Hide, p.31
Hide, page 31
He couldn’t read fast enough—his eyes soaking in every word, every implication—sweat dripping down his back, even though it was fifty degrees. By the time he’d finished reading, his hands were trembling. “Oh my God.” He read everything again, then a third time. Then he tried calling Amelia’s number and got voice mail again. He’d left earlier messages, frantic ones, pleading for her to call back. This time, he had just one thing to say. He laid the envelope on his lap as though it were a precious thing, then waited for the beep. He had just two words for his twin, likely the last words he’d ever say to her.
“I’m free.”
He walked fast back to his apartment, clutching the envelope, but the walking quickly morphed into a trot and then a full-out run. He was angry, angrier than he had ever remembered being. She had kept it all from him, knowing what it would mean for him. If he wasn’t tainted, he could be anyone, do anything. He didn’t need Amelia. For the first time in his life, he could be completely his own person. No Am to hide behind, to defer to. No Bodie Morgan bringing up the rear, disappointing everybody, including himself. No Tom Morgan. No sin.
“Boden Jensen.” He whispered the name to himself, trying it on. “I’m Boden Jensen.”
He could feel himself shedding his old skin as a weight lifted off his shoulders. He didn’t have one drop of Tom Morgan in him. When he reached his apartment, he crumpled the envelope in his fist and tucked it inside his jacket, placing a hand over it as if to protect the truths that lay inside. He didn’t need to talk to Amelia. She would only lie. He didn’t need to talk to her ever again if he didn’t want to. She didn’t know it yet, but he was already gone.
“I’m Boden Jensen,” he muttered to himself, finally clean. “And I’m free.”
CHAPTER 74
“Tell me about my mother,” Amelia said as she watched Tom Morgan stare out the window onto the backyard of his new house. She’d given it all night and half the morning to decide and now stared at the familiar stranger as though he were nothing, no one. “You always said you would tell Bodie and me about her when we got older.” He didn’t bother turning around. Was she not even important enough to face?
“I did, but now’s not the time,” he said. “We have a lot to do. There’s the doctor and the detectives.”
“The doctor. Right.”
“I don’t hold her against you.”
“But you keep bringing her up.”
It was true that you never really knew a person. She’d thought she knew exactly who and what she was, who’d made her, only she didn’t. She hadn’t a clue. She wondered if he could feel the change in her. She could feel it. He had always been so intuitive, so tuned in to the shifts in the air, sensing when things were off. Could he do that now? Could he sense that Amelia knew? She hadn’t told him about the police station. It was no longer his business.
“I’d like to know now . . . about her.”
He turned around. He wasn’t smiling; neither was she. There was no longer a reason to lie. “When did she die?” Amelia asked. “How?”
“You’re upset about the doctor,” he said, ignoring her questions. “I’ve already forgiven you for that. I think we should start with Detective Li. She has a child. Her loss will be devastating, and it will hobble them long enough for everything to fall apart. I’ve done the advance work. I anticipated that things would likely come to this.”
“You anticipated that I would fail.”
“Your mother died of a rare blood disorder shortly after you and Bodie were born. She suffered horribly in those last days. You can see now why I kept it from you? To spare you both.”
“Yes, I see now. And you loved her.”
“Of course.”
Clearly, now, she could see there was no real resemblance. Funny, how the mind worked, how conditioning happened over time, clouding things, forcing the eye not to see what the brain knew it did. If anyone would have asked her days ago, she would have sworn that she was this man’s spitting image. But now she was Anika Jensen, not Amelia Morgan or Davies. She had parents who’d loved her, a different life. “About your plan . . . ,” she said. He put warmth in his eyes when he looked back at her, but she knew better. It was a thing he did.
He wagged his finger at her. “Our plan.”
“Right.”
What could she have become if she hadn’t been corrupted by this? she wondered. It was far too late to know. He’d lied to her, to Bodie. She knew she was looking at her mother’s killer. She could feel something coming for her. It was like a train roaring down a track, its lights flashing a warning. Impact was inevitable.
“You seem distracted,” he said. “You can’t be. I need you at the top of your game. Are you?”
Amelia smiled sweetly. Her mother had been pretty. She and her father had made a handsome couple. She wondered what they were like together before this man came along. “Of course. Dad.”
His face brightened. “Good. I haven’t shown you the best part. The basement.” He brushed past her, heading toward the kitchen. “Follow me.”
Amelia turned to watch him, steel in her spine. Gone. Someone new in her place. “Right behind you.”
CHAPTER 75
Foster peered into the car with the dead woman sitting in the driver’s seat, the victim’s head leaning back against the headrest, her throat cut, blood everywhere. It wasn’t a fresh kill. It looked like the woman had been there for a while. The car wasn’t disabled. It had been driven into the empty, scraggly lot under the L tracks at Lawrence Avenue. Li walked around the car on the passenger side, shining her flashlight into the back seat.
“Who found her?” Foster flicked a look at the PO’s nameplate. “Mendoza.”
“Security guard was walking through. Saw the car sitting here. He thought it might be stolen, so he looked inside and got the shock of his life.” Mendoza angled her head toward the shell-shocked Black guy standing dazed in a cop huddle several feet away. “That’s him. Wendall Price.”
“Did he touch anything inside?” Li grimaced at the spray of blood on the inside of the windshield, on the dashboard, the steering wheel, all over the woman’s T-shirt, painting it a dull, rusty crimson. The car smelled of metal and body stench, the woman’s eyes half-open, her mouth frozen in a rictus grin that testified to the pain and surprise she must have experienced in her last moments.
“He says he didn’t,” Mendoza said. “I believe him. When we got here, he had his head between his legs. He says he faints at the sight of blood.”
“He found her when?” Foster asked.
The uniform referred to her notes. “About an hour ago. We rolled up six minutes after. No telling how long the car’s been sitting here without anybody paying it any attention. We’ve been on pins and needles waiting for another redhead dump, but when we got here and saw she was blonde . . .” She looked around at the busy crime scene. “This is out of the way, L tracks overhead. No idea what this is.”
“ID?” Foster asked.
“Found her bag with her wallet inside. Money in it. Tammy Bergin, thirty-four. Lives over in Andersonville. Drives Uber. The decal is in the back window. The car’s registered to her.”
Li reached into the car, checking the seats, the floorboards, Bergin’s bag. “No cell phone.” She checked the console, the dashboard GPS and nav system, her nitrile gloves skimming lightly over the bloody touch screen. “Nav is wiped. We’ll have to go through the company to get her last pickup.” She backed out of the car. “That won’t be a hassle.” She said it facetiously. “But I don’t think we’ll learn anything we don’t already know, do you?” Her eyes met Foster’s.
“Bergin’s face is on Amelia’s wall,” Foster said. “One of the unidentified is now identified.”
Foster leaned against the windowsill in the women’s bathroom, the lights off, her head down, eyes closed, listening to the rush and movement of the cops beyond the door. An Uber driver? That didn’t seem planned. It hadn’t been a clean kill either. Amelia was getting reckless, messy. She and her “father” were killing now just to kill. When would they stop? What could she do to make them stop? Li’s voice from the doorway startled her eyes open.
“Found something,” Li said. Foster looked up to see the worried look on Li’s face. “What’re you doing standing in the dark like an idiot? Um, I mean, sorry. Did I say that last part out loud?”
Foster lifted off the sill. She liked Li’s bluntness. Her partner was growing on her. “Found what?”
“A house. It might be where they are.” Foster followed Li back to her computer. “We know about the house in Naperville, so I kept thinking maybe that’s his thing. He likes houses. So I ran a check of all new house purchases, cross-checking them against the names—Davies, Morgan, Jensen.” Li plopped down into her chair and swiveled her monitor around for Foster to see. “Came up with nothing, of course. That would have been too easy. Then I started on the first names, cross-checking against what we knew of all three of them. Look.”
Foster leaned over, her eyes on the screen. “Frank and Anika Morton.”
Li stepped back, a satisfied look on her face. “Uncle Frank? Anika Jensen? They jumbled the names. Unoriginal, but whatever. But look down where it lists professions—accountant and art teacher. A bit of a stretch where she’s concerned. These people don’t exist. Nothing comes back on either of them that connects to who this paperwork says they are, but they fit with what we know about Davies and Tom. I googled the house. Check the photo.”
Foster leaned back to the screen. “The new house and the old one look similar.”
“Similar? They’re practically clones. That’s where he is, and where he is, she is.”
“Where is it?”
Li rubbed her hands together like a fiend in an old silent movie. “You’re going to love this. Mount Greenwood.”
Foster was sure she’d misheard. Mount Greenwood was a neighborhood on the city’s southwest side, populated in large part by city workers, firefighters, teachers, and cops. It was the farthest point away they could live from the worst of what the city offered up in terms of drive-by shootings and gang warfare and still be within city limits, which was required for city employment. “A family of murderers living in Mount Greenwood. They’re cocky bastards, I’ll give them that.”
Li scribbled the address on the legal pad on her desk, then underlined it several times. “That’s the place.” She was already out of her chair, grabbing her jacket. “Won’t hurt to drive by and take a quick look.”
Foster glanced over at Griffin’s office, but the door was closed. “We’ll fill the boss in when we get back.”
The house looked like it had been freshly painted and spruced up to sell, which it had; the for-sale sign staked into the front lawn sported a SOLD sticker on it. The block looked sedate—neat little homes, neat little lawns, lots of trees, Halloween decorations in every window right alongside FOP stickers and the city’s official flag—three white stripes, two light blue ones, and four red stars in the middle.
“Nice, huh?” Li said as they got out of the car. “We were thinking of moving out here when the baby gets a little older. Maybe a nice swing set out back, a kiddie pool in the summer.” She glanced up at the house. “Dormer windows. I love dormer windows.”
“All I see is the commute,” Foster said, “when the snow’s five feet deep and you have to shovel out.”
Li stopped. “Yeah. Didn’t think of that.”
The house looked empty. No car out front matched the one registered to Amelia Davies. There was no answer to their knock at the door.
Li peered in through the gap in the tacked-up newspaper at the window. “They could be in there.”
“This is as far as we can go, though.” Foster turned to scan the street and saw a burly white man cross over from a brick house on the other side. “Company.” Li turned.
The white man stopped at the lawn, hard eyes looking up at them. He’d planted his feet, angled his body, and flicked his right hand over to reveal the badge he clasped in it. “Name’s Nowak. Help you two with something?”
“Police,” Li said.
The man gave them a sly smile. “Knew that when I saw you pull up in the unmarked. Need a hand?”
“No, we got it,” Li said. “Thanks, though.”
“Have you seen anyone going in and out of here?” Foster asked.
“The Realtor. The guy she sold the place to. Midfifties. Dark hair. Drives a late-model Honda Accord. Got the plate number inside if you need it. Also, there was an old Rover parked here earlier. Didn’t see who got in or out.”
Li pulled her phone out of her pocket, scrolled to the image she wanted. “This him?”
He came a little closer, sliding his star into his pocket. “Yeah. Older, though. More gray.”
Li scrolled to the next photo. “How about her?”
He squinted. “No. Haven’t seen her.”
“Thanks. I’m Foster by the way.”
Li waved. “I’m Li. Vera. Thanks for stepping up.”
Nowak nodded, then turned and walked back across the street and into a beige house with an inflated ghost on the lawn.
“You know he’s watching us from behind the drapes,” Li muttered, keeping her lips from moving so Nowak couldn’t read them from across the street.
“Of course.” Foster tried the door. The knob turned freely. She pulled her hand away, letting that sink in. “Unlocked.”
Li exhaled. “Okay, so we have an unlocked door and an audience.”
“In Mount Greenwood,” Foster said, “where there are probably ten cops on this block besides that one with the ghost.”
“A neighborhood where you could probably leave your keys in your car overnight and nobody would steal it,” Li added, “or so the legend goes.”
Foster slid her a look. “We’re still in the city.”
Li pulled a face. “Um. Are we, though?” Li waved at the beige house across the street. “I’m thinking of the body count. If they’re in there, we get to stop them here. Nobody else dies.” She pushed the door open before Foster had a chance to argue the point, then stepped inside. “Police,” Li called out, her voice echoing off the bare walls, the uncarpeted floors. No heat. No furniture. Just house. “Amelia? Tom? Frank? Bodie?” She turned to Foster. “Nobody home.”
“You just breached the door,” Foster said. “We’re not going to talk about that?”
“Exigent circumstances,” Li said.
“Fill me in?”
“You heard Nowak. The Rover parked out front? Remember the Rover in Davies’s painting? She’s a threat to public safety.”
“Not even close,” Foster said. “If Griffin finds out we went this far with so little, she’ll bust us down to traffic.”
“We’re just looking, following a lead,” Li said. “There’s no one here. No rights to infringe upon. No harm, no foul. We don’t even have to call for backup. He’s across the street staring out his window.”
Foster wasn’t happy, but they were in it now. The best they could do was to get in and out as quickly as possible. “Why buy this house?” she asked. “Why not kill and move on?”
“I bet Silva could tell us.” Li wandered into the kitchen. Foster went as far as the doorway. It was a wide, open space with an island and lots of large cabinets. The previous owners had apparently done a complete paint job on it. The entire room smelled like fresh paint. Eggshell, if Foster had to guess the color.
“Will you look at this cabinet space?” Li said, moving around the room. “C’mon.” She ran her hand across the cabinets. “What I wouldn’t give for this kind of setup. You cook, Foster?”
“I microwave.”
Li studied her. “When we catch these assholes, you and I are going to have to talk.”
“No thanks.”
They spotted a door, and Li approached it. “Basement?”
“That’d be my guess,” Foster said. “We’re not going down there.”
“Of course not. That’d be foolhardy. No harm in taking a peek, though.” Li turned the knob, opened the door, and stopped to listen for any sounds from down below. “Smells like a basement. Hello?” Nothing came back but echo. “See? Nobody.”
Foster turned toward the dining room. “We’re either too late, too early, or completely wrong about everything. And I’m tired.”
She looked out the back windows at the long yard. It was large enough for a kiddie pool and swing set. If no one was here, why was the front door unlocked? “Anything?”
“A pantry,” Li called back.
Foster saw something out back, moved closer to the window, squinting to make it out.
“And another door,” Li said.
Beyond the yard, on the alley side of a short, weathered fence. The top of a forest green truck.
“Might be a storage . . .”
Foster reeled. “Li!”
Foster heard Li scream, the scream followed by the sound of something falling down a flight of stairs and the slamming of a door. She ran for the kitchen, even before the echo of both had a chance to die away.
“Li!” There was no response. “Vera!”
She rounded the corner, coming face to face with Amelia standing at the basement door, a bloody knife raised, a vacant look in her eyes. “She’s in the basement.” Amelia angled her head. “Want to join her?”
CHAPTER 76
Li lay at the bottom of the steps, the back of her head throbbing, burning, a ringing in her ears, a rush of blood coursing through her system. She was too stunned to move, even if she could manage it. Stars floated behind her eyelids, and her head felt like a lead block. Amelia Davies. She’d bolted out from the pantry door and shoved her. It had taken Li only a split second to see the woman was out of her mind. The madness was in her eyes.
Li’s entire body burned with a heat of a thousand suns, but her lower back and right ankle burned the most. She tried moving, but the pain knocked her back and stole her air. Taking a quick assessment, she could tell that her right knee was only jammed, not broken, but it was beginning to swell. Her ankle was another story. She could feel the break.
