The 6th Target (Women's Murder Club 6)

The mentioning of money sent a prickling sensation along the tops of my arms and a swooping feeling in my stomach.

“What’s the name of this service?” I said.

“Westbury. No, the Westwood Registry,” said Henry Tyler. “You’ll speak to them?”

“Yes, and please don’t say anything about this call to anyone,” Jacobi cautioned the Tylers. “Just go home. Stay near your phone. And leave the Westwood Registry to us.”

“You’ll be in touch with them?” asked Henry Tyler again.

“We’ll be all over them.”

Chapter 57

CINDY WAS ON THE PHONE with Yuki, loading the dishwasher as she talked.

“He’s just too funny,” Cindy said about Whit Ewing, the good-looking reporter from the Chicago Tribune she’d met about a month ago at the Municipal Hospital trial.

“The guy with the glasses, right? The one who tore out of the courtroom by way of the emergency exit? Set off the alarm?” Yuki chuckled, remembering.

“Yeah. See . . . and he can goof on himself. Whit says he’s Clark Kent’s nerdy younger brother.” Cindy laughed. “He’s been threatening to fly into town and take me out to dinner. He’s even angling to be assigned to the Brinkley trial.”

“Oh, so wait a minute,” Yuki said. “You’re not thinking of doing what Lindsay did. I mean, Whit lives in Chicago. Why start up an LDR when they’re so freaking doomed?”

“I’m thinking . . . it’s been a while since I’ve had any, uh, fun.”

“Been a while for me, too.” Yuki sighed. “I not only don’t remember when, I don’t remember with whom!”

Cindy cackled, then Yuki put her on hold so she could take an incoming call. When Yuki came back on the line, she said, “Hey, girl reporter, Red Dog wants me. Gotta scoot.”

“Go, go,” Cindy said. “See you in court.”

Cindy hung up and turned on the dishwasher, then emptied the trash can. She tied a knot in the bag, went out into the hallway, and hit the elevator call button, and when the car clanked to a stop, she checked to make sure it was empty before she got in.

She thought again about Whit Ewing, and about Lindsay and Joe, and about how long-distance relationships were, by definition, roller-coaster rides.

Fun for a while, until they made you sick.

And now here was another reason to have a boyfriend who stayed in town — the sheer creepiness of living in this building alone. She hit B for “basement,” and the newly paneled old elevator rocked as it descended. A minute later, Cindy stepped out into the dank bowels of the building.

As she walked toward the trash area, she heard the sound of a woman crying, a sobbing that echoed and was joined by the screaming of a baby!

What now?

Cindy rounded a bend in the underground vault of the building and saw a blond-haired woman about her own age holding a baby over her shoulder.

There was a black trash bag lying open at the woman’s feet.

“What’s wrong?” Cindy asked.

“My dog,” the stricken woman cried. “Look!”

She bent, spread open the mouth of the trash bag so that Cindy could see the small black-and-white dog that was covered with blood.

“I left him outside for only a few minutes,” she said, “just to take the baby into my apartment. Oh, my God. I called the police to report that someone had stolen him, but look. Someone who lives here did this. Someone who lives here beat Barnaby to death!”

Chapter 58

IT WAS WEDNESDAY MORNING, 8:30 a.m., four days after Madison Tyler’s abduction. Conklin and I were parked in a construction zone near the corner of Waverly and Clay, steam from our coffee condensing on the car windows as we watched the traffic weave around double-parked delivery vans, pedestrians spilling into the narrow, gloomy streets of Chinatown.