Girl Undone (TJ Peacock & Lisa Rayburn Mysteries Book 3)

by Marla Madison

  The detective didn’t answer but walked the room, looking everything over. He stopped in front of the shelves holding Bart’s collection of African violets. Bart could have sworn he was holding back a smile.

  “You said one of these is missing?”

  Bart knew that Conlin wouldn’t understand his passion for violets. His grandmother had raised them, and one of his earliest memories involved helping her take care of the plants when he was a boy. Caring for them now always reminded him of her, and their colorful blooms relieved his otherwise stark office décor.

  “Two, actually. They were rare plants. You can’t even buy them yet.”

  “Then how did you get them?”

  “I contacted a man in Chicago who raises them. I talked him into selling them.” No way was Bart going to reveal the amount he’d paid for them. “Those are the ones he took.”

  Conlin nodded. “This guy must have been watching you for a while to know which ones to take, right? Maybe this wasn’t his first visit.”

  Bart hadn’t thought of that but it made sense—sense that made him nauseous again.

  “Are you sure nothing else is missing?” Conlin asked.

  “I checked every room.”

  “I think the best we can do for you, Mr. Kosik, is to run the prints if we find any. I’ll get back to you if we get a hit in the system.” He turned to leave.

  “That’s it? You aren’t going to give me some kind of protection?”

  “This isn’t your first rodeo, Mr. Kosik; you know the drill. There’s not enough here to warrant that. We will need to print you, though, for comparison.”

  Bart had known it would be unlikely that he’d get police protection, but at the moment, all he could think about was that someone was after him, someone who might be a murderer. “Enough with the Mr. Kosik, already. I’m Bart, okay?”

  “All right, Bart. Do you have anything else to show me? Maybe this isn’t the first communication you’ve received from this person?”

  There was something in the detective’s tone, something insinuating. Bart’s forehead broke out in beads of sweat. “You think I’m making this up.” He wanted to say more, but knew he had to watch his mouth. It was important not to antagonize Conlin; Bart needed the police right now. “Sorry. I’m just a little unnerved. No, I haven’t heard from this guy before . . . that I know of, anyway. I get freak mail and comments all the time, but nothing like this one.”

  “We’re going to need copies of any others or any comments you’ve received that are even remotely similar to this one.”

  13

  On her way back from Madison, TJ stopped in to see Lisa at her home. They sat across from each other at everyone’s favorite gathering spot, the granite-topped island that divided Eric Schindler’s spacious kitchen from the great room. Lisa and Eric had been living together for more than a year and had met when TJ, Lisa, Jeff Denison, and Eric had joined forces to find out why so many abused women had gone missing.

  Over tea, a beverage TJ had slowly developed a taste for—at least the aromatic chai variety—TJ told Lisa about her trip to Madison. “I’m likin’ the roommate for knowin’ what’s going on with Kelsey. She’s the only one that was with her every day. Seems to me she has to know somethin’.”

  “But why wouldn’t she tell you?”

  “Gotta be a reason. Somethin’ we don’t know yet.”

  “The only thing that stands out is the timing. The bartender told you Whitney had a boyfriend in the spring, and Kelsey met someone in the spring.”

  “Yeah, that’s about it. And I don’t think he was all that sure of when it was. Been a pretty boring day except for finding Zimmerman’s husband boinking the sitter.”

  Lisa shook her head. “I always wonder why people like that stay together. I did want to tell you that I talked to Dr. Worthington today. I told him I thought Kelsey should have been admitted to Froedtert the day you found her, for a more thorough workup. He told me that Kelsey had regained awareness and was talking by the time they got her to Petretti’s house. He couldn’t force the girl to let him give her a complete exam and wasn’t able to talk her into it or into going somewhere else for an exam. He only was able to take her vitals and a blood sample for drug testing.”

  “Is it too late to do more testing?”

  “I’m not sure. It seems possible that a medical procedure of some kind was performed on her without her knowledge. The right blood work could possibly tell us what it was.”

  “When are you seein’ her again?”

  “She’s coming in tomorrow after you take her to Madison for her final exam at school.”

  Eric entered the room wearing jeans and a UW Badgers sweatshirt. Fresh from the shower, his dark hair stood in wet peaks above his Mediterranean complexion.

  “What did I hear about a blood workup? Or is it confidential?”

  TJ and Lisa exchanged a glance. “I suppose we could tell him about it if we left out names,” TJ said.

  “Oh, God. This gets more and more complicated. Leave me out of it.” Lisa left the room.

  Eric ran a comb through his hair, exposing bright strands of silver at his temples. He grinned at TJ “Okay, spill.”

  Later, after TJ left, Lisa found Eric in his office and took a seat in front of his desk. “Well, what did you think?”

  Eric had been an obstetric surgeon before he’d been arrested for murdering his wife six years before, and presently he taught at the medical school in Madison. He’d been in prison for nearly three years before being released on a technicality, but hadn’t been released from suspicion until his wife’s body had been discovered buried in a meadow along with those of twenty-one other unfortunate women murdered by the same man. When the medical community had shunned him after his release from prison, he’d invested in a classic car business which he spent time working in when he wasn’t teaching in Madison.

  “It’s hard to even take a wild guess without lab results. You’re waiting for a tox screen, right?”

  “Yes, a tox screen that includes drugs used for anesthesiology.”

  “Good, but all of that could take weeks,” he said. “In the meantime, it’s critical to have the girl examined. It’s unfortunate that it wasn’t done right away, but TJ said she felt she was doing the right thing when she turned her over to the aunt.”

  “At the time she thought the girl had come from the medical complex, the behavioral health division. She couldn’t have predicted that the girl’s aunt would simply whisk her away,” Lisa said.

  “Your girl needs a complete exam and blood workup—the sooner the better. TJ thought you’d be the best person to convince her to do it. I can set something up in the University clinics for you tomorrow since she’ll be in Madison with TJ. That is, if you think the aunt will go along with it.”

  “This thing is giving me a headache trying not to stumble over all the confidentiality issues. But Kelsey is an adult. She doesn’t need her aunt’s permission to get further testing. According to Rina, Kelsey insisted she didn’t need to be examined, so I can try to persuade her it’s necessary without involving her aunt.”

  Eric stood and gave Lisa a reassuring hug. “I think you’re doing the right thing. Make your call and let’s have a glass of wine by the fire.” In his arms, Lisa was struck by how complete she felt with him. Her thoughts raced to how grateful she was for him, for the wonderful life they had together.

  Eric had once expressed regret that he’d never had a child and said more than once it would be wonderful to have one with Lisa. They had never discussed it beyond the wouldn’t-it-be-nice stage, but Eric had given her so much and asked for nothing in return. Lisa wanted to give him a baby. Lisa’s daughter Paige was an adult, however, and although Lisa didn’t see her as often as she would like, she worried about presenting her with a brother or sister at the same time Paige might be thinking about surprising Lisa with a grandchild.

  Lisa was over forty, and Eric, over fifty. Having a child might not even be possible
. Before she told Eric what she wanted to do, she would see her doctor and discuss its feasibility. Her chances of conceiving might be slim since she’d already noticed changes in her cycle. But if she wanted answers, just like Kelsey’s physical exam, she couldn’t put off too long.

  14

  After spending more than half an hour convincing JR to sleep in his own bed and not in front of the Christmas tree, Richard finally had some time alone with his wife. He opened a bottle of wine, poured two glasses, and handed one to TJ.

  “To our son,” Richard toasted, “who has learned a valuable lesson tonight about our parenting skills.”

  “Yeah, what’s that?”

  “We might not know what we’re doing, but we don’t give up.”

  She laughed. “I’ll drink to that. Hate to see him get upset, but had to do it or when the damn thing comes down, we wouldn’t sleep for a week.”

  “Now that it’s quiet, I have something to tell you.”

  “Better be good news.”

  “You could look at it as good news, I suppose.”

  “Okay, spit it out.”

  “Bart Kosik blogged that he’s going to—”

  “Heard all about it,” TJ interrupted. “The guy can’t leave it alone. Should find some hacker to shut him down.”

  “If you’re done venting I’ll tell you the good news.”

  She looked at him through veiled lids and took another sip of wine.

  “You don’t have to worry about his blogs for a while, babe,” Richard said. “Seems our least-favorite blogger has a stalker.”

  “A stalker? Who’d wanna stalk that piece o’ shit?”

  At a look from her husband, she said, “I can swear all I want. He’s sleepin’.”

  Richard shook his head. TJ needed to clean up her language in front of their son and had been relatively successful in doing so. When JR wasn’t around, well, that was another matter. TJ had grown up in a house where no one expressed themselves without sentences containing four-letter words. He knew she was capable of speaking in a grammatically correct manner, but he seldom heard it, since her preferred parlance was street lingo peppered with four-letter words.

  “Can you tell me the details?” she asked. “Or is it an active case now?”

  “Yeah, I can’t tell you details, but I will tell you this much since it could affect us. There’s a nut job raising questions about what happened to those women that were murdered two years ago. We don’t have much to go on but he appears to idolize the killer and might be a copycat.”

  “A fuckin’ copycat? You kiddin’ me?” TJ set her glass aside and stood. She began pacing.

  “Don’t get upset about this yet. It could be nothing.”

  “Are more women missin’?”

  “This just happened today. Frankly, I’m not taking it too seriously.”

  “So whatever this stalker did to Kosik, he didn’t do Kosik any bodily harm?”

  “No. And I can’t do much about it unless something else happens with Kosik. I’d like you and Lisa to check with the Women’s Centers to see if they’ll run the statistics again on abused women who are unaccounted for. But you have to keep it to yourselves. You can’t tell anyone why you want the numbers.”

  TJ snorted. “Unaccounted for? Say what you really mean—missin’ without a reason.”

  The next morning TJ was still fuming about Kosik after she dropped off Lisa and Kelsey at the University Clinics in Madison for Kelsey’s physical exam. When the exam was finished they would have time to go to lunch before they took Kelsey to make up her last college final. In the meantime, TJ planned to talk to Kelsey’s study group and visit the roommate once more. She thought a surprise visit might catch her off guard enough to open up.

  The building looked the same as it had the day before, gray and somber with the lingering smell of bacon and the tangle of bicycles still in the halls. She knocked on the door—no answer. She continued knocking, increasing the force with each attempt in an effort to rouse Whitney.

  She returned to the first floor and located the apartment that housed the manager of the building. A bleary-eyed young man who didn’t look old enough to vote, much less manage a building, answered the door. “Yeah? Whaddya want?”

  TJ flashed her credentials. “Need to talk to the manager.”

  The guy scratched his stomach, exposing a white belly devoid of the six-pack look. “That would be me.”

  “Gotta name?”

  He pulled on a faded blue sweatshirt and stepped into the hall. “Jason Day.”

  “You know Whitney Chamberlain?”

  “Three D? What about her?”

  “She’s not answerin’ her door. I’m afraid she could be hurt,” she said, hoping it would get her inside the apartment.

  Day gave TJ a low-lidded look, but said, “I’ll get my key.”

  When he unlocked the door, TJ walked quickly past him to get a look around. The rooms were still—too still. Chamberlain hadn’t had a lot of stuff sitting around the place, but now it looked downright unlived in. She’d had a premonition this would happen, and she hurried to Whitney’s room, where she found only a few things still hanging in the closet and the drawers, bare.

  Whitney Chamberlain was in the wind.

  15

  TJ, Lisa, and Kelsey returned to Dr. Antoinette Butler’s office at the University Clinics after Kelsey had finished her last final at the college. When TJ expressed her concern about being allowed to sit in for the results of Kelsey’s physical, Lisa told her that she’d explained to the doctor earlier that she would be bringing TJ along.

  The doctor greeted them warmly. Without her lab coat now, the woman was attractive in a softly draped, camel-colored dress and wore her chin-length salt-and-pepper hair in loose waves about her face. In her fifties, she radiated a air of confidence often evident in successful women.

  “Kelsey,” she said. “Before I give you the results of your tests, are you sure you wouldn’t rather have me talk to you alone?”

  “No. It’s okay.”

  Butler tapped the file in front of her. “I won’t be able to tell you exactly what these results mean, but I will explain what I suspect based on your exam and your blood work.

  “You have injection sites on your hips. They’ve been there for a while and appear not to be traumatic which would explain why you haven’t noticed them. Your hormone levels are elevated, as they would be if you were pregnant; we did run a pregnancy test which was negative. Other than those two anomalies, your tests are all normal. If what I suspect is accurate, your hormone levels will recede soon, and the injection sites, of course, will disappear.”

  “So what’s that mean?” TJ interrupted. “What’d they do to her?”

  “This is strictly conjecture on my part, but, assuming she did have some kind of surgical process done, it would appear that Kelsey had her eggs harvested. Probably for use in IVF, in vitro fertilization.”

  The three listeners froze in place.

  TJ was the first to speak. “What the fuck? Sorry, but that sounds nuts. Who would do somethin’ like that?”

  “I can’t answer that. But most likely the process would be done to impregnate a woman with a fertilized ovum, or embryo, a woman capable of carrying a child but not able to ovulate for some reason. I could give you a list of medical possibilities that would cause this in a woman, but I don’t believe that’s what you’re looking for here.”

  Lisa asked, “But isn’t that an invasive procedure? I would think that there would be a way to be sure that’s what was done to Kelsey.”

  “Not without examining her ovaries, and even that might not reveal the extraction.”

  The room went silent again.

  “I understand that the procedure of egg removal would be difficult to identify after the fact, but IVF is a long process that requires regular monitoring.” Lisa looked at Kelsey. “I think you would have known if someone was preparing you for it.”

  Kelsey shrugged. “I had no idea.”<
br />
  TJ said, “Think I might be able to explain why you didn’t know what was goin’ on. Your roommate had access to you whenever she wanted.”

  “Whitney would never do something like that!”

  “Oh yeah? The roommate you’re sayin’ wouldn’t do something like that has flown the coop. Her bedroom is stripped bare of her stuff. She was givin’ you injections and even coulda’ been slippin’ you something to make you sleep hard while she did it. Even take blood samples. That’s possible, right Doctor?”

  Dr. Butler sighed. “I suppose. The conditions wouldn’t be ideal, though. What I don’t understand is, why Kelsey? There are women who will donate eggs for a price, even act as surrogates for couples who can’t conceive. For some reason, whoever did this didn’t just want eggs from a healthy female—they wanted Kelsey’s.”

  16

  When the doctor finished speaking, TJ and Kelsey rushed from the room, both with their cell phones out, leaving Lisa alone with the doctor.

  Lisa said, “Thank you for getting us in today, Dr. Butler.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m glad to have been able to help, although I can’t really tell you anything specific. Our modern technology is an amazing thing. I hate to see it abused.”

  The doctor didn’t appear to be too rushed, so Lisa asked, “Do you see private patients without a referral?” She was impressed with this doctor and if she could skip the middleman that would save her time.

  “That depends on the problem.”

  “My significant other and I are thinking about having a baby. Since I’m over forty I would like to know what the chances are that I’ll be able to conceive and to carry a child.”

  “Have you been trying?”

  “I’ve been off of birth control for a few months now.”

  “Conception can take longer when you’re over forty. There are tests that could tell you more about the feasibility of your having a child. It would be wise to do them right away, so if you can’t conceive for some physical reason, you’ll know what you’re up against. You are aware that a pregnancy at your age is more risky for both the mother and the child?”