Killing Time
Chapter
19
Around midnight I was icing my stomach in the dining room while Bree heated up leftover chicken stew on the portable electric double burner I’d bought to get us through the remodel. Heavy plastic sheeting closed off the kitchen area, which looked like a bomb had gone off inside.
“The guy was long gone by the time I could stand up,” I said.
“You get a good look at him?” Bree asked, spooning stew into bowls.
“Some dirty, crazy homeless guy with wild, frizzy hair,” I replied. “Probably lives in that room. I found a mattress, ratty blankets, fresh McDonald’s wrappers, and three bags of clothes, including something you’re not going to want to see.”
Bree set the bowl of steaming chicken stew in front of me. “What?”
I reached down, groaned at the ache in my stomach, and got the plastic grocery bag sitting beside me. I pulled out a large Ziploc evidence bag that contained a teal-blue sweater with distinctive little brass buttons.
“That’s Ava’s!” Bree cried, her hands going to her mouth.
“Her Christmas present from Nana Mama.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Have it analyzed, give the loony who hit me a couple of days to settle back into his nest, and then go back in there after him.”
“I’m going with you next time,” Bree said.
“Probably a good idea,” I said, reached out and squeezed her hand.
She held on to it while we ate, and when she finished, said, “Do you know how lucky we are, Alex?”
“Of course,” I said, rubbing her knuckles with my thumb. “We’ve got our health, each other, the kids, the jobs, a house. I’m grateful.”
“So am I,” she replied. “Sometimes I forget, but then I see people like the Bransons losing their baby daughter, and…”
Tears began to drip down her cheeks.
“Any ransom note?” I asked.
“No,” Bree said, frustrated. “And she was smart, the kidnapper. She didn’t seem to touch anything in that day care other than Joss. Just in, out, vanish.”
“Woman that age, could be the ticking clock drove her to it.”
“I thought of that,” Bree said. “No ransom note will be coming, in that case, and we’ve got way too little to go on. I don’t know how I’m going to tell the Bransons that tomorrow.”
“You’ll get her back for them,” I said, standing up to hug her.
But as I moved into her arms I found myself looking over my wife’s shoulder at Ava’s sweater and wondering if that was true.
Chapter
20
At two that Saturday morning, Marcus Sunday checked to make sure that the sperm from Preston’s used condom was triple-wrapped in Baggies and hidden in a cold cuts drawer in the fridge. Then he tied a rope around the computer genius’s ankles.
Lights off in the apartment, he and Acadia pushed the corpse out the window and lowered it until the head was about three feet shy of the alley pavement. Sunday tied the rope off around a heating pipe and went down the back stairs to the alley. He backed up the van, got out, and opened the rear door.
Getting hold of the dead programmer’s torso, he made a meowing sound and soon felt the rope slacken. He had the body inside and under a carpet in less than a minute. Before he moved on, he changed the magnetic signs on the sides of the van. It now belonged to the Ralston Feed Company.