The Bone Chamber

by Robin Burcell

  Syd pulled out her cell phone, called Amber Jacobsen at MPDC Records. “You have time to do one other favor for me?”

  “Depends. I get off in thirty. My favorite band is playing tonight. Scars on Broadway.”

  “Hoping this won’t take too long. I need info on towed abandoned vehicles in the downtown area.”

  “Time frame?”

  “Last couple weeks, up until now. And if you can tie one of them to a missing person’s case, preferably a woman, that’s even better.”

  “Piece of cake. When do you need it?”

  “I’m on my way to the PD now.”

  “I’ll have the listing for you when you get here.”

  “Thanks,” she said, then looked up, surprised to see the security guard was standing just a few feet behind her.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to interrupt your call. There’s another guard who may have heard something a few nights ago. I thought you might like to come back, perhaps to speak with him.”

  “Heard what?” she said, standing there, her hand on the car door.

  “A man arguing with a woman. A lovers’ quarrel.”

  “Did he say what night this was?”

  “Three nights ago, I think. He’s tied up at the monitors, and said to come inside to the office and he’ll go over the details with you. He thinks it could be what you’re looking for.”

  “Thanks,” she said, then tossed her briefcase into the front seat, not wanting to sound too ungrateful, since he had gone to the trouble to check for her. “Unfortunately, I have an appointment. If you could give him my card and have him call me, I’d appreciate it.” And she slid into the driver’s seat, started the car, then drove off, catching sight of the security guard in her rearview mirror. She dismissed the information he’d given her, not worried about this lovers’ quarrel thing, especially if it occurred that recently.

  There had been snow on the ground three nights ago, and in the crime scene photo, there was no snow, which meant the murder had occurred sometime before that.

  About twenty minutes later, she was walking up the front steps of the Henry J. Daly building of the Metropolitan Police Department. Amber was waiting for her at Records. Petite, she stood about five and a half feet tall, brown hair, blue-green eyes, and a dusting of freckles across her pretty face. She smiled as she held up two stacks of printouts.

  “I’m assuming,” Amber said, “that you didn’t care about any of the normal tows, drunk driving, that sort of thing. Only the unoccupied tows?”

  “Good guess.”

  She tapped the closest stack. “These are tows that were claimed by the registered owners. And these,” she said, tapping the second stack, “are for tows that the ROs didn’t claim. Not as many, but if you’re dealing with a dead registered owner, might explain why they didn’t claim their cars?”

  “Certainly one explanation.” Sydney took the first stack, looking them over. “Don’t suppose any of them are actually linked to a missing person?”

  “One actually, but to a man, and I thought you were interested in missing women.”

  “At this point, I’ll take anything suspicious.”

  Amber dug the report off the bottom of the first stack. “Originally it was entered as stolen. I remember it, because the girl came in and gave some convoluted story about people following her boyfriend. One of those truly paranoid types, government plots, tinfoil, the works, but the real story was that she was pissed off because her boyfriend borrowed the car, and he hasn’t been seen since. She reported it stolen, but it had really been towed. Boyfriend’s still missing, though. As whacked as she was, I’d hazard a bet he took off on purpose.”

  “Probably nothing, but I’ll check it out.”

  “This one, however,” Amber said, removing another report, “was towed a few days ago not two blocks from the Smithsonian. Figured since you were asking about that particular locale, it might fit.”

  Syd eyed the car’s description, a Ford Tempo, then the registered owner, a young woman who lived about ten minutes from the Smithsonian. She thanked Amber, took the reports, and after a quick stop at the ladies’ room, headed there first.

  A dead end. The car was towed due to “No Parking” signs erected for some road construction, something the owner hadn’t caught because she had been out of town on a business trip. The next several on Syd’s list were similar, and the owners present and accounted for. It was dark out now, and she was getting hungry. She looked at the other registered owners, eyeing the tow sheet from the so-called whack job Amber had told her about, a young woman named Penny Dearborn.

  Everything about the tow was wrong. From the location, the farthest from the Smithsonian in comparison to all the other cases, and an ex-boyfriend missing, when Syd needed a woman missing. What it did have going for it was that it was somewhat closer to Scotty’s apartment, which meant she could swing by, talk to the woman, then wait for Scotty to get back, since she was starved and had no intention of eating peanut butter for dinner.

  Penny Dearborn’s apartment was dark, at least the upstairs windows. The two downstairs windows were boarded over, and she wondered if anyone still lived there. Sydney parked Scotty’s Jeep about two doors down, then walked up the well-lit street. She kept to one side of the front door, knocked, and looked up at the darkened window upstairs. A few moments later, Sydney heard what sounded like footsteps descending an interior staircase, and then the door opened, revealing a tall, thin blond woman with a gaunt face.

  Sydney held open her credentials. “Special Agent Fitzpatrick, FBI. Are you Penny Dearborn?”

  The woman glanced up and down the street before looking at Sydney, then nodding. “Yeah, why?”

  “I have a few questions about your car being towed, and the missing person’s report on your boyfriend, Xavier Caldwell.”

  Penny gave a cynical smile. “Not so paranoid, am I?”

  Syd figured that remained to be seen. “Do you mind if I come in?”

  Again the woman gave that look up and down the street, then stepped aside allowing Sydney to enter. The room reminded Sydney of her own place, filled with boxes stacked around the walls, some taped shut, others still open, filled with books, newspaper-wrapped items, and other possessions tossed in with less care.

  “You’re moving?”

  “Tomorrow. Which isn’t soon enough. I haven’t had electricity in two weeks, and I’ve been broken into twice in the last week, never mind the drive-by shootings from the gang war. Used to be a nice neighborhood. But I have to draw the line when bullets start flying through my living room window,” she said, nodding toward the boarded-up windows on either side of the TV. “Goddamned landlord says he’s deducting it from my deposit. Bastard.”

  “I’m hoping this won’t take but a couple of minutes.”

  “Mind if we talk upstairs. I’m a bit paranoid these days…”

  “Upstairs is fine.” Sydney followed her into a bedroom, unlit, except by the glow from a streetlamp outside. Like the downstairs, this room was filled with boxes stacked around the perimeter of the double bed in the center of the room.

  The woman sat on the bed, and Sydney stood near the dresser next to the window that looked out over the street below. “I understand you made a missing person’s report on your boyfriend?”

  “Not sure why I bothered. I should’ve figured out what he was up to, ever since he hooked up with Miss Hoity-Toity.”

  Sydney had the sinking feeling that this was nothing of any consequence. Spurned lover. “What happened?” she asked, more as a way to urge the girl to get on with the story so Sydney could get out of there.

  “Happened? Xavier hooks up with this girl from his religion class or political history, or whatever it was, and wants to borrow my car. They’re going to go talk to someone about a conspiracy theory,” she said in a voice that told Sydney that the only conspiring was that which was taking place in the backseat of said car. “I used to think he was so profound. We’d sit and talk for
hours over coffee about how every country’s governments were all working to keep the people in the dark, how everything from 9/11 to the Catholic Church was all part of some big conspiracy, just like the conflicts in the Mideast. And then he met her. They were in the same class.” She looked away, wiped a couple tears from her face with the back of her hand. “And she said she had proof on the back of a dollar bill that it was all being run by shadow governments and the Freemasons.”

  There were a lot of nuts out there thinking that Freemasons were taking over the world, and the proof was on the back of the dollar bill. Amber undoubtedly had the right of it about this particular case, when she’d put together the reports for Sydney. Whacked. Even so, Syd was sympathetic. The woman had lost her lover to someone who told a better story. “Proof?” Sydney asked. “On the dollar bill?”

  “Yeah. Like the eye on the pyramid. And the Star of David that points to the word MASON. He just got all into it. Found his kindred spirit, he says. Hope you don’t mind, but it’s fate, he says. Fate that he forgets to give me his half of the rent money, and the utility bill. I have no power, no phone, and I got evicted when I couldn’t come up with the rent. And then maybe two weeks ago, he calls up and says they’re in trouble. That they want to borrow my car again, because he’s got to get to the airport, and he thinks they’ve been following him and her both.”

  “Who was following them?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “This girl, she have a name?”

  “Hell if I know. I never actually met her. She was an assistant to some professor in Xavier’s history or archeology class at UVA.”

  “You know the professor’s name?”

  “Woods, I think. Anyway, Xavier started meeting her for coffee, just like he used to take me. Only with her, he became twice as paranoid. He actually believed this crap.” She sat down on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. “I know it’s stupid, and I even used to agree with him, but once he met her, all that stuff he spouted just sounded…annoying. Like a cop-out. Everything that went wrong in his life, he blamed on the government. The fact we got evicted from this apartment? Government plot. His checks kept bouncing, because his deposit was lost? Government plot. All of it proved his point that they were going to take over world banking. At one point he had tinfoil on every window and wouldn’t talk without the water running. He let them turn off the phones, because they were tapped. I swear he had escape routes planned,” she said, sweeping her hand around the room to point up into the closet, now emptied. “The attic, the bathroom. I couldn’t take it anymore. It’s one thing to rail against the government over coffee, but at some point you still have to pay your rent.”

  She shrugged, tried to smile, and added, “So I kicked his ass out, got the landlord to give me an extra two weeks to get the rent money together, and what good did that do? Nothing, because I had to use my rent money to get my car out of hock, because that son of a bitch sweet-talked me into borrowing it, then left it parked in a construction zone after he ran off with his new girlfriend. It got towed.”

  Syd was tempted to tell the woman she was better off without the guy and was almost glad when her cell phone vibrated. Whatever Penny and her boyfriend were about, it wasn’t related to her case. “Excuse me,” she said, when she saw it was Scotty.

  “You ready for dinner?” he asked. “I thought we could meet at King Yen’s.”

  “Can I call you back in a few?” she said, moving away toward the window for a bit of privacy.

  “I’ve already made the reservations.”

  He’d proposed to her there and, no doubt, had chosen that spot for tonight in hopes that they could discuss their relationship. Her fault, she supposed, for not squelching the dinner thing. That didn’t mean she wanted to hurt him, give him any ideas. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the time or place to discuss it. “Give me five minutes. I’ll call you right back.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said.

  She disconnected, was just tucking her phone on her belt when she noticed a man in a long overcoat looking into the window of Scotty’s Jeep parked just down the street. “You get a lot of car thefts in this area?” she asked Penny.

  “Don’t even get me started on this crappy neighborhood.”

  The man straightened, started walking up the sidewalk. He was white, clean-shaven, too healthy-looking to match the profile of some dirtbag hoping to smash a car window for a stereo. Even so, Sydney kept her eye on him, then noticed a second man across the street, also in an overcoat, paralleling the first man. The second man started across the street, and she noticed a vertical ridge running down the length of his coat. A ridge about the length of a long barrel of an assault weapon hidden beneath. The momentary thought that these were the missing bank robbers fled when she realized Scotty would not have called her for dinner if the robbers were still out there.

  Her gaze flew to the man on this side of the street. The one walking toward Penny Dearborn’s front door.

  Syd glanced at Penny. “Where’s your phone?”

  “Downstairs. But it was shut off.”

  Every telephone in the U.S. was supposed to have 911 access, even if it was shut off for nonpayment, and 911 access meant instant address relayed to the cops, far superior to using a cell phone. “Please tell me you have a phone up here?” she asked, looking around.

  “Packed,” she said, pointing at all the boxes. “Somewhere.”

  Syd drew her weapon, stepped back from the window, then pulled out her cell phone. “This paranoid boyfriend of yours,” she said to Penny. “He happen to show you any of these escape routes?”

  7

  “Damn it, Tex!” Zach Griffin paced his office as far as his landline would allow without pulling the phone from the outlet. “You were supposed to be tailing her.”

  “We were. She left the Smithsonian. Archer was on her like white on rice.”

  “Apparently not close enough.”

  “Close enough to hear the security guard telling her that there was some fight between lovers, maybe that was the assault she was asking about. He wanted her to talk to some other security guard, but she left, went straight from there to the police department. She was getting reports on towed cars. That was when we lost her. Delivery truck got between us and her car, and Archer lost the point.”

  He had to figure out Fitzpatrick’s logic if he was to have any hope of finding her. “The police have been kept out of the loop, she’s got to know that by now, so why go there at all?”

  “Because she’s thinking like a cop, a Fed, not a spy.”

  Zach paced in the other direction, but the phone cord stopped him from moving farther. “A cop…Towed vehicles…”

  Hindsight forced him to see the consequences of letting Fitzpatrick believe she had recommended Tasha for the job, all because he didn’t want Tasha’s connection to his agency known. But as a result, Fitzpatrick believed she was responsible for recommending Tasha for the drawing, which meant guilt over her death. And if a by-the-book FBI agent wanted to allay that guilt?

  Bring the killer to justice.

  By looking up towed cars…? For what?

  She used to be a cop, so think like one…

  She had reason to believe Tasha’s murder was connected to the drawing. If so, she’d realize she needed to identify her Jane Doe-Alessandra-to determine if there was a connection. But his agency had taken over the investigation, had kept it from the local police once they realized the connection and what it could do to their operation. In essence, there were no records of the case at the police department.

  Unless they’d overlooked something…

  But what?

  Towed cars…

  Hell. “Get back to MPDC. Run an audit on every towed car that clerk ran.”

  “What kind of connection could she possibly make?”

  “If Alessandra was in a car before she went missing, that car might very well have ended up towed, because she never got back to it.”

  “But Alessandra did
n’t own a car.”

  “No, but she certainly could have borrowed one. And who the hell knows what happened to the person she borrowed it from. Maybe they’re watching that person now, to see who comes calling.”

  “I’m on it.”

  He stared out the window watching the bright headlights zip down Twelfth Street. No doubt they’d been hasty when they’d chosen Fitzpatrick, even though she had been the logical choice because of her preoccupation with her father’s killer in San Quentin. Once she completed the sketch, he’d firmly believed that she’d want to get back to San Francisco and her family for Thanksgiving, which meant she probably wouldn’t give the sketch more than a passing thought.

  Her former relationship with Special Agent Scott Ryan was another factor. The guy was heading to the top of the administration ladder, liked to do things by the book, and liked his women the same, just what Zach needed for this op. Administration says jump, subordinate says how high. Tasha had led him to believe that Sydney Fitzpatrick had been cut from the same cloth as Scott Ryan.

  Apparently she was wrong.

  And now, because of this miscalculation, Sydney Fitzpatrick was out there, God knew where, playing cop in a game that was out of her league. A game that had one rule: Kill or be killed.

  The only escape route Penny’s ex had ever truly planned was the attic. Penny, however, refused to go up there by herself. So Plan B it was, and Sydney hated Plan B. It was such a misnomer, like one had some other plan waiting, ready to go. She stood just inside the slatted closet door, peering out, cell phone in one hand, weapon in the other, hoping this didn’t get them killed, because there wasn’t enough time to think of something else. Before someone even answered the 911 call on her cell phone, the front door crashed open downstairs. After that, the only thing Syd heard was the pounding of her heart. Cops announced their arrival. These guys weren’t cops.