Chapter 39
GRIFFIN
Ford and I meet outside Lionel’s place just before six.
“Anything?” I ask.
Ford gives a grim shake of his head. He went straight to the office after his plane landed while I’ve spent all day driving around to everywhere I can think that Lionel might be. I even stopped by his ex-wife’s place. And Laura’s marker.
“No one there at all.”
It’s Sunday afternoon, but that’s still not a good sign. I can’t shake the feeling that something bigger than just Lionel going AWOL is happening. “Security?”
Ford grimaces. That’s a negative.
“Seriously?”
“You find anything?”
I shake my head.
Where the fuck are you, Lionel?
We look up at his building, neither of us, I think, feeling especially hopeful.
Lionel’s apartment is in a nondescript six-story building in Queens.
It looks like it was specifically built to house lonely, divorced men.
As though proving the point, as we walk up to the front door, a man with thinning gray-brown hair and sagging shoulders comes through, his eyes only briefly glancing over us.
He throws the door open behind him, though, which solves our need to discreetly jimmy the lock.
“This place is depressing as fuck.” Ford states the obvious as we get in the elevator. The walls are paneled in cheap vinyl-covered pressboard and the fluorescent light over our heads buzzes loudly, casting an almost greenish tint.
The fifth-floor hallway’s not much better.
I can’t help but notice how the dingy carpets and scuffed beige paint are such a far cry from the family home Laura grew up in. Her mom made “cozy home” her whole personality, with bright throw pillows on every couch and a constant rotation of baked goods in the oven.
“Did his ex-wife have any info?” Ford asks, clearly thinking the same thing.
“She hasn’t heard from him in over a year.”
I saw the pain on Laura’s mother’s worn face when she saw me and the concern when I said we couldn’t locate her ex-husband. But she quickly replaced it with stony indifference. “I don’t really care where he is,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll turn up in a dive bar somewhere.”
I didn’t tell her he’d quit drinking. It didn’t matter. He didn’t handle the loss of his daughter well—though who would? At least he’s been sober the last couple of years.
She reached out and gave my hand a squeeze before she slammed the door in my face, a nod to the happy times we’d once shared, before everything went so terribly dark.
I focus on the matter at hand. Lionel’s apartment is at the end of the hall. Halfway there, my phone buzzes.
It’s Sasha. The dim hallway seems to brighten just by me picturing her face.
SASHA: Hey, you!
GRIFFIN: Hey, sweetheart.
SASHA: You busy?
I don’t ever want to answer her yes to that question, but I stopped when I saw her name, and Ford’s already almost up at Lionel’s door.
GRIFFIN: A little. You okay?
Three dots pop up. Then a new text appears. But it’s not Sasha.
FORD: Signs of forced entry.
I whip my head up. He’s standing with his back up against the wall next to Lionel’s door, his elbows bent, weapon pulled. He’s looking pointedly at me.
“Fuck.”
I shove my phone into my pocket. If she’s not texting me 911, it’ll have to wait.
I sprint up the hallway as quietly as I can.
Ford glares, pocketing his phone. “Way to pay attention, lover boy.”
I grunt, glancing at the door. He knows I’m sorry.
The door’s closed, but the frame is bent out of shape.
“You hear anything?” I whisper.
Ford shakes his head. “Think it’s clear.”
I nod. We’ll still go in on the assumption that someone’s inside. Better safe than sorry. I move to the other side of the door.
“Ready?” I ask.
Ford nods.
I bang on the door. “Lionel.”
I tip my ear toward the wood. No sound at all. Then a little pattering and a scratch.
“Chipps,” I whisper.
Ford nods.
Lionel adopted an old tabby a couple of years ago after his wife left him. Probably the only reason he kept his life together even a little bit over the past few years.
“Lionel.” I try again, banging harder but not aggressively enough to get the neighbors out.
I tip my head.
Ford’s got the gun, so I let him slip past me while I play backup.
Ford carries; I don’t. Personal choice. We’re not cops, so we don’t do this often, but we’ve trained well enough. I try the handle. It doesn’t twist, but the door latch is broken, so I yank it open.
Ford moves in with his gun high. I follow.
The hallway’s clear. To the right is the tiny kitchen.
Ford freezes, his jaw clenching, before moving on. I glance in as I go by, and my stomach churns. There’s a chair in the cramped space, with cut ties on the legs and back. On the floor, splatters of blood.
Lionel.
The combined living and dining room is empty. I point my head to the hallway.
Chipps meows loudly, snaking around my leg.
The bathroom and lone bedroom are clear, too. Closets are empty.
“No one here,” Ford says, holstering his weapon.
I’m already headed for the kitchen.
Ford comes up next to me a moment later. “Tortured.”
I scan the blood splatters. There are a lot, but no big puddles like you’d see with more lethal injuries. “Not for long.”
“Not here, anyway,” Ford says.
Chipps meows again. His bowls are empty—food and water. I pick him up and head to the bathroom. The toilet’s empty, too. I return to the kitchen where I know Lionel keeps the food. “He’s been on his own a couple days.”
I stroke the cat behind the ears before dropping him to the ground and grabbing the bag under the sink. The garbage under there is festering. I hold my breath, grateful it’s nothing worse I’m trying not to smell.
But when I shut the door, I grimace. Because there, in the sink, are more blood splatters. Three, to be exact, and in the middle of each, a white molar tooth.
“Jesus,” Ford says.
I top up Chipps’s water, even though we’re not leaving him here.
“What do you think?” he asks me.
“I think I’m glad Chipps is out of food.”
What they say about cats is true—they’ll eat whatever’s available if they’re desperate. I know we both feared the worst when we saw that broken doorframe.
Ford gives me a grim nod. “Agreed.” Ford pops his jaw. “So if Lionel’s not here, where the hell is he?”
I walk around the apartment, taking it all in.
The place is trashed: the mattress and couch cushions are slashed, drawers have been pulled open, and shit’s been emptied onto the floor.
Except for the mess, there’s still not much here.
Compared to Chester’s place the other day, there’s not much evidence someone even lives here.
The sadness of that makes me bring my fingers to my chest, rubbing like there’s a wound there.
Except…the dining room is messier than the rest of the place. Giant rolls of paper lay strewn on the tabletop and floor.
I walk over and open one up.
“What are they?” Ford asks.
“Design plans.”
“What for?”
I show them to Ford. “Some kind of institutional building it looks like.”
Both of us frown at the paper, trying to make sense of it. It’s McCrae & Associates. It looks almost like a library or a school. The hell did he have drawings like these for?
Ford crouches down, picking up a wad of paper off the ground. It looks like it’s mostly opened mail. Bills, stamped past due. Dozens of them. He hands me one. It’s not addressed here, but to the office.
“He never brought anything home,” I say. “Said it was too risky.”
Yet here’s a huge pile of mail calling me a liar.
“He wasn’t lying about the money thing,” Ford says, picking up some of the bills. Then he goes still as he reads one of them. It’s on nicer paper than the bills, cream colored and thick.
“Fuck me,” Ford says after a minute.
He hands it to me. There’s an embossed logo at the top that says the letter’s from a law office. The subject line reads Corporate Insolvency Support.
We meet each other’s eyes.
“Guess I’m not going back to Texas,” Ford says.
McCrae & Associates is bankrupt.
I’m so stunned that it’s not until I’m back outside and Ford’s left with Chipps that I remember my phone. When I pull it out, still half-dazed at this news, I see only one missed text from Sasha, from half an hour ago.
SASHA: My brother found me. Don’t worry, I’m okay. He’s gone.