Fisher nodded slowly. "Like you said, fast."
"Too fast?"
"Maybe."
"Time-phase-wise," Pistillo said, "it's far more likely that someone grabbed her right away. As soon as she left the apartment."
"And flew her to Nebraska?"
"Or drove like a demon."
"Or…?" Fisher began.
"Or?"
She looked at her boss. "I think," she said, "that we're both coming to the same conclusion. The time line is too close. She probably disappeared the night before."
"Which means?"
"Which means that Will Klein lied to us."
Pistillo grinned. "Exactly."
Fisher's words started coming fast now. "Okay, here's a more likely scenario: Will Klein and Sheila Rogers go to the funeral of Klein's mother. They return to his parents' house afterward. According to Klein, they drive back to their apartment that night. But we have no independent confirmation of that. So maybe" she tried to slow down but that wasn't happening "maybe they don't head home. Maybe he hands her over to an accomplice, who tortures and kills her and dumps the body. Will meanwhile drives back to his apartment. He goes to work in the morning. When Wilcox and I brace him at his office, he makes up this story about her leaving in the morning."
Pistillo nodded. "Interesting theory."
She stood at attention.
"Do you have a motive?" he asked.
"He needed to silence her."
"For?"
"Whatever happened in Albuquerque."
They both mulled it over in silence.
"I'm not convinced," Pistillo said.
"Neither am I."
"But we agree that Will Klein knows more than he's saying."
"For certain."
Pistillo let loose a long breath. "Either way, we need to give him the bad news about Ms. Rogers's demise."
"Yes."
"Call that local chief out in Utah."
" Idaho."
"Whatever. Have him inform the family. Then get them on a plane for official identification."
"What about Will Klein?"
Pistillo thought about that. "I'll reach out to Squares. Maybe he can help us deliver the blow."
18
My apartment door was ajar.
After Aunt Selma and Uncle Murray's arrival, my father and I carefully avoided each other. I love my father. I think I have made that pretty clear. But a small part of me irrationally blames him for my mother's death. I don't know why I feel that way, and it is very hard to admit this even to myself, but from the moment she first became ill, I looked at him differently. As though he hadn't done enough. Or perhaps I blamed him for not saving her after Julie Miller's murder. He hadn't been strong enough. He hadn't been a good enough husband. Couldn't true love have helped Mom recover, salved her spirit?
Like I said, irrational.
My door was only open a crack, but it made me pause. I always lock it hey, I live in a doorman-free building in Manhattan but then again I had not been thinking straight of late. Perhaps in my haste to meet Katy Miller I'd just forgotten. That would be natural enough. And the dead bolt gets stuck sometimes. Maybe I'd never fully closed the door in the first place.
I frowned. Not likely.
I put my hand on a door panel and pushed ever so slightly. I waited to hear the door creak. It did not. I heard something. Faint at first. I leaned my head through the opening and immediately felt my insides turn to ice
Nothing I saw was out of the ordinary. The lights were out, as a matter of fact. The blinds were drawn, so there was not much illumination. No, nothing out of the ordinary or again, nothing that I could see. I stayed in the corridor and leaned in a little more.
But I could hear music.
Again, that alone would not cause too much alarm. I do not make it a practice to leave music playing like some security-conscious New Yorkers, but I confess to a major streak of absentmindedness. I could have left my CD player on. That alone would not chill me like this.
What did chill me, however, was the song selection.
That was what was getting to me. The song playing I tried to remember when I last heard it was "Don't Fear the Reaper." I shuddered.
Ken's favorite song.
By Blue Oyster Cult, a heavy metal band, though this song, their most famous, was more subdued, almost ethereal. Ken used to grab his tennis racket and fake-guitar the solos. And I know that I do not have a copy of that particular song on any of my CDs. No way, unh-unh. Too many memories.
What the hell was going on here?
I stepped into the room. As I said before, the lights were out. It was dark. I stopped and felt awfully stupid. Hmm. Why not just flick on the lights, numb nuts Wouldn't that be a good idea?
As I reached for the switch, another inner voice said, Better yet, why not just run? That was what we always yell at the movie screens, right? The killer is hiding inside the house. The stupid teenager, after finding her best friend's decapitated corpse, decides that this would be the perfect time to stroll through the darkened house instead of, say, fleeing and screaming like a mad animal.
Gee, all I had to do was strip down to a bra and I could be playing the part.
The song faded down in a guitar solo. I waited for the silence. It was brief. The song started up again. The same song.
What the hell was going on?
Flee and scream. That was the ticket. I would do just that. Except for one thing. I had not stumbled across any headless corpse. So how would this play out here? What exactly would I do? Call the police? I could just see that. What seems to be the problem, sir? Well, my stereo is playing my brother's favorite song so I decided to start running down the hall screaming. Can you rush over here with guns drawn? Uh-huh, sure, we're on our way.
How dorky would that sound?
And even if I assumed that someone had broken in, that there was indeed a prowler still in my apartment, someone who had brought his own CD with him… well, who was that most likely to be?
My heart picked up a beat as my eyes began to adjust to the dark. I decided to leave the lights off. If there was an intruder, there was no reason to let him know I was standing there, an easy target. Or would turning on the light scare him into view?
Christ, I'm not good at this.
I decided to leave the lights off.
Okay, fine, let's play it that way. Lights stay off. Now what?
The music. Follow the music. It was coming from my bedroom. I turned in that direction. The door was closed. I stepped toward it. Carefully. I was not going to be a total idiot. I opened the front door all the way and left it like that in case I had to scream or make a run for it.
I moved forward in a sort of spastic slide, leading with the left foot but keeping the right toes firmly pointed toward the exit. It reminded me of one of Squares's yoga stances. You spread your legs and you bend one way but both your weight and your "awareness" go in the opposite direction. The body moves one way, the mind another. This was what some yogis, not Squares thankfully, referred to as "spreading your consciousness."
I slid a yard. Then another. Blue Oyster Cult's Buck Dharma the fact that I remembered not only that name, but that his real name was Donald Roeser said a lot about my childhood sang how we can be like they are, like Romeo and Juliet.
In a word: dead.
I reached the bedroom door. I swallowed and pushed against the frame. No go. I'd have to turn the knob. My hand gripped the metal. I looked over my shoulder. The door was still wide open. My right foot stayed pointed in that direction, though I could no longer be sure of my "awareness." I turned the knob as silently as possible, but it still sounded like a gunshot in my ear.
I pushed just a little, just to clear the frame. I let go of the knob. The music was louder now. Crisp and clear. Probably playing on the Bose CD player Squares had gotten me for my birthday two years ago.