Bleeding Through: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) (22 page)

Justin shook his head. “Everything was so crazy, people searching and the cops wanting to know what Shelley did
that day
, who she saw
that day
, what kind of mood she was in, I didn’t even think about what was going on before then. I didn’t have much of anything to say anyway, and it never occurred to me they’d want to hear it.”

“I want to hear it,” Tom said. “Tell me.”

“Well, sometimes when I saw her, she seemed nervous, you know? Looking around like she expected to see somebody. I asked her one time, just joking, if she thought she was being followed. She kind of shivered and said,
God, I hope not
. Then she just laughed and changed the subject.”

“Could she have been worried about Skeet Hadley?”

“No, I told you, she wasn’t scared of him. This was something else.”

“Did that kind of thing happen more than once?”

“Yeah. Yeah, it did.” Justin nodded. “Maybe her roommate can tell you what was going on. It’s kinda hard for me to describe, you know? I mean, you’re a cop, would you take it seriously if I told you she wasn’t acting like herself but I can’t say exactly what was wrong?”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “I’m taking it seriously.”

Chapter Twenty

The apartment Shelley Beecher had shared was on the top floor of a narrow federal rowhouse that had been cut up into three residences. Tom climbed the stairs, hearing every decade of the building’s age in the creaks and groans of the wood underfoot.

He knocked on a door painted bright red. A beautiful young woman with glossy black hair and olive skin as dark as his own opened the door.

Tom introduced himself.

“Oh, hello.” The girl almost smiled, then caught herself and turned solemn. She spoke in the lilting accent Tom recognized as Indian. “I am Supriya. I was so terribly shocked to hear about Shelley’s death.”

“You lived here with her?” Nobody fitting this girl’s description had turned up in the interview notes Fagan had shared with him.

“Oh, no. Not at all. I’ve only lived in this apartment for one week. I didn’t know Shelley well, although I believe she was a lovely person.”

“Does somebody named Maria Lima still live here?”

“Oh, yes, she does. She and Shelley lived here together.”

Maria, as it turned out, was working at her day job behind the counter at the nearest Starbucks. Before Tom headed over there, he asked Supriya, “Have you heard about anybody harassing Shelley? Has there been any gossip about who might have abducted her? You don’t have to be able to prove it, and I’ll keep it confidential.”

“There have been many rumors. Gossip and innuendo.” The girl fussed with her long hair, sweeping a strand off her cheek and tucking it behind her ear. “But I can’t tell you whether any of it is true.”

“What have you heard?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t say. I didn’t hear anything firsthand from Shelley herself. I don’t want to gossip.”

Yes, you do.
The eagerness in her eyes begged him to talk her into spilling it all. “Anything you can tell me might lead to the arrest of her killer.”

He’d spoken the magic words. With a little smile, she said, “Then of course I’m very happy to help. I’ve heard that a man came here to the apartment several times and made quite a fuss. I’ve also heard that Shelley received frequent telephone calls that upset her, and she was afraid to go out at night alone.”

“She was out alone the night she disappeared, wasn’t she?” Tom said.

Supriya sighed, her shoulders slumping. “Yes. Indeed she was.”

***

The roommate, Maria Lima, had a line of customers to serve at the Starbucks counter, and she wasn’t getting much help from the lanky, spiky-haired young man working with her. A miniature dynamo with a long black ponytail,
she whisked back and forth, producing lattes of every description, scooping cookies and slices of lemon pound cake into bags, plucking proffered bills from outstretched hands and depositing change in palms, filling three orders for every one her fellow server completed.

Most of the customers wore jeans and t-shirts, some had book bags slung over their shoulders. Students just out of afternoon classes at George Mason University, Tom assumed. He waited a few minutes until the crush dwindled. When he approached the counter, Maria glanced at him and asked, “What can I get for you today, sir?”

Tom ordered coffee and paid before he introduced himself. “I’d like to talk to you about Shelley Beecher.”

She turned her large dark eyes on him, truly seeing him for the first time, and he watched all the energy drain out of her pretty face. “Oh, god,” she said. “I’ve been trying so hard not to think about Shelley.”

From her name and appearance, Tom guessed she was no more than one or two generations removed from Cuba or Latin America, but she had a pure Middle Atlantic accent, with no trace of Spanish influence.

“Can you take a break for a few minutes?” he asked. “Looks as if you deserve one.”

“You’re right about that.” Casting a scathing look at the young man working with her, she told him she’d be back shortly. She ignored his mumbled protest as she came around the end of the counter and led Tom to one of the small round tables by the window.

Before he was in his chair, she said, “You’d better catch the bastard who did this to Shelley. And I want to see him get the death penalty. Life in prison is too good for pond scum like him.”

Her angry words sounded especially harsh coming from such an attractive, petite young woman.

Taking a seat, Tom said, “I know you’ve talked to the local police—”

“Just once, and that was a month ago, when she disappeared.”

“Have you remembered anything else about the last days of Shelley’s life that might point us toward her killer?”

She sat back, folded her arms and pursed her lips as she gazed out the window. Around them, a couple dozen people sat drinking their coffee and eating their afternoon snacks, and the place bubbled with conversation and laughter. Refocusing on Tom, Maria said, “I wish to god I’d taken it more seriously. I’ll never forgive myself. I should have made her report what was going on.”

“And what exactly was that?” Tom pulled his notebook from his jacket pocket and plucked a pen from his shirt pocket.

“Well, for one thing, there was that guy whose brother was murdered. He came to see her at the apartment a couple of times when I was home. He was a mess. Both times I saw him, he came in all mad and threatening, and Shelley just talked him down. Before you knew it, he was crying over his brother and she was feeding him cookies and milk.”

Skeet Hadley was starting to sound downright sympathetic. “So you don’t think Shelley was afraid of him?”

“Not a bit. She said if it helped him to yell at her, then he could yell at her all he wanted to. She was way too soft.” Maria made a scoffing sound and shook her head. “I would’ve thrown him out on his ass. Hell, I wouldn’t have let him get a foot through the door in the first place.”

“You said that was one thing. What else was going on?”

Maria leaned over the small table and lowered her voice. “Somebody was stalking her. She was freaked but she didn’t want to admit it. I got in her face about it, but she said the cops probably wouldn’t do anything, and if her boss at the innocence project found out and thought she was in some kind of danger, she’d lose her case. It’d be taken away from her and given to somebody else. She couldn’t stand the thought of that.”

“Stalked by somebody else? You’re not talking about the same guy who came to talk to her?”

“No, no. That guy, the victim’s brother, he was upfront about it. This was something way different.”

“Like what?”

“Like weird notes in the mailbox. Like phone calls with nothing but heavy breathing on the other end.”

“Did you ever see the notes or answer one of those calls yourself?”

“Yeah, I saw one note. It said something like
I’m always watching you.
Creepy. There must have been five or six more, but she wouldn’t let me read them.”

“What about the calls? Did you answer any of them?”

Maria shook her head. “They went to her cell phone. We don’t have a land line in the apartment.”

“Do you know how often she got them?”

“It was kind of cyclical, I guess you’d call it. She’d get a couple a day for a few days in a row, then nothing for a while, then they’d start again. At first, she thought it was somebody who kept getting the wrong number, maybe they’d written down somebody’s number with one digit off or something. But it kept happening. I could always tell when it was one of those calls, just from the look on her face. But she said it was nothing, she wasn’t going to let it get to her.”

“You say it happened several days in a row, then it stopped, and it started up again later. Do you remember what days of the week she got the calls?” Any kind of pattern might tell him something.

“Days of the week? I don’t—Hmmm.” She frowned and chewed on her full lower lip as she considered the question. After a moment her face cleared, her expression brightened a little. “Maybe on the weekends? I couldn’t swear to it, though. My schedule’s so crazy half the time I don’t know what day it is.”

“Today’s Tuesday,” Tom offered.

She laughed, a little burble of amusement. “Thank you, sir. Look, I’m sorry. I’m not being much help.”

“Yes, you are.” Tom scribbled a note:
Weekend calls?
Somebody whose work during the week didn’t allow time for harassing girls?

Just then he heard a familiar sound from behind him. Jingling keys. Tom twisted around in his chair.

Detective Fagan, hands in his pockets, grinned back at him. “I figured I’d run into you somewhere.”

“Are you back here for good?” Tom asked.

“Maybe, maybe not.” Fagan pulled out a chair and sat at the table with them. “I might have to go back to Mason County, but right now I think I’ll make more progress here.” He looked at Maria. “Hello again, Miss Lima. How have you been?”

“Mad as hell,” she said. “What kind of a world is it where a girl can’t walk from a building to her car without being grabbed and murdered? Are you gonna find the person who did this?”

“We’re doing our best,” Fagan said.

“Well, excuse me for being a cynic,” Maria said, rising from her chair, “but your best really sucks, detective.”

She strode back to the counter, her head high and her shoulders squared, making her look a little taller than she was.

“It’s always good to have support from the community,” Fagan said with a bitter twist to his lips.

“Don’t blame me,” Tom said. “I haven’t been on this case long enough to take responsibility for the foul-ups.”

Fagan grunted. “You learn anything from her that I didn’t already tell you?”

“Not much.” But it was something. After hearing what Maria had to say, Tom believed more strongly than ever that Shelley’s abduction and everything that happened to her afterward had been well-planned in advance.

Another stalker. Tom couldn’t help thinking about Rachel’s sister. No connection, but the similarities made him cringe. He didn’t want Michelle to end up like Shelley. But most of all, he didn’t want Rachel hurt because she happened to be at her sister’s side.

Chapter Twenty-one

“Let’s go. I’m done for the day and there’s somebody I want you to meet.” Rachel stripped off her lab coat and hung it on the coat rack in the corner of her office. When Michelle looked up from her computer with a doubtful frown, Rachel said, “Turn that thing off and let’s get out of here.”

“Where are we going? I’m not sure it’s safe for us to be driving around.”

“It’s broad daylight and we’ll be on the busiest road in the county. You can’t let that freak rule your life. I want to see you smile before the day is over.”

Michelle turned off her laptop and rose, her face pinched with anxiety. Rachel shoved down and locked the window that had stood open to air out the room. She still detected a faint hint of the dead rat’s odor, but it would dissipate by tomorrow morning. A few smears of black fingerprint powder remained on the cabinet despite Dennis Murray’s effort to remove all of it. He’d found no fingerprints except the ones Rachel left when she opened the cabinet.

***

The smile Rachel wanted to see appeared on Michelle’s face as soon as they turned into the driveway of Grady and Darla Duncan’s big Victorian house. Simon, Tom’s eight-year-old nephew, barreled toward them across the lawn.

“Oh, he’s adorable,” Michelle said. “And he looks so much like Tom.”

Rachel jumped out and braced herself for Simon’s high-impact hug. She managed to stay on her feet with a minimum of wobbling. “Hey, you,” she said, “I brought my sister to meet you. This is Michelle.”

“Hey, Michelle, I’m Simon.” He grinned up at her and stuck out a hand.

“I’m so happy to meet you, Simon.” Michelle offered her own hand and Simon gave it a vigorous shake. “Rachel has told me a lot about you.”