by Diane Capri
Jess stopped to listen. The house remained silent. She might have believed Norah Fender had gone out and left the light on to fool intruders. But no one leaves home with two saucepans cooking on the stove.
She ran to the range and turned off the gas burners. She grabbed a kitchen towel off the rack, doused it with water, and threw it over the flaming saucepan. It crackled and spat. She found another towel, soaked it, and threw it on top of the first.
Black smoke billowed out in suffocating clouds.
She held her hand over her nose and mouth and breathed as infrequently as possible while she threw cups of water over the cloths until the flames finally spluttered out.
She waved her hands, making an effort to disperse the smoke.
Jess pulled her Glock from her bag, placed the bag on the counter, and readied her weapon.
“Norah?” she called out, loud enough to be heard throughout the house. “I’m Jess Kimball. I let myself in because I saw your cooking catch fire.”
She stood and listened. The refrigerator whirred, and air breezed from the ventilation ducts, but she heard no voices nor creaking of floorboards or anything else to indicate where Norah was inside the house.
Norah Fender wasn’t a young woman. Maybe she’d had a stroke or a heart attack or something. She could be incapacitated somewhere.
Or she could be hiding from an intruder with a loaded gun, prepared to shoot.
Jess moved carefully into the hallway. One door on the right and two on the left. Stairs led upward on the right.
She stood to one side of the first door on the left and knocked. No response.
She pushed the door open with her foot. An overhead light illuminated the room. A reading light on a side table, beside a paisley print armchair. A book lay on the chair’s arm, upturned so the reader didn’t lose her place. A sofa faced the armchair, decorated in the same paisley fabric.
She saw that the second door from the hallway led into the same room. Someone must have knocked down a dividing wall to enlarge the living room at some stage in the home’s history.
Jess backed out of the living room. She moved carefully down to the door on the right and pushed it open. This one accessed a dining room. The table was bare. A cabinet displayed a collection of bone china plates adorned with birds.
Jess looked along the corridor. Kitchen, living, and dining room.
She looked up the stairs. Fender couldn’t be gone. Not with the stove on and food cooking. She’d been a nurse. Surely, she was more careful.
Jess looked down the corridor to the rear door. She couldn’t walk out. She’d searched half the place. If Fender had collapsed for some reason, she’d need immediate medical attention. Charlene would want to know every possibility had been checked.
She’d take a quick look and then call 911.
Jess put her foot on the first step. It creaked. She walked up, keeping close to the wall to reduce the creaking noises.
The landing was small, with three rooms leading off to each side. Two bedrooms and a bathroom, Jess guessed.
She opened the first door. The bed had been used, but the table surfaces were clear. No makeup or perfumes. No pictures, no keys, no phone.
No Norah Fender.
She looked out the window. No traffic on the street and no one walking past. The Crown Vic hadn’t moved. Charlene would be getting antsy.
Jess opened the closet. The clothes were bunched at one end of the rail. Odd. She moved them, but there was nothing behind. Three pairs of shoes were neatly arranged on a rack. A space for a fourth was unoccupied. Jess closed the closet.
While she was here, she worked her way through a cabinet. Like the closet, the contents were pressed against one end of the drawers. Decidedly odd. She returned the drawers to their original positions.
The second door on the landing was a bedroom, unused. She glanced around inside the closet, which was empty.
She walked back to the landing to check the last door, presumably the bathroom. The handle turned easily. The door swung inward. Weak light entered through a long, thin frosted window. She glimpsed white tiles and flipped the light switch.
She jolted backward at the sight.
Legs sprawled out of the tub. A woman’s body. The ankles bound.
Jess spun around, training the Glock along the landing and down the stairs and back to the bathroom. She stepped forward, into the bathroom.
A man’s gloved hand shot out from behind the door, grabbed her wrist, and pointed the gun down.
She wrenched her arm back.
The big hand gripped harder and pulled her forward, smacking her face into the corner of the door.
Pain ran up her nose and across her forehead. Stars twinkled in her vision.
She twisted her hand, struggling to break free.
The gloved hand repeated its maneuver, shoving her back and forward, slamming her face into the corner of the door. The door creaked with the impact. More stars and twinkling lights danced before her with glee.
Adrenaline flooded her system. She was alive, alert, running on pure fear. If she stopped fighting, if she gave up, she would die. She knew it.
She tried to curl up her hand, twisting the gun in the man’s direction behind the door. A second hand joined the cold iron grip of the first. It twisted the gun downward. The first hand wrapped around her trigger finger.
“Help!”
The man’s shoulder banged against the door, pounding it into her body. Searing pain shot through her nose. Her lips were wet with the metallic tang of blood.
The gloved hands squeezed. Crushing her fingers. Curling them around the Glock’s trigger.
She pushed back.
He had the advantage. Overwhelmingly.
The Glock fired. A single shot. Loud. Stunning in the small, tiled space. She wouldn’t let go.
The gloved hands levered her fingers back and forth until the Glock boomed again. The gun shook in her hands.
The world went silent except for a distant whistle. She shouted, but heard nothing.
She had no choice. Offense was her only defense. She threw herself forward into the bathroom, twisting the gun in the direction of the space behind the door.
She glimpsed a long black coat. One of the gloved hands let go and curled into a fist. She leaned left, but the fist stabbed toward her, slamming into her shoulder. She barely felt the impact as her body jolted back. The bathroom spun around her. Blacks and grays swirled. Diffuse blooms of color mixed with pinpricks of the brightest light.
She stumbled. Her knees gave out. She fell forward, trapping one arm under her.
She was on the edge of darkness. Trapped in her silent world. Warmth welled up to meet her, to scoop her up in its arms. She welcomed its embrace.
The man swept past her.
More sensation than sight. She waved her gun upward, but he was gone.
She rolled onto her knees and curled over, her head close to the floor. She felt thumping. Footsteps a long way off. The staircase.
She forced her head up with a grunt. The room spun. The sink and shower curtain spun wildly around her. The tub curled into the air, the lifeless legs flashing by. She braced herself with both hands on the ground, willing the world to still itself.
The distant, muffled footsteps reached the end of the stairs.
She took a deep breath. Her brain vibrated in her skull. Her nose throbbed. She grabbed the door handle and levered herself up.
She stumbled for the stairs. Muffled sounds as wood crashed and glass rattled. The backdoor. She grabbed the handrail and stumbled down the stairs. Her knees trembled as if they could give out at any moment. Adrenaline and determination kept her going.
She kept her eyes down. Focusing on the carpet. Directing her feet. Watching for the end of the steps. Twinkling lights continued to dance in her vision. All of them blinding white. She twisted her head to one side to reduce the ache in her left shoulder and keep the blinding light from spearing pain in her skull.
&
nbsp; She turned one hundred eighty degrees at the bottom of the stairs. He’d run out the back door. To the back yard. With the tall fences. She tightened her grip on the Glock. He’d be trapped.
No. That’s not right.
She shook her head, and the pain and lights sparkled again.
The only way out led to the front of the house, toward the street.
She’d get ahead of him.
She staggered to the front door, grabbed the lock, and twisted it open.
The door was heavy. It swung inward, pushing her back.
She clung to the handle to keep upright. The door slammed against the wall. The security chain whipped around and slapped the backs of her hands.
She stepped out. Two doors down, a man in a black coat was hurrying away.
Jess lifted her Glock. “Stop!” she screamed, but she barely heard her own voice.
The man ducked into a white car.
She squinted, trying to focus. The car’s engine roared, and the tires squealed. She staggered to the middle of the front lawn.
Her stomach heaved.
The man and the white car raced by.
She held her gun out, fighting to level her aim on the moving target.
She lowered her weapon. She couldn’t fire. Not wildly. Not in a neighborhood where bystanders could be hit.
Her sight line followed the Chrysler.
Charlene. In the street.
Charlene stood by the Crown Vic, her gun in her outstretched arms, pointing at the fast approaching white Chrysler.
The car fishtailed around her, the rear end striking a fence before roaring off down the street.
Charlene came running to Jess. “What happened? You all right?”
Jess lowered her Glock, and sank to her knees. The taste of blood filled her mouth.
Charlene knelt beside her. “You okay?”
Jess looked up. “Call 911. We need an ambulance.”
Charlene pulled out her cell. “Have you been shot?”
Jess rolled backward, twisting her legs underneath her, slumping onto the ground. Shot? The world danced around her.
Charlene dialed 911 and held the phone to her ear with her shoulder while she patted Jess down. “Have you been shot?”
Jess rolled her head from side to side and clamped her teeth together to hold back nausea. “No. Face. Shoulder. Punched.”
Charlene ran her hand over Jess’s forehead. “That man?”
“Yeah.”
“I heard gunshots.”
Jess gripped Charlene’s arm and pulled herself to an upright seated position. “There’s a body. In the bathtub. Upstairs.”
Charlene spoke into her phone. She gave her name and the street address, and she reported a shooting with injuries.
Jess grabbed Charlene’s hand and struggled to her feet. Her balance rocked, and her shoulder ached, and her head felt as if her neck had turned into a spring. She wiped the back of her hand under her chin. It came away bloody.
But she was alive. She’d be fine. Sore. Bruised. But fine.
Sirens sounded in the distance.
Jess labored her way to the front door. “We have to check. She could be alive.”
Charlene took Jess by the arm and steered her inside the house. Jess grabbed a handful of tissues from a box on a table in the hallway and patted them around her nose and mouth. The sight of giant blots of blood surprised her. The door had mashed her face, but the adrenaline had been an anesthetic.
Jess put a foot on the first step. Her knee trembled.
Charlene renewed her grip on Jess’s arm. “You going to make it?”
Jess grabbed the banister and lurched up the stairs.
The bathroom door was half open, the bathtub visible, the legs where she’d first seen them.
The chemical residue of gunfire was pungent in the air. Jess pushed the door open with her cuff. Her prints were already all over the house, but she didn’t need to make things worse.
But things were already much worse.
She sagged backward.
The body in the tub was female. The head was wedged between the taps at a right angle to the rest of the body. Her legs were too long for the bathtub and draped over the side. One arm was tucked under her, the other wrapped over her head. Long hair was matted and stuck to her face with dried blood.
Large blooms marred her floral dress. Ruby red. Blood on pastel.
Jess’s breath escaped her. She swallowed hard. “Gunshot wounds,” she muttered.
Charlene stared. Her eyes rigidly fixed on the body. “Fender?”
“It’s her house.”
Charlene stared.
Jess shook Charlene’s arm. “You okay?”
Charlene didn’t move. Jess shook her arm again. Charlene turned and hurried from the room.
Jess looked back at the bathtub. Her shock was wearing off, and welcome clarity was slowly returning to her mind.
Her attacker had twisted her hand until her gun pointed at the body and fired. He’d left her with the Glock. She had run into the street brandishing it like a mad woman. Witnesses were likely. Simple forensic tests would establish her gun had shot Norah Fender and Jess had been holding it at the time.
Jess’s hearing was coming back, too. She heard the wail of sirens and the screeching of tires out front as if from a great distance. And an almost constant ringing in her ears.
She put her hand on the wall for balance, and wobbled down the stairs to the front door. She laid her Glock on the table and walked outside.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
A trio of police cars pulled onto the street. They split, two parking in front of Fender’s house, the other on the far side of the road. Jess walked toward the pair of cars, and the officers jumped out, drawing their weapons.
Jess held her hands up by her shoulders. “I’m Jessica Kimball. I found the body.”
Three of the men entered the house, the other approached Jess. His name tag said Gonzalez. “You made the call?”
She shook her head. “Officer Charlene Mackie did. There’s a body in the bathtub. Upstairs. I was attacked—”
An ambulance arrived. Its siren warbled into silence. A man and a woman jumped out and ran for the house, large medical bags in their hands.
Jess shook her head. “She’s gone.”
“We’ll see,” said the female medic, and they bustled past into the house.
“There was a man…”
“Is he still inside?” Gonzalez asked, hand on his radio.
She shook her head again. “No. He ran out. Drove away.” She pointed in the direction the Chrysler had gone.
“Okay. Take it easy. We’ll find him.” Gonzalez placed a steadying hand on her right bicep. “Let’s get you some medical attention. And you can tell me all about it.”
“My bag is in the kitchen. My ID’s in there.” Even with her injuries, she recognized the problems. And she knew she wasn’t thinking straight. She could have a concussion. Or worse.
“Okay. We’ll get it.” Gonzalez sent a man to fetch the bag. He waved one of the paramedics over. “Go with him. He’ll take a look at you. Stay there while we sort this out. Then we can talk.”
The paramedic led Jess to the ambulance and helped her climb inside. She sat on a gurney. The paramedic cleaned the blood off her face and shined a penlight into her eyes. Jess winced and reflexively squeezed her eyes shut until he moved the light away. The paramedic made a note.
“Did you lose consciousness at any time?”
“No.” A loss of consciousness wasn’t necessary for a concussion diagnosis.
“Dizziness? Visual problems?”
“A little dizziness. Vision seems to be okay now. No vomiting.” The fewer symptoms of concussion she exhibited, the better. She didn’t want to be admitted to a hospital in Oregon today.
“How about confusion or amnesia?” The paramedic seemed to be reading from a list and looking for items to check off.
“I’m very clear on what happened
back there. No confusion at all.”
“Headache?”
“Not yet. Unless you count the throbbing from where he slammed my face into the door.”
The paramedic nodded and wrote that down, too. “You were in an enclosed space where two gunshots were fired. How’s your hearing? Any ringing in your ears?”
“Some. It’ll get better.”
“If you’re lucky. The damage can be permanent. You should be tested.” The paramedic made a few more notes and cleaned the rest of the blood off Jess’s face. He prodded her sore nose, feeling both sides, checking for fractures.
He put two butterfly bandages across the bridge of her nose and handed her an ice pack. “Hold this on your forehead and nose for a few minutes. Then take a break and hold it there a few minutes more. Let’s try to keep the bruising and swelling down.”
Jess did as she was told.
“You’ll need X-rays. Probably an MRI, too.” He made a few more notes. After a while, he left her alone. He took a medical bag and walked over to check on Charlene.
She was seated inside the Crown Vic talking to Gonzalez. Jess pulled out her phone. She was halfway through dialing her editor when she hung up and dialed Nelson.
He answered the phone himself, which was a little surprising. “Randolph Police.”
“Jessica Kimball. We’re in Castleford. South of Portland.”
“Who is ‘we’?” He didn’t give any hint that he’d heard from Gonzalez.
“We have a problem here.” She took a deep breath, ignoring his question.
“What kind of problem?”
“We went to Kid’s Own Medical Center. Turns out one of their nurses was charged with selling babies. She was convicted. Served some time.”
“You’re not making a lot of sense here, Jess,” Nelson said. “You think all of this is relevant to Peter Whiting?”
“The nurse’s name was Norah Fender. She signed Peter Whiting’s original birth record. She was the labor and delivery nurse.”
“I see,” he said again, although he didn’t seem to understand. “And you think that since Barbara Whiting can’t be Peter’s biological mother, this Norah Fender arranged a private adoption?”
“Maybe that. Or maybe an outright sale.”
