Chapter 1 #2
Leah forced her mind to focus. “I… I don’t know. I’m in the ladies’ room, locked in a stall. I don’t think he knows I’m here.” She listened intently for sound beyond the room. Nothing. “Please hurry.”
“Did you see or hear a weapon?”
“No,” Leah murmured.
“Are you armed, Ms. Gerard?”
“No. Please. Hurry.”
The dispatcher assured Leah a unit was already en route to her location. She was to stay in place and on the line until help arrived.
Then Leah did the only thing she could… She waited.
Sunday, August 10, 2:00 a.m.
Four uniformed police officers had arrived.
One had stayed with Leah, taking her statement, and three had searched the entire restaurant.
They had combed through the alley behind it…
the dumpsters. They had scrutinized all vehicles parked in the area.
Neighboring businesses had been checked, but all were closed for the night, with no signs of breaking and entering or other foul play.
There was no one else on or around the property except Leah and the police.
Presumably, whoever had…hurt Raymond had also taken him away, completely disappearing by the time the police arrived.
Harold Manafort, the restaurant manager, had been called.
The good news was, they had not found a body.
There was no blood anywhere.
There were no signs of foul play whatsoever.
Nothing.
The bad news was that Leah looked like a fool.
She sat at a table now, only a few yards from the corridor where she’d hidden in that ladies’ room for what had felt like an hour but was likely only fifteen or twenty minutes.
Detective Anthony Lambert sat at the table with her, a pen poised above his notepad.
He scribbled and turned pages and scribbled some more as she told her story for the second time.
She’d told it first to the female police officer who had come into the ladies’ room looking for Leah after the four had forcibly entered the building. Her three fellow officers had spread out and begun the search that proved futile.
Eventually, a detective, the one now seated at the table with Leah, had arrived, and she’d repeated her story.
He’d asked a few questions, and then he’d spoken with the uniformed officers and gone through the restaurant and the alley with them.
A moment ago he had returned to her table and started to ask more questions.
Throughout it all, the female officer, whose name Leah still could not remember, held vigil nearby.
Leah wasn’t sure whether they feared she would take off—obviously she could get out, now that the front entrance had been breached—or that she would call someone on her cell.
She was surprised they hadn’t asked for it yet.
After all, she was no doubt considered suspicious at this point, seeing as how no body or blood had been found in the place where she’d insisted on having seen both.
“So,” Lambert said, drawing her attention back to him, “you sat out here alone in the near darkness for forty-five minutes, waiting for your date.” He leaned forward and peered at his notebook. “One Raymond Douglas.”
It sounded particularly sad when he said it aloud that way. Who waited that long in a dark restaurant for a man she didn’t even know—had only met briefly that one time? “Yes. He’d asked me to wait in the dining room for him and I did.”
Desperate. Besides suspicious, the detective likely now believed her to be desperate.
Lambert studied her over the bifocals he’d settled into place on the bridge of his wide nose.
He was not a large man. Average height, slim build.
Yet it was obvious he spent some time in the gym.
His arm muscles bunched and flexed against the sleeves of his shirt.
He’d long ago removed the suit jacket and hung it on the back of the chair next to him.
He had keen, probing eyes. He seemed alert, ready to dive across the table and kick some butt if necessary.
Not at all the cliché detective so often depicted on television.
If not for his gray hair, she would never have believed the man was fifty-eight.
She wouldn’t have known his age had he not said something to one of the uniformed officers about being too old at fifty-eight for these sorts of calls.
At this point, Leah was feeling far older than her twenty-eight years as well.
“He’d never asked you out before,” Lambert said. Not really a reasonable question, because she’d explained the extent of her knowledge of Raymond Douglas already. But she’d watched enough crime dramas on television to recognize the drill. He was fishing around to see if her story would change.
“We didn’t know each other before two weeks ago.”
He flipped back a page and appeared to verify that his notes were correct, or maybe he was simply buying time. He looked up. “Do you understand the ramifications of making a false statement to the police?”
Leah’s jaw dropped. “What?” Was he seriously asking that question? She really had not expected him to go in that direction. What kind of person did he think she was?
“We found no body. No blood. No nothing to suggest what you say you saw happen actually happened.”
Anger flared in her belly. “I know what I saw.”
“Perhaps you fell asleep while you were waiting and dreamed it.” He shrugged. “It’s happened to me. I fell asleep once and dreamed my wife left me. Only difference is, three days later she did.”
“I did not fall asleep,” Leah said, unable to keep the bitter edge out of her voice. This was bordering on ridiculous.
“Mr. Manafort said Raymond Douglas told him and the investors who came to last night’s meeting that he was leaving immediately after that meeting for a long-awaited vacation.”
The statement took Leah aback. “Why would he ask me to wait here for him if he was going on vacation right after his meeting?” It made no sense. This had to be a mistake.
“That’s a very good question,” Lambert agreed. “My first inclination is to not believe he asked you to wait.”
“You think I’m lying?” A glimmer of outrage flashed through her. “Why in the world would I do that?” This was insane!
She was a full-time student who worked every minute she wasn’t glued to a book or a laptop. There was no time in her schedule for games like this. There was, frankly, no time for anything. The idea of how many hours she had just wasted made her all the more furious.
So much for putting herself out there, as her roommate had insisted.
Lambert studied her for a long, uncomfortable moment. “I’m not sure why you would do this,” he admitted, “but I will certainly find out. So if you’re not being completely honest with me, you need to do so right now.”
He actually thought she was making up the story. “I am telling you that Raymond Douglas was here and someone killed him…or at least hurt him. I saw him—his body—being dragged across that kitchen floor, and I saw blood.”
This was unbelievable. Frustration joined the mix of anger and outrage.
“I’ve interviewed by phone three of the five employees who closed up the restaurant tonight,” Lambert said. “They all confirmed that Mr. Douglas was fine and intended to leave shortly after they left. In fact, one saw him at the rear exit just before she left the kitchen.”
“Wait…what?” How could that be? Those people had let her inside.
Why would they leave her in an empty restaurant?
Wouldn’t they have been suspicious? “That makes no sense at all. Why wouldn’t at least one among them have demanded to know why I came into the restaurant?
Why would they have allowed me to come inside if no one else was around? ”
“That’s a question for the manager to pose to his employees.
” Lambert closed his notepad with a distinct snap.
“Since you are not an employee of this establishment, and none of the people to whom I spoke who are employees had any idea why you came inside as they were leaving, I can only say that your story feels off somehow. Why would you not ask after Mr. Douglas as the others filed out and you entered? Why would you sit in the dark—basically—for forty-five minutes? You’re a bright woman.
It seems illogical to me that you would do this. ”
The idea that he was making far too much sense rattled her.
“I… I don’t know what else to say. He asked me out on a date, and I followed his instructions on where and when to meet him.
The delay was annoying, but I wanted to be patient.
” She shrugged. “To tell you the truth, it’s been a while since I’ve been on a date, period, much less basically a blind date.
I guess I thought I was giving him the benefit of any doubt. ”
Again, Lambert considered her for several seconds. “I also called Mr. Douglas’s assistant, who confirmed he was scheduled on the red-eye to Los Angeles. We’re still attempting to verify that he boarded the plane, but the vacation appears to be legitimate. It’s your date we can’t seem to verify.”
This couldn’t be. Why would Raymond ask her out and then do this?
It made no sense. They had talked an hour before she came to the restaurant.
Maybe he was scheduled for a vacation starting tomorrow.
Who knew? Today, actually, since it was well after midnight.
Whatever his plans for today, Raymond Douglas had scheduled a date with her for last night. Her friend Isla could verify this.
“I can’t tell you about the plans he’d had for today or any other upcoming days,” Leah said, her patience thinning, “but I know his plans for last night. As I’ve told you twice already, you can verify this with my friend, Isla. Raymond and I were going to an exhibit—”
“So you say,” he interrupted. “Your friend has not returned my call. In any event, we will locate Mr. Douglas, and I hope that he is alive and well. Either way, I will be speaking with you again, Ms. Gerard. You are free to go for now. I’ll be in contact as soon as I confirm our missing victim’s whereabouts. Then we’ll go from there.”
This was so wrong. Leah pushed back her chair and stood. She swayed just a bit. She was tired and totally at the end of her emotional rope. All that aside, she was not some prankster or criminal or whatever this detective thought she was.
“I know what I saw, Detective,” she repeated. “Apparently, I can’t make you believe me—but when he doesn’t show up you’ll know I was right.”
“If,” he said, waylaying her plan of turning her back to him and marching angrily away, “he doesn’t show up, I’m afraid your problems will be just beginning, Ms. Gerard.”
“Why is that?” What the heck was he insinuating?
“If Mr. Douglas is truly missing and you were the last person in the vicinity of where he was last seen, then that would make you our prime suspect—wouldn’t you agree?”
Oh. My. God. This could not be happening. “If I had something to do with his disappearance—injury and probably murder, because I know what I saw—why would I call the police? More importantly,” she added, “why would I stay here and wait for them to arrive?”
“Stranger things have happened, Ms. Gerard, believe me. For now, don’t leave the city. We will be talking again.” He rose from his chair. “Since you walked here, Officer Clayton will take you home.” He nodded to the female officer standing by.
Leah almost said she would prefer to walk back home as well, but given the circumstances, she would gladly accept a ride.
No matter what this detective believed, Raymond Douglas was likely dead. Leah firmly believed that someone had murdered him right here in this restaurant.
Surely the police would figure that out when they didn’t find him. Knots tied in her belly. But then, Lambert was right: she was the only person left in this restaurant when he vanished.
“This way, Ms. Gerard,” Officer Clayton said, breaking into her new nightmare.
Leah followed the other woman, unsure of what else to do. There was one other thing she suddenly understood with utter clarity.
Once the police involvement in whatever happened here tonight got out, the killer—and there was a killer, or kidnapper, or whatever out there somewhere—would know someone else besides him and Raymond had been in the restaurant.
How long would it take that person to find Leah?
Copyright ? 2025 by Debra Webb