Midnight Betrayal

by Leigh, Melinda

  What was happening?

  A shadow loomed over her. A knee pressed into her back, shoving her face into the seat. The weight holding her down sparked a surge of brain-numbing panic. Before she could move, something bound her ankles. Her hands were pulled behind her back and fastened together. In seconds, she was effectively kidnapped.

  The weight moved off her back. Unable to control her body enough to even turn her head, she caught the driver’s back in her peripheral vision. She couldn’t see his head, but the figure was too tall, too thin. It wasn’t the short, stocky driver from the Rittenhouse. Then who was it?

  The door closed. Her captor got into the driver’s seat. The quiet snick of the door locks made everything fall into place.

  Oh my God. Fear slammed through her with the same jolt of electricity as she realized the truth. The police had arrested the wrong person as the murderer.

  31

  The back room at the veterinary clinic smelled like dogs and disinfectant. Conor stared at the plastic pouches of coffee-colored liquid spread on the stainless-steel tray. “What is that?”

  Standing next to him in pale blue scrubs, the vet scratched her head. “We aren’t positive, but we suspect drugs.”

  “Drugs.” Events and information clicked into place like the tumblers in a lock. “And you took them out of Kirra’s stomach?”

  “Yes.” The vet gestured to the packs. “There have been several other recent cases of liquid heroin and cocaine being transported inside animals.”

  “Liquid heroin.” It made perfect sense. Hector had been way too determined to get Kirra back.

  “Yes. Kirra is a lucky dog. If one of those pouches had burst, she would have died.”

  “But you said she’s going to be OK.”

  “She is.” The vet nodded. “The police are on the way. Since she’s your dog, you’ll need to stay and talk to them. Do you want to see her while you wait?”

  “Yes.” Relief coursed through Conor as his gaze swept over the pitiful dog. Her belly was shaved. A long row of stitches closed an eight-inch incision. An IV line was taped to her foreleg. The line snaked out of the metal cage and attached to the bag of fluids hanging on the bars above the door.

  The vet opened the cage door. “You can pet her.”

  Conor reached in and stroked the dog’s head. Her eyes opened. Her tail stub jerked in a weak wag the second she caught sight of him.

  “I spayed her since she was under anesthesia anyway. She’ll need to stay here overnight,” the vet said.

  “Thank you.” Conor checked his messages but saw none from Louisa. A sliver of apprehension slid through his gut. She’d been waiting for word on Kirra.

  The next hour was spent answering questions for the police report. The cops verified the pouches were likely full of liquid heroin. They’d had several other cases of drugs being transported in animals recently. It was seven o’clock before Conor finished. He left the vet’s office. Pulling out his phone, he hurried toward the bar. He left a message on Louisa’s cell phone and sent her another text. Something was wrong.

  He went into Sullivan’s.

  Behind the bar, Pat set a freshly drawn draft in front of a customer. “Is everything all right?”

  “The dog was full of heroin packets.”

  Pat’s eyes widened. “Holy shit. No wonder that kid wanted her back so much.”

  “Yeah.” Conor’s gaze swept the bar. “Louisa hasn’t been in?”

  “No.” Pat took an order and tilted a tall glass under the tap. “Was she supposed to come here?”

  “No, but I haven’t heard from her. She was worried about the dog. She should have called me right after work.” Conor paced the length of the bar. “I’m going to drive over there.”

  “Go.” Pat straightened the glass. A perfect head of foam topped the amber liquid. “Text me when you find her, all right?”

  “Yeah.” Conor headed out the back door. Was it just this morning that he’d found Hector bleeding in the alley? Seemed like much longer. His Porsche was parked on the street at the end of the alley. He started the engine. His phone chirped as he pulled away from the curb. He didn’t recognize the number.

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Sullivan?” a familiar voice asked.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Gerome from the Rittenhouse.”

  Conor’s heart double tapped.

  “The police have already been notified, but I wanted you to know too,” Gerome said. “You know Dr. Hancock arranged for the car to pick her up after work.”

  “Yeah. I was there.”

  “Right. When she didn’t come home right after work, I thought maybe she wanted to stop somewhere. But we just found our driver in the men’s room utility closet. He was tied up. Someone zapped him with a homemade stun gun. His uniform and the car are missing. Dr. Hancock isn’t in her apartment.”

  Conor’s heart dropped into his stomach. “Someone stole the town car?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you try Dr. Hancock at the museum?”

  “She left two hours ago.”

  “I’ll be right there.” Conor floored the Porsche. Weaving in and out of traffic on Front Street, he dug Detective Jackson’s card out of his wallet. He left his name and number on the cop’s voice mail with a simple message. “Louisa is missing.”

  Two patrolmen were questioning the driver when Conor ran into the Rittenhouse.

  Gerome paced the lobby.

  “Does he remember anything?”

  “No.” Gerome stopped and shook his head. “Someone zapped him as he came out of the stall. Whoever it was dragged him into the utility closet, stole his clothes and keys, and tied him up.”

  One of the cops walked over. “Are you the boyfriend?”

  “Yes.” Conor gave him his personal information. “Do you have any clues? What about tracking the GPS in her cell phone?”

  “The town car is fitted with a GPS. We’re trying to get a position on it now.” The cop looked grim. “Her purse was found in the street in front of the museum. Her phone was inside.”

  Pacing, Conor dialed the museum, but the after-hours message played. He tapped Gerome on the shoulder. “I’m going to the museum. Call me if anything happens here?”

  “Will do,” Gerome said.

  A police cruiser was parked at the curb in front of the museum. An officer was in the foyer, talking to the guards and a tall man Conor recognized from the fund-raiser as Louisa’s boss. Conor banged on the door. Cusack opened it.

  Conor pushed his way inside and introduced himself. “Where’s Louisa?”

  Cusack crossed his arms over his chest. “The police are reviewing the security camera footage. The guard saw Dr. Hancock walking toward a black sedan about fifty yards down the street. That’s all he saw. It was rush hour. Most of the office staff was heading out. We’re not open on Monday nights.”

  A second cop hustled down the hall.

  “Are you familiar with the museum murder case?” Conor asked.

  “Every cop in the city knows about the case,” the cop said and then turned to Cusack. “Did anything unusual happen here today?”

  “The whole office was out of sorts. Between the news that Isa Dumont had disappeared and Professor English had been arrested, everyone was in shock.” He paused. “I doubt that it’s connected, but just before she left, Dr. Hancock brought a box to my office. She claimed to have found it in one of the third-floor storage rooms. We’ve had a petty thief in the museum over the past few weeks. The box contained some of the items the staff had reported missing. I called the detectives in charge of the case. They weren’t available, so I left a message.”

  “Would you show us the box?” the cop asked.

  “Of course.” Cusack led them to his office. “We changed cleaning contractors this week in hopes that w
ould solve the problem. The things seemed to go missing at night.”

  Conor and the cop looked into the box of random personal items.

  The cop pulled gloves out of his pocket and lifted the museum brochure onto the desk. He opened it, and a pile of papers fell out, including what appeared to be a map printed off the Internet. “It’s a map.”

  Conor pointed to a fat line on the map. “The expressway.” He moved his finger to tap two wavy squiggles. “The Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers.”

  They identified other landmarks.

  “I wonder what these stars mean?”

  “They’re numbered. One and two are in North Kensington. Number three is in West Philly. Number four is in Camden.” Conor squinted at the tiny marks.

  The cop looked over Conor’s shoulder. “Those aren’t the best neighborhoods.”

  “Wait. The first two bodies were found in North Kensington.” Conor’s heart clenched. The blood it pumped through his veins turned refrigerator cold. “Number three must be Isa. Louisa is the fourth victim. That means she’s in Camden.”

  “I think you’re right.” The cop reached for his radio and turned toward the corridor.

  Camden, New Jersey, then. It had to be.

  But what if he was wrong?

  “You need to talk to Detectives Jackson and Ianelli,” Conor shouted after the officer. He grabbed the map, carried it out of the director’s office, and ran off a copy at the machine next to the secretary’s desk. He hit the hallway running before the cop turned around. He read the map as he bolted down the main corridor and through the lobby.

  “Wait!”

  Conor stopped and turned.

  “They located the town car,” the officer shouted down the hall. “In the Delaware River.”

  Conor paused, terror freezing his feet in place for a few long seconds. No. He couldn’t believe she was dead. He wouldn’t be able to function. She couldn’t be gone. “Was anyone inside?”

  “Not that they could see,” the cop yelled. “They won’t be able to open the trunk until it’s pulled out of the water.”

  Conor ran out on the implication that Louisa could have been in the trunk. His Porsche was still illegally parked out front. He jumped in and roared away from the curb. Detective Jackson hadn’t called back. Conor headed toward the Ben Franklin Bridge. He raced down Market and made a left onto Fifth Street. The bridge loomed bright in the night sky, its lighted frame spanning the Delaware River. Somewhere on the other side of that dark width of water, Louisa faced a killer.

  The car door opened. Louisa lay on the seat. She’d managed to roll onto her side, but the ride had been short, not even long enough for her to regain complete use of her body after the electrical shock. She blinked, temporarily blinded by the vehicle’s interior dome light. Outside, everything was dark.

  Her captor leaned in. The light glittered on a knife. Louisa pulled her legs up and kicked out. Her feet connected, and she knocked the figure backward.

  “You bitch.”

  Louisa froze. She knew that voice. But it was impossible.

  A knife flicked out, severing the thin plastic tie that bound Louisa’s ankles. A gun was pointed directly in Louisa’s face. “Get out of the car.”

  Shock paralyzed Louisa. Had her ears been affected by the electricity?

  “Now.” The gun shook with erratic motions.

  Louisa wiggled to the edge of the seat and sat up. A fiery pins-and-needles sensation burned through her feet as she flexed her ankles. Her bound hands behind her back impeded her movements. With an awkward heave, she lurched to her feet. Dizziness swirled in her head. She had to be wrong. She squinted into the darkness.

  “Move.” The figure motioned forward with the muzzle of the gun. Louisa looked up at a crumbling old row home. In the darkness, all she could see was the outline of the building against the sky. The roofline appeared to have significant gaps. A dog barked in the distance.

  With a prod from the gun, Louisa stumbled into a narrow alley that ran between buildings. With the muzzle pressing hard into her back, she climbed three cement steps and pushed open a door. Her mind reeled. The stench of garbage and human waste assaulted her nostrils as she crossed an unstable floor, the wood creaking and shifting under her feet. She walked toward a faint glow. A doorway led to a wooden stairwell.

  “Downstairs.”

  The shove sent her tumbling. She flipped once. Her head struck a tread, and the faint light faded to blackness.

  Camden, New Jersey, jockeyed with Detroit and Flint, Michigan, for the highest per capita murder rate in the nation. With boarded-up factories, plenty of vacant row homes, and crack houses, Camden was a model of urban blight. After Conor passed the demolished Sears building, he exited Admiral Wilson Boulevard onto Martin Luther King Boulevard. Once he drove through the public facade of Camden, the refaced buildings and inset brick crosswalks that marked the new city center, he emerged into the heart of the city, a heart that could use a thousand-way coronary bypass.

  Conor pulled over and turned on the dome light. He counted the streets past Broadway, drove through three more intersections, and turned right. Before he navigated the next two turns, he turned off his headlights and crawled forward in the dark. The Porsche bumped along. The paved-over backstreet was worn down in spots to its original cobblestones.

  Boarded-up row houses lined the street. An occasional chain-link fence corralled God-knew-what. Buildings slated for eventual demolition were tagged with red-and-white signs. A house with fresh paint on the door and flowers in urns on the step was the saddest sight of all, a sign that someone cared. The streetlights were dark. Half the lots were vacant and knee-high with weeds. On the left, a six-foot rusted privacy fence ran the length of the street. Dogs barked behind it.

  Several wrong turns wasted precious time. The star on the map was just up the block. Conor pulled over behind a Dumpster.

  He called Detective Jackson again, this time leaving a detailed message with the address of the mapped star. The Philly cops would have to coordinate with the Camden police. Conor didn’t have time for any of that bullshit. If Louisa was here, he’d find her.

  Then he got out of his car, opened the trunk for the tire iron, and headed toward the boarded-up brick row home halfway down the block. He paused, hiding behind a rusted Cadillac on blocks, and sized up the house. Bricks crumbled. Graffiti covered most of the surfaces.

  Tire iron in hand, Conor crept toward the side of the house. Like all the others, the side window was boarded up.

  Sweat trickled down his back, and his heart thudded, loud as a bass line. But now was his chance to check inside. Moving toward the rear of the building, he climbed the cracked cement stoop and checked the door. Unlocked. He pulled it open. The inside was beyond dark. No moonlight penetrated the boarded-up windows. He stepped to the side and listened, easing the door closed behind him. The inside of the house was dead silent. He didn’t even hear any rats or insects rustling around.

  He gave his eyes and ears a few minutes to adjust, but he still couldn’t see six inches in front of his face. There was zero light for his desperate pupils to absorb. Conor pulled his phone out of his pocket, held it an arm’s length away, and turned on the screen. Nothing attacked him. He let out his breath. He brightened the display and swept it around the space. More graffiti tags decorated the walls. Trash, a rotted mattress, and bottles littered the floor. The odors of feces and urine burned his nostrils. He shined his phone at the floor. Something had been dragged through the dirt. Stepping around a scattering of used needles, Conor followed the path to a doorway. Stairs descended into the black cellar.

  He turned up his phone’s brightness to maximum and started down the steps.

  Pain lanced behind Louisa’s eyeballs and swelled in her temples, radiating downward through most of her body. She cracked an eyelid to total darkness. Judging from the hard cold
ness seeping through her clothes, she was lying on cement. A basement? Curled on her side, she wriggled, but she could barely move. Her hands and feet were bound and fastened to something solid behind her back. She tried to open her mouth but couldn’t. She moved her lips. Something sticky tore at her skin. Tape.

  Where was she? What had happened?

  As she lay still, a memory pushed past the agony in her head. The museum. She’d gotten into the town car and . . .

  The memory—and all its associated betrayal—clarified in her mind.

  Fear and nausea rose in her throat. She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose, willing her stomach to settle and her panic to subside, but hysteria bubbled inside her chest. Perhaps choking on her own vomit would be preferable to what lay ahead: multiple stabbings, a knife slicing through her throat, fire eating at her flesh. The wounds on Riki’s body played in her own private slideshow.

  How much would it hurt to bleed to death?

  A wave of grief spilled over her. Conor. She’d finally fallen in love, finally found a good man, only to die before they could enjoy any happiness. Before he even told her he loved her.

  Did he? Would he be devastated by her death?

  A scuffing sound prompted the involuntary reopening of her eyelids. A floorboard creaked overhead. She strained to see something, anything, in the darkness. A faint glow descended toward her. She blinked to clear her blurry vision. There were stairs on that side of the room. With another bout of queasiness, she remembered tumbling down, her head striking a tread, her vision blackening.

  The light flickered over her. She closed her eyes and braced herself for more pain. Fear swept through her. Her numb, restrained limbs trembled.

  “Louisa?”

  Conor!

  Relief rolled over the pain in her head. The glow crossed the cement toward her. He set his cell phone on the floor beside her and checked her binds.