Or 3204? She wasn’t sure. Either way, it was a large number. How would she be able to convey the number to him? Her throat constricted in despair.
They’d have to do it digit by digit, she realized. Four digits. It could be done. The cop sounded intelligent; he’d figure it out. And then she’d have to give him the apartment number. Though probably once they had a house number, they could send some squad cars . . . she began to feel hopeful.
The battery indicator changed. One percent.
“Hunter . . . Hunting . . .”
She tensed. Almost there. She had to be alert. If she missed the street name, they’d never find her.
It was then that she realized she could no longer hear the radio outside her door. Instead, she heard footsteps approaching the door.
“Huntington . . . Hurlbut . . . Huron . . . Hussum . . .”
The door flung open, flooding the room with light, the silhouette of a man in the doorway. She barely noticed that Martinez had said the correct street name and gone right on, intoning street names in a calm, steady voice. She started screaming hysterically into her gag.
“Is it Hussum Street? Hello? Lily? Is it Hussum Street?”
The man walked forward, picked up the phone from the floor, and disconnected the call. He looked at her, trembling. He crouched down, and his hands shot forward, grabbing her throat.
His fingers squeezed. Hands tied behind her back, she could do nothing but squirm, trying to breathe.
CHAPTER 33
“Damn it!” Martinez shouted. “The call disconnected.” He hit redial, and after a second the prerecorded voice of a woman informed him that the number was not available.
“I have an approximate location from the cell towers,” Tatum called. “I have the map over here.”
Martinez rushed to Tatum’s computer, joining Zoe.
“It’s within one mile of 805 North Trumbull Avenue,” Tatum said, pointing at the map.
“Any streets there starting with HU?” Martinez asked, scanning the map. “There. Huron Street.”
He turned around and barked at Mel, “Get dispatch to send squad cars to Huron Street, now. We’ll try to get you a more accurate address.”
Mel was on her phone, already talking by the time he finished his sentence.
“Any way we can get more specific?” he asked Tatum.
“One mile from that address pretty much encompasses all of this part of Huron Street,” Tatum said, pointing at the screen. “I’ll talk to the cell company, try to get a better estimate.”
“He’ll make a run for it,” Zoe said, looking at the map. “And he’ll take her with him.”
“Why?”
“He’s not done with her yet. The women he takes mean a lot to him. He keeps each one for a week or more after killing them. He won’t give her up easily.”
“Tell dispatch to alert all squads,” Martinez shouted at Mel. “The suspect might be on the move. Stop any man walking alongside a woman or carrying sizable luggage. Stop all the cars on the street. We can’t let this guy get away.”
“He might manage to leave the area by the time they get there,” Tatum said.
“He’d have to be damn fast,” Martinez growled.
“He will be,” Zoe said. “And he’ll have the cover of darkness and the rain working for him.”
Martinez was nodding as he held his phone to his ear. “Sir,” he said to someone on the other side. “We know his approximate location, and he’s making a run for it. His victim might still be with him. Yes, sir. I need a helicopter and—”
There was a pause, and then Martinez said, “Yes, sir.” He hung up and hollered, “Get a helicopter up above that neighborhood. And I want roadblocks. Stop any car driving north from Huron Street to Chicago Avenue and any car going south from Huron to West Ferdinand Street.”
“He might go west, via Kostner Avenue,” Tatum said, scrolling the map.
“And a roadblock on the crossroad of Kostner and Pulaski,” Martinez called to Mel, who was rattling the instructions to dispatch. “We’ll get him.”
CHAPTER 34
He teared up as he dragged her body to the embalming table. That was what happened. That was precisely why so many couples broke up. Spouses cheating on each other, backstabbing each other, calling the police. Before he changed them, there could be no trust, no reliance. No real love.
He didn’t have much time, he knew, but he had to do this before they left, or their relationship would never last. The neighbors would complain about the smell again.
No, if he really loved her, he had to risk it all and do this. He made the incision, his fingers trembling. His hands worked fast, frantic, mixing the embalming fluid. No time to be accurate; he would just have to hope he got it right. How soon would they find him? How had he screwed this up? Why the hell hadn’t he checked if she had another phone? It was love. Love had made him careless.
He put in the tube and started pumping the liquid in. After a few seconds, he realized in frustration that he’d forgotten to make an incision for the drainage. He reached for the jugular vein, cutting hurriedly, and a spurt of liquid drenched him. Blood.
Damn, damn, damn. That damn woman and
her phone call—look at what she’d done to him.
He looked at her body, his heart broken. Her neck was a mess, a large rip where he had cut. Her wrists were completely mangled; she had hurt them badly when she’d struggled to get to her damn phone. She had bruises and scratches on her feet . . .
She had been so beautiful. And so innocent. Or at least that’s what he had thought.
The hell with the embalming. He would take her like she was. They could have a few wonderful days together, before she would have to leave. He removed the tube from her neck, another spurt of blood drenching his fingers and her delicate skin. Her entire chest was a mess. Frantic, he began dressing her up, struggling to put a shirt over her head. Was that the sound of sirens?
Damn it!
He picked her up. No time for her pants. Carrying her over his shoulder, he got into the garage. If he hadn’t had a garage available, he would have given up on her. No way he could walk out the door with the woman’s body on his shoulder, with the police out in the street.
He hesitated. Should he put her in the back or in the front seat? The cops might be less suspicious about a man driving with his wife in the passenger’s seat. But if they looked closely . . .
He popped the trunk, dumped her inside. Looked at himself in the side mirror.
He was covered in blood. He walked back to the workshop, washed his face and hands. There was a huge stain on his blue shirt, but perhaps in the dark it would be harder to see. He could hear more sirens. Time to go. Now.
He entered the van and opened the garage door. It rose slowly as he gritted his teeth. Come on . . . come on . . .
Finally, the door was open. He drove outside, headlights off. Closed the garage door behind him.
First things first. Get off the street. He quickly turned right on North Ridgeway Avenue, switching on his headlights as he did so. Just another man on the road, driving his van somewhere unimportant. No need for the police to check too close.
Above him, he heard a helicopter. The street flooded with bright white light behind him. He forced his foot to remain steady on the gas pedal. If he started speeding now, he’d be pulled over in no time. He had to stay calm. He would just drive up to Chicago Avenue, turn left, and drive home. There was no reason for the police to . . .
