Chapter 5 #3
“Yeah, I don’t understand it either. I did try to get more of an explanation, but I wasn’t successful. He did say that he would call me back later, and he would do more digging, repeating that we should be connecting the dead women.”
“Good God,” Eric muttered. “By any chance did he mention how many dead women we have on our hands? I’ve heard that he has access to some … interesting insights.”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard too. I tried to tell him no.”
“How did that go?”
“He laughed at me and then told me that he had absolutely no confusion over which women. I have nothing on this guy. I have seen enough to know that he’s withholding information. He ended the call, but I did get a promise. He did say he would get back to us.”
Eric sat back in the front seat of his car, still parked in front of Eden’s house. “Are we literally talking about Deborah Kingston and our three other serial killer rape-murder victims?”
“I don’t know for sure. That’s why I was hoping you had worked with him before. Do you know if he’s always this, uh, curt?”
“I don’t think he is,” Eric replied. “I mean, I have heard about his craziness, but he’s got a solid reputation. Still, we’re just starting to look at a connection between cases.”
“And yet there you are, heading over to look at Debbie’s luggage.”
“Sure, but that’s just because I wanted to confirm we didn’t miss anything.”
“Guess what? You’re now on task to confirm you didn’t miss anything, and, if you did, to confirm that you don’t miss anything now.” With that, Captain Louis ended the call.
Not at all sure what the hell just happened, Eric exited his vehicle, picked up the Chinese food bags, and walked up to Eden’s front door. It opened before he got there, and Eden frowned at him. However, when she saw the Chinese food, her face lit up. But the light died immediately.
Eric nodded. “I figured, since neither one of us had eaten, this might not be a bad idea.”
She hesitated and then opened the door wider.
“Thank you. I haven’t been eating very much, to be honest.” When he frowned at that, she just shrugged.
“What am I supposed to say? Somebody I cared about is dead, and we have no answers, yet it feels very much like we should.” He didn’t say anything to that for a long moment.
She stared at him and added, “I appreciate the fact that you haven’t called me crazy. ”
He smiled. “Do you know anybody by the name of Stefan Kronos?”
She thought about it, then shook her head. “Not really. I’ve never met him. Debbie mentioned him, but I don’t know in what capacity.”
He stared at her. “Interesting.”
“Maybe, but, … as I said, I don’t know how she knew him.”
“Interesting,” he murmured.
“You keep saying that, but you’re not explaining what’s interesting about it,” she noted sharply.
“Can you remember anything about the conversation?”
“Just the name. Debbie was always into the paranormal and all that stuff. That’s one of the reasons she wanted to meditate more, so she could reconnect”—Eric kept his gaze on her, and she shifted uneasily—“with her parents.”
“Her parents?”
“Yeah, they died about ten years ago, maybe. At the time, she went to multiple mediums to try and contact them, until I finally managed to get her to stop. It just seemed there was never any contact when she went. She would get so depressed, and I felt it wasn’t healthy for her.”
“Interesting,” he murmured.
“Again with the interesting. You say that a lot, yet it doesn’t mean anything.”
“Stefan Kronos contacted my precinct. He talked to Captain Louis about—” He hesitated, not sure if he wanted to let on too much, and diverted, “about a case.”
“About Debbie’s case?” she asked, turning to him.
“Maybe,” he turned away to put the containers on the counter.
“What did Stefan say?”
“It was a very cryptic message.”
“If he’s a psychic, that’s what they seem to do,” she said, with an offhand swing of her arm.
“A part of me was thinking about contacting a psychic just because I want to know what happened to Debbie. I can’t get that thought out of my mind.
Now, for the first time, … I understand why Debbie was so heavily invested in getting answers about her parents. ”
“What do you mean, getting answers?”
“They both died many years ago, together, while on vacation in Mexico. Their case was never solved,” she shared, “and Debbie was very upset at the prospect of not getting answers. Now I feel as if I’m fighting to get answers for her and that she would be cheering me on.”
Eric stared at her for a long moment.
She sighed. “I know. … I’m certifiable, right?” She turned and walked into her kitchen. She tossed him a backward glance and added, “But you have to understand, when you lose somebody—”
“I do understand. I lost my younger brother quite a few years ago,” he said, with a sad smile, “and there isn’t anything quite like it.”
“Right, there isn’t, and you do everything you can to deal with it.
Yet, at the end of the day, you can just do nothing at times.
” She pulled out plates and chopsticks. He quickly dished out food on both plates while she watched.
They ate quickly, both hungry. “Did you ever get answers on your brother?”
“Yeah, he was killed by a drunk driver,” he replied. “A young life, tossed away, all because of too much booze.”
“Did it feel better knowing? Did it help?”
“Time helps—at least dulls the sting. I was so angry for so long, but, at some point, you must let it go because it poisons you.”
“It does, and I think that’s what I was most concerned about with Debbie—that she was getting way too involved in trying to get answers.
That, and I was really doubting the information she was getting from these psychics,” she added, frowning.
“I didn’t know any of them and never had anything to do with them, but I just felt it was not good for her to get so heavily invested in them.
After that she seemed to be okay for a while, and that helped a lot.
At least I thought that she was doing better about it.
I don’t know now,” she admitted, raising her hands in frustration.
“Sometimes I think maybe she was still contacting people and just keeping it from me.”
“Which is one of the reasons why I was looking for her cell phone and any other information that might be available.”
“Right,” she muttered. “I didn’t even think about her cell phone when I packed up her things because it’s always with her.”
“Yet it wasn’t.”
She stared at him for a moment, ate the last few bites on her plate, then got up, and he followed her. She walked into the living room where she had dumped Debbie’s stuff, pointed at two bags, and said, “Those are hers from the seminar.”
When she reached for one, a phone in the outside pocket buzzed. She quickly pulled it out and held it up for him to see. “This is her phone, but I don’t know who’s calling.”
He quickly reached for the phone and answered it, and, when nobody spoke on the other end, he explained who he was and added, “I need you to identify yourself. Who are you?” The phone call went dead.
She stared at the phone, then over at him, and asked, “You still think absolutely nothing is going on here?”
He frowned as he faced her. “I have no idea what’s going on. All I know is that we have somebody with no visible means of foul play—but now something else may have changed.”
“Could it be the guy you mentioned—Stefan?”
“Do you mind if I go through the rest of her bags?”
“No, go right ahead.”
“And I’ll be taking her phone with me.”
“Yeah, I figured, and, if it helps, you’re more than welcome to it.”
“And if it doesn’t?” he asked, glancing at her, and she just shrugged. “I have her phone now, so I’ll look at her contacts, confirming that I have spoken to everybody who she has in her phone and that we haven’t missed any of her friends somewhere along the line.”
Eden nodded. “If you find something, I would just ask that you keep me in the loop.”
He didn’t say anything, just nodded. As he continued to go through her bags, all he saw was just dirty laundry that Debbie had apparently set aside to wash but hadn’t put in the washer just yet.
“Would she normally have not unpacked?” Eric asked.
“Oh, God, yes,” Eden confirmed, with the wave of her hand. “For the most part, she was a slob.” He gave a bark of laughter, and she smiled and nodded. “Debbie didn’t really understand why she should have to do any of that. She thought that maids were assigned for everything in life.”
“If you want to pay the money,” he replied, “there is. You don’t even have to do laundry. You just take it to a dry cleaner, if that’s what you want to do. I’ve known plenty of older men who did that.”
“Maybe,” she noted, without rancor, even though he stared at her sharply.
She shrugged and explained, “I don’t know why her phone would even still be in her bag, unless she came in and was so tired that she just collapsed on the bed.
She called me twice, but I wasn’t ready to talk to her.
” She stared off in the distance. “That’s a guilt I’ll have to find a way to deal with somehow.
” She looked over at him. “As for her phone, … I can only imagine she was exhausted and didn’t unpack.
Then again her bedroom was a disaster so … ”
“I saw her bedroom and searched through it, as did forensics, but they missed finding her phone.”
Eden asked, “You don’t think someone left it there after you all were through with her apartment?”
Eric frowned. “It is possible, I suppose. Yet we try to stay with the more normal explanations, at least at first. Maybe she didn’t want somebody to contact her,” he suggested. “That would be another reason not to take your cell phone with you to bed.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. None of this makes any sense to me.”
“It will make sense eventually,” he noted. “It’s just that we don’t always get the answers that we need to make sense of it right away.”
Having gone through both bags but finding nothing suspicious, he sat down in the kitchen again, finished eating, and then stood up. “I’ll go back to the office and see what I can do with her phone.”
As he walked to the door, he stopped and looked at her, and she just waved her hand. “Go on, Detective. I’ll be fine. But if you want more of the Chinese food,” she said playfully, “you’ll have to come back later.”
He laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Within seconds, he was gone.