Bettinger landed in the parking lot of the rose-colored apartment building in which the woman lived, locked his car, and walked along a cracked stone path that divided two rectangles of dead grass. His stomach growled, clamoring for something more substantial than a protein bar or coffee.
“Be patient.”
As he reached the entrance, the door swung open, and he seized its handle. A short white woman who had spiky black hair, a pierced nose, and a puffy lime green jacket emerged, glaring at the detective.
“Police,” said Bettinger, displaying his badge.
“Do you have a warrant?”
“Sure I do.”
The detective walked past the woman and entered the lobby, which was decorated with frosted mirrors that might have been fashionable in the 1980s for a period of one week. Three plump cats slept in the corner near a radiator, and the detective envied their simple existence.
“This is a privately owned building,” the woman proclaimed from the doorway. “You can’t just come in here because you want to.”
“It’s amazing what I can’t do.” The detective fingered the elevator button.
“That badge doesn’t make you omnipotent.”
“Let me get a dictionary.”
The elevator door opened, and Bettinger entered a sarcophagus of frosted mirrors, where he was soon joined by the irate woman.
“You don’t have anything better to do?” asked the detective.
“You don’t have permission to be here. I want to make sure you don’t damage anything or anyone or plant any evidence.”
“Should the police department expect another donation from you this holiday season?”
“My partner’s father works for the city, so I know the kind of shit you guys pull.”
Bettinger wondered to what extent the Victory police force actually deserved their terrible reputation. As his adversary withdrew her cell phone from her lime green jacket, he fingered the fourth-floor button.
“My wife thinks my left side’s handsomer—though you’re the director.”
The door closed, and the elevator shuddered.
A digital image of the woman’s black boots appeared on her cell phone, as did a movie camera icon. “I won’t get in your way,” she announced. It was obvious that she was a very accomplished tattler.
The elevator stopped and opened. Bettinger entered a light blue passageway, and the spiky-haired woman followed after him, keeping her distance.
A dozen strides brought the detective to a door that wore the number 705. There, he paused and looked at the director, who was fifteen feet away from him. “What’s my line?”
No suggestions came from the woman.
Bettinger returned his attention to the door and rang the bell. Inside the apartment, something heavy thudded upon the floor.
“It’s the police,” announced the detective. “I’d l—”
“I didn’t call the police.” The voice belonged to a young woman who sounded distraught.
“Are you Melissa Spring?”
“Her roommate.”
“When was the last time you saw Melissa?”
“Go away.”
“I’m a detective, and I’d like to talk to you.”
The woman inside the apartment said nothing more. After thirty seconds of silence, the spiky-haired tattler paused her cinematic endeavors.
“How do I know you’re really a cop?” asked the resident.
Filming resumed.
“I have a badge and a very nice business card.” Something occurred to Bettinger. “Who else might I be?”
No reply issued from the other side of the door.
“May I talk to you in private?” asked the detective.
“I don’t know where she is, okay?” Something wet and fearful was lodged in the back of the woman’s throat. “Go away.”
“Somebody else already came by? Looking for her?”
A sniffle sounded inside the apartment.
“I’m going to hold up my badge and slide my card under the door to prove who I am.”
“I can’t talk to the police.”
“Ma’am … whenever anybody says ‘I can’t talk to the police,’ they should talk to the police. Immediately. I can get a warrant, but then things become official.” Bettinger produced his badge. “Look outside.”
The peephole glass darkened.
“You see it?”
“Yeah.”
The detective wrote a message on the back of his business card and slid it under the door. “Look down.”
The peephole filled with light.
Thirty seconds later, Bettinger asked, “You read it?”
“Yeah.”
“Say it loudly.”
“I won’t open this door until that nosy idiot with the camera goes away.”
The detective looked at the director and shrugged. “I’m not positive, but I think she means you.”
The spiky-haired woman glared at him.
“As of this moment,” Bettinger declared, “it’s interfering with an investigation if you keep that on.” He aimed an index finger directly at the cell phone.
“I know what it means.” The tattler turned off the device and tucked it away. “You’re pretty clever for a Victory cop.”
“I’m imported.”
“That explains it.”
A smirk glimmered upon the woman’s face as she entered the stairwell. Her heavy boots thudded down the concrete steps, and soon, the sound was silenced by the closing door.
The detective returned his attention to the apartment. “She’s gone.”
“Okay.” A bolt clacked. “I’m telling you now I’ve got a gun.”
“Do you intend to shoot me?”
“If you’re not who you say you are.” The woman on the far side of the door sniffled. “I’ve had a bad morning.”
“What’s your name?”
“Kimmy.”
“Okay, Kimmy. I’m Detective Jules Bettinger. You may call the police department and verify who I am if you’d like.”
“I believe you.”
A chain rattled.
Bettinger displayed his empty hands. “If you shoot me, where should I expect it?”
“The heart.”
“That’ll be difficult.”
“Why?”
“Mine’s the size of a grape.”
A bolt clacked, and retreating footfalls sounded within the apartment.
“It’s unlocked,” said the young woman. “Let yourself in.”
XXIII
Kimmy’s Likes and Dislikes
Bettinger entered a domain that had furry couches and mismatched rugs and smelled like a combination of berry air fresheners, incense, and marijuana. Beside a recliner chair that looked like a leopard stood Kimmy, a skinny, blond twentysomething who had busted lips, large dark eyes (one of which was swollen), and a red robe. A huge revolver dangled from her right hand, pointing at the middle of the corresponding foot. Although the young woman had two fingers curled around the trigger, the detective did not know if she had enough strength to successfully launch a bullet.
“Mind your toes.”
Kimmy saw that the muzzle of her firearm was trained upon her bare right foot. Carefully, she scooted her toes to safety.
Bettinger asked, “Should I close this?”
“Go ahead.”
The detective gently shut the door.
“Do the bottom lock.”
Bettinger turned the bolt that was directly above the doorknob. “Do you want me to stay here while we talk?”
“You can sit.”
“Cheetah or zebra?”
“Zebra.”
The detective walked across a paisley rug and sat upon a furry white couch that had black stripes. A bong lay underneath the opposing recliner, but he did not remark upon it.
Bettinger gestured at Kimmy’s busted lips and swollen eye. “Did your previous visitor do that to you?”
“Yeah.”
�
�Can you tell me what happened?”
The young woman nodded.
“Okay. I’m going to take out a notepad and a pencil. Please refrain from shooting me in the heart.”
“I won’t shoot you.”
The detective produced his notepad, set it on the sofa, and withdrew a mechanical pencil.
“I remember that kind,” said Kimmy. “Had a class where we used them.” The young woman ruminated for a moment and shook her head. “I can’t remember what it was.”
Bettinger did not gesture to the bong that lay underneath the recliner. “You can sit down if you’d like.”
“I’m too wired.” Kimmy leaned against the arm of the cheetah sofa, her gun carelessly threatening the life of a ratty stuffed animal that was either a moose or a bear. “So this morning,” she began, “like five in the morning, somebody buzzes the door. Usually me and Melissa just ignore it when people buzz—it’s mostly kids or bums—but this guy keeps ringing and ringing, and she wasn’t here to get it.”
“When did Melissa go away?”
“Monday.”
“You know where?”
“No.”
“Have any guesses?” asked Bettinger.
“She didn’t say anything, she was just gone. She’s gone a lot.”
“Does she have a car?”
“No. Her boyfriend usually gets her.”
“Sebastian Ramirez?”
“Yeah, though he’s in the hospital now. Or I thought he was until what that guy said.”
“What guy?”
“The one from this morning. Let me tell it.” Kimmy pointed the hand that lacked a firearm at the intercom, which was beside the front door. “So I go to the thing and push the button—tell the guy to stop buzzing, and he doesn’t say anything. All I hear is that crackle you get because the intercom sucks and’s like a hundred years old.
“I pee and then I go back to bed, and he starts fucking buzzing again. Sounds like that noise in the hospital when the patient’s heart stops—beep beep beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. Annoying!”
“Would you mind putting your gun down?” inquired Bettinger, leaning out of the way of the raised firearm.
“Sorry.” Kimmy set the revolver on the couch, directly between the stuffed creature and the armrest upon which she leaned. “So it’s beeping—he’s just holding it down—and I go to the door and tell the guy to stop pressing the fucking button, I’m not gonna let him in no matter what.
“I was fucking angry.”
“I presumed.”
“So now I’m shaking—keyed up the way you are when you’ve had too much coffee or done some—” The young woman decided to omit the second mind-altering substance from her narrative. “And so I do a couple of shots to calm me down, ’cause that can help, you know?”
“Of course I do.”
“So I lay in bed, try to fall back asleep, and I put on some music—some reggae, which is the best for going unconscious.
“I’m right at the edge, about to drift off—sort of dreaming about this guy I used to date at Oakfield who was kinda dumb, but really nice and always wrapped everything with Christmas paper—even in the summer when it was like a thousand degrees—and the doorbell rings, scaring the fuck out of me. This door right here—” Kimmy pointed across the room. “Not from the intercom downstairs.
“There’s this moment where I’m not sure if it’s real—the doorbell—or part of the dream with Stevie and the Christmas wrapping paper. And then it rings again, and I almost fall out of bed.
“I know for sure—
“He’s here.
“So I come in the living room and look at the door, which is totally locked and has the chain on and everything. And the bell rings again, and I’m like, ‘Go away,’ and he’s like, ‘I found a cat outside. It got hit by a car and was trying to get into the building, and a guy I buzzed told me you take care of them,’ which is true. There’re a bunch of strays me and Melissa feed, and when it gets cold like this, they sleep in the lobby or the basement so they won’t freeze.
“So the guy’s like, ‘I’m gonna put her in front of your door,’ and I hear a meow.”
Kimmy shook her head. “So now I feel bad for yelling at the guy—since he was just trying to help—I thought—and I go over to the door and look through the peephole and see a big guy wearing a dark blue jogging outfit, walking away, and I’m like, ‘Wait!’—mainly ’cause I can’t afford to pay for a vet—but he just leaves.
“So I open the door and look at the cat, a big orange one—one of the ones that stays here I named Janet. She’s crying the way cats do, but’s just lying there, shaking, not going anywhere, and I see a piece of white sticking out of her back and realize it’s her spine. That’s when the big guy grabs me by the neck and throws me inside. He shuts the door and says right in my face, ‘Scream and I’ll kill you.’”
Tears filled the young woman’s eyes.
“I was so scared. He looked like he would do it—he was huge. And he had on gloves and a ski mask like killers do.”
A suspicion surfaced within the detective. “Could you tell what color he was?”
“African American.”
“Anything else you remember about him?” Bettinger inquired as he turned the page in his notepad, wondering if Dominic was the assailant.
“Had gold teeth.” Kimmy tapped her upper incisors. “These.”
The detective’s partner had no such hardware, though it was possible that he had installed some superficial metal in his mouth as a misdirection.
Bettinger said, “So he’s inside…”
“Yeah. And he pulls out a gun that has one of those silencers on it and locks the door and’s like, ‘Where’s Melissa?’ and I tell him she isn’t here, but he doesn’t believe me. So we go look in all of the rooms and by the end, when he knows for sure she’s not here, he’s quiet. And I’m like, ‘I told you,’ and he hits me with the gun so hard I fall on my ass. There—” The young woman gestured at the paisley rug that was in front of the kitchen. “I’ve got bruises all over.”
“Please let me take you to a hospital after this. You should—”
“No thanks.”
Bettinger did not want to pester the woman, and as he stifled another yawn, he wondered exactly how safe it was for him to be on the road at all, much less act as a chauffeur. The middle-aged man had slept eighty minutes in the last thirty-one hours, and his collapse was imminent.
“So then he asks where she is,” Kimmy continued, “and I tell him the same thing I told you—‘She’s been gone since Monday, I don’t know, I haven’t heard from her.’ So then he’s quiet, thinking, and I can hear Janet crying outside—it’s fucking awful—sounds like a baby—and somebody says, ‘You get her?’ and he’s like, ‘Go downstairs and wait. Take the cat.’ So I know he has a partner outside helping him.
“Then he gets an idea or something and goes in the bathroom and turns on the light. He puts the stopper in the bathtub and starts running the water—the hot water—and he looks over at me and’s like, ‘Where’s your cell phone?’ And I point to my bedroom and am like, ‘In there,’ and he’s like, ‘Let’s get it.’
“So we go into my room and there it is—on my nightstand—and he’s like, ‘You’re gonna send a text message to Melissa,’ and that’s when I remember that I forgot to plug it in last night. I open it up, and it’s totally dead—no juice at all.
“I tell him I need to charge it, and he’s like, ‘Go ahead,’ and as soon as I plug it in the wall, he smacks me across the face.”
The detective frowned, looking at the swollen skin around the young woman’s right eye. “I don’t like this guy at all.”
“Me neither! I thought he broke my whole head, it hurt so bad. And so I’m on the carpet—dizzy, seeing lights—and all I can hear is the water running in the bathtub.
“He grabs me by the hair, stands me up, looks at me, and’s like, ‘Take off your clothes.’ And I get numb. Cold. This guy’s a rhinoceros—he rapes m
e, he’ll turn my insides into pesto.
“So I just stand there, shaking—in shock, I guess—and he slaps me and’s like, ‘Do it now,’ and while I’m taking off my socks and nightshirt, I’m thinking of that cat with the broken back and the jewelry store I work at and that Christmas wrapping paper. I don’t have a bra on, so I cover my boobs—which aren’t that great anyways—and he points his gun at my thong and’s like, ‘That too.’
“I take it off, but keep my legs pressed together—I’m totally sure he’s gonna rape me.” Kimmy shook her head. “But then he’s like, ‘Sit on the bed.’ And I do.
“I just sit there, naked, watching the phone charge like it’s a rock concert or something.
“It feels like forever.
“One of those little black bars appears, and I tell him I have some power. He nods his head and’s like, ‘Let’s take it to the bathroom.’
“The water’s still running in there, and he shuts it off, puts the toilet lid down, and’s like, ‘Sit.’ So I sit on the toilet, and I’m naked and shaking hard. ‘Text Melissa,’ he tells me. ‘Get her to come home right now.’
“So I ask him what I should say to get her to come home.
“And he leans over to the bathtub, puts down a razor blade, and’s like, ‘Think of something good.’
“It isn’t easy to think of something good when you’re like that—naked with a stranger in your own fucking bathroom, and he’s telling you that. So I start crying—really crying—hard—and he’s like, ‘You’ve got forty-five minutes to get her here. Probably shouldn’t waste too much time blubbering.’ He’s calm like my driver’s ed teacher was. Or like guys who play bass guitar.
“It takes me about five minutes to think of something, and I’m like, ‘I have something,’ and he’s like, ‘What is it?’ and I’m like, ‘I’ll tell her that her mother’s here and wants to see her about something.’
“So he asks me if Melissa likes her mother, and I say, ‘Like the way most people do—not really, but you sort of owe her everything, so you do your best.’ And he’s like, ‘What if she calls her mother?’ and I’m like, ‘Why would she do that if she’s right here?’”
Mean Business on North Ganson Street Page 12
