Chapter 38
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Nick
This was a nightmare. As soon as Nicole fired that gun, someone called the police. Shep was able to drive away, and I told him to get to Rybelt and help Gabe secure Matt. I hadn’t heard from either of them. I was currently standing in front of Officer Mendez, explaining why he’d failed.
“This is Matt’s landlord.” I pointed to her dead body, where investigators were taking pictures. “James Somers, or as Greg knows him by, Lenny Harlston, is her husband. I don’t know all the details, but the two of them were in this together.”
Mendez was writing everything in his little pad and nodding. “And she came here and just killed herself?”
“Yes.”
Greg was sitting in the kitchen talking to another officer, but all he kept saying was, “I don’t understand anything.”
“Look, Officer, I’d love to sit here and tell you all the shit I’ve found out that the police failed to be able to, but I need to go find my boyfriend.”
“Hold on.” Mendez held up a hand. “I can’t let you leave.”
“You’ve asked me, Greg, and Angel, who all said she offed herself. I can come to the station and fill out a statement, but not until I know Matt is okay.”
“Nick!” Angel came barreling over much to the mingling cops’ dismay. “It’s Gabe, he got to Rybelt, and Matt wasn’t there. Darnell said Camie needed him to go somewhere, and they left out back. When Gabe got there Camie was out cold, Matt’s bag on the ground, and he was gone.”
I gritted my teeth and glared at Mendez. “I’m leaving now.”
“Mr. Saint.”
“No, Mendez. You all failed him, and I promised Matt I’d keep him safe. I won’t be another person who disappoints him. Follow me if you want but right now, you have to get the fuck out of my way.”
I didn’t wait, and the moment I left the apartment, Angel was on my heels. If the cops came, I didn’t care. That wasn’t where my priority was.
“Where are we going?” Angel asked.
“He’s not at Rybelt anymore.” I was texting Noel while answering Angel.
“Okay, so where to?”
I knew who had him; I just didn’t know where. “Hang on.” I connected a call with Noel. “Tell me you have something.”
“Shit. Well, I mean, James Somers comes up clean. On paper he’s not a veterinarian, and no, Lenny isn’t either. Nicole or Jenny, whatever she’s called, is a librarian. I called in some favors and what I did find was that the building, while owned by James Somers, has a cosigner.”
“Who?” I had the phone on speaker so Angel could listen.
“The name is Neil Hash. Now that name got hits. He was a veterinarian but lost his license about six years ago…for reasons. When I did a little more digging, he looks suspiciously like James Somers.”
“Because James nor Lenny were legal or there wasn’t any credit for them, he had to make one of his other aliases cosign?” Angel snorted. “I don’t know if that’s clever or insane.”
“Both,” Noel and I said at the same time.
“Something else I found. I put Nicole’s picture through facial recognition, and I got a suspicious tag and got the idea to rewind her age. I altered her face five years, then ten.”
“Okay, and?”
“And a seventeen-year-old girl matching her description was reported missing ten years ago in Eufaula, Alabama.”
“Nicole was twenty-seven? She looked older.” Angel was driving toward Rybelt, but I didn’t want to go there.
“Go to the apartment building. I’ll break into James’s; maybe there’s something there.”
Angel turned and made his way in that direction.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Noel said. “I think Nicole was James’s obsession once, and he kidnapped her—you know how these things go. Brainwashed, abused, he molded her into what he wanted her to be.”
“That would explain why she said she disappointed him right before killing herself,” Angel added.
“Yeah. Noel, what about the lake house they said they go to all the time?”
“No such place. I looked under all the names. I mean there could be one under some other name, but I doubt it. He does have a sick mother, though. She’s in a home but according to her medical files, she hasn’t spoken in over seven years.”
“Shit. Okay.”
“Call me when you get to the apartment. I’m running a few more things, and hopefully I’ll get a hit. I’m scouring CCTV cameras around Rybelt. Maybe I can track where he went with Matt.”
“Thanks, Noel.”
“We’ll find him, Nick.”
I didn’t answer him. I simply disconnected the call and covered my face with my hands.
“We will get him, Nick.” Angel squeezed my arm.
I hoped they were both right, because I couldn’t fail Matt.
We got to the apartment complex, and I didn’t even wait for the elevator—I took the stairs to the third floor. I glanced at Matt’s door, a dull ache weighing heavily on my chest. I wished I could knock and say, “Hey, Mattie,” and have him tell me to stop calling him that.
James used regular locks for all the doors, nothing a good old fashioned lockpick set couldn’t handle. I heard someone behind me and knew it was Angel—he’d have my back.
It took only a minute to get inside and unfortunately, it was eerily silent.
Angel shut the door behind him, and I gestured for him to go left while I went right. The living room was something out of Homes and Gardens , and there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. I mean, I understood wanting to have a clean home but there was clean, and then there was whatever this was.
Down the hall there was a bathroom, with the perfect color scheme and not even a towel out of place. Farther along had to be the master bedroom.
Immaculate like the rest of the rooms, there was a bed you could bounce a quarter off, his and hers closet sides, and dressers. I went through drawers but there was nothing, not even a fucking rosary.
“Nick.” I looked up, and Angel filled the doorway.
“You got something?”
“You need to see this.”
I followed him out to the other side of the apartment. I assumed he was taking me to a guest bedroom but when I entered it, there was nothing welcoming about it.
Chains hung from the walls and ceiling, a cage off in the corner. Hooked to one wall were instruments. I’m not talking BDSM kind of stuff; this was torture devices.
“It’s a punishment room,” I surmised.
“I wonder how often Nicole found herself in here.”
As angry as I was with her for assisting James in getting Matt, at that moment I realized she’d been as much of a victim. She’d thought death was a better choice than facing a disappointed James.
“Angel, we have to figure out where Matt is, now!”