Fifteen #4
“I really think you should wait for me to get there before you go back.”
“I can’t.”
“Fine. Call me in an hour.”
After I hung up with him, I continued driving toward Oak Lawn. Dane’s number flashed across my display a few minutes later, and then the number for the hospital. I answered that call.
“Hello?”
“Jory, where are you?” my brother snapped at me.
“Pretty smart, using the hospital phone. I thought you were Sam.”
“I was hoping you would.”
“Is Sam up?”
“No, he’s still sleeping. All the drama this morning exhausted him. Where are you?”
“I’m running down another lead.”
“Jory!” he barked at me. “Get your ass back here now.”
“If you were in my place and Aja was the one in the hospital, you would be doing whatever you could to keep her safe, so don’t gimme shit about this.”
“Jory, it’s not the same. You’re—”
“Doing spectacularly well? I know. Thank you.”
“Jory, come—”
“I am not a dog, and I won’t be back tonight. Just take care of Sam for me. I’ll call and check in.”
“Jory, what makes you think that the house where you’re going won’t be absolutely swarming with police? Think about it. And they probably have several people waiting just for you to show up. Be logical about this.”
He had a point.
Probably.
Or…they’d checked out the house and left.
And really, did they have the manpower to stake out all the places I might be?
Did they really care? No matter what Hefron, or Moore, had said to Sam, they really didn’t care about me.
The danger everyone cared about was Rego James, and I had no reason to return to his club.
“Jory!”
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I’ll check back in soon.”
Once I’d hung up on him, I turned the phone off and then, on my way to the house, I stopped at a gas station, took the SIM card out of my phone, destroyed it, then bought a new burner.
The people at the store appreciated me giving them the old one.
It just needed a new SIM and they had lots of those.
You always wonder why people go looking around creepy places at night.
In every horror movie I’d ever seen, it had been my question as well.
The fact of the matter was, though, that sometimes you had to go to scary places in the evening because other people would see you during the day.
So when I parked down the block and ran to the house, armed with a flashlight and my burner phone, I figured that even though I had an irrational fear of Michael Myers being in the house waiting for me, logically I was safe—it was just dark.
This was the rational thought I held on to even as my heart threatened to pound out of my chest.
I slipped into the basement through the window and fell five feet or so to the floor.
I was sure that something terrifying was waiting in the shadows to get me, even though rats were probably the only spooky things in the place.
I was expecting jars of body parts but found only a washer and dryer, a sink, and a counter that folded clothes were stacked up on.
Even though I knew that it wasn’t the room Caleb and I had been held in, I checked it over anyway, looking for anything that didn’t fit.
I went to the lint trap on the dryer and found it clean; I went through the small wastebasket and was really disappointed when there was nothing at all.
When I was satisfied that I had seen anything it was possible to see in this room, I went through the door, using the sleeve of my sweater to turn the knob, and into the kitchen of the house.
It was boring. What had started out as a nightmare quickly became tedious.
The house was clean. Like a-maid-service-had-been-through-it clean.
Going from room to room yielded nothing at all.
The inside didn’t match the outside either.
It became clear that all Greg Fain had needed was a landscaper.
Inside, the house looked nothing like the home of Norman Bates and more like something that belonged in an Ikea catalog.
Everything was new and shiny; all the bells and whistles were there, from brushed steel and wood decor to a fairly large TV.
The second floor was just as nice, and next to the bathroom was a steam room.
As I stood in the master bedroom on the second floor, I had to wonder what in the world had prompted a guy like Greg Fain to get caught up in a kidnapping.
But maybe all this stuff had cost a lot of money.
Everyone needed money, so perhaps Dane forking over ten million had been his primary motivation.
The only weird thing I found in the bedroom was a picture frame in the wastebasket beside the armoire.
The glass was broken, but there was no picture in it.
I had no idea what that meant but made a mental note of it anyway.
Back downstairs in the den, I looked for any papers that would give me an idea of who Greg Fain was.
But again, there was nothing. What really was weird was the extent of the nothing.
All the desk drawers were empty, and there was nothing on the sides as well.
On CSI, they always found a clue either under a drawer or on the side, or taped to the bottom of something, but no such luck in Mr. Fain’s office.
Nothing inside the air conditioner vent, or the vents on the floor, and no telltale drops of blood.
It was simply anticlimactic, and I was disappointed. There were no clues to be found.
Still, when I was back outside, I felt better.
It was a clear night, and not being inside calmed me.
I had just watched way too many horror movies in my life to be comfortable in a dark house.
I let the shiver pass through me and took a steadying breath when I was standing alone in the backyard.
Only then did I see the shed. How I had missed it when I walked around the house the first time was beyond me, but nonetheless, it was there, white in the moonlight.
I saw the dead patch of grass where I guessed the outside freezer had been, where they’d found Greg Fain’s body, and I saw all the little flags in the ground where the police had marked it.
When I realized I had to roll the door open on the shed, I knew, of course, this was the place.
Inside was as I remembered—the concrete floor, the metal walls, and the absence of windows. It wasn’t necessarily a scary place, just odd to be there without being tied up. I checked over every inch of the room and came up with nothing, not even a gum wrapper or some dirt. It was pristine.
I walked around the shed using the flashlight, looked at the grass surrounding it, and found not a thing even remotely useful or interesting.
I walked down the alley on the other side of the fence, trying to figure out which way, if any, the kidnapper had driven the car, but it was useless. On the way back, I called Sam’s cell.
“Hello?”
“I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“Jory.” He sounded so relieved.
“How are you feeling?”
“Baby, where are you?”
“At the house.” I sighed.
“Okay.”
“There’s nothing here.”
“I could’ve told you that. They pulled everything outta there, J. The crime scene guys went over everything with a fine-tooth comb.”
I looked at the house as I scaled the fence into the backyard, and it was only then that I noticed the window. “Oh shit, Sam, there’s an attic.”
“What?”
“I didn’t see a ladder or anything. Nothing was open on the second floor. Did they find an attic?”
“I’m sure they did. They’re trained, you know.”
“You’re funny.”
“Always have been, but listen, don’t go back in the house. Drive here to me.”
“I have to check the whole house, Sam. I don’t want to miss anything.”
“Love, don’t. I’m gonna call Hefron right now while you drive over here.”
The idea of going back into the house made me nauseous. The fear was irrational but nevertheless coursing through my body. Outside, I could see if something came at me. I could maneuver or run. In the confines of the house, I could not.
“Shit,” I said. “Why am I so fuckin’ scared of nothing?”
“Jory,” he pleaded, “baby, it’s not nothing. You’ve been fearless so far, but really, this is stupid. They found the attic; you don’t need to go up there.”
“Okay,” I said to placate him before I hung up and forced myself forward to the back door. I could feel my chest tightening; I was having trouble moving air through my lungs. I was so close to hyperventilating.
In the kitchen, leaning on the refrigerator and hearing it cycle, I calmed down.
Normal noises, things that made sense, were helpful.
I still wanted a gun. I had never wanted one before.
And even though I was calmer than I’d been all night, my phone ringing scared the hell out of me, and I screamed.
“Shit,” I said as I answered it, feeling stupid.
“As predicted, they did find the attic, but I told them you were there, so lots of people are on their way back. You’re gonna be knee-deep in police officers in, like, ten minutes, so just drive back to me, okay?”
But I knew his voice too well. He was lying. “Sure,” I played along before I hung up again and called Caleb.
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Never mind,” I scolded him. “Do you remember ever being in an attic?”
“An attic? I don’t think so.”
“When you got taken to talk to Dane on the phone, where’d ya go?”
“I don’t really know because I was blindfolded, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was a kitchen. It just smelled like a kitchen, you know?”
Which made sense. The walk from the shed to the kitchen was close, and there was a phone in the kitchen. Not that they had used that phone. Caleb had said he’d talked to Dane on a cell phone, probably a burner like mine.
“So you remember being outside and then inside when he moved you.”
“Yeah.”
“God, I wish you were here to see the shed and the kitchen.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow morning. You can pick me up.”
“I will. What airline?”