Just One Bite

by Jack Heath

  “At home. Hidden in a Ziploc bag under the carpet. I didn’t know how to get rid of it.”

  This reminds me of all the body parts hidden in my house, waiting for me. It takes effort to bring the hospital room back into focus.

  “This man at the restaurant,” Thistle says. “Was he white? Big?”

  “No. He is Latino, skinny. With a mustache, and an earring. Gold.”

  “Which ear?”

  He thinks about it. “Left.”

  “You know his name?”

  “No.”

  I want to show him a photo of Charlie Warner. She’s blonde, tallish. Capable of skinning people.

  But Thistle will want to know the connection, and other than the fact that Biggs’s body turned up right near our usual drop-off point, I don’t have one. As I’m trying to come up with a plausible excuse, something else occurs to me. Charlie Warner isn’t the only good-looking blonde I’ve seen hanging around since I started working on this case.

  “Please,” Gomez says. “I’ve answered your questions. I need to go home to my family. They’ll be scared.”

  “You resisted arrest,” Thistle says. “Twice. We can’t just let you go home.”

  “Agent Thistle,” I say. “A word?”

  Thistle follows me out into the corridor.

  “I think we should send him home,” I say.

  Thistle looks incredulous. “Our only suspect?”

  “He’s not a suspect. He’s a witness at best.”

  “He hasn’t given us a sliver of evidence that his story is true. He works at the place where all the phone trails end, and where the blood of one of the victims was found. He fled from us. Twice. No one else has seen this woman.”

  “Ian McLean has,” I say. “She picked up Daniel Ruthven in her car, on the night he disappeared.”

  “That could have been anyone.”

  “We’ve seen her, too. She was outside Shannon Luxford’s office.”

  “She...” Thistle trails off, remembering the tall, glamorous blonde we saw in the math department. Who saw us, and turned quickly away.

  “It’s a stretch,” Thistle says finally.

  “Is it? She looked like she was doing the same thing we were doing. Asking if anyone had seen Biggs. She was showing a picture on her phone to a student.”

  “But if she killed him, she knows exactly where he is.”

  No, I think to myself. Because I took the body. She may not even know he’s dead.

  “Let’s say she was driving him somewhere,” I say, “and he escaped. Jumped out of a moving car and ran into the woods, for example. So she went to his work looking for him.”

  “There are so many things wrong with that I don’t know where to start,” Thistle says. “Leaving aside the fact that there are thousands of attractive blonde women in Houston—”

  “But only one hanging around our victim’s office.”

  “If Biggs escaped, why didn’t he contact us?”

  “Didn’t his file say he had heart surgery?” I ask. “Maybe he had a heart attack while he was running away.”

  “But the killer didn’t notice the body?”

  “Maybe he fell down a hole or something,” I suggest, thinking of the deer trap near the log cabin.

  “This is a metric fuck-ton of speculation,” Thistle says. “Even if I bought it, why would I let Gomez go?”

  I still think there’s a chance that Warner is behind this. But if so, I’m screwed—so I’m desperate to make this theory work.

  “Because if you don’t,” I say, “the killer will find a new stooge at the dump, or a new dump. We’ll be back to square one. But if we put Gomez back into play, eventually the killer will call him for help with her next victim. Or maybe she’ll try to kill him, now that she knows we’re on to her. Either way, we have a chance to catch her. She told Gomez she was approaching him on someone else’s behalf—if that’s true, I’d like to know who it was.”

  Thistle looks appalled. “You want to use Gomez as bait?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “And how do I explain to the director that we’re letting our only suspect go?”

  “He’s not our only suspect, we don’t have the evidence to hold him, we’re worried about him suing the state because we shot him while he was unarmed.” I shrug. “Take your pick.”

  Thistle takes a long, deep inhale, like a drag on an imaginary cigarette.

  “We’ll keep him under surveillance, obviously,” I add. “The risk to him and his family is minimal.”

  “Fucking hell, Blake,” Thistle says finally. “You better be right about this.”

  Her phone rings. She answers. “Thistle.”

  A long pause.

  “Okay. We’ll be sending a covert surveillance team. Stick around until they arrive.”

  She hangs up. “Gomez’s family is fine,” she says. “Shaken, but fine. Forensics found the skin flap. They’re taking it to Dr. Norman.”

  “Was the wife worried about getting deported?”

  “She sounded more worried about her husband. The kids protect her, for now, as long as she can prove they were born here.”

  We walk back into the hospital room. Thistle unlocks Gomez’s cuff.

  “You’re free to go,” she says. “You and your family will be monitored around-the-clock by plainclothes agents for your own protection until further notice.”

  “Thank you,” Gomez says, clasping Thistle’s hand.

  “Let me be clear,” Thistle says. “We’re hoping this woman will contact you again. When she does, you’re not going to alert her that you’ve spoken with us. You’re going to do everything she says, and pretend you don’t know about the surveillance. If you fail to comply, the protection will be withdrawn and you may be treated as an accessory. Understood?”

  Gomez nods vigorously.

  “Your car’s at the impound,” Thistle says. “We’ll get it fixed. In the meantime, here’s some money for a cab.”

  After he’s gone, Thistle turns to me. “I still can’t figure out the connection to those dates.”

  “Yeah.” I rub my eyes. “We’re still missing something.”

  Just saying those words, missing something, makes me pause. It’s a feeling rather than a thought. That strange tingling as my subconscious starts making connections. Connections it should have made much earlier.

  The size of the rooms at Luxford’s house. The half-finished renovations. The air conditioner, still running. The extra remote on the coffee table.

  “We need to go back to Luxford’s house,” I say.

  “What?” Thistle looks incredulous. “We have independent witnesses confirming the existence of this blonde woman. Now you want to focus on Luxford?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I know where he is.”

  * * *

  When we get back to Luxford’s house, I walk right in the front door. I want to see Luxford before anyone else does. I want to watch the moment he realizes he’s been caught.

  Because that will tell me if he’s a serial killer, or just a rapist. Different animals, with different defensive behaviors. A rapist will put his hands up and deny everything. Start trashing his accusers. But a serial killer will confess, because he wants the publicity. Or because he’s relieved to be caught, and he’s afraid they’ll let him go if he doesn’t.

  As frightened as I am of getting arrested, sometimes I’m more frightened that I won’t be. That the eating and lying will go on forever.

  Thistle is close behind me. The other two cops, Albrecht and Terracini, are behind her.

  “He’s not here,” Terracini says, but he keeps his voice low. “We searched the place thoroughly last time. No one’s been in or out since then.”

  I’m already walking into the living area. “You know they didn’t find Saddam Hussein in t
hat hole until they’d already searched the area, given up and called the helicopters to extract them?”

  Albrecht looks down. “You want to rip up the floor?”

  “No.” I listen. Again, I’m struck by how the room seems smaller than it should be. No sound except the rumbling of the air conditioner. I can’t even hear the traffic outside. This is a well-insulated house.

  But why would the owner of a well-insulated house leave the AC running when he went out?

  I go to the coffee table and look at the remotes. Too many.

  One is Sony, which matches the game console. One is Samsung, which matches the TV. One is LG, which matches the Blu-ray sound system combo.

  On the final remote, all the buttons but two appear to be fake. The two real ones are green and red. The green one features a picture of a key. The red one has a padlock logo. The brand is BHI.

  I show it to Thistle.

  She nods. “That’s Joseph Luxford’s security company. They install security systems.”

  “Including panic rooms,” I say. “Right?”

  I push the green button, and listen. Nothing. I walk around the ground floor, pushing it over and over, hoping to hear a beep.

  “Let’s check upstairs,” Thistle says.

  We go up the narrow staircase—narrow because the wall had to be expanded during the renovation, reinforced to take the weight of all the steel and concrete above. We run into Shannon’s bedroom and I push the button again.

  This time I do hear a beep, and a sliding sound. But not from this room. From the storage room.

  “This way,” I say. But something’s bothering me. If Luxford is in the panic room, shouldn’t the remote be in there with him? Maybe this one is a spare—but it seems like an obvious oversight.

  Thistle has other concerns. “Why would he install his panic room in the bedroom he doesn’t use?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe the structure of the house couldn’t take it anywhere else.”

  “Then why not move his bed?”

  We’ve reached the storage room. I open the wardrobe—the one Luxford keeps empty. The rear wall has already slid sideways, exposing a foot-wide gap.

  Thistle raises her pistol. “Luxford! Come out with your hands up.”

  There’s a second of silence.

  Then the screaming starts.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  A man is stabbed in the heart. No one tries to save him, and yet he doesn’t die. How?

  I don’t wait for Thistle. She has the gun, but we don’t need it. The scream has told me exactly what we’re going to find in Shannon Luxford’s panic room. We’ve already wasted too much time. So I walk right in. As I pass through the doorway, I notice how thick the door is—there’s hardened steel behind the plaster, with huge automatic bolts.

  Half of the space behind the closet is a standard panic room. Poured concrete walls, floor and ceiling. There’s a bank of small monitors, so the occupant can observe the rest of the house. All switched off, and probably useless, since I didn’t see any cameras downstairs. There’s a phone line, but no actual phone. Overhead, a narrow vent pumps recycled air around, droning like an idling truck. A hole in the wall next to the door probably used to be the emergency exit button.

  The other half of the room could have come from a parallel universe. It has painted walls, a small bed and a fake window, letting in some approximation of daylight. An antique bedside table has a plastic lamp on it. A mirror. Clothes are scattered all over the floor. A skimpy nurse’s uniform. A police outfit, but not the kind a real police officer would wear. They’re like Halloween costumes, half-buried under mountains of heels and lingerie.

  Thick Plexiglas separates the bedroom from the rest of the panic room. The glass is scratched from weeks or months of battering. Air holes have been cut in it, and there’s a transparent door. Four hinges on one side and three padlocks on the other.

  A camera is mounted on a tripod on this side of the glass. Through the lens, this would look more or less like a normal bedroom, except for the two paint buckets in the corner.

  Thistle’s voice: A doll can work twenty-four hours per day, seven days a week. And Howard’s: You know how many cam girls are prisoners in those little rooms?

  A young woman in a schoolgirl’s skirt and sweater is slapping her palms on the glass. Her cheeks are hollow after days of starvation. I assume she hasn’t eaten or drunk since Luxford fled. Her bloodshot eyes are wide with desperation and terror.

  “Get me out of here!” she shrieks. “Please, just get me out of here! Help me!”

  “Holy shit,” Thistle breathes.

  I rattle the padlocks. I didn’t see any keys when we were searching the place. “We’ll need Albrecht’s tools,” I say.

  “On it.” Thistle runs back out of the room.

  “No! Don’t leave me, please don’t leave me!” The woman is sobbing with terror. “Come back!”

  I’ve only been in here for fifteen seconds, and already I know how she feels. Even with the remote in my pocket, it’s hard to suppress the panic. What if the door closes? What if the batteries in the remote die and we get trapped? No daylight. No fresh air. No one would be able to hear us shouting for help.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “We’re gonna get you out of here.”

  The woman doesn’t even seem to hear me. “Please, just let me out. Let me out. He could be back any minute.”

  I stick my fingers through the air holes. “There are two more police officers downstairs. He can’t hurt you anymore. It’s over.”

  The woman is shaking, long dark hair falling all over her face. Wheezing like an asthmatic. Now that rescue is so close, she’s freaking out. I bet she wasn’t this scared when the situation seemed hopeless. The mind is a funny thing.

  I understand what she’s been through. Not just because I’ve been starved. Not just because I was once bound and gagged in the trunk of a psycho’s car and later chained up in his basement.

  It’s because I’m a bad guy. As bad as Luxford. So I can imagine everything he did to her.

  “Hey,” I say. “He’s not coming back. Ever. Okay? If he does, I’ll rip his throat out.”

  She looks at me uncertainly. “You’ll what?”

  “I’ll rip his throat out, like a mad dog. I’m not even kidding.”

  She grips my fingers through the air holes. “Please don’t leave me.”

  “I won’t, I promise. We’re walking out of here together. You and me. Okay?”

  “I want my mom,” she says. “Can you call my mom?”

  “We will. You’re Abbey, right?”

  She snatches her hands away, suddenly suspicious. Like I’m in league with Luxford. “How did you know that?”

  “You’re listed as missing,” I say. “People have been looking for you.”

  Albrecht and Terracini enter the room. Albrecht looks grim. She hurries over to the door and starts punching out the padlocks with the chisel. Terracini takes in the glass, the buckets, the camera, and goes pale.

  “Catch him,” I say. “Catch him!”

  Thistle whirls around in time to grab Terracini as he faints. Puffing, she lowers him to the ground. He’ll never live this down.

  * * *

  Abbey lived in Columbus, Ohio, before she moved to Houston for college on a scholarship. Her mom came to Texas when Abbey went missing, but went home again a few months later when the money ran out.

  Thistle calls her from the car. “We found Abbey. She’s alive. She’s with us.”

  I can hear crying down the other end of the line.

  “I’m putting her on, okay?” Thistle says.

  Abbey takes the phone with a skeletal hand. She’s wrapped in Thistle’s jacket, which makes her look tiny, even though I know she’s nineteen. Dehydrated, but the tears start, anyway. “I’m here, Mom. I’m
okay.”

  Thistle starts driving us to the Texas Woman’s Hospital, which isn’t far from the field office. I can’t hear what Abbey’s mother is saying, but she sounds angry, like any parent who’s been worried sick.

  “Hey,” Thistle says. “You all right?”

  It takes me a second to realize I’m the one she’s talking to. Thistle doesn’t know everything I’ve done, but she knows everything that’s been done to me. As a kid and as an adult.

  I look out the window. “Fine.”

  After a second, she squeezes my hand. I let her.

  “You did good,” she says.

  “Not who I expected to find,” I say.

  “Maybe not. But if you hadn’t figured it out in time...”

  She doesn’t need to finish the sentence. Abbey would have died of thirst in that little room. Luxford wasn’t coming back for her.

  Thistle doesn’t let go of my hand until she needs to change gears.

  Abbey keeps saying, “I’m okay,” into the phone, over and over again. I don’t know if she’s telling herself or her mom. Eventually she passes the phone back to Thistle. “She wants to talk to you.”

  Thistle assures Abbey’s mother that the Bureau will cover her flight to George Bush airport, and she’ll be picked up as soon as she gets there. The director might kick Thistle’s ass for that, the budget being what it is. But it seems to soothe the mom a bit, and eventually she ends the call.

  As we approach the hospital, I can see Abbey getting nervous. When we drive into the parking lot under the building, she looks like she’s on the verge of a panic attack.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  She nods, teeth clenched.

  Thistle parks, and we all get out of the car. Thistle and I start to walk toward the gleaming steel doors of the elevators, but Abbey slows right down.

  “I can’t go in there,” she says.

  “It’s safe,” Thistle promises. “The doctors just want—”

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

  I get it. After I got out of that basement, I never wanted to be indoors again.

  “Okay,” Thistle says. “We’ll take the stairs.”